A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day...so check back often.
In the News: (Registration may be required to read some stories)
Bush to Endorse Petraeus Plan - Plans by President Bush to announce a withdrawal of up to 30,000 U.S. troops from Iraq by next summer drew sharp criticism yesterday from Democratic leaders and a handful of Republicans in Congress, who vowed to try again to force Bush to accept a more dramatic change of policy. (READ MORE)
Intelligence Chiefs Back A Guantanamo Reversal - The Bush administration's top intelligence officials have all filed declarations to a federal appeals court -- including two classified top-secret -- warning that its recent ruling ordering the release of information about detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, will cause grave harm to national security. (READ MORE)
Ms. Clinton's $850,000 Bundle - Norman Hsu may turn out to be the best thing that's happened to campaign finance reform in years. The Hsu episode illuminates how the current system produces bad results and why changes need to be made. (READ MORE)
Clinton Campaign Cites Flawed Background Check - A spokesman for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign yesterday blamed a faulty background check for the campaign's failure to raise any questions about Norman Hsu, a previously unknown businessman who suddenly became one of its biggest fundraisers. (READ MORE)
Hearings Illustrate A Divide, Even Within Parties - Two Republican senators, two wildly different takes on yesterday's Iraq hearings. "That's the first specific plan that I have heard from the administration or the military, that their forward thinking is not only how many troops but what role those troops are in," said Sen. Johnny Isakson, a Georgia conservative. (READ MORE)
From the Front:
Michael Yon: Hunting al Qaeda, Part I of III - Writing these words from downtown Baqubah at a place called Combat Outpost White Castle, I am surrounded by soldiers from Alpha Company 1-12 Cav who are preparing for combat. Tomorrow, [15 July] they will clear a dangerous palm grove that abuts the Diyala River, a place where just last night approximately 7 suspected enemy were killed by American forces. Among the dead apparently were several members of Tonto’s family. (READ MORE)
IraqPundit: Piqued by Petraeus - Listen to how frustrated the NYT is about the congressional testimony of Gen. Petraeus and Amb. Crocker: "We hope Congress is not fooled by the silver stars, charts and rhetoric of yesterday’s hearing," the NYT editorial page sputtered on Tuesday. But is this an editorial or is it a fit of pique? (READ MORE)
Bill Ardolino: Random Pictures - Evil Marine makes Iraqi child cry. Just kidding, this isn't an Agence France Presse caption. Some Marines are bored with civil affairs missions, some embrace them. This fellow loved interacting with kids, and picked up this crying child to comfort him. Unfortunately ... it turned out to be a long, hard, slog. (READ MORE)
Eighty Deuce on the Loose in Iraq: 6 years ago today... - A group of suicidal fundamentalist extremist Muslims under the control of one Osama bin Laden hijacked 4 commercial airliners with desitinations within the United States. 2 of the 4 were flown in to the North and South towers of the World Trade Center, fatally crippeling them, causing their collapse and the subsequent murder of over 3,000 unarmed American civilians. Another plan was flown in to the pentagon in Washington D.C. making this attack a truly military style attack. (READ MORE)
Calvey in Iraq: Remembering - Greetings from Baghdad! I imagine each one of us can remember where we were when we heard about the 911 terrorist attacks. Today is a day to reflect on the simple maxim that Freedom is not Free, and that we have to fight to preserve our freedom from terrorists. That’s not very hard to reflect on here, except that we are too busy fighting the terrorists to spend much time ruminating about it. (READ MORE)
On the Web:
Owen West: Our New National Divide - Last month I was running the Central Park loop when a runner wearing a U.S. Marine Corps shirt approached. I alerted the two boys in the jog stroller and my eldest, who met this world with a father in Iraq, shouted, "Semper fi!" The man saw the emblem on my visor and said, "You hear about Doug Zembiec?" If most Americans have six degrees of separation, Marines have no more than two. I nodded and stopped my watch. But all he managed to say was, "That one hurt." Then he plunged down the hill toward 72nd Street, cutting his own path against the flow. (READ MORE)
Kay S. Hymowitz: Freedom Fetishists - More than perhaps any other American political group, libertarians have suffered the blows of caricature. For many people, the term evokes an image of a scraggly misfit living in the woods with his gun collection, a few marijuana plants, some dogeared Ayn Rand titles, and a battered pickup truck plastered with bumper stickers reading "Taxes = Theft" and "FDR Was A Pinko." (READ MORE)
WSJ Review & Outlook: Petraeus Takes the Beltway - So the two men best qualified to give an honest and comprehensive account of events in Iraq have marched through Congress to say--and show--that the surge is working and America's goals are still within reach. Yet it's a sign of the U.S. political debate that their evidence of progress seemed to make the headlines in none of our leading news sources yesterday. Instead, the "news" seems to be that General David Petraeus has recommended that some 5,000 U.S. troops can rotate out of Iraq by the end of this year, and that U.S. forces might be able to return to pre-surge levels by next July if progress continues. (READ MORE)
John McCaslin: Gipper's Spirit Still Powerful - As for the 50 most powerful Washingtonians, saluted in spirit if not in person at Cafe Milano, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is on the top of GQ's list, which includes the usual political suspects like Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California. Interestingly enough, the late Ronald Reagan also is found on the list of the 50 most influential people, given the continued popularity of his guiding principles. (READ MORE)
John Leo: Indoctrination 101 - In 1997, the National Association of Social Work (NASW) altered its ethics code, ruling that all social workers must promote social justice "from local to global level." This call for mandatory advocacy raised the question: what kind of political action did the highly liberal field of social work have in mind? The answer wasn't long in coming. (READ MORE)
Peter Suderman: Good News for People Who Like Bad News - When it comes to the economy, no one likes bad news?no one, that is, except for liberal politicians. Why? Because liberals rely on bad news to sell their policies of choice. In fact, their whole approach to the economy is almost entirely predicated on it. (READ MORE)
Jonah Goldberg: The real "blowback" behind Osama - The Washington Post, Time magazine and the Associated Press are just a few of the news outlets that have asserted the U.S. is arming the Sunnis in Iraq. (READ MORE)
Brent Bozell III: Opposing 9-11 Remembrance - As America headed into the weekend before the sixth anniversary of the horrific Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the latest purported video from Osama bin Laden reminded the country that the war on terrorism is still a real and persistent battle. (READ MORE)
Ben Shapiro: The Battle Over The 9/11 Legacy Is The Battle Of Our Time - A century from now, 9/11 will be seen either as the death knell of a crumbling civilization or a rallying cry for a renewed, American-led movement for freedom. (READ MORE)
Kathleen Parker: The Good, The Bad, and the Very Ugly - WASHINGTON -- On the sixth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Americans were treated to two starkly contrasting images that speak centuries of difference between the U.S. and its enemies. (READ MORE)
Jake's Life: Six Years Later - Today marks the sixth year anniversary of September 11th, 2001. What has changed? It's really pretty hard to say. Flying home from Las Vegas yesterday I was completely molested at airport security, even while wearing my service uniform. Was it a change from seven years ago? Yes. Did it make me feel safer? Not really. Some changes are obvious six years later. (READ MORE)
The Monkey Tennis Centre: 9/11 and why I blog - Since a few people have actually started to visit this blog I’ve been thinking that I should write a little about why I began it six weeks ago, and I suppose today is as good a day as any, because I probably wouldn’t be doing this if it weren’t for what happened on this day six years ago. (READ MORE)
Jules Crittenden: Put a Lid On It - Another great 9/11 speech, this one from Deval Patrick, governor of our own great Commonwealth of Massachusetts: “Among many other things, 9/11 was a failure of human understanding,” Patrick said. “It was a mean and nasty and bitter attack on the United States. But it was also a failure of human beings to understand each other, to learn to love each other.” Our failure to understand we needed to convert to Islam and kneel to the Caliphate. (READ MORE)
Bryan Preston: Al-AP smears Gitmo guards - Here’s the headline adorning the AP’s latest: Guantanamo detainees tell of abuses - I read that and thought, “Here we go again. The AP has unearthed more uncorroborated terrorist tales of abuse and is printing them as though they’re verified fact.” But I was wrong. That’s not what the AP is reporting, at all. Here’s the story. (READ MORE)
Allahpundit: (Video) Fauxtography made even easier! - Remember the post last week about how new software was going to make image manipulation disturbingly easy? I didn’t know the half of it. This application requires a little more skill than the previous one but there’s nothing here, it seems, that a 12-year-old couldn’t handle. The nuts and bolts stuff at the beginning is dry but the stick with it. The results are amazing. (READ MORE)
See-Dubya: Metric rebellion wins: A pint is still a pint in Britain - I regard this story as curiously parallel to our own defunding of the Mexican truck program–a populist uprising against unpopular regulation. But where we had protectionist Teamsters, they had the “Metric Martyrs”–shopkeepers who violated European Union regulations by continuing to sell things in pounds and ounces and pints instead of in hemidemisemiquavers and hectagons and rectaliters or whatever such Continental barbarities the muscles from Brussels demanded. And they were fined heavily for it. (READ MORE)
Baron Bodissey: More SIOE Brussels Updates - I have been taken to task for conflating the EU with Belgium, and with the Brussels police. So let me clarify what I’m saying: I know the EU is not Belgium. But massive Muslim immigration is an official EU policy, even if it is a near-secret. That’s what the demonstrators were protesting, and the police in Brussels were acting as agents of the EU, whether they were cognizant of it or not. (READ MORE)
Don Surber: Pelosi’s pre-emptive strike - Why wait for President Bush to actually give a speech to react? Suspecting that Bush may unleash upon the American people Words of Mass Determination, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi fired off a pre-emptive press release. In doing so, Pelosi shows the American people she is a reactionary who has one set of rigid ideas. (READ MORE)
Ed Morrissey: Dennis Kucinich Votes Against 9/11 Remembrance - Congress voted on a nonpartisan bill to act as a tribute to the victims of 9/11, including the men and women who died at the Pentagon six years ago. Supporting such a resolution would seem rather uncontroversial. However, to the man cultivating a reputation as the House's resident eccentric, nothing is too uncontroversial to make into a moment for him to call attention to himself: (READ MORE)
The Belmont Club: Iraq, Lebanon and Iran - Pajamas Media has a roundup of blogger reaction to the Israeli air strike in Syria. Former Spook has the most extensive analysis. The most interesting aspect of the maps purporting to deplict the strike is that the target was near the Iraqi/Syrian border. The Israelis were said to have penetrated right through the teeth of the Syrian air defense, at one point going through Turkey, including a rotary wing commando unit and attacked, apparently with success. (READ MORE)
Amy Zegart: 9/11 - Hindsight Bias? - Several comments about my 9/11 book SPYING BLIND raise a crucial question: can I really talk about the causes of 9/11 without commmitting hindsight bias? The answer is you bet. 340 reasons explain why. I was deeply worried about this question, so spent two years tracking what happened to every unclassified intelligence reform recommendation from 1991 to 2001. I found that a dozen unclassified studies examined the CIA, FBI, intelligence overall, and US counterterrorism capabilities during the decade. These weren't obscure little groups, but high profile blue ribbon commissions, government studies (Clinton's reinventing government initiative, the FBI's own strategic plan, to name just 2), and nonpartisan think tank task forces sponsored by places such as the Council on Foreign Relations. (READ MORE)
Cassandra: The Course Of Honor - There are times in life when we are presented with a clear opportunity to do the right thing. In the heat of the moment it is not always easy to act with honor and integrity, especially when our only options seem inimical to our self interest. But these moments present us with the chance to affirm what we believe. They are the field tests of our often abstract ideology; in the end, they are the only available measure of whether our beliefs have any meaning, or whether they are just empty words. Unfortunately, the Democratic Party was presented with such an opportunity this week. So far its actions have brought nothing but dishonor and disrepute upon a party once known for championing idealism and defending the right, even in the face of the harshest reality. (READ MORE)
Paul: Hsu and the $40 million Ponzi Scheme - It's an overused line, but the other Hsu really dropped tonight. It seems Hsu was running yet another Ponzi scheme but this time he went for the whole enchilada. “'60s Figure Says He Financed Donor Hsu - Where did Norman Hsu get his money? That has been one of the big questions hanging over the prominent Democratic fund-raiser, as reports have surfaced about hundreds of thousands of dollars he made in political donations...” (READ MORE)
Alexander K. McClure: Public Opinion in Iraq - Improving? - I'm not a fan of CBS/New York Times polls. Having written a column at Polipundit a few days before the 2004 election debunking in minute detail its absurdly biased poll, I am under no illusion that its polling, and especially the reporting of the same, slants left. That said, it is worth analyzing the trend on its Iraq polling. First, let me say that I do not believe the question of whether we should or should not go into Iraq will have any relevance in the 2008 election. (READ MORE)
Uncle Jimbo: Guilty of Contempt of Congress - Yes I am, your honor. I plead guilty to the highest level of contempt it is humanly possible to have for our Congress and would ask divine intervention to enable me to despise them as fully as they deserve. In a take one for the team kind of mentality, I have watched as much of the weasel fest on Capitol Hill as I could. I work from home and much is on computer, so I could have the bastiges on in the background. (READ MORE)
Dafydd: Kagen On Jones - Hugh Hewitt had a little snippet about this Fred Kagan article Thursday, but I decided it needed a more thorough discussion. And besides, it's a good excuse to schedule another post to automagically appear while we're drilling for oil in Alaska, one of the original fourteen colonies that became the United States. Military analyst Frederick W. Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute -- one of the creators, along with Gen. Jack Keane, of the counterinsurgency strategy currently in use by Gen. David Petraeus -- is rather steamed about the way the media has spun (twisted is the better word) the Iraq report by Retired Marine General Jim Jones. In fact, let's start with Kagan's final sentence: (READ MORE)
Big Dog: Lack of Nuclear Option will Hurt Republicans - When the Republicans were in the majority they complained quite a bit that the Democrats were obstructionists. This is usually true whether they are in the minority or not when there is a Republican president as evidenced by their opposition to judicial nominees whereas Republicans give an up or down recommendation to Democratic presidents. Clinton had no trouble getting his nominees approved. In any event, the requirement in the Senate for 60 votes hurt republicans because they did not have that many. When the Democrats put up barriers for everything imaginable, the Republicans threatened to exercise what was known as the nuclear option. (READ MORE)
Confederate Yankee: What Else Remains - At this point in the Scott Beauchamp/The New Republic scandal, only two questions really matter: Have the editors of The New Republic spoken with Scott Beauchamp since his July 26 statement outing himself? If so, does Beauchamp still stand by his stories as he then claimed? There are several reasons to ask this question now, starting with the fact that we know Scott Beauchamp has very recently been available for interviews. (READ MORE)
Jeffrey Breinholt: "Intense Hospitality": Islam in American Courts and Why It Matters - During the week we recognize the sixth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and Congress considers the future of U.S. involvement in Iraq, I want to offer some general observations about an issue I have been writing about - Islam in the American courts - and why awareness of this history is so important to counterterrorism challenges we face today. Here’s a little-known historical fact that comes from an American court case: the reason Western countries chose to place military and diplomatic assets in foreign locations was the threat of Muslims to their nationals residing those countries. We know this because of a 1957 Supreme Court opinion, in which the wife of a U.S. Air Force sergeant who killed him and was thereafter convicted in court martial proceedings successfully challenged the application of the military tribunals to her overseas conduct. (READ MORE)
Dadmanly: Mumblety-Peg - The far left political advocacy group Moveon.org placed a full page ad in the Sunday New York Times, attacking General David Petraeus. The ad’s headline included an offensive play on Petraus’ name, asking if the General would “betray us,” and in the text of the ad discounting both his testimony and his character. Pundits and politicos alike have been falling all over themselves, in outrage, in calls for Democrats and other anti-war opponents to disavow the ad, and war opponents themselves have made several expressions of regret or “frustration.” (READ MORE)
Dhimmi This!: Times Picayune Does a Democratic Hit Job on Alexander - On Tuesday, September 11, 2007, The venerable Times Picayune decided that the front page should be devoted to media hit jobs against Republicans. I guess there wasn't anything better to write about on National Patriot Day. Remember this event, Well, rather than focusing on the Long War or the events of September 11, 2001, the Times Picayune decided to focus upon rehash the old story of David Vitter and his propensity for prostitutes and a new non-story concerning Republican Candidate for Louisiana Attorney General, Royal Alexander. The Picayune ran the same old story on Vitter because Larry Flint has supposedly made this news - again. The voters of Louisiana can make a decision concerning Vitter when he is up for re-election. (READ MORE)
Diary of a Hollywood Refugee: Eli Pariser LYING on CNN - Today on CNN as I write this, Eli Pariser is LYING while accusing General Petreaus of lying. His lies are an attempt to justify the despicable ad that his cult, MORON.org , took out in the equally despicable NY Times. He alleges no one has disputed the lies he put forth in the ad, but in fact, (and facts are not what Eli deals in) many people - politicians, journalists, and general public... (READ MORE)
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