Wizbang Podcast

Sorry for the long absence. I was busy. I hope I can keep it up again. Here's what I thought you'd like to hear about today:

What's Really Going on in Basra? What Really Went on at Bear Stearns? What would a Hillary Presidency Look Like? What's Really Going on with FISA? What's Really Going on with Real ID? Listen:

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What's Really Going on in Basra?

The anti-war media, like the NY Times and the Washington Post, have been spinning the recent uptick in violence in Iraq as a loss for the Americans and the Iraqi government, and a win for Muqtada al-Sadr. Here is the Times on April 1:Last week, Iraq's defense minister, Abdul Kadir al-Obeidi, conceded that the government's military efforts in Basra met with far more resistance than expected. Many Iraqi politicians say that Mr. Maliki's political capital has been severely depleted by the Basra campaign and that he is in the curious position of having to turn to Mr. Sadr, a longtime rival, for a way out.

David Price writing at Dean's World , in a post headlined: Sadr's Triumphant Surrender writesI haven't seen the media swoon this hard over a militant anti-American in decades. Is Sadr the new Che?

To get another view of events in Iraq, I listened to the Pentagon podcast recording of a press conferences in Iraq with Major General Rick Lynch.

We've heard from him before on the Wizbang podcast. He has a rather direct approach to events on the ground, a refreshing change from the spin of the Times. Lynch has been in charge of the area south of Baghdad for the past 13 months. In this clip he summarizes the progress he has made over that time, in terms of numbers of attacks per day, down from 25 to 2, or a 90% reduction.

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In that clip Gen. Lynch attributes the end of hostilities to his success on the battlefield. In the minds of the press, the violence stopped because Sadr told his side to stop. Both are true, of course, but it's a matter of what caused what. He is also asked about reconciliation with his enemies. He has an interesting response.

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He clearly is not happy with Iran sending munitions to kill his soldiers. And an unhappy General Lynch is going to make the enemy in Iraq very unhappy.

What Really Went on at Bear Stearns?

The recent melt down of the investment bank Bear Stearns as a result of a gradual, and then suddenly quite steep decline in the value of their asset base, which included many derivatives based on mortgage backed securities. Here is a somewhat simplified description of the events by the head of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke,

here describing the events that lead up to the merger of Bear into JP Morgan Chase on Sunday March 16 for $2 a share, down from $160 a share less than 12 months ago. The focus is on a liquidity crisis. Their assets on the books were significant, but they could not get access to them when they needed them due to other firms not wanting to do business with them.

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So the fed extended liquidity to Bear to help them get to the weekend, when they then assisted with negotiations for the merger with JP Morgan Chase. But what is the taxpayer at risk in this arrangement? There is talk of a $30b bailout by the Fed. In fact what happened was the Fed extended credit terms and received assets in return that were "marked to market". This is a term in the financial community that reflects the valuing of an asset from its book value to how much a willing buyer would pay for it. Here is Bernanke explaining that to Senator Tim Johnson of South Dakota. The Senator's speech is slurred due to the emergency brain surgery that saved his life in 2006. Back then, he was rushed to the hospital to repair serious bleeding in the brain. That he has recovered well enough to conduct questioning at this hearing is remarkable. He asks some excellent questions. The first question is about risk to the taxpayers, and the other is about the Moral Hazard problem. This is the economic term for the idea that if the government helps one firm out of a jam, others will behave in a more risky manner, knowing that they will get the same treatment if they get in trouble. Regulators take extra care to prevent the creation of a moral hazard by preserving risk.

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Later on, the Chairman of the Securities and Exchange commission, Christopher Cox discusses role of the SEC and the capitalization of Bear Stearns. Bear Stearns was in fact solvent throughout the crisis. The problem was that no other firm would lend them cash, even if the loan was backed by solvent assets, like treasury securities, the most risk-free investment in existence.

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Keep these facts in mind when you hear people like Hillary Clinton and others claim that the fed bailed out Wall Street, but can't afford to bail out Main Street. Speaking of Hillary Clinton, our next topic is...

What would a Hillary Presidency Look Like?

I am not a fan of Hillary Clinton. As my Wizbang colleagues have repeatedly pointed out, she is not to be trusted . Here she is on Jay Leno's show talking about a mythical 11 year old boy's remarks to here. Thanks to Rus Roberts at Cafe Hyak for pointing out this clip , also available on Wizbang Blue.

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What that remark points out is Hillary's total confidence that she can fix any and all problems. If someone's hourly wage is too low, just legislate a higher one. If the firm that employs the person can only pay a fixed amount, legislate no reduction in hours. As Rus identifies, this is foolishness on stilts:I wish Jay Leno had pointed out that the cut in hours was the result of passing the minimum wage--that it was as inevitable as gravity. I wish he'd said that the story showed how the minimum wage is a false promise of prosperity. I wish he'd pointed out that fighting isn't enough, caring isn't enough, that prosperity can't be legislated any more than self-interest can be made illegal. I wish Jay Leno had said that when you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is to stop digging.

And if that little boy really exists, I'd like to tell him that a Senator fighting for you is a losing proposition. You have to fight for yourself. If your Mom wants more money, she needs to go back to school or work a second job. And as for you, stay in school. It's the best way to avoid earning the minimum wage.

What's Really Going on with FISA?

The Democrats in Congress have blocked the renewal of a modification of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA. As a result, the process of watching and listening to terrorists in foreign countries is more difficult now that it was before Congress mandated that the modifications expire. Here is a clip from Attorney General Michael Mukasey appearance at the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco . This section is part of the question and answer session after the speech. There are two issues that are holding up the FISA modifications. The first is the ability to listen to phone conversations of suspected terrorists when the conversation signal goes through wires in the United States, and the second is immunity from lawsuits against the phone companies who provide the access to those lines. This clip deals with the immunity issue.

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Later on Mukasey also talks about the need to know what the terrorists are talking about. He is asked if we profile muslims at airports.

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He clearly takes is personally.

What's Really Going on with Real ID?

There is a lot of bunk out there on the subject of the Real ID Act, which is Homeland Security's attempt to improve the identity cards people use to board planes, cash checks, and authenticate potential employees, namely drivers licenses. Here is the Governor of Montana on NPR blowing smoke about the Act:

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He is right that this is an unfunded mandate. In fact, that is probably his primary objection. He'd like to get money to pay for the infrastructure that will be required to support Real ID. What he is not saying is what the act actually will do. For that, we can listen to a speech at the Heritage Foundation on January 16 by Stewart Baker, Assistant Secretary for Policy, U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Governor Schweitzer is not telling the truth about Real ID. Surprised?

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So it's not just a matter of some high school students faking ID's. There will be an online authentication process to ensure that a document presented is what was issued. The objections to Real ID are from governors holding the fed's hostage for money to buy systems to track identities, and from others who are using the threat of big government to scare people and prevent the adoption of safe and effective means of issuing identification cards. I recommend listening to the entire presentation at the Heritage web site .

That's it for now, podcatchers. I'm Charlie Quidnunc reporting from Mercer Island.

Here's what I thought you'd like to hear about today:

Driving God out of the Public Square - Secularists and Bigots Attack Romney Gates on the NIE - It's not Policy, it's the Independent CIA More Progress in Iraq - Permanent Progress

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Driving God out of the Public Square - Secularists and Bigots Attack Romney

On my last podcast I played a clip from Mitt Romney's Faith in America speech. Since then, he has been praised by Republicans, and condemned by Democrats. Big surprise I guess. But the criticisms have all been over his statemen t that Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom. Some have claimed that this would exclude agnostics and atheists from government. Is anyone surprised that a speech called Faith in America is calling for more faith? Some are claiming that he is calling for a theocracy. I missed that part, somehow.

Here is Newt Gingrich on This Week with George Stephanopoulos challenging the host's views on Romney's speech and American History.

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I was intrigued, so I found an audio clip at American Rhetoric of an actor reading Lincoln's second inaugural address. It was given less than two months before he was assassinated. And it is frankly religious. Listen to the last half of this very short address. I think you will recognize the last few lines.

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Stirring words, indeed. But the talking heads on This Week were ready to hang Romney for his modest effort. Listen to Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts.

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Sam claims that it's getting much much closer to a theocracy; Frightening ; Encroachment into the government. All Bunk.

But for a really off the rails criticism of Romney, we have to go to MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell. Never one to hold back on his true feelings, Lawrence dragged up ancient history on the LDS church to attack Romney with both barrels. Here he is on The McLaughlin Group. Hold on to your hats.

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Good for Pat Buchanan, one of my least favorite Republican pundits for asking if Romney's Mormonism disqualifies him from being President, and if past condoning of slavery by Christians disqualify them from running for office. O'Donnell is unhinged.

He appeared on Hugh Hewitt 's show after this rant to continue the bile against Romney. Hugh asked why he was only criticizing the politely religious, instead of the Islamofascists.

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What a wimp. Only point out the flaws of the safe groups, not the dangerous ones.

Gates on the NIE - It's not Policy, it's the Independent CIA

Last week's release of the National Intelligence Estimate has been very controversial. Some have cited the cessation of the Iranian nuclear weapons program to call into question the belicose rhetoric of the Bush administration. World War III and all that. Secretary Robert Gates spoke on the subject of the NIE to some of our allies in Bahrain last week. I'm going to play to excerpts, the first from the speech and the second from the questions after the talk. Thanks to the Pentagon Channel Podcast for the audio.

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I can see what trouble this independent intelligence community is to those responsible and accountable for government policy. How can our allies trust us when those who must formulate and implement the policy are tossed to the wolves by unaccountable spooks bent on bringing down Bush?

More Progress in Iraq - Permanent Progress

I have tremendous respect for Maj. Gen. W.E. Gaskin, the top man in Anbar Province. As the Pentagon Channel described it: MajGen W.E. Gaskin, Commanding General, MNF-West, II Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward), provides Pentagon reporters with an update of ongoing operations in western Iraq, Dec 10, 2007 I joined a conference call with the General on a previous podcast, #66 on July 20 , where he reminded us that Most of the dumb ones are dead. Gaskin is getting close to the end of his tour, due out in February 2008. So I was anxious to listen to his press conference on December 10 to the Pentagon Press Corp. I'm going to play two excerpts from that audio file. The first is in answer to a question of permanence of the success.

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Let's hope we can get something done in the six generations of animosity that Al Qaeda in Iraq has generated in Anbar.

The next clip illustrates one of the talking points of the anti-war crowd. I've heard two false claims recently. The first is that ethnic cleansing and newly constructed walls and baricades separating Sunnis and Shia is resonsible for the decline in violence in Iraq. The second is that Anbar province was starting to calm down before the surge, so the Marines have nothing to do with the decrease of violence there, now about 90% less than before. Here is Gaskin responding to the latter of those two canards.

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Here's another index of the success in Iraq. It's part of a news conference with Marine Commandant Conway at the Pentagon talking about the requirement for MRAPs, the Mine Resistant Ambush Protection vehicles that the Pentagon convinced Congress to pay several billion dollars for last year to prevent the loss of life and limb that IED's were causing in Iraq. The MRAP is more resistant to IED's than the Humvee. Now the Marines have cut their request, ever since the violence has gone down. Here's Conway:

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Want to know how much better things are going? Look at how bad the stock price of Force Protection is. Force Protection (FRPT ) is one of the only pure play MRAP companies in the market. It's down from $24 in October to $6 this week. On WizbangPodcast.com you can see the chart.

Live by the sword, and all that.

Of course all of this success is having little effect on the Democratically controlled House. Nancy Pelosi's strategy is to continue to seek to pull troops out at every opportunity, regardless of the futility of the gesture. So far, I think she has passed a dozen resolutions, bills, budgets, and other actions in the house, all of which have either been killed in the Senate or vetoed by the President. It's clear that her strategy is to loose as many times as she can, in the vain hopes that it will frustrate her Democratic base enough to increase her majority in the House and Senate. But the frustration she must be feeling at her non-stop failures appears to have affected her brain. Here she is at her last weekly press conference before the holiday break, railing against the Republicans.

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No, Nancy, we don't love war. We hate losing. We like to win. And we value a stable, secure, and self defensible Iraq that can be an ally in the war on terror. And we just might get it, too, despite your efforts to force a defeat on our military. Bozo.

That's it for now, Podcatchers. I'm Charlie Quidnunc reporting from deep beneath downtown Seattle in the Passat studio.

Here's what I thought you'd like to hear about today:

Huckabee's Conversion on Illegal Immigration - The Fastest Recovery in Political History Romney's Faith in America Speech - What does it mean for the Evangelical Vote The White House Press Corp's Crazy Aunt in the Attic - Some of Helen Thomas' Latest Emissions Newt Gingrich on the CNN-YouTube Debate - Selection Bias at the Network Moral Equivalence Run Amok - on Slate's Political Gabfest Advice to a New Recruit in Iraq - Write your Momma Every Day

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Huckabee's Conversion on Illegal Immigration - The Fastest Recovery in Political History

I'm no fan of Mike Huckabee. His stand on taxation and big government drive me up the wall. Take this interchange during the CNN-YouTube debate on the question of federal support for a trip to Mars.

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You've got to love Tancredo's realistic conservative comeback to Huckabee's call for more money. Later on Romney said that it reminded him of being Governor of Massachusetts, where people were constantly coming to him with great ideas that were wastes of taxpayer money. Another Huckabee flaw is his support for scholarships for illegal immigrants while governor of Arkansas. He was confronted about this expertly by George Stephanopoulos on ABC's This Week last Sunday . Thanks to the Corner for pointing out a post by David Sanders of the Arkansas News Bureau .

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I'm going to read David Sanders posting here:His logic capsized. Apparently for Huckabee, withholding college scholarships or in-state tuition from the children of illegal immigrants is tantamount to the state "punishing" students for the sins of their parents, but withholding Pell grants or financial aid from the children of illegal immigrants is tantamount to the federal government simply not "rewarding" these same students for the sins of their parents?

He is trying to have it both ways.

Stephanopoulos reduced Huckabee, who is often lauded for his rhetorical prowess, to the role of a verbal contortionist who tried to bend and spin his way out of unfamiliar territory. But when he forced Huckabee to project onto the presidency the logic and reasoning that guided him as governor, he exposed an incongruent position and an inherent weakness on an issue important to Republicans.

So with that performance behind him, the current Iowa front-runner Huckabee has been backpedaling fast. Today, four days later, he posted his Plan for Immigration Enforcement and Border Security . It's a decent comprehensive plan to address the problem on the federal level, where most agree it should be dealt with. States and localities have been forced into silly positions by the millions of people who the federal government has allowed into the country illegally. The problem is that he came by this plan only after being called on it by a liberal media person like Stephanopoulos, formerly Clinton's press secretary. Can you imagine how his position on evolution vs. Intelligent Design will resound among the Democrats and independents in November, should he win the nomination? It won't be pretty.

Romney's Faith in America Speech - What does it mean for the Evangelical Vote

It's no secret that Romney has trouble convincing evangelical Christians that it would be safe to nominate a member of the LDS church for President. Many of the Christian conservatives just don't like what the church stands for, nor their aggressive conversion and missionary efforts. His religion is also a problem for the Democrats, who don't like anyone who wears their faith so openly. It makes liberals feel creepy. Here is NPR's Robert Seigel talking to Romney on religion last week. Thanks to the Corner for the pointer.

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This problem of Romney's membership, and leadership, in the LDS church has been talked about frequently by the pundits on TV. Today, he gave a speech attempting to address the issues. His talk was modeled, claims the media, on a talk John F. Kennedy's gave as the Democratic nominee for President, when he attempted to address concerns with his Catholic faith. Here's a short clip from that speech to religious leaders in Houston, Texas on September 12, 1960, less than a month before the general election.

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This speech is widely credited with enabling non-Catholics to feel safe voting for Kennedy in 1960. Romney felt he needed the same kind of response, so that religious conservatives in the Republican party were comfortable with his candidacy. Unlike Catholics in 1960, who represented somewhere around 25% of the electorate, the 4.9 milion members of the LDS chuch today are less than 2% of the U.S. population. This makes Romney's hill a bit steeper to climb than what Kennedy faced. Here is an excerpt from today's speech by Romney at the campus of Texas A&M University at the George H. W. Bush Presidential Library in College Station, Texas. Thanks to C-SPAN for the audio, and the Corner for the transcript .

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Byron York on the Corner on National Review Online had this to say after the speech:I just spoke with Oran Smith [of the Palmetto Family Council], who watched the speech in Columbia, South Carolina with a small group of religious conservatives. (He convened the group at the request of CNN, which watched the speech with them.) Smith told me that he liked the speech, and thought Romney had helped himself, but that reaction was mixed within the group.

"I was the most enthusiastic," Smith said, "because there were several things that resonated with me that only an evangelical would notice. For instance, he talked about the coldness and deadness of religion in Europe. That is something that is talked about in evangelical churches almost every Sunday - somebody will say, 'The mission trip to Wales is starting next week.' Mike Huckabee might say something like that, but that's not something you would say unless you had a really good speechwriter or you were very tuned in to evangelicalism."

Who knows if it will stem the rising tide of Huckabee among the Republicans in Iowa. I can only hope.

The White House Press Corp's Crazy Aunt in the Attic - Some of Helen Thomas' Latest Emissions

Helen Thomas has a front seat for every White House Press Briefing, and manages to say something stupid, irritating, and downright wrong in just about every news conference. Here is an except from several recent episodes of the Helen Show. The first is from November 28, when she misread a news report that said the following.BAGHDAD, Nov. 27 -- American troops in Iraq killed at least five people, including a child, when they fired on vehicles trying to drive through roadblocks in two separate episodes over the past two days, military officials and witnesses said Tuesday.

Beyond that, at least 30 other people were killed or found dead on Tuesday, including three women and three policemen in Baquba, who were killed by a suicide bomber disguised as a shepherd. The headline :
35 Are Killed in Iraq, 5 by U.S. Troops Here's Helen's spin on the news, begging not for a response so much as the heavens to open and President Bush to resign and hand the reigns of power over to Helen herself.Thanks to the Media Blog on National Review online for the pointers to the best bits, and to the White House web site for the audio.

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No Helen, it was not 35 killed by Americans, it was 5 killed by Americans, and 30 more murdered by the enemy. Fool. Here's another. It starts with another media type asking for comment, and Helen comes back with her question.

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No Helen, the President does not want Hillary elected. Fool. Finally, here she is at her most incomprehensible self, asking about troop withdrawals. How Dana Perino can put up with her on a daily basis is a mystery to me.

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Move on, indeed. Helen is a fool and should pull herself out of the White House Press Corps. She was interviewed by the Huffington Post the other day. Here's what the good Helen had to say about mistakes by the press:What would you say to a young reporter who, in their exuberance, published something that turns out to not be true?

If it isn't too earth-shaking, then I would assure them, "This is what you did wrong..." and give them a second chance. But I don't think you get another chance if you make a mistake involving a big story.

Do you think technology is changing that? That a good reporter will always find a venue because there are so many media outlets now?

No, but I do think it is kind of sad when everybody who owns a laptop thinks they're a journalist and doesn't understand the ethics. We do have to have some sense of what's right and wrong in this job. Of how far we can go. We don't make accusations without absolute proof. We're not prosecutors. We don't assume.

So if there's this amateur league of journalists out there, trying to do what you do...

It's dangerous.

What makes it dangerous? Isn't more information always better?

Not necessarily. Not if it isn't true. It could be out there and it could really muck up the whole picture. I'm not trying to suppress information; I'm just saying you have to be very careful.

My advice is simply try, as best you can, to only write the truth and try to check everything, and I think you just hope for the best. And, certainly, if someone gives you a story, I think you have to look a gift horse in the mouth. You have to find out why they're peddling it to you.

Always question why anybody does things. That's probably good advice for anybody. So Helen, if it's such good advice, why don't you take it yourself?

Newt Gingrich on the CNN-YouTube Debate - Selection Bias at the Network

C-SPAN had Newt Gingrich on Book TV for one of their three hour interview sessions, talking about his books, politics, government, and the media. I spent the morning Sunday with the TV on listening while I did a little kitchen remodel. My wife asked why he doesn't run for President. I think his history as a target for Democratic anger and bile would make it tough for him to run. His negatives are just too high at this point. But he is a great thinker. He was asked his opinion on political debates. That's all Newt needs to go on a bender with a dozen great ideas in the space of two minutes and ten seconds.

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Clearly if they get 5,000 questions to chose from, they can pick any political angle they want. And what they wanted was questions that put all Republicans on the defensive. Their claim that it was to separate the candidates rings hollow. They picked the silliest nuts they could find to embarrass the candidates.

Moral Equivalence Run Amok - on Slate's Political Gabfest

I listen to the Slate Magazine Political Gabfest Podcast every week, even though I disagree with almost everything they say. Last week they discussed the situation with the arrested English elementary teacher in the Sudan. This section starts off with David Plotz, who can barely speak out loud in front of his coworkers, rightly stating that the Sundaese are insane. (My advice to David: breath. It's called a diaphragm. Use it) But Emily Bazelon thinks that all fundamentalists are equally crazy, it's just that the Muslim ones have more power. Sure, Emily. Watch out for those fanatical Lutherans trying to get you to eat their marshmallow lemon jellow in the shape of the great Satan.

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Sure the Jewish settlers would be the same as the saber wielding maniacs in the Sudan. She's a nutter.

Advice to a New Recruit in Iraq - Write your Momma Every Day

I've been unable to join most of the Pentagon Blogger's Round Table conference calls lately, due to business commitments. The Pentagon invites around 50 bloggers to around 10-15 calls a week with an assortment of soldiers, officers, State Department Provincial Reconstruction Team members, and others who are dying to get the true story of Iraq out to the people of America. I was able to join one back on November 15, with BG Boozer, Deputy Commanding General for Multi-National Division North, talking about operation Iron Hammer and Its progress. The story was positive, but guarded. The military is having success reducing the violence and bringing essential services to the Iraqi people. We are training the Iraqi security forces to be able to take over when we leave, and the political progress is working from the ground up, if not the top down. All good stuff. Challenges remain with insurgents, special groups funded by Iran, and Al Qaeda holdouts. But the enemy is having fewer and fewer successful operations, and fewer good guys are dying or getting hurt. I took the call while riding the train from Portland to Seattle, so pardon the noise. I asked about Iranian weapons. Here's that question:

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The General remarked early on that his son will be in Iraq next month, and I asked him what advice he gave him. The answer touched me deeply.

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What a great piece of advice. I would give my son, if he were ever to serve in the military exactly the same suggestion. Call your momma every day.

That's it for now, podcatchers. I'm Charlie Quidnunc reporting from cold and snowy Helena, MT.

Here's what I thought you'd like to hear about today:

Gun Ownership: An Individual or Collective Right? - Eugene Volokh debates Erwin Chemerinsky Roe v. Wade - Time for a Second Look?

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Gun Ownership: An Individual or Collective Right? - Eugene Volokh debates Erwin Chemerinsky

There were two major events in the world of constitutional jurisprudence in the last two weeks. The first was the decision by the Supreme Court to grant a review of a Court of Appeals decision to overturn a Washington D.C. law banning ownership of handguns. This marks the first time since 1939 that the court will consider whether the Second Amendment right to bear arms is an individual or a collective right. Eugene Volokh appeared on KPCC's Air Talk program to defend the individual right side against Erwin Chemerinsky on the collective side. But first I'm going to play a recording of Professor David Currie reading the 2nd Amendment. Thanks to the Volokh Conspiracy for the link to the University of Chicago Law Faculty Blog .

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Just to make sure you get it, here it is again.

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Now, let's hear Erwin Chemerinsky concede that there may be an individual right to bear arms, but the government can regulate guns anyway, if the rules are reasonable . The host, Larry Mantle, asks some important questions, and then Eugene Volokh comes in to shred Chemerinsky's argument. Lots of constitutional law fun on the radio.

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I love Chemerinsky's claim that the DC ban on all handguns is reasonable. I would guess that a ban on all religions could be considered reasonable in the eyes of an atheist. But religion is protected in the bill of rights, just like gun ownership. And we allow people the free exercise of religion. Why not the free ownership of guns? I suggest that this reasonableness argument is not going to go very far. But it is good to hear they have conceded the individual right. It's about time.

Roe v. Wade - Time for a Second Look?

The second big story on constitutional law was more ephemeral. I detect a growing consensus among conservatives that the court may eventually get another crack at the Roe v. Wade decision. I'm no lawyer or constitutional scholar, but three different programs I've listened to over the last two weeks have caused me to think there may be a valid argument for overturning this decision. The first was an appearance at the Heritage Foundation presentation by Henry Mark Holzer, law professor and author of

The Supreme Court Opinions of Clarence Thomas 1991-2006: A Conservative's Perspective . The talk could more accurately described as a love-fest for Clarence Thomas. The first clip is about what the professor describes as Uber-Substantive Due Process, which is the tendency of the court to over reach in trying to make or undue what they consider silly laws , even if those law are enacted by the political branches of government. This clip starts a little slow, but believe me, you will not be disappointed by the end.

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Over ruled, root and branch, indeed. Tell us what you really think professor. Later, Professor Holzer had a great answer to a loaded question about Roe at the end of talk.

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That's got to hurt.

People have little faith in the speed of legislatures fix problems, it seems, so they turn to the courts. In 1879 the legislature of Connecticut passed their contraceptive ban. It outlawed any drug, medicinal article or instrument for the purpose of preventing conception . The law was almost never enforced, but it was on the books. People tried for years to make it a test case to push the Supreme Court to get involved, when the Connecticut legislature apparently found no reason to repeal the law. I suppose they thought they had no choice to elect new leaders, or move to a state that permitted contraception. That it would take too long. So, in 1964, Planned Parenthood opened a clinic whose sole purpose was to issue contraceptives. The director, one Estelle Griswold , and a doctor at the clinic were arrested and fined $100. This is the case that ended up in the Supreme Court as Griswold v. Connecticut.

As the professor showed in his talk, that decision to extend the constitution, was a constitutionally indefensible rationale for the later destruction of literally millions of the unborn.

That decision has been with us for 52 years. If people are unhappy with a slow legislative branch, just look at how slow the court system is. How much longer will the activist judiciary, compensating for a sloppy legislature that failed to undue a silly law in Connecticut, be with us? Perhaps another 50 years. Unless we get judges who are strict constructionists.

Speaking of strick constructionist judges, the second clip on Roe is from Rudy Giuliani's talk to the Federalist Society last week, where he discussed his judicial philosophy and federalism. The audience ate it up. Thanks to C-SPAN for the audio and JoinRudy2008 for the transcript .

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This sounds like a reasonable way to approach problems. Try them out, see what works, and implement the best solutions. Don't trust a centralized, one size fits all solution and hope it works everywhere.

The final clip is from Fox News Sunday , where another Republican candidate, Fred Thompson was on to explain his views on this issue. He is against the Human Life Amendment to the Constitution , which would enshrine a prohibition against abortion in the constitution, and prevent states from passing laws that would legalize abortion. I'm against that amendment, since I prefer states to be able to pass laws that affect their citizens without federal involvement. But I'm also against Roe, on constitutional grounds. That is the position that Fred Thompson has taken, and he has taken heat for it from some right to lifers, like Hugh Hewitt , among others. Here is Fred on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace. He is clearly uneasy about all this scrutiny of the details of his endorsement by the National Right to Life Committee. Chris' rapid fire questions seem to rattle the laid back Tennessean in this clip.

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I find Huckabee's views on abortion, not to mention big government, taxation, and trade policies abhorrent. I see no reason to outlaw abortion nationwide. Were Roe to be overturned by the replacement of a few Supreme Court Justices over the next four years, then states like California and New York and others would certainly pass laws to allow the procedure, while others would probably impose restrictions. That's a position I support. And Thompson's view that the Human Life Amendment has zero chance of passing, but that overturning Roe v Wade is possible, shows that he has a practical position.

All this talk about the power of the states makes makes many people very nervous, and rightly so. Remember that throughout the first half of the 20th century, it was state laws that enforced the separate but equal doctrine of racial segregation. It was, after all, the activist Warren court vilified by Professor Holzer who ruled for the plaintiffs in Brown v. Board of Education, and began the end of the segregated south. You will have a hard time finding anyone who feels that ruling was wrongly decided. It's important to keep that in mind as we listen to conservatives advocate the somewhat radical idea of overturning Roe. And as the possibility of doing so increases over the next four years, should a Republican get elected in 2008, expect those who are on the other side of the issue to bring up the specter of state's rights and the 1948 Dixiecrats like Strom Thurmond. It's not a pretty picture, and we need to be prepared.

Here's what I thought you'd like to hear about today:

Is Iran Cleaning Up their Act In Iraq? - Some Interesting Data Points Hillary's Equivocating - Having it all ways Armitage on Plame -She was Right, I'm an Idiot Are we Waterboarding Anyone? - Lindsey Graham says no, and he ought to know

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Is Iran Cleaning Up their Act In Iraq? - Some Interesting Data Points

It's been no secret that Iran has been extremely unhelpful in stabilizing Iraq. From their support of rouge militia elements, their supplying of the deadly Explosively Formed Projectiles, also known as EFP's, the training of Iraqi insurgents, and the presence of Quods force operatives inside Iraq, they have been supremely challenging to the interests of the U.S. in Iraq. It was therefore surprising to hear the following exchange in a press briefing from November 6 in Iraq, with Rear Admiral Gregory Smith and the press. Thanks to the Pentagon Channel for the audio.

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So, it looks like the EFP shipments into Iraq have stopped, and as a response we are releasing some Iranians held in detention in Iraq. This sounds promising. The nine Iranians were released three days later. According to the AP :
BAGHDAD (AP) -- The U.S. military released nine Iranians from custody in Iraq on Friday, including two accused of being members of an elite force suspected of arming Shiite extremists. It said they were no longer considered security risks.

The nine were released to Iraqi officials, and were being transferred to the Iranian Embassy in Baghdad, the U.S. military said in a statement. They were expected to return to Iran later Friday, it said. I say this is good news, even if I have no idea what it all means.

We are clearly getting the upper hand Militarily in Iraq. The monthly casualty and death rates have been coming down among US military and Iraqi civilians. One of the reasons is that Sadr has asked his followers to abide by a cease fire. Admiral Smith addressed a question about this the next day. Thanks to the MNF-I web site for the audio.

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The key influence has been the decimation of Al Qaeda in Iraq. The primary purpose of the November 7 briefing was to show how many senior leaders and operational members of this band of thugs have been either killed or captured. Here is Smith talking some numbers. A picture of some of these guys is on the Wizbang Podcast web site. Click on the thumbnail for a bigger image.

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All this success in Iraq is giving the Democrats in Congress fits. Here is David Obey, D-WI, and chairman of the house appropriations committee explaining the success, answering questions at the National Press Club. Thanks to C-SPAN for the audio.

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That's it, we've run out of targets. Must be, Dave. Moonbat. Later on he is asked a question about funding the Pentagon's request for modifications to a bomber to accommodate a larger conventional warhead. His answer has a lot to say about where the power lies in Congress. Hint: it doesn't rest in this cheese head.

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I love it. Obey said: "I don't have the power to determine whether we will or will not do anything. " How true, how true.

Hillary's Equivocating - Having it all ways

Senator Clinton is trying to triangulate between different positions on Iran. She voted for a resolution to call the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization, but has been taking incoming fire from the Democrats that the resolution was a call for an invasion of Iran. Of course it was not. Any comparison between the Iran resolution, and the final authorization for the use of military force in Iraq that Congress passed in 2003 is a fantasy. We have a long way to go before any military actions in Iran. But here's Hillary triangulating Anti-Bush positions with her support of the resolution, at the Democratic Debate last week. I can't figure out where she stands. Can you?

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Well, now we know that Hillary's secret weapon will be: vigorous diplomacy. Why didn't I think of that. Of course that is exactly what the Bush administration sanctions have been, and Bush's meetings with the heads of state of Europe. She has to find a way to bash Bush while hoping no one sees that her policies would be identical to his. Later on in the debate she had her well known gaffe about driver's licenses for illegal aliens. Tim Russert has been vilified for asking this question, and the one about the release of secret papers on the role she played in the Clinton White House. To me, his question is a typical Tim Russert gotcha question. Welcome to the big house, Ms Clinton. If you can't handle Tim, how are you going to deal with old Dinner Jacket in Iran?

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Armitage on Plame -She was Right, I'm an Idiot

One of the great mysteries of the Valerie Plame/Joe Wilson kerfuffle has been the question of why Richard Armitage leaked her identity to Robert Novak. As a senior State Department official, he should have known that providing her name to that serial discloser Novak would result in instant publication of her CIA role. On Sunday, appearing on Wolf Blitzer's Late Edition , Armitage explained.

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As Byron York on the Corner of National Review Online said:he also gave us a bit more evidence to show that, from his perspective at least, it was entirely unintentional. But there must be a conspiracy in there somewhere. Of course the only conspiracy I could find was the one to try to manufacture a scandal out of a fools misstatement to the press. Novak has already said that he found Plame's name in the Who's Who directory, after Armitage said the wife of Joe Wilson worked at the agency. Putting two and two together is not that complicated people.

Are we Waterboarding Anyone? - Lindsey Graham says no, and he ought to know

At the confirmation hearings of Attorney General Nominee Judge Michael Mukasey, there has been an enormous amount of discussion of the interrogation technique of waterboarding. I have no opinion on the morality or effectiveness of waterboarding. On one side you have those who say it is torture, and we should not stop the practice immediately. Others say it works, it doesn't meet the definition of torture, and we should continue it. Both sides have lathered on the rhetoric at the expense of some pretty basic questions. Two questions that I'd like answered are:What is it? Are we doing it today?
During the final confirmation hearing, when the committee met to vote on recommending his nomination to the full senate, Lindsey Graham, R-SC, had this to say about those kind of basic questions. Thanks to C-SPAN for the audio.

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What he said was that the CIA program is legal and effective. And further, Waterboarding is illegal. You can put 2 + 2 together if you want. The only way those two statements could be true is if the CIA doesn't do waterboarding. If so, all the Democratic posturing is just intended to embarrass the administration under the cover of a secret program. If the program became public, all this posturing would been seen as disingenuous. Which of course it is. We don't waterboard. End of discussion.

That's it for now, podcatchers. I'm Charlie Quidnunc signing off from cold, wet, and rainy Seattle.

Here's what I thought you'd like to hear about today:

Politicizing the California Fires - Some Fantasies in the Media Working with George - Nancy Pelosi's view of the President Why Does the Religious Right Prefer Hillary to Giuliani? - Dobson's Answer Demagoguing the Jena Six in the House - Appealing to the prejudices and Fears of the People Courage in India Pakistan - Benazir Bhutto after escaping an attack and I did write India by mistake. Sorry

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Politicizing the California Fires - Some Fantasies in the Media

It was inevitable that some in the media and the political world would try to politicize their fantasies about the causes of the California wildfires. The fires are no joking manner. People's lives have been lost and thousands of homes destroyed or damaged this week. But the speed and ferocity with which the media and their anti-Bush friends have pounced on the fires for their own benefit was stunning. I'm going to play three examples. Two are from Air America, a station known for polemics against the Bush administration. First, thanks to the Radio Equalizer , we have Randi Rhodes speculating that Blackwater is somehow involved, then Mike Malloy accuses the "Bush Crime Family" of setting the fires. Moonbats.

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Not to be outdone, the Junior Senator from California, Barbara Boxer used her hearing into the effects of Global Warming on Public Health issues, to claim that there is shortage of equipment in California to fight fires, and it is somehow the fault of the Bush Administration's war in Iraq. Thanks to C-SPAN for the audio.

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That was Kit Bond setting her straight, re-framing her complaint about equipment into a promise to vote to increase funding for the national guard in the next Pentagon authorization bill. Fat chance Kit.

As Don Boudreaux on Cafe Hayek wrote:this war, while it does interfere with efforts to extinguish wildfires, does not interfere any more so than does nearly any other government program you care to name. Resources have multiple uses and are scarce. To use a worker or raw materials fighting a war is to take that worker and those materials, at least for a time, away from other potentially valuable uses.

The same is true of using workers and other resources to fight the "war on drugs" -- or using workers and other resources to administer agricultural price-support programs -- or using workers and other resources to run the Departments of Education, Transportation, Commerce, and so on -- or using workers and other resources to enforce the Endangered Species Act.

The question is not does fighting the war in Iraq reduce government's (and private persons') ability to battle the wildfires. Of course it does. The questions are, rather, are too many resources devoted to fighting the war? Will Americans likely be made better off by taking some resources away from the war effort and put instead to other uses?

Boxer's attempt to blame property losses in California on Iraq are easy and simplistic, but she is just wrong. As a Senator, she has the power to buy whatever the forest fighters might need. As it turns out, the fire fighters are not likely to need many of the up-armored Humvees, or MRAP vehicles, or remote control IED defusing systems that are now in use by the National Guard in Iraq. They need highly trained personnel and specialized equipment. If it is so important to buy that stuff, then propose it. Otherwise, shut the heck up. Moonbat.

The press is really looking for someone to blame for this tragedy. Listen to this excerpt from the Pentagon Press conference discussing what they were doing to help California. When Lt. General Steve Blum, Chief of the National Guard Bureau got up to answer questions, he was asked there was any way that the war in Iraq made things worse in California. Listen to one reporter pleading for material she could use. Thanks to the Pentagon Channel for the audio.

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How effective would your typical Marine be, with no fire fighting training, be in a brush fire? If California needed manpower, they could call up some of their 15,000 National Guard. The media is just trying to find an angle to blame the war in Iraq for something.

Working with George - Nancy Pelosi's view of the President

I dislike Nancy Pelosi enormously. She is clearly focussed on fighting Republicans, and not at all on fighting terrorists who are trying to kill us. Here she is on Tavis Smiley's show last week. It starts off with her claim that "the generals" agree with her, than clarifies it that only the few "retired generals" that have been willing to take her side say we need to get out now. Then she mis-speaks that we have to fight in Afghanistan, "that's where the terrorists are", corrected to "that's where terrorism began". Why should we be fighting where the terrorists no longer are as active as they are elsewhere? She doesn't say. Later she discloses how she really feels about George Bush. She has the worse case of Bush Derangement Syndrome around.

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Nancy, we have learned over time that you do not share our values. You want to pull out of the hotbed of terrorism in Iraq, redirect our forces to a place where the can do very little more, and take the advice of people who have no accountability for their success, the "retired generals". Some values.

Why Does the Religious Right Prefer Hillary to Giuliani? - Dobson's Answer

I've been wondering why the religious right has been so upset with Rudy Giuliani as the Republican nominee for President. I heard Dr. James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, explain his views to KKLA host Frank Pastore on TownHall.com's Weekend Journal . His ideas were reasonable, if you have a a singular focus on biblical moral principals above any economic, security, or political rationale. My problem is that if we put up someone acceptable to Dobson, we could end up with Sam Brownback as a candidate, and Hillary Clinton as President. Dobson said as much during this interview.

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At the end, Dobson showed his cards. He said, If Hillary does win, and that would be awful, but if she does win, that same community would mobilize like never before. In other words, if Hillary becomes president, our fund raising will go through the roof. What an enormously self interested jerk. He is willing to destroy the U.S. military, send our health care system into socialism, and increase tax rates to levels not seen in 50 years, as long as he will have a good foil for his fund raising letters.

Demagoguing the Jena Six in the House - Appealing to the prejudices and Fears of the People

I have no love for the only Muslim Congressman in the House of Representatives, Keith Ellison, D from MN. As Redstate noticed in a post entitled,A hateful circus in the House Judiciary Committee

The United States Attorney for the Western District of Louisiana is black attorney Donald Washington. Washington comported himself with great dignity as he was humiliated in disgraceful and disgusting fashion at Tuesday's House Judiciary Committee hearing by several Democratic members, including Minnesota Fifth District Rep. Keith Ellison. Ellison played the role of the bullying, insulting demagogue that he perfected while hustling on behalf of Louis Farrakhan and assorted thugs and cop killers in Minneapolis during the 1990's. C-SPAN described the hearing this way:

Donald Washington, U.S. Atty. for the Western District of Louisiana, testifies at a House Judiciary Cmte. hearing on the "Jena Six." The Cmte. is investigating why the Justice Dept. did not pursue hate crime prosecutions following the Jena High School noose incident. Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) chairs the hearing. Thanks to C-SPAN for the audio. This part is at 35 minutes in, when Ellison questions, and refuses to let respond, U.S. Atty. Donald Washington.

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What a bully. He was not looking for answers, nor for the truth. As a true demagogue, he was looking to incite people by appealing to their prejudices, fears, and ignorance. As we now know, most of the Jena Six accepted truths are false, including the so called "noose hangers" incident. As Craig Franklin wrote in the Christian Science Monitor on 10/24, much of what the media has been repeating, and Congressmen have been demagoguing, was wrong. He wrote:An investigation by school officials, police, and an FBI agent revealed the true motivation behind the placing of two nooses in the tree the day after the assembly. According to the expulsion committee, the crudely constructed nooses were not aimed at black students. Instead, they were understood to be a prank by three white students aimed at their fellow white friends, members of the school rodeo team. (The students apparently got the idea from watching episodes of "Lonesome Dove.") Go and read the whole thing for a eye opening view of the truth the media leaves far behind in their rush to tell a story that comports with their own prejudgments. But don't expect those like Ellison to apologize. They will have moved on to the new story long ago.

Courage in India Pakistan - Benazir Bhutto after escaping an attack
Upon returning to India after a lengthy exile, suicide bombers attacked Benzir Bhutto's vehicle procession through Karachi. As MSNBC wrote:A suicide bombing in a crowd welcoming former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto killed at least 123 people Thursday night, shattering her celebratory procession through Pakistan's biggest city after eight years in exile. Gateway Pundit found a video of her talk to her supporters shortly after the blast, where she had this to say:

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I wish her good luck against those who seek her elimination.

That's it for now podcatchers. I'm Charlie Quidnunc reporting from chilly Mercer Island, WA.

Here's what I thought you'd like to hear about today:

Should we Talk to Iran? - Using North Korea as a Case Study Defining Torture Down - When discomfort and fear is confused with torture Good news on Iraq - How the media hides it Picking the Poster Children - Misplaying the Absolute Moral Authority Card

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Should we Talk to Iran? - Using North Korea as a Case Study

Many amateur pundits have been calling for the Bush Administration to open bilateral dialog with Iran. The idea is that you need to talk to your enemies even more than your allies. Jimmy Carter the other day said as much. Here is is on WBZ radio with Ed Walsh talking about talking to Iran. Thanks to OpinionJournal.com's Best of the Web for the link.

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This is rich. During the Iranian hostage crisis, the Iranian government held our diplomats for over a year against their will in our diplomatic embassy . Some success for diplomacy . As James Tarranto comments:Carter's failure to learn from his own experience is really quite stunning. He proudly cites the taking of "my hostages" (a very odd turn of phrase) at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran as evidence that America had diplomatic relations with Iran. Excuse us, but was that fact ever in dispute? The real point--and this is not so subtle that anyone can be excused for missing it--is that diplomacy with Iran didn't work back then, as evidenced by the Iranians' having taken our diplomats hostage!

Anyway, we talk to Iran today. We have had high level discussions about their shipment of weapons like EFP's into Iraq. They deny the evidence and claim they are doing their best to stabilize the region. And then they continue to ship arms to kill Americans. What point is there to talk to liars? Their promises have no merit.

President Bush was asked why we don't talk to Iran in his question and answer session on October 3, in Lancaster County Pennsylvania. Thanks to the WhiteHouse.gov for the audio and transcript . Here's his answer to a question from a 10th grader in the audience.

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The president is clear that there are times and places to have discussions with your enemies. When we have the proper amount of leverage, we will talk to Iran. But not until we get the Russians, the Chinese, the Germans and others ready to give up their vast financial interests in Iran. When they are willing to work with us, then we can bring economic sanctions against the regime. Any talk before we have leverage is a waste of time.
Defining Torture Down - When discomfort and fear is confused with torture

Jimmy Carter was also asked about torture in his interview with WBZ. Here is Ed Walsh's question and the former president's answer.

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Notice the deflection of the question about the so called enhanced interrogation techniques ? He immediately reframes the question about interrogation techniques to a question about torture. But what is torture, and is what we are doing to get information from detainees actually torture? I don't know. My idea of torture is what John McCain

endured in North Vietnam, where he suffered broken bones and denial of medical treatment. From the Atlantic Robert D Kaplan describes the fate of Bud Day, a marine pilot who was shot down over North Vietnam and held for years in a prisoner of war camp. He later wrote a memoir.In December 1967, a prisoner was dumped in Day's cell on the outskirts of Hanoi, known as the Plantation. This prisoner's legs were atrophied and he weighed under 100 pounds. Day helped scrub his face and nurse him back from the brink of death. The fellow American was Navy Lieutenant Commander John Sidney McCain III of the Panama Canal Zone. As his health improved, McCain's rants against his captors were sometimes as ferocious as Day's. The North Vietnamese tried and failed, through torture, to get McCain to accept a release for their own propaganda purposes: The lieutenant commander was the son of Admiral John McCain Jr., the commander of all American forces in the Pacific. McCain suffered real torture. But are prolonged exposure to cold, head slapping, and fear of drowning really torture? Aren't we defining it down just a bit here?

I heard an egregious redefinition of the interrogation we do in Guantanamo by Bob Garfield talking on WNYC's On the Media last week. Here is an excerpt from that. It closely matches the Carter angle.

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It just doesn't seem believable to these people that we could aggressively question terrorists without torturing them. I am just grateful that they are not in charge of interrogations. The man who is, President Bush, had this to say on the matter:

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Go get-em George! Brett Stephens writing at OpinionJournal.com had this helpful bit of history for context:a landmark 1978 decision laid down by the European Court of Human Rights. In Ireland v. the United Kingdom, which dealt with Britain's (extrajudicial) treatment of members of the Irish Republican Army, the court concluded that the following methods did not amount to torture:

"(a) Wall-standing: Forcing the detainees to remain for periods of some hours in a 'stress position,' described by those who underwent it as being 'spreadeagled against the wall, with their fingers put high above the head against the wall, the legs spread apart and the feet back, causing them to stand on their toes with the weight of the body mainly on the fingers.'

"(b) Hooding: Putting a black or navy colored bag over the detainees' heads and, at least initially, keeping it there all the time except during interrogation.

"(c) Subjection to noise: Pending their interrogations, holding the detainees in a room where there was a continuous loud and hissing noise.

"(d) Deprivation of sleep: pending their interrogations, depriving the detainees of sleep.

"(e) Deprivation of food and drink: subjecting the detainees to a reduced diet during their stay at the center and pending interrogations."

Remarkably, the European Court reached this careful judgment despite the fact that the "five techniques were applied in combination, with premeditation and for hours at a stretch" and that some of the detainees sustained "massive" injuries. The court's reasoning wasn't meant to excuse the behavior of British authorities, which it rightly described as "inhuman and degrading." But by maintaining the "distinction between 'torture' and 'inhuman or degrading treatment,' " the court sought to preserve the "special stigma [attached] to deliberate inhuman treatment causing very serious and cruel suffering."

Can we agree that some things are torture and others not? I doubt it.

Good news on Iraq - How the media hides it

Howard Kurtz's Reliable Sources on CNN Sunday morning had two reporters on to discuss the hiding of good news about Iraq. Their viewpoints were striking. Listen to this clip from the middle of the show.

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Yes indeed, it sure is tricky to hide anything that doesn't take your side in the argument. Dispute over how to count the numbers. But every single number that could be counted, was counted, and all types of violence is down, mostly around 50%. And Howard's question towards the end: If casualties were up, would you report that? The reporter acknowledged that she would report bad news regardless of trends. What ever happened to disinterested and complete reporting? Ethics anyone? Good work showing them off for who they are, Howard.

Picking the Poster Children - Misplaying the Absolute Moral Authority Card

There has been a lot of back and forth lately about the Democratic response to the President's radio address last week. They chose a 12-year old boy to read the prepared text, presumably because of his moral authority. Who would dare criticize a poor boy in need of health insurance? Well, it turns out his family made choices with their money that did not include health insurance. That is their prerogative. And it is the government's role to ensure that those who don't have such luxurious choices get health coverage of the kind currently available in the S-CHIP program. Lefty bloggers are upset that righty bloggers have uncovered the considerable financial assets the 12-year old's family has available to them. An editorial in the OpinionJournal.com summed up the controversy this way:After the Schip veto, Democrats chose a 12-year-old boy named Graeme Frost to deliver a two-minute rebuttal. While that was a political stunt, the Washington habit of employing "poster children" is hardly new. But the Internet mob leapt to some dubious conclusions and claimed the Frost kids shouldn't have been on Schip in the first place.

As it turns out, they belonged to just the sort of family that a modest Schip is supposed to help. One lesson from this meltdown is the limit of argument by anecdote. The larger point concerns policy assumptions. Everyone concedes it is hard for some lower-income families like the Frosts to find affordable private health coverage. The debate is over what the government should do about it.

I love this controversy because it highlights to trouble people get into when they play the moral authority card. A perfect example in another issue is the use of poster children to talk about illegal immigration. Mickey Kaus noticed this on last week. He writes: Here's an anguished NPR report on a victim of the highly-touted "E-Verify" system for checking the immigration status of employees. It seems Fernando Tinoco, an American citizen, "thought he was living the American dream." But at a new job he got a "tentative non-confirmation" for his Social Security number. Two hours after being hired he was fired. And then ... he "cleared up the problem" ... and then he got his job back. ... So what's the big difficulty? He was ... humiliated! Yes, that's the ticket. Though he doesn't sound very humiliated in this report--despite the egging-on of the NPR reporter ("They thought you were illegal. ... Criminal! But you're an American." ..."Yes. We're in America, yes.") ... Remember: This is the best case NPR and the legal rights groups that feed it could come up with. ...

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Mickey goes on:database-error rate for those pre-employment checks? ... 3) The Corner's Mark Krikorian points out that making Mr. Tinoco iron out the problems with his Social Security number actually helped him in one respect--because it presumably means he will now get his Social Security benefits without a bureaucratic hassle. ...

That's it for now podcatchers. I'm Charlie Quidnunc reporting from cool clear fall day in Mercer Island.

Here's what I thought you'd like to hear about today:

Mission Descisions - Why don't we just fight the Terrorists in Iraq? The Myth of the Objective Anchor - Katie Couric and the Nefarious We Dinner Jacket visits the U.S. - and Columbia Screws it up Hillary's Gigglefest - She Laughs at the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy

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Play clip.

Mission Descisions - Why don't we just fight the Terrorists in Iraq?

I watched and listened to much of Hillary Clinton's talk show marathon on Sunday, when she appeared as the lead guest on Meet the Press , This Week with George Stephanopoulis , Face the Nation , Fox News Sunday , and Late Edition . The talk ranged across a wide field of topics, including health care, fund raising scandals, the war in Iraq, and why people hate her so much. I'm going to focus on two topics from her appearances. The first is her call for a change in mission. Listen to this segment from Face the Nation with Bob Scheiffer.

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She is clearly trying to walk a fine line between the hard left, with their calls for withdrawal now regardless of consequences, and the hard right shock troops like me. She wants to stay, but with a new, more narrowly defined mission. Here she was on This Week with George Stephanopoulis saying much the same thing:

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She has her talking points and she stuck to them in a very professional manner. But how realistic is it to change the mission from population security and counter-insurgency of today, authored by General David Petraeus, to one centered on counter terrorism? Can you fight terrorists in Iraq, like the infamous Al Qaeda in Iraq, without securing the population? How many troops would that take? Fred Kagan , one of the primary advocates of General Petraeus's surge strategy, and a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, had this to say on those ideas in a recent Heritage Foundation Podcast . The audio is a little over modulated, but the message is clear.

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What he said was that you can't fight Al Qaeda if you can't get the population to tell you where they are. And they won't tell you if you aren't protecting them. That's the trade: if you promise to stick around and keep them safe, they will tell you where the bad guys are. This is the success formula that Petraeus has been following. This morning, I joined a conference call, sponsored by the Pentagon , with Army LTC Ken Adgie, commander in charge of operation Marne Torch II, described by the Pentagon as follows:Task Force Marne troops continue to break up improvised explosive device-making cells in southern Baghdad, and push further south into new areas, with the conduct of Operation Marne Torch II, launched Sept. 15. The operation, Multi-National Division - Center's newest offensive, picked up immediately on the heels of its predecessor, Operation Marne Husky I asked the LTC about Hillary's idea of counter terrorism only, without civilian security. Here's what he thought of the idea:

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I agree with the commander. Without the great intelligence the population is now sharing with them, there is no way they can figure out who the bad guys are. And the people won't share with someone they don't trust. The term bird dog in his response refers to the 4-5 top informants that he uses in their area of operations. These citizens supply the bulk of the tips to the coalition forces.

The Myth of the Objective Anchor - Katie Couric and the Nefarious We

Katie Couric, the anchor of CBS Evening News with anybody but Dan Rather, appeared at the National Press Club this week for a pleasant discussion with Marvin Kalb , the Edward R. Murrow Professor of Practice at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. With such a title, it's not surprising that Marvin Kalb has delusions of grandeur. Here's a short clip from their sit down, noticed by Jonah Goldberg on the Corner on National Review Online . As Jonah writes:The Nefarious "We"

Close readers may have noticed that I am increasingly vexed by cosmopolitanism , the idea that we are not citizens of a country or products of a place but rather "citizens of the world."

Well, here's Katie Couric speaking at the National Press Club yesterday:

Thanks to C-SPAN for the audio.

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Jonah goes on to describe her sentiment this way:What a fascinating little slip! How deeply disturbing it is when Americans refer to the United States in a time of war as "we"! Some may think this is a little thing, but I truly don't. I hear liberals refer to the United States as "this country " quite often, usually accompanied with an eye roll, as in: "Of course, in this country , we have to pay for our own health care." Or, "in this country people think it's 'unpatriotic' to call America an evil empire." The "in this country " thing makes it sound like some sort of accident or mistake that the speaker was born here. Woops got off the bus one country too early on the Northbound express!

A critic might respond that I'm perhaps overly sensitive to this sort of thing and therefore I probably pick up on it too much and think it's a bigger deal than it is. That may in fact be true. Indeed, to some extent I'm sure it is. But just as my sensitivity to this sort of talk says something about me and my views, doesn't Couric's sensitivity say something interesting about her and her views? That she was made uncomfortable by the use of "we" to describe the United States of America during a time of war is really quite revealing, at least to my ears. To mine also, Jonah. Quite revealing.

Dinner Jacket visits the U.S. - and Columbia Screws it up

Iran's smallest madman came to New York this week to educate the world. Columbia offered President Hack-on-my-dinner-jacket a forum to speak. As Bill Bennett recognized, the President of Columbia, Professor Bollinger, should not have invited the madman to speak at a distinguished lecture series. That was wrong. But it was also wrong to insult him. Here's Bill on his Morning in America program, thanks to the Corner again .

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Bill is right that the insults hurt the case of freedom. And it lead students to applaud the little President's complaints. Bad day all around I'd say. But for a much more appropriate discussion with the Iranian madman, we can listen to 60 Minutes from last weekend. Scott Pelley produced a hard hitting interview with Mr. Dinner Jacket. I'm going to play an excerpt from that interview that shows how weaselly the little dictator is. Listen closely to all the ways he fails to answer the question. His first tactic is to turn around and ask the interviewer a question. Then he answers a different question from the one asked. Then he makes an assertion about something tangentially related to the question. He never directly answers anything asked. I don't trust a word he says.

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I think it is quite clear that Iran is building a nuclear weapon, that they plan to use it to destabilize the Middle East, as they have used all the other weapons in their arsenal to destabilize Lebanon and Iraq, and then eventually destroy Israel and the U.S. He is not going away any time soon.

Hillary's Gigglefest - She Laughs at the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy

Hillary Clinton's appearances on the Sunday shows included one with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday. As it happened, it was one year after Bill Clinton's rant against Chris Wallace and the right wing conspirators at Fox News. Chris asked the Mrs. Bill about that event, and why the Clintons are so partisan.

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That laugh. What can we possibly do about that laugh? If there is rock somewhere I can hide under for the next few months, I think I might do that. Anything to avoid hearing it one more time.

That's it for now podcatchers. I'm Charlie Quidnunc signing off from the PassatStudio deep under the skyscrapers of Seattle.

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The Petraeus Show

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The Petraeus Show

Those not living under a rock know that General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker testified on capitol hill this week to cheer leading Republicans and skeptical Democrats. I listened to most of the House and Senate testimony over the past few days. There were few really surprising moments after the introductory remarks from both witnesses. The rest of the 16 or so hours was taken up by speechification exercises of both parties, interspersed with restatements of the opening remarks by the witnesses. I'm going to play a few short excerpts from the Senate hearings. First, I'll play the questions, if they could be called that, of Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California. She spoke so long that there was no time left for any response from the witnesses, supposedly brought in to provide a punching back for the great Ms Boxer. This is classic spin by the Senator, taking every opportunity to twist the General's words until they bore no resemblance to what he had ever said in the past. This segment starts with Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman, Joe Biden, having the nerve to ask the General to shorten his answers so that the Senators get more time to bloviate. Amazing. Thanks to the Pentagon Channel for this and all the other clips by Petraeus and Crocker in this podcast.

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So at the end of her speech there is no time for an answer. Why do they bother bringing these guys all the way back from Iraq, away from where they are succeeding, just so self important Senators can lecture them about their own personal ideas? Her recommendation that we pull back to large heavily fortified bases and out of the neighborhoods the way the Brits did in Basra shows how out of touch she is with what's happening in Iraq. Chaos is quickly taking over in Basra ever since they pulled back. That same chaos will take over the country if we follow her advice. The best counterweight to this set of arguments was made by Senator Graham later in the day. Here's his back and forth on the subjects.

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Graham is a skilled litigator; he gets his witness to do the talking. How refreshing.

Some of the best of the week's Petraeus and Crocker show was in their appearance at the National Press Club. The reporters had the good sense to ask questions and get out of the way for the responses. Here is some of the exchange concerning the difference between the ability of the Iraqi army to work on their own, contrasted with the benchmarks that measure their readiness by a set of clip levels. His point is that the benchmarks can be a misleading indicator of how effective the Iraqi army actually is in action, as opposed to paper evaluations.

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Later on Petraeus was asked about how he handles the personal attacks by outside groups like Move-on.org. His answer is enlightening.

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I had heard that the General looked for inspiration to the famous Rudyard Kipling poem "If". He said so on the Fox News interview with Brit Hume earlier in the week. I went to the Librivox web site and found this terrific reading of the poem by one "Chip in Tampa". Listen to the master.

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One of the criticisms of the Petraeus plan to draw down brigade combat teams roughly at the same pace that they arrived, is that it so closely resembles the troop rotations required to maintain the 15 months on, 12 months at home schedule that Secretary Gates promised to the troops at the beginning of the surge. It appears to some, and Petraeus went out of his way to claim otherwise, that the only reason he is reducing troop levels is to meet the demands of the rotation schedule. It's a fair criticism. Why are we so short on troops that we have to reduce our force in Iraq? The man formerly in Petraeus' position in Iraq, now Army Chief of Staff General George Casey, spoke with writers at a forum sponsored by Government Executive Magazine , in Washington, DC. on September 6. Casey gave some background on why we don't seem to have enough troops any more.

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Gee, you think the reduction in the U.S. Army from 780,000 to 480,000 had any effect on our ability to respond to the conflicts of the future? Maybe.

That's it for now podcatchers. I'm Charlie Quidnunc reporting from the Boise airport waiting for the last flight home to Seattle on a Friday night.

Here's what I thought you'd like to hear about today:

How long the Surge? - Admiral Mullen's View Reinstating the Draft? - A Warning Shot from General Douglas Lute Are We Really at Risk of a Domestic Terrorist Attack? - Not according to the left The Debate on Changes to the FISA law - Rivkin v Greenwald Is Iraq like Viet Nam? - What George Bush Actually Said

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How long the Surge? - Admiral Mullen's View
The newly confirmed Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon is Admiral Michael Mullen . He takes over from General Peter Pace at the end of September. At his confirmation hearing in the Senate Armed Services Committee at the end of July, he was asked about our options in Iraq by Carl Levin, the Democratic Chairman of the Senate Committee. Thanks to C-SPAN for the video. He describes the pros and cons of three options for the next 12-18 months in Iraq.

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Admiral Mullen is very clear that Defense Secretary Gates' commitment to 15 months on, 12 months off troop rotation schedule, in order to preserve the all-volunteer force, is going to lead to the end of the surge. Not the end of military activity, just a return to 15 brigades from the current 20. Later on in the hearing, Senator Lindsey Graham tries to pin down the Admiral to dates and force levels. He clearly indicates that we can't keep as many in theater as we have now without breaking the 15/12 commitment.

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So it sounds to me like the Pentagon plans for half the troops in 3-4 years, in order to reach the 12 month on, 24 month at home rotation. That schedule is critical to recruiting and retention goals of the all volunteer army. Which brings us to our next topic:

Restarting the Draft? - A Warning Shot from Douglas Lute

The Pentagon has always preferred volunteers over conscription. The draft is an anathema to the Generals. It would go against the goal of having the strongest, most intelligent, most motivated armed forces we can get. So why did Lt. General Douglas Lute, President Bush's War Czar suggest a return of the draft? From NPR on August 10, we hear a rumble of that. His real title is assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser for Iraq and Afghanistan, but the war czar sounds so much more dramatic. Here he is interviewed by Michele Norris.

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Clearly we are putting our young men and women under stress by forcing longer deployments in the war zone. Long times away from families, extended risk from being in the conflict theater a greater percentage of their service time, and the incredibly tough working conditions put the military under enormous pressure. As the liaison between the President's National Security team and the other branches of government involved in Iraq, including the Defense Department and the State Department, he has regular contact with those responsible for planning and executing operations there. Someone at the Pentagon must have done the arithmetic on force levels and decided that Lute would be the right guy to float the draft idea to the media. No one else has mentioned it.

Dave Winer, a long time anti-war blogger had an idea what it meant. He wrote on August 15:I figured out why the czar said what he said -- it's the military, sending a message to the President, in clear terms. We can't keep running the way we're running, and if you won't do something about the shortfall of soldiers for the war in Iraq (really an occupation, of course) we'll take the issue to the people, in a way you'll feel. No doubt, even talk of a return to the draft changes things. I think it's a good idea to talk about it, and quite possibly a good idea to reinstate it. That would get us out of this mode of life-as-usual. We are losing in Iraq, pointlessly, and eventually we're going to have to leave. Yes, cut and run is looking like the right way to go, esp when the cut part could be explained as "cut our losses."

While I don't agree with Dave's view that we should leave right away, I agree that General Lute was sending a message with the NPR interview. I couldn't find any reference to the radio appearance in any of the right wing of the blogosphere. I think many conservatives have tuned out NPR, or mistakenly assumed that this was the same draft proposal that Charles Rangel has been talking about. Rangel's motivation is to weaken the military to the point where it could no longer be effective. Lute, on the other hand, wants the politicians to realize that keeping the surge would have consequences on the 15/12 rotation schedule promise, and on the long term viability of the all-volunteer force. The Pentagon will do what the White House tells them, but they won't let it happen without a fight. Conservatives who would like to continue the surge would do well to understand the arithmetic involved.

Are We Really at Risk of a Domestic Terrorist Attack? - Not according to the left

One of the arguments I hear occasionally, especially from my 16 year old son, is that the real risk of being killed in a terrorist attack in America is extremely low, and that we should stop worrying about the Jihadi's and the IslamoFascists in the Muslim world. The way this argument goes, if 3,000 people died on 9-11, out of a population of 300 million, our chances of being killed are one in a hundred thousand. More than ten times that number die each year in car accidents. Or so the argument goes. I thought only 16 year olds had this level of naivety. But on Slate's Podcast Gabfest on August 3, Newsweek's Jonathan Alter reiterated that argument. Listen and weep:

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National security does dominate the mind of the typical Republican voter. We saw 9-11 with our own eyes, saw the people jumping out of 100 story buildings to escape burning jet fuel, and we don't want it to happen again. But more important than fear for my personal safety, what I am afraid of is what another attack would do to our country. Consider the aviation industry. Who would fly if they thought there was a fair likelihood of being rammed into a skyscraper? An estimate published recently determined, and I quote, Based on the scenario thought most likely, another attack on U.S. commercial aviation could cost as much as $420 billion, according to a new study appearing in the current issue of the scientific journal Risk Analysis. The authors conducted their research on the basis that the attack would shut the entire system down for seven days and require a two-year recovery period.

"The Economic Impacts of a Terrorist Attack on the U.S. Commercial Aviation System" by four scientists at the University of Southern California Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events... As the sixth anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001, approaches, the conclusions from this study should help commercial aviation authorities with their emergency planning.
It should help them to understand that their ass is grass if another attack takes place.

It's not the attack that scares us, it's the fallout on the entire US economy that has us rooting for Rudy. We want someone who will do whatever it takes to keep these crazies far away from our soil. The Jonathan Alters of the world, with their smug assurance that voters of Iowa are not likely to be hurt in another terrorist attack, are clueless of our real fears.

And, if the left thinks the latest concerns for NSA eavesdropping rule changes are an assault on our civil liberties, they should think about what would happen after a second 9-11. Which leads us to our next topic:

The Debate on Changes to the FISA law - Rivkin v Greenwald

C-SPAN hosted a debate between liberal blogger Glenn Greenwald and David Rivkin on the most recent FISA law modifications that Congress passed just before their August recess. This is the introduction by Glenn "Sock Puppet" Greenwald, followed by a response by David Rivkin. If you have time, go and listen to the whole thing. Greenwald actually comes across as reasonable in the debate, although his claims of a police state ring a bit hollow in 2007.

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Glenn's claim that George Bush is listening in on your phone conversations and reading your email is ludicrous. Imagine how silly he would sound arguing these points after the next attack. I guarantee no one would listen to his pitiful cries after a second such event.

Is Iraq like Viet Nam? - What George Bush Actually Said

President Bush's speech this week to the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention was described by ABC news in a headline as follows:
IRAQ LIKE VIETNAM... BUSH'S NEW TALKING POINT AS 14 AMERICANS DIE Thanks to Ace of Spades for the pointer. They later changed it to New Bush Talking Point: Iraq Like Vietnam How thoughtful. During the speech, a few sections of which I'm going to play in just a moment, he actually talked about many conflicts, including World War II, Korea, and Viet Nam, and said that there were lessons to be learned from these conflicts. His point was not that the Iraq and Viet Nam were the same. It was rather that the mistakes in Viet Nam cost us dearly, the successful rebuilding of Japan benefited us greatly, and we have the potential in Iraq to have a result more Japan than Viet Nam if we behave properly.

The first excerpt is from the beginning of his speech where he lays out his argument. The second clip is a story from history that is relevant to the present.

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Not fit for freedom indeed. Where else have we heard that criticism? Oh, I remember, it was about Iraq. The President returns to the present later in the speech, to illustrate why the lessons of Viet Nam bear on our current conflict in Iraq.

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Words well spoken. He appears to have been able to take a few minutes off from his 24/7 phone call eavesdropping and email reading to learn a 45 minute speech.

That's it for now, podcatchers. I'm Charlie Quidnunc signing off from deep beneath the bowels of the city of Seattle, WA.

Here's what I thought you'd like to hear about today:

How's that Surge Going, Congressman? Defending Alberto -Anyone out there? Next Steps on Iran -Why Bombing isn't such a good idea A Moving Tribute to the Lion of Fallujah

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How's that Surge Going, Congressman?

Success has many fathers, it is said, but failure is an orphan. When it comes to Iraq debate in Congress, we are seeing the exact opposite of that old saw. By advocating withdrawal, the Democrats appear to be demanding the credit for the eventual failure of our efforts in Iraq.

The latest incarnation of that sentiment is a pair of resolutions under consideration in the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee last week. Chairman Ike Skelton gaveled a hearing to:receive testimony on H.R. 3087, to require the President, in coordination with the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and other senior military leaders, to develop and transmit to Congress a comprehensive strategy for the redeployment of United States Armed Forces in Iraq, and H.R. 3159, the "Ensuring Military Readiness Through Stability and Predictability Deployment Policy Act of 2007."
H.R. 3159 would require the Pentagon to abide by their new policy of 15 months of deployment and 12 months at home training and equipping. If the Pentagon were required to do this, the surge of troops would have to end by April of 2008, according to the Washington Post : Regardless of what decisions are made in Washington and Baghdad, the U.S. military cannot sustain the current force levels beyond March 2008 because of force rotations. This clever bill the Democrats are advocating will require removing troops from Iraq to meet the terms of the existing Pentagon policy. According to the experts at the Post, a surge beyond March 2008 would require Secretary Gates to go back on his pledge to maintain the 15 on/12 off plan. It's a tried and true way to use someone's words to restrict their choices.

But credit is due to Chairman Skelton for bringing to the committee two well regarded witnesses. First up was General Jack Keane , a former Army Chief of Staff and current member of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, testified in opposition to the resolutions. The second witness was Lawrence Korb , of the Center for American Progress, who has ready the NY Times and the Washington Post quite thoroughly. I jest, since Mr. Korb is very knowledgeable on matters of defense and represented his side quite well in the debate. I'm going to play a few clips from the show. First up is a section of Keane's opening remarks. Thanks to C-SPAN for the audio, and Iraq Insider for the transcript.

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After General Keane, Lawrence Korb spoke about the broken Army, and concluded by supporting the resolutions under consideration. Thanks to American Progress for the testimony transcript. He has finished his litany of troop problems, and moves to plugging his latest book.

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Notice the protester at the end of that last clip. There were more as the day wore on. The hearing went on for four hours and 45 minutes, and General Keane had to leave after two hours. This was the source of much consternation from some of the lower level Democratic Congress critters. This next clip starts off with Tom Cole, Republican from Oklahoma talking about the inability of the Iraqi politicians to come together and legislate as the benchmarks require.

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Boyda is a piece of work. I listened to the entire hearing and heard no references by General Keane to a vacation in Iraq. Her straw man argument is that people are claiming a paradise in Iraq. No one said that. Keane acknowledged the violence still prevalent in Iraq. Boyda's problem is that she is unable to listen to anyone whose facts conflicted with her prejudices. And what really bothered me is her insistence that we find a way to come together and put these crazy partisan politics behind us. . What a load of crap. She is more partisan than either of the witnesses. Thanks to BizzyBlog for the pointer to Boyda's shenanigans. And also to RedState for the image of Boyda on the Podcast site.

Dennis Prager identified the Democratic call for unity as the sham it is. Here he is on Townhall.com Weekend Journal from last week. He played clips from the Democratic YouTube/CNN debate, first from Senator Clinton.

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He makes a great point about unity on my terms. Whenever I hear someone claim that, we should ask what policy concessions they are willing to make to generate the often praised unity .

But back to Iraq. The Democrats are pedaling towards failure as fast as they can, in the hope they can lock the Pentagon into a defeat before General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker can report back to Congress in September that things are going better than many expected. The latest Congressman to worry about the Petraeus report is Representative James Clyburn, the house majority Whip, being questioned by two Washington Post reporters. Thanks to the Corner on National Review Online for the pointer.

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Note that he is not hoping for things to go badly in Iraq. He clearly meant that it would be a problem keeping the votes together in the House. That's his job. He's the Democratic Whip, the man responsible for counting votes and herding the cats in the Democratic caucus. But it is entertaining to get some visibility to the sausage making in Congress. Let's hope the 47 Blue Dog Democrats can see enough progress by September to forestall any retreat legislation that the lefty Democrats are trying to pass before then. If their constituents keep seeing positive press about progress, President Bush just might be given enough time and resources to make a success of it. I just wonder how the Democrats will be able to become the father of that result.

Defending Alberto -Anyone out there?

It's no secret that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is under a lot of pressure from Senate Democrats and a few Republicans like Arlen Spector. In fact, he appears to be so disliked that Fox News Sunday could find no conservatives willing to come on the Sunday show to defend his side of the disputes over the fired US Attorneys. Chris Wallace asks a few pointed questions about that pesky evidence thing that keeps getting in the way of a good old fashioned lynching of Gonzales. Listen to the tail end of Senator Russ Feingold where he immediately shifts to Iraq and a dozen other issues instead of answering Chris Wallace's questions. Chris does a great job here not letting him get away with it.

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The best defenders of Gonzales have been Senator Orin Hatch and White House Press Secretary Tony Snow. Orin Hatch was on ABC News This Week on Sunday. Listen to Tony in their new briefing room take on a dozen reporters looking for blood in the water on July 27. Thanks to the White House podcast for the audio. This part starts with Tony describing the difference between the Terrorist Surveillance Program, other classified intelligence programs. The controversy is over whether or not there was a disagreement between Justice and the Administration on some intelligence programs. Some now and formerly at Justice said there was a disagreement, and Gonzales said there was not. The Senators want to have Gonzales indicted for perjury, without letting any of that evidence stuff get in their way. Here's Tony trying to explain.

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As I see it, there is a Venn diagram that can explain what I call the Gonzales-Comey Universe of Controversy. Picture a big circle, which represents all the intelligence programs that the Administration runs. Inside that circle, there is smaller circle that represents controversial programs. That is what Comey was describing in his now famous description of a hospital visit on a seriously ill Attorney General Ashcroft. There is a smaller circle, not attached to the controversial programs circle, in which we have the program that President Bush declassified and called the Terrorist Surveillance Program. Gonzales did not lie when he claimed that there was no controversy over the TSP. The controversy that Comey was describing involved other programs. If anyone needs help with this, I'm available for appearances on Fox News Sunday with a few days notice and airfare from Seattle to Washington for me and my family. We need to see some museums and monuments.

Next Steps on Iran -Why Bombing isn't such a good idea

In a previous Podcast I played an excerpt from Senator Joe Lieberman's appearance on Face the Nation on June 10, when he advocated bombing the training camps in Iran where they are training the militants attacking us in Iraq. This idea has not gained much traction lately. And for good reason. Recently the Heritage Foundation hosted a talk by someone who understands the consequences of that course of action. In the lecture, based on the ideas in his book, Taking on Tehran: Strategies for Confronting the Islamic Republic , Ilan Berman spoke about some alternatives we face in confronting Iranian influence. Berman is an Editor, and Vice President for Policy, American Foreign Policy Council. He started the talk by knocking down the three current straw men arguments about Iran. Those are 1) we should just talk to them; 2) we should attack them militarily; or 3) a middle ground where we do nothing and assume that deterrence will work. He finds each lacking, and moves quickly to a more complex and subtle strategy involving economic sanctions and publicizing the human rights violations by the government. In this section of the lecture, he has destroyed the straw men, and is describing his solution. If you have time, go and listen to the entire lecture . There's an MP3 of the file on the Heritage site. I highly recommend the whole thing, including some questions at the end about gasoline rationing in Tehran.

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The key to the success of this policy is a quick change from our current uncertain policy towards Iran. We only have a few years before their investments in gasoline refining and nuclear weapons development will put Iran in a position of such strength that the only course left open to us will be a massive military one. And the risk to our friends in the region and our soldiers within firing distance of Tehran will make that option a very bad one indeed. Time is running out.

A Moving Tribute to the Lion of Fallujah

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates spoke at the 1st Annual Marine Corps Association Dinner in Arlington, VA on July 18. He ended it with a story of one particularly well liked marine. Here's his closing to that speech. Hold on to your hat, ladies and gentlemen. Thanks to the Military.com for the audio.

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Gates is certainly a very different man from Donald Rumsfeld. Amazing stuff. That's it for now, podcatchers. I'm Charlie Quidnunc reporting from high above Seattle.

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Is al Qeada in Iraq the same al Qaeda that Attacked America on 9-11? Who are we fighting?

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Is al Qeada in Iraq the same al Qaeda that Attacked America on 9-11?

The press, politicians, intelligence services, and the military have been all over the news talking about Al Qeada in Iraq. The military has claimed that the most spectacularly violent attacks in Iraq have been originated by Al Qaeda in Iraq, or as the New York Times prefers to call it, al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. I've been listening to a lot of press conferences, talk shows, and blogger's conference calls over the past two weeks trying to get a better understanding of the role of al Qaeda in Iraq, or AQI. In today's podcast I'll show why the military believes that AQI is the biggest military and political threat in Iraq, what the group has done, how we have them on the run. I'll try to show the connection to the global al Qaeda network and what the battle in Iraq means in the Global War on Terror. I'll also show how the Democrats and their enablers in press are trying to minimize the connection between AQI and the al Qaeda who attacked us on 9/11. They fear that if the public believes they are part of the same network, the quest to get us out of Iraq as soon as possible will fail, and Americans will once again support the war.. To give you an example of that quest, here is Nate, a blogger writing at The Hollow Horn who points to articles that bolster his position. Titled, The Al Qaeda Myth , Nate writes:The president and his partisans keep harping on the presence of Al-Qaeda in Iraq as a reason for our continued involvement. There are a lot of problems with this claim.

Articles in the New York Times and Time note most of my objections. First, there never was an Al-Qaeda in Iraq until we came. Second, it would be a bit of a stretch to suggest that this is the same Al-Qaeda that attacked the US five years ago. (It has been chastised by Zawahiri for its indiscriminate methods several times.) Third, it represents only a very small percentage of the Iraqi insurgency.

Nate is mostly right that there was little active Al Qaeda presence in Iraq before the invasion in 2003. But just because they were not there before we invaded doesn't mean they are not part of the same network today. The bulk of the AQI network arrived after 2003. So what?

Nate's third claim that AQI is a small percentage of the insurgents is technically correct, but it ignores the power of their "weapons of mass effect", as BG Robert H. Holmes, Deputy Director of Operations, U.S. Central Command, identified in a conference call recently. But I'm getting ahead of myself. From the NY Times article Nate refers to, we read:In rebuffing calls to bring troops home from Iraq, President Bush on Thursday employed a stark and ominous defense. "The same folks that are bombing innocent people in Iraq," he said, "were the ones who attacked us in America on September the 11th, and that's why what happens in Iraq matters to the security here at home."

It is an argument Mr. Bush has been making with frequency in the past few months, as the challenges to the continuation of the war have grown. On Thursday alone, he referred at least 30 times to Al Qaeda or its presence in Iraq.

But his references to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, and his assertions that it is the same group that attacked the United States in 2001, have greatly oversimplified the nature of the insurgency in Iraq and its relationship with the Qaeda leadership. It may simplify a complex network of insurgents, criminal gangs, radical Shiite militia, Sunni Tribal outlaws, and other opportunists who we face on the ground in Iraq when Bush singles out AQI. But if they're the one threat that is more deadly than the all the others combined, it makes sense to focus on them. Especially if AQI swears allegiance to the one enemy that has twice successfully attacked us on our home soil.

I'm going to play a clip to show the context for President Bush's remark linking bombers in Iraq to 9-11. David Gregory asked him a question the hot topic of the day, a quote from Michael Hayden about the quality of the Iraqi government in 2006. It's from the Bush press conference on July 12.

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The reporters have the right to be skeptical about the connection. It seems all too convenient that the group we are fighting in Iraq is the same as those who attacked us on 9-11. As the President correctly identifies, we know that 19 of them are dead, because they were on the planes. And we know that we have Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in custody in Guantanamo. But the network continues to threaten us, and some in Iraq invoke the name of al Qaeda in their literature and web sites.

On July 15, on ABC News' This Week with George Stephanopoulos George asked National Security Adviser Steven Hadley, about the connection. Notice the spin George tries to pull, and Hadleys deft handling of the issue.

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How disingenuous of Stephanopoulos to suggest that Bush was claiming that Iraq was responsible for 9-11. He is just saying that the same al Qaeda network, run by the same people, are directing the most vicious attacks against us now in Iraq. They have shifted the front from airplanes into buildings on American soil to truck bombs in Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad. It would be like saying that we had no right to invade Japan in 1945 because these were not the same pilots who attacked us at Pearl Harbor. The location has changed, the tactics have shifted, but the leaders, the motivation, and the goals are the same.

That is not enough proof for the media, though. Here is a short clip from WNYC's On The Media from June 29 with Bob Garfield and McClatchy reporter Mike Drummond. Mike wants to start from the assumption that the Pentagon is spinning the al Qaeda link.

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Snicker Quotes . What a lovely term of art. And his claim that journalists being neutral is laughable. He thinks his job is to spin in the other direction as furiously as he can, while laughing with his insider buddies at those who are so gullible as to believe in the threat al Qaeda.Snicker Quotes . Amazing stuff.

Reporters have clearly gotten the memo about the need to be skeptical of everything the Pentagon says about al Qaeda. But as any good adversary, the Pentagon is ready. Here is Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner on July 18 at his press conference announcing the arrest of al-Mashhadani, the highest ranking Iraqi in AQI. He was asked about the AQI connection multiple times, and this one by John Burnett of NPR was dripping with skepticism. How can someone who is only 15% of the insurgency be so important he asks:

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Clearly the reason they are important is that they are more effective than the other groups. They kill more people. John Burnett's report on NPR the next day illustrates the media skepticism on the role of al Qaeda in Iraq.

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Linda Wertheimer would like to see the evidence. Back on July 11, General Bergner held a press conference to showcase the vast quantity of evidence the military had gathered against AQI. Listen to this introduction, then a question trying to separate AQI from al Qaeda. Thanks to the Pentagon channel for the audio, and MNF-I for the transcript .

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After the press conference, the Pentagon provided some bloggers with an opportunity to call into a conference call with the general. I asked about the skepticism in the media about the connection.

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Of course, the general has access to all the documentation seized in the raids that show the connection. If you are interested in some of those documents, there is a set of charts available on the MNF-I web site for all to see. A few shots are on the Wizbang Podcast web site as well.

In a press conference on July 13, General Benjamin R. Mixon, commander of the MNF-I north made some headlines by saying that during 2008, he might be able to begin a 12-18 month drawdown of force in the north of Iraq. This was spun by the media into such headlines as U.S. could draw down in north Iraq next year

More interesting than this tidbit, was Mixon's description of AQI.

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The media really wants to find an enemy, any other enemy, rather than AQI. For if al Qaeda is causing all the trouble in Iraq, then that supports the argument that we should stay there and defeat them. So to avoid that inevitable conclusion, the spin is that it's a different al Qaeda.

Here is Joel Klein, long time Democratic talking point generator and reporter, in Time :
Recently, in his desperation, starting with his speech at the Naval War College on June 28, he has been telling an outright lie, and he repeated it now, awkwardly, in Cleveland: "The same people that attacked us on September the 11th is the crowd that is now bombing people, killing innocent men, women and children, many of whom are Muslims, trying to stop the advance of a system based upon liberty."

That is not true. The group doing the most spectacular bombings in Iraq was named al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia by its founder, Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, now deceased, in an attempt to aggrandize his reputation in jihadi-world. It is a sliver group, representing no more than 5% of the Sunni insurgency. It shares a philosophy, but not much else, with the real al-Qaeda, which operates out of Pakistan.
It may indeed represent only 5% of the Sunni insurgency in terms of people, but it is closer to 100% of the spectacular violence. And just because it is a new affiliate of al Qaeda, doesn't make it separate from them. But don't let those facts and evidence get in the way of a favorite Democratic talking point. After reading the National Intelligence Estimate, Richard Clarke wrote an op-ed for the New York Daily News. Clarke served the last three Presidents, as national coordinator for security and counterterrorism. He is the author of "Against All Enemies." He wrote : the NIE notes that Al Qaeda may use "regional terrorist groups" and cites, as an example, "Al Qaeda in Iraq." What it does not say, but can be read between the lines: "Al Qaeda in Iraq" is a different organization than the folks in Pakistan and Afghanistan who attacked us. Put another way, the President is wrong when he claims that we are fighting in Iraq the people who attacked New York and Virginia. "Al Qaeda in Iraq" did not even exist until after we invaded Iraq.

Sigh. This talking point is clearly got legs. A week after a raft of clear and convincing evidence linking AQI to al Qaeda, someone who should know better is sticking to his Democratic talking points like white on rice. I don't expect much to change, but I can offer my contribution to the discussion.

Who are we fighting?
But if you're looking for a picture of the absolute depravity of AQI, the press conference and subsequent bloggers call with Lt. Col. Andrew Poppas to talk about Operation Ithaca, a raid on July 12 in which the U.S. Army scored a significant hit on AQI. As the email press release sent to me stated:Operation Ithaca, targeting al-Qaeda operatives near the villages of Haimer, Abu Nasim, and Jamil, Iraq, resulting in 29 al-Qaeda gunmen killed, 23 detained, eight hostages released, two weapons caches discovered and a safe house destroyed.
Here is Lt. Col. Poppas description of the raid.

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He later describes the intelligence from the locals that lead to the raid. Included in the dispatches from the Pentagon was a picture, which you can see on the podcast web site, of one of the Iraqi prisoners held captive by AQI until the raid freed him. His back is covered in whip bruises, as was his front, with open wounds from the torture that AQI had been inflicting on him.

This is the enemy we face in Iraq. Lead by the same group that attacked us on 9-11. And ready and willing to come to America if we abandon Iraq and leave so they can train and equip in the safe haven that Iraq will become if we leave prematurely. Any questions?

How is AQI able to transform their relatively small percentage of the insurgency, in terms of the number of fighters, into such a powerful effect on the security situation, and more importantly, on the public debate? The Pentagon sponsored a bloggers conference call with BG Robert H. Holmes, Deputy Director of Operations, U.S. Central Command. During the call, BG Holmes tried to explain the way AQI works. He starts out by summarizing the good news. This clip is the part after the "but" part.

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AQI is clearly using the weapons of mass effect to take the focus off the good things that are happening. They may just succeed at that.

One more bloggers conference call sponsored by the Pentagon was with the Marine in charge of the forces in Anbar. MG W.E. Gaskin, USMC, Commanding General Multi-National Force West had this to say about AQI.

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Let's hope we find more of the dumb ones.

That's it for now podcatchers. I'm Charlie Quidnunc signing off from my perch high above the streets of a cold and damp Seattle, WA.

Here's what I thought you'd like to hear about today:

Closing Guantanamo? - Why We Can't Those Busy Iranians in Iraq - with the Hezbollah Connection New Progress on Reconciliation in Iraq - Calm After the latest Samarra Bombing The Army is not Breaking - Applying Lynch's Rules of War

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Closing Guantanamo? - Why We Can't

One of the most persistent rumors in Washington these days is that we are just about to close the detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. It usually starts by someone demanding that we should just shut down the center and try all the prisoners in criminal courts in the U.S. That leads to a question to some high ranking official asking if we are going to close it. For example, the following clip from a press conference June 29 in which Secretary Gates is asked about Gitmo.

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In truth the issue is much more complex than just sensitive intelligence sources. It's also about the methods of capture. Many of the prisoners were seized on the battlefield, where normal criminal police procedures were not on the minds of our soldiers. There was no CSI Miami crew that descended on the crime scene to scrub it for evidence when Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was captured. And what would they be charged with? Is it really a crime for a citizen of Afganistan to wage jihad against an American soldier? Of course not, it's a war. The Pentagon detainee policy was the subject of a blogger's conference call on June 26 that I participated in. Michael Goldfarb of the Weekly Standard has a good writeup of the call. There's another from UPI . I'm going to play a few clips from the call that explain why we are not going to close Guantanamo any time soon. The first clip is me asking about the difference between criminals and combatants.

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Grim from Blackfive asked next about what's next for the detainees. Later, I ask about the rumors of closure that periodically surface.

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I think Liotta captured the reason this rumor keeps coming up: Some people allow their wishes to get ahead of their ears.

Those Busy Iranians in Iraq - with the Hezbollah Connection

Last February, some officers in Iraq, lead by Major General Caldwell, put on a show of Iranian weapons seized in Iraq. The press conference was highly criticized because of some over the top remarks about how much the Iranian government was involved in the activity. I covered this in my podcast at the time. Since that time there has been tremendous intelligence efforts made to make the case that Iran is highly unhelpful in Iraq. On July 2, Brig. Gen. Kevin J. Bergner took another run at exposing Iranian involvement in Iraq. He was exceptionally well prepared. No offense to Major General Caldwell, but General Bergner blew the doors off this issue. They have documents, interrogation results, and network connections back to Hezbollah in Lebanon that show how deep the Iranian connection goes. I'm going to play several clips from his presentation. Thanks to the Pentagon for the transcript and the audio. At this point he begins talking about the Iranian connection to what are called Special Groups .

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This description of Daqduq is just one of the Iranian directed bad guys seized or killed in Iraq. General Bergner described others in his talk. The Q&A that followed his presentation was good also. Here's Lara Logan of CBS, and Michael Ware of CNN asking some great questions.

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Of course the next question is what to do about Iran. Anybody have any ideas? Senator Lieberman on Face the Nation on June 10 had one:

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New Progress on Reconciliation in Iraq - Calm After the latest Samarra Bombing

I was invited to another bloggers conference call set up by the Pentagon on June 21 with Colonel Michael Hoyt, who is the senior chaplain officer in Iraq. He was on to talk about a little noticed religious summit held the previous week that drew top leaders of Sunni, Shi'a, Christian, Yezidi, and the Kurds to a conference on religious reconciliation. The conference was the first in many ways, as the Colonel described on the podcast. You can read the transcript of it on a link on my web site . The first excerpt talks about tangible results of the meeting, which by coincidence concluded on the same day that the minarets at the Golden Mosque in Samara were bombed.
As Time Magazine wrote:It is a measure of how warped things have become in Iraq these days that attacks on nearly a dozen mosques over three days qualifies as good news. That's because it could have been so much worse in the wake of this week's bombing of the Shi'ite Askari mosque in Samarra.

When the same shrine was bombed in February 2006, more than 100 Sunni mosques were damaged or destroyed by rampaging Shi'ite mobs in the weeks that followed, and thousands of people from both communities were killed in tit-for-tat attacks. The locus of this violence was Baghdad, the stronghold of Moqtada al-Sadr's Shi'ite militia known as the Mahdi Army. When the carnage began, American troops in and around the Iraqi capital had been mostly in what the military calls "force protection" mode. They were largely confined to their bases and doing relatively little patrolling, instead counting on the newly formed Iraqi Army and police to keep the peace. But Iraqi security forces could only look helplessly on -- and in some instances join in -- as the Mahdi Army began a systematic campaign of sectarian cleansing from mixed neighborhoods. Listen to the Colonel talk about what changed this time, thanks in part to the conference that he organized in Iraq. The first question was from Andrew Lubin of On Point .

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Later on I asked if more of the conferences were planned.

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A way ahead for a committed public action by religious leaders to denounce violence. That beats the alternative, I guess. It just doesn't seem like that will be enough to calm the pull out now crowd in Washington.

The Army is not Breaking - Applying Lynch's Rules of War

One of the most persistent claims is that the Battle in Iraq in the War on Terror is stressing the U.S. Army to the breaking point. That was one of the reasons that Senator Richard Lugar gave in his most recent call for reducing our troop surge in Iraq. His speech on the floor of the Senate outlining his concerns was widely quoted to show that we need to have a new strategy in Iraq, one that pulls our troops back from the front lines and lets the Iraqi's assume more of the war fighting. His key point is that domestic political pressure will force a disastrous withdrawal, unless we find a middle ground between surge and withdrawal. Here is a section of his speech where he, like Jack Murtha before him, talks about breaking the Army. Thanks to the lefties at Americablog for the transcript, and C-SPAN for the audio.

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To a military man, those are fighting words. Picking up the call to battle, I'll play a clip from the end of Major General Rick Lynch's recent press conference from Iraq. General Lynch is in command of Operation Marne Torch, which is the surge in southeastern Baghdad. He was asked what would happen if we pulled back as Lugar recommended. I expected him to back down from the question, but he took it head on.

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He closed his press conference with the following admonition to those like Senator Lugar who say the Army is broken.

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We do have great soldiers. Thank you, general, for that reminder.

That's it for now podcatchers. I'm Charlie Quidnunc reporting from the Passat Studio in hot, hot, hot, Mercer Island, WA.

Here's what I thought you'd like to hear about today:

The Body Armor Story -an Update from the House Armed Services Committee and the Jerk

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A few weeks ago on the podcast I played some clips dealing with the controversy over the body armor that the Army provides to troops in Iraq. The Army tests armor to a standard, and the only type of armor that passes their test is called Interceptor. It's made by several manufacturers who compete for the Department of Defense business. Another firm, Pinnacle Armor, has a different style of body armor they call Dragon Skin. It's a very different design, which some felt might be more effective than the Interceptor. In 2006, the Army tested Dragon Skin, but it failed to stop the bullets they fired at it. I picked up the story in my podcast after NBC News commissioned some tests in Germany to determine if Dragon Skin would be more effective than Interceptor. Their tests showed that it was, but there were questions about the testing methodology of the NBC study. I played clips from the NBC story, and from an Army press conference soon after their story ran, refuting NBC's conclusions.

To try to settle the controversy, the House Armed Services Committee held a hearing on June 6 to allow both sides to present their side of the story. I'm going to play several clips from that. Several key points were made over the four hours of bloviation:Duncan Hunter's Son is fighting in Iraq. He said so about 20 times during the hearing. Thanks for the info, Congressman. We get the point. Thanks for your service. Murray Neal, the CEO of Pinnacle Armor , maker of Dragon Skin, is a jerk. He spent most of his time at the witness table insulting his potential customer, the Army, his paymaster, Congress, and anyone else in a position to help him. The Army is looking for better armor that protects more effectively, is lighter in weight, and more flexible than the current standard, but only if it's better Dragon Skin has repeatedly failed Army tests, weighs 50% more than Interceptor, and is produced by a company that has lied about their certification in the past, is up for disbarment by the Air Force for that lie, but may indeed have a better technological solution that would save lives. Pinnacle thinks that the tests were not fair, that the Army has prejudged them, and they want a special test at a lab not chosen by the Army There was enough smoke at the hearing to obscure almost anything.

That said, there was some nice theater in the four hour hearing. The first two hours were made up of opening statements and questions of the CEO of Pinnacle, Murray Neal, and NBC's expert, Philip Coyle. For the next two hours, the Army was given an opportunity to respond. First up, is Duncan Hunter (R CA) , who's running for President, and who has a son in Iraq. It's a reasonable summary of the issues as he sees them. Just a regular guy who wants the best for the troops.

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Congressman Hunter set up the opening statement of Murry Neal, the CEO of Pinnacle, the maker of Dragon Skin. I'm going to play a few clips where he makes a series of innuendos, suggestions, and claims that the only reason his product has repeatedly failed the Army tests, is that the lab where the testing takes place has a vested interest in making sure Interceptor always passes, and Dragon Skin always fails.

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Notice the claim Mr. Neal is making: The only lab where Dragon skin always fails is the lab where Interceptor always passes. If true it would be a serious indictment of the Army. If false, of Pinnacle. Any evidence? No. Next, he makes another unfounded claim about the Army Soldier Systems Command, Natick, Mass. Listen to this clip.

Play clip.

Oooo. Boogetty boogetty boo. He doesn't know if the Army is deliberately killing American soldiers by keeping his company's product away from the troops. "Approximately the vast majority of its time."

Next up was Philip Coyle. From his biography :From Sept. 29, 1994, through Jan. 20, 2001, Coyle was assistant secretary of defense and director, Operational Test and Evaluation, in the Department of Defense. In this capacity, he was the principal adviser to the secretary of defense on test and evaluation at DOD.
Mr. Coyle starts right out by pissing off the congressman on the Armed Services Committee, by accusing them of being closed minded.

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From this point on, Mr. Coyle, having placed himself firmly out on a limb by accusing the Army of getting it wrong, and NBC getting it right, on the unrelated issue of the Trophy Active Protection System , proceeds to cite the authoritative source of his confidence in the Pinnacle Dragon Skin Products.

Play clip.

Of course, a Wikipedia article is more authoritative than any silly Army test lab. Everyone knows that. And the History Channel? Please. As Little Green Footballs noted today, this network has scheduled a screening of the 9-11 "truthers" favorite polemic, "Loose Change", which attempts to prove that 9-11 was an inside job. Mr. Coyle's has just sawed of the limb onto which he climbed in his earlier testimony.

After the last Army press conference on May 21 , which was covered in a previous podcast , General Mark Brown went through an exhaustive description of the Army testing procedures, and the Dragon Skin failures of those tests. Pinnacle's response at the time, was to issue a press release, which Congressmen Gene Taylor (D Miss,) , took issue with during the hearing on June 6.

Play clip.

During Congressman Taylor's questioning, he asked Mr. Neal, the CEO of Pinnacle, about some Army test results that the Army claimed were "penetrations". A penetration in a body armor test is where the bullet goes through the armor. Mr. Neal's claim is that his Dragon Skin stopped some rounds, while the Army claimed there were penetrations.
He starts out asking Mr. Coyle, and moves to Mr. Neal.

Play clip.

Later on in the hearing, the Army explains these results, in which the x-ray shows something in the armor after the test. I'll cover that later. Meanwhile, Congressman Syder (D Ark), asks Mr. Neal to explain some of the things he said in his prepared remarks, which were not spoken at the hearing, but were submitted for the record.

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What a slime ball this Neal is. Later on, Congressman Hank Johnson, (D GA) asks how sales are going for Mr. Neal.

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As you hear, innuendo goes both ways. Now we have established the motivation of Mr. Neal's actions. Later, Congressman Hunter comes back to probe Mr. Coyle and Neal about the penetration shots and claims about superiority. How many tours has your son done in Iraq, Congressman?

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This exchange gets to the heart of the matter. We have a CEO who knows that his product has failed fair tests, doing his best to obscure or obfuscate these results while claiming his product is superior, and encouraging parents to spend $5000 to buy their sons and daughters his body armor. This is the impression that Mr. Neal left the committee. At the end of the first session, Chariman Ike Skelton (D MO) , closes with an observation.

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What he did there was read a claim by Pinnacle that they were certified 8 months before the certification came through. The next week the Defense department announced an investigation:Air Force Materiel Command recommended Friday that the Air Force bar Pinnacle Armor Inc., the maker of Dragon Skin body armor, from signing new contracts with the U.S. government, CongressDaily reported.

Headquarters Air Force will review the recommendation and decide on a potential ban within several weeks, the report said.

The recommendation comes just days after it was revealed that the Air Force Office of Special Investigations is investigating the California-based manufacturer on allegations that it falsely claimed Dragon Skin vests were certified to a level of protection they did not possess.

The Pentagon gets touchy when you accuse them of something illicit through innuendo and accusation, and then try to make a lot of money by lying about their work.

Next up was the Army to present their side of the story. Duncan Hunter voices his opinion that despite the deplorable behavior and statements by Pinnacle and their CEO, the Army should test Dragon Skin again.

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He is right that there may be some value in the Dragon Skin product. We cannot let their actions prevent us from getting the best technology to the front. One of the things Hunter brought up was the claim by Pinnacle that what the Army called penetration, may have actually been a defeat of the round, and not a penetration at all. Mr. Neal showed pictures of the army x-rays and used those as proof the bullet was still in the armor. There's a picture on the Wizbang Podcast web site of the disputed x-ray, taken from the Army presentation of May 21, 2007. In the picture you can clearly see a dark object in the armor that looks like a bullet. The Army explained that to the Congressman at the hearing in the next clip.

Play clip.

So what you could not see in this podcast was a video the Army showed at the hearing, and I have a picture taken from it on my web site, in which the CEO of Pinnacle observed the testers struggling to dig the bullet out of the clay. Mr. Neal then ignored that fact, looked at the x-ray, and claimed the bullet was still in the armor. Do we really want to do business with a serial liar like Mr. Neal and his company? I would say not. And do you remember his claim that anyone wearing the vest would be fine after what he called a "defeat of the round"? Congressman Taylor asked the Army what they thought of that claim.

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Mr. Neal has shown that he is not be be trusted. But the desire to get the best product into the field to protect our troops is too strong to let that fact get in the way. One way to establish the facts is to have a new test. The Army has an RFP on the street right now to enable contractors to bring forward new ideas in body armor. Lieutenant General N. Ross Thompson was asked about this by Congressman Snyder (D Ark).

Play clip.

So Pinnacle has an opportunity to compete and choses instead to go to the news media to bypass a competitive bid process. They make unfounded accusations of unfairness of tests. They claim that penetrations are not really penetrations, even though they are shown on the video to have seen the penetration with the eyes of their CEO. Through innuendo they lead people to believe that the Army has hidden test results, all in order to sell their product to unsuspecting families of soldiers in harm's way. When all these facts are taken together, one has to wonder what the most appropriate remedy would be for the government. Congressman Jones (R NC) summed up the consensus of the hearing towards the end. He asked the Sargent Major Tom Coleman for the opinion of the troops in the field of the body armor, especially in light of the publicity by NBC news of Pinnacle's claims.

Play clip.

I don't think the pentagon is going to be doing business with Pinnacle any time soon.

That's it for now podcatchers. I'm Charlie Quidnunc reporting for the Wizbang Podcast from chilly and cloudy Mercer Island, WA.