Interesting News - 15 January 2008

Operation Iron Harvest is going on in Northern Iraq to push al Qaeda out of their final footholds. The Washington Post reports that the operation has resulted in 60 insurgents killed and over 200 captured during the past week. The NYT apparently missed the briefing.

The NYT is a case study in the failure of journalistic ethics and yellow journalism. Their latest the other day was a lead story clearly meant "to convince Americans that combat experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan are turning troops into murderers when they come home." True, returning vets committed or are charged with 121 murders in the United States since our current wars began. But, as Ralph Peters points out – but the Times does not – in context that means our soldiers "are five times less likely to commit a murder than their demographic peers."

And according to the NYT in an editorial yesterday, Iraq and the surge are no longer of importance to the general election. The Weekly Standard sees it a bit differently. "As the surge in Iraq has succeeded, the presidential campaign of John McCain has risen from the ashes. This is no coincidence, and the message is simple and unmistakable. The surge is now a powerful force in American politics. In the jargon of the 2008 presidential race, it's a game-changer."

The Iraqi Minister of Defense sees a security need for U.S. troops in Iraq for about another decade. He estimates that Iraq "will be able to take full control of the internal affairs of the country" by 2012. "[R]egarding protection from any external threats, our calculation appears that we are not going to be able to answer to any external threats until 2018 to 2020." The Defense Minister made these statements as the U.S. and Iraq negotiate U.S. troop presence in the country following the end of the UN mandate.

Bringing much needed sanity to the tort bar’s the search for deep pockets irrespective of responsibility is the Supreme Court with its 5-3 decision in Stoneridge Investment Partners v. Scientific-Atlanta. The court held that third party actors and business associates of the corporate entity that committed fraud cannot be held liable for the fraud if investors did not rely on their statements in making an investment decision. Read the entire decision here.

The spectre of Islamic radicalism in Pakistan is very much a Frankenstein’s monster. Radicalism was nurtured in Pakistan by Pakistan’s ISI and funded by Saudi Arabia to produce militants useful in pressuring India and controlling Afghanistan. But those radicals have long since cut the imbelical cord, and the ISI itself is suspect.

In the People’s Republic of California, the state plans to take control of the thermostats. One is both amazed at the incredible hubris of the left and the amount of damage and mischief their schemes of centralized control for the greater good of mankind inevitably portent.