Fourth World War

At last: The Public Diplomacy Reader

2007-08-06T22:32:00.000-04:00

Here's a new resource to help improve the nation's international message-making capabilities: a 500 page storehouse of knowledge and ideas called The Public Diplomacy Reader.

Just published by The Institute of World Politics Press, The Public Diplomacy Reader is a compendium of the most influential, undervalued, important, obscure, memorable and forgotten wisdom on what public diplomacy is all about. There isn't a more diverse collection of public diplomacy works in a single volume.

Designed by a scholar-practitioner in the field - the editor of this blog - The Public Diplomacy Reader is intended both for students and veteran professionals in the areas of public diplomacy, international broadcasting, public relations, public affairs and information operations.

It's already a textbook at the National Defense University in Washington. To order, click here.

The war of ideas: Let's fight it like a real war

2007-07-03T00:53:00.000-04:00

It's been getting a lot of attention in the Pentagon, among our troops in Iraq, in the CIA and in other parts of the US government, and now it's available through Amazon: an immediate-term strategy to win the war of ideas.

My new book, Fighting the War of Ideas like a Real War, offers low-cost, off-the-shelf ways to attack and destroy the enemy through the use of words, images and information in a quick-and-dirty but legal and moral psychological warfare campaign.

There are worse things to do to an Islamist extremist than kill him. This book describes some of those ways.

Here's what Armed Forces Journal recently said about the book:

The playground chant of "sticks and stones" is turned on its head in J. Michael Waller's intriguing book "Fighting the War of Ideas Like a Real War," in which he argues that words, images and messages can, in fact, hurt a lot. And in the terrorism war, these are sorely underused strategic weapons that could be every bit as powerful as the conventional sticks and stones of war we prefer to hurl.

Waller's concise book, published by the Institute of World Politics, where he is a professor of international communications, is at heart a cry for someone, somewhere to step up and lead the fight in the war of ideas. Whether this is a State or Defense Department role, the author remains circumspect.

Waller makes the case that the Islamist terrorist is successfully and without compunction using ferociously anti-American propaganda. Why then are Americans so slow and uneasy to fight like with like? Our idea of the ideas war is that we'll win hearts and minds simply by communicating all the good things about us. Not enough, says Waller. American messages of democracy and friendship get tuned out in the urban street hellhole; we must also start dishing the dirt on our enemies.

The book is packed with action points that could be implemented rapidly and at little cost. We could, for instance, stop feeding the terrorist's self-esteem and confirming his status as a martyr by using the term he selected for himself: jihad. The term "hirabah" has been defined as "killing by stealth and targeting a defenseless victim in a way intended to cause terror in society." This is an Islamic definition of terrorism the West could exploit.

Another strategic weapon could be public ridicule, which is more feared than death; it's destruction without martyrdom. Waller's justification for why ridicule works feels right. "It sticks. The target can't refute it. It gets better with each re-telling." This stuff is so blindingly obvious and seemingly both clever and simple that it begs the question, "Why aren't we already doing this?"

Is it too late to make any difference? Perhaps. But if this guide offers ways that could discredit, divide and ultimately squelch the enemy into a blob of irrelevance, then the debate shouldn't be whether it's too late; the question is how soon can we start?
Get your copy today on Amazon.

Comparative apologies

2007-04-21T22:17:00.000-04:00

It's been interesing to see the difference between Koreans' response to the massacre at Virginia Tech and Muslim and Arab response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Korean-Americans, Korean citizens in America, and the Korean government didn't whine about discrimination, racism and bigotry. They didn't demand special protections. They didn't make excuses.

They apologized. Profusely and profoundly.

And of course, they didn't need to. The psycho kid at Virginia Tech didn't murder in the name of Korea. He wasn't trained to kill by Korean causes. The South Korean government doesn't crank out extremist propaganda that incites young men to murder. No Korean-American activist groups tacitly supported him.

New postings at PoliticalWarfare.org

2007-04-09T23:09:00.000-04:00

I've narrowed my focus to my primary area of work, which is in the political and psychological warfare area, so please visit me at my PoliticalWarfare blog, at www.politicalwarfare.org.

Well-put in Anchorage

2007-02-20T02:05:00.000-05:00

". . . all because an editor at Insight magazine arbitrarily decided to put quotes around it in a 2003 article."

That's a good summary of the origin of the latest false Lincoln quote controversy, written by the "Alaska Ear" columnist for the Anchorage Daily News. The Ear was commenting on Alaska Congressman Don Young's use of the inaccurate quote on the House floor last week.

No deception there. No "fabricated"or "made up" or "fake" quote like some are saying in the blogosphere. Just an editing error and this author's failure to make a timely correction back in 2003. That's carelessness, not fraud. No excuse for it, to be sure. But there was no intent to mislead. For the unadulterated quote, see the post below.

A hanging offense, Part 2

2007-02-16T01:55:00.000-05:00

More controversy erupted this week about the non-quote that's not from President Abraham Lincoln.

It's based on a story I wrote for Insight magazine in December, 2003, in which I quoted from President Lincoln's July, 1863 letter that the Union League distributed as a pamphlet later that year. In the letter, President Lincoln referred to the treasonous acts of a US Congressman, askingwhy a boy who deserts from the army must be shot, while nothing should be done to a "wily agitator" (Rep. Clement L. Vallandigham) "who induces him to desert?"

The implication I drew from the letter was that, if it was legal to execute the boy-deserter, it would be just as legal to mete out the same punishment to the saboteur congressman. I quoted from the original Union League copy of the Lincoln letter:

"Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier-boy who deserts, while I must not touch a hair of a wily agitator who induces him to desert? This is none the less injurious when effected by getting a father, or brother, or friend, into a public meeting, and there working upon his feelings till he is persuaded to write the soldier-boy that he is fighting in a bad cause, for a wicked Administration of a contemptible Government, too weak to arrest and punish him if he shall desert.

"I think that in such a case to silence the agitator and save the boy is not only constitutional, but withal a great mercy."

"His [Vallandigham's] arrest was made because he was laboring, with some effect, to prevent the raising of troops; to encourage desertions from the Army; and to leave the rebellion without an adequate military force to suppress it.

"He was not arrested because he was damaging the political prospects of the Administration, or the personal interests of the commanding general, but because he was damaging the Army, upon the existence and vigor of which the life of the nation depends.

"He was warring upon the military, and this gave the military constitutional jurisdiction to lay hands on him."

In the lead of my story, I began, "Congressmen who willfully take action during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs, and should be arrested, exiled or hanged. That's what President Abraham Lincoln said during the War Between the States."

Kind of to-the-point, but it was my interpretation of the Lincoln quote that was to follow. Problem is, a well-meaning copy editor ran quotation marks around the first sentence, making it appear that I was quoting Lincoln directly saying that saboteur congressmen should be arrested, exiled or hanged.

That's not what I intended to portray. FactCheck.com was the first to call me on it - in August, 2006, nearly three years after the fact. The researcher said that my quote had been used at least 18,000 times on various blogs and websites. It was the first I'd heard of it, and I immediately said that the quote was not real. On returning from vacation, I wrote a correction on FourthWorldWar.com.

I thought that was the end of it until this week, when my friend Frank Gaffney used the quote in his weekly Washington Times column. His editor at the Times alerted him to readers who had pointed out the error, and I related the story to both of them for correction. Gaffney had corrections made immediately on the 20 or so websites that carry his column.

But the story got legs again when Congressman Don Young (R-Alaska) read from the column yesterday on the floor of the House. An Alaska newspaper found the FactCheck.com item and tracked me down. Again, I related the story.

Now others are having fun with it. Today the Washington Post ran a piece about Young, tracing the origin to me (and kindly calling me a "conservative scholar" - as if it labels liberal scholars as thoroughly) but being good-natured about it all.

A spokeswoman for Congressman Young said the lawmaker stands corrected about the Lincoln "quote," but that "he continues to totally agree with the message of the statement." (Good for him!)

Editor & Publisher, which covers the newspaper industry, has written two stories so far: One on February 14 and one on the 15th, blaming the Washington Times for not issuing a correction quickly enough.

Why is the US Army sponsoring Rosie O'Donnell's show?

2007-01-17T11:35:00.000-05:00

Why is the United States Army sponsoring Rosie O'Donnell's diatribes trashing the war against Iranian-backed insurgents and Islamist terrorists?

The Army is spending huge amounts of taxpayer dollars running recruitment ads on the anti-military leviathan's ABC television program, The View.

Why is the Army paying ABC to subsidize O'Donnell's hateful show in the first place?

Furthermore, what self-respecting soldier would want to recruit people who have so little to do in the middle of the day that they can sit around and choose to watch The Blob?

I bet most recruiters would agree. To comment directly to the Army recruiting office, send an email here: GoArmy@usarec.army.mil.

The Baker plan for Iraq: Strategic vision or tactical political dodge?

2006-11-30T09:30:00.000-05:00

Former Secretary of State James Baker is a tough and shrewd political fix-it man whose skills at bureaucratic warfare and media spinning are among the best in the country.

He has a well-earned reputation for grinding down his opponents and dispatching his enemies. He is a gentleman who wields a sharp political dagger. He's pulled many a protruberance from the wringer.

He knows how to fight and he knows how to win.

But counting hanging chads on Florida ballots isn't the same as winning in Iraq. And this is where Baker appears to be falling down. He didn't run the George W. Bush campaign and do what he did in Florida in order to "settle" something. He did it to win.

In domestic politics, James Baker lives and breathes for victory. But as his record as secretary of state shows, he doesn't seem to know the word when fighting battles beyond America's borders. And that has had terrible consequences for the world, which is why his Iraq recommendations are unlikely to be fruitful.

Let's look at the record.

1. Nicaragua - aren't we all sick of it by now? - was a domestic political headache for Baker, both when he was in the Reagan White House and when he was Bush 41's secretary of state. He understandably wanted to wash his hands of Nicaragua when he took over the State Department, and rid President George H. W. Bush of the stink.

So what did he do? He disposed of the problem as if he was taking out the kitchen garbage. He forced the pro-US Nicaraguan Resistance army to disarm unilaterally, but didn't try to make the Sandinista communists do the same. He pledged that the US would support the pro-American fighters as they transitioned into a democratic political process.

What he really did was toss them to the wolves. He did nothing as the Sandinistas picked off more than 120 former contra commanders, assassinating them one by one. He broke America's promise to that small country. Nicaragua remains a basket case, and Hugo Chavez just funded the return of Daniel Ortega to office.

2. Soviet Union. When President Reagan's loyal aides were developing and executing the strategy to undermine the Soviet empire - a policy that became known as the Reagan Doctrine - Baker was fighting his own battles in the White House. Through press leaks and bureaucratic maneuvering, he tried repeatedly to prevent Reagan loyalists from fulfilling the president's agenda, and often succeeded in neutralizing them by damaging their reputations or getting them fired. This is a story that remains to be told in detail.

When he became Secretary of State in 1989, the Soviet Union was collapsing. By the summer of 1991, when it was all over for the Kremlin, Baker tried to keep things together. He didn't encourage the democratic and national independence movements. He didn't even encourage Russian President Boris Yeltsin who was trying to get Russia to secede from the USSR.

He gave the appearance of siding with the leaders of the Soviet Communist Party who were desperately trying to avert a collapse. He was particularly concerned that Ukraine would secede. Witness his involvement in the elder Bush's notorious "Chicken Kiev" speech.

3. Afghanistan. This is arguably the worst of all. As with Nicaragua, Baker wanted to cut off America's Afghan allies as soon as the Soviets pulled out. He got his way when he became secretary of state in January, 1989.

The last Soviet forces pulled out of Afghanistan that February. Ahmad Shah Massoud, leader of the non-Islamist and arguably pro-American Afghan resistance army, warned us repeatedly not to abandon Afghanistan after the Soviet pullout.

To do so, Massoud warned, would leave Afghanistan to the clutches of Pakistan's ISI intelligence service, which was dominated by Islamist extremists who sought to turn Afghanistan into a Wahhabi theocracy. The ISI had diverted significant covert American aid to the fanatical Islamist Afghan guerrilla factions, often at the expense of Massoud's forces. Massoud needed the US to stay involved - and in a big way.

But Baker cut and ran. He closed his eyes as his friends in Saudi Arabia and Qatar bankrolled the Wahhabi warlords and guerrillas, undermining the new government of President Burhanuddin Rabbani, whom Massoud served as defense minister, and setting the stage for the Taliban and, ultimately, nobodies like Osama bin Laden.

Even when the Saudi monarchy's very existence was at stake after Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, Baker failed to leverage American military support on Saudi behavior abroad. (Let's forget for the moment that his own ambassador to Baghdad, April Glaspie, told Saddam to his face something that led him to believe that the US would not defend Kuwait were he to invade.)

After Saddam rightly or wrongly took the cue, Secretary Baker brilliantly organized an after-the-fact international coalition to join the US in repulsing Iraq from Kuwait, but that was all. The administration encouraged Iraq's beleagured Shi'ites to rise up against Saddam, but Baker never had any intention to help them. And, of course, he never had the "vision thing" that would allow a plan to knock off Saddam when the dictator was down.

But he did support the stationing of American troops in Saudi Arabia to defend the House of Saud - the very policy that Osama bin Laden would use to justify his twisted jihad.

This is not 20/20 hindsight. Although almost nobody had ever heard of bin Laden at the time - and one cannot fairly accuse Baker of not having predicted the rise of bin Laden as an individual - others clearly and openly predicted the rise of Islamist extremism, knew about Saudi funding of Wahhabi extremism including among Afghan guerrilla factions, and warned against inflaming devout Muslims by keeping troops in Saudi Arabia, among other things.

James Baker is a gifted politician. But he is a tactician, not a strategist. On international affairs he has shown tactical brilliance but a horrid lack of strategic vision. His timeframe seems to be up to the next domestic presidential election. But his record shows he is content to leave crises to fester for future generations. And that's where he falls down as a statesman.

Senator Biden has interesting plan for Iraq

2006-11-29T11:14:00.000-05:00

Incoming Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden (D-Delaware) has voiced an idea that some of us have been supporting all along: Partition Iraq into three countries.

The American trend toward promoting centralization of other countries isn't always what's best - especially when we (used to) preach federalism at home. Why not let Iraq partition itself into its three natural nations, either as a confederation or as three separate countries?

There are lots of reasons to be against it, as the administration has maintained. But there are good reasons for it, as well. Especially when the Iraqis won't step up to the plate and take the national sovereignty we have been trying to extend them.

Many advocates of a unitary Iraq say that allowing Kurdistan to become independent would cause problems for Turkey, a staunch NATO ally. True enough. But Turkey lost its chance to influence the Iraq outcome by denying us its territory as a northern front in 2003, so we should not be so concerned about Ankara's self-interests when our own are at stake.

Judge Collins hands terrorists another win

2006-11-29T00:54:00.000-05:00

The legal activist group that has been litigating on behalf of terrorists has won another major court victory, thanks once again to US District Judge Audrey Collins.

In a 45-page judgment, Collins reversed her tentative July decision and handed the terrorists another win, ruling that the President does not have the right to identify "specially designated global terrorists" and seize their assets.

"This law [to seize terrorist assets] gave the president unfettered authority to create blacklists," CCR lawyer David Cole tells the Associated Press. "It was reminiscent of the McCarthy era."

The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), which specializes in legal support for terrorists and spies, sponsored the litigation. CCR leader Michael Ratner won the US Supreme Court case to extend constitutional rights to the terrorist detainees being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Most recently, Ratner was in Berlin with disgraced former Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, who was responsible for the Abu Ghraib scandal. Karpinski stood with Ratner on foreign soil to announce that she would be witness in a German legal case alleging that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is a war criminal. (See post below.)

Judge Collins is a favorite go-to girl for the circuit-shopping terrorist supporters. In 2004 and 2005, she struck down sections of the USA Patriot Act.

Gangster regime

2006-11-24T17:34:00.000-05:00

Someone is murdering all the Russian journalists, members of parliament, and former state security officers who have been exposing the corrupt regime of KGB Colonel Vladimir Putin.

When he was Russian state security chief (after being in charge of hard currency operations in St. Petersburg), Putin personally took charge of the investigation of the gangland-style murder of crusading parliament member Galina Starovoitova. The authors of the crime were never found.

Then came the murders of journalists from Novaya Gazeta, one of the only opposition newspapers that Putin could not silence: investigative reporter Igor Domnikov, killed after being attacked on a Russian subway in 2000; editor Yuri Shchekochikhin, a specialist in corruption and the security services who was poisoned in 2003; and Anna Politkovskaya, first poisoned and finally shot to death in 2006.

Domnikov's targets were corrupt governors; his killers were found. The assassins of his two colleagues remain at large.

And now the radiation poisoning of one of the few Russian state security officers to defect to the west because of official corruption.

Putin calls the radiation poisoning of former state security officer Alexander Litvinenko a "pity" and warns that the killing not be used as a "political provocation" against him.

Human Rights Watch tries to save Saddam from justice

2006-11-20T09:54:00.000-05:00

Human Rights Watch is trying to save Saddam Hussein from the hangman.

It thinks the prosecution of the Iraqi former dictator was "unfair" and that excecuting Saddam would be "indefensible."

"The proceedings in the Dujail trial were fundamentally unfair," says Nehal Bhuta, author of a new, 97-page Human Rights Watch report that rips into the prosecution.

"The tribunal squandered an important opportunity to deliver credible justice to the people of Iraq. And its imposition of the death penalty after an unfair trial is indefensible," Bhuta says.

Human Rights Watch is giving its report lots of publicity. While covering itself by saying it has always argued for Saddam to be put on trial, the group is contriving reasons not to execute him. Among the excuses:

1. "The trial failed to meet basic fair trial standards in its first trial."

2. Iraqis are incapable of trying former regime officials on its own: "Unless the Iraqi government allows experienced international judges and lawyers to participate directly, it's unlikely the court can fairly conduct other trials."

3. If Saddam is executed for the relatively few crimes of which he stands convicted, he won't be able to stand trial "for genocide against the Kurds."

4. Executing Saddam Hussein "while other [years-long] trials are ongoing will also deprive many thousands of victims of their day in court."

And oh, yes, there's a fifth excuse: "Human Rights Watch opposes the death penalty as inherently inhumane punishment. . . ."

On its website, Human Rights Watch says the Iraqi "court should overturn verdict [and] death penalty."

Ex-Gen. Karpinski of Abu Ghraib collaborates with terrorist lawyer

2006-11-14T15:51:00.000-05:00

The disgraced former US Army general in charge of Abu Ghraib prison during the prisoner abuse scandal is now collaborating with radical attorneys who specialize in defending terrorists.

Former brigadier general Janis Karpinski is working with terrorist attorney Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights to try Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in a foreign court.

Karpinski and Ratner appeared in Berlin today to announce a suit alleging that Rumsfeld is guilty fo committing war crimes in Iraq.

Ratner is the lead defense attorney for captured terrorists being detained by the US military in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The self-styled "civil rights" activist has spent nearly 40 years in defense of political extremists, assassins, bombers, spies and others in the name of "constitutional rights."

Over the past four decades, Ratner's organization has provided legal defense for US Marine turncoat Clayton Lonetree, who spied for the Soviet KGB; for convicted spies for the intelligence services of Vietnam and Cuba; and for a range of terrorists, including the Weather Underground, Black Liberation Army, FALN and Macheteros of Puerto Rico; the Baader-Meinhof Gang/Red Army Faktion of Germany; and in recent years, Islamist terrorists and their support groups.

Karpinski was demoted to colonel for dereliction of duty, misleading federal investigators, failure to obey a lawful order and shoplifting. She claims that she's a scapegoat.

So now the disgraced former general is now on foreign soil collaborating with the world's most notorious terrorist defense lawyer, allowing herself to be used in a propaganda campaign to discredit the United States and undermine the war on terror.

How the terrorists see American power

2006-11-09T23:54:00.000-05:00

The leader of the terrorist group that killed more than 240 US Marines and blew up our embassy in Beirut says he sees the United States as lacking in will and staying power to maintain a presence in the Middle East.

He says that he remembers vividly from his childhood the TV images of American helicopters fleeing from Saigon, and that he expects the US to repeat itself in the coming years.

Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah told Al Jazeera on October 31: "When I talk about an [American] failure, I'm not saying that the Americans' plan for the region has collapsed, and that they are packing up their things and leaving, like what happened in the final days in Vietnam.

"But I would like to tell you clearly. . . I am one of those people who see a very clear picture. In our childhood . . . When we were young boys . . . I cannot forget the sight of the American forces leaving Vietnam in helicopters, which carried their officers and soldiers.

"Some Vietnamese, who had fought alongside the Americans, tried to climb into these helicopters, but the [Americans] threw them to the ground, abandoned them, and left.

"This is the sight I anticipate in our region, but I am not saying it will happen in months. It will take years. The Americans will gather their belongings and leave this region - the entire region. They have no future whatsoever in our region. They will leave the Middle East, and the Arab and Islamic worlds, like they left Vietnam.

"I advise all those who place their trust in the Americans to learn the lesson of Vietnam, and to learn the lesson of the South Lebanese Army with the Israelis, and to know that when the Americans lose this war – and lose it they will, Allah willing - they will abandon them to their fate, just like they did to all those who placed their trust in them throughout history."

Thanks to MEMRI for providing the translation of the Al Jazeera broadcast.

He took credit then. He must take blame now.

2006-11-08T00:14:00.000-05:00

He justifiably took credit for helping engineer the historic Republican takeover of the House of Representatives more than a decade ago.

But he milked that takeover for business-as-usual cash, bringing in his crooked crony Jack Abramoff and turning the US House into a whorehouse of scandal and greed.

He turned his Wednesday conservative activist group meetings into front operations for Abramoff's sleazy clients. He duped idealistic people and corrupted others to shill for the likes of Enron, Indian gambling empires, and Chinese sweatshop interests.

Most ominously, he teamed up with the Muslim Brotherhood's Abdurahman Alamoudi, who would one day plead guilty to federal terrorism charges, and Sami Al-Arian, a convicted leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. He took money from Alamoudi and Wahhabi interests to undermine the War on Terror. He planted his Islamist friends in sensitive US government posts.

His name is Grover Norquist. In the coming days and weeks, when the pundits point to the GOP scandals surrounding Abramoff, keep in mind that Norquist was Abramoff's enabler, fixer and agent of influence. Norquist indeed helped the Republicans take over the House a half-generation ago. But he helped destroy their achievements in 2006.

Message from Ms Speaker

2006-11-08T00:10:00.000-05:00

Divided conservatives hand victory to Ortega

2006-11-07T10:10:00.000-05:00

Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega never had majority support among fellow Nicaraguans, but due to the country's quirky electoral law, he might become president anyway.

Conservatives Eduardo Montelalegre and Jose Rizo - unable to separate the good of their country from their own egos - split the anti-Ortega majority, apparently enabling the murderous Marxist former junta leader to redeem himself democratically.

Thanks, in large part, to funding from the Chavez regime in Venezuela, massive fraud built into the Nicaraguan political and judicial systems, and the cheerleading of former President Jimmy Carter.

All the returns aren't in, but press reports indicate that Ortega might have won about 40 percent of the vote, with about 32 percent to Montealegre and 24 percent to Rizo. The figures vary widely as the returns are counted and spun.

Nicaragua's spoils-based political system has doomed the country to the permanent status of banana republic.

Typical neocons

2006-11-04T01:37:00.000-05:00

Leave it up to the neocons to stab you in the back when the chips are down.

True to form. I've been there lots of times.

That's about all I'm going to say about it. For now.

Correlation? As US election nears, more US servicemen die

2006-10-19T00:32:00.000-04:00

Is there any relationship between the approaching American congressional elections and the enemy's intensified killing of our servicemen in Iraq?

My bet is that the enemy is exploiting the cut-and-run rhetoric of the bed-wetters in this year's congressional campaign, and that it will ratchet up the killings of American men and women as November 7 nears.

It's one thing in politics and infotainment to differ with how the US is fighting the war in Iraq. That's freedom of speech.

It's another to use rhetoric so carelessly that it plays into the hands of the enemy and gets our people killed. That's treason.

RIP, Ed

2006-10-12T14:44:00.000-04:00

On this day four years ago in Kuta, Bali, Indonesia, Islamist terrorists killed 202 people, including Edward Waller. Ed was employed by Nexis-Lexis in Hong Kong and was a member of the Hong Kong Football Club. Ed was 26 years old. His brother Tom made a short video to remember him.

Not so ronery with Mad Madeleine

2006-10-11T13:33:00.000-04:00

The Dear Leader was thrilled in 2000 to meet for the first time with an American official. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright looks pretty excited, too.

Dave Zucker, the creator of Airplane!, the Naked Gun and Scary Movie, has made a great campaign-season video that sort of features the mad duo. The Republicans are too wimpy to air it. The 90 seconds are well worth the time: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7h3GPc_yMCE.

Look who's visiting Pearl Harbor

2006-10-10T01:05:00.000-04:00

The Chinese Navy destroyer Qingdao (DDG 113) moors at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on September 6, 2006. Not pictured: the Hongzheu (AOR 881), also on what is called "a routine port visit."

Is that Admiral McVadon waving the little red flag?

(Photo courtesy Chris Brown)

Putin's birthday present

2006-10-07T14:03:00.000-04:00

Russian President Vladimir Putin turned 54 on October 7, and he got what for him is a nice birthday present to add to his collection.

One of his few critics still alive in the Russian media, Anna Politkovskaya, was gunned down in her apartment building.

Anna was one of my heroes. She is at least the twelfth journalist critical of Putin to be murdered.

Two of the others - Yuri Shchekochikhin of Literaturnaya Gazeta, who was poisoned; Paul Klebnikov of Forbes magazine, who was shot to death in the street - were my friends. As was State Duma member Galina Starovoitova of St. Petersburg who was murdered in the stairway of her apartment, much as Anna was.

I remember clearly how Putin, a St. Petersburg native who was then Russia's internal security chief, pledged to take personal control of the investigation of Galina's death. The authors of her assassination remain at large.

Two weeks ago, Anna had been poisoned. Her killers succeeded in time for Putin to celebrate his birthday.

Most of Russia's journalists who criticize Putin are either silenced, in exile, or dead. That should tell us something about the nature of Russia's government today.

Russians buy stake in EADS and try to gain control

2006-09-22T09:21:00.000-04:00

The Russian government has become the largest independent shareholder of the European Aeronautical Defense and Space (EADS) company, and it's openly trying to take control of the French-German-Spanish enterprise.

This is bad for a number of reasons: EADS prides itself as a reliable partner with the United States, which it can no longer be if the Russians get in the door; and EADS would be supplying advanced technology and know-how to Moscow's military industries.

EADS is competing to build the Joint Cargo Aircraft (JCA) for the US Army and Air Force in what is reported to be a deal worth tens of billions of dollars. EADS says it wants to have assembly plants in the United States so that it can gain political influence and have a greater say in US defense spending.

According to Flight International, "Russian government officials have said they hope Vneshtorgbank's (VTB) purchase of €950 million ($1.2 billion) in traded shares - equivalent to 5.02% of EADS - could be turned into a blocking stake.

EADS is thrilled with the cash as what its joint chairmen call a "manifestation of interest and confidence in the long-run success of EADS." But they say they won't offer the Russians a seat on the board, and they won't alter the French-German-Spanish government ownership structure.

The Russians aren't likely to settle for a back seat and might try to purchase up to 25 percent of the company. About 30 percent of EADS shares are publicly traded and there is no restriction on who owns them.

"A spokesman for Russia's president Vladimir Putin said the Kremlin wants 'real participation in the control' of EADS as 'a full-rights member of the directors' council' and may try to raise the stake to 25%," according to the report.

As with its sale of C-295 military transport planes to the Chavez regime in Venezuela, EADS has been trying to keep the Russian stock purchase out of the public eye.

EADS wants to break into the Russian airliner market, but it is also trying to get a foothold in the American defense and homeland security sectors. Its choices might be (and should be) irreconcilable.

As Flight International notes, "an increasing Russian-owned stake in EADS will set alarm bells ringing in the USA."

Will Senate let Kofi Annan sabotage a Senate process?

2006-09-21T09:04:00.000-04:00

The US Senate is finding itself in the strange situation of allowing the United Nations to sabotage the confirmation of the American ambassador to the world body.

The Senate is close to setting a precedent to allow the UN Secretary General to sandbag the Senate confirmation of an American ambassador.

Kofi Annan has it out for Ambassador John Bolton, who has been exposing UN inefficiencies, ineffectiveness and corruption and demanding reforms.

Columnist Robert Novak reports today how Senator Lincoln Chafee (R-RI) is playing into Kofi Annan's hands by blocking the Bolton nomination from reaching the Senate floor.

The lead Senate opponent of Bolton is Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT), who's biggest gripe - predictably - is that Bolton opposes Fidel Castro. Throughout his Senate career, Dodd has done more than most to further Castro's goals, helping the Sandinistas, the FMLN guerrillas in El Salvador, and most recently fighting to normalize relations with the dying regime.

The anti-Bolton campaign "can be directly traced to a determined Democratic senator [Dodd] and the vengeful UN Secretariat," Novak reports.

Annan has waged a "stealthy sabotage" campaign against Bolton, "executed by his deputy, Mark Malloch Brown," according to the columnist.

"Bolton's ordeal provides a cautionary tale for any foreign policy conservative who wants to serve his country in Washington. . . . some of Bolton's colleagues in the State Department (where he was an undersecretary in George W. Bush's first term) were backstabbing when the president named him UN envoy. Bolton's overriding defect was his anti-Castro views, which collided with Dodd's goal of 'normalizing' relations with Communist Cuba. Dodd was able to mobilize Democratic colleagues ino a deadlock - creaing demand for execuive branch documents involving Bolton," Novak continues.

Annan's deputy Mark Malloch Brown, at the UN, has been orchestrating a campaign for foreign ambassadors to pressure the Senate to block Bolton.

If the Senate allows that to happen, it will be abdicating its constitutional responsibility. The UN Secretariat will have established a precedent to intervene in Senate deliberations and veto an American president's choice of ambassador.

If the Senate allows the UN to interfere in the constitutional "advise and consent" procedure of confirming ambassadors, it will be opening the door to further UN intervention in American politics.

USA Today blames Pope Benedict for inciting violence

2006-09-17T21:51:00.000-04:00

Some big voices in the US media are losing it. The Muslim Brotherhood has accepted Pope Benedict XVI's apology for having given offense to faithful Muslims (while not retracting his courageous and truthful remarks from September 12), but the atheists who run the New York Times editorial page aren't satisfied.

USA Today is blaming the Pope for the Islamist firebombing of churches in Palestine and the murder of a Catholic nun at a women and children's hospital in Somalia. An Iraqi group called the Pope the "dog of Rome" and threatened to "break your crosses in your home" and send suicide bombers to murder people at the Vatican.

In a September 18 editorial headlined, "Pope's words spark violence," USA Today appeared to urge self-censorship on the part of Western leaders so as not to offend the Islamists.

Oddly and encouragingly, European leaders are lining up behind the Pope. German Chancellor Angela Merkel strongly defended him. And a lot of Muslim leaders out there staying cool about the controversy.

Even the radical Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), fresh with its new coat of moderate rhetorical camouflage, didn't do its typically hysterical rant. Instead, it urged that Catholics and Muslims use the opportunity to have a "dialogue."

The editors of New York's Gray Old Lady and the McPaper just don't seem to get it.

Critic of Pope supports suicide bombers

2006-09-15T10:19:00.000-04:00

One of the first Muslim leaders to denounce Pope Benedict's September 12 speech is a cleric who openly supports terrorist suicide bombers.

Qatar-based Yusuf al Qaradawi, a native of Egypt who is considered the spiritual chief of the Muslim Brotherhood, went on Al Jazeera, ripping into Pope Benedict's comments and demanding an apology to "the Muslim nation."

Previously, al Qaradawi lauded Islamist suicide bombers and exhorted Muslims to kill American troops in Iraq.

Will Islamists validate Pope Benedict?

2006-09-15T07:50:00.000-04:00

How predictable. In an academic speech, the Pope quoted a 14th century Byzantine leader against Muhammad's spreading of religion by violence, and how his life is in danger.

CNN is carrying a Reuters story headlined, "Islam row raises Pope safety fears."

If only Muslim leaders around the world had been as indignant five years ago about 9/11 terrorism in the name of Islam as they are today about the Pope! Perhaps that indignation would have snuffed out Islamist radicalism.

Speaking at the University of Regensburg on September 12, Pope Benedict XVI denounced violence perpetrated in the name of religion, and commented on the practice of forcibly converting people to faiths.

That was enough for Muslim leaders around the world, who - practially without exception, if news coverage is correct - lamented or denounced his comments. Some compared him, predictably, to Hitler.

So far, just like after 9/11, there's no indication of introspection. Just more foaming-at-the-mouth hysteria. Within a day, some church officials were worrying that the hysteria could result in more Islamist attacks on Christian churches around the world, or even an assassination of the Pope himself.

The last papal assassination attempt occurred in 1981 at the hand of Turkish Muslim Mehmet Ali Agca. Religion was not an issue in that attempt.

Pope Benedict went out of his way in his September 12 speech to be respectful of Islam. Concluding his remarks, he said, "the world's profoundly religious cultures see this exclusion of the divine [religiously-motivated violence] from the universality of reason as an attack on their most profound convictions. A reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion into the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures."

Click here for the full prepared text of Pope Benedict's September 12 speech: http://www.cwnews.com/news/viewstory.cfm?recnum=46474.

House plans probe of intelligence support for Chinese spy

2006-09-12T00:55:00.000-04:00

The House Intelligence Committee plans to probe the intelligence community for the alarming level of support extended to convicted Chinese spy Ronald Montaperto.

A veteran Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) officer, Montaperto was convicted recently of improperly handling classified documents and admitted passing secrets to Chinese military intelligence officers. Prosecutors identified Montaperto's offense as espionage, but went after him on lesser charges.

House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Peter Hoekstra says he intends to investigate the level of pro-PRC activity within the US intelligence community. Bill Gertz has uncovered the story in the Washington Times. For more, see my blog RonaldMontaperto.com.

Army policy: Stop scaring terrorists

2006-09-06T13:14:00.000-04:00

Reacting again to criticism of interrogation tactics against captured terrorists, the US Army has issued new guidelines.

Soldiers are now forbidden to scare detainees too much.

According to news reports about the new guidelines, it is now against Army policy to scare terrorists by dunking their heads under water, or by making dogs bark at them.

Meanwhile, the terror suspects at Guantanamo enjoy daily food menus, medical attention above and beyond the norm for US citizen prisoners, free legal representation by Center for Constitutional Rights lawyers bent on liberating them so they can resume their war against America, and other manners of US government pandering.

In the politically correct spirit of excessive transparency, the Army has published the field manual in full. Here's a link to a PDF version: http://www.army.mil/references/FM2-22.3.pdf. Even the terrorists can read it from the Army website.

Australian prime minister singles out Muslim immigrants. Good for him!

2006-09-02T01:48:00.000-04:00

Australian Prime Minister John Howard isn't shy about demanding that immigrants become good citizens. His following comments on a recent radio interview have sparked threats of riots and other forms of violence from certain Muslim quarters in his country:

On the need to integrate into society and speak English

". . . what I want to do is to reinforce the need for everybody who comes to this country to fully integrate and fully integrating means accepting Australian values, it means learning as rapidly as you can the English language, if you don’t already speak it, and it means understanding that in certain areas, such as the equality of men and women, the societies that some people have left were not as contemporary and as progressive as ours is."

On the need to treat women well

"And I think people who come from societies where women are treated in an inferior fashion have to learn very quickly that that is not the case in Australia. That men and women do have equality and they’re each entitled to full respect. I think Australia has benefited enormously from immigration."

On phony discrimination claims

"Most of the Islamic people I know are as appalled by the attitude of a small minority as you are and I am. But there are some who see appeals for people to fully integrate into the Australian community, they try and turn that into some kind of act of discrimination against them and I think that’s the sort of thing that [the questioner] is reacting against and she’s quite right to do so."

Australian Muslim groups reacted predictably to Howard's comments.

Truth-telling from a rising Australian leader

2006-09-02T00:56:00.000-04:00

Watch Australian Treasurer Peter Costello, heir apparent to Prime Minister John Howard. Here's what he said about Muslim immigrants in a November, 2005 interview. The comments are from Costello's official Website:

On tension in society

". . . when you see people that are being picked up in raids in our major capital cities, being charged with terrorist offences you realise that these are dangerous times, that there are threats that are facing innocent Australians and you realise that we as a community have to be on our guard. It is something that we will have to live with, we may have to live with for a while. But it is much better to take preventative action than to have to deal with the consequences afterwards."

On immigrants who promote Sharia law

". . . there are some things Australia stands for, has always stood for, always will stand for which will never change. We will never be an Islamic State. We will never observe Sharia Law. We have a Constitution. The Constitution means that Australia has a civil state, that the laws are made by elected representatives. We will always be a democracy and to people who say, well we have come to this country and we would like to turn it into something that it isn’t, I say, you must understand, that will never occur."

On civic principles

"There are certain core Constitutional things that Australia stands for, always will and expects all of its citizens to accept. And that is a civil government with parliamentary democracy, with democratic law making, with equality between men and women and if you’re someone that doesn’t like those principles then Australia may not be the best place for you. . . ."

On immigrants seeking to impose Islamic ways

". . . if you want to live in an Islamic republic there are countries around the world that are Islamic republics, you might be happier in those countries than you will be in Australia."

On immigrants' loyalty to their new country

". . . And the point I make also is people who come to Australia as immigrants and become Australian citizens, they take an oath to this country and that means something. That means your loyalty is to this country, its democratic values, you pledge an oath to observe those democratic values and I think it is incumbent upon us in Government to say to those people we mean it and we expect them to mean it as well."

On delivering the message

"I don’t think we ought to mix our messages, I think we ought to be very clear and very direct. There are things that Australia stands for and if you want to be an Australian you are expected to believe in those things as well."

On dual citizenship

". . . people who are dual citizens, who are an Australian citizen and an a citizen of another country as well, if they are not happy with Australia it might be better for them to live in the country where they are also a citizen. See, it is a funny thing, isn’t it, to say well I want to live in this country but I am just opposed to everything that happens or I am opposed to its system of government. If you really are opposed to everything that happens or its system of government then why not go to the country where you also hold citizenship? You might be happier there, that is my point. Rather than say I would like to change everything about Australia, everything that it stands for, maybe the problem doesn’t lie with the country; maybe it lies with the individual."

On Muslim immigrants seeking to force change

". . . I think it is time for the Australian Government to speak clearly and to make this point and to make it to any person who has the view that somehow they can change Australia into something which it will never be, and it won’t happen. And they ought to understand that and would-be migrants ought to understand that as well and I think the time has come for plain speaking. That is what I am engaging in."

On extremist immigrants ruining the majority

". . . of course most Muslim Australians are here because they actually respect civil state, they respect parliamentary democracies, that is why they came here. And anyone who respects those things is very welcome to come here. It is the people who come here and want to take advantage of that and then change it or abolish it that I am speaking to. It won’t be abolished, we have a Constitution, it won’t change, if you don’t like the way Australia is run, if you don’t like a civil state then you are not going to like Australia. That is my point. But if you do and you do want to take advantage of it, of course you are welcome here, very welcome here, like millions of other migrants that have come to Australia."

On need for 'moderate' Muslims to speak out

". . . moderate Muslim leaders have a very big role to play here as well. I think when they speak unambiguously and clearly renouncing terrorism, warning that those people who are engaging in terrorism are not true followers of Islam, that they are following a perverted ideology. When they speak like that they are a very, very big part of the solution of the security for Australia. And I would warmly welcome moderate Muslim leaders speaking out in an unambiguous and uncompromising way."

On tolerance

"There is plenty of room in Australia for different fashion and plenty of room for different ways of standard of living. But there is no room for people who don’t accept what Australia stands for. Parliamentary democracy, the rule of law, equality of people, civil state, that is where there is no room for compromise. How you look, what you eat, various ways bloom here but let’s be very clear about the most important things about Australia and what it stands for."

A hanging offense

2006-08-31T16:13:00.000-04:00

The people at Annenberg Political Fact Check brought to my attention a mistake in an article I wrote for Insight magazine nearly three years ago.

My article began with this sentence: "Congressmen who willfully take action during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs, and should be arrested, exiled or hanged." I wrote those words. But I never said they were a Lincoln quote. A copy editor inserted quotation marks around them to make the sentence look like it had been said by President Abraham Lincoln.

I'm sure the editor thought he was trying to correct what he thought was poor punctuation. The fact is, President Lincoln never said it, and I never claimed the words were his.

When I saw the quotation marks in print, I asked a senior editor to insert a clarification in the next issue of the magazine and on the website. He never did. I unwisely failed to push the matter and went on, thinking that the magazine wasn't widely read anyway.

That was a bad move, and I should have pressed for a correction. I didn't receive any feedback at all until just over a week ago while on vacation, when Brooks Jackson at FactCheck.org contacted me about it. A candidate running against Rep. John Murtha (D-Penn.) had used the quote thinking it was real, Jackson said. So did thousands of others. Jackson told me that he found 18,000 references to the so-called quote on the Internet.

My sentence, I thought at the time, was a vivid way of summarizing what President Lincoln had said about congressmen who sabotaged the Union during the Civil War. (One of my editors, a southerner in spirit, changed my "Civil War" reference to "War Between the States." I'm from New England and have always called it the "Civil War.")

FactCheck.org researched the question with Lincoln scholars and searched Lincoln's works in an electronic database. It pointed out a factual error I had made. But FactCheck.org also made a factual error of its own by stating inaccurately that I had said that an individual had been hanged for his anti-war activism. FactCheck.org's words follow:

When we contacted Waller he said we were the first to ask him about it. He readily conceded that the quote is bogus and blamed the matter on editors at Insight magazine. Here is the pertinent portion of his reply, in full, to our emailed inquiry:

J. Michael Waller: Thank you for giving me the opportunity to correct this important issue. The supposed quote in question is not a quote at all, and I never intended it to be construed as one. It was my lead sentence in the article that a copy editor mistakenly turned into a quote by incorrectly inserting quotation marks.
Additionally, I filed my story with the lead sentence ending in the words 'Civil War,' which my southern editor switched to 'War Between the States.'

Oddly, you are the first to question me about this. I'm surprised it has been repeated as often as you say. My editors at the time didn't think it was necessary to run a correction in the following issue of the magazine, and to my knowledge we received no public comment. The magazine is no longer being published.

Again, thank you for asking about this and for providing the opportunity to correct it.

We followed up by contacting Insight's former managing editor Scott Stanley. He denied putting quote marks in Waller's copy, but said such a thing might have been done by one of six "formatting editors" at the publication, who sometimes "took liberties" with the copy. "I know Waller well enough to know that if Waller said it, he did," Stanley said. He said Waller might have put the phrase in italics, and that a formatting editor might have changed it to a direct quote by mistake, following an Insight policy of not opening a story with italicized quotes. "My guess is that somewhere along the line, somebody played with it thinking they were doing the right thing," Stanley said.

FactCheck.org also reported that I made errors of historical fact in the article. I used reprint of a letter by Abraham Lincoln from June 1863, and quoted directly from it for the article. That quote, in my view, satisfies my controversial summary.

I wrote in a note to readers at the articles conclusion: "Given the recent controversy about the authenticity of quotations attributed to President Abraham Lincoln, Insight went directly to the primary source for the presidential statements about how to deal with congressmen who sabotage the war effort. This reporter found the quotes in a June 1863 letter that President Lincoln wrote, published that year in pamphlet form as 'The Truth from an Honest Man: The Letter of the President,' by King & Baird Printers in Philadelphia and distributed by the Union League."

FactCheck.org says that I made a "vital error" in stating that Indiana lawyer-politician Lambdin Milligan, a Copperhead agitator sentenced to hang, was a member of Congress. The source I used identified Milligan as a congressman, but in re-checking today I find no other reference. FactCheck says a federal directory of former congressman shows no member by that name.

I take the point, but must note that FactCheck is flat wrong says that I wrote that Milligan was hanged. I said no such thing. I wrote that he (1) "awaited the gallows," (2) that a military commission "sentenced him to be hanged on May 19, 1865," and (3) quoted Judge Williams as saying that Milligan had been "condemned to hang." Lincoln was assassinated and the war was over before the execution date, and Milligan was not hanged.

Fake I.D.

2006-08-28T13:33:00.000-04:00

Will driver's licenses packed with biometric data really make the country a safer place? Some national security figures think so, and the industry, seeing billions of dollars worth of opportunities, is pushing it hard.

But it's a phony solution to a real problem. Government-issued personal ID cards with the most private of information - fingerprints, retina scans and other unique bodily data - are just a fig leaf to make the public look like those in charge are actually keeping the country safe.

They are almost worthless as long as the federal government continues to let millions of illegal aliens enter the country without any documents.

They are almost worthless as long as federal and state governments accept foreign ID cards for illegal aliens to substitute for legal documents.

They are almost worthless as long as our leaders allow millions of illegal aliens to remain in the country, even when many if not most have been using counterfeit IDs or other false information.

They are almost worthless as long as the government turns a blind eye toward crooked federal employees in the Social Security Administration and elsewhere who routinely issue fake Social Security numbers and real Social Security Cards for illegal aliens.

Biometric cards are almost worthless as long as the government continues to appoint known Islamist sympathizers to key intelligence and security posts in government agencies (including the Department of Homeland Security.

To say nothing of criminal negligence throughout government agencies where personal information on millions of citizens is stored on laptops and other portable devices that can be - and have been - easily lost or stolen.

Et cetera.

Recycled propaganda

2006-08-02T22:03:00.000-04:00

Watching how the nation's "newspapers of record" are covering Fidel Castro's health, I'm reminded again of the precipitous decline of American journalism.

The New York Times and Washington Post are uncritically feeding us the controlled propaganda of the Cuban Communist Party as if it was news.

Compare the Castro coverage with how they have covered the health problems of Vice President Dick Cheney, treating White House statements of the veep's heart condition with all the appropriate skepticism and then some.

The Washington Post story on the afternoon of August 2 ran with the headline, "Cuban Media Suggests Castro is Doing Well."

The New York Times' lead story repeated the unsubstantiated Cuban claim that Castro's condition was "stable."

An Associated Press story began with the lead, "Fidel Castro still appeared to be running the show in Cuba." Its sole sources were Cuban Communist Party publications and regime officials.

Even the Voice of America acted like a mouthpiece of the Cuban regime. A VOA item headlined, "Castro Said to be in Stable Condition" began with a reprint of a Cuban government communique. VOA's supposed biography of Raul Castro contained nothing that would offend Cuban government censors, even crediting the younger Castro with being behind the regime's economic reforms.

After Fidel

2006-08-02T11:28:00.000-04:00

Fidel Castro's health - or lack thereof - is officially a "state secret," Cuban government officials say, leading one to conclude that the tropical generalissimo is not doing very well.

Even if the New York Times tells us in a front-page headline that Fidel's condition is "stable."

Brother Raul is in the comandante's chair, as has been the transition plan since 1959. "I do it not because he is my brother - the whole world knows how much we hate nepotism - but because on my honor I consider him to have sufficient qualities to replace me tomorrow in case I die in this struggle," Fidel said the month he took power.

The Castro brothers made sure that all the others with sufficient qualities, such as General Arnaldo Ochoa Sanchez found their lives ended prematurely.

This brings us to a key point about the anticipated post-Fidel transition, a point that nearly all the media coverage of Raul manages to miss.

In addition to controlling the military, the intelligence services, other state entities, and an empire of hard currency business operations, Raul Castro controls the ruthless East German-trained secret police. And with it, he dominates what passes for a judicial system on the island.

No post-Fidel government can be legitimate with such Stasi-like machinery (and personnel) in place.

Any transition plan for Cuba must confront the legacy of the secret police: how to undermine it, how to break it up, and what to do with the archives and informant networks.

Those working Cuba should take lessons from the Soviet and East European transitions. The Czech Republic, Estonia and the former East Germany offer some of the best examples. Russia and Nicaragua offer the worst.

For in-depth discussion of historical examples, see Dismantling Tyranny: Transitioning Beyond Totalitarian Regimes the book that Ilan Berman and I edited at the American Foreign Policy Council.

Without uprooting the secret police system immediately, any transition will take decades.

["The Great Reunion" graphic courtesy of PeoplesCube.com.]

EADS CASA and its Joint Chavez Aircraft

2006-07-31T01:00:00.000-04:00

What a pathetic sight: lobbyists of a NATO ally apparently lying to congressional staff about their company's supply of military aircraft to Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez.

My sources on Capitol Hill say that lobbyists for the European aerospace manufacturer EADS have misled congressional staffers who voiced concern about the company's $600 million sale of CN-235 maritime patrol planes and C-295 military troop transport and cargo planes to Chavez.

The lobbyists have insisted that the sale won't go through, but the Venezuelans insist otherwise, as I report on Venezuelastan.com.

Somebody's lying. And I think it's the lobbyists for EADS and the EADS CASA consortium that manufactures the planes - and is trying to sell the same aircraft to the Pentagon as the Joint Cargo Aircraft (JCA).

Some cyberwags have made the above cartoon of EADS North America CEO Ralph Crosby - one of the lobbyists who's been trying to run away from the Venezuela issue - and Hugo Chavez. They have other satirical artworks on TeamJCA.org.

As before, I think Congress should ban any funding to EADS CASA for its circumvention of US nonproliferation law and its breaking of the US military embargo against the Chavez regime.

Even if the deal falls through, EADS CASA and other foreign military suppliers need to learn a lesson that if they expect to profit from business with the United States, they'd better choose who's side they're on.

Israel: Finish the job quickly or lose

2006-07-25T08:51:00.000-04:00

The terrorists will win if Israel's operation in Lebanon against Hezbollah becomes drawn out.

That's probably calculated into Hezbollah's strategy. There can be no finer method of inflaming Arabs and Muslims - thus generating more extremists for terrorists to recruit - than a protracted Israeli campaign.

With talk of another long-term presence in Lebanon, it looks like the Israelis don't get it.

The effects on Israel could be catastrophic. The US-Israeli friendship (it is not an alliance, because there is no mutual defense treaty) could stretch to the breaking point if a protracted conflict draws the United States into choosing between its support for Israel and the success of the war in Iraq.

While right now Iraq, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and others are more fearful of Hezbollah than they are of the Israelis, Hezbollah has become a popular David against what Arabs see as an Israeli Goliath, and the group's underdog image will help recruit a new generation of terrorists under the sponsorship of Iran. A drawn-out conflict could dissolve US support.

So if Israel is serious about destroying Hezbollah - and about fighting fourth generation warfare in general - it must hurry up and get the job over with, and not fall into the trap of peace processes and international troop presences in Lebanon.

Such things seldom end conflicts. They only postpone them. If Israel doesn't finish the job quickly, it - and westward-looking Arab governments, to the extent that they exist - will lose.

A big Caribbean screw-up

2006-07-12T14:36:00.000-04:00

Like a drunken tourist on a Caribbean cruise, the United States excels at making itself unwelcome.

Amazingly, the US can no longer exert the influence it once did in the tiny Caribbean island nations.

While the focus has been on Arab and Islamic parts of the world, the administration has cooked up failure after failure in the American hemisphere (we can start with how it let Chavez off the hook when it could have made a difference).

Last week, the US lost the support of all 15 member states of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), which voted to support the Chavez regime in Venezuela as the region's rotating member on the United Nations Security Council.

This is another diplomatic disaster for the US, which had backed Guatemala, in the Americas. It seems as though everything the United States touches turns to mierda.

Jamaica's main newspaper, the centrist Daily Gleaner, isn't pro-Chavez and certainly values the United States. However, in a recent editorial, it said that Venezuela's petropolitics weren't the only reason why the 15 Caribbean states backed Chavez over democratic Guatemala.

The administration would have been wise to listen to our Jamaican friends.

The pro-Chavez vote, the Gleaner said in its July 12 editorial, "has to do with more than the concessionary PetroCaribe oil agreement provided by Venezuela.

"The region does not see Guatemala as a natural ally. Guatemala has, in the past, pursued with great hostility its claim to all of Belize, the English-speaking CARICOM member in Central America. It behaved in the same fashion at the World rade Organisation against the preferential access to the region's bananas in the European Union's market. The ruling in its favour is disastrous to some Caribbean economies. Guatemala's social policies also do not sit well with the Caribbean.

"While Venezuela maintains a claim to two-thirds of Guyana it has not pursued the claim with the same hostility, even extending the PetroCaribe benefits to Georgetown [Guyana]. Indeed, Venezuela is seen as a reliable partner.

"It is important for Jamaica and other CARICOM governments to explain to the US what it already knows in the realm of foreign policy: that support for Venezuela does not weaken respect for the US and ought not to weaken the deep, underlying relationship."

Bush's nuclear deal with Russia is a bad idea. Congress should kill it.

2006-07-10T01:09:00.000-04:00

It looks and sounds like another bad idea from the Bill Clinton-Strobe Talbott playbook: send our spent nuclear fuel to Russia and pay the Russians billions of dollars to store it.

And do it pre-emptively, demanding nothing in return.

That Clintonian logic is all the rage in the State Department right now, where Under Secretary for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns seems to be calling the shots for Russia.

Burns, the robust-looking man of steel appearing in the photo, was the Russia guy on Clinton’s National Security Council, ran aid for the former Soviet Union in the Clinton State Department, and flacked for the slavishly pro-Kremlin policies of Clinton’s Deputy Secretary of State, Strobe Talbott.

Sunday’s Washington Post reports that the Bush Administration wants to give Russia billions of dollars to store American and other spent nuclear fuel. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the administration isn’t demanding anything up front in return. Even worse, senior US officials are merely hoping that the prospect might incentivize Russia to stop supplying Iran’s nuclear program.

This is a preposterous idea hatched by a latter-day Alger Hiss. If the White House and Pentagon don’t kill this thing, Congress should. And quickly, before it develops a life of its own.

Ambassador: Burns helped Belarus dictator seize power

2006-07-10T00:41:00.000-04:00

As a National Security Council staffer in the early Clinton administration, Nick Burns improperly served as a conduit for hard-line Belarus dictator Aleksandr Lukashenko (pictured), and pushed policies that helped the dictator seize power and crush the democracy movement.

So wrote Ambassador David H. Swartz, who resigned in protest of Burns' actions and wrote an essay published in the June 3, 1997 Washington Times exposing what Burns did.

Swartz stated that Burns "materially facilitated the current state of affairs in Belarus through numerous policy sins of commission and omission." The worst centered around President Bill Clinton's 1994 visit to Belarus that helped the communists kill the chances of the pro-western democracy movement.

As I reported in 1997, "So disastrous was the administration's planning of Clinton's January 1994 trip to Minsk that reform-minded Chief of State Stanislau Shushkevich told Swartz, 'Your president will be here only a few hours, then go on his way. I will be left to pick up the pieces and my enemies will make quick work of me.' Two weeks after the Clinton visit, Shushkevich was indeed ousted in a 'quasi-putsch' led by Lukashenko. Swartz quit his 28-year diplomatic career in protest of Clinton policy that very month."

Flashback: Nick Burns assailed reporter for exposing Russian nuke bunker

2006-07-09T23:57:00.000-04:00

Nick Burns, the State Department official behind the plan to pay billions of dollars Russia to accept the world's spent nuclear fuel, has a history of covering up for the Kremlin.

During the Clinton administration, Burns, as State Department spokesman, sold the public on Strobe Talbott's chekaphilic policy toward Russia.

Burns also tried to cover up for Russian misdeeds.

In April 1997, when news emerged that Russia was building massive fortified nuclear command centers at Yamantau Mountain and Kosvinsky Mountain, State Department Spokesman Burns ducked reporters questions and assailed the integrity of the reporter who broke the story.

The Pentagon, on the other hand, confirmed that the story was true. It even released data, such as the map accompanying this posting, to substantiate the report.

A check of the transcript of Burns' press briefing shows he attacked Washington Times reporter Bill Gertz for revealing the bunker program.

Asked to comment on the story, Burns responded, "You know, I was gone for eight days, and I thought maybe I'd come back and things would be different. But they're not different. I find Mr. Gertz spends most of his time collecting alleged intelligence reports and then regurgitating them on the pages of his newspaper. And, frankly, there ought to be - I mean, most journalists in this city, including, I think, everybody in this room, do their job in a very different way. You go out and do your own research, you talk to people. You go out and you work hard, and you sweat to get your stories. Clearly their must be another way of reporting on the US-Russian relationship than leaking alleged intelligence documents. So I don't think I'll give it the time of day, frankly. (Laughter.) Except to just sound off again against the modus operandi of Mr. Gertz."

Note to Gitmo authorities: Top lawyers for detainees are part of terrorist network. Treat them as such.

2006-07-08T12:50:00.000-04:00

In addition to giving the terrorists at Guantanamo special dietary menus, regular medical checkups, special religious privileges and other luxuries, US officials also let the terrorists keep documents in their cells. Now - surprise! - they learned that the enemy is using the documents to further their cause.

Authorities at the US military's terrorist detention facilitity at Gitmo have discovered that detainees "were using confidential lawyer-client papers and envelopes to pass handwritten notes their guards could not intercept," according to the Washington Post.

This should not surprise us. Read on.

"Detainees could apparently hide documents in their cells -- including instructions on how to tie knots and a classified U.S. military memo regarding cell locations of detainees and camp operational matters at Guantanamo -- by keeping the materials in envelopes labeled as lawyer-client communications," the Post reports.

"Notes that investigators found after the suicides on June 10 were apparently written on the back of notepaper stamped 'Attorney Client Privilege,' which allowed detainees to communicate secretly without interference, according to government officials."

And our guys at Gitmo didn't see this coming? The network of lawyers aiding the detainees has a rap sheet going back decades that includes using attorney-client privilege as a means of promoting terrorist causes.

The main group is the Center for Constitutional Rights, cited in the Post article. The CCR was created almost 40 years ago to keep armed radicals and other terrorists "in the streets," in the words of its late founder, William Kunstler. Kunstler's protege, Michael Ratner (pictured), runs the CCR today. Ratner is part of the terrorists' legal support network.

Ratner's colleague, Lynne Stewart, is now in federal prison for abusing attorney-client privilege in support of her client, terrorist Sheik Abdel Rahman of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Rahman was the spiritual leader behind the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York. Among other things, Stewart was found guilty of acting as a courier between the imprisoned sheik and his terrorist followers.

The CCR denounced the verdict against Stewart, effectively defending her right to serve as part of a terrorist operation.

Another is one of Stewart's lawyers, Susan Tipograph. When she isn't doing legal work for the "poor and oppressed," she's helping terrorists. Tipograph was found to have helped Puerto Rican terrorist bomber William Morales escape from prison by abusing the attorney-client privilege.

So there's probably a lot more to the Guantanamo work of CCR and other terrorist attorneys than pure legal defense.

In February, 2005, FourthWorldWar.com ran an item urging the feds to investigate the Center for Constitutional Rights as a terrorist support operation. Here's another chance for them to start, if they haven't done so already.

Click here for our 2004 item on Ratner and the Center for Constitutional Rights.

Click here for David Horowitz's article, "COINTELPRO's Overdue Return."

EADS CASA: Supplier to third world dictators

2006-07-07T19:37:00.000-04:00

EADS CASA, the European aircraft manufacturer that wants to become a big-time Pentagon contractor, continues with its underhanded sale of military aircraft to Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez.

While aiding Chavez over the strongest of US objections - to the point of ignoring highest-level national security concerns and circumventing US export control laws - EADS CASA is sending its lobbyists around Capitol Hill to tell lawmakers what a reliable partner it would be for the Coast Guard, Army and Air Force.

EADS CASA is shooting for the multibillion-dollar Joint Cargo Aircraft (JCA) contract. Lawmakers should send the sleazy lobbyists packing with the message that they can sell to Chavez or sell to Uncle Sam, but that they can't do both.

For more, see my blog Venezuelastan.

Social responsibility in the Second World War

2006-07-06T13:35:00.000-04:00

1942

Social responsibility today

2006-07-06T13:33:00.000-04:00

Courtesy DPS.

NYT exposing Rumsfeld's home address? Two can play that game.

2006-07-02T21:42:00.000-04:00

Here's the latest outrage from the New York Times: A story by Peter T. Kilborn exposing the locations of the private homes of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow and others.

Disguising his exposé as a feature story about the rich and famous in the Chesapeake Bay town of St. Michaels, Maryland, Kilborn names and describes the remote roads that Rumsfeld and Cheney use to reach their weekend retreats, exposes how their homes "are hidden down two-lane roads with cunning yellow signs on utility poles that say, menacingly and untruthfully, 'No Outlet,'" and gives the names of Rumsfeld's house and its location next to a named creek.

Accompanying the story is a photograph by Linda Spillers of Rumsfeld's driveway, showing the house at the end of the lane and a birdhouse at the front gate. Kilborn carefully reports that the birdhouse contains a security camera, and the copy editors point it out again in the photo caption.

Well, a big New York Times reporter is as much a public figure as a political leader. So if it's in the public interest to publish the exact locations where Rumsfeld and Cheney spend their private weekends, it's also in the public interest to show where the reporter lives.

Maybe somebody could do a feature of the rich and famous of hoity-toity Chevy Chase, Maryland, where Peter T. Kilborn lives. His house is just three blocks south of the exclusive Chevy Chase Country Club at 4007 Oliver Street, Chevy Chase, Maryland 20815. Good manners prevent this blog from publishing his phone numbers.

USA v. Montaperto: New blog posts treason documents

2006-06-27T21:57:00.000-04:00

Documents pertaining to the treason of Ronald Montaperto, the influential China scholar and intelligence analyst who passed national security secrets to Beijing and discredited skeptics of the PRC, appear on a new blog.

The blog, "Montaperto the Chinese Spy," is located at www.RonaldMontaperto.com.

The new website, posted by this blogger, contains the eight-page federal "Statement of Facts" by federal prosecutors in United States of America v. Ronald N. Montaperto, Criminal No. 1:06cr257.

Montaperto agreed to plead guilty to a lesser crime than espionage, and to cooperate in a federal counterintelligence investigation. However, as Bill Gertz reports in the Washington Times and as the "Statement of Facts" explains, the real crime is far more serious.

Instead of trying to get to the bottom of the matter, Montaperto's friends and partisans are trying to cover it up.

FourthWorldWar has learned that certain Bush administration officials, including a National Security Council staffer, called prominent news organizations after the Gertz scoop in an apparently successful bid to spike the story.

Watch RonaldMontaperto.com for more.

Traitor: Ronald Montaperto, dean of military intelligence analysis on China, unmasked as spy

2006-06-23T18:23:00.000-04:00

One of the most influential intellectual shapers of US military intelligence analysis on China, Ronald Montaperto, has been unmasked as a Chinese spy.

"A Pentagon official said Montaperto's value to China included both the secrets he shared and his role facilitating Chinese deception of U.S. intelligence by providing feedback on how those efforts were working," Bill Gertz reports in the Washington Times.

"A senior U.S. intelligence official bluntly stated, 'He was a spy for China.'"

A DIA analyst since 1981, Montaperto became dean of the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies at the Pacific Command in Hawaii, under the wing of soft-line Marine Lt. Gen. Hank Stackpole (Ret).

"Montaperto also was part of an influential group of pro-China academics and officials in the US policy and intelligence community who share similar benign views of China. The group, dubbed the Red Team by critics, harshly criticizes anyone who raises questions about the threat posed by Beijing's communist regime," according to Gertz.

Montaperto was responsible for years of faulty intelligence analysis concerning China, and brought dozens of sinologists into the system. As with the case of Ana Belen Montes, the DIA Latin America analyist who was convicted as a Cuban spy, Montaperto influenced his underlings, recruited new people into the system, and tried to damage or destroy the careers of professionals who saw Beijing as a military threat.

The DIA must purge itself of Montaperto's proteges, and conduct a damage assessment of how much the traitor compromised the intellectual and professional integrity of other sinologists in the intelligence community.

Chinese spy trashed 'Blue Team' skeptics

2006-06-23T18:13:00.000-04:00

Ronald Montaperto, the veteran Defense Intelligence Agency officer who spied for communist China, also served as an agent of influence to destroy the credibility of scholars and policymakers who saw the PRC as a threat to national security.

As a member of the Blue Team that follows Beijing's military and intelligence operations, this blogger saw firsthand how Montaperto would malign the arguments, presentations, facts, credibility and integrity of US intelligence officers and mid-level officials who warned of PRC intentions and capabilities.

Montaperto was so pro-Beijing that Blue Team members half-joked among themselves that if he wasn't a recruited agent of the PRC, he at least acted like one.

Let's not inflate the image of Zarqawi's successor

2006-06-20T17:26:00.000-04:00

The US would be smart not to inflate the image of the new leader of al Qaeda in Iraq as it did for his dead predessor, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

From the White House on down, American leaders gave Zarqawi priceless prestige as the archenemy of the United States and personal rival of the President of the United States. They did so by incessantly naming Zarqawi by name.

In this blogger's view, they helped make Zarqawi a more powerful terrorist, especially as he was able, for years, to elude US and Coalition forces and achieve, for a while, mythic status.

Zarqawi's successor, reportedly an Egyptian, should receive no such image-enhancement from Uncle Sam.

US officials should deny him his identity. They should refer only to the "terrorists" or the "enemy," and not to a named individual or group. The names of enemy figures should never cross the lips of American leaders.

(President Bush and Karl Rove ought to know this instinctively. Bush tried not to mention Senator John Kerry's name during the 2004 campaign to deny Kerry credibility as a personal political rival. Somehow, the White House can't apply the same logic to our nation's mortal enemies.)

Momentum: Banning Chavez military suppliers from US contracts

2006-06-16T23:52:00.000-04:00

This blogger's idea to ban Hugo Chavez's military suppliers from competing for US government contracts is catching on.

Here are some developments since FourthWorldWar's May 3 posting that called for preventing foreign defense contractors from major US defense programs if they help America's adversaries.

* May 17: The Center for Security Policy ran a Decision Brief, "Venezuela Arms Embargo Should Be Part of Bush Doctrine," endorsing the approach.

* May 22: The Providence Journal, hometown newspaper of a member of the US Senate Western Hemisphere Affairs Subcommittee, ran this blogger's op-ed that outlined how the Spanish government and EADS CASA set out to ignore US security concerns in order to sell military cargo planes to Chaveaz.

* May 24: Scripps Howard News Service syndicated the piece, which appeared in at least 12 other newspapers.

* May 25: Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ), Chairman of the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security, circulated a "Dear Colleague" letter explicitly citing EADS CASA for endangering US national security by selling warplanes to Chavez. The letter said, "This case underscores the need to establish a comprehensive policy that holds foreign military suppliers accountable for cooperating with hostile regimes that compromise US security."

* June 5: Four senators - John Kyl, Bill Nelson (D-FL), Johnny Isakson (R-GA), and Rick Santorum (R-PA) wrote a letter to President George W. Bush, telling him that the aircraft sale "threatens to undermine the US ban and weaken democratic stability in the region."

* June 6: The Hill, an influential newspaper for and about Congress, ran a news story about the senators' letter, headlined, "Spain's Sale to Chavez Puts EADS on Defensive."

* June 7: PR Newswire ran a news release commenting on the senators' letter and refuting EADS CASA propaganda. The release was a top feature on Yahoo News.

* June 7-15: EADS CASA lobbyists, including the company's CEO, converged on Capitol Hill to do damage control on the Venezuela problem, saying that their company will not break the US embargo (because the firm was busily stripping US-made parts from the Chavez-bound planes).

* June 14: Sukhoi of Russia joined EADS CASA as Chavez's top warplane suppliers. Chavez officially announced the purchase of 24 Su-30 fighter planes.

* June 16: The June 7 PR Newswire release remains on the top 10 Yahoo News search results for "EADS CASA," and occupies three of the top 10 Google News search results for "EADS CASA," and for the company's aircraft model, "CN 235."

CAIR equates US Marines with Zarqawi

2006-06-09T13:19:00.000-04:00

The day after attending the dedication of the first mosque on a United States Marines base, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) issued a press release comparing the Marines to terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

CAIR issued a news release on June 8 to comment on the death of Zarqawi, expressing hope that the terrorist's elimination would help reduce violence in Iraq.

But CAIR pointedly expressed hope that the terrorists would stop directing their violence against civilians - not against American and coalition troops, who die almost daily.

In CAIR's words, "We hope the death of terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi will lead to a decrease in the skyrocketing number of civilian deaths in Iraq and will help slow the downward spiral of sectarian violence gripping that nation.”

CAIR wasn't content to stop with mere criticism of Zarqawi. To show its even-handedness, it slammed the Pentagon.

In the same release, CAIR effectively equated the the American presence in Iraq with the terrorists, and specifically likened the US Marines to Zarqawi.

CAIR stated: "CAIR has previously condemned many of the hostage-takings, bombings, beheadings, and other attacks carried out by terrorist groups in Iraq. The Washington-based Islamic civil rights and advocacy group has also challenged the justification for America’s presence in Iraq and recently called for the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld over reports that U.S. Marines killed 24 Iraqi civilians last November in the city of Haditha."

A link to a demand for the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld followed the statement.

CAIR did not make a blanket condemnation of terrorism until 2004, and failed to endorse a fatwa against terrorists until 2005. The group underwent years of pressure after the 9/11 attacks for being unpatriotic and sympathetic to certain terrorist factions. It has sought to mainstream itself in the media as a "civil rights" group.

Pentagon officials and others in the administration have pandered to CAIR and other groups with soft spots in their hearts for certain terrorists.

Feed it to the swine

2006-06-08T10:46:00.000-04:00

Al Zarqawi's body is dead, but we've yet to finish him off for good.

Zarqawi's body should get no Islamic burial. It merits no such dignity. It should have no grave as a site for terrorist pilgrims to visit, no place for a memorial. It should return to the earth with the appropriateness due any of the musfidoon who wage hirabah against society.

Make the carcass so unclean that no one will doubt the eternal filth of Zarqawi's evil soul. Send a message to Zarqawi's followers. Feed the terrorist's carcass to the swine.

New blog tracks unfolding Venezuelastan crisis

2006-05-30T09:14:00.000-04:00

As the Venezuela crisis continues to unfold amid Washington's paralysis, I've started a new blog - Venezuelastan - to follow the issue. Thanks to so many of you who said they want to get a better spin on the annoying and dangerous regime in Caracas.

(Yes, that's a real, unaltered photo of Hugo in one of his costumes.)

Los Angeles Times picks up on ridicule as weapon

2006-05-21T11:00:00.000-04:00

Weaponizing ridicule is an idea that's catching on. The Los Angeles Times commissioned this blogger to write an op-ed on the subject, appearing as "Larry, Curly and Osama" on May 21.

The piece begins, "Osama bin Laden says he doesn't fear dying. He says he fears being humiliated.

"So let's give it to him."

Abu Boo-Boo: Cutting Zarqawi down to size

2006-05-05T10:08:00.000-04:00

US military forces in Iraq have improved their exploitation of battlefield intelligence for political and psychological warfare purposes.

The handling of the captured, unedited al Qaeda video of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi - shown in a black ninja costume and New Balance sneakers, and asking for help because he couldn't operate a simple machine gun - was wonderfully choreographed and executed. (For a video of Major General Rick Lynch's briefing, click here.)

Zarqawi and other terrorists have controlled their images to the world through edited digital videos, portraying themselves as invincible tough guys.

They don't look so tough any more. In the unedited video, Zarqawi fumbles with his M-249 weapon, with its bipod down. He looks confused as he tries to switch it from single-shot to automatic. Someone calls in Arabic, "Go and help the sheik!" Zarqawi relies on a subordinate for help. He fires the weapon apparently against no target as a couple followers mill around. After firing the M-249 on full-auto, one of Zarqawi's lieutenants takes the rifle by the searing hot barrel, burning his hand.

This blog has long advocated using ridicule as a weapon of warfare. We Americans can take it. The terrorists and their friends, in their shame-based culture, cannot.

In a presentation to the world media, American soldiers juxtaposed the Bad Boy videos with the raw footage they recovered in Iraq.

The story has spread all over the world - no thanks to Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya satellite TV, which reportedly have tried to ignore the video, with at least one newspaper ridiculing Zarqawi as "Abu Boo-Boo."

It's important for us in the Christian world to mock the enemy and overcome our fears so that we won't become terrorized or demoralized.

The story has gotten great press worldwide, even on China's party-controlled media. During the news conference in Iraq, journalists praised Maj. Gen. Lynch for the briefing.

However, the US needs to ensure that the Zarqawi video with the appropriate commentary is broadcast RELENTLESSLY in the Arabic-speaking world.

Feliz Cinco de Mayo

2006-05-05T09:02:00.000-04:00

Happy Cinco de Mayo, everyone - the day the French were defeated by the Mexican army.

And while you celebrate, check out the new line of Vicente Fox T-shirts from our friends at the People's Cube. Tell the Mexican president to mind his own business about our immigration laws until Mexico is as welcoming of immigrants as we are.

And while you're at it, just for yucks, see if the State Department weenies will boot out the Mexican diplomats who have been covertly coordinating many of the illegal alien protests, among other things incompatible with their diplomatic status.

US should bar Spanish firm from American defense contracts

2006-05-03T00:50:00.000-04:00

Should the US buy military hardware from foreign companies that assist our nation's foes?

Apparently, some in Congress and the Pentagon think so.

So what should we do with the following situation: A Spanish subsidiary of a French and German defense giant is selling military transport planes to Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, against strenuous US objections. The company is lobbying Congress to sell up to $40 billion worth of the same type of planes to the US Coast Guard, Army and Air Force.

Worse, Spain's socialist government colluded with Chavez in a nasty anti-American propaganda campaign, heaping abuse on the US while paid agents in Washington lobbied Congress to appropriate money to buy the aircraft in question.

What to do? Send a message: Help other companies prioritize whose side they want to be on by banning the Spanish company from selling to the US government.

It's an easy message to send, and it doesn't cost taxpayers a penny.

I discuss the issue in a new paper titled "When our allies arm our adversaries: What to do when diplomacy fails."

(Photo: Spanish President Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero of the Socialist Workers Party and Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez)

Do you like the Star Spangled Banner in Spanish? How about the Mexican national anthem in English?

2006-05-02T09:31:00.000-04:00

Since the Mexican government is so active in trying to dictate American law, with its consular officials coordinating the recent illegal immigration protests in the United States, it's only fair to give Mexico some reciprocal treatment.

And since Mexico-backed activists have profaned the Star Spangled Banner with a phony Spanish translation that changes our anthem's meaning, it's only fair to take a peek at the Mexican national anthem, unofficially titled, Mexicanos, Al Grito de Guerra (Mexicans, To the Cry of War).

So here it is, the official version from the Mexican President's website, and an English translation that attempts to be faithful to the original. A very spirited martial song, the anthem was adopted in 1854 after Mexico lost a third of its territory - the part that millions of Mexicans today prefer as their home - to the United States.

Scroll down for an English translation, which others may re-word if they wish.

Chorus:

Mexicanos, al grito de guerra
El acero aprestad y el bridón,
y retiemble en sus centros la tierra
Al sonoro rugir del cañón.

I

Ciña ¡oh patria! tus sienes de oliva
De la paz el arcángel divino,
Que en el cielo tu eterno destino
Por el dedo de Dios se escribió.

Más si osare un extraño enemigo
Profanar con su planta tu suelo,
Piensa ¡oh patria querida! que el cielo
Un soldado en cada hijo te dio.

Chorus

II

¡Guerra, guerra sin tregua al que intente
De la patria manchar los blasones!
¡Guerra, guerra! Los patrios pendones
En las olas de sangre empapad.

¡Guerra, guerra! En el monte, en el valle
Los cañones horrísonos truenen,
Y los ecos sonoros resuenen
Con las voces de ¡Unión! ¡Libertad!

Chorus

III

Antes, patria, que inermes tus hijos
Bajo el yugo su cuello dobleguen,
Tus campiñas con sangre se rieguen,
Sobre sangre se estampe su pie.IV

Y tus templos, palacios y torres
Se derrumben con hórrido estruendo,
Y sus ruinas existan diciendo:
De mil héroes la patria aquí fue.

Chorus

IV

¡Patria! ¡patria! Tus hijos te juran
Exhalar en tus aras su aliento,
Si el clarín con su bélico acento
Los convoca a lidiar con valor.

¡Para tí las guirnaldas de oliva!
¡Un recuerdo para ellos de gloria!
¡Un laurel para ti de victoria!
¡Un sepulcro para ellos de honor!

Chorus

Mexicanos, al grito de guerra
El acero aprestad y el bridón,
Y retiemble en sus centros la tierra
Al sonoro rugir del cañón.

An unaltered English translation follows:

Chorus:

Mexicans, at the cry of war,
prepare the steel and the steed,
and may the earth shake at its core
to the resounding roar of the cannon.

I

Gird, oh fatherland, your brow with olive
the divine archangel of peace,
for your eternal destiny was written
in the heavens by the hand of God.
But if some strange enemy should dare
to profane your ground with his step,
think, oh beloved country, that heaven
has given you a soldier in every son.

Chorus

II

War, war without truce to any who dare
to tarnish the country's coat-of-arms!
War, war! Take the national pennants
and soak them in waves of blood.
War, war! In the mountain, in the valley,
the cannons thunder in horrid unison
and the resonant echoes
cry out union, liberty!

Chorus

III

Oh fatherland, 'ere your children
defenseless bend their neck to the yoke,
may your fields be watered with blood,
may they trod upon blood.
And may your temples, palaces and towers
collapse with horrid clamor,
and their ruins live on to say:
This land belonged to a thousand heroes.

Chorus

IV

Oh, fatherland, fatherland, your children swear
to breathe their last in your honor,
if the trumpet with warlike accent
should call them to fight with courage.
For you the olive branches!
A reminder for them of glory!
A laurel of victory for you!
For them a tomb with honor!

Chorus

(Note: To keep the translation derived from the Wikipedia link faithful to the Spanish original, this blogger has changed the English word "country" to the proper translation of the Spanish word "patria," which is "fatherland.")

State Department posts accurate translations of National Anthem

2006-05-02T09:20:00.000-04:00

The State Department's Spanish-language website gives four reasonably accurate translations of the Star Spangled Banner, as opposed to the defiled ones now being circulated. To view them, click here.

Weak military leaders + aggressive lawyers = wartime sabotage

2006-05-01T12:30:00.000-04:00

One more instance of how weak military leadership has allowed aggressive lawyers to run amok and sabotage the war effort: British troops in Iraq are reportedly afraid to open fire on the enemy lest they be prosecuted.

British forces, according to a confidential Ministry of Defence report, "lack the confidence to open fire" because of a "fear of prosecution," according to the Sunday Telegraph.

The report "confirms that soldiers believe that if they shoot dead insurgents they will become embroiled in a 'protracted investigation' and if prosecuted will receive 'no support from the chain of command.'"

Want a T-shirt with that?

2006-04-25T20:47:00.000-04:00

Fresh from our friends at The People's Cube: A new line of apparel and desk stuff in support of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. To buy some Rummy shirts for the spring season, click here.

Question for President Bush to ask Torie Clarke

2006-04-19T09:21:00.000-04:00

If the President is considering Torie Clarke to become his White House spokesman, he should ask her the following question: "Were you or were you not the anonymous leaker behind the February 19, 2002 New York Times story that sabotaged the Defense Department's post-911 strategic influence effort against al Qaeda?"

The answer: She was.

Waging a turf battle over an issue she didn't even understand, Clarke deliberately sabotaged a sensitive military influence program designed to fight the "war of ideas" in the terrorist heartland.

A disloyal team member, she was the secret leaker to the New York Times to shut down the Office of Strategic Influence (OSI), in February 2002. Reporters James Dao and Eric Schmitt quoted her as if she were two separate people: sometimes as an anonymous "senior Pentagon official" with the damaging quotes, and other times by name as the official Pentagon spokeswoman expressing concern about the issue.

She never tried to defend the hearts-and-minds activity.

Then, using her power as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, Clarke forbade OSI officials from speaking to the press to defend the program.

She lied when she implied that OSI was going to use disinformation against the press. Using disinformation was strictly against OSI - and Pentagon - policy; disinformation wasn't needed when we had the truth on our side, and from a practical standpoint, disinformation is counterproductive because, once exposed, it would compromise the war effort.

An audit of all OSI papers and electronic memoranda requested by Senator Carl Levin exonerated OSI of the disinformation allegation. The DoD Inspector General found OSI had done nothing wrong.

The only disinformation in the OSI issue was Clarke's own misleading and untruthful statements to the New York Times to wage her turf war.

Clarke failed to defend her department, her boss, and the president. She purposely allowed the controversy to spin so far out of control - timed over a three-day weekend when President Bush and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld were out of Washington - that OSI was permanently crippled and had to be shut down.

The net effect of the controversy was to make "influence" a dirty word in the war on terror, and effectively to remove lifesaving strategic influence from the American arsenal.

How many American lives were lost because of her cat fight?

And now, four years later, the president is still wondering why the US isn't winning the war of ideas - and possibly considering Clarke to be his spokeswoman.

President Bush and White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten should ask Torie Clarke: Were you or were you not the anonymous leaker behind the February 19, 2002 New York Times story that sabotaged the Office of Strategic Influence?

Better yet, polygraph her.

Muslims claim they swung Italy's election

2006-04-17T04:21:00.000-04:00

Italian Muslims claim they mobilized the votes to defeat Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

They joined forces with Italy's substantial communist voting bloc to change the majority in the Chamber of Deputies and remove Berlusconi from power. The margin was slim: just over 25,000 votes.

The head of Italy's largest Islamic organization said that until the current vote, Muslims had not voted as a large bloc.

Union of Islamic Communities in Italy (UCOII) leader Hamza Piccardo said, "Today things have changed: Apart from our indication to vote for the Party of Italian Communists of Oliviero Diliberto, an important aspect was the presence of several [Muslim] candidates in parties within the Union coalition, notably Khaled Fouad Allam for the Daisy and Ali Rashid for the Refounded Communist Party."

Nationalize Citgo

2006-04-09T19:51:00.000-04:00

The Chavez dictatorship in Venezuela is bent on picking a fight with the United States, confident that the US is hamstrung by its dependence on Venezuelan oil.

Venezuela's state-controlled oil monopoly, PDVSA, is one of the largest oil suppliers to the US, and owns the Tulsa-based fuel giant Citgo.

Chavez has turned what his regime calls "the new PDVSA" into an engine of his subversive network of violent revolutionary movements. Citgo has become a funding mechanism for the regime to consolidate its control of the country and fuel interests around the world that are hostile to the United States and its allies.

The United States should prepare to nationalize Citgo, taking care to ensure the property rights of the American owners of Citgo gas station franchises.

It should then privatize the company to American investors, and use the proceeds to combat the dictatorship in Venezuela and its friends in neighboring countries.

Fox News: Blogger on Neil Cavuto, O'Reilly Factor

2006-04-08T08:59:00.000-04:00

Fox News picked up on this blogger's Center for Security Policy paper, "Mexico's Glass House," and featured it on Your World with Neil Cavuto and the O'Reilly Factor.

On Cavuto's live program on April 7, substitute host David Asman and I had a spirited conversation about how the Mexican constitution and law treat immigrants as second-class citizens, denying them freedom of speech and assembly, and discriminating against them for employment.

Bill O'Reilly and I had a similar conversation on his April 10 edition of the Factor.

A link to "Mexico's Glass House," a study of the Mexican constitution's immigration provisions, appears in a post below. For a link to my summary of Mexico's main law on immigration, click here.

'Mexicans Without Borders' to bus in thousands of protesters

2006-04-08T08:38:00.000-04:00

Take a look at one of the organizers of the April 10 illegal immigration protests: Mexicans Without Borders.

This is not a joke. The Washington Post reports on April 8 that Mexicans Without Borders has ordered 63 buses to transport protesters to the Mall in Washington, DC. The group expects to bring in at least 3,500 demonstrators.

Socialism and Liberation reveals the interlocking directorates that help make such protests so large and successful: Mexicans Without Borders leader Macrina Cárdenas is on the steering committee of ANSWER.

FYI: Mexico's official language is Spanish

2006-04-07T11:31:00.000-04:00

For those who get their boxers bunched about whether immigrants from south of the border should speak English if they want to stay here: In Mexico, Spanish is the official legal language.

The website of the Mexican presidency says it officially: "El idioma oficial de México es el español y cuenta con más de 66 lenguas amerindias."

That's Spanish for, "The official language of Mexico is Spanish, and is among more than 66 amerindian languages."

Mexican law makes it a felony to be an illegal alien (in Mexico)

2006-04-06T16:28:00.000-04:00

Under Mexican law, it is a felony to be an illegal alien.

Illegal immigration into Mexico is a crime punishable by up to two years in prison.

Mexico's legal system is different from that of the United States, but is a combination of American constitutional law theory civil system, and its punishment of criminals is generally more lenient than in the US.

Which makes it all the more significant that Mexico considers illegal immigration into the country to be so serious that it is a felony.

Mexico prefers not to burden its prison system with illegal aliens, so it prefers to deport those illegally in the country.

However, Article 123 of Mexico's General Law on Population (Ley General de Poblacion) states, “A penalty of up to two years in prison and a fine of three hundred to five thousand pesos will be imposed on the foreigner who enters the country illegally.”

Another good idea from our neighbors south of the border.

Mexico's glass house

2006-04-03T05:06:00.000-04:00

Every country has the right and duty to restrict the quality and quantity of foreign immigrants entering or living within its borders.

If American policymakers are looking for legal models on which to base new laws restricting immigration and expelling foreign lawbreakers, they have a handy guide: the Mexican constitution.

In brief, the Mexican Constitution states that:

- Immigrants and foreign visitors are banned from public political discourse.

- Immigrants and foreigners are denied certain basic property rights.

- Immigrants are denied equal employment rights.

- Immigrants and naturalized citizens will never be treated as real Mexican citizens.

- Immigrants and naturalized citizens are not to be trusted in public service.

- Immigrants and naturalized citizens may never become members of the clergy.

- Private citizens may make citizens arrests of lawbreakers (i.e., illegal immigrants) and hand them to the authorities.

- Immigrants may be expelled from Mexico for any reason and without due process.

For an item-by-item look at the Mexican constitution as it relates to immigration and naturalization, see my paper, "Mexico's Glass House," published by the Center for Security Policy.

USA Today has nice things to say about ridicule

2006-03-25T01:14:00.000-05:00

USA Today ran a fantastic column this week arguing for the use of ridicule in a strategic PSYOP campaign against our terrorist enemies.

The Hoover Institution's Peter Schweizer wrote the USA Today piece, which ran on March 23.

I especially like the feature because it has very kind things to say about my White Paper, "Ridicule: Instrument in the War on Terrorism," published by the Institute of World Politics.

American propagandists made vicious fun of Hitler during World War II, starting when the US Army took over the Walt Disney studios in Burbank, California, the day after the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor.

It's hard to become terrorized when your enemies are worthy of ridicule. It's also hard for a terrorist to get recruits and support if people are making fun of him.

Think of how we could parody Osama bin Laden, with that effeminate way he walks, and especially that and limp wrist?

Did Ukrainian officers spy for the Russians in Iraq?

2006-03-25T00:38:00.000-05:00

Pentagon revelations of Russian spying against the United States for Saddam Hussein won't surprise people who have observed the behavior of certain Ukrainian officers working with the US in Iraq.

The political leadership of Ukraine is friendly toward the United States, but Kiev chose never to uproot the old, Russian-controlled KGB structures in the country, and some US officials have complained that Ukrainian military intelligence remains heavily penetrated by the Russian GRU.

A captured Iraqi document from the time of the US-led invasion in 2003 purports to be the summary of a letter from a Russian official to Saddam Hussein. That document, according to the Washington Post, mentions that the Russians had "sources inside the American Central Command in Doha" who spied on the coalition's top commanders.

FourthWorldWar is reliably told that certain Ukrainian officers serving in the coalition's top decisionmaking structures liberally help themselves to large amounts of internal documents, and that no US counterintelligence presence has been there to stop them.

Could there be a connection between Ukrainian traitors who still work for Moscow and the recent revelations from Iraq? We should use the opportunity to help Ukrainian leaders clean house.

Signs of a world power?

2006-03-15T16:43:00.000-05:00

The pathetic nature of the United States' diplomatic prowess manifested itself again, this time in the United Nations, where Washington was trounced 170-4, with 3 abstentions.

The vote was on a new UN Human Rights Council that would replace the discredited UN Human Rights Commission.

Belarus, Iran and Venezuela abstained.

Not even our closest NATO allies stood with us on this one, even though many shared the United States' misgivings that the new body would ultimately mock itself.

The only UN member states that voted with us: Israel, Marshall Islanda and Palau.

Shame on the rest of the world. And shame on us for letting the vote get out of control.

Conservative McGovernites

2006-03-10T17:36:00.000-05:00

Nobody has a monopoly on virtue, and the Left isn't the only segment of society that can be duped by foreign propaganda.

Right now, it looks like a number of conservative Republicans are falling victim to the propaganda of the enemy and spreading thoughtless messages of demoralization while our nation is at war.

My colleague on the Center for Security Policy's Academic Council, Victor David Hanson, has begun taking names: William F. Buckley, Niall Ferguson, Francis Fukuyama and George Will.

Some of them cite the blowing up of the Samarra shrine and the roadside bombings that claim lives of our servicemen practically every day.

Those bombings are not military attacks. They are acts of armed propaganda.

The conservative commentators should know better. They should be ashamed. Whatever they think of the president and his team, they should be pushing for victory and not falling into the terrorists' propganda trap.

Osama bin Laden must be thrilled. He apparently follows the political debate in the United States, so such comments from the president's own political camp must only give him and other terrorists the confidence they need to keep killing our people.

In his January speech to Americans on Al Jazeera, bin Laden noted "the outcome of the US opinion polls, which indicated that the overwhelming majority of you want the withdrawal of the forces from Iraq."

"In fact," bin Laden continued, "reports indicate that the defeat and devastating failure of the ill-omened plan of the four - Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz - and the announcement of this defeat and working it out, is only a matter of time, which is to some extent linked to the awareness of the American people of the magnitude of this tragedy."

The al Qaeda leader acknowledged that the United States still can win the war, and commented on what would happen if the US lost. "I would like to tell you that the war is for you or for us to win. If we win it, it means your defeat and disgrace forever as the wind blows in this direction," he said.

Bin Laden indicated that the US can't win the war by weapons alone, underscoring the point that the US is not using the huge psychological warfare resources at its disposal:

"Do not be deluded by your power and modern weapons. Although they win some battles, they lose the war. Patience and steadfastness are better than them. What is important is the outcome."

That outcome, pathetically, depends on American pundits' perseverence. They should do what is right and try to win the war.

Serious about secrecy? Sign this Revolutionary War oath

2006-02-28T16:03:00.000-05:00

With all the counterterrorism secrets leaking out of Congress and the executive branch, it's time to look at how the Founding Fathers would have dealt with the problem.

Our country's founders took secrecy so seriously that all lawmakers had to sign a pledge with teeth so sharp that a leaker would be expelled from Congress and treated as an "enemy."

The Second Continental Congress adopted the following "Resolution of Secrecy" early in the Revolutionary War. Today's Congress should enact a similar resolution for its members:

RESOLUTION OF SECRECY ADOPTED BY THE CONTINENTAL CONGRESS, NOVEMBER 9, 1775

Resolved, That every member of this Congress considers himself under the ties of virtue, honour, and love of his country, not to divulge, directly or indirectly, any matter or thing agitated or debated in Congress, before the same shall have been determined, without leave of the Congress; nor any matter or thing determined in Congress, which a majority of the Congress shall order to be kept secret. And if any member shall violate this agreement, he shall be expelled [from] this Congress, and deemed an enemy to the liberties of America, and liable to be treated as such; and that every member signify his consent to this agreement by signing the same.

Source: Documents Illustrative of the Formation of the Union of the American States (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1927), p. 18, Quoted from Secret Journals of the Acts and Proceedings of U.S. Congress, Vol. I, p. 34.

We were at war at the time, and we treated enemies with a bit of rope and a stout oak tree. It's time to get back to our founding principles.

See no evil about GRU

2006-02-27T01:58:00.000-05:00

The press continues to ignore very quotable concerns from the individual who warned colleagues of disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff of a possible connection with Russian military intelligence.

Recently in the Boston Globe, this blogger was quoted as having been asked to help the Abramoff team in 1997 to organize congressional delegations to Russia. The fine article by correspondent Michael Kranish reads:

Abramoff's work on Russian affairs began in the mid-1990s, according to J. Michael Waller, the former editor of a Washington-based newsletter, Russia Reform Monitor. Waller said he was contacted by two Abramoff associates in 1997, and was asked to help organize Abramoff's trip with DeLay to Russia.

"I was told by two of Abramoff's colleagues that he wanted to represent the Russian government," Waller said. He said Abramoff's colleagues explained that Abramoff was working for Naftasib, the Russian energy company, and that "if he performed well on Naftasib then the Russian government would retain him."

That made Waller uncomfortable, he added, because he had read Russian documents that said Naftasib supplied oil to the Russian military, so he declined to help Abramoff plan the trip.

"I was concerned that Abramoff was going to become an agent of influence for the Russian government and that he would mask that relationship," Waller said.

While I praised Kranish for his coverage, I must state that the article - as with others in recent months - omitted my biggest on-the-record concern, which was Abramoff's alleged GRU connection.

State Department's banned counterdisinformation page

2006-02-25T15:08:00.000-05:00

Here's an important State Department web page that everyone should bookmark.

I point it out only because it doesn't appear on the State Department's search engine and is supposedly banned in the United States thanks to a timid interpretation of an obsolete law.

The page is titled "Identifying Misinformation." Is is designed to inform foreign publics about false or misleading statements about the US and American policy.

It is the heroic effort of one individual at the State Department, whose office consists entirely of himself and, at times, a half-time support staffer.

State Department leaders do not believe that countering misinformation and disinformation is a very important issue, and have denied the office any resources to function effectively.

Here's the link: http://usinfo.state.gov/media/misinformation.html.

Ridicule is a powerful weapon. Let's use it.

2006-02-19T02:19:00.000-05:00

It's time to add ridicule to our propaganda arsenal against our terrorist enemies and other adversaries.

Incessant, morbid portrayals of an individual, movement, or nation as a mortal enemy might rally support for the American side, but they have a shelf-life that gets tired over time. Constant specters of unrelenting dangers risk sowing defeatism and chipping away at our own morale. Abroad they risk making the U.S. look like a bully in some places and surrender the propaganda advantage to the other side. The questions at this stage of the war are:

* Do we inadvertently aid our enemies and potential enemies by taking them too seriously?

* Does our relentless portrayal of individuals, ideologies, movements and philosophies as mortal dangers to America enhance the enemies’ status and prestige?

* Is it an unsound political strategy to hype the image and power of the enemy and the few leaders who personify it?

* Is there something else the United States and its allies should be doing in their attempts to discredit, undermine and defeat the enemy?

My latest article argues in the affirmative. It suggests that US strategy includes undermining the political and psychological strengths of adversaries and enemies by employing ridicule as a standard operating tool of national strategy.

* Ridicule raises morale at home.

* Ridicule strips the enemy/adversary of his mystique and prestige.

* Ridicule erodes the enemy’s claim to justice.

* Ridicule eliminates the enemy’s image of invincibility.

* Directed properly at an enemy, ridicule can be a fate worse than death.

For the full text of my article, "Ridicule: An Instrument in the War on Terrorism," published by the Institute of World Politics, click here.

For a pdf document of the draft, click here.

(Bag search parody image courtesy of ThePeoplesCube.com. For larger image of the poster, click here.)

Remember the Iran saboteur at State

2006-02-12T20:00:00.000-05:00

Now that the US and Europe are contemplating war against Iran because we have practically run out of political options, let's recall the State Department official who sabotaged funding for Iran's internal opposition.

As we reported last July, the State Department's small but influential Policy Planning office is riddled with political appointees who do not share President Bush's agenda.

When all other relevant government officials had given their approval to provide $3 million to Iranian opposition figures, a political partisan who worked against the president threw sand in the works. It's time to remember who she is and what she did.

That individual was Suzanne Maloney, the Iran advisor on the Policy Planning staff. Maloney tried to defeat President Bush in the 2004 election, aiding the John Kerry campaign, and deferred a job in anticipation of working in a Kerry administration.

She was an ExxonMobil fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations last year when Policy Planning cleverlings brought her on to run the Iran portfolio.

That's when she sandbagged the money for internal opponents to the Islamo-nuts now running Iran.

It's also useful to recall what happened at the State Department when this blog broke the sabotage story. Instead of investigating Maloney, it tried to find out who blew the whistle.

Egypt ran 'insensitive' Muhammad cartoons last October

2006-02-10T16:24:00.000-05:00

Before wetting ourselves about whether European, American, Australian, New Zealand, etc., publication of the controversial Muhammad cartoons is offensive to Muslims, let's note that the same Danish drawings appeared in the Egyptian press last October, and nobody said boo.

Thanks to the blogger at Freedom for Egyptians for publishing copies of the October 17, 2005 issue of Al Fager, along with the explanatory notes for those of us who do not read Arabic. To go straight to the images, click here.

The American way of propaganda

2006-02-09T09:49:00.000-05:00

Since 9/11, this blogger has heard well over a dozen senior US government officials reject the idea of waging political warfare and all-out propaganda campaigns against terrorists, because such activity is "un-American."

Those officials are wrong.

History proves it. In the first of a series of White Papers on public diplomacy and strategic communications, I explain how aggressive use of propaganda and political warfare is as American as Old Glory.

Our nation's most revered founders - John Adams, Samuel Adams, Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson among them - were skilled propagandists and political warriors.

Our warfighters and strategists would do well to learn from them.

"The American Way of Propaganda: Lessons from the Founding Fathers" is available from the Institute of World Politics. Click for html version or pdf document.

Ahmadinejad to visit Cuba on 9/11 anniversary

2006-02-07T22:33:00.000-05:00

Fidel Castro has invited Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Cuba on the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States.

Citing the Cuban Communist Party daily Granma, Agence France-Presse reports from Havana that Ahmadinejad accepted Castro's invitation to attend the Non-Aligned summit in Havana from September 11-16, 2006.

Ahmadinejad expressed gratitude for Cuban support for Iran's nuclear program. Cuba, Venezuela and Syria voted against an International Atomic Energy Agency resolution to refer Iran to the UN Security Council due to worries about its nuclear weapons program.

Granma reports that Iranian Parliament leader Ghulam Ali Haddad Adel will also visit Cuba.

Termination is proposed of key VOA broadcast services

2006-02-07T16:44:00.000-05:00

The entity that governs America's global broadcasting operations is proposing to do away with much of its English-language programming and to axe broadcasts in languages spoken in parts of the world vital to US interests.

The proposal comes in the form of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) budget request for Fiscal Year 2007, and a notice that the board sent to offices throughout its jurisdiction.

The cuts are a combination of smart realignment to stay abreast of technology developments and global listener/viewer/user trends, and further cannibalization of US broadcasting capabilities to stretch resources for enhanced programming in priority areas. The board has drastically curtailed or canceled entire broadcasts in several languages rather than ask the public and Congress for the resources it really needs, and it plans to do so again in FY 2007.

The board proposes to eliminate VOA's 24-hour "News Now" program in English, and all radio programming in Bosnian, Croatian, Georgian, Greek, Hindi, Russian, Serbian, Turkish and Thai.

The board envisions keeping some non-English-language broadcasts on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (which are not "Voice of America" but gray propaganda with news about the countries where each language is spoken), and/or making TV the main medium for the US to reach people who speak those languages.

FourthWorldWar.com publishes the text of the notice below.

Message from the Board of Governors on the Budget Request for FY 2007

Today, the President’s budget request for fiscal year 2007 has been sent to the Congress. In light of all of the press reports about the tight budget environment, you are all aware of the pressures on the discretionary budget and the post-Katrina and Iraq conflict requirements that have helped to shape it.

In spite of this difficult budget environment, the Administration’s FY ’07 request contains a 4.3 percent increase for the BBG – and a 5.3 percent increase for the Voice of America. This increase specifically recognizes the importance of VOA’s broadcasting to Iran and Afghanistan as well as the role television increasingly plays in what we do.

In a clear vote of confidence in the role of VOA’s satellite television in the war on terror, the President’s budget provides close to $10 million to upgrade VOA’s television production facilities. The budget funds FY ’06 expansion of VOA television to Iran – where Persian television news programming is being increased from 30 minutes to four hours – and radio and television expansions in Afghanistan. The FY ’07 budget continues radio broadcasting to Zimbabwe (previously funded by USAID) and adds a Spanish television news magazine show that would air five days a week.

To fund these and other war-on-terror related enhancements, we will be facing significant reductions in other areas. With increased emphasis on television and the continued drop in shortwave radio listening worldwide, we foresee a significant reduction in transmission operations devoted to shortwave broadcasting. The budget projects elimination of News Now English radio broadcasting in FY ’07, but Special English and English to Africa will not be affected by the cuts, and VOA’s popular Internet site will become the major English outlet for our worldwide news-gathering operation.

Other proposed program reductions include the elimination of VOA
Croatian, Turkish, Thai, and Greek. VOA Georgian and VOA and RFE/RL radio broadcasts in Macedonian would also be eliminated. VOA would continue to broadcast in Macedonian via television, and RFE/RL would maintain its radio broadcasts in Georgian. This budget request also proposes that VOA pursue a television-only strategy in its Albanian, Bosnian, Serbian, Russian and Hindi services. RFE/RL would continue to serve radio audiences in Albanian, Bosnian, Serbian and Russian.

However, RFE/RL would eliminate six hours of its Russian radio
broadcasts as it realigns to pursue an UKV (FM) broadcast strategy in Russia. None of the VOA reductions would take place until fiscal year 2007.

The proposed language service reductions are not a reflection of the quality of the programming of these services. In many cases, these programs are better than ever. And not all of the proposed budget cuts would come at the expense of the language services. More than half of the budget reductions assumed in the FY ’07 request result from reductions in IBB support and engineering. This budget is about positioning our international broadcasting effort for the future. In order to set VOA and other BBG services on a path for growth and enhanced impact, we must respond to changing viewing habits, adopt new technology, and efficiently respond to the nation’s most immediate and vital national security challenges.

The Administration’s FY ’07 request for $671.9 million for the BBG will fund technological innovation as well as highly visible programs in support of the war on terror, and it continues to cement international broadcasting’s key role in the overall U.S. foreign policy effort. These are programs where VOA’s successful implementation will be highly anticipated and, as it has in the past, we are confident that VOA will succeed.

We know that this budget will also bring hardship to the agency. It assumes a loss of positions in parts of the agency, and gains in others, in 2007. To address some of the hardship of realignment, we will try to implement personnel reductions by voluntary means as much as possible.

We are seeking buyout authority and early out authority to try to soften the impact on affected employees. We would like to stress, however, that there will not be any elimination of VOA positions associated with this budget until fiscal year 2007.

As you know, the submission of the President’s budget request to the Congress is just the beginning of this process of charting the agency’s course for FY ’07. Of course, none of the proposed reductions may be implemented until the agency’s final budget is fully vetted by the Congress and signed into law. Until that time, agency management will do its best to keep you informed of our progress in gaining personnel authorities necessary to help moderate the potential impact of the proposed budget reductions inherent in the budget request.

The new cross burners

2006-02-05T02:15:00.000-05:00

Fanatical Islamist mobs, outraged by European cartoons about Muhammad, are stomping and burning the Christian Cross in their mad rampages around the world.

In London they are publicly threatening more terrorist attacks like the July 7 transit bombings.

Hamas, the democratically elected terrorist movement that won control of the Palestinian Authority, has called for the artists and publishers to be murdered.

In Jordan, a Muslim newspaper editor who urged people to calm down was sacked.

In Washington, the US State Department tries to sound even-handed, or perhaps, to avoid taking a stand.

In Lebanon, Muslim gangs sack Christian neighborhoods and vandalize churches.

And from Europe to Indonesia, the crazed Muslim fanatics vent their hate on the Christian Cross, stomping it with their feet, burning it amid jeers and laughs and chants of Allahu Akhbar.

The world press reports it all as the burning of the flags of Denmark and Norway, where the offending cartoons appeared. But the sole symbol on both nation's flags is the Christian Cross.

While many Muslim leaders have denounced the violence and appealed for calm, no Muslim leader anywhere has denounced the cross burnings.

No civilized person should miss or pretend not to see the symbolism, and what it means for us all.

Time to deny prestige to terrorists

2006-01-30T14:53:00.000-05:00

When is the White House going to stop commenting on the weird threats of al Qaeda sociopaths and leave the opining to others down the government food chain?

President Bush and other senior US officials, like President Clinton before, have inflated the authority and prestige of Osama bin Laden and other terrorists by commenting on them publicly and repeatedly naming them by name.

It's a silly and counterproductive policy that has not aided the war on terror, and arguably has undermined it.

Google won't help US enforce anti-porn law, but gladly helps Chinese censors

2006-01-25T00:13:00.000-05:00

After refusing to help the US government protect children from online pornographers, search engine Google agreed to collaborate with Chinese government censors to filter out anything the regime finds objectionable.

Money motivates both actions. Google claims to be protecting the rights of its users but in reality is making a fortune from pornography, much of which is tied to organized criminal syndicates.

"To obtain the Chinese license, Google agreed to omit Web content that the country's government finds objectionable," AP reports. "Google will base its censorship decisons on guidance provided by Chinese government officials."

"Google officials characterized the censorship concessions in China as an excruciating decision for a company that adopted 'don't be evil' as a motto," according to AP. "But management believes it's a worthwhile sacrifice."

Walter Cronkite's second Tet Offensive

2006-01-16T19:37:00.000-05:00

Former CBS anchorman is re-living his Vietnam War glories, making headlines by calling for the United States to pull out of Iraq.

Way back when the TV triopoly controlled information enough to make Cronkite "the most trusted man in America," the CBS anchorman arguably had more of an influence on American public opinion than any media figure since.

That was before the New Media, of course, which drove a stake through Cronkite's successor, Dan Rather, forcing Rather to retire in shame.

Cronkite has never owned up to falling for a huge North Vietnamese propaganda operation, the Tet Offensive of 1968, which made it look as though the Viet Cong insurgency had overrun South Vietnam and its capital, Saigon.

In reality, the US, South Vietnamese and other allies smashed the Viet Cong during Tet, and effectively destroyed the insurgency.

But that wasn't the image that Cronkite and others showed on TV, which made it look as though Saigon was about to fall. Cronkite told viewers that the Vietnam War was unwinnable.

He claims he made the comment after his boss urged him to put his "objectivity" aside.

President Lyndon Johnson, who obsessed over the ABC/CBS/NBC triopoly's TV coverage, reportedly said, "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America." Johnson announced he was quitting politics, and gave Hanoi and its Soviet allies proof that their military propaganda operations, if stretched out long enough on American TV, could grind down the United States' will to fight.

Now, at age 89, Cronkite proves he hasn't learned his lesson. His says Tet comment - putting his objectivity aside - remains one of his proudest moments.

Keeping history straight: Who wiretapped Martin Luther King

2006-01-13T00:29:00.000-05:00

This Martin Luther King holiday, we hear the predictable voices slamming the FBI for having wiretapped the civil rights leader.

Perhaps Senator Ted Kennedy of others of his ilk will use that reminder as a reason for not renewing the USA PATRIOT Act.

How good is your history: Who ordered the FBI to spy on Martin Luther King?

J. Edgar Hoover? Richard Nixon? Hatemongers in an out-of-control domestic spying network?

Answer: The Attorney General of the United States ordered the FBI to do so. The Justice Department's main building in Washington is named after him. It was Ted's sainted brother, Attorney General Bobby Kennedy.

Follow-up: Al Gore used Martin Luther King Day to denounce President Bush's tough policies against terrorist networks operating here at home, among us.

Jim Moran: Dissing veterans, picking on women and kids, and flip-flopping on Iraq

2006-01-12T23:27:00.000-05:00

Congressman Jim Moran is a boxer and he likes to talk real tough.

It's all an act. This is a guy who nearly assaulted an 8 year-old black kid and did something that made his bruise-covered wife call 911 and divorce him the next day. Now he's dissing American troops who just returned from fighting al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

He can beat up women and little black children, but he can't face someone his own size.

At one of Moran's recent town meetings in Alexandria, Virginia, a young sergeant told the congressman he'd returned from Afghanistan and would have volunteered for Iraq had he not been injured. He noted that Moran never attended the welcoming events for the troops in his district, and never wrote them letters as congressman generally do for returning troops.

Moran answered, "that wasn't a question," turned away from the sergeant to look for someone on the other side of the room, and changed the subject.

FLASHBACK: Jim Moran likes to run away from uncomfortable truths. When he was a newly-elected congressman in 1991, his first speech on the floor of the House of Representatives included a call for bipartisanship in support of the previous President Bush, to oust Saddam Hussein's military from Kuwait. He pledged to vote to support Operation Desert Storm.

His party leaders quickly told him what the deal would be if he wanted to get ahead in Congress.

So when the time came to vote, Jim Moran flip-flopped. He sold his vote to the House Democrat leadership and voted against Operation Desert Storm.

This blogger (in those pre-blog days) passed Moran in the street as Moran left the Longworth House Office Building and called, "Nice flip-flop, Congressman!"

Moran, who was with a female companion, said nothing, then turned around red-faced and shouted from across the street, "Well I sure hope you're satisfied!"

I went through the revolving doors into the Longworth building and continued about my business. Halfway down the block-long hall, someone yanked me by the shoulder and swung me around. It was a livid Jim Moran, with furious gray eyes and a drop of spittle on his blond mustache. Having ambushed me from behind, he raised his fist as if he was about to smash my face in.

I was in the company of a Marine and Navy SEAL, and the congressman dropped his fist.

But he talked tough. He demanded to know my name, and when I refused to tell him, he interrogated me about what right I had to be in a congressional office building. (He needed to re-read the Constitution.) He grilled one of my colleagues. Then he grunted and turned away.

Soon afterward, when the Washington Times reported the incident, Moran got on the radio to spin the story. "It was just a couple of punks," he told WRC Radio.

This punk was a former Senate staffer wearing a three-piece suit. I called the radio station immediately, spoke to the producer and told him I was the guy Moran was talking about. The host announced on-air that one of the punks was on the line, and that he wanted Moran to talk to me.

But Jim Moran ran away. He hung up.

Just like he turned away from the Afghanistan veteran at his latest town meeting.

Jim Moran looks and sounds tough, but inside he's a weakling. He's insecure and he has childlike problems with his temper. If good people confront him honestly and insistently enough, he'll become unglued and finish his political self-destruction. Let's help him do it.

Eagleburger: Talk of Iraq withdrawal comforts terrorists

2006-01-06T09:49:00.000-05:00

Former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger is not known as a particularly partisan Republican, and he supported Senator John McCain against George W. Bush in the 2000 presidential primary campaign.

So he's not speaking as a neocon flack when he warns that those who demand a pullout form Iraq are inadvertently aiding the terrorists.

After a January 5 White House meeting with President Bush and 12 other former secretaries of state and defense, Eagleburger told reporters, "Every time we talk about withdrawal you can see the ears of Osama and his friends perking up."

Murtha: 'We've become the enemy'

2006-01-06T09:42:00.000-05:00

Congressman John Murtha is sounding less like a member of the loyal opposition and more like Ramsey Clark.

Speaking at an event for Congressman Jim Moran (D-VA), Murtha repeated his demand for an immediate, unilateral American pullout from Iraq. The Washington Post covered the event.

"We've become the enemy," Murtha said.

Joint Chiefs chairman says congressman damages troop morale

2006-01-06T09:41:00.000-05:00

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff says that the tone and wording of a leading anti-war congressman is damaging the morale of American troops in war zones.

General Peter Pace responded to an ABC TV appearance of Congressman John Murtha, the hawkish ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee. A staunch supporter of the military, Murtha became one of the war's shrillest opponents several months ago after spending time with young American servicemen who had been wounded and mutilated in Iraq.

Murtha has demanded an immediate US pullout from Iraq, regardless of the strategic consequences, saying in effect that the troops are fighting a cause that cannot be won militarily. On ABC he went further, telling an interviewer that if he were a young man, he would not join the military today.

The congressman's statements are serious because the Pennsylvania Democrat is no liberal weenie: he fought in Korea and Vietnam during his 37 years in the US Marine Corps, and has been more solid on defense than many Republicans.

Commenting on Murtha's remarks, Pace told reporters,

"That's damaging to recruiting, it's damaging to the morale of the troops who are deployed, and it's damaging to the morale of their families who believe in what they're doing to serve the country.

"When a respected leader like Mr. Murtha, who has spent 37 extremely honorable years as a Marine, fought in two wars, has served the country extremely well in the Congress of the United States, when a respected individual like that says what he said, and 18- and 19-year-olds look to their leadership to determine how they are expected to act, they can get the wrong message."

A congressman's constitutional duty - and Murtha's especially, as a top Armed Services Committee member - is to question the commander-in-chief when necessary, and view US defense policy with a critical eye. But like his Senate colleagues and others criticized on this blog, he has unacceptably crossed the line. He should unilaterally withdraw his comments and become more constructive in his criticism.

The Abramoff scandal and Russian military intelligence

2006-01-03T23:26:00.000-05:00

Press reports about the malfeasance of former Washington insider Jack Abramoff have missed an important dimension of the disgraced lobbyist's career.

Abramoff may have been a counterintelligence problem for the United States and for the decision-makers he targeted and funded.

His lawyer, Julius "Jay" Kaplan (at left of photo), jumped all over this blogger several years ago when I was researching a piece on Russian influence-peddling for a New York financial magazine. I was tracking down a Russian money trail around then-Vice President Al Gore and Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott when I discovered that Abramoff was involved with at least one Russian GRU military intelligence figure whose company was paying him to organize congressional delegations to Moscow.

In April 2005 and again December 31, the Washington Post ran a photograph of one of the GRU figures, Marina Nevskaya, standing with Kaplan and others. (Click here for the photo. Nevskaya is in the middle. Kaplan is wearing the red tie.)

Nevskaya's company, NaftaSib, paid Abramoff to represent it in Washington. In some documents filed with the Clerk of the House, Abramoff masked the connection through a Bahamian cutout company, registering as an agent of the Bahamas and not of Russia.

NaftaSib's official biography of Nevskaya says she speaks fluent French and Vietnamese in addition to English, and that she was an instructor at the Military Diplomatic Academy in Moscow. Her biography does not say that the academy is a principal training school for Russia's GRU military intelligence service.

The GRU's continued offensive espionage operations against the United States, which the FBI says continue at Cold War levels, make Nevskaya's service as a GRU instructor important to the Abramoff influence operation.

Was the GRU using Abramoff to compromise Congress and other Washington policymakers for Russian military intelligence?

While researching the story in the summer of 1997, I posed the question to a senior FBI counterintelligence agent. He was hard-nosed Cold Warrior with a reputation of strong skepticism against the Russians. To my surprise he shrugged off the question, saying there was probably nothing to it. Two-and-a-half years later, in early 2000, I understood his disinterest when he himself was arrested as a Russian spy.

I don't think that Robert Hanssen had any inside information, and I'm not trying to connect him with Abramoff or Nevskaya. (Nor, for that matter, am I accusing Nevskaya or her company of anything beyond running influence operations in Washington.)

The financial magazine never ran the story, so I mentioned the connection in the Russia Reform Monitor newsletter in August, 1997. I had a dim view of Abramoff then, and was concerned that his paid work for the Russians would damage Republican congressional figures to whose causes Abramoff had been donating money. (Disclosure: I worked for Abramoff at the College Republican National Committee in 1982 and 1983, and quit with two colleagues after we suspected him of financial improprieties.)

Few noted the Abramoff-NaftaSib issue until 2004, when major news organizations started going after Abramoff's contacts in the House of Representatives.

The Washington Post and NBC know about the GRU issue, because they have quoted of late from my 1997 report, yet no one has raised the possible Russian spy connection. It's about time someone did.

Bush's 'domestic spying' order saved New York from second attack

2005-12-18T15:02:00.000-05:00

Buried in today's breathless Washington Post story about President Bush's "domestic spying" order is this factoid: the action stopped more terrorist attacks on American soil.

"Officials have privately credited the eavesdropping with the apprehension of Iyman Faris, a truck driver who pleaded guilty in 2003 to planning to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge" in New York, Post reporter Peter Baker mentions in the 13th paragraph of the 23-paragraph article.

"Bush said other plots have been disrupted as well," Baker continues casually. The reporter shows no interest in telling the readers what those plots might have been.

The Post editors obviously have decided to undermine such counterterrorism activity. Their hearts bleed through the inflammatory 1970s-style headline, "President Says He Ordered NSA Domestic Spying," and placement of the story on the top-right of the front page of the Sunday paper.

"Domestic spying" was a favored term of the Left in their successful 1970s crusades to gut the nation's security, intelligence and counterintelligence capabilities.

Beneath the front page article is an above-the-fold "analysis" by Barton Gellman and Dafna Linzer titled "Pushing the Limits of Wartime Powers."

The lead paragraph in that "analysis" - Postspeak for a front-page editorial disguised as news - reads as follows:

"In his four-year campaign against al Qaeda, President Bush has turned the U.S. national security apparatus inward to collect information on Americans on a scale unmatched since the intelligence reforms of the 1970s."

Again, we see inflammatory language: "to collect information on Americans." Not to collect information on terrorists in America, or terrorist suspects in America, or terrorist infrastructure in America, but "on Americans."

If President Bush pushed the limits of wartime powers after 9/11, good for him. He should keep pushing.

Get real about the PATRIOT Act: Take a page from the Founding Fathers

2005-12-17T02:51:00.000-05:00

Congress is still playing patty-cake as it pretends to keep the public safe from terrorism.

The Senate's defeat of the USA PATRIOT Act shows that the majority of senators believe that our nation's security and intelligence services are greater threats to public safety than are the terrorists.

For a serious concept of a PATRIOT Act, lawmakers should study what the Founding Fathers - the real patriots - did when they fought to create and protect our great democracy.

They cracked down on immigration to filter out those who would subvert the new nation.

They told enemies of the new republic - Tories - either to sign loyalty oaths or be expelled from their state.

Massachusetts passed a law that identified 300 Tories, disposessed them of their property, ordered them to leave the commonwealth immediately, and warned that if they ever returned, they would be hanged.

That's a serious way of ridding a democratic society of those who would subvert and abuse it. It's something for the public to consider today - and compare it to the embarrassingly tame half-measures the US has taken so far against terrorists and their supporters here.

Al-Zawahiri has Pentagon lawyer to thank for Afghanistan progress

2005-12-11T23:35:00.000-05:00

Terrorist leader Ayman al-Zawahiri can thank a US Department of Defense attorney for the Taliban's continued operations in Afghanistan.

In a recently released video, al-Zawahiri credited Mullah Omar, leader of the ousted Taliban, with running a three-year effort "against the Crusaders and apostates in Afghanistan" and supposedly controlling "extensive parts of eastern and western Afghanistan."

Al-Zawahiri credits the resilence of the Taliban with enabling suicide bombings in Afghanistan.

He should thank a US military lawyer, who we won't name. For now.

That lawyer saved Mullah Omar from being killed by American forces.

Early in the Afghanistan campaign, the operator of a Predator drone spotted Mullah Omar escaping from a building and fleeing in an SUV. The Predator operator readied to eliminate Mullah Omar with a Hellfire missile - but the lawyer, whispering in the operator's earpiece, told him not to fire. The reason: Innocent people might be in Omar's vehicle.

Omar has eluded friendly forces ever since, while remaining alive to kill more of our own people in Afghanistan.

Take the trial back from Saddam Hussein

2005-12-09T11:35:00.000-05:00

In a further sign that the lawyers have hijacked American national security strategy, two years of preparation for Saddam Hussein's trial have allowed the former dictator himself to turn it into a propaganda circus.

While the American team supervising the process has focused exclusively (again) on process, Saddam and his team - which includes Ramsey Clark, head of the International Action Center - have turned the trial from an indictment of his crimes to an indictment of the United States and the new Iraqi government.

The sight of a well-dressed, defiant, self-assured Saddam Hussein gives an image that the dictator will return, frightening the Iraqi people and emboldening his followers.

There's time to fix that. With Saddam boycotting his trial in protest, here's what the US can help its Iraqi allies do, as Charles Krauthammer recommends in today's Washington Post:

1. Bring Saddam into the courtroom wearing prison garb and shackled.

2. Isolate Saddam in a glass booth. Silence his interruptions and histrionics.

Otherwise, "our only hope, as always with Hussein, is that he destroys himself with his arrogance and stupidity. He has stupidly walked out of his own trial. This is our opportunity."

War Footing: Book calls for US political warfare offensive

2005-12-09T02:26:00.000-05:00

A new book by one of Washington's most prolific defense experts calls for the United States to employ political warfare as a strategic weapon against its rivals, adversaries and enemies abroad.

Center for Security Policy President Frank Gaffney makes the recommendation as Step 8 in War Footing: 10 Steps America Must Take to Prevail in the War for the Free World.

War Footing is a brand-new release by the Naval Institute Press.

Contributors include Victor Davis Hanson, former CIA Director Jim Woolsey, Daniel Goure, Bruce Herschensohn, Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney, USAF (Ret.), Claudia Rosett, Maj. Gen. Paul E. Vallely, USA (Ret.), Rep. Curt Weldon, and yours truly.

Some of the policy prescriptions in Step 8:

The United States needs to take a number of steps, urgently, to inaugurate a program of political warfare.

1. Stop evading the issue. No government strategy to date for the so-called "War on Terror" has included political warfare as an element of the American arsenal.

2. Devise, staff up and begin executing a political warfare strategy. Countering the [enemy's] ideology must be its principal focus.

3. De-legitimize Islamist extremism in the eyes of Muslims, and especially its potential supporters. We need to show that, while violent Islamism is certainly a problem for us in the West, it is a vastly greater problem for the Muslim community.

4. Use our strengths. The good news is that Americans are among the world's experts at political warfare. The bad news is that we mainly use it against each other: after all, the strategies and tactics of any hard-fought election campaign are precisely the stuff of applied political warfare. The talent, creativity, ingenuity and, yes, ruthlessness of top-flight political campaign strategists of both parties should be mustered for the purpose of fighting our enemies and helping our friends - rather than fighting each other.

5. Invest in the instruments of political warfare, including public diplomacy . . . [which] must be viewed as a form of political warfare.

6. Use the Internet as a tool of political warfare. In particular, the power of creative web sites, webcasting and blogging should be aggressively exploited.

7. Strengthen the CIA clandestine services, and authorize and fund them for long-term strategic political warfare.

8. Grant the Department of Defense the primary responsibility for political warfare. Just as the State Department leads in public diplomacy, the "warfare" side of communications is legitimately a Pentagon function and must not be assigned to our diplomats.

9. Don't forget political warfare in non-Islamist areas. The US must combat adversarial political warfare wherever it arises, even in countries traditionally considered friendly.

10. Reinforce and strengthen our friends. By demonstrating that there are not only consequences for opposing us, but also real and tangible benefits from supporting us, we can maximize the chances of our success.

Winning a political war is, in the end, a question of credibility. When nations stand firm for what they claim to believe in, they are perceived as credible. When they appear unwilling to stand firm - regardless of their rhetoric - they are vulnerable to their enemies' more decisive use of political warfare. With the fate of the Free World hanging in the balance, we cannot be (or be perceived to be) weak and irresolute. Toward this end, we must wage political warfare effectively, convincingly, and decisively.

Three scandals behind the Iraq propaganda flap: FourthWorldWar's view in USA Today

2005-12-07T16:53:00.000-05:00

USA Today ran an editorial that criticizes the US military for planting propaganda in the Iraqi press. The editors invited this blogger to provide an opposing view after the Pentagon refused. The editorial and counterpoint appeared together on December 7. For the USA Today editorial, click here. The counterpoint is reprinted below.

"Information a Vital Weapon" USA Today, December 7, 2005

by J. Michael Waller

Three scandals hide behind the U.S.-propaganda-in-Iraq controversy.

The first scandal is that the United States hadn't been planting favorable, truthful stories in the Arab media all along.

Americans will lose the war in Iraq — and the global "battle for hearts and minds" — if their military, diplomatic and intelligence services don't become more creative than the enemy is about influencing how people think in the Arab world.

That's why the Pentagon's foreign influence activity is so vital to winning in Iraq. It's a fundamental part of supporting the troops.

Until this year, the U.S. government was probably the only force that did not regularly plant stories in the Iraqi media. It left that game to extremists from Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and al-Qaeda itself. With predictable and possibly fatal results.

Here's the dilemma: Individual Iraqi journalists sympathetic to the democratic mission are constantly vulnerable to terrorist death squads. Iraqi editors are more likely to publish articles to advance freedom if doing so won't expose their reporters to retaliation. Yet the Iraqi public is more likely to believe local newspapers than our overt editorials or paid advertisements with our disclaimers and foreign-sounding names. The Pentagon found a way around the problem by paying Iraqi journalists to run Arabic translations of truthful, military-authored articles and stories.

Which brings us to the second scandal: Disgruntled Pentagon officials who disagree with policy continue to leak secrets with impunity. Their sabotage of strategic information campaigns after 9/11 ensured that the military had no propaganda strategy against al-Qaeda and none when it went into Iraq.

Paired with it is the third scandal: the hubris and recklessness of some news organizations that pontificate about democratic media principles as they place their struggling Iraqi colleagues in mortal danger.

They may as well tell moderate Arab journalists, "If you cooperate with our troops, we will expose you to the death squads."

All the more reason for our military to keep up the good work. The Iraqi people — and our troops — depend on it.

J. Michael Waller teaches public diplomacy and political warfare at the Institute of World Politics. (The Defense Department and Lincoln Group declined to provide an opposing view.)