Muqtada al Sadr Weighs In

Almost certainly (based on my informal survey of left and right leaning commentary, as well as comments that have appeared on my own blog), you believe that Muqtada al Sadr is one of our primary enemies in Iraq and that the cease fire he announced in late August of 2007 is a big factor in the reduced violence associated with the troop surge. For a long time, I have argued that the evidence suggests that, after his disastrous confrontations with the U.S. military in 2004, Muqtada al Sadr decided to stop fighting us. In addition, after an unbelievable Sunni-extermination campaign that he launched to suppress al Qaeda's suicide bombing campaign against Shiite civilians (which he unleashed in 2006, after al Qaeda's final-straw demolition of the Golden Mosque in Samarra), Muqtada al Sadr decided to actually cooperate with the troop surge by pulling his forces off the streets of Baghdad (in early 2007). Within days of the very first few American reinforcements arriving in Baghdad (February of 2007), execution-style killings of Sunni males dropped by 50%. Unfortunately, al Qaeda's suicide bombing campaign against Shiite civilians immediately resumed (no one except for people who read my blog know this, weirdly), but Muqtada al Sadr still kept his forces at bay to allow the American troop surge and the Sunni Awakening to take the fight to al Qaeda. Six months later, in September of 2007 (just after Muqtada al Sadr declared his not-very-important cease fire with other Shiites), al Qaeda's suicide bombing campaign coincidentally collapsed to the comparatively low levels that we see today. Throughout all of this, Muqtada al Sadr was a big help, contrary to what you probably believe.

Over the last few days, the Mahdi Army has been fighting against Iraqi security forces in Basra and Baghdad (and elsewhere), as an attempt is finally made to disarm illegal militias. These fighters claim loyalty to Muqtada al Sadr, so you have probably assumed that Muqtada ordered the uprising and that he has now decided to throw in the towel. But why do you make that assumption? I assume that he did no such thing, and my assumption is based on his long-standing cooperation with the Iraqi government and with the troop surge strategy. We really don't know who ordered the Mahdi Army to start fighting, and we don't know the degree to which those militia forces are under the control of Muqtada al Sadr. And Muqtada's first real public stance on the fighting is, as usual, helpful:

Moqtada Sadr on Sunday told his Mehdi Army militias to stop fighting government troops.
...
Moqtada Sadr's statement said: "Because of the religious responsibility, and to stop Iraqi blood being shed... we call for an end to armed appearances in Basra and all other provinces.

"Anyone carrying a weapon and targeting government institutions will not be one of us."
...
The cleric also demanded that the government apply the general amnesty law, release detainees and stop what he called illegal and random raids.

He also told his followers to "work with Iraqi government offices to achieve security and to file charges against those who have committed crimes".

If you have never questioned your deeply held belief that Muqtada al Sadr is our bitter enemy in Iraq who is working against our goal of establishing a stable government there, it might be time to do that. If you do, you should try to inhibit reflexive brain circuits from reading my words as saying that Muqtada al Sadr is our friend in Iraq. He's not. He hates American troops, and he wants them out of Iraq. He just seems to have come around to the view that the way to get rid of them is to have a stable country. That is, he seems to have adopted the same view that the Sunnis have finally adopted.

Meanwhile, "news" coverage of recent events in Iraq read like opinion pieces. Reporters always do this when the truth of what is going on is a bit murky. Here is the New York Times taking up the ultra-liberal side of the story and training your liberal mind to believe that Muqtada al Sadr's helpful declaration is actually very, very bad:

Still, though fighting was reported to have died down by late afternoon in Basra, it continued in Baghdad, including heavy combat by Iraqi and American troops and aircraft in the Mahdi Army stronghold of Sadr City, casting uncertainty on the deal.

A strict curfew imposed by the government on Thursday was lifted at 6 a.m. Monday.

The negotiations with Mr. Sadr were seen as a serious blow for Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, who had vowed that he would see the Basra campaign through to a military victory and who has been harshly criticized even within his own coalition for the stalled assault.

As you can see, the negotiations "were seen" as a serious blow to Maliki. Then again, how do these reporters know that it was universally seen that way? The paper's left-leaning readership generally assumes that New York Times reporters are infallible and omniscient, but I don't. What is the evidence that the negotiations "were seen" as a serious blow? You have to keep reading, and late in article you find that the reporters dug up someone named Qassim Daoud (described as "...a former national security adviser who leads a secular Shiite party that has supported Mr. Maliki in the past") to express their own personal views, which are then passed off as "news." Get it? When they say that the negotiations "were seen" as a serious blow (thereby creating the impression that the negotiations were widely viewed in this light), they really just mean that they were seen that way by one single insignificant person in Iraq (and, more to the point, by the liberal reporters themselves).

Fair Question

From Howard's Dean's 2004 endorsement of John Kerry:

Dean added, "The real issue is this: Who would you rather have in charge of the defense of the United States of America, a group of people who never served a day overseas in their life, or a guy who served his country honorably and has three Purple Hearts and a Silver Star on the battlefields of Vietnam?"

As Jake Tapper notes:

McCain, by the way, has been awarded the Silver Star, the Legion of Merit, two Bronze Star Medals, a Purple Heart and the Distinguished Flying Cross.

Well, that was Howard Dean back then. As you've probably heard already, this is Howard Dean now:

"While we honor McCain’s military service, the fact is Americans want a real leader who offers real solutions, not a blatant opportunist who doesn’t understand the economy and is promising to keep our troops in Iraq for 100 years," Dean said.

Iraq is Falling Apart, so it's Time to Panic (as usual)

If you are a reporter (or if you get your news from one), you probably think along these lines:

OH MY GOD! I've been hearing nothing but happy talk from warmongering neocons about the effect of the troop surge on violence in Iraq. Now Muqtada al Sadr has ordered his Mahdi Army to start fighting government forces again, and the cease fire he declared is in jeopardy. Everything is starting to unravel again, which is no surprise to me because there is no military solution to the problems in Iraq.

Sound about right? Here is an actual news story along those lines:

Is 'success' of U.S. surge in Iraq about to unravel?

BAGHDAD — A cease-fire critical to the improved security situation in Iraq appeared to unravel Monday when a militia loyal to radical Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al Sadr began shutting down neighborhoods in west Baghdad and issuing demands of the central government.
...
The freeze on offensive activity by Sadr's Mahdi Army has been a major factor behind the recent drop in violence in Iraq, and there were fears that the confrontation that's erupted in Baghdad and Basra could end the lull in attacks, assassinations, kidnappings and bombings.

I love the scare quotes around 'success' in the headline.

There is much that you need to understand here. First, the "cease fire" that Muqtada declared in late August of 2007 and then renewed again last month was not a major factor in reducing violence in Iraq. It was, instead, a very helpful minor factor (as I illustrated here). Second, with respect to violence in Iraq, the big problem is not Shiites fighting each other (e.g., the Mahdi Army vs. the Badr Brigade, or the Mahdi Army fighting Iraqi security forces). Such squabbles flare up occasionally, but the overall death toll is microscopic compared to the previous death toll from Sunnis and Shiites killing each other. Third, the fighting that is taking place now is more like the Chicago Mafia fighting the feds in the 1920s than it is like a civil war. The rogue elements of the Mahdi Army in Basra are simply criminal thugs. Fourth, these elements are more under the influence of the Iranians than they are under the influence of Muqtada al Sadr.

You can find mention of these long-known facts in some of the less hysterical stories out there:

The Iraqi prime minister and U.S. officials have denied Sadr's charges that the operation is politically motivated and aimed at crushing the cleric and his supporters ahead of provincial elections in October. They insist the effort is aimed at rogue elements who have refused to abide by a cease-fire that Sadr called for his militiamen last August.

"These are essentially criminal militias who are a problem here," said U.S. Embassy spokesman Philip Reeker.

This is true, and it is not news. For the better part of a year now I have been pointing out that Muqtada al Sadr is cooperating with our efforts, and in a big way. The problem is that he no longer controls (or never did control) significant factions of the Mahdi Army. Here is a bit more on that:

"Iran's very good at putting pressure on you, forcing you to split, and anything that squeezes out the side, Iran picks up and turns into hardline factions," Ware said. "That's exactly what's happened to Muqtada. He's had purge after purge after purge of belligerent commanders, and they've all been swept up by Iran.

"And now the most lethal attacks on U.S. forces, the most coordinated attacks on U.S. forces, the most daring attacks on U.S. forces in the country are committed by Iranian-backed breakaway elements of Muqtada's militia faction."

The violence in Basra -- which has spread to Shiite areas throughout the country, including Baghdad -- is a kind of fighting Americans are unaccustomed to seeing, said retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Donald Sheppard, CNN's senior military analyst.

"This is intra-Shia. This is not Sunni vs. Shia, this is not civil war, this is not sectarian violence, it's intra-Shia politics for control of the government," he said.

And such violence, which is not rooted in sectarian hatred, is not the kind of violence that is likely to reach the ungodly levels of sectarian killing that gripped Iraq in 2006 and for much of 2007.

Muqtada al Sadr's recent public expressions are not what they used to be (back when he was exhorting his followers to fight the Americans). Here is what he is saying now:

Iraq's Sadr calls for talks to end days of violence

NAJAF, Iraq (Reuters) - Powerful Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr on Thursday called for talks to end days of widespread clashes between his followers and Iraqi security forces in southern Iraqi towns and cities and Baghdad.

"We ask everyone to adopt the political resolution and peaceful protest. Do not shed Iraqi blood," Sadr said in a statement read to Reuters by Hazem al-Araji, one of his senior aides in the holy Shi'ite city of Najaf.

Muqtada al Sadr is not our enemy in Iraq. He is not our friend either (not by a long shot), but I am amazed that more people do not realize that he isn't the threat they think he is. And to understand why Shiite-on-Shiite violence is not the big problem you fear that it might be (and why Muqtada's cease fire is also not the big deal you think it is), it helps to briefly review the basics about how Iraq exploded out of control in the first place:

1. Bush toppled Iraq's secular Sunni government (the Baathists)

2. The former Baathists launched a hopeless insurgency that prompted Democrats in America to immediately raise the white flag to further savage their own president in a time of war, but it was unable to prevent Democratic progress in Iraq. The game was over even though the fighting wasn't.

3. The Baathists decided to temporarily offer safe haven to al Qaeda terrorists, who had the power to fight the occupation more effectively. They were not ideologically in sync with al Qaeda, but they decided to use them on a temporary basis to evict the Americans.

4. Unfortunately for the Iraqi Sunnis, al Qaeda had other ideas. Their idea was not to topple the elected Shiite government of Iraq and to restore the Baathists to power. Instead, their idea was to incite a civil war between the Shiites and Sunnis and to take full advantage of what would then become the failed state of Iraq. Iraq would be the place from which to launch global jihad (and al Qaeda is talking along those lines to this very day). To create a civil war, al Qaeda sent its foreign suicide bombers to kill Shiite civilians and to destroy their mosques.

5. Just as it was supposed to do, al Qaeda's suicide bombing campaign eventually enraged Muqtada al Sadr to the point that he directed his Mahdi Army to unleash a furious killing spree against Sunnis in Baghdad. By this point (early 2006), sectarian fighting in Iraq was out of control.

6. Eventually, it became clear to the Sunnis that this was not healthy for them and that the Americans were not going to raise the white flag and leave Iraq with their tails between their legs despite the fact that the Democrats (who favored that very policy then and continue to favor it today) took control of Congress in the November 2006 elections. With the Democrats unable to rescue their insurgency, and with al Qaeda having proven to be more of a problem than a help, the Sunnis switched sides. Meanwhile, in direct response to the troop surge, Muqtada al Sadr greatly reduced his killing spree against Sunnis in Baghdad.

All that time, Shiite-on-Shiite violence was sprinkled into the mix, but it was minor by comparison. It still is. This does not mean that the current confrontation in Basra won't produce a lot of casualties. It might very well do that. But all indications from the past suggest that this is not the kind of problem that will cause Iraq to fall apart.

More worrisome to me is what al Qaeda is planning to do for the benefit of the Democrats who are hell-bent on surrendering in Iraq no matter what. After all, General Petraeus is scheduled to testify in Congress in a few weeks. Do you recall what al Qaeda did in the weeks before his last appearance? Here is a casualty chart that shows the number of civilian victims of al Qaeda's foreign suicide bombers in Iraq (taken from my usual analysis of the Iraq Body Count database):


Notice anything in particular? First, the very month that Muqtada al Sadr dramatically reduced his anti-Sunni extermination campaign in Baghdad (February, 2007 -- the first month of the troop surge and 6 months before his famous cease-fire), al Qaeda suicide bombings dramatically increased. In the days before Petraeus testified, we had the most dramatic attack of all. And the Democrats, far from being outraged over al Qaeda's attempt to control them like puppets on a string, did just what that wretched terrorist organization wanted them to do. Basically, they used the massive escalation of violence as a gift to attack the general's integrity.

I'm not really worried about the Shiite-on-Shiite violence underway today. Many criminal thugs may yet die in that confrontation, but even that would not portend disaster (not that I can see, anyway). I am worried about what al Qaeda might do, and I also worry that grateful Democrats will again use a savage suicide bombing attack against innocent civilians as a gift to use against Petraeus and Bush.

The Now-Permanent Jeremiah Wright Imbroglio

I am absolutely astounded by the continuing firestorm over Barack Obama's willing 20-year association with radical anti-American preacher Jeremiah Wright. To me, it's a complete non-issue. After all, it has been obvious for a long time that Obama is nothing like the transcendent beacon of hope that his mesmerized followers perceive him to be. Instead, he's just a standard liberal politician who has maneuvered his way to the top the way that all politicians do, and associating himself with Wright was just a politically convenient step to take along the way (which is fine by me). Wright's views would alienate a lot of people, but you have to remember that Obama hails from the far left, and such people are lot less put off by anti-American ranting and raving (even if they don't fully agree with it) than those on the right usually are.

On March 19, Obama gave a speech that was supposed to put the issue to rest. Many on the left gushed over it, and Jonah Goldberg summarized some of their glowing reviews here:

Thank God for Barack Obama. For until his "More Perfect Union" speech last Tuesday, it seems it never occurred to anyone that America needed to talk about race. "Maybe this'll be the beginning of a conversation," Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan proclaimed on "Meet the Press." According to New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, just the fact of Obama's address proves that a "national dialogue on race" is "essential." The Chicago Tribune reported that "many voters, black and white, say they were moved by Obama's speech ... which they see as a long-awaited invitation to begin an honest, calm national dialogue about race." Newspaper editorial boards agree. In the words of the San Diego Union-Tribune: "Prodding Americans to confront their racial differences is, by itself, an accomplishment of historical proportions."

However, even excluding reactions from the right, it wasn't a complete love fest. Here, for example, is ABC News weighing in:

Buried in Eloquence, Obama Contradictions About Pastor

In Speech, Obama Contradicted More Than a Year of Denials About His Knowledge of Rev. Wright's Sermons

Buried in his eloquent, highly praised speech on America's racial divide, Sen. Barack Obama contradicted more than a year of denials and spin from him and his staff about his knowledge of Rev. Jeremiah Wright's controversial sermons.
...
Until yesterday, Obama said the only thing controversial he knew about Rev. Wright was his stand on issues relating to Africa, abortion and gay marriage.

"I don't think my church is actually particularly controversial," Obama said at a community meeting in Nelsonville, Ohio, earlier this month.

"He has said some things that are considered controversial because he's considered that part of his social gospel; so he was one of the leaders in calling for divestment from South Africa and some other issues like that," Obama said on March 2.

His initial reaction to the initial ABC News broadcast of Rev. Wright's sermons denouncing the U.S. was that he had never heard his pastor of 20 years make any comments that were anti-U.S. until the tape was played on air.

But yesterday, he told a different story.

"Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes," he said in his speech yesterday in Philadelphia.

No kidding. And Hillary Clinton is not going to let it rest:

Clinton: Wright 'would not have been my pastor'

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, in a wide-ranging interview today with Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reporters and editors, said she would have left her church if her pastor made the sort of inflammatory remarks Sen. Barack Obama's former pastor made.

"He would not have been my pastor," Clinton said. "You don't choose your family, but you choose what church you want to attend."

This, of course, is the key point that many on the right have taken issue with. The relevant part of Obama's speech was this:

And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children...I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe..

Nice try, but he's not your family, and you can, indeed, choose to disown him (or freely choose to adopt him, which is basically what you did). Here is Ed Koch weighing in on this issue:

Senator Obama in his speech acknowledged that the rantings of his minister are "inexcusable," but stated, "I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community..."

Before we discuss his grandmother, let's examine the impact of Rev. Wright's statements on the Senator's two daughters. Nothing says it better than a song from the musical "South Pacific," to wit, "You have to be taught to hate and fear...You've got to be carefully taught." Few dispute that Rev. Wright's sermons are filled with hate.

Why didn't Senator Obama stand up in the church and denounce his hateful statements or, at the very least, argue privately with his minister? It was horrifying to see on a video now viewed across America the congregation rise from the pews to applaud their minister's rants.

I completely understand the cynical political calculation that prompted Obama to embrace the anti-American radical in the first place, but I am not sure I understand his attempt to make him a blood relative (which he need not have done, but it's too late now). All that did was to ensure that the issue will live right through November. Along the way, it will probably be bundled with his refusal to wear an American flag on his lapel for what will seem like silly reasons to all but the far left:

Obama Dropped Flag Pin in War Statement

Obama Stops Wearing Flag Pin, Says He'll Show Patriotism Through Ideas

"You know, the truth is that right after 9/11, I had a pin," Obama said. "Shortly after 9/11, particularly because as we're talking about the Iraq War, that became a substitute for I think true patriotism, which is speaking out on issues that are of importance to our national security, I decided I won't wear that pin on my chest.

"Instead," he said, "I'm going to try to tell the American people what I believe will make this country great, and hopefully that will be a testimony to my patriotism."

Well, he could wear that pin AND tell the American people what he believes will make this country great. Instead, having initially chosen to wear the pin (a free choice, presumably), he then conspicuously removed it to make some sort of statement. In the months to come, I suspect that his decision to do that will be juxtaposed with his willing 20-year association with an anti-American radical who is not, despite what Obama implies, a blood relative. And in his debates with John McCain, I can imagine this issue coming up (if, for example, McCain is proudly wearing that pin). It is not really an important issue to me -- not at all -- but I suspect that it is going to partly define Obama. And all of this fits with his willingness to accept an American defeat in Iraq. Many on the right are not prepared to accept defeat at the hands of al Qaeda in Iraq now that things are going so badly for them over there, as the Bush administration accurately points out:

The surge has done more than turn the situation in Iraq around -- it has opened the door to a major strategic victory in the broader war on terror. For the terrorists, Iraq was supposed to be the place where al Qaeda rallied Arab masses to drive America out. Instead, Iraq has become the place where Arabs joined with Americans to drive al Qaeda out. In Iraq, we are witnessing the first large-scale Arab uprising against Osama bin Laden, his grim ideology, and his murderous network. And the significance of this development cannot be overstated.

But Obama will have none of it. And the fact that he willingly associates with and takes spiritual guidance from an anti-American zealot while at the same time choosing to conspicuously remove a symbol of patriotism from his lapel (to make himself stand out from other politicians in that respect) will make people wonder if his far left views on Iraq match the far left views that others have expressed, such as the views once expressed by James Carroll in the Boston Globe:

For all of the anguish felt over the loss of American lives, can we acknowledge that there is something proper in the way that hubristic American power has been thwarted? Can we admit that the loss of honor will not come with how the war ends, because we lost our honor when we began it? This time, can we accept defeat?

If you are a fan of Barack Obama, you already know the answer: "Yes we can!" I don't actually believe that Obama himself would express views like this, but I do suspect that, being the far left liberal that he is, he finds such views to be less objectionable than most would (which is also why he was able to tolerate Jeremiah Wright for so long). Barack Obama is just about as liberal as a politican gets, and even the New York Times is finally beginning to puzzle over the question of how a man of the far left can be the transcendent uniter he claims to be:

Obama’s Test: Can a Liberal Be a Unifier?

WASHINGTON — At the core of Senator Barack Obama’s presidential campaign is a promise that he can transcend the starkly red-and-blue politics of the last 15 years, end the partisan and ideological wars and build a new governing majority.
...
But this promise leads, inevitably, to a question: Can such a majority be built and led by Mr. Obama, whose voting record was, by one ranking, the most liberal in the Senate last year?
...
Mr. Obama’s rise has been built in part on the idea that he represents a break from the established identities that have defined many of the nation’s divisions. To many, he embodies a promise to bridge black and white, old and young, rich and poor — and Democrats, Republicans and independents.

Even so, Mr. Obama does not come to the campaign with a reputation as one of the most accommodating bridge-builders in the Senate. And while he promises a very different politics from Mrs. Clinton, their voting records in the Senate last year were not strikingly different.

A recent analysis of key votes by The National Journal concluded that Mr. Obama had the Senate’s most liberal voting record in 2007; Mrs. Clinton ranked 16th. But of the 267 measures on which both senators voted, the National Journal analysis found that they differed on only 10. One of their major differences came on an amendment that called for the designation of the Revolutionary Guards in Iran as a terrorist organization; while Mrs. Clinton supported it, Mr. Obama missed the vote, but said he opposed it.

Congressional Quarterly said Mr. Obama voted with his party 97 percent of the time on party-line votes last year; Mrs. Clinton did so 98 percent of the time.

Well, it might come as a shock to Obama supporters, but he is just a liberal (though an impressive one), and the fact that he embraced a man like Jeremiah Wright for 20 years pretty much ensures that he does not have what it takes to bring everyone together.

What effect has all of this had on the polls? The results are somewhat inconsistent, but the Rasmussen tracking poll suggests that, among Democrats, there has been a slight shift in the direction of Hillary Clinton. Among the general electorate, there has been a larger shift away from both Democrats and toward John McCain. The Jeremiah Wright flap first began to appear on the radar screen on March 13 as best I can tell. Obama gave his speech on March 19, which seems have thrown gasoline instead of water on the fire. Charted below are the results of the Rasmussen daily tracking poll (here and here) since early March (with the red line marking the onset of the Jeremiah Wright story):


What was a clear lead for Obama on March 13 is now a small lead for Clinton. The matchups against Mccain show even clearer trends:



On the other hand, the daily tracking poll from Gallup shows all three of these comparisons to be statistical ties, with nothing much having changed over the last few weeks. The difference may be that Gallup polls registered voters, whereas Rasmussen polls likely voters. Likely voters are probably paying much closer attention to all of this than the larger group of registered voters.

A political eternity lies between now and November, and events from the recent past suggest that unpredictable twists and turns will be the norm.

Saddam's Pre-War Ties to Islamic Terrorists

I don't really care all that much if Saddam Hussein had ties to al Qaeda before the U.S. invasion of Iraq. My concern is that, like it or not, we are in a war against al Qaeda now (the real al Qaeda), and our choice is to win that war (John McCain) or to lose that war (Barrack Obama). That's your choice, take your pick. It happens to be the same choice faced by al Qaeda, so they are fighting on despite the fact that the war is going very badly for them. The flow of foreign fighters into Iraq has declined, many of the foreign fighters who are already there are seeking to leave, jihadist leaders acknowledge serious setbacks in Iraq, and al Qaeda's popularity throughout the Muslim world has suffered a severe setback since the invasion. Thus, the recent tactical shift in Iraq associated with the troop surge offers the promise of a strategic victory in the war on terror that few envisioned at the outset. If we finish the job, the damage done to al Qaeda's global jihadist objectives will be exceeded only by the victory we will hand to them should Barack Obama assume the presidency in January of 2009.

That's the reality today, but it is still interesting to look back at Saddam's pre-war terror connections. Grownups already know that he had connections to Islamic radicals (e.g., read the 9/11 Commission report), and that's what raised reasonable suspicions about his links to al Qaeda. The adolescent left, by contrast, thinks that it's all a big snow job because the secular Saddam could not possibly have had anything to do with radical Islam. This intellectually vacuous idea is often reinforced by the bumper-sticker mentality of our mainstream media, which long ago summarized the 9/11 report as simply saying that Saddam had "no collaborative relationship" with al Qaeda. This is another great example of using the truth to mislead:

Al Qaeda-Hussein Link Is Dismissed

By Walter Pincus and Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, June 17, 2004; Page A01

The Sept. 11 commission reported yesterday that it has found no "collaborative relationship" between Iraq and al Qaeda, challenging one of the Bush administration's main justifications for the war in Iraq.

The classic technique here is to refute an allegation that was never made. The same technique was used to refute the never-made allegation that Iraq posed an "imminent threat" to the United States. Bush actually said that it would be a mistake to wait until Iraq posed an imminent threat, and the fact that the U.S. invaded before the threat became imminent is why the invasion was "illegal" (under international law). Similarly, before the war, Bush argued that Saddam had connections with al Qaeda, but he never said that it was a "collaborative" relationship. But his critics are always happy to put words into his mouth and then claim that, in their own fevered imaginations, Bush essentially said what they they are now refuting. It's misleading, but it works.

In any case, the question of Saddam's pre-war ties to terror has been renewed because the Pentagon just released an extremely detailed study of the issue based on an analysis of 600,000 captured documents. The press, which is heavily invested in one particular narrative that fuels the feverish minds of the radical anti-war left, has again done just what they did before:

Study: No ties between Saddam, al-Qaida

WASHINGTON, March 12 (UPI) -- A Pentagon review of Iraqi documents has found no evidence of ties between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida, McClatchy Newspapers reported Wednesday.

The study is scheduled to be released to the U.S. Congress and the public this week.

A U.S. official said that in more than 600,000 documents seized after the 2003 invasion none showed a "direct operational link" between the Iraqi regime and Osama bin Laden.

The Bush administration used allegations of such links as a justification for the invasion. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld claimed in 2002 that there was "bullet-proof" evidence and Secretary of State Colin Powell cited links in his February 2003 speech to the United Nations immediately before the invasion.

And there you have it. Bush lied, people died. What else do you need to know?

I learned a long time ago that you can't let the mainstream media do your thinking for you. They are well meaning, but they lean far to the left. You really can't lean far in one political direction and also be objective because ordinary humans are not adept at detecting their own biases. When you lean left (or right), you tend to jump at evidence that seems to support your world view. Thus, a story like the one quoted above tells me little except that the reporter leans to the left and can find at least one sentence that seems to support the liberal view of the world. To me, that's not news.

As usual, I went looking for the report itself. You can find it here, and Volume 1 is the one you want. For now, I am just going to provide some excerpts from the report and mainly leave it at that. Much of the report documents Saddam's support for Palestinian terrorist groups and for his planned use of suicide bombers to carry out assassinations of Iraqi opposition group leaders (in Europe and elsewhere). But what caught my attention were Saddam's connections to Islamic jihadist groups. It's quite clear that those connections were extensive and that he maintained a business-like relationship with them. As such, it's easy to see why any intelligence analyst operating in a post-9/11, pre-war environment would not look at this evidence and jump to the conclusion that we need not worry about Saddam's ties to terrorism. Quite the opposite, in fact, even though it is also true that an operational relationship with al Qaeda did not exist. And if wish, you can use that true fact to lie about Saddam's connection to international terrorism. It's great technique if your goal is to do something other than convey the truth. If you want the truth, you probably have to read the report for yourself. Here are some relevant excerpts (with lines separating different parts of the report):

Iraq was a long-standing supporter of international terrorism. The existence of a memorandum (Extract 10) from the lIS to Saddam, written a decade before OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM, provides detailed evidence of that support. Several of the organizations listed in this memorandum were designated as international terrorist organizations by the US Department of State.

Extract 10.
[18 March 1993]

Islamic Jihad Organization [Egyptian Islamic Jihad]

In a meeting in the Sudan we agreed to renew our relations with the Islamic Jihad Organization in Egypt. Our information on the group is as follows:

It was established in 1979.

Its goal is to apply the Islamic shari' a law and establish Islamic rule.

It is considered one of the most brutal Egyptian organizations. It carried out numerous successful operations, including the assassination of Sadat.

We have previously met with the organization's representative and we agreed on a plan to carry out commando operations against the Egyptian regime.

Islamic Ulama Group - Islamic Scholars Group

It was established in 1948 and is very influential in large areas of Pakistan, especially in the northern districts. They rely on financial support from Iraq and Libya. The party is led by Ahmad Nu'mani. He has strong relations with our agency since 1981 and is ready to carry out any assignment we task him with.

The Afghani Islamic Party

It was founded in 1974 when its leader [Gulbuddin Hekmatyar] escaped from Afghanistan to Pakistan. It is considered one of the extreme political religious movements against the West, and one of the strongest Sunni parties in Afghanistan. The organization relies on financial support from Iraq and we have had good relations with Hikmatyar since 1989

-----------------------------

One other memorandum (Extract 12) bears consideration. Drafted in Saddam's office, it refers to an agreement with Islamic terrorists to conduct operations against the Egyptian regime during the first Gulf War (1991) and for continued financial support for the terrorists after hostilities ended.

With respect to the proposal of our special security agency [liS] regarding calling a representative of the Islamic Group in Egypt to Iraq in our topsecret personal letter dated 11 March 1993. This letter was in response to the President directing that only fmancial support is available for now. Intelligence operatives and contacts should be maintained in any movement in the Arab homeland, as indicated by the President in a top-secret letter, 38 dated 25 March 1992. [Emphasis added]

The last sentence (in italics referring to the agreement with Islamist terrorists) deserves special attention: it refers to a top-secret order for Saddam's intelligence services to maintain contact with any movement in Arab countries. While it is not surprising that Saddam, one of the last of the Middle East's revolutionary nationalists, would endeavor to support revolutionary groups, it is important to recognize that many of these nationalist groups changed in the late 1990s. Saddam viewed these groups through the eyes of a pan-Arab revolutionary, while the leaders of the growing Islamist movements viewed them as potential affiliates for their Jihad. In other words, two movements, one pan-Arab and the other pan-Islamic, were seeking and developing supporters from the same demographic pool.

-----------------------------

A much longer document from 1993 illuminates how the outwardly secular Saddam regime found common cause with terrorist groups who drew their inspiration from radical Islam. One could argue that keeping some of these extremist groups active outside of Iraq was a pragmatic defensive measure against them. Nevertheless, the Iraqi document reports on contact with a large number of terrorist groups in the region, including those that maintained an office or liaison in Iraq. The document goes into great depth about Iraq's links to the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and includes a memorandum, dated 8 February 1993, asking that movement to refrain from moving against the Egyptian government at that time.

-----------------------------

The Terror "Business" Model of Saddam Hussein

Saddam's interest in, and support for, non-Iraqi non-state actors was spread across a wide variety of revolutionary, liberation, nationalist, and Islamic terrorist organizations. For years, Saddam maintained training camps for foreign "fighters" drawn from these diverse groups. In some cases, particularly for Palestinians, Saddam was also a strong financial supporter. Saddam supported groups that either associated directly with al Qaeda (such as the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, led at one time by bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri) or that generally shared al Qaeda's stated goals and objectives.

Now, I am sure that a left-leaning reporter truly believes that the best way to summarize this report is to say "Study: No ties between Saddam, al-Qaida." However, the truth turns out to be a lot more interesting than that.

Chasing the Popular Vote

Here is an article by Ben Smith that echoes some points that I wrote about the other day. Basically, Clinton's hope for the Democratic nomination rest on her taking the lead in the popular vote. Even if she trails in the pledged delegate count when all is said and done (which she will), she can plausibly claim to be the rightful nominee if more Democrats voted for her than voted for Barack Obama (just as many Democrats believe that Al Gore was the rightful winner over George Bush back in 2000):

Can Clinton win popular vote, superdelegates?

The apparent collapse of planned new votes in Florida and Michigan could push victory on a key symbolic measure — the primary season popular vote — beyond Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s grasp.

Clinton’s top supporters, including her husband, have suggested in recent days that amassing more votes than Sen. Barack Obama, while it has no formal meaning, could offer a key rationale for laying claim to the nomination. The theory: Winning the popular vote might give party leaders known as superdelegates a reason to take the nomination away from Obama, who is virtually sure to earn more pledged delegates.

"If Sen. Obama wins the popular vote then the choice will be easier. But if Hillary wins the popular vote but can't quite catch up with the delegate votes, then you have to just ask yourself, 'Which is more important, and who is more likely to win in November?'” former President Bill Clinton told ABC earlier this week.

Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a key Clinton ally, painted the same path to victory.

"Let's assume that Sen. Clinton goes ahead in the popular vote count," he said in a March 13 conference call with reporters. He then asked, “Which is more Democratic”: the measure of delegates won or of votes received.

This is a point that I have been making for a while now. However, Ben Smith looks ahead and thinks that a popular vote lead for Hillary is not in the cards:

It’s impossible to project turnout in the 10 states and territories left to vote, but Clinton will have to close a deficit of more than 700,000 votes. That means, even with extremely high turnout estimates, she would have to win by huge, double-digit percentages in the states where she could have an edge — Pennsylvania and West Virginia — while holding Obama to tiny gains in states such as North Carolina and Oregon, where he is heavily favored.

But that 700,000-vote lead exists only if the voters of Michigan and Florida are disenfranchised:

The margins in Florida, where both were on the ballot, and Michigan, where Clinton faced off against “uncommitted,” are a mark of how much Clinton loses by missing out on mutually accepted, contested elections in those states. Her margin in Florida was 294,772; in Michigan, where Obama was not on the ballot, she won by a margin of 90,141 over “uncommitted.”

But with the prospect of new votes in Florida and Michigan now dim, Clinton is stuck trying to squeeze more than 700,000 votes out of just 10 states and territories. And interviews with close watchers of Democratic politics in the largest of those states suggest that Clinton will find it extremely hard to make up that ground.

Smith assumes that a super delegate can only factor Michigan and Florida into his or her thinking if they conduct "do over" primaries. But what law mandates that line of thinking? If Obama is perceived as helping to block the re-votes (because he'd likely lose them both), a super delegate is free to use the best estimates available, which give Clinton almost 400,000 of the 700,000 votes she needs to overtake Obama in the popular vote total. And in the largest primary yet to come, Pennsylvania, she currently enjoys a big lead:


On average, she leads by about 14 points (51% to 37%), with the latest poll giving her a whopping 26-point lead (56% to 30%).

She may not be able to overtake Obama in the popular vote total even if Florida and Michigan are counted, but Obama's star is no longer rising, and Clinton seems likely to come out of Pennsylvania with a big boost. And there will be one more thing for super delegates to consider after that happens, namely, national polls of Democrats:


Obama still clings to a small lead, but what will this chart look like after Pennsylvania votes? In any case, I can see why Clinton has taken this new stance on the issue of the Michigan re-vote:

Clinton asks Obama to support do-over

Sen. Hillary Clinton challenged her Democratic opponent Sen. Barack Obama to support a primary election that will allow Michigan voters to have a voice in the selection of the next president.

“The people in Michigan and particularly Democrats in Michigan know that Michigan matters in both the primary and general election,” she told a crowd of more than 300 people at the AFSCME Local 25 union hall in Detroit. “If the Democrats send a message that we don’t care about your votes, I’m sure that John McCain and the Republicans will be happy to have them.”
...
“Sen. Obama speaks passionately on the campaign trial. Today I’m urging him to match those words with actions,” she said. “I have accepted a plan for a new vote in Michigan. It’s been approved by the Democratic National Committee. I call on Sen. Obama to do the same. Does he mean what he says or does he not?"

There are interesting times for Democrats.

UPDATE: I just checked the betting on Barack Obama over the last 7 days at Intrade, and here's the relevant chart:


You can see that the trend is in the negative direction. The green bars show the volume of trading. Obama's recent speech on race in America caused a wave on betting on the 19th, which raised his stock temporarily. But even that speech, which the left loved for its inspiring emotional overtones and the right picked apart for its vacuous intellectual content, does not seem to have stopped the slow downward drift.

Well, this is just a small snapshot. In politics, a week is an eternity, so we'll see what happens in the days to come.

How to Deny (or Minimize) al Qaeda in Iraq

As I indicated yesterday, one reason why the left has such a hard time making sense out of al Qeada in Iraq is that they predicted that our invasion would lead to a civil war between Shiites and Sunnis. When sectarian violence spiralled out of control in 2006, they thought they saw confirmation of their theory. They didn't, but now they are trapped by that increasingly antiquated way of thinking. It's hard to let go of an idea that you thought was proven right beyond a shadow of a doubt. But let go they must.

The civil war theory has trouble assimilating the idea of al Qaeda in Iraq. Knowing that, I've tried to pay attention to how Democrats cope with the uncomfortable fact that Osama bin Laden appears to have made the war in Iraq his top strategic priority. Most on the left simply adopt an eerie code of silence on the issue, which I have documented relentlessly on my blog. Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, John Murtha, and, now, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama discuss Iraq in terms of a civil war and make no mention of al Qaeda at all (except, perhaps, to say that we'll leave a few troops behind to "target terrorists"). It's as if they are talking to teenagers whose brains are not sufficiently developed to absorb any sort detail about Iraq, so they just gloss right over the most important details about al Qaeda. The fact that Democrats don't seem to know any of the details about al Qaeda in Iraq is of concern to me given that they may win back the White House in November.

In any case, when they don't adopt the standard eerie code of silence about al Qaeda in Iraq, Democrats usually adopt one of 4 other options in a desperate effort to hang on to their cherished "civil war" scenario. Those involve making one of these claims:

1. Al Qaeda in Iraq is just a myth

2. Al Qaeda in Iraq is different from the al Qaeda that attacked us on 9/11

3. Al Qaeda is in Iraq, but they are a tiny fraction of a complex insurgency

4. Al Qaeda in Iraq is in Iraq only because we are (i.e., it's George Bush's fault), so they'll just leave when we leave

Very few on the left attempt to openly deny the truth about al Qaeda by adopting option #1. But some do. Here is an article in the Washington Monthly entitled "The Myth of AQI," which was quickly endorsed by the ordinarily sensible lefty Kevin Drum. The evidence contradicting this idea is so overwhelming that it does not really deserve a response (but, of course, I responded in detail anyway, here and here).

Option #2 is odd and seems to be based on the false idea that Bush once claimed that Saddam and al Qaeda conspired to attack us on 9/11. In a typically snotty editorial today, the New York Times seems to fall back on this idea. In a standard liberal litany of complaints about the war in Iraq, the editors say:

"All evidence to the contrary, Mr. Bush is still trying to make it seem as if Al Qaeda in Iraq was connected to the Al Qaeda that attacked America on Sept. 11, 2001. "

It's not really clear what they are trying to say here, but it is clear that they are trying to elicit an emotional reaction from an especially eager part of the liberal brain (namely, the large part of the liberal brain that is wedded to the idea that "Bush lied!"). Their point would have been a bit clearer if, after starting their sentence with the phrase "All evidence to the contrary...", they actually cited some evidence. Do they mean to imply that al Qaeda's suicide bombers in Iraq are mainly Iraqis? They're not. Do they mean that al Qaeda's leaders in Iraq are Iraqis? They're not (remember Zarqawi?). Do they mean that Osama bin Laden (al Qaeda's #1) and Zawahiri (al Qaeda's #2) are playing no role whatsoever? That's obviously false given their repeated pronouncements about jihad in Iraq. For example, here is what Osama bin Laden said just a few months ago:

Iraq: Bin Laden Appeals To Muslims To Support Al-Qaeda

In a 56-minute audio statement released on the Internet on December 29, Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden issued his most vocal criticism to date of Iraqi nationalist insurgent groups.

Bin Laden said the failure of Sunni Arab insurgents to align with Al-Qaeda in Iraq is hurting the global jihadist effort and will ultimately impede the establishment of an Islamic state in Iraq.

Here is another account of an earlier message from bin Laden:

A second Bin Laden tape, released on December 27, 2004, underscored Al Qaeda's interest in Iraq and support for the ongoing insurgency. In this recording, Bin Laden personally welcomed and endorsed Jordanian-born terrorist leader Abu Musab Al Zarqawi as an Al Qaeda affiliate and leader of Al Qaeda operations in Iraq.19 Bin Laden identified the insurgency in Iraq as "a golden and unique opportunity" for jihadists to engage and defeat the United States, and he characterized the insurgency in Iraq as the central battle in a "Third World War, which the Crusader-Zionist coalition began against the Islamic nation."20 Describing Baghdad as "the capital of the caliphate," Bin Laden asserted that "jihad in Palestine and Iraq today is a duty for the people of the two countries" and other Muslims.

It seems that the battle between U.S. forces and al Qaeda in Iraq has the close attention of Osama bin Laden (the guy who attacked on 9/11, in case that slipped your mind). So what do they mean when they say that al Qaeda in Iraq is not the al Qaeda that attacked us on 9/11? Do they mean that al Qaeda in Iraq has not pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden? Wrong:

Al-Qaida front group airs video glorifying Osama bin Laden

BAGHDAD: An al-Qaida front group aired a nearly hour-long video Friday showing dozens of masked men singing religious and patriotic songs and brandishing automatic weapons as they praised Osama bin Laden and the leader of the Taliban.

The Islamic State of Iraq, an umbrella group that includes the terror network, included footage with excerpts from old speeches by the al-Qaida leader and slain al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who died a year ago Thursday in a U.S. airstrike northeast of Baghdad.
...
"Our leader bin Laden, with power of faith, made America tremble .. Our Emir Mullah Omar .. We destroyed America .. Baghdad, the cradle of esteem, is calling on us .. hurry up to head for paradise . we are the soldiers of God," the militants chanted.

So I guess I don't know what the editors of the New York Times mean when they say that we are fighting a different al Qaeda in Iraq. No one should be able to get away with referring to evidence and then not citing some of that evidence (which is what they do). A liberal reader might get the idea that the editors of the New York Times know what they are talking about and that "all" of the evidence supports what they say. That's way wrong.

Option #3 (i.e., stating that al Qaeda is a tiny fraction of the insurgency) is typical, and it appeared in the New York Times as recently as this week:

Although many American military officials and politicians — and even the Iraqi public — use the term Al Qaeda as a synonym for the insurgency, some American and Iraqi experts say they believe that the number of committed religious ideologues remains small.
...
“It has a great deal more to do with the economy than with ideology,” said one senior American military official, who said that studies of detainees in American custody found that about three-quarters were not committed to the jihadist ideology. “The vast majority have nothing to do with the caliphate and the central ideology of Al Qaeda.”

Claiming that al Qaeda in Iraq is an extremely small part of the insurgency seems outright dishonest to me precisely because it is true. It is a true fact, but most people who hear it don't realize that it is also an irrelevant fact. The relevant fact is that al Qaeda's suicide bombers have killed 10,000 people in Iraq since 2004, the vast majority of whom were innocent Shiite civilians. It is their lethality, not their percentage of the insurgency, that matters. But the New York Times and many others on the left talk about the percentage (e.g., 2%) without saying a single word about their lethality. As I said, that seems dishonest to me.

Option #4 (i.e., al Qaeda is there only because we are, and they'll leave when we leave) is the Barack Obama option (at least the blaming Bush part). When others note that al Qaeda is in Iraq, he points out that this is George Bush's fault:

"John McCain thought that he could make a clever point," said Obama, inserting the response into his stump speech as he now finds himself facing fire from McCain as well as Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

"Like I wasn't reading the papers. Like I didn't know what was going on. I said, well, first of all, I do know that al-Qaida is in Iraq and that is why I said we should continue to strike al-Qaida targets. But I have some news for John McCain. And that is that there was no such thing as al-Qaida in Iraq until George Bush and John McCain decided to invade Iraq," Obama said to cheers.

This, again, is a little dishonest precisely because it is largely true. Stating a true fact to divert attention from the real question is not a sign of confidence or of intellectual honesty. Instead, it is a political gimmick. The real question is what to do now that we are clearly in a major war with al Qaeda in Iraq. On this question, there is simply no depth of thought from any Democrat anywhere (not counting Joe Lieberman). Obama says that he'll "...continue to strike al-Qaida targets." Gee, there's a detailed inquiry into the issue (and that's as detailed as he ever gets). Democrats are fond of suggesting that everything about Iraq is "complex," but their analysis of al Qaeda of Iraq is painfully simplistic.

Well, those are the primary (and misleading) strategies that Democrats use to avoid dealing with the uncomfortable truth about al Qaeda in Iraq. As it turns out, I'm not the only one who sees through their dishonesty. An editorial in today's Washington Post also nails them. After pouncing on the mistakes that Bush has made, the editors discuss the Democrats:

Barely acknowledging the reduction in violence, the Democratic candidates insist that U.S. troops are, as Ms. Clinton put it, "babysitting a civil war." In fact, the surge forestalled an incipient civil war, and U.S. commanders and diplomats in Iraq don't hesitate to say that if American forces withdrew now, sectarian conflict would probably explode in its full fury, causing bloodshed on a far greater scale than ever before and posing grave threats to U.S. security.

BOTH Mr. Obama and Ms. Clinton propose withdrawing U.S. troops at the most rapid pace the Pentagon says is possible -- one brigade a month. In the 16 months or so it would take to remove those forces, they envision the near-miraculous accomplishment of every political goal the Bush administration has aimed at for five years, from the establishment of a stable government to agreement by Iraq's neighbors to support it. They suppose that the knowledge that American forces were leaving would inspire these accords. In fact, it more likely would cause all sides to discount U.S. influence and prepare to violently seize the space left by the departing Americans.

With equal implausibility, the Democratic candidates say they would leave limited U.S. forces behind to prevent al-Qaeda from establishing bases. They assume that an Iraqi government that had just been abandoned by the United States would consent to the continued presence of American forces on its territory. In all, Ms. Clinton and Mr. Obama speak as if they have no understanding of Iraqi leaders, whom they propose to treat as willing puppets.

But the most interesting part of the editorial was its hope that Clinton and Obama are both lying to the American people about Iraq in order to get elected. I hope so, too:

If there was a glimmer of sense in Mr. Obama's speech, it lay in his acknowledgment that "we will have to make tactical adjustments, listening to our commanders on the ground, to ensure that our interests in a stable Iraq are met and to make sure our troops are secure." Ms. Clinton conceded that "the critical question is how we can end this war responsibly" and added "it won't be easy." In fact it will be terribly hard -- and it can't be done responsibly in the way or on the timeline the two Democrats are proposing. We can only hope that, behind their wildly unrealistic campaign rhetoric, the candidates understand that reality.

Here's hoping that the Democrats are lying their way back to the White House (i.e., here's hoping that they will confront al Qaeda in Iraq despite what they say). But if they are telling the truth, then you had better prepare yourself for a new series of tapes from Osama bin Laden declaring a glorious victory over America by al Qaeda in Iraq. When that happens, you should think back to what the Iraq Study Group once said:

Al Qaeda will portray any failure by the United States in Iraq as a significant victory that will be featured prominently as they recruit for their cause in the region and around the world. Ayman al-Zawahiri, deputy to Osama bin Laden, has declared Iraq a focus for al Qaeda: they will seek to expel the Americans and then spread “the jihad wave to the secular countries neighboring Iraq.”

Gee, 'ya think?

The Lethality of Suicide Bombers makes the News

A new story about the suicide bombers of Iraq on MSNBC is remarkable in that it acknowledges how deadly they have been in Iraq and that they are the foreign foot soldiers of al Qaeda. I realize that both facts are as obvious as the sky is blue, but that's not the case for many on the left (and that's where MSNBC lies on the political spectrum). To the left, al Qaeda in Iraq is a big ol' neocon myth, or, at a minimum, the threat it poses is grossly exaggerated because only 2% of the insurgency is made up of foreign fighters. It's fascinating to me how the left-leaning mind can be tripped up by a true fact about the number of al Qaeda terrorists in Iraq. Although they make up only a small part of the insurgency in terms of sheer numbers (2% sounds about right to me), they matter because they are ones who are killing everybody. Is that really such a difficult concept to grasp? Nonlethal insurgents are not a big problem even if they number in the tens of thousands.

In any case here is the new story:

Suicide bomber is al-Qaida's deadliest weapon

BAGHDAD - The suicide bombers who have killed 10,000 people in Iraq, including hundreds of American troops, usually are alienated young men from large families who are desperate to stand out from the crowd and make their mark, according to a U.S. military study.

As long suspected, most come from outside Iraq. Saudi Arabia, home of most of the 9/11 hijackers, is the single largest source. And the pipeline is continually replenished by al-Qaida in Iraq's recruiters.

Can you believe that? MSNBC is finally catching up with my blog! If only they would say a few words about who the suicide bombers generally target and what their goal is, people might finally begin to break out of the misguided "civil war" scenario that has long been pushed by the mainstream media and by the Democratic candidates for president. It never was a civil war in the sense that everyone seemed to think. It was, instead, a war against al Qaeda, and that war is still underway. The left has trouble appreciating this fact because they predicted that an invasion would do little more than unleash a civil war that Saddam Husssein, although a bad guy and everything, managed to hold in check. When the fighting in Iraq spiraled out of control, they saw apparent confirmation of their prediction, and they are still stuck on that faulty analysis.

Here is more detail from the article about the number of people killed by al Qaeda's suicide bombers (i.e., by that 2% of the insurgency):

According to the National Counterterrorism Center in Washington, 949 suicide bombers killed 10,119 people and wounded 22,995 from the beginning of 2004 until now. Data compiled by the AP through its own reporting found that between April 28, 2005 and March 13, 2008 there were 708 incidents involving suicide bombings, with a total of 14,633 Iraqis wounded and 7,098 killed.

The National Counterterrorism Center says that the suicide bombers of Iraq killed 10,119 people from the beginning of 2004 until now. When I use the Iraq Body Count database, I come up with a number of 8500, which is in the right ballpark. The difference may be that IBC tracks civilian casualties, whereas the Counterterrorism Center may include casualties among U.S. and Iraqi security forces. But the point is that the suicide bombers have been extremely deadly no matter which source you rely on.

With respect to the AP count (7098 Iraqis killed since April 28, 2005), the IBC database yields a figure of 7751. Not exactly the same, but the level of agreement is again pretty good, and this gives me confidence that my much more detailed analysis of the IBC database is based on reasonable data. The point is that the suicide bombers are very deadly despite the fact that the left constantly tries to minimize the role played by al Qaeda in Iraq.

Another article from the U.S. Department of Defense adds a few key points about a recent analysis of 48 would-be suicide bombers:

The overwhelming point from the 48 (foreign terrorists in custody) is they came to Iraq expecting to see Americans get killed, yet what they primarily saw was Iraqis getting killed, and it bothered them,” Bacon said. “They did not come to kill Iraqis.”
...
Additionally, he said, officials found out that most of the foreign terrorists had signed up to be fighters but were pressured by al Qaeda to become suicide bombers.

“They were told, ‘This is your duty. This is what we need you to do for the Jihad. You could be more useful as a suicide bomber than you could be a fighter. You’ll be a martyr and this is what we need you to do to win,’” he said.

Fascinating. They thought they were coming to Americans, but like the left in America, they knew nothing of Zarqawi's wicked but ingenious plan to defeat America and destabilize Iraq by slaughtering Shiites. By slaughtering Shiites, al Qaeda hopes to once again goad Muqtada al Sadr's Mahdi Army to start executing Sunnis in Baghdad. An outcome like that looks like "civil war" and completely demoralizes weak willed Americans, which is just terrific for al Qaeda.

As I have said many times before, to understand Iraq, you have to understand the suicide bombers of Iraq (who they are, how many people they have killed, what they are trying to accomplish). That's why I was happy to see that new story on MSNBC. At least it tells part of the story. The New York Times, on the other hand, has long been on a mission to convince its liberal readership that al Qaeda in Iraq is a small part of a "complex" story, one that is heavily exaggerated by Bush and his like-minded war-mongers. But when they push this myth onto to their uncritical and incurious readership, they never point out that the suicide bombers (and their leaders) are almost exclusively foreign. They also do not mention how deadly the suicide bombers have been compared to the rest of the insurgency, presumably because that inconvenient fact does not fit the narrative. Moreover, like the poor misguided souls drawn to Iraq to fight Americans (but who end up killing Shiites instead), they seem absolutely clueless about what the suicide bombers are trying to accomplish, as if they never read Zarqawi's letter. The Times was at it again just the other day:

The sea of oil under Iraq is supposed to rebuild the nation, then make it prosper. But at least one-third, and possibly much more, of the fuel from Iraq’s largest refinery here is diverted to the black market, according to American military officials. Tankers are hijacked, drivers are bribed, papers are forged and meters are manipulated — and some of the earnings go to insurgents who are still killing more than 100 Iraqis a week.
...
In fact, money, far more than jihadist ideology, is a crucial motivation for a majority of Sunni insurgents, according to American officers in some Sunni provinces and other military officials in Iraq who have reviewed detainee surveys and other intelligence on the insurgency.
...
Although many American military officials and politicians — and even the Iraqi public — use the term Al Qaeda as a synonym for the insurgency, some American and Iraqi experts say they believe that the number of committed religious ideologues remains small. They say that insurgent groups raise and spend money autonomously for the most part, with little centralized coordination or direction.
...
“It has a great deal more to do with the economy than with ideology,” said one senior American military official, who said that studies of detainees in American custody found that about three-quarters were not committed to the jihadist ideology. “The vast majority have nothing to do with the caliphate and the central ideology of Al Qaeda.”

All true, and if were not for the simple fact that the small number of al Qaeda suicide bombers are the ones who are killing everybody, this would be a relevant point. You can see why the Times chooses not to delve into the inconvenient facts about the lethality of the suicide bombers in Iraq (and says absolutely nothing about their strategic purpose). The tiresome technique of virtually every liberal analyst is to focus on the number of insurgents instead of on their lethality. There are, perhaps, 20,000 insurgents in Iraq, but there are only about 40 to 50 foreign suicide bombers entering the country each month (i.e., the foreign fighters are a tiny fraction of the insurgency). This is what the New York Times is focusing on, and all other liberal analysts seem to take their marching orders from this news organization. But look at how many people have been killed by the suicide bombers in just this month alone compared to the number killed by the rest of the insurgency. So far this month, 444 civilian deaths have been recorded by Iraq Coalition Casualty Count. Of those, 124 were dug up from mass graves and may have been killed a long time ago, which leaves 320 killed by violent acts that occurred this month. Of those, about 134 were killed by suicide bombers, and another 40 or so were killed by car bombs (often the work of al Qaeda as well). Thus, at an absolute minimum, 42% (134 out of 320) of the civilian deaths this month can be attributed to al Qaeda's suicide bombers. If you add in deaths from car bombs and the like, it comes to over 50%. Remember that the next time someone tells you that al Qaeda amounts to only 2% of the insurgency. That's true, but who cares? They account for as many as 50% of the civilian casualties. And, right before your incurious liberal eyes, they are still carrying out Zarqawis wicked plan:

Bombing kills at least 43 in Karbala

Dozens of Shiite worshippers wounded in attack near mosque

BAGHDAD - A female suicide bomber struck Shiite worshippers in the holy city of Karbala on Monday, an official and a witness said, killing at least 43 people and leaving pools of blood on the street leading to one of Iraq's most revered mosques.
...
The U.S. Embassy and military issued a joint statement blaming al-Qaida in Iraq for the Karbala attack.

If you hail from the left, ask yourself: why did this suicide bomber target innocent Shiite worshippers? What's the point? Raw hatred? That's as deep as the standard liberal analysis typically goes. But read Zarqawi's letter, which makes it all completely clear for anyone who is willing to absorb the truth:

The Shi'a in our opinion, these are the key to change. Targeting and striking their religious, political, and military symbols, will make them show their rage against the Sunnis and bear their inner vengeance. If we succeed in dragging them into a sectarian war, this will awaken the sleepy Sunnis who are fearful of destruction and death at the hands of these Sabeans, i.e., the Shi'a.
...
As far as the Shi'a, we will undertake suicide operations and use car bombs to harm them.

Get the picture? Al Qaeda wants to drag the Shiites into a sectarian war against the Sunnis, and the plan is to do that by using suicide bombers and car bombs. This is not complicated. Despite the fact that the New York Times has not the slightest clue about this elementary information, they gleefully jumped on McCain's misstatement about Iran training al Qaeda (when he presumably meant that Iran was training rogue elements of the Mahdi Army):

Dems pounce when McCain misspeaks on Iraq

GOP candidate erroneously claims Iran is training Al Qaida in Iraq

JERUSALEM - Senator John McCain’s trip overseas was supposed to highlight his foreign policy acumen, and his supporters hoped that it would showcase him in a series of statesmanlike meetings with world leaders throughout the Middle East and Europe while the Democratic candidates continued to squabble back home.
...
Mr. McCain said several times in his visit to Jordan — in a news conference and in a radio interview — that he was concerned that Iran was training Al Qaeda in Iraq. The United States believes that Iran, a Shiite country, has been training and financing Shiite extremists in Iraq, but not Al Qaeda, which is a Sunni insurgent group.

McCain obviously meant to say something else, which sets him apart from the Times (which actually misunderstands Iraq -- they don't just accidentally misstate what is going on). If only the New York Times would jump on themselves for their much greater ignorance about what is happening in Iraq, a huge swath of liberals in this country might awaken to the fact that they are openly agitating for defeat at the hands of al Qaeda in Iraq by advocating a quick withdrawal of our troops.

If you lean left, let me just acknowledge that you can blame George Bush for al Qaeda's war in Iraq. Barack Obama likes to do that, and it seems to make him feel better. Back before the war, there was good reason to believe that Saddam was cooperating with al Qaeda, and he was to some extent. But the degree of cooperation may have been less than it seemed. One piece of evidence for a cooperative relationship was the fact that Zarqawi -- who later headed al Qaeda in Iraq and devised the wicked plan that nearly crushed America's will to fight -- was in Iraq well before the war. Colin Powell famously cited his presence there as evidence for Saddam's association with al Qaeda:

But what I want to bring to your attention today is the potentially much more sinister nexus between Iraq and the al-Qaida terrorist network, a nexus that combines classic terrorist organizations and modern methods of murder. Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi an associate and collaborator of Usama bin Laden and his al-Qaida lieutenants.
...
Zarqawi's activities are not confined to this small corner of northeast Iraq. He traveled to Baghdad in May of 2002 for medical treatment, staying in the capital of Iraq for two months while he recuperated to fight another day.

This offered good reason to believe that Saddam was working with Zarqawi, but the other theory was that Zarqawi came to Iraq in preparation for the coming U.S. invasion. I have never seen any actual evidence bearing on this issue, but I came across some the other day at freerepublic.com. There, someone named "jveritas" sometimes translates documents that were captured in Iraq. He just translated a new document posted on an al Qaeda web site that suggests that Zarqawi (referred to as Abou Mussab in the document) came to Iraq to fight America. Here is how he described the document:

On February 17 2008, Al-Ekhlaas which is the largest terrorist forum on the internet published an Al Qaeda document that talks about the life of Abou Musaab Al Zarqawi and indicates that Zarqawi came to Iraq before the war to prepare the terrorist insurgency against the US troops. According to the document Zarqawi arrived to the Sunni areas in central Iraq. This document was written by one of Al Qaeda top leaders called “Saif Al Adel”.

And here's the translation:

We started the work and the contact with the leadership, and we began to support and help the leadership again, and this was our goal after we left Afghanistan. We began establishing the fighter groups. On one hand to return to Afghanistan and conduct planned operations there, and on the other hand we began to study the situation of the groups and bothers to find new places for them.

After long discussions, brother Abou Mussab with his Palestinian and Jordanian companions decided to go to Iraq because of their dialects they can quickly mix and assimilate in the Iraqi society. Our analysis was that the Americans were going to make the mistake sooner or later to invade Iraq, that this invasion will lead to the fall of the regime, and that we should play an important role in the confrontation and resistance, and that this is our historical chance to establish the Islamic State who will have the biggest role in removing injustice and establish justice in this world allah willing. I was in agreement with brother Abou Mussab regarding this analysis. There were no relation between Al Qaeda and Saddam regime that is worth mentioning, as opposite to what the Americans are saying so they can create excuse and legal justifications according to their laws that they imposed on the world that is enslaved by the West, the Israelis and the Anglo-Saxons.
...
The goal was to reach the Sunni areas in central Iraq and the beginning of the preparation to confront the US invasion and defeat it allah willing. The choice was not arbitrary but a studied one.

When he said goodbye to me leaving for Iraq, Abou Musaab has added a new dimension to his personality. This new dimension focused on punishing the Americans for the crimes that they committed in their bombing of Afghanistan and that he witnessed in his own eyes, the hate and hostility that Abou Mussab had for the Americans guaranteed to form new traits to Abou Musaab personality.

This document is not necessarily gospel truth, but it rings true to me. Al Qaeda had some relationship with Saddam long before our invasion, but it seems clear that al Qaeda elevated Iraq to priority status precisely because we did. Thus, you can blame George Bush for the fact that we are now fighting al Qaeda in Iraq. Of course, if we were not fighting them there, we would be fighting them in Afghanistan (which is where all Democrats preposterously think the "real terrorists" are). Thus, the idea that everything would be fine on the al Qaeda front if only Bush has not invaded Iraq is downright silly. Still, it's true that al Qaeda came to Iraq in a big way because of our presence there, and now it's war (like it or not). You can blame George Bush all you want, but he is not running for president. What matters now is how the current crop of presidential candidates plans to defeat al Qaeda in Iraq. Obama and Clinton plan to defeat al Qaeda by withdrawing our troops, which is a plan that I am sure would be endorsed by Osama bin Laden. McCain, by contrast, plans to complete the job that has been started by the troop surge.

Finally, I'd just like to remind you that al Qaeda does not care -- at all -- about this:

Iraqi provincial elections law approved

BAGHDAD - Iraq's presidential council has withdrawn its objection to a provincial elections law. The announcement on the fifth anniversary of the war gives a major boost to U.S.-backed efforts to promote national reconciliation.

The move comes three weeks after the law was rejected because of concerns by Shiite Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi.

Wednesday's statement says the council approved the bill after talks with legislators and political blocs. The decision paves the way for a national vote on Oct. 1 that the United States hopes will give the Sunnis more political power.

That's nice, and if this were a civil war, it would be huge news. But it's not a civil war. Instead, it is a war against al Qaeda in Iraq, and that terrorist organization is not fighting for political reconciliation. Don't you get it by now? They are fighting for the exact opposite.

Americans are Split Right Down the Middle

The results of current opinion polls are amazing. It's just a tie everywhere you look. For example, nationwide, do Democrats prefer Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton? For a while, it looked like Obama was going to run away with it, but a look at all of the polls together (from pollster.com) suggests that his meteoric rise has leveled off, so much so that the two candidates are now essentially tied:


What about Obama vs. McCain in a general election matchup? It's essentially a tie:


Clinton vs. McCain? A tie:


What about the superdelegate issue for the Democrats? Those superdelegates will determine who gets the nomination. Should they base their votes on whoever has the most pledged delegates or on whoever has the best chance of beating McCain? When you ask the voters that question, well, it's a tie:

Democrats appear split on this question -- 49 percent say that superdelegates should base their votes on their view of who would be the best candidate; 46 percent say that superdelegates should base their votes on the results of the primaries and caucuses.

Whereas the polls are all split down the middle, the betting at Intrade is not that way. Barack Obama is still favored to win in November, but people are not as wildly enthusiastic about him anymore:


This chart shows the betting over the last month, and his current chances to win it all stand at about 44%. You can see how his star faded after his primary losses in Texas and Ohio on March 3. Still, it's amazing how well he is holding up lately in light of the Rezko and Wright problems.

The bettors give John McCain the second best chance of winning at all, and his star has been rising continuously over the last month:


Right now, the bettors say that he has a 39% chance of winning it all.

Hillary Clinton, despite having achieved a statistical tie with Obama in recent opinion polling among Democrats, is a long shot to win it all according to the bettors (though she pulled herself off the floor with her wins on March 3):


Well, in light of her recent comments about the war in Iraq, I am beginning to hope that her chances to win remain slim:

Clinton also said both Bush and McCain want to keep the United States tied to Iraq's "civil war, a war we cannot win. That, in a nutshell, is the Bush/McCain Iraq policy. Don't learn from our mistakes, repeat them. ... We can have hundreds of thousands of troops on the ground for 100 years, but that will not change the fact that there is no military solution to the situation in Iraq."

Good grief. A war we cannot win? You mean that the war against al Qaeda in Iraq is a war we must now choose to lose? And there is no military solution to the situation in Iraq? How, then, do you propose to defeat al Qaeda in Iraq now that the Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds are all fighting with us against that terrorist organization? And are you still suggesting that General Petraeus is a liar when he says that al Qaeda in Iraq is "public enemy number one?" Hasn't he acquired some degree of credibility for having proven you wrong about the dramatically declining violence in Iraq -- which you claimed required a "willing suspension of disbelief" to accept?

Clinton has apparently decided to deal with the problem in Iraq in the way that all Democrats deal with the problem. Specifically, she has adopted an eerie code of silence on the issue of al Qaeda in Iraq while preposterously construing the situation there as a "civil war." It's not. It's an uncivil war, with the Iraqis on one side (Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds alike) fighting alongside American troops against al Qaeda in Iraq. Fully 80% of Iraqis say that U.S. forces should help them fight al Qaeda in Iraq, and this includes 66% of Sunnis (at least 80,000 of whom have now taken up arms against al Qaeda).

Al Qaeda's plan for evicting American forces and destabilizing that nation remains fully in force even though the threat has been diminished by the troop surge and the Sunni Awakening. That plan, in case you don't know, is to relentlessly send suicide bombers against innocent Shiite civilians to demoralize America and fuel sectarian fighting (in hopes of destabilizing the elected government of Iraq). That's not a civil war. Instead, it is an attempt to create one, and al Qaeda's ability to do so will be greatly enhanced by the removal of U.S. troops. And you really should try to imagine the celebratory communiques from Osama bin Laden that will saturate the airwaves on the day President Clinton starts to pull our troops from Iraq. Al Qaeda really will have achieved victory over America in Iraq, so his words will not ring hollow. And the effect of his words (and al Qaeda's victory) on jihadists around the globe will be electrifying. Bin Laden will issue a new call to arms, and the jihadists will merrily stream to Iraq in even greater numbers to ensure that the last remaining American troops are forcibly evicted. After all, even Clinton doesn't propose to remove all of our troops from Iraq, but al Qaeda will not stand for her partial-withdrawal plan. The suicide bombers of Iraq will finish the job they started there (unlike us), and then they will turn their attention to Afghanistan.

I voted for Clinton when the Democratic primaries came to my state because I didn't think she really believed the anti-war nonsense she adopted on the campaign trail (in stark contrast to her longstanding views on the issue of national security). Today, I'm having trouble believing that she is just making it all up in order to win votes. Instead, she seems to actually believe that the time has come to accept defeat at the hands of al Qaeda in Iraq.

A New Poll on Attitudes in Iraq

A new poll of the Iraqi people was just released, and it shows that perceptions are improving over there just as they are over here. Unfortunately, pollsters in Iraq have stopped asking what I regard as the single most important question, which is the one that asks how life is now compared to how it was under Saddam Hussein. The reason I consider that to be the most important question is that it is the one piece of information that tends to shock the anti-war crowd into a kind of awakening. You can tell that it is news to them because, in my experience, they initially just scoff at the idea that more Iraqis say that life is better now than it was then (i.e., back when we had Saddam Hussein in a "box"). This shows that their thinking about Iraq is far off the mark. Of course, when you finally manage to convince them of the truth (by directing them to the polling data), they will typically announce that they simply do not care what the Iraqis think about that (because the war was illegal, or it was immoral, or it was all for oil, or whatever). And I believe them when they say they don't care because it fits with the fact that they also seem not to care that Iraq would have descended into a hellish nightmare of murderous ethnic cleansing had we withdrawn our troops at the height of violence (which is what they and Barack Obama wanted to do). But, when I bring up this point, I am really not trying to get them to care about the Iraqi people so much as I am trying to get them to correct their strongly held but false impression that we've made life much worse for the Iraqis as a result of our invasion. That's what I like about that question, but pollsters have stopped asking it (because, I assume, they didn't like the answer they were getting).

Before getting to the new poll results, let me remind you of what the Iraqi people previously said about life now compared to life under Saddam Husssein. The results from that question were getting worse over time as Iraq descended into sectarian fighting, but never did the Iraqis prefer life under Saddam:


The 2007 results shown here come from a BBC poll conducted in March of 2007 (back when violence in Iraq was still completely out of control), and I've combined the "somewhat better" and "much better" numbers into a single "better" category (same for "worse"). Even then, more people considered life to be better compared to the Hussein era than thought it was worse. That gives you some indication of how bad things really were under Saddam Hussein. If they asked that question again today, I expect that the results would be back to where they were in 2005 now that violence has been reduced to levels that were last seen in 2005. But I guess we'll never know now that pollsters are no longer interested in this key question.

In any case, on to the new poll. Much in this new poll is similar to what was true of past polls, but a few points are worth highlighting. First, is life in Iraq good or bad these days? Here are those results:


The green arrow marks a period of time just before al Qaeda bombed the Golden Mosque and set off a wave of sectarian killing. Life was good for the Iraqi people, but al Qaeda changed all that (intentionally and as part of an amazingly effective plan). The last 3 points show the period during which the troop surge has played out. The surge did not result in an overall decrease in violence until September of 2007, but you can see that a majority of Iraqis now once again says that life is good. In time, if violence remains low, this will probably get back to where it was before (i.e., close to 70%). It would be nice if it would get there just before our own presidential election. Anti-war activists won't care, but many Americans will.

As recently as August, only 39% of Iraqis viewed the invasion as justified, but now an amazing 49% see it that way. I like that trend. Also back in August, a majority of Iraqis felt that attacks on U.S. forces was acceptable. Now, that number is down to 42%. And only 38% of Iraqis want coalition forces to leave now:



As I said, the trends are good, and if General Petraeus can keep al Qaeda down and out, the positive trends will probably continue for quite some time.

Obama's Changing Views on the War in Iraq

There is a bit of buzz on the internet because Obama apparently said in 2004 that there was, back then, not much of a difference between his position on Iraq and Bush's position on Iraq. This is a surprise because Obama famously opposed the invasion and, recently, has been advocating a precipitous withdrawal (which I oppose because it is tantamount to accepting defeat at the hands of al Qaeda in Iraq). If, in between his pre-war anti-war stance and his current anti-war stance he actually supported Bush's pro-war stance, that would be news indeed.

In this long and interesting article, Peter Wehner says the following:

Almost as soon as the war began in March 2003, Obama had second thoughts about his opposition to it. Watching the dramatic footage of the toppling of Saddam’s statue in Baghdad, and then the President’s speech aboard the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, “I began to suspect,” he would write later in his autobiographical The Audacity of Hope (2006), “that I might have been wrong.” And these second thoughts seem to have stayed with him throughout the entire first phase of the occupation following our initial combat victory. As he told the Chicago Tribune in July 2004, “There’s not that much difference between my position and George Bush’s position at this stage.”

Did Obama really say that to the Chicago Tribune? I could not find the link anywhere, and I began to wonder. So I logged on to the Chicago Tribune web site, searched it, and forked out $3.95 to get the relevant article. I can't link to it either, but you should definitely trust me when I tell you that it is there:

Obama's a star who doesn't stick to the script

[Chicago Final Edition]

Chicago Tribune - Chicago, Ill.
Author: John Kass
Date: Jul 27, 2004
Start Page: 2
Section: News
Text Word Count: 814

As you might be able to tell from the title, this reporter is absolutely giddy about Barack Obama. That's a phenomenon that has exploded out of control today, with hyper-enthusiastic supporters carrying Obama to huge margins of victory in the caucus states.

In any case, here is some of what Obama said:

"On Iraq, on paper, there's not as much difference, I think, between the Bush administration and a Kerry administration as there would have been a year ago," Obama said. "There's not much of a difference between my position and George Bush's position at this stage."

That wouldn't have surprised the Deaniacs and other anti-war activists of the Left gathered here. While Kerry has acknowledged as much on the main points--a Kerry presidency wouldn't mean a withdrawal of U.S. armed forces from Iraq--it is not something the Democrats draw attention to or brag about.

I can see why Obama would not want to draw attention to this, but I expect that John McCain (whose views on Iraq have been pretty consistent) will. Who would have thought that Obama's views on Iraq would ever have matched George Bush's?

In that interview, Obama said again that if he had been in the Senate during the vote on the war, he would have voted against it. But he also said that he "...wouldn't advocate pulling out now, responsibly arguing that the U.S. cannot accept a failure there." Excuse me? I just about spit my coffee out all over my keyboard when I read that. The U.S. cannot accept failure there? I agree, but when did Obama switch from that position to openly advocating that we adopt failure in Iraq as his major foreign policy objective? Or perhaps he hasn't changed his position. Perhaps he, like Hillary Clinton, is just fabricating a false position to appease the enraged anti-war extremists in his party (just so he can get elected). I'd like to think this is true, but I suspect that his false position is the one he adopted in this Chicago Tribune interview in 2004. After all, in his famous pre-war speech in which he opposed the invasion, he sounded like a standard Moveon.org radical:

What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.

What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income - to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression.

I suspect that he showed his true colors on the issue of Iraq in this speech, but I hope that the real Obama was the one who was talking to that Chicago Tribune reporter in 2004.

In any case, the point is that he opposed the war before the invasion, then he supported Bush's post-invasion policy, then he opposed the troop surge in favor of rapid withdrawal. I wonder if he will now say that he supports Bush's policy on the surge? He hasn't said so yet, so I guess he still sticks to the notion that we should have facilitated Iraq's rapid decent in horrific sectarian violence and genocide by withdrawing our troops at the height of violence in 2006. That somehow seems inconsistent with his earlier stance that the U.S. cannot accept failure there.

Finally, I was interested to read his thoughts about race in light of the controversy over Geraldine Ferraro saying this:

“If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman of any color, he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.”

In his interview in 2004, Obama seemed to express very similar views. The reporter was impressed with Obama's willingness to discuss race and his acknowledgment of the idea that it was one of the reaons why he was chosen ss the keynote speaker at the Democratic convention:

"You know, look, there's no doubt that part of the reason I was asked to speak is because I'm an African-American candidate," he said, picking at a salad.

Possible Popular Vote Totals for Obama and Clinton

Dick Morris and Eileen McGann have an interesting article suggesting that the super delegates are beginning to trend in Barack Obama's direction. Hillary's lead among super delegates who have declared a preference is now 247 to 211 (which is smaller than it was a few weeks ago). But what I found most interesting in this article was their look ahead to the coming Democratic primaries. Unlike me, what they care about is how many pledged delegates each candidate is likely to win, and they report what everyone has been reporting (which is that Obama's lead is insurmountable, though it may shrink slightly by the time it is all over). Lots of people think that the super delegates will act like robots and simply declare their support for the candidate with the most pledged delegates, which means that Obama wins. But if they relied on reasoning like that (i.e., "Obama has more pledged delegates, therefore he gets my vote"), then why even have super delegates? If the super delegates will actually exercise their reasoning abilities, then the anticipated popular vote totals become as interesting as the pledged delegate totals.

Morris and McGann look ahead and expect this result:

She’ll probably win Pennsylvania (158 delegates), Indiana (72), Kentucky (51), West Virginia (28), and Puerto Rico (55). Obama will likely win North Carolina (115), Oregon (52), Montana (16), South Dakota (15) and Guam (4). If this turns out to be so, Clinton would lead in states with 364 delegates while Obama would prevail in states with 202. But even if we assume 10 point wins for each candidate in each state (and the margin will likely be much tighter), all Hillary would get from her states is 36 more delegates while Obama would get 20 from his — still leaving Obama with a lead of 147 in elected delegates.

OK, but what will the popular vote totals look like? To find out, I just assumed that the primaries will go as Morris and McGann predicted (with the winner's margin of victory being 55% to 45% in each state). I looked up the populations of each state and assumed that 50% were Democrats and that half of those would turn out to vote. These are obviously simplifying assumptions, but I just wanted to get a ballpark figure. When I ran the numbers, I came up with a net gain of about 360,000 popular votes for Hillary Clinton.

As of today, according to RealClearPolitics.com, Clinton trails Obama by 408,951 votes if you count Florida but exclude Michigan. This is a sensible way to look at the totals because both Clinton and Obama were on the ticket in the Florida primary, and there was a heavy voter turnout for that contest. So, Obama currently leads by about 410,000 and Clinton stands to close that gap by about 360,000. Thus, using my very rough figure for the coming primaries, the popular vote total will leave Obama with a tiny lead of about 50,000 votes. If Michigan runs another primary election, and if Hillary wins that one by 55% to 45%, she'd pick up about 250,000 more votes than Obama would (giving her a clear lead in the popular vote totals). I have no idea who would actually be favored in a Michigan re-vote, but if Hillary could win by that amount, she'd probably have the lead in the popular vote total, whereas Obama would have the lead in the pledged delegate total.

Well, as I said, my calculations are very rough. I'll try to refine them as time goes on, but I suspect that Clinton sees a very real possibility of holding a lead in the popular vote totals when all is said and done. If so, will the super delegates simply ignore that fact and choose Obama because the pledged delegates so obviously reflect the will of the people?

Al Qaeda's New Plan for Iraq

I realize that I spend a lot of time thinking about the suicide bombers of Iraq. My obsession stems from the fact that they provide the key to understanding what happened in Iraq in the aftermath of our invasion, yet not a single anti-war extremist appears to have even the slightest understanding of them. Generally speaking, advocates of withdrawal, if they acknowledge the suicide bombers at all, try to fit them into a civil war scenario, which is like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. It just doesn't work.

If you are a beginner on this issue, it is important to understand that 90% of the suicide bombers come from outside of Iraq. We've known for a long time that they are mostly foreign fighters, but a cache of documents intercepted not too long ago provided a lot more detail about them:

Papers Paint New Portrait of Iraq's Foreign Insurgents

By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 21, 2008; Page A01
...
The cache of documents was discovered last fall by U.S. forces in the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar.
...
The records are "one of the deepest reservoirs of information we've ever obtained of the network going into Iraq," according to a U.S. official closely familiar with intelligence on the insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq.
...
Based on the Sinjar records, U.S. military officials in Iraq said they now think that nine out of 10 suicide bombers have been foreigners, compared with earlier estimates of 75 percent.

And here is a chart from the New York Times that indicates where these suicide bombers come from:


Who is responsible for getting these jihadists to Iraq, equipping them with suicide belts, and sending them on their missions? There is simply no doubt whatsoever that these foreign fighters are being funneled into Iraq and then sent out on their missions by al Qaeda's foreign leadership. A very detailed analysis of captured documents about the foreign fighters of Iraq can be found here. The report suggests that nearly all of them transit through Syria:


Although nearly all suicide bombers in Iraq are foreign fighters, not all foreign fighters become suicide bombers:


This was news to me. What do the other foreign fighters do when they get to Iraq? I have never really inquired into that matter, but I have sometimes wondered about the many car bombs that are used against Shiites that do not involve a suicide bomber. These additional foreign fighters may have the special expertise needed to carry out such attacks, and one wouldn't want to use such people up in a suicide attack (because their expertise could be put to good use repeatedly). What this means is that the very high casualty total that we can already confidently attribute to al Qaeda (based on casualties from suicide bombings) is probably quite a bit higher than that. For the moment, I have no further information about these other fighters, but it is an issue I'd like to learn more about.

Evidence that these fighters are being sent to Iraq by al Qaeda's foreign leadership is everywhere (e.g., read this if you are skeptical about that), but I found this tidbit about the fighters coming from Libya to be interesting:

In an admittedly small sample, 76.9% (30) of the 39 Libyans that listed their arrival date in Iraq entered the country between May and July 2007, which may indicate a spring “surge” of Libyan recruits to Iraq. If the numbers cited by the Los Angeles Times in July 2007 are any indication, even the U.S. Army may have underestimated the Libyan contingent in Iraq. The apparent surge in Libyan recruits traveling to Iraq may be linked the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group’s (LIFG) increasingly cooperative relationship with al-Qa’ida, which culminated in the LIFG officially joining al-Qa’ida on November 3, 2007.

Gee, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group pledges allegiance to al Qaeda, and a surge of suicide bombers from that country into Iraq immediately follows. I assure you, al Qaeda is not sending these fighters to Iraq to participate in a civil war. Instead, they are coming to create a civil war that was not happening on its own, and their method has long been to slaughter Shiites and destroy their mosques so they would strike out in rage against the Sunnis. Zarqawi (the now-deceased leader of al Qaeda in Iraq from 2004 through 2006) conceived of this diabolical plan, and what you have been watching in Iraq over the last few years are the fruits of his malicious campaign.

How many civilians have the suicide bombers killed? As usual, I downloaded and analyzed the updated database at Iraq Body Count. First, take a look at the yearly totals (before we consider the numbers in more detail): '''


Although we did not know it at the time (because, at the time, no one really believed what Zarqawi said in his letter), al Qaeda's suicide bombing campaign began way back in 2004. His letter describing the purpose of that campaign was written in late 2003 and was intercepted in early 2004. Suicide bombings increased in 2005, but then they were suppressed in 2006. Why? Because 2006 is the year that Muqtada al Sadr's Mahdi Army unleashed its ferocious Sunni extermination campaign in Baghdad. That's when civilian casualties in Iraq spiraled out of control, and that's when you thought you were watching a civil war unfold. It's also when Democrats became particularly emboldened in their efforts to withdraw our troops.

In any case, according to IBC statistics, 3760 civilians were killed by al Qaeda's suicide bombers in 2007. This fits with figures provided by the U.S. military (as quoted in this article in the Washington Post):

Al-Qaeda in Iraq carried out more than 4,500 attacks against civilians in 2007, killing 3,870 and wounding nearly 18,000, the military announced yesterday.

If you are a left-wing anti-war crusader, you probably think that the U.S. military lies on a regular basis to create the false impression that al Qaeda is a huge problem in Iraq. The problem with your thinking is that you get the same number (almost exactly) from analyzing a database maintained by dedicated left-wing anti-war crusaders. Thus, you really need to get over your Vietnam-era suspicion of the military no matter how much self-pride you take in the fact that you can heroically stand up against the "military-industrial complex" of your own country. Doing that is less like heroism and more like juvenile delinquency, and it's time to grow up.

Now lets look at the suicide casualty statistics in a bit more detail (i.e., month by month):


The arrows depict two critical moments in time. The first arrow points to casualties from February 2007. What do you make of that? It is clear that casualties from al Qaeda's suicide bombers simply skyrocketed in that month. Any ideas why that might be? If you recall, February 2007 was when the very first few soldiers associated with the troop surge began to arrive in Baghdad. But the suicide bombers did not immediately attack them. The chart shows civilian casualties, not military casualties. Why did al Qaeda's suicide bombers immediately start slaughtering civilians in that very month? And why is it that the mainstream media has zero curiosity about that?

The answer is that Muqtada al Sadr called off his Sunni extermination campaign in Baghdad just a few weeks earlier, and that extermination campaign is what was keeping the suicide bombers suppressed:

Mahdi Army lowers its profile, anticipating arrival of U.S. troops

By Leila Fadel and Zaineb Obeid | McClatchy Newspapers

Posted on Saturday, January 13, 2007

BAGHDAD, Iraq - BAGHDAD, Iraq—Mahdi Army militia members have stopped wearing their black uniforms, hidden their weapons and abandoned their checkpoints in an apparent effort to lower their profile in Baghdad in advance of the arrival of U.S. reinforcements.

"We have explicit directions to keep a low profile . . . not to confront, not to be dragged into a fight and to calm things down," said one official who received the orders from the anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
...
Militia members say al-Sadr ordered them to stand down shortly after President George Bush's announcement that the U.S. would send 17,500 more American troops to Baghdad to work alongside the Iraqi security forces.

The decision by al-Sadr to lower his force's profile in Baghdad will likely cut violence in the city and allow American forces to show quick results from their beefed up presence.
...
Across the capital residents described a changed Mahdi Army—in Sadr City, a Shiite slum of more than 2 million people, in Talbiyah on the outskirts of Sadr City, and in Hurriyah, a formerly Sunni Muslim neighborhood in the north of the capital that in recent weeks has been taken over by the Mahdi Army.

Checkpoints in those locations were gone. Instead, young men in jeans and buttoned shirts directed traffic, helped the Iraqi army and wandered the streets nonchalantly.

Muqtada al Sadr's response helped to greatly decrease violence in the sense that executions of Sunni males in Baghdad immediately declined, but overall violence remained much the same because al Qaeda's suicide bombers were suddenly free to start killing Shiites again. And that they did, as you can clearly see in my chart above. I remain amazed that readers of my blog are the only people in the world who appreciate the fact that suicide bombings instantly and dramatically increased when the Madhi Army stood down in February of 2007.

Now look at my second arrow in the chart above. It shows that deaths from suicide bombings reached record levels in August of 2007. That was mostly due to a seemingly strange attack by al Qaeda on the Yazidis of Iraq. Remember that attack?

Iraqi officials: Truck bombings killed at least 500

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The death toll in the suicide bombings Tuesday in northern Iraq has risen to at least 500, local officials in Nineveh province said Wednesday.
...
The Tuesday truck bombs that targeted the villages of Qahtaniya, al-Jazeera and Tal Uzair, in northern Iraq near the border with Syria, were a "trademark al Qaeda event" designed to sway U.S. public opinion against the war, a U.S. general said Wednesday.
...
Al Qaeda in Iraq is predominantly Sunni, and Mixon said members of the Yazidi religious minority have received threatening letters, called "night letters," telling them "to leave because they are infidels."
...
Brig. Gen. Abdul Karim Khalaf, an Interior Ministry spokesman, said there were three suicide trucks carrying two tons of explosives. At least 30 houses and other buildings were destroyed.

Why did al Qaeda save their most spectacular attack to date for August of 2007? No one can know with certainty, but it seems highly plausible to think they this attack was a gift to Democratic politicians that they could use against General Petraeus when he gave his much heralded report to Congress just a few weeks later.

Does it seem preposterous to you to suggest that al Qaeda might very deliberately seek to influence public opinion in the U.S.? A new study by Harvard economists asked this question: Are insurgents in Iraq emboldened when politicians speak in ways that indicate that America's resolve is failing? And are they similarly emboldened when polls show the same thing? To find out, these researchers studied the number of attacks that occurred during weeks in which anti-war politicians made statements that Bush officials openly complained about as possibly emboldening our enemies. They then compared the number of attacks that occurred during those weeks with the number of attacks that occurred in other weeks. They used a similar method for public opinion polls suggesting flagging resolve in America. They also compared attacks that occurred in areas where people were likely to be tuned into such news (e.g., where they have lots of TVs) vs. areas where people were unlikely to be privy to such news. Their bottom-line conclusion is this:

We find in periods after a spike in war-critical statements, insurgent attacks increases by 5-10 percent. The results suggest that insurgent groups respond rationally to expected probability of US withdrawal.

This obviously doesn't mean that opponents of the war should not speak out, but it does suggest that they should choose their words a bit more carefully than they do now. For example, they should probably avoid implying that President Bush or General Petraeus are liars, and they should think twice before declaring that "this war is lost." Also, anti-war Democrats should couple their remarks with a statement that acknowledges that what they are saying will embolden the enemy. After all, it seems pretty obvious that the enemy -- especially al Qaeda in Iraq -- is working hard to help the party that may yet come to their rescue.

But my main point here is that al Qaeda is not merely reactive in the sense that they respond to signs of wavering resolve (as this new study shows). They are also proactive in the sense that they will bomb hundreds of innocents to death in a very intentional effort to help the Democrats pursue their anti-war objectives.

With all of that in mind, I am worried about what is going to happen over the next few weeks in Iraq. General Petraeus is scheduled to testify again in April, and al Qaeda knows it. They also know that Democrats are having trouble pursuing their anti-war objectives (because public opinion is shifting in the direction of greater resolve) and that they could really use a mass-casualty attack right now to help them achieve partisan political advantage when Petraeus testifies (when the war in Iraq will again have the complete attention of the American public). The Islamic State of Iraq (i.e., al Qaeda in Iraq) may yet come through for the Democrats. A recent interview with its commander was just published here. The interview was described like this:

On February 12, 2008, the Qatari daily Al-'Arab published an interview with Islamic State of Iraq commander in northern Iraq Abu-Turab Al-Jaza'iri. The interview was conducted under stipulations laid down by the State including no disclosure of the region where it took place and no communications or recording equipment of any kind brought to the site.

In that interview, this al Qaeda commander acknowledges severe setbacks in Iraq and admits that al Qaeda's policy of attacking civilians may have been a mistake. They seem to have a new plan now, and I take his words seriously:

The Next Few Months Will Prove Decisive

On the change in ISI’s strategy and the continuation of attacks, Al-Jaza'iri said: "It is clear that the strategy [of capturing cities and turning them into bases] has failed, so today we are fighting a guerilla war, or, as some call it, 'street fighting.' The efficacy of this strategy has been proven in various contexts. We have been instructed to focus our attacks on targets that are strategically and morally important to our enemies, on the eve of the US election campaign."

He continued: "...It is the type of attacks and the way they are planned that will be changed. Accordingly, we will be focusing on operations that cause the maximum pain and bewilderment to the enemy. This shift will open a new page in the fighting, which you will notice on the fifth anniversary of the occupation of Iraq..."

Addressing Iraq's Sunnis, Al-Jaza'iri said: "The next few months will prove decisive, and by Allah! We have prepared for this. We have humiliated the Crusaders, and have made their blood flow in the streets... And what is to come will be even worse and more bitter. Therefore, I say to those who claim that we have failed, or are paralyzed...: You will receive our answer in the next few weeks."

We may have seen part of the answer in this attack a few days ago:

Eight soldiers were killed in a pair of bomb attacks on Monday, the heaviest single day of U.S. casualties since September.

Three of those soldiers died in a roadside bombing in Diyala, a violent province where al-Qaida in Iraq has been active.

The five others were killed while on foot patrol in central Baghdad. A suicide bomber approached them and detonated his explosives vest. The Islamic State of Iraq, a Sunni militant group, issued a statement Wednesday claiming responsibility for the soldiers' deaths.

Only a mainstream media reporter could believe that it is more informative to describe the Islamic State of Iraq as a "Sunni militant group" (which helps you to think in terms of the outdated "civil war" scenario) than as al Qaeda's organization in Iraq. But, as someone once said, you go to war with the media you have, not the media you wish you had. In any case, it seems that all 8 of our soldiers died at the hands of al Qaeda in Iraq. Did you know that, or are you hearing it here first?

We are in a war against al Qaeda in Iraq. The real al Qaeda. They are not fighting us in Afghanistan no matter how much you think it makes sense to shift our troops there to take on the "real terrorists." Moreover, a commander of the Islamic State of Iraq makes it very clear that he is going to try to influence the presidential election in America. His openness about that is simply amazing, though not one mainstream media reporter will let you in on that little secret. Read his words again: "We have been instructed to focus our attacks on targets that are strategically and morally important to our enemies, on the eve of the US election campaign."

Never underestimate al Qaeda. They ingeniously engineered a victory for anti-war socialists in Spain a few years ago (resulting in a quick pullout of Spanish troops from Iraq), and they'd like to engineer a victory for an anti-war Democrat in the U.S. (so that U.S. troops will be quickly withdrawn as well). Don't put it past them.

An Informative Chart in the New York Times

Today, the New York Times actually showed the kind of chart that I always show to illustrate progress in Iraq. This is a good thing because a chart like that is the only way to really bring their liberal readership up to speed on the actual effects of the troop surge:




It would have been helpful to accompany this chart with a reminder about some news from the past:

Democrats Are Unified in Opposition to Troop Increase, but Split Over What to Do About It

By JIM RUTENBERG and PATRICK HEALY
Published: January 15, 2007

WASHINGTON, Jan. 14 — The White House sought Sunday to head off building pressure in Congress to cut off or limit financing for sending more troops to Iraq.
...
Speaking on “This Week” on ABC News, Representative John P. Murtha of Pennsylvania, the chairman of the subcommittee on military appropriations in the House, said he expected Congress to move to restrict financing for new troop deployments — or at the very least tie approval to stringent conditions the White House would have to meet first.

Well, drawing attention to what the Democrats wanted to do when the going got tough would be expecting a lot. Instead, the new article puts the obvious progress associated with the troop surge in the most negative light possible (pointing out that it is a "stalemate" now). In addition, they make no mention of al Qaeda, either in their article or in their chart (as if we have no idea whatsoever about who bombed the Golden Mosque in Samarra and set off the increased sectarian violence). Their refusal to name the terrorist organization that is most responsible for violence in Iraq makes sense in light of their previous efforts to convince their readership that Bushs' frequent naming of al Qaeda in Iraq was just another neocon exaggeration designed to prop up support for an increasingly unpopular war. It also fits with the longstanding eerie code of silence that all Democrats have adopted on the issue of al Qaeda in Iraq.

The failure to name al Qaeda allows these New York Times reporters to get away with a standard mental maneuver on the left, which is to adopt the assumption that all of these gains are temporary unless the Iraqis show some fast political progress:

American commanders in Iraq have been warning for months that the security gains were far from irreversible, particularly since progress in Iraqi political reconciliation, which would presumably address the tensions underlying the violence, has been halting.

Political progress would "presumably address the tensions underlying the violence"? I don't think so.

I wonder if readers of the New York Times ever ask themselves a question like this: "gee, now that the Sunnis have joined us and Muqtada al Sadr has declared a cease fire, who the heck are we fighting over there anyway?" That would be a good question, and a large part of the answer is "al Qaeda in Iraq." But if your brain has been programmed by the New York Times, it is probably unprepared to assimilate that information. That's why you need to first ask yourself this question. After all, the first step towards achieving a better understanding of what is happening in Iraq is to realize that your much-cherished "civil war" scenario is all wrong and always has been. You can appreciate how wrong it is by considering the simple fact that, now, Americans, Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds are all working against some un-namable foe in Iraq. Once you finally name that foe, you will then be in a position to rethink the widely accepted notion that its all about political progress in Iraq.

The "political progress" theory holds that there is a civil war in Iraq between Shiites and Sunnis and that the extra U.S. troops have temporarily separated these warring factions while Iraqi politicians are given one last chance to settle their political differences. If they fail to do that, then the civil war will resume.

The problem with this way of thinking is that it begins with the wrong conceptualization of Iraq in that it fails consider the role played by al Qaeda. And the key point here is that al Qaeda does not care at all about political progress in Iraq. This is not to say that political progress is irrelevant. It obviously matters. But it is to say that even if every last political benchmark were achieved, we'd still have a big fight on our hands, and our simple choice is to win that fight (the John McCain option) or to immediately surrender (the Barack Obama option). There is no other choice, unfortunately, and all the political progress in the world is not going to change that fact.

Periodic Fiscal Insanity

Over the last couple of years, I've often pointed out that our economy has been doing much, much better than you realize. You probably mistakenly think that our economy has been something less than fabulous throughout the Bush years because you get your news from the media we have, not the media we wish we had. Reporters aren't trying to deliberately mislead you, but they don't know up from down when it comes to economic indicators, and they largely hail from the left. When you put those two things together and add in a despised (by them) president, you get a non-stop series of reports about the troubles facing the U.S. economy. My point has always been that, to figure out how the economy is doing, you have to look at the basic indicators (i.e., the ones that have always been used to gauge the health of the economy), and you have to look at those numbers over time (e.g., dating back 20 years) and over place (e.g., compared to the other major industrialized nations of the world). Anyone who has taken the time to do that knows that the American economy is simply fabulous. There is no getting around it no matter how painful you might find that truth to be.

Many have gotten the impression that my posts about the economy translate into strong support for Bush's economic policies. That's not true. Exposing the well-intentioned but misguided efforts by mainstream media reporters to convince you that George Bush has simply ruined the American economy (or tilted it in favor of the rich) is nothing more than an effort to reveal the truth -- based on concrete evidence that you can check for yourself -- about the condition of our economy (not to specifically support Bush's economic policies). The only exceptions to this are the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003. At the time they were enacted, I wasn't sure that they were a good idea. In hindsight, it seems that they were (given how strong the economy has been since 2003 and how low the budget deficit was getting until the recent stimulus package was enacted).

In any case, my efforts to convince you that the American economic model is the way to go will be a bit more complicated now that the economy is heading into a period of slow-growth (and, perhaps, a recession -- but we'll see). However, I'd like to point out that our economy suffers periodic economic jolts that lead to recessions but that do not imply that there is anything structurally defective about our basic economic policies. Looking back to the 1980s, we had this:

Savings and Loan Crisis

The US Savings and Loan crisis of the 1980s and 1990s was the failure of several savings and loan associations in the United States. More than 1,000 savings and loan institutions (S&Ls) failed in "the largest and costliest venture in public misfeasance, malfeasance and larceny of all time."[1] The ultimate cost of the crisis is estimated to have totaled around USD$160.1 billion, about $124.6 billion of which was directly paid for by the U.S. government -- that is, the U.S. taxpayer, either directly or through charges on their savings and loan accounts-- [2], which contributed to the large budget deficits of the early 1990s....

A taxpayer-funded government bailout related to mortgages during the S&L crisis may have created a moral hazard and acted as encouragement to lenders to make similar higher-risk loans during the 2007 subprime mortgage financial crisis. [4]

The concomitant slowdown in the finance industry and the real estate market may have been a contributing cause of the 1990-1991 economic recession. Between 1986 and 1991, the number of new homes constructed dropped from 1.8 million to 1 million, the lowest rate since World War II. [5]

Then, in the late 1990s, we had this:

Dot-com bubble

The "dot-com bubble" (or sometimes the "I.T. bubble") was a speculative bubble covering roughly 1995–2001 (with a climax on March 10th, 2000 with the NASDAQ peaking at 5132.52) during which stock markets in Western nations saw their value increase rapidly from growth in the new Internet sector and related fields. The period was marked by the founding (and, in many cases, spectacular failure) of a group of new Internet-based companies commonly referred to as dot-coms. A combination of rapidly increasing stock prices, individual speculation in stocks, and widely available venture capital created an exuberant environment in which many of these businesses dismissed standard business models, focusing on increasing market share at the expense of the bottom line. The bursting of the dot-com bubble marked the beginning of a relatively mild yet rather lengthy early 2000s recession in the developed world.

Now, about a decade down the line, we have this lovely mess:

Subprime mortgage crisis

The subprime mortgage crisis was a sharp rise in home foreclosures which started in the United States in late 2006 and became a global financial crisis during 2007 and 2008.

The crisis began with the bursting of the housing bubble in the US[2][3] and high default rates on "subprime" and other adjustable rate mortgages (ARM) made to higher-risk borrowers with lower income or lesser credit history than "prime" borrowers. Loan incentives and a long-term trend of rising housing prices encouraged borrowers to assume mortgages, believing they would be able to refinance at more favorable terms later. However, once housing prices started to drop moderately in 2006-2007 in many parts of the U.S., refinancing became more difficult. Defaults and foreclosure activity increased dramatically as ARM interest rates reset higher. During 2007, nearly 1.3 million U.S. housing properties were subject to foreclosure activity, up 79% versus 2006. [4] As of December 22, 2007, a leading business periodical estimated subprime defaults would reach a level between U.S. $200-300 billion. [5]

In each case, some irrational activity spiraled out of control, and a recession was needed to shake it off. I don't know if a recession awaits us now, but, one way or another, we are in the midst of shaking off the crazy loan deals that have been artificially propping up the housing market in recent years. As the economy slows, our well-intentioned but utterly clueless media will surely blame Bush and portray the American economy as being hopelessly compromised, so let me try to inoculate you from this with a small injection of relevant economic information. As I have noted many times, the basic indicator of economic health is GDP growth. In a recession, GDP actually shrinks (for at least two quarters if you want to get technical about it). The change in GDP tells you what the prevailing trend is, but GDP per capita tells you where the average American actually stands. Let's look at that figure since 1980 for the U.S. economy and for the major economies of Europe (with PPP corrections to adjust for differences in the cost of living across countries; data here):


Those red circles show recession years as defined here (though I think they are really slow-growth periods that included periods of actual economic contraction). The years 1980, 1982 and 1991 were all associated with a decreasing GDP for the entire year (i.e., those were genuine recession years). I don't think we'll see that for 2008, but only time will tell. But my point is that, back in 1980, per capita GDP in the U.S. was much like that of the major industrialized nations of Europe. Throughout the Reagan years, the Bush-I years, the Clinton years, and the Bush-II years, the American economy has been increasingly outpacing the economies of Europe. Periodic recessions that serve to shake out fiscal nonsense do not change that fact. That's my point today. The current recession (if we have one, that is) will not change that fact either. And this will remain true despite the hysteria that you will no doubt encounter in mainstream media reports about the dire economic conditions we face.

Look at this chart and then think about whose economic policies you support, those of the Republican (John McCain) or the Democrats (Obama and Clinton). Given the clearly sub-par performance of the (relatively) socialist, big-government economies of France, Italy and Germany, I would just like each candidate to explain how his or her policies are more like the economic policies that have served as very well since 1980 (and are now serving Great Britain pretty well) and less like those that have mired the other large economies of Europe in the depths of permanent economic mediocrity. Is that asking too much?

Obama Doesn't Reject Being Clinton's #2

Clinton is hinting that Barack Obama could be her choice for VP, and she is doing so (presumably) to attract the votes of those who like Obama but also worry that he isn't really presidential material (at least not yet). CNN and many other news organizations reported that Obama rejected this idea, but that's not how I read his words:

Obama rejects being Clinton's No. 2

(CNN) -- Sen. Barack Obama flatly rejected suggestions Monday he would be a vice presidential running mate for Sen. Hillary Clinton.

So he said that, if he doesn't win, he would not be her vice-president? I went looking for the quote, but here is what I found instead:

"Sen. Clinton is fighting hard. She's tenacious. I respect her for that. She is working hard to win the nomination. But I want everybody to be absolutely clear. I'm not running for vice president. I'm running for president of the United States of America," Obama told supporters during a rally in Columbus, Mississippi.

Well, that is nothing more than a simple statement of fact that does nothing to address the issue. We already know that you are running for president, so your being "absolutely clear" about that already obvious fact doesn't tell us much. The question is this: if you don't win, would you consider being Clinton's vice-president?

Here's another quote:

"With all due respect. I won twice as many states as Sen. Clinton. I've won more of the popular vote than Sen. Clinton. I have more delegates than Sen. Clinton. So, I don't know how somebody who's in second place is offering vice presidency to the person who's in first place," he said.

Fair enough. Clinton is audacious to suggest that Obama would be good for the #2 spot given that he currently has the lead and is still favored to win (despite recent setbacks in Ohio and Texas). She is audacious, but, as I said, the question is this: if you don't win, would you consider being Clinton's vice-president? Yes or no?

Here's another quote:

"I don't understand," he said. "If I'm not ready, how is it that you think I should be such a great vice president?"

That's a perfectly reasonable critique of Clinton's new political ploy. But the question is simply this: if you don't win, would you consider being Clinton's vice-president?

The New York Times, in an article entitled "Obama Rejects Suggestion That He Lower His Sights," added this quote:

"I don’t want anybody here thinking that I, somehow, well you know, maybe I can get both," Mr. Obama implored his audience. "Don’t think that way. You have to make a choice in this election. Are you going to go along with the past or are you going to go toward the future?"

Well, I realize that you don't want anyone thinking along those lines because it does you no good, but what would you do if you don't win? If you want to reject the notion of serving as Clinton's #2, just say "I will not consider serving as Clinton's vice president." If you don't want to reject that notion, then just utter a bunch of sentences that seem to imply that you are rejecting the idea without really doing so.

Despite the headlines at CNN and the New York Times, I see no evidence at all that he actually rejected the idea that he would serve as the vice-president under Hillary Clinton. Instead, he deftly parried her political ploy without making any real commitment. He's a natural born politician.

Climate Models are Good for the Tranquilizer Industry

It's all much worse than you thought:

CO2 output must cease altogether, studies warn

Research points to years of warming even with ambitious emission cuts

The task of cutting greenhouse gas emissions enough to avert a dangerous rise in global temperatures may be far more difficult than previous research suggested, say scientists who have just published studies indicating that it would require the world to cease carbon emissions altogether within a matter of decades.

Yikes. And how did they arrive at this conclusion? Like this:

Using advanced computer models to factor in deep-sea warming and other aspects of the carbon cycle that naturally creates and removes carbon dioxide (CO2), the scientists, from countries including the United States, Canada and Germany, are delivering a simple message: The world must bring carbon emissions down to near zero to keep temperatures from rising further.
...
Although computer models used by scientists to project changes in the climate have become increasingly powerful, scientists acknowledge that no model is a perfect reflection of the complex dynamics involved and how they will evolve with time.

What do you suppose they mean by that phrase "increasingly powerful?" I don't think it means that the climate models have a proven ability to predict the future because they haven't been around long enough to be assessed in that manner (which is the only assessment that matters). Note that my concern about the ability of a climate model to predict the future is completely distinct from the question of whether or not CO2 emissions can (and do) contribute to a greenhouse effect. I have not looked into research on that question in any great detail, but I don't really question it, and I approve of sensible efforts to reduce CO2 emissions in the U.S. despite the fact that they are going to massively increase in China (no matter how much you freak out about the looming environmental catastrophe).

Climate models are increasingly powerful in the sense that they can better fit what happened in the past (at least I assume so). A reasonable person might therefore assume that the models are correspondingly better able to predict the future. Although this is a reasonable intuition, it is quite wrong. Lots of people have lost a lot of money in the stock market because they failed to appreciate this fact. You can write a model to accurately predict the past performance of the stock market, but it won't help you to get rich. The problem is that a model can provide a nearly perfect fit of past behavior but for the wrong reasons. Unfortunately, there is no way to tell for sure if your model is fitting past data for the right reasons or the wrong reasons. All you know is that it fits very well (even better than past models that did not have the benefit of updated observations). If a model fits the data perfectly for the wrong reasons, it will not be able to predict the future. Thus, the only way to test whether a model can actually predict the future is to test its ability to do just that (not merely to test its ability to fit past data). I doubt any scientist anywhere would dispute that assertion (even the "real scientists" who are in the habit of predicting an environmental calamity down the line). Climate models that predict the worst 50 years down the line have only been around for a few years and so cannot have had their validity tested in this manner. Thus, your choice is to trust those models for no reason at all or not to trust them. More specifically, you have to place some degree of confidence in those models, and the whole problem with the global warming debate as I see it is that people place far too much confidence in models that are unproven (and they will necessarily remain unproven for many years to come).

Meanwhile, environmental activists and China are both going to keep doing what they always do. At the Prometheus blog, I found this fascinating study in contrasts:


Good for Greenpeace for taking matters into their own hands to try to stop Heathrow from building a third runway. But it would make more sense for them to hop into that plane and fly to China, where their efforts might be put to better use:


And here are sobering facts from the article about air transportation in China:

Air traffic volume rose 16 percent to 185 million passengers in 2007, according to official figures.

The General Administration predicts passenger traffic will grow by 11.4 percent a year between now and 2020, and freight traffic by 14 percent.

The number of airports serving more than 30 million passengers a year will rise from three now to 13, it said.

These predictions don't come from a climate model, and they could also be wrong (remember all those old predictions about a population bomb?). But China's population is growing and their economy is growing, and it makes a certain amount of sense to assume that both will continue for the time being. And it's not just more airports that will be built:

The Great Pall of China

Explosive growth means China will overtake America this year as world's biggest producer of greenhouse gases

By Michael McCarthy and Clifford Coonan
Wednesday, 25 April 2007

IEA estimates that the Chinese, who in 2006 are thought to have emitted about 5,600 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) to the Americans' 5,900, will this year emit about 6,020 million tonnes of CO2 to about 5,910 from the US. (Britain by contrast emits about 550 million tonnes.) It is these emissions from around the world which are causing the atmosphere to warm, with potentially disastrous consequences.
...
The Chinese and the others are fiercely resistant to the idea of CO2 cuts being imposed on them, as they feel they should be entirely free to pursue economic growth, just as western countries have done for 200 years. They also still have much lower carbon emissions in per capita terms than do western nations.
...
Mr Birol emphasised the scale of the problem yesterday by pointing out that in the next eight years alone, the Chinese would install, as new, as much energy generating plant as currently exists today in all of the 25 countries of the expanded European Union- a total of 800 gigawatts.

Ninety per cent of this would be coal-fired, that is, producing the most C02, and most of this, he said, would last for 50 to 60 years - "you can't shut down a power station after five or 10 years as that would be economic suicide". He said: "If we can't influence China and India in their coming energy business decisions, we will be locked in, and we will have to live with the consequences for half a century or more."

It's going to be hard to convince the Chinese to do anything meaningful if even the signatories to the Kyoto Protocol don't take the problem seriously (which they don't, at least not as measured by their actual behavior independent of their rhetoric). China is building airports and coal-fired power plants at a rapid clip, and it seems that only a global depression will prevent that from happening. But fear not! We also have this reassuring news:

China to switch to energy-efficient lightbulbs

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - China, which makes 70 percent of the world's lightbulbs, has agreed to phase out incandescent bulbs in favor of more energy-efficient ones, part of a push by a leading world environmental funding agency.

Well, that's a relief. But CO2 emissions are going to skyrocket anyway, in large part because China is not going to sacrifice its economy because of what unproven computer models say. In fact, even the signatories of the Kyoto Protocol were merely grandstanding and thumping their environmental chests (not actually committing to a reduction -- let alone a slowing -- of CO2 emissions). Canada provides the perfect case study. That country pledged to reduce emissions to 6% below 1990 levels by 2012. Here is a recent update on their actual performance:

Canada's emissions are 27 percent above 1990 levels and the government has said it would be impossible to meet the targets without doing great damage to the economy.

Gee, the Canadians sound just like the Chinese.

Democrats Finally Get Serious About "Torture"

I am not one who thinks of himself as being involved in advancing the "conservative cause," even though I am in strong agreement with conservatives on several issues that matter a lot to me (national security being the main one). It is also true that I have completely lost whatever desire I once had to advance the "liberal cause." There are just certain ways of thinking that characterize the liberal mind that I do not share at all. The recent bill that sought to abolish harsh interrogation techniques (which Bush just vetoed) brought this to the fore.

When it comes to harsh interrogation techniques, one has to draw the line somewhere. Everyone agrees that CIA interrogators should not torture high-level al Qaeda detainees (where "torture" means what it always meant). The real question has nothing at all to do with torture (unless you are hysterical liberal bent on accusing evil conservatives of moral depravity) and everything to do with defining limits. That is, the question is this: how harsh can interrogation methods be when we capture a high-level al Qaeda detainee who may have time-limited information about impending terrorist attacks (information that, if elicited, could save thousands of innocent lives)? This is a question that is not strongly informed by moral considerations. Surely I would not be immoral if I allowed interrogators to decrease the temperature in the interrogation room to one degree below climactic perfection. Don't you agree? What about 2 degrees, then? Three? What does your personal morality tell you about the permissible deviation from climactic perfection when interrogating high-level al Qaeda detainees? It tells you nothing because this isn't a moral issue. There are practical tradeoffs, and those tradeoffs involve our desire not to slide down the slippery slope into torture (here again, I mean actual torture) while also not allowing many thousands of innocents to unnecessarily die horrible and excruciatingly painful deaths merely so we can prance around the world preening about how morally evolved we all are. The hard job is to draw the line (how harsh is too harsh?). No one who wants the line drawn at a relatively harsh point on the scale is morally depraved, and no one who wants to draw it at a less harsh point on the scale is a raving idiot. It's just a hard call, and we elect our representatives to make that judgment (one that has no obvious, pre-determined answer).

Still, when deciding where to draw the line, all liberals differ from me in that they resonate to arguments like this:

Supporters of the legislation say it would preserve the United States' ability to collect critical intelligence and raise country's moral standing abroad.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Congress would work to override Bush's veto next week. "In the final analysis, our ability to lead the world will depend not only on our military might, but on our moral authority," said Pelosi, D-Calif.

I have never encountered a liberal who speaks like this and who has also thought beyond the mere uttering of this thought (which sounds good but appears to lack substance). What's the idea, exactly? That is, what does an enhanced "moral authority" buy us? Will the rest of the world suddenly join us in opposing Kyoto-like solutions to global warming? Will they help us to save the people of Iraq from the wolves of al Qaeda? Will they want to immigrate to the U.S. even more than they now want to do (God forbid)? Will they do even more business with us than they are already doing (with the weak dollar, they are already doing record amounts of that)? Will tourism in the U.S., which is now at record levels, increase even more? What, exactly, do we gain?

In truth, it seems to me that in order to regain our moral authority so that we can lead the world, then, in the eyes of Democrats, we have to stop leading and start following. That is, we have to ban all harsh interrogation methods, abolish the death penalty, sign the next version of the Kyoto Protocol, embrace the International Criminal Court, sacrifice the Iraqis by immediately withdrawing our troops, and on and on. From this perspective, there is apparently no difference between regaining our moral authority and adopting the liberal agenda (pretty much in its entirety). That being the case, Nancy Pelosi might have just as well had said "In the final analysis, our ability to lead the world will depend not only on our military might, but on our adoption of exclusively liberal policies."

In any case, I have long criticized liberal hysterics for not explicitly saying where they would draw the line when it comes to methods of interrogation. They love to accuse their political opponents of advocating torture, but they never specify the harshest interrogation method that they would allow. And they refuse to do so because, unless even the slightest degree of harshness is outlawed, a liberal who answers my question about this will be accused by other liberals of advocating "torture." Where's the fun in that? With that in mind, I give Democrats some credit for finally stepping up to the plate and stating in their new bill that the harshest interrogation metods that the CIA should be allowed to use are the methods specified by the Army Field Manual:

The 19 interrogation techniques allowed by the Army Field Manual include the "good cop/bad cop" routine; making prisoners think they are in another country's custody; and separating a prisoner from others for up to 30 days.

Making prisoners think they are in another country's custody? Like making them believe they have been captured by Israel's Mossad? Psychological torture! Oh, sorry, I guess I'm feeling a little liberal today. Actually, I'm happy that the Democrats are finally trying to draw the line, and they are drawing it at a not-so-harsh point on the scale. Good for them, but I agree with Bush:

Bush said the CIA must retain use of "specialized interrogation procedures" that the military does not need. The military methods are designed for questioning "lawful combatants captured on the battlefield," while intelligence professionals are dealing with "hardened terrorists" who have been trained to resist the techniques in the Army manual, the president said.

"We created alternative procedures to question the most dangerous al-Qaida operatives, particularly those who might have knowledge of attacks planned on our homeland," Bush said. "If we were to shut down this program and restrict the CIA to methods in the field manual, we could lose vital information from senior al-Qaida terrorists, and that could cost American lives."

And I agree with the director of the CIA as well:

The CIA director said in a memo Saturday to agency employees that it is not a choice between a "blanket application of the Army Field Manual or the legalization of torture."

The manual "does not exhaust the universe of lawful interrogation techniques," Mike Hayden wrote. "There are methods in CIA's program that have been briefed to our oversight committees, (that) are fully consistent with the Geneva Convention and current U.S. law, and are most certainly not torture."

He said military and intelligence missions are different. Hayden described the CIA program as a "tightly controlled and carefully administered national option that goes beyond the Army Field Manual" and has been a "lawful and effective response" to the threat of terrorism. "It will continue to be so as we work within the boundaries established by our nation's laws," he wrote.

The Democrats love to make political hay out of the "torture" issue. Well, let the games begin:

When President Bush vetoed legislation Saturday that would have prohibited the CIA from using physical force in interrogations, he had the support of Sen. John McCain - the most outspoken of any presidential candidate in his opposition to torture.
...
Both of McCain's potential Democratic rivals, Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, were absent from the vote but have said they support the vetoed bill. Neither has made it a campaign issue, however, and neither commented on Bush's veto.

Gee, neither Obama nor Clinton is hysterically accusing the President of supporting "torture" and harming our moral authority? And they are not making it a campaign issue? How odd. Something tells me that McCain will not allow them to remain silent on this issue all the way up the November election.

Getting the Story of al Qaeda Exactly Backwards

Obviously, I'm not getting through to people, so let me try this again. Steve Chapman, a columnist for the Chicago Tribune, just came to the defense of Barack Obama, who had demonstrated a complete lack of understanding about al Qaeda in Iraq and who was rightly taken to task over it by John McCain. As you may recall, Obama said he wants to withdraw our troops from Iraq lickety-split, but he'll send them right back if al Qaeda tries to establish a base there. McCain then pointed out the slightly obvious fact that al Qaeda terrorists are already in Iraq, and they're called al Qaeda in Iraq.

Chapman characterizes this informative exchange between these leading presidential contenders like this:

McCain's attempts to show off his expertise often turn into banana peels. Recently he attacked Barack Obama for saying that in the future, he might send forces back in "if al-Qaida is forming a base in Iraq." Jeered the Arizona senator, "Al-Qaida already has a base in Iraq. It's called al-Qaida in Iraq."

But al-Qaida in Iraq has about as much to do with al-Qaida in Afghanistan as the San Diego Padres have to do with the Catholic Church. It's a separate, independent and largely homegrown group that is focused on slaughtering Iraqi Shiites, not targeting American cities. And here's a newsflash for McCain: It didn't exist until our invasion created conditions favorable to violent insurgency.

As I have said before, you should not hold a strong opinion about Iraq if you haven't investigated the role played by al Qaeda (in particular, the role played by al Qaeda's suicide bombers). Steve Chapman has obviously put very little thought into this matter, and his apparent lack of curiosity allows him to think as he does. He says that al Qaeda in Iraq has about as much to do with al Qaeda in Afghanistan as the San Diego Padres have to do with the Catholic Church, but he is too uninformed to know just how right he actually is. He is right to suggest that al Qaeda in Iraq is nothing like al Qaeda in Afghanistan, but the point he is trying to make about that could not be more wrong. He'd know that if he had any curiosity at all about the suicide bombers of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Al Qaeda in Iraq and al Qaeda in Afghanistan differ greatly, as Chapman implies, but not in the way he seems to think. Here is how al Qaeda operates in Iraq (from today's news):

69 dead in Baghdad's 'heinous crime'

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has denounced the twin bombing attacks that ripped through a Baghdad commercial district on Thursday, killing at least 69 people, as "a heinous crime."
...
The bombings occurred in Karrada, a bustling commercial area that is busy when the Muslim weekend begins on Thursday nights.

A roadside bomb exploded first, around 7 p.m. As others gathered to help the wounded, a suicide bomber amid the crowd detonated an explosive vest, killing and wounding many more.

In Iraq, al Qaeda's suicide bombers are extremely deadly, and they have been that way for a long time (as I have documented relentlessly). What's the story with al Qaeda in Afghanistan? Chapman seems not to have noticed that al Qaeda is barely even operative there because Osama bin Laden sent his suicide bombers to Iraq instead. In Afghanistan, the Taliban (not al Qaeda) use suicide bombers as well, but, unlike the suicide bombers of Iraq, they are largely incompetent, as this UN report notes:

While Afghanistan’s first suicide attack occurred on 9 September, 2001, the tactic remained rare until 2005. Since then, the suicide attack has become increasingly commonplace in the Afghan theatre. While suicide attackers elsewhere in the world tend not to be poor and uneducated, Afghanistan’s attackers appear to be young, uneducated and often drawn from madaris across the border in Pakistan. They are also - fortunately - relatively inept at this tactic, managing to kill only themselves in many instances.

Thats' one difference between the suicide bombers of Iraq and Afghanistan. But there is another key difference. The incompetent suicide bombers of Afghanistan come mostly from Pakistan. The vastly more competent suicide bombers of Iraq come from all over the Muslim world, as this article in the New York Times explained. Here's the map showing the origins of the suicide bombers of Iraq:


So, the suicide bombers of Iraq are very deadly and they come from many foreign countries, whereas the suicide bombers of Afghanistan are not particularly deadly and they come from across the border in Pakistan. But there is another difference as well, as this report notes:

While the low death statistics certainly speak to the Taliban bombers' general ineptitude, part of the answer also lies in their targeting patterns which differ from those in Iraq. Iraqi suicide bombers from such jihadi groups as Ansar al-Sunnah and al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia frequently seek to inflict high casualty rates by attacking soft targets, such as crowded markets. Their objective is to cause as much bloodshed as possible, incite sectarian violence and destroy U.S. efforts to construct civil society in Iraq. Afghan suicide bombers, on the other hand, appear to have different objectives and have focused almost exclusively on hard targets (government, police, military). In 2007, for example, the Taliban have attacked foreign or Afghan military/police targets in 16 of their 22 bombings (in three cases the target was undetermined).

In other words, the suicide bombers of Iraq are deadly, they come from many foreign countries, and they target innocent Shiite civilians. By contrast, the suicide bombers of Afghanistan are not particularly deadly, they come from across the border in Pakistan, and they don't target civilians. In case it's not clear to you yet, let me hit you over the head with the conclusion:

The suicide bombers of Iraq represent al Qaeda in action; the suicide bombers of Afghanistan represent the Taliban in action.

As such, the "real terrorists" (i.e., al Qaeda terrorists) are fighting us in Iraq, not Afghanistan. What will it take to get this simple point through to Democrats like Barack Obama and columnists like Steve Chapman? It's not that complicated.

All of this fits with a Newsweek article published way back in 2003:

Bin Laden's Iraq Plans

By Sami Yousafzai, Ron Moreau and Michael Hirsh
Newsweek

Monday 15 December 2003

At a secret meeting, bin Laden's reps give bad news to the Taliban: Qaeda fighters are shifting to a new front.

During the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, three senior Qaeda representatives allegedly held a secret meeting in Afghanistan with two top Taliban commanders.

The confab took place in mid-November in the remote, Taliban-controlled mountains of Khowst province near the Pakistan border, a region where Al Qaeda has found it easy to operate?frequently even using satellite phones despite U.S. surveillance.

At that meeting, according to Taliban sources, Osama bin Laden's men officially broke some bad news to emissaries from Mullah Mohammed Omar, the elusive leader of Afghanistan's ousted fundamentalist regime. Their message: Al Qaeda would be diverting a large number of fighters from the anti-U.S. insurgency in Afghanistan to Iraq. Al Qaeda also planned to reduce by half its $3 million monthly contribution to Afghan jihadi outfits.

All this was on the orders of bin Laden himself, the sources said.

Get the picture? Osama bin Laden sent his suicide bombers to Iraq, and they have been plying their deadly trade there ever since. Bizarrely, Democrats and certain columnists seem to think that the real al Qaeda is in Afghanistan. Since when have al Qaeda's suicide bombers been a bunch of bumbling incompetents? Since never. The bumbling and incompetent suicide bombers of Afghanistan are representative of the larger bumbling and incompetent Taliban military operation in Afghanistan. It's quite a different story in Iraq.

Chapman says that al Qaeda in Iraq is "...largely homegrown group that is focused on slaughtering Iraqi Shiites." Here, he is either being deliberately misleading, or he simply does not know the facts. I assume it is the latter. As I noted above, the suicide bombers of Iraq -- that is, the weapon that al Qaeda uses to slaughter people -- are not homegrown. There are, of course, homegrown fighters who have joined al Qaeda in Iraq, but the deadly killers are the foreign foot soldiers (not the homegrown helpers). Note this fact from a recent article in the Washington Post:

Based on the Sinjar records, U.S. military officials in Iraq said they now think that nine out of 10 suicide bombers have been foreigners, compared with earlier estimates of 75 percent.
...
Al-Qaeda in Iraq carried out more than 4,500 attacks against civilians in 2007, killing 3,870 and wounding nearly 18,000, the military announced yesterday.

Against these nearly 4000 deaths are less than 300 deaths caused by the suicide bombers of Afghanistan in 2007. Think about that, and then think again about the fact that Chapman said "...al-Qaida in Iraq has about as much to do with al-Qaida in Afghanistan as the San Diego Padres have to do with the Catholic Church." As I said, he doesn't know how right he is.

And then there is that little detail about al Qaeda being "...focused on slaughtering Iraqi Shiites." Do you think he ever stopped to consider why al Qaeda's foreign suicide bombers would slaughter Shiite civilians? Are these killers funneling into Iraq from all over the world to participate in a civil war between Sunni and Shiites? Obviously not. Instead, al Qaeda is funneling them into Iraq to create a civil war. Zarqawi conceived of this plan, but no liberal analyst of Iraq seems to have read his letter in which he spelled it all out in words that even a 5th grader could understand (are you smarter than a 5th grader?):

The Shi'a in our opinion, these are the key to change. Targeting and striking their religious, political, and military symbols, will make them show their rage against the Sunnis and bear their inner vengeance. If we succeed in dragging them into a sectarian war, this will awaken the sleepy Sunnis who are fearful of destruction and death at the hands of these Sabeans, i.e., the Shi'a.
...
Way of action: As we have mentioned to you, our situation demands that we treat the issue with courage and clarity. So the solution, and god only knows, is that we need to bring the Shi'a into the battle because it is the only way to prolong the duration of the fight between the infidels and us.
...
So i say again, the only solution is to strike the religious, military, and other cadres of the Shi'a so that they revolt against the Sunnis. Some people will say, that this will be a reckless and irresponsible action that will bring the Islamic nation to a battle for which the Islamic nation is unprepared. Souls will perish and blood will be spilled...This is what we want. Then, the Sunni will have no choice but to support us in many of the Sunni regions. When the Mujahidin would have secured a land they can use as a base to hit the Shi'a inside their own lands, with a directed media and a strategic action, there will be a continuation between the Mujahidin inside and outside of Iraq.
...
As far as the Shi'a, we will undertake suicide operations and use car bombs to harm them.

That's why al Qaeda's suicide bombers are slaughtering Shiites. They are in search of sectarian chaos because the failed state they envision would allow al Qaeda to wage jihad from Iraq. There is nothing complicated or top secret about this, yet some who aspire to be our commander-in-chief (e.g., Barack Obama) and others who write columns read by millions (Steve Chapman) don't seem to have a clue about it.

And this brings me to the utter folly of Barack Obama's plan for Iraq. Right now, our soldiers and the Sunni alliance are working hard to suppress al Qaeda's suicide bombers. But even with 160,000 U.S. troops and another 80,000 Sunni fighters, al Qaeda still managed to kill 69 Shiite civilians in Iraq yesterday. They killed more than 200 civilians last month (and, as I said, they killed almost 4000 in 2007). I ask you: what will the suicide bombers do when U.S. forces are reduced? Obviously, their attacks will greatly increase. On the left, it is fashionable to simply assert that the Sunnis will "take care of" al Qaeda once our soldiers depart. But if 80,000 Sunni fighters can't stop the suicide bombers right now even with the help of 160,000 U.S. troops, according to what fantasy does it make sense to assume that they will able to do so when we withdraw, say, 120,000 of those troops? Hope? Just hope? I'd say so. Hope is Barack Obama's plan for Iraq. Unfortunately, al Qaeda has a much more effective plan.

We saw how the Shiite militias responded when the suicide bombers were out of control in 2006. Muqtada al Sadr's Mahdi Army unleashed a ferocious anti-Sunni extermination campaign in Baghdad (just as Zarqawi hoped they would do). When we withdraw our troops and al Qaeda immediately resurrects its diminishing (but still deadly) suicide bombing campaign, do you imagine that the Shiite militias will just sit on the sidelines as they watch their people perish and their holy mosques bombed to the ground? That's not going to happen. And when they resume their slaughter of Sunnis in Baghdad, do you imagine that the Sunnis will continue to fight al Qaeda in Iraq -- even with the Mahdi Army raining down on them? Or might it be the case that Zarqawi was right to think that under those conditions, the Sunnis will have no choice but to once again embrace al Qaeda? It seems almost certain that Zarqawi was right. After all, if the U.S. is not there to save the Sunnis from the Mahdi Army, al Qaeda will be their only hope. And, as I have said before, al Qaeda does not care at all about political reconciliation in Iraq. No oil deal is going to cause al Qaeda to call off its suicide bombing campaign in Iraq, and if you believe otherwise then there is probably no hope for you (so go ahead and vote for Barack Obama).

Al Qaeda is being defeated in Iraq, and the only sensible course of action is to continue crushing the life out of them until their defeat at the hands of the U.S. military and their Sunni allies in Iraq is complete.

The Weak Dollar and America's Prestige

Over the past few years, I could have written about a billion blog posts saying that I basically agree with whatever Lawrence Kudlow is saying about the American economy. It therefore caught me by surprise when he weighed in with this opinion:

Resurrect King Dollar

By Lawrence Kudlow
Tuesday, March 4, 2008

If Sen. John McCain wants to run as a candidate of change, and if he’s interested in distancing himself from President Bush on some issues, he should reverse the declining fortunes of the Bush wartime dollar. America’s prestige is on the line.
...
Right now the greenback is in virtual freefall. It’s a disorderly drop that’s picking up speed. In the last month the dollar has fallen 5 percent. Over the past two years it has declined 30 percent against the euro. In the past six months it has dropped nearly 20 percent versus the yen. Measured in terms of a basket of industrial currencies, the dollar is now below its 1970’s level.

Consequently, for the first time in a decade I’ve become genuinely worried about inflation. Over the last year and a half, consumer prices have climbed from 1.5 percent to nearly 4.5 percent. Prices are rising today faster than average hourly earnings for the non-management workforce. As real incomes go down, so goes the consumer.

I certainly agree that inflation is a big concern. And it's true that, in theory, a weak dollar can stir inflation by making imported goods more expensive. But the dollar has been weakening dramatically for a long time. What effect has that had on inflation so far? To find out, I dug up numbers on (a) the exchange rate with the euro here and (b) the U.S. inflation rate here. I computed average annual rates for both and plotted them up for the years 2001 through 2007. Here is what I found:


The value of the dollar in relation to the euro is shown by the magenta line and can be read of the left vertical axis. In 2001, one dollar would buy you a little more than one euro. In 2007, a dollar would get you only about .75 euros. Thus, during the Bush years, the value of the dollar has fallen by a whopping 35%.

The inflation rate (CPI-U) over those same years is shown by the blue line and can be read off the right vertical axis. Except for 2002, when it was quite low, inflation has ranged between 2.3% and 3.4%. There does seem to be a slight upward trend in recent years, but it is not very large in light of the dramatic decline in the value of the dollar. That's not to say we shouldn't worry about this issue, but it does seem that the relationship between the value of the dollar and the rate of inflation is not overwhelmingly strong. Also, the weakening dollar is helping to finally lower the trade deficit:


This chart shows the current account deficit expressed as a percentage of GDP according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). It is conspicuously huge (no other major industrialized nation has a deficit anywhere near this large), but it is coming down a bit now, largely because of the weaker dollar. And the increased exports that come with a weaker dollar are fueling what little GDP growth we have right now. With all that in mind, I'm not quite as enthusiastic as Kudlow is about deliberately strengthening the U.S. dollar.

But I guess the real source of our disagreement on this issue has to do with the idea that "America’s prestige is on the line." He elaborates on that point later in his article:

And if all this weren’t bad enough, the falling greenback is becoming a symbol of American decline. Folks are making fun of the dollar. Our enemies around the world are pointing to the unreliable dollar as evidence of American weakness. Weakness as a financial power. Weakness as a national-security power. Does an unreliable currency symbolize an unreliable nation?

I don't see it this way. It's true that many people mistakenly equate a lower dollar with a weak economy, but that just means that many people are misguided. For example, look at the value of the dollar from 2003 through 2007 in my chart above. It plummeted against the euro. Does that mean that the European economies were outperforming the U.S. economy over that long stretch of time? Hardly. On the most basic measure of economic health -- growth in GDP -- the U.S. has far outperformed the major economies of Europe (Germany, France, Italy and Britain):


The IMF estimates the value at 1.9% for the U.S. in 2007, but the actual value came in at 2.2% (so I assume the IMF will update their figure in due course). My point is that despite the dramatically declining value of the dollar, economic growth in the U.S. from 2003 to 2007 was phenomenal. I know you don't realize this because you get your news about the economy from mainstream media reporters, but it's not debatable, and the fact that we are now in a weak period of growth (and a recession may be in store for us) does not change that fact.

Worrying about the fact that people around the word will mistakenly interpret a weak dollar as a sign of America's economic decline is not something I'm going to waste any time doing. For similar reasons, I don't worry (at all) about America's declining "moral authority" or about the fact that popularity polls in France and Germany show that people there think the U.S. is not what it used to be and that it is one of the biggest threats to world peace. What they think about us is their business, not ours (and what we think about them is our business, not theirs). I know how shocking this way of thinking is to some people who have never taken one moment out of their lives to ponder the possibility that we gain nothing -- not one thing -- from an enhanced "standing in the world" (i.e., from an increased level of support in popularity polls). In actual practice, our "prestige," our "popularity," and our "moral authority" are all basically irrelevant. If those were enhanced to everyone's satisfaction (i.e., if we regained our moral authority or if we enhanced our prestige), yet Britain, France and Germany nevertheless consistently elected anti-American leaders who think that the U.S. is a depraved nation that has lost its way, that would be a concern for me because it would show that, in practice, these things matter a lot. Thus, my claim that we should not worry about our "standing" in the world is not born of arrogance. Instead, I've paid attention to how Europeans behave when they take a real poll (not a popularity poll). When they do that, they send the anti-American politicians (who seem to mirror the views of the electorate, at least according to popularity polls) into retirement. That this happened in both Germany and France -- two nations with relentlessly anti-American populations -- is nothing short of amazing, and it suggests to me that our low standing in various European nations does not translate into anything tangible. I haven't been able to detect a tangible cost, anyway.

All of this is in stark contrast to other opinion polls that do matter a great deal, such as the opinions that Muslims have about al Qaeda. We do not depend on the French having a high opinion of us, but al Qaeda does depend on the Muslim world having a high opinion of them. As their prestige and their "moral authority" drops, their recruitment efforts suffer and their financing declines. They don't have an economy of their own to keep them going. Al Qaeda is not a nation unto itself, so it depends on the support of people within the nations that it infests. As stated in prior National Intelligence Estimates, if their standing drops in the Muslim world, their recruitment efforts will suffer. That is a very tangible cost, and that's why I pay close attention to al Qaeda's "moral authority" and prestige in the Muslim world while pretty much ignoring America's moral authority and prestige throughout the world. When the day comes that America's supposedly suffering moral authority translates into something tangible, then I'll start to become concerned about it.

Obama Can't Seem to Win the Big States

Obama's magical momentum went up in a puff of smoke last night, as he lost in Texas, Ohio, and Rhode Island while only managing to carry Vermont. Why did Vermont buck the new trend? Because it is a state with lots of radical left wing anti-war extremists, and that's the type of person who really loves Obama (for good reason, I might add). That shows up in the exit polls:

EXIT POLLS: WHY OBAMA WON VT

From MSNBC's Norah O'Donnell and Adam Verdugo

Vermont is one of the most liberal states and anti-war states in the country. The Obama campaign believes it can net more delegates out of Vermont, than if Hillary Clinton wins both Ohio and Texas, because of potential margin of victory.

And here are some additional election results from that state that help to explain why Obama did so well there:

Vt. towns approve Bush-Cheney 'indictment'

BRATTLEBORO, Vt. - Voters in two Vermont towns approved measures Tuesday calling for the indictment of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for what they consider violations of the Constitution.

More symbolic than anything, the items sought to have police arrest Bush and Cheney if they ever visit Brattleboro or nearby Marlboro or to extradite them for prosecution elsewhere — if they're not impeached first.

Nothing but sensible, mainstream decision-making there. Radical left wing anti-war extremists love Obama (but not Clinton) for the same reason that I don't want to see him anywhere near the White House.

Meanwhile, in the face of his losses elsewhere last night, Obama has resorted to emphasizing his continuing lead in pledged delegates. Lots of people seem to think that this pledged delegate lead matters a lot (even though he won't get enough to secure the nomination). For example, in Slate, John Dickerson makes this observation:

She Lives!

Clinton has come back, but has she come back far enough?

By John Dickerson

During Hillary Clinton's 11 straight losses to Barack Obama, her aides and allies started talking about the Clinton roller coaster. She wasn't in a death plunge, they said; it was just a steep drop before an inevitable upward rise. By winning the Ohio and Texas primaries Tuesday, Clinton got that lift...
...
But what exactly did Clinton gain with her extraordinary win? The Democratic race has come down to a contest of numbers versus narrative. The numbers are on Barack Obama's side. Clinton won three of four primary contests but did little, or perhaps nothing, to eat into Obama's pledged-delegate lead of more than 100. Barring a cataclysmic event, Clinton isn't going to take the delegate lead from Obama, which means he can still make the case that he is the candidate of the people.

Well, yes, if you blindly assume that the "pledged delegate" count is the best way to gauge the will of the people. But what if it isn't? Jonathan Alter makes a similar point in Newsweek:

BETWEEN THE LINES: Jonathan Alter

Hillary’s Math Problem

Forget tonight. She could win 16 straight and still lose.

Hillary Clinton may be poised for a big night tonight, with wins in Ohio, Texas and Rhode Island. Clinton aides say this will be the beginning of her comeback against Barack Obama. There's only one problem with this analysis: they can't count.

I'm no good at math either, but with the help of Slate’s Delegate Calculator I've scoped out the rest of the primaries, and even if you assume huge Hillary wins from here on out, the numbers don't look good for Clinton. In order to show how deep a hole she's in, I've given her the benefit of the doubt every week for the rest of the primaries.

The numbers that don't look good for Hillary have to do with the pledged delegate count, which, according to RealClearPolitics, Obama leads 1340 to 1206. Clinton is unlikely to overcome that lead by the end of the race, and to many Obama supporters, this means that the super delegates will have no choice but to support him. After all, if they don't, they are bucking the "will of the people," and we could have rioting in the streets.

The super delegates probably will want to take into account the will of the people, but the idea that needs to be further considered is that the pledged delegate count is the best measure of that. In fact, the idea that the super delegates should robotically vote in accordance with the pledged delegate count (even if neither candidate has nowhere near enough to secure the nomination) is just another way of saying that we should do away with the super delegates altogether. If the outcome is determined solely by a majority of pledged delegates (even if the requisite number has not been attained), why even have super delegates?

The Democrats have super delegates so that they can exercise their independent reasoning abilities (at least I assume so), not so they can act like pre-programmed robots. To be sure, some of the super delegates might reason like this:

Well, if we disenfranchise the voters of Michigan and Florida, and if we disregard the fact that Obama got more than his fair share of pledged delegates in the caucus states, then Obama holds a slight lead in the pledged delegate count. Who am I to question the validity of that measure of the will of the people? He gets my vote.

Remember, the delegate counts from the caucus states do not accurately characterize the "will of the people." The will of the people is best ascertained by seeing how they vote in the privacy of the voting booth. You get a measure like that from states that hold primaries. The caucus states, by contrast, reflect the will of left wing party activists voting in public.

With that in mind, it seems reasonable for a super delegate to avoid acting like a mindless robot and to factor several variables into his or her thinking before deciding who to support. For example, a super delegate might take a look at the popular vote totals from all of the states, including Florida and Michigan. Michigan is a slight problem because Clinton was on the ballot but Obama wasn't. Still, we can assign all of the Michigan votes for "uncommitted" to him. If we do that, and if we look only at the states that held primaries (not caucuses) because we are trying to measure the will of the people (not the will of far left party activists), the totals come out like this (and I got the total for "uncommitted" in Michigan here):

Obama: 13,439,573 (50.0%)
Clinton: 13,435,253 (50.0%)

Isn't that amazing? It's almost an exact tie. If the super delegate wants to factor in the will of the party activists from the caucus states, the numbers become:

Obama: 13,760,591 (50.4%)
Clinton: 13,563,192 (49.6%)

From what I can tell, the "people" are about as evenly split as they can possibly be. Add to that the fact that Clinton has this tendency to win all of the big states (New York, California, Michigan, Florida, Texas, New Jersey, Ohio, and, probably, Pennsylvania), some of which are critical swing states when it comes to the general election, and it becomes less clear that a super delegate should feel duty bound to support Obama. And the super delegate might also want to factor in what the national polls have to say when all is said and done. What if the Tony Rezko issue (which reminds me a little of the Duke Cunningham scandal that Democrats once thoroughly enjoyed) further tarnishes Obama such that Clinton has a commanding lead in the national polls by August? Are super delegates supposed to just say to themselves "none of this matters..must...vote...for...Obama"? I obviously don't know how the super delegates will reason this out, but I do suspect that they will exercise their reasoning abilities instead of mindlessly voting in accordance with the pledged delegate count (as if that count provides a sacrosanct measure of the will of the people).

Of course, I am hoping that, in the end, Hillary Clinton will emerge as the winner, and that may be clouding my thinking here (just as Obama supporters are allowing their hopes to influence their thinking about the role played by the pledged delegate count). I hope Clinton wins the nomination because then we'll have a race between a Democrat and a Republican who are both sensible on the issue of national security. I know that Clinton has, during the primaries, suddenly swerved to the Moveon.org/Barack Obama view (according to which we should immediately revive al Qaeda in Iraq by withdrawing the very troops who are finally crushing the life out of that terrorist organization), but that's a completely new position for her (so I don't believe it). Obama, by contrast, is card-carrying anti-war extremist, which is why he was endorsed by Moveon.org (and why he embraces that organization). Remember, Moveon.org is the group that took out a full page in the New York Times to declare that General Petraeus was betraying our nation. Such people see a kindred spirit in Barack Obama.

Then again, my enthusiasm for Clinton is somewhat tempered by this news:

Clinton hails 3 wins; Obama downplays losses

After big night, ex-first lady leaves door open to sharing ticket with rival

WASHINGTON - Hillary Rodham Clinton scored three victories in a night of revival that denied Barack Obama a ripe opportunity to drive her from the Democratic presidential race. Clarity came only to the Republican side, where John McCain made the nomination his own.

Meanwhile, Clinton, fresh off big primary victories, hinted Wednesday at the possibility of sharing the Democratic presidential ticket with Obama — with her at the top.
...
Asked on CBS's "The Early Show" whether she and Obama should be on the same ticket, Clinton said: "That may be where this is headed, but of course we have to decide who is on the top of ticket. I think the people of Ohio very clearly said that it should be me."

Having a radical left wing anti-war extremist just a heartbeat away from the presidency would worry me a lot, and the very idea that Obama might end up being the vice-president makes it very unlikely that Clinton would get my vote in the fall. For now, though, I hope she manages to get the nomination.

Live by Momentum, Die by Momentum

Before Wisconsin held its primary, it seemed that 2 theories could explain what had happened up to that point. One theory held that Obama had momentum (i.e., the electorate was trending in his direction), and that's why he had won a string of primaries. The other held that it was all explainable on the basis of demographics (latte liberals and blacks going for Obama in primary states plus hyperventilating devotees working to his advantage in the caucus states; Hispanics, women and working-class liberals going for Clinton). The momentum theory would see Obama win big in Wisconsin, whereas the demographic theory would see a close race there (and perhaps even a win for Clinton). Obama won going away (by a stunning 17 points), which served to cement the momentum theory for me. Obama had it, and it was hard to see Clinton finding a way to overcome it.

Demographics are stable, but momentum can be fleeting. If you are going to live by momentum, you had better wrap things up fast. Otherwise, you might die by momentum when it switches back to your competitor. Going into today's big primaries, Clinton suddenly has the momentum, with Obama reeling from his connections to Tony Rezko (who is now on trial for extortion, money laundering, and fraud) and his campaign's acknowledgment to the Canadians that Obama's apparent opposition to NAFTA is merely a cynical political gimmick designed to mislead a gullible electorate in order to wrap up the nomination today in Ohio. I don't really hold either one of those against him, but it seems that others might. In Texas, Obama's relentless march upward in the polls has suddenly come to a screeching halt according this chart from pollster.com:


And if you look at the polls that began their surveys on March 1 or 2, it seems that Clinton might once again enjoy the lead she had surrendered to Obama about a week ago:


Clinton clearly has the momentum now (with an average 2.4% lead in these very late polls), which no one predicted, but it doesn't necessarily mean that she'll win in Texas. The Wisconsin polls had Obama winning by 5, but he ended up winning by 17. His unexpectedly large win there either means that if you have the momentum, you'll do even better than the polls predict (which would mean that Clinton might break out with a big win today) or that pollsters have trouble predicting who among Obama's mesmerized supporters will get out and vote (in which case Obama might enjoy a sizeable win despite the polls showing a slight lead for Clinton). I love the uncertainty of political contests in the United States, which is an experience the Russians may never know.

What's happening in Ohio? It looks like Clinton has put the brakes on Obama's momentum there as well:


If you look at the polls that began their surveys March 1 or 2, they all point to a convincing Clinton victory in Ohio:


Clinton says that she'll stay in the race even if she loses in Texas or Ohio. She's either saying that just to keep her momentum alive heading into today's potentially decisive contests (but, in reality, she'll drop out if she loses either one) or she's going to stay no matter what on the theory that Obama will go down in flames over the Tony Rezko affair (in which case she'll be there to serve as the party's savior).

No matter what happens today, it seems that the bloom may be coming off the Obama rose. It was inevitable, but I didn't expect to see it happen so soon. If he wins big today in Texas, it will go a long way towards patching up his leaky ship. Still, it's possible that substance will matter more than style from here on out, and that would be a good thing. Fewer hyperventilating devotees will faint when he gives a speech, but the American electorate may finally awaken to the fact that Obama's plan for Iraq matches al Qaeda's plan to the letter. That ought to matter more than his politics-as-usual NAFTA deception or his past dealing with shady characters like Tony Rezko.

Worth Noting

Iran's leader has a suggestion for American policy in Iraq:

BAGHDAD - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Monday dismissed U.S. accusations that his country is training extremists and demanded that the Americans withdraw from Iraq.

Al Qaeda's deputy chief, Zawahiri, has a plan for Iraq that Ahmadinejad would approve of:

So we must think for a long time about our next steps and how we want to attain it, and it is my humble opinion that the Jihad in Iraq requires several incremental goals:

The first stage: Expel the Americans from Iraq.

Barack Obama has his own plan for Iraq:

Obama will immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq. He will remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months.

Can you spot the common denominator? I guess there is some logical analysis according to which it makes sense to immediately enact the policy objectives of our sworn enemies, but that logic escapes me.

No, I am not saying that Obama is the enemy or that he is trying to to achieve what our enemies want to achieve. My point is just that he will be doing their bidding (unwittingly) because, as I documented in my previous post, he is a typical head-in-the-sand liberal when it comes to reasoning about al Qaeda in Iraq. You can tell that because his reasoning involves no details, as if Iraq can be fully conceptualized by a few bumper-sticker-like slogans.

Questions that Should Guide Your Thinking about Iraq

As I've said before, if you want to understand what happened in Iraq over the last 2 years, then you need to go straight through these 3 questions:

1. Who are the suicide bombers of Iraq?

2. How many innocent civilians have they killed?

3. What are they trying to accomplish?

If you think that Iraq spontaneously descended into a civil war as a result of our invasion, then you haven't answered these questions. And if you haven't answered these questions, it would be very odd for you to have a strong opinion about what to do now. It would be even odder for you to consider voting for Barack Obama.

Don't listen to any neocon as you try to answer these 3 questions. Investigate the matter for yourself. What you'll find is that the suicide bombers are almost all foreigner fighters being funneled into Iraq by al Qaeda, they have killed many thousands of innocent civilians (nearly 4000 in 2007 alone), and their goal has nothing at all to do with political reconciliation in Iraq. Let me repeat that: al Qaeda's goal has nothing at all to do with political reconciliation in Iraq. The al Qaeda leadership does not care about how oil wealth will be distributed, it does not care about amnesty and retirement deals for former Baathists, and it could not care less about the timing and structure of provincial elections. Why, then, are they deliberately slaughtering so many innocent Shiite civilians?

If you don't know the answer to that question, then how could you possibly think of voting for Barack Obama? Barack Obama thinks that Iraq has fallen into state of civil war, with both sides forcibly separated for the moment so we can see if political reconciliation can be achieved. If political reconciliation is not achieved, we'll pull our forces from the country and let the Sunnis and Shiites have at it again. This is a standard liberal conceptualization, one that is all wrong and that can only be seriously entertained by those who have not sought answers to the three questions I asked above.

Back to that third question: why is al Qaeda targeting innocent Shiites with their suicide bombers? Those who have investigated the matter for themselves know that the goal is to incite civil war. That is, al Qaeda is not participating in a civil war on the side of the Sunnis. That's not what the suicide bombings are all about. Instead, al Qaeda is attempting to goad the Shiite militias into once again eradicating Sunnis in Baghdad. Al Qaeda wants civil war, not political reconciliation, and their method is to send suicide bombers against Shiite civilians and their holy mosques. That's what caused violence in Iraq to explode out of control in the first place. It was not a case of Shiites and Sunnis fighting a civil war. Instead, it was al Qaeda trying to goad the Shiite militias into killing Sunnis, and it finally worked. That is, after al Qaeda destroyed the Golden Mosque, Muqtada al Sadr finally ordered his militia to kill any Sunni male they could find in Baghdad. That's what was happening before the troop surge and the Sunni "Awakening" helped to get both factors (namely, al Qaeda's suicide bombing campaign and Muqtada al Sadr's Sunni extermination campaign) under control.

With all of that in mind, let's consider a new set of questions that come to mind in response to Barack Obama's plan for Iraq. First, here is his severely limited understanding of the situation on the ground:

The Surge: The goal of the surge was to create space for Iraq's political leaders to reach an agreement to end Iraq's civil war. At great cost, our troops have helped reduce violence in some areas of Iraq, but even those reductions do not get us below the unsustainable levels of violence of mid-2006. Moreover, Iraq's political leaders have made no progress in resolving the political differences at the heart of their civil war.

Actually, violence is way below the levels in effect in mid-2006, but you can't expect a Democrat who is not paying attention to the details to know anything about that. He is, after all, merely running for president (not for some important office or anything), and you certainly don't have to master any details about our war in Iraq to be fully qualified for the job of commander in chief. I think that's obvious.

Like Democrats everywhere, Barack Obama maintains an eerie code of silence about one issue that is slightly relevant to the purpose of the troop surge. Can you guess what that issue is? Let me give you a hint. The hint comes in Bush's speech to the nation in which he clearly outlined the actual reason for the troop surge (which Obama thinks is "...to create space for Iraq's political leaders to reach an agreement to end Iraq's civil war"):

As we make these changes, we will continue to pursue al Qaeda and foreign fighters. Al Qaeda is still active in Iraq. Its home base is Anbar Province. Al Qaeda has helped make Anbar the most violent area of Iraq outside the capital. A captured al Qaeda document describes the terrorists' plan to infiltrate and seize control of the province. This would bring al Qaeda closer to its goals of taking down Iraq's democracy, building a radical Islamic empire, and launching new attacks on the United States at home and abroad.

Our military forces in Anbar are killing and capturing al Qaeda leaders, and they are protecting the local population. Recently, local tribal leaders have begun to show their willingness to take on al Qaeda. And as a result, our commanders believe we have an opportunity to deal a serious blow to the terrorists. So I have given orders to increase American forces in Anbar Province by 4,000 troops. These troops will work with Iraqi and tribal forces to keep up the pressure on the terrorists. America's men and women in uniform took away al Qaeda's safe haven in Afghanistan -- and we will not allow them to re-establish it in Iraq.

See the difference between the way in which Obama characterizes the purpose of the troop surge and the way in which the commander-in-chief (who ordered the surge) characterizes it? Bush understands that we are in a war against al Qaeda in Iraq. Yet Barack Obama and the entire mainstream media just forgot about this, so they keep saying that the only purpose of the surge was to give Iraqi politicians some breathing space while the two sides of the civil war were temporarily held apart. That's way wrong.

After demonstrating a complete lack of understanding about what is happening in Iraq, Obama described his ingenious plan:

Bringing Our Troops Home

Obama will immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq. He will remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months. Obama will make it clear that we will not build any permanent bases in Iraq. He will keep some troops in Iraq to protect our embassy and diplomats; if al Qaeda attempts to build a base within Iraq, he will keep troops in Iraq or elsewhere in the region to carry out targeted strikes on al Qaeda.

This is what the Democrats have been saying for 2 years now. At least he mentions al Qaeda here, as if it is some sort of minor nuisance factor that can be effectively addressed by leaving a few troops behind to carry out "targeted strikes." What you have to realize is that, right now, the Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds are all working with us. That is the current state of the "civil war." So who the heck are they fighting against? They are fighting against al Qaeda's suicide bombers, and those suicide bombers are still seeking to kill innocent Shiite civilians in an effort to reignite sectarian violence. Those suicide bombers killed more than 200 people in the just-completed month of February even with 160,000 American troops and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis (Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds alike) trying to stop them. Now I ask you:

1. What will the suicide bombers do when Barack Obama starts to remove our troops from Iraq?

Feel free to answer this question in your own mind, but the answer seems obvious to me. If they can kill more than 200 civilians per month with 160,000 U.S. troops trying to keep the suicide bombers suppressed, they will immediately start to kill many, many more Shiites. If you believe otherwise, you have not been paying attention.

2. What will Muqtada al Sadr's Shiite militia do when U.S. forces are no longer preventing al Qaeda's suicide bombers from slaughtering innocent Shiite civilians?

Again, answer for yourself, but, again, the answer seems pretty obvious to me. The Shiite militias will do what they did the last time al Qaeda's suicide bombing campaign was out of control. That is, they will start to kill Sunnis en masse. Not out of "raw hatred" but in an attempt to suppress al Qaeda's killers who are being harbored by a small number of Sunnis who have joined al Qaeda's jihadist cause (and who do not care -- at all -- about political reconciliation).

3. When al Qaeda's suicide bombers are once again slaughtering Shiite civilians, and when the Shiite militias once again strike out against Sunnis to stop them, will the state of Iraq be more in accordance with al Qaeda's goals or with American goals? What are al Qaeda's goals, anyway? The evil genius Abu Musab al-Zarqawi made that quite clear in a letter that he wrote back in 2004:

The Shi'a in our opinion, these are the key to change. Targeting and striking their religious, political, and military symbols, will make them show their rage against the Sunnis and bear their inner vengeance. If we succeed in dragging them into a sectarian war, this will awaken the sleepy Sunnis who are fearful of destruction and death at the hands of these Sabeans, i.e., the Shi'a.
...
Way of action: As we have mentioned to you, our situation demands that we treat the issue with courage and clarity. So the solution, and god only knows, is that we need to bring the Shi'a into the battle because it is the only way to prolong the duration of the fight between the infidels and us.
...
So i say again, the only solution is to strike the religious, military, and other cadres of the Shi'a so that they revolt against the Sunnis. Some people will say, that this will be a reckless and irresponsible action that will bring the Islamic nation to a battle for which the Islamic nation is unprepared. Souls will perish and blood will be spilled. This is, however, exactly what we want, as there is nothing to win or lose in our situation.
...
If we are able to deal them blow after painful blow so that they engage in a battle, we will be able to reshuffle the cards so there will remain no value or influence for the ruling council, or even for the Americans who will enter into a second battle with the Shi'a. This is what we want. Then, the Sunni will have no choice but to support us in many of the Sunni regions. When the Mujahidin would have secured a land they can use as a base to hit the Shi'a inside their own lands, with a directed media and a strategic action, there will be a continuation between the Mujahidin inside and outside of Iraq.
...
As far as the Shi'a, we will undertake suicide operations and use car bombs to harm them.

But when those suicide operations take place and when those car bombs go off, Democrats (including Barack Obama) think they are watching a civil war. They are not. They are watching al Qaeda try to goad the Shiites into killing Sunnis because the resulting chaos is precisely what al Qaeda is trying to achieve. For obvious reasons, Democrats who feel compelled to maintain a strict code of silence about al Qaeda in Iraq (except when they mometarily break out of it to blame al Qaeda's presence on Bush) never, ever discuss Zarqawi's letter. I wouldn't either if I were trying to mislead an uninformed electorate into voting for me.

All of this information about Iraq is well known (except among Democrats, that is), and none of it is really debatable. It's not debatable, therefore it is ignored. It's what I call the "eerie code of silence," and Barack Obama has fully adopted this politically expedient and intellectually dishonest campaign strategy. General Petraeus has a different view of Iraq. As such, Barack Obama's "civil war" analysis can mean only one of two things:

1. Barack Obama thinks that General Petraeus is lying about Iraq.

--or--

2. Barack Obama thinks that he understands the military situation on the ground better than General Petraeus does.

It's one or the other because here is the most recent analysis from Petraeus:

Petraeus Describes Factors Affecting Iraq Assessment

BAGHDAD, March 2, 2008 – The top military commander in Iraq gave some insight today into what he will consider as he prepares to report to the president and Congress in April on the way ahead.
...
The way ahead in Iraq will not be easy, the general said. “Each day something bad happens,” he said. “(But) the relative degree of the bad news tends to be less.”

The number of car bomb attacks has dropped, but there is a slight increase in suicide-vest attacks. Al Qaeda is having a tough time building car bombs and then getting them through checkpoints, Petraeus explained, but suicide vests are transportable and are now being handed to women.
...
Al Qaeda remains the biggest threat, and over time coalition and Iraqi forces have killed, captured or run off substantial numbers of the terror group. But there is still a lot of work to do in the Diyala and Tigris river valleys, and in Iraq’s second-largest city of Mosul and surrounding Ninevah province.

“We are going after al Qaeda relentlessly wherever they are, and wherever we can find them, we put our teeth into their jugular,” Petraeus said.

Mosul is an important place to al Qaeda. “Analysts have said that while Baghdad is critical for al Qaeda to win in Iraq, Mosul and its area is critical for their survival,” the general said. Recent successes notwithstanding, Petraeus warned, a “final battle” with the terrorist group is not imminent.

“Al Qaeda is incredibly resilient,” he said, “and they are receiving people and supplies through Syria – although numbers through Syria are down as much as 50 percent.”

Coalition and Iraqi forces will take on al Qaeda in the north, but will do so on their timetable and according to their plans, the general said. He will not start shifting U.S. and Iraqi forces willy-nilly around the country.

“The key is to hang on to what you’ve got,” he said. “You cannot, in your eagerness to go after something new, start to play ‘Whack-a-mole’ again. You have to hang onto the areas you’ve cleared; you have to have that plan to do before you go.”

Coalition forces are moving to Mosul and Ninevah, but Petraeus said he will not risk losing gains made in Baghdad, the belts around Baghdad and in Anbar province to do so.

“Al Qaeda is trying to come back in,” he said. “We can feel it and see it, and what we’re trying to do is rip out any roots before they can get deeply into the ground.”

Any questions? Yet to Barack Obama -- the man who could very well end up being our next commander in chief -- it's all just a big ol' civil war, with al Qaeda being nothing more than an insignificant nuisance factor that can be handled by a few remaining forces who will conduct "targeted strikes" against them. As I said, Obama either believes that Petraeus is lying when he says that al Qaeda remains the biggest threat in Iraq or he believes that he understands the military situation better than Petraeus. I wish he'd explain to the American people which it is because both are equally ludicrous. Even Barack Obama knows this, which is why he, too, has adopted the eerie code of silence on the issue of al Qaeda in Iraq.

It's Cold Out There

I came across a nice chart presented in the New York Times today on global temperatures. I separated the chart into two parts and slighted modified them to make them a tad more readable. The first shows global temperatures dating back to 1850:


Obviously, the general trend is upward. You don't need any computer model to suppose that this trend may continue for quite some time. However, the fact that computer models predict that it will continue should not (in my view) increase your confidence about that at all. Climate scientists have confidence in the ability of their models to predict the future because they haven't yet had the humbling experience that other scientists have had when they have tried to predict the future behavior of complex systems. Economists, for example, cannot predict when the next recession will happen. The difference between economists and climate scientists is that economists have seen their models crash against the rocks of empirical reality. That is, the model predicts a crisis that doesn't happen or fails to predict a crisis that does happen. And here's the key consideration: the model encountered that sobering fate even though it could fit past data perfectly. That is, looking back and adjusting its parameters to fit past recessions, the model might provide a perfect explanation for all past recessions (based, for example, on some obscure ratio between two seemingly unrelated economic statistics). But when you ask the model to predict the future, it falls flat on its face.

I don't really know, but my guess as to why climate scientists actually believe their own models is that those models fit the past so very well, and they can't be proven wrong for many decades to come. Thus, the essential humbling experience that other scientists have had when they have tried to predict the future behavior of a complex system is not something climate scientists are familiar with. And I guess they never will be because the day of reckoning is too far into the future.

Still, more recent temperature trends do not serve to massively increase one's confidence that the climate models can accurately predict the future of the climate. Here's the other part of the chart from the New York Times article showing temperature trends since 1980 (tropical sea surface temperature anomalies in the Pacific Ocean shown on top; land temperature anomalies shown on bottom):


It's a pretty flat function for the last ten years, and I simply do not know what the future holds. Neither do climate scientists. If someone has not proven his ability to predict the future, you should not accept his ability to do so even if he claims that he, unlike you, is a "real" scientist. Even real scientists can't predict the future, and most real scientists know it. Well, more precisely, they learn it based on humbling experiences (after starting off with the same faith that climate scientists have in their models).

Real climate scientists say that C02 is contributing to a greenhouse effect, and I believe them. Determining that such a thing might be happening is something that is within the power of science to determine. But predicting the future behavior of a complex system is not. Someday, far, far into the future, climate scientists are likely to join the ranks of other scientists in understanding their limitations. Either that, or climate scientists are uniquely endowed with incredible predictive abilities that all other scientists lack. It's one or the other.

Casualties in Iraq: February, 2008

For the sixth month in a row, civilian casualties in Iraq remained lower than anyone thought possible as recently as September, which is when General Petraeus testified before infinitely skeptical Democratic politicians. The American public has a sense that matters have improved in Iraq, but I don't think they appreciate the magnitude of the improvement. This chart gives you some idea of just how much things have improved (from Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, with standard corrections to the data described here):


The dark purple bars show the months during which the troop surge has been underway. As you can plainly see, civilian casualties casualties are now about 1000 per month lower than they were when Bush ordered the surge. These statistics are incomplete, and when the more complete statistics compiled by Iraq Body Count come out in a month or so, they will show the exact same trend (as is always the case), but all of the numbers will be essentially doubled. That is, at the peak of violence (which is when the Democrats wanted to rapidly withdraw our troops, whereas Bush ordered the surge), about 3000 civilians were dying each month. Now, about 1000 are dying each month. Thus, Iraq is still a very violent place, but the last 6 months have seen about 12,000 fewer dead civilians than would have occurred if Barack Obama had prevailed on the troop surge. I know, I know, in response to this observation, you want to change the subject and talk about how many civilian lives would have been saved had Barack Obama been president and allowed the dictator with the blood of more than 1 million people on his hands to remain in power indefinitely. It's hard to know how many would have died had we followed that path, and any estimate largely hinges on what you believe would have happened to the no-fly zones that were protecting the Shiites and Kurds. After all, we didn't have the no-fly-zone policy in effect for no reason whatsoever. We had it in effect because, without it, those people would have been slaughtered (as they had been before) by Saddam Hussein's forces. One problem that few people who opposed the war want to discuss is that the idea of keeping the no-fly zones in effect indefinitely was not tenable:

Monday, 19 February, 2001, 19:07 GMT

No-fly zones: The legal position

The two no-fly zones over Iraq were imposed by the US, Britain and France after the Gulf War, in what was described as a humanitarian effort to protect Shi'a Muslims in the south and Kurds in the north.

The justification was that an acute humanitarian crisis made it necessary to infringe the sovereignty of Iraq in this way.

However, unlike the military campaign to expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait, the no-fly zones were not authorised by the UN and they are not specifically sanctioned by any Security Council resolution.
...
Critics add that whatever was justified in 1991 is not necessarily justified more than 10 years later, when the reasons for continuing the air patrols may have changed.

France no longer takes part in policing the no-fly zones, and the US and the UK are now alone in the Security Council in insisting that their frequent bombing of Iraqi targets is covered by international law.
...
Other countries, notably China and Russia, have condemned the no-fly zones as a violation of Iraqi sovereignty, and they insist there is no backing for the policy under international law or UN resolutions.
...
Since UN weapons inspectors withdrew from Iraq shortly before a three-day US-UK bombardment in late 1998 known as Operation Desert Fox, the two Western powers have kept up their attacks whenever Iraqi air defences have locked onto aircraft patrolling the no-fly zones.

Baghdad says more than 300 civilians have died in these attacks...

The US and British air forces have disputed some of these figures, and insist they never target civilian areas.

However, the raids have provided ammunition for Iraqi efforts to garner support for an end to its international isolation.

Now try to imagine keeping the no-fly zones in place after UN inspectors decided that Iraq had no WMDs (which is probably what they would have said had they been allowed to continue their cat-and-mouse game with Saddam in 2003). There is no possible way.

One can argue forever about what would have happened had Saddam been allowed to maintain his ruthless grip on Iraq, but there is not much argument about what would have happened had we withdrawn our troops at the height of violence in 2006. Something like this would have happened:


People are still fond of saying that our invasion of Iraq is somehow serving the purposes of al Qaeda. But remember what was said in the National Intelligence Estimate that Democrats gleefully leaked because it indicated that Iraq had become a cause celeb for jihadists. It said something else that is relevant to the question of whether or not troop withdrawal at the height of violence was a good idea:

The Iraq conflict has become the cause celebre for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of US involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement.
...
we judge that al-Qa’ida will continue to pose the greatest threat to the Homeland and US interests abroad by a single terrorist organization.
...
Should jihadists leaving Iraq perceive themselves, and be perceived, to have failed, we judge fewer fighters will be inspired to carry on the fight.

Now, I ask you, which policy -- troop withdrawal at the height of violence or a troop surge now that is now crushing the life out of al Qaeda in Iraq -- is more likely to cause jihadists leaving Iraq to perceive themselves, and to be perceived, as having failed? This is not a hard question to answer. Obviously, the Clinton/Obama option would have inspired many more jihadists to carry on the fight, and the entire world would be harshly condemning the United States for abandoning Iraq after causing a "civil war." It is the McCain option that is hurting the jihadist cause by reducing civilian casualties and demonstrating that America no longer just abandons its allies when the going gets tough. And not only are civilian casualties way down (despite the fact that the jihadists are trying to keep it as high as possible), U.S. military casualties are way down as well:


The fight is not over yet, and victory over al Qaeda in Iraq is not yet assured. But Barack Obama was perfectly comfortable accepting certain defeat for America (and a perceived victory for the jihadists) when the going got rough. He's a nice guy, but that tells me all I really need to know about him. He might win, but he will not get my vote.

Of the 566 civilian casualties recorded at the ICC web site, it is important to understand that 291 (i.e., about 50%) are attributable to al Qaeda. Of these, 213 were caused by suicide bombers (always attributable to al Qaeda, and correctly so), 63 were unconvered from mass graves in areas that had previously been under the control of al Qaeda in Iraq, and 15 were killed by simultaneous car bombings (the kind of attack that is a hallmark of al Qaeda).

Of course, al Qaeda is not the only deadly force in Iraq. Another 97 were killed, execution-style, in Baghdad. I believe that these killings represent sectarian violence by rogue elements of the Mahdi Army (such that most of the victims are Sunni males). At the height of violence, more than 1000 Sunnis were being killed each month in Baghdad as the Mahdi Army sought to suppress al Qaeda's suicide bombing campaign against Shiite civilians. Unless al Qaeda is allowed to make a big comeback (which is what Barack Obama will allow them to do), it's hard to see the Mahdi Army getting back to that kind of killing spree. But some of that is still taking place.

Meanwhile, as America achieves a resounding victory over and Qaeda and works to stabilize Iraq with remarkable success, American attitudes are slowly changing:


Incredibly, 40% of Americans still believe that our efforts are not reducing civilian casualties despite the fact that, for 6 straight months, they are about 1/3 of what they once were. Slowly but surely, though, they are getting the picture. And then there is this:

Opinion on the critical question of whether the U.S. should keep troops in Iraq is now about evenly divided, the first time this has happened since late 2006. About half of those surveyed (49%) say they favor bringing troops home as soon as possible, but most of these (33%) favor gradual withdrawal over the next year or two, rather than immediate withdrawal. Similarly, just under half (47%) say that the U.S. should keep troops in Iraq until the situation has stabilized, with most of these (30%) saying that no timetable should be set.

The Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds are all united with 160,000 American forces fighting al Qaeda in Iraq. Even so, al Qaeda was responsible for 50% of the civilian casualties last month. Never underestimate al Qaeda, and don't even think about voting for the man who seriously believes that we should withdraw our forces from Iraq to go fight al Qaeda in Afghanistan.