Walid Phares On Iran's Continuing Acts of War

Iran is employing Hezbollah to train Iraqi assassination squads with the intent of reintroducing them into Iraq. This is neither surprising nor, for that matter, in any way out of character for the mad mullahs. Terrorism expert Walid Phares weighs in on Iran's acts of war and adds a recommendation that we should be supporting elements who want to institute democracy in Iran.

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"Senator, You're No Jack Kennedy"

The title of this post is from a memorable quote from the late Sen. Lloyd Bensten, eviscerating Dan Quayle during a VP debate. But it could equally be the words of James Piereson, the author of a book on JFK, Camelot and the Cultural Revoltion, as he responds to those on the left who equate Barack Obama to JFK. Indeed, as he notes, the progressives of today have nothing in common with the hawkish liberals of old.
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This from Mr. Pierson in an e-mail posted at the NRO:

. . . Theodore Sorenson, JFK's close aide and speechwriter, has said recently that Barack Obama is the natural successor to President Kennedy because of his skills as a speaker and his message of "hope and change." This idea has been augmented by endorsements of Obama by Ted and Caroline Kennedy.

. . . From the standpoint of ideas and philosophy, there is little in Obama to remind us of JFK. Kennedy was a firm cold warrior who believed in the American mission in the world. His memorable inaugural address was entirely about foreign policy and the cause of liberty. Kennedy, in fact, tried to run to the right of Richard Nixon in 1960, blaming the Eisenhower administration for a "missile gap," the embarrassment of the Castro revolution next door, and the downing of a reconnaissance aircraft over the Soviet Union in May, 1960. He brought up comparisons to Chamberlain, Munich, and "appeasement." On the domestic front, while JFK is viewed as a hero of the civil rights movement, in fact he came around gradually to support a civil rights bill in 1963. Kennedy was in fact a cautious politician, unwilling to get too far ahead of public opinion on this critical issue.

The reason that JFK left such a powerful imprint on the liberal movement had little to do with his actual policies, which were generally centrist. President Kennedy’s legacy was more cultural than directly political: he spoke beautifully, (thanks to Sorenson) he drew on images from literature and classical culture, he was a young president in the midst of a burgeoning youth culture, he was a highly attractive man, he had a beautiful family, he was rich, he was an author, he hung around with Harvard professors and Hollywood stars and starlets. He practiced the old politics but with a decidedly new cultural approach. Lyndon Johnson was much more of a liberal in terms of policy, but his cultural persona (in contrast to Kennedy's) was of the old school.

This latter fact is the reason that some observers seen Sen Obama as the new incarnation of JFK. He seems culturally to be of an avante garde, like JFK, though his policies internationally and domestically have little in common with the late President's. This says less about Sen Obama or about JFK than about contemporary liberalism, which is far more concerned with style and one's posture toward the world than about actual policies.

Read the entire post. Just to add, in his three years in office, JFK oversaw a vast expansion of our military involvement in Vietnam, the attempt at a coup in Cuba with the Bay of Pigs invasion, repeated failed assassination attempts of Fidel Castro, and the assassination of South Vietnam's President, Diem. It would be hard to find a more complete contrast between two individuals on foreign policy than Obama and JFK.

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Assassinations Have Ended, Organised Crime Is Finished & Armed Groups Are No Longer On The Streets"

Since it concluded, the end result of the Iraqi government's Basra offensive has been hidden in the fog of . . . not war, but media spin. The results are now becoming clearer - at least in those papers who are reporting on the matter in any depth. The Iraqi Army now owns Basra. The title of this post comes from a quote by an Iraqi resident of Basra.

This from a report by AFP:

Three weeks after Iraqi troops swarmed into the southern city of Basra to take on armed militiamen who had overrun the streets, many residents say they feel safer and that their lives have improved.

The fierce fighting which marked the first week of Operation Sawlat al-Fursan (Charge of the Knights) has given way to slower, more focused house-by-house searches by Iraqi troops, which led on Monday to the freeing of an abducted British journalist.

Residents say the streets have been cleared of gunmen, markets have reopened, basic services have been resumed and a measure of normality has returned to the oil-rich city.

The port of Umm Qasr is in the hands of the Iraqi forces who wrested control of the facility from Shiite militiamen, and according to the British military it is operational once again.

However, the city is flooded with troops, innumerable checkpoints constantly snarl the traffic, residents are scared to go out at night despite the curfew being relaxed, and the sound of sporadic gunfire can still be heard.

An AFP correspondent said three northwestern neighbourhoods once under the firm control of the Mahdi Army militia of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr -- Al-Hayaniyah, Khamsamile and Garma -- are now encircled by Iraqi troops who are carrying out door-to-door searches.

Two other neighbourhoods once dominated by the Mahdi Army, Al-Qiblah in the southwest and Al-Taymiyyah in the centre, have been cleared of weaponry and many people have been arrested, military officials say.

Residents expressed relief at the improved security.

"I am very happy about the situation right now. The deployment of the Iraqi army has made gunmen and gangsters disappear from the streets," said court employee Mahdi Fallah, 42.

"The gangs were controlling the ports and smuggling oil. Now the ports are back in government hands. Everything in Basra is better than before."

Taxi driver Samir Hashim, 35, said he now felt safer driving through the city's streets and was willing to put up with the traffic jams caused by the many security checkpoints.

"We feel secure. Assassinations have ended, organised crime is finished and armed groups are no longer on the streets," said Hashim.

"I think Basra will be the best city in Iraq," he added optimistically. "We are finally beginning to feel there is law in Basra."

"We feel comfortable and safe and secure," said civil servant Alah Mustapha.

"The situation in Basra is stable. The Iraqi army controls the city and there are no longer armed groups on the streets."

The Iraqi security operations have not been without severe problems, and on Sunday 1,300 police and soldiers were sacked for failing to do their duty during the assault, which began on March 25 under orders of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

. . . The US military, meanwhile, said that since the crackdown began, the Iraqi security forces have arrested some 430 people, including 28 death row convicts who had been on the run.

And the British military, which is stationed at Basra airport giving logistical and air support to the Iraqi forces, said Iraqi soldiers had uncovered large caches of weapons and had dismantled a car bomb factory.

The Sadr movement has bitterly denounced the crackdown, accusing the government of using the security forces to weaken its political opponents ahead of provincial elections due in October.

A similar crackdown is also under way in the Mahdi Army's eastern Baghdad bastion of Sadr City where around 90 people have been killed in clashes between US and Iraqi forces and Shiite militiamen in the past 10 days.

Read the entire article. And there is more from Bill Roggio at the Long War Journal:

As Iraqi and Coalition forces are pressing the fight against the Mahdi Army in northeastern Baghdad and the southern port city of Basrah. Iraqi troops have cleared two Mahdi Army strongholds in Basrah, and are reported to have surrounded three others as they prepare to press the operation. In Baghdad, the Iraqi Army and US forces continue to clash with the Mahdi Army while forces have moved into southwestern Sadr City and set up a 'demonstration area' to distribute aid and provide local security.

The battle for Sadr City

The Iraqi government signaled that it was willing to take on the Mahdi Army inside its Baghdad stronghold of Sadr City and the outlying neighborhoods since Muqtada al Sadr ordered his militia to cease fighting six days after the Basrah operation began in March. Last weekend, Ali al Dabbagh, the spokesman for the government of Iraq, said Iraqi and US forces would "continue [operations] until we secure Sadr City." Multinational Forces Iraq said it was backing the Iraqi government and the military in its efforts.

The operation involves more than military operations, as the Iraqi government seeks to wrest control of the Mahdi Army's grip on public services inside Sadr City. "The aim now is to launch an ambitious plan of 30-day, 60-day, and 90-day public works and services -- improvement projects designed to convince the local population that the Iraqi government -– and not Sadr's Mahdi Army militia – is best able to improve the quality of life in an impoverished expanse of pot-holed streets, open sewers, and joblessness," the Christian Science Monitor reported. "US and Iraqi military are now set up and living among the Sadr City residents in the 'demonstration' area of the southern third of the sector."

Clashes in Sadr City continue as the Mahdi Army attempts to disrupt the government's attempts to gain a foothold in the neighborhood. US troops killed five "criminals" in a series of engagements starting on the evening of April 14 up through this afternoon. . . .

Operation Knights' Assault moves forward in Basrah

As Iraqi and US troops work to wrest control of Sadr City from the Mahdi Army and allied Iranian-backed Shia militias, Operation Knights' Assault continues in the southern port city of Basrah. Knights' Assault has "entered a new phase of operations," Multinational Forces Iraq reported in a press release. Iraqi troops, backed by US and British advisers and coalition air and logistical support, have "started the process of clearing strongholds previously dominated by criminal militias." Iraqi and Coalition spokesmen have continued to refer to the Mahdi Army and other Iranian-backed militias as "criminals."

Iraqi troops have cleared the Qiblah in the southwestern portion of the city and the Taymiyyah neighborhood in central Basrah, while the Mahdi Army strongholds of Hayaniyah, Khamsamile and Garma in the northwest "are now encircled by Iraqi troops who are carrying out door-to-door searches," according to AFP.

Iraqi troops took control of the ports of Khour al Zubair and Umm Qasr in Basrah province on April 1, and the ports are now open for business. Iraqi Marines are now securing the ports, freeing the Iraqi Army to conduct operations elsewhere in Basrah province.

Elements of the Mahdi Army in Basrah have vowed keep their weapons as the Iraqi security forces move into the Mahdi-controlled neighborhoods. . . .

Clashes between the Mahdi Army and Iraqi and Coalition forces are ongoing in Basrah. Coalition air forces killed four Shia mortar men and wounded another in an attack west of Basrah on April 15. An Iraqi intelligence officer was killed in an ambush by "unidentified gunmen" in central Basrah on April 14. Iraqi soldiers also captured one kidnapper while freeing a British journalist who was kidnapped in Basrah more than two months ago. The Iraqi troops were fired on by the kidnappers as they were clearing the neighborhood.

Iraqi and Coalition forces have inflicted serious casualties on the Mahdi Army since launching Operation Knights' Assault. Four hundred Mahdi Army fighters have been killed since the March 25, while Iraqi soldiers have lost 15 killed in fighting and have had another 400 wounded. More than 400 Mahdi Army fighters were captured and 1,000 wounded in the clashes in Basrah alone. . . .

Read the entire article.

(H/T Instapundit)

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Analyzing & Spinning The Offensive in Basra

The Basra Offensive will not reignite major hostilities in Iraq and to call the Iraqi Army "bogged down" in Basra just a few days into the Iraqi government's offensive to retake the city is ridiculous.


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Much of the MSM is trying to shoehorn the Iraqi offensive against Sadr - and its spillover outside Basra - into its anti-war meme that Iraq is a quagmire, etc. To the contrary, it is absolutely necessary both to take control of Iraq's major port city and to exert control over their country. The offensive in Basra is necessary to bring peace to the country, and it is doubtful that Sadr will long risk open warfare again with the U.S.

Sadr, if you will recall, made a powerplay in 2004, seeking to defeat the U.S. in an uprising against U.S. forces that ended with the decimation of his Mahdi Army in Najaf in 2004. Sadr reconstituted a militia with support from Iran. In 2006, following al Qaeda in Iraq's bombing of the Mosque of the Golden Dome, Sadr’s forces, heavilly supported by Iran, engaged in a brutal campaign against Sunnis that led Iraq to the brink of civil war and gave a large part of the impetus for the surge. Indeed, it is clear that Iran is attempting to set up Sadr's Mahdi militia along the lines of Hezbollah and duplicate Iran's control of Iraq much as they control Lebanon.

Fifteen months ago, our MSM was speculating that Maliki would not authorize any action against Shia militias - and in particular Sadr's miitias - that were almost as problematic as al Qaeda. PM Maliki was portrayed as beholden to Sadr and, indeed, he had protected Sadr's militia from U.S. offensives. The NYT continued to harp on that meme long after it became apparent that Maliki had broken with Sadr and had come to view Sadr as a major obstacle towards governing Iraq.

Sadr, for his part, pulled back from any direct confrontation with U.S. forces during the surge. He has, however, made a bid for control of several cities in the south, with the most important being Basra. The British never exerted real control over the city, and their withdraw led to a complete vaccum that the various Shia militias attempted to fill. This was much more along the lines of gangland warfare to control the crime in 1920's Chicago than anything else - it was a campaign of assassinations and intimidation with the prize being control of Iraq's major port and the truckloads of cash that could be skimmed from the theft and blackmarket sales of oil. A recent NYT article provides an excellent and thorough review of the situation in Basra as of February of this year.

Now you have much of the MSM attempting to claim that the battle in Basra has returned Iraq back to open warfare and that, because Iraqi forces have not yet cleared the city of Basra five days after the offensive began, the offensive in Basra has stalled and the Iraqi military is losing. Both are ridiculous claims.

As to the latter, war is not a video game where the fighing ends in an hour. Offensives to force an enemy from a city - MOUT operations - are arguably the most difficult and time consuming of all military operations. In World War II, MOUT operations ate up entire divisions over a period of months. In Vietnam, during the TET offensive, it took nearly thirty days to drive the NVA out of Hue. Proclaiming anything about the Basra offensive after five days shows more than anything that our current crop of journalists lack any military experience and any understanding of military history.

As to the former claim, that the offensive in Basra will ignite much further unrest in Iraq, that ignores the necessity of establishing central government control over Basra and it mispercieves the potential ramifications. This is not 2004 and Sadr is no longer viewed as a bulwark against Sunnis nor a necessity for delivery of services. He does not enjoy large scale support throughout the Shia population. A NYT "news analysis" today, though rife with speculation, nonetheless explains the situation adequately:

The most intense fighting in Iraq in months had the ring of the familiar. Another battle against followers of a rebel Shiite cleric. Fighting in the south that spread to other cities.

But as the week came to a close, it was clear that the current fighting in the southern city of Basra and the clashes in Baghdad had some fundamental differences from the battles in Najaf and Baghdad that plagued the American military in 2004.

For starters, the Shiite rebels are fighting mainly Iraqi soldiers, rather than Americans. Their leader, Moktada al-Sadr, is not defending against attacks from a redoubt inside the country’s most sacred shrine, but is issuing edicts with a tarnished reputation from an undisclosed location, possibly outside the country. And Iraq’s prime minister, a Shiite whom Americans had all but despaired would ever act against militias of his own sect, is taking them on fiercely.

The differences represent a shift in the war, whose early years were punctuated by uprisings against Americans by a vast, devoted group of Mr. Sadr’s followers, who were largely respected by Shiites. As their tactics veered into protection rackets, oil smuggling and other scams, Mr. Sadr’s followers too began to resemble mafia toughs more than religious warriors, splintering and forming their own gangs and networks, many beyond Mr. Sadr’s direct control.

Even some Sadrists seemed to understand the toll their methods were taking on their popular appeal, which has become increasingly important as provincial elections draw near.

. . . Basra residents were groaning under daily assassinations and kidnappings and a wholesale policy of intimidation. By the time the fighting started in Basra on Tuesday, that discontent had spread to a large swath of Iraqi society — including some of its largely Shiite army and police. The shift opened up a space for Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki to move against the Mahdi Army. And while it is far from clear that his effort will succeed — reports of soldier and police surrenders abound — the mere fact that he is trying is new.

. . . [A] strong note of support for Mr. Maliki’s actions could be heard in the words of some Iraqis interviewed this week, who cast his success as crucial to the future of their country.

“If Mahdi Army wins this war, that means Iraqi will be destroyed,” said a Shiite businessman from Baghdad. “That means Moktada will be president and it will be a stick in the eye of the Americans. It will be a religious country, an extreme country.”

The Mahdi Army’s image is considerably changed from 2004, when its members were seen as Shiite Robin Hoods, protecting undefended neighborhoods, helping distribute cooking gas, and standing up to what many Shiites saw as an act of American aggression, when tanks rolled into Sadr City, a Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad. But during the sectarian violence and terror of the ensuing years, the militia began breaking down into a patchwork of groups, some involved in death squads, others in theft and corruption.

A Western official with knowledge of Iraq’s security forces said the current situation differed from earlier stand-offs because the Iraqi Army finally has the resources to take on the militiamen.

The official said Mr. Sadr’s followers “overplayed their hand” and may have fatally damaged his credibility. Mr. Sadr’s lack of control, the official said, has forced Mr. Maliki to act, and to act decisively.

“The militia was indifferent to the cease-fire. They didn’t do what Sadr told them to do, to hold peaceful demonstrations only and no attacks,” he said. “They just didn’t do that, and they’re making him look like he’s out of control.” . . .

Read the entire article. The MSM will continue to try and spin this in the upcoming month, but there is no question the Iraqi army and the U.S. will prevail in the effort both in Basra and to any other areas in which the Sadrists rise up. A second decimation of the Sadrists will hurt Iranian interestes - and that is indeed very good for the long term peace and security of Iraq. It will mean that when this offensive is concluded in 30 or 60 or 90 days, Iraq will be a safer place indeed - and the Iraqi central government will have established its bona fides in a way only taking on the Sadrists could establish.

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Master Terrorist Imad Mughniyeh Assassinated

The assassination of Imad Mughniyeh is a very big victory in the war on terror. Mughniyeh worked for al Qaeda, Iran, Fatah and was the number 2 man in Hezbollah. Short of bin Laden, Mughniyeh probably has more American blood on his hands than any other terrorist. His career spanned more than a quarter of a century, until he was killed today in a car bombing in Damascus.



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For those who know the history of terrorism, the name of Imad Mughniyeh is immediately recognizable. Born in 1960, he is known to have been behind the 1983 bombings of the U.S. Embassy, and U.S. Marine and French peacekeeping barracks, which killed over 350, as well as the 1992 bombings of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires and the kidnapping of dozens of foreigners in Lebanon in the 1980s. He has been hunted by the U.S. since he engineered the kidnapping, torture and murder of CIA Lebanese Station Chief William Buckley in 1984. According to ex-CIA agent Robert Baer:

Mugniyah is probably the most intelligent, most capable operative we’ve ever run across, including the KGB or anybody else. He enters by one door, exits by another, changes his cars daily, never makes appointments on a telephone, never is predictable. He only uses people that are related to him that he can trust. He doesn’t just recruit people. He is the master terrorist, the grail that we have been after since 1983

And here is what an Israeli Intelligence had to say about Mughniyeh in 2001, speculating that he had been part of the planning along with al Qaeda for 9-11:

. . . Mughniyeh is probably the world’s most wanted outlaw. Unconfirmed reports in Beirut say he has undergone plastic surgery and is unrecognisable. . .

"We’ve only got scraps of information, not the full picture," admits one intelligence source, "but it was good enough for us to send a warning six weeks ago to our allies that an unprecedented massive terror attack was expected. One of our indications suggested that Imad Mughniyeh met with some of his dormant agents on secret trips to Germany. We believe that the operational brains behind the New-York attack were Mughniyeh and Zawahiri, . . .

. . . "Bin Laden is a schoolboy in comparison with Mughniyeh," says an Israeli who knows Mughniyeh . "The guy is a genius, someone who refined the art of terrorism to its utmost level. We studied him and reached the conclusion that he is a clinical psychopath motivated by uncontrollable psychological reasons, which we have given up trying to understand. The killing of his two brothers by the Americans only inflamed his strong motivation."

. . . Mughniyeh, 48, is a "sick man", says an intelligence officer who was in charge of his file. He is considered by Western intelligence agencies as the most dangerous active terrorist today. He is wanted by several governments and the Americans have put a $2m reward on his head.

. . . It was the assassination of one man in March 1984 that is said to have made Mughniyeh the CIA’s most wanted terrorist. Mughniyeh allegedly kidnapped the head of the CIA station in Beirut, William Buckley. The kidnapping triggered what later became known as ‘Irangate’, when the Americans tried to exchange Buckley (and others) with arms for Iran. However, the attempt ended in a fiasco. By one unconfirmed account, Mughniyeh tortured and killed Buckley with his own hands.

A year later, in a combined CIA/Mossad operation, a powerful car bomb went off at the entrance to the house of Hizbullah’s spiritual leader, Sheikh Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah. Seventy-five people were killed. One of them was his brother. Hunted by the CIA and the Mossad, Mughniyeh hid in Iran.

In February 1992, Israeli helicopter gunships attacked the convoy of the then head of Hizbullah, Sheikh Abas Musawi, in South Lebanon. Musawi, his wife and children were killed and the revenge attack followed a month later. According to press reports, Mughniyeh was called back into action and, in a well-planned and devastating attack, his people blew up the Israeli embassy in Argentina. The building was demolished and 92 were killed. Only last year, after a long investigation, did Argentina issue a warrant for Mughniyeh’s arrest.

The reprisal for the attack in Argentina came in December 1994, when a car bomb went off in a southern Shi’ite suburb of Beirut. Four people were killed. One of them was called Mughniyeh, but to the deep disappointment of those Israelis who planted the bomb it was the wrong one. Mughniyeh’s life was saved, but his other brother Fuad was killed. Mughniyeh waited for his opportunity for revenge.

. . . How to counter this kind of terrorism? "To fight these bastards you don’t need a military attack," said an experienced Israeli commando officer. "You only need to adopt Israel’s assassination policy."

Read the entire article. The assassination today of Mughniyeh, in Damascus by a car bomb is suspected to be the handiwork of Mossad. See here for more. Israel is declining comment.

A report in the Lebanese newspaper Ya Liban comments dryly:

An explosion rocked the Kferssouseh neighborhood in Damascus - near the Iranian school Tuesday evening

One person was killed as a result of the explosion .

No one declared responsibility .

The news about an explosion in Syria came as a big shock to many people in Lebanon. All the explosions for the past 3 years occurred in Lebanon and Syria was blamed for all of them . . .

And there is much more in a series of article in the Jerusalem Post about Mughniye's history of terrorism and his assassination. See here and here.

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CIA Chief Hayden Discusses the Bhutto Assassination, Pakistan, & Interrogations

CIA Director General Hayden, has stated that the man responsible for Benazair Bhutto's assassination by Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, pictured right. Per the Long War Journal, Baitullah Mehsud is the leader of the newly created Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan. Baitullah was appointed leader of the orgnaization after a gathering of local Taliban leaders throughout the tribal areas and the Northwest Frontier Province in mid-December. Mehsud is also behind a spike in violence by the Taliban as they seek to destabilize the Pakistani government.

This today from a Washington Post interview with General Hayden:

. . . Offering the most definitive public assessment by a U.S. intelligence official, Hayden said Bhutto was killed by fighters allied with Mehsud, a tribal leader in northwestern Pakistan, with support from al-Qaeda's terrorist network. That view mirrors the Pakistani government's assertions.

The same alliance between local and international terrorists poses a grave risk to the government of President Pervez Musharraf, a close U.S. ally in the fight against terrorism, Hayden said in 45-minute interview with The Washington Post. "What you see is, I think, a change in the character of what's going on there," he said. "You've got this nexus now that probably was always there in latency but is now active: a nexus between al-Qaeda and various extremist and separatist groups."

Hayden added, "It is clear that their intention is to continue to try to do harm to the Pakistani state as it currently exists."

. . . "This was done by that network around Baitullah Mehsud. We have no reason to question that," Hayden said. He described the killing as "part of an organized campaign" that has included suicide bombings and other attacks on Pakistani leaders.

. . . Hayden made his statement shortly before a series of attacks occurred this week on Pakistani political figures and army units. Pakistani officials have blamed them on Mehsud's forces and other militants. On Wednesday, a group of several hundred insurgents overran a military outpost in the province of South Waziristan, killing 22 government paramilitary troops. The daring daylight raid was carried out by rebels loyal to Mehsud, Pakistani authorities said.

For more than a year, U.S. officials have been nervously watching as al-Qaeda rebuilt its infrastructure in the rugged tribal regions along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, often with the help of local sympathizers.

In recent months, U.S. intelligence officials have said, the relationship between al-Qaeda and local insurgents has been strengthened by a common antipathy toward the pro-Western Musharraf government. The groups now share resources and training facilities and sometimes even plan attacks together, they said.

"We've always viewed that to be an ultimate danger to the United States," Hayden said, "but now it appears that it is a serious base of danger to the current well-being of Pakistan."

Hayden's anxieties about Pakistan's stability are echoed by other U.S. officials who have visited Pakistan since Bhutto's assassination. White House, intelligence and Defense Department officials have held a series of meetings to discuss U.S. options in the event that the current crisis deepens, including the possibility of covert action involving Special Forces.

Hayden declined to comment on the policy meetings but said that the CIA already was heavily engaged in the region and has not shifted its officers or changed its operations significantly since the crisis began.

"The Afghan-Pakistan border region has been an area of focus for this agency since about 11 o'clock in the morning of September 11, [2001], and I really mean this," Hayden said. "We haven't done a whole lot of retooling there in the last one week, one month, three months, six months and so on. This has been up there among our very highest priorities."

Hayden said that the United States has "not had a better partner in the war on terrorism than the Pakistanis." The turmoil of the past few weeks has only deepened that cooperation, he said, by highlighting "what are now even more clearly mutual and common interests."

Hayden also acknowledged the difficulties -- diplomatic and practical -- involved in helping combat extremism in a country divided by ethnic, religious and cultural allegiances. "This looks simpler the further away you get from it," he said. "And the closer you get to it, geography, history, culture all begin to intertwine and make it more complex."

Regarding the public controversy over the CIA's harsh interrogation of detainees at secret prisons, Hayden reiterated previous agency statements that lives were saved and attacks were prevented as a result of those interrogations.

He said he does not support proposals, put forward by some lawmakers in recent weeks, to require the CIA to abide by the Army Field Manual in conducting interrogations. The manual, adopted by the Defense Department, prohibits the use of many aggressive methods, including a simulated-drowning technique known as waterboarding.

"I would offer my professional judgment that that will make us less capable in gaining the information we need," he said.

Read the entire article.

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Interesting News From Around The Web

Walid Phares assesses the state of terrorism around the world. "In short, there are several "wars" on terror worldwide. . . . America is leading the widest campaign, but efforts around the globe are still dispersed, uncoordinated, and in many cases, contradictive."

At NRO, a symposium on Pakistan with a wide variety of views on Bhutto’s assassination and how we should interact with Pakistan, including this assessment from Victor David Hanson: "Pakistan is a nuclear dictatorship, with a thin Westernized elite sitting atop a vast medieval Islamist badlands that it cannot control."

Bhutto’s 19 y.o. son is expected to be named the successor as head of her political party. If he actually wins in the Pakistani election, this seems like it will lead to the sort of "palace intrigue" not seen since the days of Cardinal Richelieu.

More reflections on fallout from the Bhutto assassination here. And the Telegraph has an incisive article on the Frankenstein’s monster of terrorism nurtured by successive Pakistani governments, including Bhutto’s, that now threatens to overtake all of Pakistan. Former PM Sharif, an Islamist with Saudi support, is not what we want to see in charge of Pakistan. For some good background, see this Stephen Cohen article on the jihadi threat in Pakistan. And this from Tariq Ali on the Saudi connection to the madrassahs and terrorists in Pakistan.

Michael Ledeen examines more State Department pro-Iranian spin.

2007 was "a year that strode boldly into the stall of human events and took a wide stance astride the porcelain bowl of history." Read David Barry’s hilarious year in review.

A politically incorrect Aussie’s wish list for 2008.

Classical Values has some thoughts on our rather insane primary system that gives special weight to Iowa and New Hampshire.

A New Years Resolution for Congressional Republicans that all conservatives can get behind. End the earmarks.

And some late blogging of things I did not have time to get to earlier . . .

Hillary Clinton almost takes the cake for sublime idiocy. The last thing Pakistan needs at this point is further destabilization, but we have Hillary calling the current government illegitimate and demanding an international tribunal to investigate Bhutto’s assassination. While Obama does take the cake – finding that Bhutto’s assassination was caused by our prosecution of the Iraq war. If only we had surrendered earlier to al Qaeda, perhaps this would not have happened. Even the incredibly cynical John Edwards called that one a bit of idiocy.

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Interesting News From Around the Web

An interview with an Iraqi Shiite cleric and politician who calls for secular rule, religious opposition to the Iranian concept of theocratic rule, and who says that "President Bush and America should be thanked for saving us from . . . Saddam Hussein. . ."

In Iraq, a series of raids target the Mahdi Army and, in a separate action, the capture of two men suspected of involvement in the May 12 kidnapping of three American soldiers during an insurgent attack against their checkpoint 12 miles south of Baghdad.

A sharp rise in inflation has provoked fierce criticism of hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad—not only from his reformist opponents, but also from senior conservatives who helped bring him to power but now say he is mismanaging the economy.

The story of Naomi Wolf and the incredible sophistry of our modern left.

EU propaganda - in reality, its what the EU does most effectively.

Iran expanded their terrorist activities in Iraq after the 2006 elections in America, but they have been beaten back by a combination of effective U.S. military action and an Iraq that does not buy into the Iranian theocratic model, despite the surge of mullah money and weapons into Iraq. The assertion the reduction in violence in Iraq is due in part to a conscious decision of the mad mullahs in Iran is counterfactual according to Michael Ledeen.

Der Spiegel has a timeline of "the most important political events and violent attacks in Pakistan since March 2007."

The Bhutto assassination, seen in light of the assassinations in Lebanon and elsewhere in the Middle East, is an example of how radical Islamist, both Wahhabi / Salafi and Khomeinist Shia, register their vote in elections.

An analysis of Bhutto’s legacy and the ramifications of her assassination from the Jerusalem Post.

From Wafa Sultan: "The Quran states: ‘Allah hath purchased of the believers their persons and their goods, for theirs (in return) is the Garden (of Paradise ): They fight in His Cause, and slay and are slain" (9/111).’ I believe that Muslim clerics in the US have explained this verse in the same way that the clerics in Syria had explained it to me at young age. Growing up, I had always believed that suicide bombing was justified for the cause of being a martyr."

The UK resorts to bribing criminals to self deport themselves in an attempt to deal with a glut of foreign criminals that cannot be deported under the EU’s insane immigration and deportation laws.

How utterly screwed are British multiculturalists: . . . Amis recently put to his impeccably liberal audience at the ICA: 'Do you feel morally superior to the Taliban?' Only about a third raised a hand to say they did, a nice demonstration of relativist liberal guilt.


And there is this gem from the multiculturalists in Germany: "Many of us in the West are convinced that our presence in Afghanistan cannot be justified, that our troops should withdraw and that Afghanistan should be left to the Afghans. They ask themselves: Who are we to believe that it is inhumane to sell an 11-year-old girl? Who are we to impose our values so vehemently on the Afghans, on this [40 year old] man . . . [who purchased] this girl [and married her]?"

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