Austin Bay Blog

I wrote that I think the Bush Administration lacks the spine to pursue the individuals who leaked the details on the counter-terror finance intel operation.

The SWIFT leakers must be identified and prosecuted. If our culprit is a Senator, tough luck, send the sleaze bag to the brig. If the leaker is a senior Bush Administration employee– find a cell for the crook. A mole at CIA or NSA? Sign them up for the long course at Ft. Leavenworth.

The NY Times’ exposure of a productive, legal, and one-time secret intelligence operation is already rich with ironies (such as NY Times editor Bill Keller demonstrating an ignorance of what “freedom of the press” means in US constitutional terms).

So build on that irony. It’s time for the president to appoint a special counsel. We need a prosecutor with experience. President Bush should appoint Patrick J. Fitzgerald as special counsel to find the leakers. Based on his Plame case performance, In the process of finding the illegal leakers Fitzgerald will slap any liar with a perjury charge.

If the NY Times’ source proves to be a foreign source, we need to know that. A foreign source may well be beyond US prosecution. Special Counsel Fitzgerald should have leeway to follow the trail wherever it leads.

The Wall St Journal accuses the NY Times of using it as “its ideological wingman.” The subject? The exposed terrori-finance monitoring intel operation. 

UPDATE: Here’s the WSJ’s editorial.  The initial link goes to Editor and Publisher’s story on the dispute. (Thanks to the four readers who responded in email.)

The WSJ jumps on Bill Keller’s June 25th open letter discussing his decision to blow the intel operation.  I agree– that lettery revealed much about his paper’s institutional biases and his own blindness.  

The Houston Chronicle reports on the PRI’s (Institutional Revolutionary Party) political revival in northern Mexican states. Good read. Also has the latest poll figures for the upcoming presidential election: Lopez Obrador (PRD) 37 percent, Calderon (PAN) 35 percent.

From StrategyPage:

June 30, 2006:  The government is cracking down on Shia Arab militias, and the attacks on Sunni Arabs. This has led to battles between largely Shia police and army units, and these Shia militias. The Shia troops and police appear to have accepted the concept of shutting down Shia militias that try to deliver their own idea of justice. This is critical as Iraqi police and troops forces take over security duties in Mosul. The city is full of heavily armed Sunni Arab and Kurdish gangs, each attempting to take control of the entire city. 

Read the entire analysis, from June 26 to June 30.

Blog Week’s Topic 2 on internet privacy begins witha discussion of Hong Kong’s now famous Bus Uncle.

The citizenship case involving Somali-born politician and activistAyaan Hirsi Ali continues to roil. Hirsi Ali’s decision to leave Holland and move to the US embarassed many Dutchmen and Europeans. Rita Verdonk is the heavy in this story. Verdonk is Holland’s immigration minister. On May 19 Blog Week in Reivew did a long segment on Hirsi Ali.

The BBC updates.

Informationweek has the story. The laptop, which contained personal information on 26 million veterans, was recovered intact. The Montgomery Advertiser says the information was not copied.

The Supreme Court said “no” (5-3) to military tribunals for Gitmo detainees.

Will this ruling redefine the meaning of ”illegal combatant?”

Instapundit has some observations and links. So does pajamas.

Orin Kerr weighs in.

No means no, so policy must change.

UPDATE: Captains Quarters thinks the Supreme Court ruling says “No to tribunals, yes to trials.” However, the US government can detain the terrorists for the duration of the war, without trial. I followed one of the links on Orin Kerr’s page to the Scotusblog, which says: “The Court expressly declared that it was not questioning the government’s power to hold Salim Ahmed Hamdan “for the duration of active hostilities” to prevent harm to innocent civilians. But, it said, “in undertaking to try Hamdan and subject him to criminal punishment, the Executive is bound to comply with the Rule of Law that prevails in this jurisdiction.” Stay tuned.

 UPDATE 2: Informative analysis (via rcp) by Ronald Cass, dean emirtus of the Boston School of Law.

In 2001, bin Laden was promoting a “global caliphate.” The Islamist terror bombers who committed mass murder in Madrid (March 2004) intended to restore Spain (Al Andalus) to Islam. A week before Iraq’s historic January 2005 democratic elections, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi declared a “fierce war on this evil principle of democracy.”

These statements– mad as they may seem– were statements of strategic intent.

Iraq now has a democratically-elected government. Bin Laden hides in a cave. Spain did remove its regimental contingent from Iraq –an operational political victory for Al Qaeda– and Spain remains subject to terrorist threat. However, Catalonian-led regional separatism is a far bigger political threat to Spain than Al Qaeda. Zarqawi is dead and Iraqi security forces continue to roll up his network.

So who is winning this war?

In November 2001 the a sizeable swath of chitchat class thought Afghanistan was an utter failure and that the US had fatally botched the War on Terror– in other words, we were losing. Fighting continues in Afghanistan’s rugged southwest– and it will continue for years, but America’s Afghanistan war is no failure, not in November 2001 and not in June 2006.

Key graf from that column: 

But in war everything is difficult. In part, America is paying the price for a generation of elite opinion leaders largely devoid of personal military service. The lords of chitchat might have more patience if they had suffered the wretched (but enlightening) experience of humping a rifle and 70-pound rucksack at 2 a.m. in the rain, with a sergeant hard on their weary heels.

In retrospect America has fought this global war –and is winning it– with little help or sacrifice from its economic and media elites. Lack of service and sacrifice are one thing, outright hindrance another. Pessimism and defeatism do hinder– both sap will. However, in this war, elite pessimism and defeatism have not produced defeat.

How long before we have a book by an Iraqi historian assessing the Iraqi determination and will to persevere? The Iraqi people’s inked fingers (January 2005) remain a powerful symbol of courage and hope. They have persevered despite daily terrorist massacre. This is one of the biggest stories of our time.

Likewise UN Security Council Resolution 1546–another big story waiting for recognition. Within a year or so an “elite opinionmaker” will discover this document and tout it as the road map to Iraqi democracy. That is exactly what it is –and the Multi National Force-Iraq campaign plan was designed to achieve those goals. 

Plans are necessary, but without effort, sacrifice and persistence they remain words.

Hat tip Big Pharoah and pajamasmedia. This report from the Jerusalem Post analyzes Hamas’ competing factions. Radicals wanted to derail any peace process by forcing a fight with the Israelis.

The lede: 

The latest Blog Week in Review should be available at the pajamasmedia site later today. Eric Umansky makes a similar point about Hamas radicals during the show’s segment on Hamas and Gaza. The latest Blog Week in Review should be available at the pajamasmedia site later today. Eric Umansky makes a similar point about Hamas radicals during the show’s segment on Hamas and Gaza.  

The latest Blog Week in Review should be available at the pajamasmedia site later today. Eric Umansky makes a similar point about Hamas radicals during the show’s segment on Hamas and Gaza.  Israel is holding the Hamas government responsible for the kidnapping that lead to the Gaza military action. They’ve arrested several dozen Hamas politicans. ANd note Israeli aircraft buzzed Bashar Assad’s home in Latakia. The Assad dictatorship in Syria backs Hamas’ radicals.

The report from the LA TImes:

Military officials also confirmed that four Israeli warplanes circled early Wednesday over a palace of Syrian President Bashar Assad near the coastal city of Latakia. Assad, who reportedly was at home, is seen as a key source of support for Hamas hard-liners believed to be behind the soldier’s kidnapping…

Read the entire article.

Via Strategypage:

June 29, 2006: Although “Supreme Leader” the Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khameini has basically told the world to buzz off regarding the country’s nuclear ambitions, relations between him and radical President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may be deteriorating. Apparently, Ahmadinejad’s frequent arch-conservative ranting on foreign policy and domestic issues runs contrary to a more nuanced, pragmatic approach favored by Khameini and the circle of conservative clerics who are his principal advisors. Khameini has on several recent occasions spoken far more moderately on certain issues than has Ahmadinejad. As a result, Ahmadinejad reportedly has recently told Khameini to button his lip about certain diplomatic matters, as an intrusion on the president’s authority. In a sense, this can be likened to the complexities of the “Red Guards” phase in Maoist China during the 1960s, when various factions in the Communist leadership tried to out-do each other in radicalism in order to firm up their control…

Read the entire report. 

Robert Samuelson (hat tip rcp) at Mexican economic progress and regress.

Key grafs:

It’s not that Mexico has made no progress. Its economy was once crisis-prone, inflation-ridden and heavily insulated from foreign trade. Now it has quelled inflation (about 4 percent, down from 17 percent in the late 1990s), controlled government spending and opened up to trade. Before adoption of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994, tariffs on covered imports averaged 12 percent (and were much higher in the 1980s); by 2001, they were 2 percent. In recent years, its economy has grown almost 4 percent annually.

But that growth doesn’t suffice for a poor country whose population is increasing by more than 1 percent a year. In China, economic growth averages about 9 percent to 10 percent annually; in India, about 6 percent to 8 percent. Mexico isn’t in the same league.

As for the rapidly approaching presidential election:

On paper, the leading candidates for president advocate different economic policies. Former Mexico City mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution urges more government activism. Felipe Calderon of the center-right National Action Party — the party of the incumbent, Vicente Fox — favors “the market.” But each might have trouble enacting his agenda without a legislative majority, with the once-dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) controlling swing votes. At best, economic growth might improve slightly; at worst, it might decrease.

Read the whole thing.

The last paragraph of this column jibes with much of what Samuelson says.

Linked via StrategyPage.

Iraq the Model writes:

Iraq’s national security advisor Muwaffak al-Rubaie says Iraqi security forces arrested Abu Qudama al-Tunisi in a raid in the suburb of al-Dhuloiya north of Baghdad. 15 other foreign terrorists were killed in the raid according to al-Rubaie.

The terrorist of Tunisian origin confessed that he was responsible for the attack that destroyed the Askari Shrine in Samarra back in February 22 of this year.

This is great news. Since the death of Zarqawi Iraqi and coalition forces have been “rolling up” Al Qaeda cells and hardline insrugent cells. Iraq the Model says Iraqi forces are still looking for al-Tunisi’s cell leader– a man named “Haitham al-Badri who is believed to be the field commander under whom Abu Qudama was operating…”

al-Badri was once connected to Saddam’s regime and “later became one of the leaders of Ansar al-Sunna and later al-Qaeda organization in Iraq.” That’s interesting. A Saddam operative conveniently migrates to Ansar al-Sunna (an Islamist group that operated against the Kurds) and ends up with Al Qaeda. This character needs to be arrested and his odyssey from secular Baathist to Al Qaeda cell leader explored. Counter-terror experts know the intel agencies of rogue nations and transnational terrorists ”connect in the sewer” (along with drug dealers, arms traders,  organized criminals, smugglers of various stripes,etc). These kinds of gray-area, individual connections are hard to trace– but they occur. Stay tuned.

The entire report also contains a description of how the Samaraa mosque attack was planned and conducted.

UPDATE: The AP story with this infromation just broke. The AP identifies the arrested individual as “Yousri Fakher Mohammed Ali, a Tunisian also known as Abu Qudama.” Compare the AP report to Iraq the Model’s.

A tough essay in The London Times from the Bishop of Gibraltar.

John Cooley’s recommendations strike me as a bit idealistic, given the current turmoil. An African Union peacekeeping force is a possibility, but the AU’s peacekeeping track record isn’t a plus. (See last week’s Creators Syndicate column for more on the turmoil, the clans, and peacekeeping possibilities.)

In 2002 I wrote a column which looked at Somalia as three separate countries. Cooley thinks a “federation” might help stabilize the country. There is something to this idea, but for it to work the ICU’s Taliban-tendencies must be curbed. The two northern Somali state-lets don’t want to have anything to do with Taliban-style sharia law.

UPDATE: Diplomatic wrangling continues as the US “banned” contacts with a senior ICU cleric the UN has identified as an Al Qaeda associate. (Article is by Reuters.) The ICU also has factions–it’s no monolith. The ban may be an attempt by the US to do two things: (1) state the case that ICU “talibanization” has little appeal in Somalia and  (2) see if it can encourage moderation by or within the ICU. Stay tuned.

UPDATE 2: Now the ICU has launched another series of attacks, breaking the ceasefire (via BBC). The ICU may be trying to pre-empt a move by Ethiopia.

The London Times runs an excerpt from Michael Gove’s new book. He’s covering material others have covered but some people have yet to get the message. Last year at a counter-terror conference in Orlando, FLorida, a speaker (a woman who taught journalism) told us that US policies since the 1970s created Islamism. I didn’t get to ask her if she had ever read anything by Sayyid Qutb. I doubt she’d ever heard of him. Nasser put Qutb to death in the 1960s.

Key grafs:

Islamists believe in the re-ordering of society to secure total submission to a narrow, puritan and fundamentalist interpretation of Islam. They are conducting a civil war within the Islamic world designed to overthrow existing regimes, which they consider to be unforgiveably apostate, and replace them with a single and unified Muslim state, the restored Caliphate. Islamists believe that the sanctity and culture of Muslim lands are menaced and defiled by Western influences, from capitalism to feminism, which have to be eradicated.

That cleansing process must be accomplished by suicidal violence, because, in the words of Islamism’s most influential thinker, Sayyid Qutb, “the death of those who are killed for the cause of God gives more impetus to the cause, which continues to thrive on their blood.”

I ought to add this passage, too (which immediately follows the first quote):

The bloodshed should not stop at Islam’s current borders. Not just because those nations which are unIslamic constitute dar-al Harb, the House of War, which constantly threatens the security of the Muslim world. But also because Islamists are driven by a divine mission to ensure the whole earth, in due course, learns to submit to Islamist rule.  

The belief that Islam’s sovereignty over the whole globe is necessary and total was powerfully displayed on BBC TV’s Newsnight in February 2006. Anjem Choudray, one of the leaders of the UK Islamist group al-Ghurabaa, rejected the suggestion that he might be happier pursuing his fundamentalist approach to religion and politics outside the secular and liberal political culture of the UK. England, he informed the viewers, “belongs to Allah”. And just in case we didn’t appreciate just how far short of Allah’s, and his, standards, we fell, Choudray utterly rejected any notion of accommodating his beliefs and practices to the norms of our democratic society, arguing, “if you put me in the jungle, should I behave like an animal? Of course, not.”

Remember, if you live in the US, you live in the House of War. The New York Times doesn’t believe that, but Salafist/Islamist terrorists believe it. Read Gove’s entire essay.

Via Iraq the Model– seven insurgent groups are considering Iraqi PM Maliki’s reconciliation offer. A “group” is of course an ill-defined figure. Some of them may be little more than websites; one or two may be a militia with strong tribal ties, dozens of fighters, and several hundred sympathizers. Time will tell. Time will tell. The definition of “amnesty” is certain to change as the process continues– it’s changed in the last ten days. That said,  to a degree the discussion over last ten days repeats the Summer 2004 discussion of amnesty when INterim PM Iyad Allawi raised the concept.

Via the AP (from the Detroit Free Press).

The lede:

Iraq’s prime minister unveiled a 24-point national reconciliation initiative Sunday, offering amnesty to insurgents who renounce violence and have not committed terrorist attacks on U.S. soldiers or Iraqis.

Nouri al-Maliki’s much-anticipated plan lacked important details but issued specific instructions to Iraqi security forces to rapidly take control of the country so U.S. and other foreign troops can leave eventually. It didn’t include a deadline for their withdrawal.

Two weeks ago we discussed reconciliation programs on Blog Week In Review. I’ve also commented on the program Iyad Allawi floated in 2004.

This just showed up on the White House web site. I’ve started scanning Tony Snow’s press conferences once or twice a week. It’s an interesting exchange on the issue of amnesty between Snow and a member of the White House press corps– tough questions but reasonable questions– service journalism without sensatonalism.

Q What is it about the Prime Minister’s reconciliation plan that the White House sees as assurance that Iraqis involved in fighting the occupation, as they see it, will not be granted amnesty?

MR. SNOW: Well, the way Prime Minister Maliki put it — let me just go to — I’ll go back and take a look at his exact language, and I’ll let you draw your own judgment. If you took a look at the statement there are long — four or five paragraphs where he talked about the kinds of act of terror that were being visited upon — he talked about enemies of the political process, he talked about assassination operations affecting the country’s capabilities, statesmen, scholars, specialists, doctors. He talked about religious scholars, messengers of peace, and others are being killed without distinction — university professors, children, women, the elderly. In other words, there’s a long roster to remind people that terrorists are doing their best to disrupt what’s going on.

Then he says later, “To those who insist on aggression, terrorism, and murder, we extend a hand that carries a firm legal stand to protect our country.” “Extending a hand” means, in other words, doing everything possible to bring them to justice. He also said, “Issuance of amnesty on detainees who were not involved in terrorist crimes and acts, war crimes and crimes against humanity.” I mean, I’m going to let that speak for itself. But I think the other thing is that there was no attempt made in this document to say that one would treat Americans different than Iraqis.

Q Well, even Kurdish leaders are quoted as saying it needs clarification. It seems to me that if you’re an Iraqi, you see a terrorist attack against civilians as something very different than fighting occupation forces. And that is –

MR. SNOW: Well, it depends on who the Iraqi is. And I’m not going to get myself involved in that internal debate. As I just pointed out, this is — you know what it is? It’s a proposal by the Prime Minister, and it now serves as the starting point for a national debate where they are going to talk about precisely what this term — I mean, at the beginning of a debate, there may be some things that may seem a bit ambiguous to you and me, and that is going to be debated out through the parliament. And I don’t — if you’re looking for an absolutely locked-in, complete and absolutely unambiguous answer right now, it doesn’t exist.

Q Okay. But what I’m hearing from senior officials is that the whole argument is silly, and it seems to me there’s certainly enough ambiguity here that one could make a case that attacks on coalition forces could be forgiven.

MR. SNOW: Well, we’ll have to wait and see. I don’t read it that way.

Q Was there specific pressure brought to bear on the Prime Minister to –

MR. SNOW: No, no. I think — look, as I’ve said before from the podium, you get — you’ve got to be able to — the Iraqis now have got the obligation to put together a government and to make it effective. Do we share our views? Yes. But on the other hand, the President made it clear that he views Prime Minister Maliki as a fellow head of state. And at this point, we are certainly encouraging the Iraqis to go forward and move through this.

Prime Minister Maliki also understands the political situation here in the United States. I think — again, we have to give the Iraqis credit for having some political smarts of their own.

In the next few weeks I’ll be writing more about the reconciliation process.

Vapid, ignorant, and arrogant– and perhaps a dose of desperation. That’s Bill Keller’s so-called apology appearing in the media and advertising section of the NY Times.

I thought Howell Raines and Jayson Blair would be the Gray Lady’s bottom. Keller’s response indicates the pit is yet to come, though blowing a legal and useful international intelligence operation in the midst of a global counter-terror war is low.

Keller essentially responds with smack talk. He says he wants to respond personally then:

Some of the incoming mail quotes the angry words of conservative bloggers and TV or radio pundits who say that drawing attention to the government’s anti-terror measures is unpatriotic and dangerous. (I could ask, if that’s the case, why they are drawing so much attention to the story themselves by yelling about it on the airwaves and the Internet.) Some comes from readers who have considered the story in question and wonder whether publishing such material is wise. And some comes from readers who are grateful for the information and think it is valuable to have a public debate about the lengths to which our government has gone in combatting the threat of terror.

It’s an unusual and powerful thing, this freedom that our founders gave to the press.

Yes, it’s unusual. Liberty is an extraordinary opportunity, Bill, which is why it is so precious, why its privileges must be used responsibly and with wisdom, and why it must be defended. Defense against global terrorists requires global intellgence capabilities. Yes, they must be responsive, they must be responsibly run, they must be monitored. They must also operate with a degree of secrecy–secrecy from the enemy, Bill. This program met the criteria, except now it is no longer secret.

A warped religious ideology emotionally and intellectually empowers Islamo-fascists, but money fuels their operations and their operations kill. Their operations kill people by the thousands and if they get enough money and have a little luck –or if we quit fighting them– their operations will kill millions.

As for those of us criticizing the Times foolishness acting as megaphones– I think Instapundit answered that silly crack. Editor Keller decries angry conservatives; let him wrestle with his imagined political devils.

Some of us –the majority of Keller’s critics– are American soldiers and citizens who recognize dangerous, arrogant stupidity when we read it printed on his front page.

Keller’s arrogance knows no boundary

The Administration case for holding the story had two parts, roughly speaking: first that the program is good — that it is legal, that there are safeguards against abuse of privacy, and that it has been valuable in deterring and prosecuting terrorists. And, second, that exposing this program would put its usefulness at risk.

It’s not our job to pass judgment on whether this program is legal or effective, but the story cites strong arguments from proponents that this is the case…

The Times, apparently, told the story because it could and because it thinks it can get away with it– which was one theory I discussed yesterday.

Keller claims he appreciates conscientious people who have “come to a different conclusion” regarding the Times’ exposure of the intel operation. But to be conscientious you have to have “gone through the process I’ve outlined above”– replicate his allegedly careful train of analysis and decision-making.

Bill Keller’s analytic process is a shame and a sham– he does not think America is at war. The semblance of peace in the Hamptons and in Hollywood has blinded him. He isn’t conscientious, he’s unconscious– and the Times act is unconscionable.

UPDATE: Hugh Hewitt fisks Keller’s letter. Hugh needs to get Keller on his radio program. I know, Hugh has invited him but Keller is a busy man.