Desperation

Earlier, I noted the treasure trove of intelligence that had been recovered from the house where Zarqawi was killed. The Iraqi government has released one particular letter that needs to be read to be believed. This is a letter that shows exactly how desperate al Qaeda in Iraq is. Bottom line, they were already collapsing before Zarqawi was killed. The letter outlines a number of strategies to try to save the terrorists and accomplish the downfall of Iraq.

The situation and conditions of the resistance in Iraq have reached a point that requires a review of the events and of the work being done inside Iraq. Such a study is needed in order to show the best means to accomplish the required goals, especially that the forces of the National Guard have succeeded in forming an enormous shield protecting the American forces and have reduced substantially the losses that were solely suffered by the American forces. This is in addition to the role, played by the Shi'a (the leadership and masses) by supporting the occupation, working to defeat the resistance and by informing on its elements.

As an overall picture, time has been an element in affecting negatively the forces of the occupying countries, due to the losses they sustain economically in human lives, which are increasing with time. However, here in Iraq, time is now beginning to be of service to the American forces and harmful to the resistance for the following reasons:

1. By allowing the American forces to form the forces of the National Guard, to reinforce them and enable them to undertake military operations against the resistance.

2. By undertaking massive arrest operations, invading regions that have an impact on the resistance, and hence causing the resistance to lose many of its elements.

3. By undertaking a media campaign against the resistance resulting in weakening its influence inside the country and presenting its work as harmful to the population rather than being beneficial to the population.

4. By tightening the resistance's financial outlets, restricting its moral options and by confiscating its ammunition and weapons.

5. By creating a big division among the ranks of the resistance and jeopardizing its attack operations, it has weakened its influence and internal support of its elements, thus resulting in a decline of the resistance's assaults.

6. By allowing an increase in the number of countries and elements supporting the occupation or at least allowing to become neutral in their stand toward us in contrast to their previous stand or refusal of the occupation.

7. By taking advantage of the resistance's mistakes and magnifying them in order to misinform.

Based on the above points, it became necessary that these matters should be treated one by one:

1. To improve the image of the resistance in society, increase the number of supporters who are refusing occupation and show the clash of interest between society and the occupation and its collaborators. To use the media for spreading an effective and creative image of the resistance.

2. To assist some of the people of the resistance to infiltrate the ranks of the National Guard in order to spy on them for the purpose of weakening the ranks of the National Guard when necessary, and to be able to use their modern weapons.

3. To reorganize for recruiting new elements for the resistance.

4. To establish centers and factories to produce and manufacture and improve on weapons and to produce new ones.

5. To unify the ranks of the resistance, to prevent controversies and prejudice and to adhere to piety and follow the leadership.

6. To create division and strife between American and other countries and among the elements disagreeing with it.

7. To avoid mistakes that will blemish the image of the resistance and show it as the enemy of the nation.

In general and despite the current bleak situation, we think that the best suggestions in order to get out of this crisis is to entangle the American forces into another war against another country or with another of our enemy force, that is to try and inflame the situation between American and Iraq or between America and the Shi'a in general.

Specifically the Sistani Shi'a, since most of the support that the Americans are getting is from the Sistani Shi'a, then, there is a possibility to instill differences between them and to weaken the support line between them; in addition to the losses we can inflict on both parties. Consequently, to embroil America in another war against another enemy is the answer that we find to be the most appropriate, and to have a war through a delegate has the following benefits:

1. To occupy the Americans by another front will allow the resistance freedom of movement and alleviate the pressure imposed on it.

2. To dissolve the cohesion between the Americans and the Shi'a will weaken and close this front.

3. To have a loss of trust between the Americans and the Shi'a will cause the Americans to lose many of their spies.

4. To involve both parties, the Americans and the Shi'a, in a war that will result in both parties being losers.

5. Thus, the Americans will be forced to ask the Sunni for help.

6. To take advantage of some of the Shia elements that will allow the resistance to move among them.

7. To weaken the media's side which is presenting a tarnished image of the resistance, mainly conveyed by the Shi'a.

8. To enlarge the geographical area of the resistance movement.

9. To provide popular support and cooperation by the people.

The resistance fighters have learned from the result and the great benefits they reaped, when a struggle ensued between the Americans and the Army of Al-Mahdi. However, we have to notice that this trouble or this delegated war that must be ignited can be accomplished through:

1. A war between the Shi'a and the Americans.

2. A war between the Shi'a and the secular population (such as Ayad 'Alawi and al-Jalabi.)

3. A war between the Shi'a and the Kurds.

4. A war between Ahmad al-Halabi and his people and Ayad 'Alawi and his people.

5. A war between the group of al-Hakim and the group of al-Sadr.

6. A war between the Shi'a of Iraq and the Sunni of the Arab countries in the gulf.

7. A war between the Americans and Iraq. We have noticed that the best of these wars to be ignited is the one between the Americans and Iran, because it will have many benefits in favor of the Sunni and the resistance, such as:

1. Freeing the Sunni people in Iraq, who are (30 percent) of the population and under the Shi'a Rule.

2. Drowning the Americans in another war that will engage many of their forces.

3. The possibility of acquiring new weapons from the Iranian side, either after the fall of Iran or during the battles.

4. To entice Iran towards helping the resistance because of its need for its help.

5. Weakening the Shi'a supply line.

The question remains, how to draw the Americans into fighting a war against Iran? It is not known whether American is serious in its animosity towards Iraq, because of the big support Iran is offering to America in its war in Afghanistan and in Iraq. Hence, it is necessary first to exaggerate the Iranian danger and to convince America and the west in general, of the real danger coming from Iran, and this would be done by the following:

1. By disseminating threatening messages against American interests and the American people and attribute them to a Shi'a Iranian side.

2. By executing operations of kidnapping hostages and implicating the Shi'a Iranian side.

3. By advertising that Iran has chemical and nuclear weapons and is threatening the west with these weapons.

4. By executing exploding operations in the west and accusing Iran by planting Iranian Shi'a fingerprints and evidence.

5. By declaring the existence of a relationship between Iran and terrorist groups (as termed by the Americans).

6. By disseminating bogus messages about confessions showing that Iran is in possession of weapons of mass destruction or that there are attempts by the Iranian intelligence to undertake terrorist operations in America and the west and against western interests.

Let us hope for success and for God's help.

Notice a couple of things here? They have a strategy to use the media to increase their standing. In other words, make sure the media paints them as a powerful foe. Then the admission that their only hope for success is to involve America in another war.

This is a picture of a group that has already reached the point of complete failure. They are beaten. We just need to clean up the remnants.

When Zealots Take Over

John Stossel has an article up over at Real Clear Politics that describes religious zealotry in action. No, we're not talking about the religious right that so many lefties screech about. We're talking about the religious zealots who worship in the church of environmentalism.

Media coverage of environmental regulators makes them look like dispassionate scientists. But too often they are dangerous religious fanatics.

Years ago, when ranchers and farmers told me that our government's environmental regulatory agencies had been captured by fanatics so hostile to the idea of private property that they'd use the endangered-species law to drive just about every landowner off his land, I thought they were overwrought. Then I learned the story of the lynx.

Thousands of lynx live in North America, but since environmental officials weren't sure whether there were any in the Gifford Pinchot and Wenatchee National Forests in southern Washington state, they commissioned a million-dollar study to find out.

….

For their study in Washington state, government biologists nailed pieces of carpet soaked with catnip onto trees, hoping a lynx would rub up against them and leave some fur — evidence of the lynx's existence in this particular area. Sure enough, when biologists sent carpet samples to a lab, they came back positive for hairs from a Canada lynx.

That may sound like good evidence that there were Canada lynx in the area, but actually, the regulators went to a zoo, got hair samples from captive lynx, and sent those hairs to the lab to be tested.

The biologists only admitted rigging the test when they were caught. The cheating didn't surprise Jim Beers, a biologist for the Department of Fish and Wildlife for 30 years.

He told me that biologists at Fish and Wildlife were on a campaign to keep people out of wooded areas. "The agencies today," he said, "are staffed with environmental radical activists." And the activist-bureaucrats don't want people living in the woods.

Once caught with their hands in the cage, the biologists announced that they were not trying to cheat, they were just "testing" the lab to make sure it could detect lynx hair by sending a "control" sample. Beers said: "That's the same as you telling me that you caught them walking out of the bank with money and they said, 'Oh, we were just seeing if the system works here.'"

That is not a test, that is an attempt at fraud. Stossel makes the point that it is more likely for a zealot to take a job at a regulatory agency than a dispassionate scientist. I can completely validate that observation from personal experience. There is quite a substantial number of people who work at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission who are, in fact, vehemently anti-nuclear. I dealt with those folks pretty regularly.

Proof That Modern Art Isn’t

From England, we now have definitive proof of something I have long suspected. Modern art isn't really art at all. The Royal Academy put a work of art consisting of a block of slate topped by a small, bone shaped piece of wood.

The problem is, the chunk of stone was supposed to be a plinth to display a sculpture of a human head. The wood was just a brace to help prop up the head. The gallery lost it's head.

The Royal Academy included the chunk of stone and the small bone-shaped wooden stick in its summer exhibition in London.

But the slate was actually a plinth and the stick was designed to prop up a sculpture. The sculpture itself — of a human head — was nowhere to be seen.

"I think the things got separated in the selection process and the selectors presented the plinth as a complete sculpture," the work's artist David Hensel told BBC radio.

The academy explained the error by saying the plinth and the head were sent to the exhibitors separately.

"Given their separate submission, the two parts were judged independently," it said in a statement. "The head was rejected. The base was thought to have merit and accepted.

Got that? The sculpture was no good to the gallery, but the chunk of rock with a stick had "merit". Although it is not reported, one assumes that some art critic swooned over the rock and stick and even now is writing a glowing review.

Streaking Gets Dangerous

When a Michigan man ran into a bit of nervous hesitation on the part of his intended bride, He informed her that taking risks was part of life. In a really, really stupid way to prove the point, the man then jumped out of the window wearing nothing but his birthday suit and ran across the street. When he noticed a couple walking down the street, he suddenly discovered his discretion and hid in some bushes. Unfortunately, a passerby noticed the rustling bushes and a pair of bare feet sticking out.

The passerby happened to have a gun.

The couple were discussing marriage early Wednesday when the woman said she wasn't sure if she was ready, according to Ann Arbor police reports. The man responded that taking risks is an important part of life and, to prove his point, jumped out of a first-floor window and ran naked across the street.

Before he could return, he spotted a couple walking and hid in some bushes to avoid them. A 28-year-old man noticed the bushes rustling and bare feet underneath, then drew a .40-caliber handgun and ordered the naked man out, police said.

The naked suitor ran away, but the armed man gave chase and threatened to shoot, police said. The gunman fired a shot and the naked man fell to the ground, suffering minor injuries.

The gunman was arrested but later released when the risk-taker decided he didn't want to press charges. No word on whether his risky behavior landed him a bride or convinced her that he was too dumb to marry.

Treasure Trove

It would appear that an enormous amount of intelligence was gathered from the ruins of Zarqawi's bombed house. That in turn has led to even more intelligence finds as leads developed from the captured information are followed up on. The Iraqi government believes that they now have the upper hand on al Qaeda in Iraq.

National Security Adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie also said he believed the security situation in the country would improve enough to allow a large number of U.S.-led forces to leave Iraq by the end of this year, and a majority to depart by the end of next year. "And maybe the last soldier will leave Iraq by mid-2008," he said.

Al-Rubaie said a laptop, flashdrive and other documents were found in the debris after the airstrike that killed the al-Qaida in Iraq leader last week outside Baqouba, and more information has been uncovered in raids of other insurgent hideouts since then.

He called it a "huge treasure … a huge amount of information."

When asked how he could be sure the information was authentic, al-Rubaie said "there is nothing more authentic than finding a thumbdrive in his pocket."

"We believe that this is the beginning of the end of al-Qaida in Iraq," al-Rubaie said, adding that the documents showed al-Qaida is in "pretty bad shape," politically and in terms of training, weapons and media.

"Now we have the upper hand," he said at a news conference in Baghdad. "We feel that we know their locations, the names of their leaders, their whereabouts, their movements, through the documents we found during the last few days."

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, meanwhile, pressed forward with his initiative to crack down on violence in Baghdad. Government forces fanned out across Baghdad for a second day, setting up checkpoints and frisking motorists.

Al-Maliki has promised the crackdown would not target any ethnic or sectarian group.

Between the captured information and the huge security crackdown, I rather suspect the members of al Qaeda who are still free are feeling very nervous at the moment. Overall, that's a good thing. People who are busy looking over their shoulders tend to be too preoccupied to cause mischief. People who are running scared make mistakes. All the signs point to a huge shift in momentum toward the Iraqi government.

UPDATE: AP reports that Major General William Caldwell, a US military spokesman in Iraq has announced that the intelligence has led to 452 raids with 104 terrorists killed and another 759 people captured. 143 of the raids were carried out by Iraqi forces acting alone while the rest were joint Iraqi and US operations.

Bush Continues To Surprise

His critics. In a move that uses a 100 year old law, Bush will declare a huge area Northwest of the main Hawaiian Islands a national monument. A sweeping list of rules will protect the area from development or commercial use.

In his second use of the 100-year old National Antiquities Act, which empowers the president to protect important cultural or geological resources instantly, Mr. Bush will enact a suite of strict rules for the area, including a five-year phasing out of commercial and sport fishing, officials said.

The chain of largely uninhabited atolls, seamounts, reefs and shoals, which sweeps northwest from the big islands of Hawaii, is called the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands and is home to some 7,000 species of marine life, including endangered green sea turtles and Hawaiian monk seals and millions of breeding seabirds.

Earlier yesterday, the region, which at 140,000 square miles is nearly the size of California, was to have been named a national marine sanctuary, a different kind of protection that could have taken a year to enact.

But Mr. Bush, in a last meeting to consider the plan and timetable, decided to cut things short, said a senior official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not want to take attention away from Mr. Bush's public statement today. "He said, Look, I've got this authority, I'm going to use it," the official said.

"What we avoid is another year or more in process when we already have consensus," he said, noting that national-monument status avoided the prospect of lawsuits over proposed sanctuary regulations. Since the Clinton administration, environmental campaigners had pushed for marine sanctuary status for the area, and as recently as early last night they were girding for months of public debate over the proposed sanctuary rules with a few groups representing Pacific fish-processing companies and fishing fleets.

Last night, representatives of the conservation groups were at first startled by the sudden switch, but were then exultant.

I expect immediate and harsh denunciations from leftists for this unilateral, cowboyish move to circumvent public discussion of the measure. To be consistent and all.

Morning Sky

Crackdown Starts Getting Results

Yesterday, the Iraqi government began a security operation in Baghdad designed to regain control of the capitol. Iraqi troops and police wearing new, distinctive uniforms hit the streets and began getting results almost at once.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — Iraqi troops Wednesday uncovered a kidnapping ring, seized weapons — including three rockets — and defused two roadside bombs after beginning a security clampdown on the often lawless streets of Baghdad.

In the first day of the new government's push to restore order in the capital, Iraqi troops also enforced a curfew from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. and issued a weapons ban for civilians.

Four insurgents were detained at one checkpoint after three people emerged from a car "screaming for help," said Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad.

"We found eight people that had been kidnapped now for four days that we were able to return back under control of the Iraqi government," Caldwell said. "They worked for an electrical company down south of Baghdad."

Iraq's ministries of Defense and Interior would not give specific numbers on how many troops were stationed across the city Wednesday, but it appeared to be fewer than the 70,000 that the Interior Ministry initially said it would deploy. (Watch the violence that inspired the Baghdad crackdown — 1:56)

Hours after the operation began, President Bush said at a news conference in Washington that 26,000 Iraqi troops and 23,000 Iraqi police will be backed by about 7,200 U.S.-led coalition troops.

"This operation is a joint effort to restore security and rule of law to high-risk areas in the capital city," Bush said.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has promised to deploy Iraqi forces to quell a spike in violence and sectarian strife in recent months.

This is the largest operation carried out in Baghdad since Iraq gained its sovereignty in June 2004, said Maj. Gen. Mahdi al-Gharrawi, commander of the forces deployed by the Interior Ministry.

Authorities will beef up the operation in coming days while making efforts not to disrupt the lives of civilians, said Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani.

Asked Wednesday if the Iraqi military and police soon would be able to snuff out the insurgency on their own, Caldwell replied, "I'm not sure they're going to be able to crush anything anytime soon, but they're getting stronger and better each and every day."

This is off to a promising start. OF course, the Washington Post coverage of this focuses on the inconvenience the security measures are causing. They also quote an Iraqi man who says he could care less about convenience if the Iraqi government can stabilize the situation. The crackdown has already freed hostages and defused at least one roadside bomb, while casualties appear to be falling (although it's pretty early on and a bit hard to tell where that is going).