In To Win

There is an op-ed in the Washington Post that will, I am quite sure, raise a lot of uproar in the blogosphere. Liz Cheney writes on why the US must win in Iraq. The fact that she is who she is will make some reject her arguments out of hand. But frankly, she is saying a lot of things I have said on this blog and that a lot of others have been trying to point out as well.

Sen. Hillary Clinton declared this weekend, " I'm in to win." Anyone who has watched her remarkable trajectory can have no doubt that she'll do whatever it takes to win the presidency. I wish she felt the same way about the war.

In fairness, Clinton, with her proposal for arbitrary caps on troop levels and hemming and hawing about her vote for the war resolution, has company on both sides of the aisle. Sen. Joseph Lieberman is the only national Democrat showing any courage on this issue. We Republicans — with help from senators such as Chuck Hagel — seem ready to race the Democrats to the bottom.

I'd like to ask the politicians in both parties who are heading for the hills to stop and reflect on these basic facts:

· We are at war. America faces an existential threat. This is not, as Speaker Nancy Pelosi has claimed, a "situation to be solved." It would be nice if we could wake up tomorrow and say, as Sen. Barack Obama suggested at a Jan. 11 hearing, "Enough is enough." Wishing doesn't make it so. We will have to fight these terrorists to the death somewhere, sometime. We can't negotiate with them or "solve" their jihad. If we quit in Iraq now, we must get ready for a harder, longer, more deadly struggle later.

· Quitting helps the terrorists. Few politicians want to be known as spokesmen for retreat. Instead we hear such words as "redeployment," "drawdown" or "troop cap." Let's be clear: If we restrict the ability of our troops to fight and win this war, we help the terrorists. Don't take my word for it. Read the plans of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Ayman Zawahiri to drive America from Iraq, establish a base for al-Qaeda and spread jihad across the Middle East. The terrorists are counting on us to lose our will and retreat under pressure. We're in danger of proving them right.

There is quite a lot more. We are, as a nation, showing a horrible face to the world. One of internal rancor and disarray. Do not think this is not seen and understood by our enemies. It surely is. The cost to this country for losing the war in Iraq will be enormous. And the next war - and there will be one - will be much, much more ugly and costly.

Time Capsule

The folks in Tulsa, Oklahoma are planning to open a time capsule on June 15th of this year. The capsule, sealed up fifty years ago, contains: fourteen bobby pins, a ladies compact plastic rain cap, several combs, a tube of lipstick, pack of gum, facial tissues $2.73 in bills and coins and a pack of cigarettes with matches, an unpaid parking ticket and a bottle of tranquilizers. All in a handy carrying container.

A brand new 1957 Plymouth Belvedere Sport Coupe.

Promoters are looking for people who helped lower the car into its crypt in 1957 to perhaps shed some light on what to expect when the car is unearthed.

There's speculation the car may have turned into a pile of rust. Or that it's in pristine condition and worth thousands of dollars.

Sharon King Davis, who has chaired Tulsa's centennial efforts, looked at photos of the people responsible for burying the car in 1957 and found her grandfather.

"I wish grandpa had left me some instructions," she told the Tulsa World.

The car had been largely forgotten until Davis and her group started work on the centennial. Files on the car have vanished, so it's not clear what to expect when the lid is lifted.

What's known is that the car is on a steel pallet with jacks under the axles. Efforts were made to preserve it, but it's unclear if moisture has gotten to the metal and caused rust.

"There's a kind of Rip Van Winkle reaction," Davis says. "Most people had long ago forgotten the buried car, but as the time to dig it up nears, they are waking up and wondering about life in 1957."

It is not at all clear who will own the car when (or if) it comes out of the ground. A contest was run back when it was buried and the microfilmed records of who made guesses as to what Tulsa's population would be in 2007 are also buried with the car. Whoever guessed closest to the actual figure - or their heirs - are supposed to get the car. (Oh, I can see the lawyers lining up right now…..)

More about the car here and here. (One has to ask: what if they forgot to put the keys in it? Wouldn't that be hysterical?)

Ski Tuscon!

Many thanks to reader Lanie for several photos from the Arizona winter wonderland including some cool cactus (literally) and a 'Zona snowman!

Some Lines Should Not Be Crossed

This is one of them.

PARK CITY, Utah — "Zoo" is a documentary about what director Robinson Devor accurately characterizes as "the last taboo, on the boundary of something comprehensible." But remarkably, an elegant, eerily lyrical film has resulted.

"Zoo," premiering before a rapt audience Saturday night at Sundance, manages to be a poetic film about a forbidden subject, a perfect marriage between a cool and contemplative director (the little-seen "Police Beat") and potentially incendiary subject matter: sex between men and animals. Not graphic in the least, this strange and strangely beautiful film combines audio interviews (two of the three men involved did not want to appear on camera) with elegiac visual re-creations intended to conjure up the mood and spirit of situations. The director himself puts it best: "I aestheticized the sleaze right out of it."

Devor and his writing partner, Charles Mudede, live in Seattle and were stunned, as were many in the state, by a story that broke in 2005 about a local man who died after having sex with an Arabian stallion. Though bestiality is not illegal in Washington, the subsequent revelation of the existence of an Internet-based zoophile community (the men refer to themselves as "zoos," hence the title) was a shock.

There are certain things in any civilization that should be forbidden for any number of reasons. The sexual abuse of animals is one of those things. There are some things that cannot be "aestheticized" no matter how you try to dress it up. The more things like this are mainstreamed by filmmakers like Devor, the more we are diminished as a society. Sundance did a great disservice by showing something like this. This is not "edgy" or "art" or "aesthetic". This is perversion.

We should call it what it is and denounce it, not make movies about it.

UPDATE: Others: Right Wing Nut House, Libertas, Blogs for Bush, Preemptive Karma, Riehl World View, Hill Chronicles, Dumb Ox Daily News, Return of Scipio,

Iran Bars IAEA Inspectors

Iran has barred 38 International Atomic Enenergy Agency inspectors from entering Iran. A few were apparently allowed to proceed, but most were denied entry.

Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said some inspectors were admitted, but maintained that Iran could decide who should be turned away.

"The International Atomic Energy Agency submits a long list of inspectors to member countries and the countries have the right to oppose the visit by some inspectors," Mottaki told the official Islamic Republic News Agency.

The head of the parliamentary committee of national security and foreign policy, Alaeddin Borojerdi, had been quoted by a students' news agency as saying Iran had barred 38 inspectors.

Last month, the U.N. Security Council imposed limited trade sanctions on Iran because of its refusal to cease uranium enrichment, a process that produces the material for nuclear reactors or bombs. Days later, the country's parliament passed a motion that obliged the government to revise its cooperation with the IAEA, but gave it a free hand to determine the steps to be taken.

If Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is facing domestic unrest as several media outlets have suggested, that pressure is not changing Iran's nuclear stance to any perceptable degree. It is time to step up the international pressure.

Save The Terrorists

Even in this day and age, there are people who are willing to overlook terrorism. The are people who want to blame terrorist behavior on us, saying it is our policies that drive the terrorists to their actions. Those same apologists decry efforts to fight back against terrorists and denounce those efforts at every turn. Much of the opposition comes from Europe, not just America. That's why these people are signing petitions denouncing efforts to control terrorism.

What the heck are you supposed to do with squirrels that attack humans?

As of Wednesday, 682 people had signed an online petition that asks the city of Mountain View to abandon plans to kill squirrels in Cuesta Park, the site of numerous squirrel attacks starting in May of last year.

Late last month, a woman from Fallon, Nev. signed the petition and posted this comment: “These people want to kill the squirrels for being aggressive, so what are they going to do about their own aggressive tendencies? … Maybe the squirrels are just reacting to the aggression they see around them?''

Some of the people who recently signed the petition, located at www.thepetitionsite.com, are based in England and South Africa. The petitioners' goal is to gather 1,000 online signatures and forward the message to Mountain View City Hall. The petition site is powered by care2.com, a Redwood City-based “environmentally-responsible'' networking site.

The online outrage was sparked by a proposal from city staff to place traps in trees to catch and euthanize aggressive squirrels. The proposal was put together following a string of attacks last fall that received local, and subsequently, international attention.

After the plan was announced in October, city staff and council members were hit with a barrage of e-mails and calls from squirrel aficionados. City staff, in turn, put the trapping plans on hold in favor of warning park visitors against feeding squirrels and trying to limit the amount of food trash left behind for the squirrels.

I originally noted the reports of the squirrel attacks back in September and noted then that the entire debate was an exact analog of the debate over terrorism of the human sort. It still is. If not more so. The squirrels have attacked little kids and inflicted injury, yet they have vehement defenders and apologists. Interesting, isn't it?

Long Island Invaded By Invisible Beaver

Reports are streaming in that a beaver has not been seen on Long Island. We can't make this stuff up folks.

Word that a lone beaver set up housekeeping in Northwest Woods has East Hampton Town abuzz about the provenance of the dam-building beast, whose ancestors are thought to have vanished from Long Island hundreds of years ago.

Garbo-like, the reclusive rodent has yet to be actually seen. But traces of beaver bustle are evident at Scoy Pond: toppled, tooth-marked trees, a dam, even a stout lodge sitting at a stately remove in the pond…..

……Skeptics note Long Islanders' propensity for acquiring, and then abandoning, exotic animals. A prairie dog native to the Plains states was found in a sandy burrow on Fire Island four years ago.

But some locals are firmly convinced that the beaver is real.

"There have been no sightings, but the evidence is irrefutable," said East Hampton Town Supervisor Bill McGintee. "We've very pleased. We've got an abundance of wild turkeys, beavers and disoriented porpoises."

If the Animal Uprising™ has indeed perfected the cloak of invisibility then they are far ahead of human scientists.

Somali Islamist Leader Surrenders

In what is a very interesting development, one of the leaders of the islamists who were trying to take over Somalia has surrendered to Kenyan officials and is being held in Nairobi. The leader, Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, who is considered one of the more moderate members of the islamist leadership reportedly feared for his life.

Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, who has been described by a U.S. diplomat as a moderate who could play a role in reconciling Somali factions, crossed into Kenya, went to a police station along the border on Sunday and was flown to Nairobi, according to a police report seen by The Associated Press.

The U.S. said it was not involved in protecting Ahmed, who apparently feared for his life in Somalia, where the remnants of his Council of Islamic Courts are being hunted by Ethiopian troops and Somali government forces.

"The U.S. government is not holding or interrogating Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed and was not involved in his capture or surrender," a U.S. Embassy official said, speaking on condition of anonymity as they weren't authorized to talk to the media.

U.S. Ambassador Michael Ranneberger has repeatedly said Ahmed is a moderate Islamic leader who should be part of a national reconciliation process in Somalia.

Ahmed was the chairman of the Executive Council of Islamic Courts and shared the leadership with the Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys, who was chairman of the court's legislative council. While Ahmed is considered a moderate, Aweys is on a U.S. list of people with suspected ties to the al-Qaida terror network, though he has repeatedly denied having links to international terrorists.

If Ahmed agrees to hold talks with Somalia's government, it could be a major step toward preventing the widespread insurgency that many Islamic leaders have promised in Somalia.

Depending on how this unfolds, this could preemptively break the back of any insurgency that may be in the offing. There have been increasing reports of violence in Somalia, but there does not appear to be a clear link to the islamists. A good deal of it appears to be warlords and clans going at one another.

Mob Hit In Gary

The completely lawless organized criminal elements of the Animal Uprising™ are at it again. This time the animal mob whacked one of their own and dumped the body in Gary, Indiana.

GARY, Ind. — Mayor Rudy Clay says he couldn’t believe it when he saw the latest piece of rubbish illegally dumped along a Gary street — a 5- to 6-foot-long dead alligator.

“I jumped back,” Clay said after visiting Thursday’s reptile discovery.

The dead animal was found among a pile of roofing shingles and old tires dumped illegally from a 40-foot-long rolling garbage container in the city’s Glen Park area.

Gary code enforcement officers arrested an employee of a recycling company on illegal dumping charges for leaving the animal and the other trash.

Our sources tell us that the murder victim was suspected of squealing on a new reptile offensive coming in the spring.

Snowmen In Tuscon

They're building snowmen in Tuscon, Arizona today, while areas farther North in that state are digging out from a foot or more of snow with still more forecast.

Sunday's storm came amid a wave of winter storms that have brought snow, ice and strong winds to the Plains region, but also to the Southwest, including Arizona, Texas and New Mexico.

The harsh, frigid conditions were blamed for 11 traffic fatalities in the Plains over the weekend.

Although the heaviest snowfall in Arizona on Sunday was in the north, snow also fell in downtown Phoenix and Tucson, which received up to 1 1/2 inches, according to the National Weather Service.

Danita D'Water said there were huge snowflakes in her neighborhood in far northeast Phoenix.

"The children are running up and down the street, riding their scooters in the snow," she said. "The kids are pretty excited but the adults were out taking pictures."

More than a foot fell in Forest Lakes, Pinetop and at the Sunrise Ski Resort, among other places in northern Arizona. Between one and three inches fell in Flagstaff, said Robert Bohlin, meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

A winter storm warning remained in effect until noon Monday for parts of northern and northeastern Arizona, with the National Weather Service forecasting up to an additional three inches of snow.

Since at least some people went on record recently saying that 2007 could be the warmest year on record, it will be very interesting to see what the numbers look like at the end of the year. (Remember the dire predictions about the 2006 hurricane season?) There are a lot of these kinds of reports this winter from areas that normally do not see temperatures this low or any snowfall to speak of. Does it prove or disprove anything? Of course not, just as a warm spell proves nothing.

Unraveling Myths

Mark Moyar, who's book Triumph Forsaken was reviewed in the Weekly Standard a short while ago, has an article in the Christian Science Monitor today. In it he explains how so much of the "history" of the Vietnam war became mired in myth. It is not at all a pretty picture and shows just how dangerous bad journalism can be for the nation and the world. Moyar's extensive research into communist archives proves that the "conventional wisdom" about Vietnam has been very badly twisted by three journalists and their distortions and subsequent coverup of their actions.

Three journalists handed down the standard version of the Vietnam War in three bestselling tomes. The first two, David Halberstam's "The Best and the Brightest" (1972) and Stanley Karnow's "Vietnam: A History," (1983) each sold more than 1 million copies, while the third, Neil Sheehan's "A Bright Shining Lie" (1988), received the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.

These books have profoundly influenced almost everything else that has been written about the Vietnam War. Because of the iconic status of these journalists and the political inclinations of the intelligentsia, the three books received few serious challenges – prior to the publication last summer of my "Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954-1965."

Historians such as Guenter Lewy, Lewis Sorley, and Michael Lind have also effectively contested some of the journalists' basic interpretations, and antiwar historians have produced more modest modifications, but the Halberstam-Sheehan-Karnow rendition of the war has remained dominant.

One reason for the durability of their version is that the endless repetition by other commentators produced the impression that it had to be right. Earlier, when writing a book on counterinsurgency in the latter years of the war entitled "Phoenix and the Birds of Prey," I, too, presumed that the first half of the war had been covered exhaustively. Only after many subsequent forays into archives and Vietnamese-language sources did I discover that the standard narrative of the critical early years was terribly wrong.

The books of Messrs. Halberstam, Sheehan, and Karnow can be fully understood only in the light of the authors' actions in Vietnam during 1962 and 1963. Their writings were key elements in the drama, particularly in the summer and fall of 1963 when the US Embassy instigated a coup against South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem.

It is an extremely interesting read. I still have not read Moyar's book, but intend to. Even more so now, I think. Moyar is a historian, not a journalist. And he has gone to great lengths to research this book using original sources. His evidence appears to be pretty compelling that the conventional wisdom is incorrect.

Hillary! Campaigns For Funds

Not the Hillary you are expecting and not funds for what you think. Sir Edmund Hillary is attempting to shame the British government into providing some financial support to help preserve Terra Nova, the base built by Robert Falcon Scott (and used by Ernest Shackleton) in Antarctica.

"To find that these relics of a heroic age are barely supported by Britain is just a little bit disappointing," he said as he sat inside Shackleton's rickety hut at Cape Royds, beside the Ross Sea.

The timber huts, with their shelves of tinned food, bedding and equipment, offer an extraordinary snapshot of the conditions faced by early 20th century polar explorers. However, they are increasingly in danger from the conditions.

Britain takes the view that although Scott was British, the responsibility is entirely New Zealand's because the huts are within the Ross Dependency, territory claimed by Wellington. New Zealand says it cannot afford to carry out the work, which it estimates would cost £3 million.

In recent years, campaigners, including Sir David Attenborough, the actor Kenneth Branagh, and the explorers Sir Ranulph Fiennes and David Hempleman-Adams, have tried to get the British Government to support the preservation project.

It would be a shame to lose that bit of history due to indifference.

Bolivia Slipping?

The Washington Post reports that all is not well in Evo Morales' attempted socialist workers paradise. Things are not going - at all - in the direction that Morales promised. And people, both Morales supporters and those who oppose him, are increasingly taking to the streets in protest over what is (or isn't) happening in Bolivia.

As President Evo Morales celebrates his first year in office Monday, he remains determined to launch what he calls a "democratic revolution," built on the traditions of the country's indigenous population. But the rising public unrest — by his opponents and supporters — has forced the government to come up with new ways to try to get there.

Morales, and the slight majority of assembly members aligned with him, initially had hoped that the assembly, created last year, would enable them to grant indigenous communities more institutional power and a bigger share of government revenue.

But long-simmering regional conflicts have interfered, with opposition assembly members insisting on more autonomy for local governments in regions that produce the bulk of the country's export income. The deadlock over voting procedures is merely a reflection of the much deeper fault lines running through Bolivia.

"Our meetings always end in insults," said Oscar Urquízu Córdova, an assembly member for the Podemos party, which opposes Morales, the former leader of a coca growers union. "Their side accuses us of 500 years of oppression against the indigenous class, and they say we represent a repressive oligarchy. Then we say things back to them, like calling them 'narco-traffickers.' "

Meanwhile, the rifts left unaddressed by the assembly have worsened.

Last month, about a million people filled the streets of Santa Cruz to demand greater autonomy from the central government, which the protesters accuse of taking their region's wealth and unfairly distributing it elsewhere. Recently, when the regional governor of the central district of Cochabamba said he would seek greater regional autonomy, Morales's allies took to the streets to demand his resignation. Two people were killed and more than 100 wounded in the resulting clashes.

There are plans being floated in Bolivia to force recall referendums on regional governors. These plans are being pushed by, surprise, Morales supporters. Does this sound at all familiar? *Cough* Venezuela *cough*.

Changing Ways

The Opinion Journal today hails the announcement by Ban Ki-Moon directing that an external investigation of all of the United Nations funds and programs in the wake of revelations that North Korea may have been using funds improperly. They reach the same conclusion I did: Ban is a refreshing change over the corrupt Annan administration.

The proximate cause for Friday's meeting between Messrs. Ban and Melkert, and for Mr. Ban's clean-house announcement, was Melanie Kirkpatrick's op-ed article in The Wall Street Journal on Friday detailing irregularities in the UNDP's programs in North Korea and citing U.S. concerns that tens of millions of dollars in hard currency have been funneled to dictator Kim Jong Il.

The UNDP must have got Mr. Ban's memo. We publish today a letter in The Wall Street Journal (available here) from the agency's Mr. Melkert, responding to Ms. Kirkpatrick's article and our accompanying editorial. "We . . . welcome an independent and external audit of our operations in North Korea," he writes. And, "If the member states of the U.N. and UNDP's board were to decide that our presence there were no longer useful, we would leave immediately."

Kim Jong Il is about as likely to change the way he does business as he is to move to Hollywood to pursue his avocation as a movie buff, so a UNDP pullout from North Korea is the right policy. The Pyongyang government won't even permit U.N. officials to visit the sites of some of the projects that their agency is funding. There's no way of knowing whether the "battery factory" paid for with U.N. money actually exists or is just a vehicle for funding Kim's regime.

In a statement posted on its Web site Friday, the UNDP asserts that it can account for all but $337,000 of its recent expenditures in North Korea. Of the $6.5 million spent in 2005-2006, it says, only $337,000 went to projects directly managed by the North Korean government. The agency now manages most of its projects in North Korea directly.

Interestingly, that time frame coincides pretty closely with the departure of Mark Malloch Brown as head of that agency. One has to go, "Hmmmmm." It will be highly interesting to watch what else scurries out from under the rocks at the UN as they are turned over one by one.