A little more finesse, please
Jim Hoagland of the WaPo says that Bush and company need to show more finesse in its foreign policy than they have used thus far. The blunt rhetoric worked earlier, but it is losing its effectiveness now. Terrorism is not the only thing happening in the world today, at least in the minds of other nations, and Bush would probably more easily win allies in the terror war if his administration was not so single-focused in its diplomacy.

Great strengths become great weaknesses when pushed too far. An overemphasis on rhetoric and doctrine -- on "talking about nothing but terrorism, terrorism, terrorism when I needed to talk about my problems too," as one political leader who attended a Pacific Rim summit with President Bush last week in Mexico complained to an aide -- holds its own dangers.

US Army training for Baghdad fight?
Seems so. The Army's main urban warfare training center at Fort Polk, La., is going full swing in anticipation of combat in Iraq:

Military analysts and Pentagon officials say that U.S. strategy will focus on isolating Saddam and his regime while avoiding battles with the Iraqi military wherever possible, especially in cities. But war planners cannot rule out the possibility of combat in Baghdad, a sprawling city of 5 million, or in other populated areas, including Saddam's hometown of Tikrit, north of the capital. . . .

'The most challenging thing about urban fighting is the chaos that is increased by the environment,'' says Maj. Jim Lechner, a veteran of the 1993 battle of Mogadishu, Somalia, who is now assigned to an Army infantry brigade at Fort Lewis, Wash.

''You can have rubble blocking streets, smoke everywhere and lots of civilians,'' he says.

You might also consider this TechCentral article by Joe Katzman from last July in which he says that the US does have some unique technologies for urban combat.

Some political headlines

GOP Governorship Odds Dim

A Debacle in Minnesota

Early Returns: Jeb Bush Turns Corner

TV networks pledge Election Night caution

The Air Force - Navy Canoe Race
Someone emailed this to me years ago, and this post by Sgt Stryker made me think of it.

The Navy and the Air Force decided to have a canoe race on the Potomac River. Both teams practiced hard and long to reach their peak performance before the race. On the big day, the Navy won by slightly over a mile.

Afterwards, the Air Force team became very discouraged and depressed. The officers of the Air Force team decided that the reason for the crushing defeat had to be found. A "Hydraulic Performance Evaluation and Assessment Team," made up of senior officers, was formed to investigate and recommend appropriate action. Their conclusion was that the Navy had eight sailors rowing and one officer steering, while the Air Force had one airman rowing and eight officers and NCOs steering. So the senior officers of the Air Force team hired a consulting company for $735,000 to advise the rowing team what to do.

After six months, the consultants reported that too many people were steering the boat and not enough people were rowing.

To prevent losing to the Navy again next year, the Air Force Chief of Staff made historic and sweeping changes: the rowing team's organizational structure was totally realigned to four steering officers, three area steering superintendents and one assistant superintendent steering NCO. They also implemented a new performance system that would give the single airman rowing the boat greater incentive to work harder. It was called the "Rowing Team Quality Air Force Assurance and Implementation Program," with meetings, dinners, and a three-day pass for the rower.

Said the Chief of Staff, "We must give the rower empowerment and enrichment through this quality program."

The next year the Navy won by more than two miles. Humiliated, the Air Force leadership gave a letter of reprimand to the rower for poor performance, initiated a $4 billion program for development of a new joint-service canoe, blamed the loss on a design defect in the paddles and issued leather rowing jackets to the beleaguered steering officers in the hopes they would stay for next year's race.

What's that again?
"One of the requirements of a healthy party is that it renews itself. You can't keep running Walter Mondale for everything." -- Walter Mondale, declining to run for the U.S. Senate in 1989. (Found at PejmanPundit.)

Joe Katzman's World Series memories
. . . are worth the read if you love baseball. Well chosen, well written, like everything else Joe writes. Maybe now that the season is over, Joe will return to helping us make sense of the rest of the world.

On the trail of the third man
I think that was the name of a Myrna Loy movie back in the 1940s. But today it is the riddle surrounding the activities of accused snipers, John Muhammed and Lee Malvo.

The Washington Post reports that although police have no actual evidence that there was anyone else involved in this month's serial killings, they are investigating the possibility. Ballistics tests show that the same rifle used in the Maryland-Virginia murders was used to kill a liquor store manager in Montgomery, Ala., Sept. 21. Montgomery's police chief, John Wilson, said that. . .

. . . witnesses saw John Allen Muhammad, 41, and John Lee Malvo, 17, the two suspects in the sniper shootings, at the scene of the Montgomery shooting. But they said Muhammad had a handgun and Malvo was holding a magazine -- and neither appeared to have a rifle, Wilson said.

That, Wilson said, has led him to suspect that a third person may have been involved and possibly fired the Bushmaster XM-15 rifle that authorities found in Muhammad's Chevrolet Caprice last week. . . . "We haven't ruled out a third person or another gun," Wilson said.

The store manager, Claudine Parker, died and her assistant, Kellie Adams, was wounded in the neck as they locked up the store in late afternoon.

A nearby patrol car pulled up and officers saw Muhammad standing over the two women, rummaging through their purses and holding a handgun in his right hand, Wilson said. One officer tended to the victims. The second chased Muhammad, the chief said. Malvo was about 50 yards away, standing with a magazine in his hand, possibly acting as a lookout, Wilson said, citing witness accounts.

The second officer continued chasing Muhammad through a restaurant parking lot, but a blue car darted out and blocked the path, Wilson said. Muhammad and Malvo were arrested in a blue Caprice last week.

At the time of the liquor store shootings, Wilson said, police thought the car was at the wrong place at the wrong time. But once authorities learned that Muhammad and Malvo had a blue car, he said, his suspicions turned to a possible third person.

Speaking of a blue car blocking police, Muhammed's car cut off a Maryland policeman driving on the DC beltway late on Oct. 3, less than an hour after Pascal Charlot was shot with Muhammed's AR-15 rifle in in northwest Washington.

The weather-beaten Caprice with New Jersey license plates, co-owned by shooting suspect John Allen Muhammad, sped past the officer's cruiser about 10 p.m. Oct. 3 and then immediately braked, arousing the suspicion of the off-duty officer in a marked police cruiser.

The officer, who was on his way to his late-night shift, punched the tag number into his computer, noted that neither the vehicle nor the tags had been stolen and continued toward his office, sources said. The Caprice, by that time, was traveling at the legal posted speed.

Police noticed the same car and ran its plates than a dozen times from Sept. 28 to the day Muhammed and Malvo were arrested, but there was never any reason at the time to stop it. (I observed on Oct. 16 that the police might be "playing PETA fisherman - catch and release" with the killers.)

When Muhammed (or Malvo) cut off the Maryland cop on the beltway, was he attempting to draw attention away from an accomplice a little farther up the road? Authorities now believe that Malvo was the actual trigger man in at least one shooting. If they used more than one vehicle, it would make sense for the unarmed one to run interference for the other, who had the weapon.

With the new information from Alabama, the possibility of a third accomplice in the killings should be vigorously pursued.

Will post later tonight - have hardly been home today

Those United Methodist bishops are at it again
"If it ain't one thing, it's another." Having united in favor of extending Saddam Hussein's murderous regime, the UMC's bishops are now fighting over theology.

United Methodist bishops are taking sides over a Chicago bishop's questioning of traditional doctrines on Jesus, such as the virgin birth and a physical resurrection.

After Chicago Bishop Joseph Sprague read a chapter on Christology from his book - to be published soon - at Iliff School of Theology in Denver in January, the bishops of Florida and North Carolina publicly challenged him, while the South Carolina bishop endorsed his beliefs.

"I profoundly disagree with some of his conclusions," North Carolina Bishop Marion M. Edwards, a friend of Bishop Sprague, told 450 United Methodist clergy on Monday.

"This is not a time for angry diatribe and bitter finger-pointing," Bishop Edwards said of a dispute fanned by conservatives upset at the Sprague lecture. "It is a time for correction and accountability."

Thanks, guys. This is very helpful.

Oh, how the Lord must weep.

Good piece on John Muhammed and related issues
Wesley Pruden says what needs to be said about connecting some dots in the case (link is perishable).

Like coals to Newcastle, a link to Glenn Reynolds
Glenn has an excellent posting about the myth of the angry white male. (As if you aren't going to see it anyway . . . .)

Update: Still more more links and quotes there showing (conclusively, I think) that the so-called angry, white, military-vet male is now the kicking dog for senseless murder.

"Glacier Girl" flies again!
After spending about three million dollars to locate, retrieve, transport and restore a World War II P-38 fighter plane from under 268 feet of Greenland ice, Roy Shoffner got to watch the plane fly again Saturday in Middlesboro, Ky. Ipse Dixit has a news lead.

The plane was one of seven being shuttled to Europe as part of Operation Bolero. All seven were forced to land on the Greenland ice cap due to bad weather. The pilots were rescued, but the planes rermained. Over the years, snow buried them to a depth of 268 feet:

A Federal Express tractor-trailer truck has blown to smithereens near St. Louis. Mo.
The truck was blown to pieces; TV pictures show destruction was total for cargo trailer. No word on cause yet. Seems to have been on an interstate highway at the time.

Update: MSNBC says it "caught fire," Fox News says it blew up. The debris field seems pretty big to me, so I think that Fox is right. But the bottom of the trailer seems pretty intact, so the explosion may not have been a big one.

Both FedEx drivers are unhurt, which is good news.

Is Bush's star falling only a week before election day?
Curiously, the more President Bush campaigns around the country on behalf of Republican candidates, the lower his approval ratings go. Dick Morris explains why.

Blueprint for United States of Europe released
An outline for the United States of Europe has been unveiled by Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, former president of France. "United States of Europe" is just one name suggested for the new entity. Other possible names are European Community, European Union, United Europe.

Its objectives would include economic and social cohesion, protection of common values, high employment, liberty, security and justice, foreign policy.

The union would have "legal personality", with the power to sign treaties and take a seat on international bodies such as the United Nations.

Union citizenship would be established and defined, giving rights of free movement, residence and voting in the union and diplomatic protection in other countries.

An "exit clause" would allow countries to withdraw voluntarily from the union.

The UK reportedly is not in approval, especially of the part about dual citizenship.

Good business missives from Dan Miller
My good friend Dan Miller emails a weekly newsletter that I always find thought-provoking. You can subscribe free to the newsletter at his web site. Two nuggets from this week's letter:

"HUMAN FILING CABINETS?"

I ran across this term recently in reference to office buildings -- and it made my skin crawl. Much has been said about the depersonalization of the modern technology worker's work space. How can one be creative, innovative and contributing when in a work environment that has all the ambience of a veal-fattening pen? When I drive by the high-rise buildings, (I consider anything where you can't have your feet in the grass in thirty paces a high-rise) I cringe in mental pain for those trapped inside in surroundings they endure to survive.

Here's a piece from "The Dilbert Principle," by Scott Adams:

Boss - "We've got a lot of empty cubicles because of downsizing. I hired the Dogbert construction company to convert part of the office into prison cells which we'll lease to the state."

Dilbert - "Sounds like a big job."

Boss - " Nah, a little paint, new carpet and we're there."

The cartoons continue to relate the differences in employees and prisoners; namely that the prisoners had a better health plan. And ultimately, the plan to use spare cubicles as prison cells had to be abandoned because of too many complaints from the prisoners.

Work settings cannot be alienating and dehumanizing if we are to produce anything beyond what a machine could produce. Anything resembling "Human Filing Cabinets" will ultimately suck the life, energy and thinking intelligence out of those who succumb to that alternative. Read, "If it ain't broke, break it."

INTERVIEW FLUBS

OfficeTeam (www.officeteam.com), a worldwide staffing company, recently hired an independent research firm to survey hiring executives at the 1,000 largest U.S. companies. The question: What are the strangest things that job candidates have said or done in interviews? Here are some of their more memorable answers:

--- After answering the first few questions, the candidate picked up his cell phone and called his parents to let them know the interview was going well.

--- The person got up just a few minutes after the interview had begun, saying he left his dog in the car and needed to check on him.

--- When asked why she wanted to work for this company, the candidate replied, "That's a good question. I really haven't given it much thought."

--- When asked how he would improve sales if hired, the candidate replied, "I'll have to think about that and get back to you." He then stood up, walked out, and never came back.

--- Asked by the hiring manager why he was leaving his current job, the candidate replied, "My manager is a jerk. All managers are jerks."

--- When the interviewer asked what the candidate was earning, she answered, "I really don't see how that is any of your business."

--- After being complimented on his choice of college and the GPA he achieved, the candidate replied, "I'm glad that got your attention. I didn't really go there."

--- The candidate asked for an early morning interview. He showed up with a box of doughnuts and ate them during the interview, saying this was the only time he'd have to eat breakfast before going to work.

--- When asked by the hiring manager about his career goals, the candidate replied, "To work the least amount of time possible until I can get your job."

Need I say that none of these folks was hired? The moral, according to OfficeTeam executive director Liz Hughes: "Think before you speak. The first thing that comes to your mind might not be the most appropriate thing to share with the hiring manager." How true.

Some headlines around the Internet

New Al Qaeda Chiefs Emerge

With Osama bin Laden and his chief lieutenants dead, captured or on the run, al Qaeda's operations are being directed by a handful of combat-hardened veterans, most of them little-known Middle Eastern men who built their terrorist resumes together mounting lethal attacks against the USS Cole and U.S. embassies in eastern Africa.

U.S. and European intelligence sources identified six emerging leaders as key to running the terrorist network's global military and financial networks.

Inspectors back threat of force
The leaders of two main international weapons inspection agencies urged a divided U.N. Security Council yesterday to spell out consequences of "any lack of cooperation" by Iraq in destroying its biological.

North Korea refuses demands it give up nuclear weapons development.

Bush to force UNSC vote on Iraq resolution
The president will set a deadline for action by the UN Security Council for a vote on the Iraq resolution, "if substantial progress toward a stringent weapons inspection plan is not made by next week, senior administration officials said today."

After six weeks of negotiations, the Bush administration is essentially reaching the endgame in its campaign to persuade the 15-nation Security Council to adopt a robust resolution to force Hussein to give up his deadliest weapons. France and Russia, two of the council's five members with veto power, have voiced the fiercest opposition, with officials saying they suspect Washington will use the resolution to justify a military overthrow of the Iraqi regime. But other countries also harbor concerns.

What?! We'd use force to topple Saddam!? Say it ain't so!

I explained what I think is Bush's game plan and why the timeline is important here.

Bush and the UN - a long response by Richard Heddleson
Richard is my most frequent correspondent, one whom I have urged to start his own blog. Instead, clever fellow, he feeds me leads and thoughts, and other bloggers as well (his letter to Glenn Reynolds appeared on Instapundit recently), thus getting his word out in many blogs instead of just one.

This being so, he emailed his long response to my recent posting on Bush and the UN that he said would not fit in the comments block. Here it is, only mildly edited, with my comments in italics.

Richard wrote:

"Why the US is losing the debate about Iraq in the UN" helped crystallize some thoughts to share. First, even more than is usually true, we do not have all the facts in real time. Second, I am beginning to suspect that the world will look a lot more different in a year than it does today; this is the second shoe dropping after 1989.

Your contention is that we want the UN to approve the use of force in Iraq. I'm not sure that has ever been the case; a nice to have, yes; a must have, no.

Not quite. What I said, or sure meant to say, was exactly that UN approval for US action against Iraq would be nice, but not necessary. I am pretty sure I made this explicitly clear at the end of my post. We want UN approval, we do not need it.

Given the number of facts he has that we don't we don't know why Bush wants this war with Saddam now.

I do not think Bush does want war now. I believe him when he says that he wants the situation resolved without war. Also, I have maintained since last May, at least, that if war with Iraq comes, it won't come this year, a contention I have repeated since then and still maintain.

Saddam's failure to honor his agreements with the UN and all the other reasons Bush has put forth are not sufficient to justify the risks he is taking. Sure, everybody puts together additional reasons based on open sources and logic, but I suspect there is something more at work.

I believe that the UN resolution the US is pushing in the UNSC (and that is 90+ percent certain to fail) is sincere on President Bush's part. It calls for weapons inspections to begin again - unhindered by Iraq, as they were supposed to be all along - and unless full cooperation is given by Iraq, the promise of military force. I think that really is what Bush wants, even though he also knows that the chance of Saddam actually cooperating with inspections is nil.

The timing of this resolution is already behind where Bush wanted it to be, I think. I think he wanted the resolution to have been passed by mid-October. That would have allowed new inspections teams to enter Iraq by November. If, by miracle, Saddam cooperated, well and good. If not, then we give the inspectors two months to get screwed over and around, withdraw them and lower the boom mid-January or so.

Instead, Russia and France have been obstinate and are trying to offer a new inspection resolution that does not include a threat of force clause. They say that if Saddam does not cooperate, the UNSC can consider force then. No good: the inspectors get to Iraq no earlier than mid-November even if the UNSC voted it right away. Then if they get no results after two months, it's mid-January. The to consider yet another UNSC resolution authorizing force will take what - six weeks? Now it's the end of February, maybe beginning of March, and the best season for military ops in Iraq is almost over. (See my long posting, "Fighting a winter campaign in Iraq: Operational considerations of a large-scale campaign this winter.") So Bush is pushing for a UNSC vote right away. The optimum timeline demands it.

What are the risks Bush is taking? Bush decided to go to Congress first, another in his string of "unilateral cowboy" actions. There he got all the legal authority he needed to make war. Why the Congress first and as though he wasn't going to even ask the UN what it thought? Did he really think he would be able to go to war without going to the UN? Or was that a bone to throw the Democrats to make them feel superior morally and intellectually and give them a warm glow from winning a major concession and controlling the crude and stupid cowboy?

The American center and right wanted Congressional authorization without reference or dependence on what the UN said. But the American Left and some of the center want UN approval no matter what the Congress says. I think Bush is trying to reach both groups. Remember, he campaigned that he is a uniter, not a divider. Also, UN approval does greatly simply the international diplomacy and anti-terrorism, no matter how much unilateral-minded people protest that the UN can go fly a kite.

As I wrote in my Blogbook-nominated essay,

Additionally, there will likely be long periods when military forces will be inactive. Political maneuvering, intelligence operations and law-enforcement operations will be continuous but un-spectacular. Even clear victories will be of a small scale and will lack the moments of triumph that have nourished the red maw of American Holy War in centuries past.

This war will not have a clear ending in either time or space. There will be no surrender ceremony of abject capitulation by the enemy. Victory, whatever that word will actually indicate, will be neither final nor obvious. To the question, "How will we know we've won?" the answer is, "We won't."

These are critical, long-term operations that US unilateralism will hinder, not help. Terrorism is a web, and so are efforts to combat it. We need the efforts and cooperations of other nations to carry these efforts out over the long term.

You brought up poker. This looks like he's playing a real high stakes game by proceeding with the UN vote prior to the election.

No, as I said, the timeline for potential military action forces the issue to be dealt with now. We can fight Iraq at other than wintertime, but we'd rather not.

If the UN OK's the resolution, he can implement regime change regardless of the mid-term election results. If the resolution gets rejected by the UN, he has a lot on the line.

I disagree. I think the result of the UN vote is at worst neutral for Bush. If the UNSC passes his resolution, Bush wins there are domestically. If not, he still wins at home, because he has said all along that he is not tying Americans' security to a UNSC vote.

If he loses the mid-terms, he loses big. There will be a lot of new [committee] chairmen in the House, eager to flex their muscles after having been out of power for nearly a decade.

Everything I have read so far says that the chance of the House of Representatives becoming Democrat majority is nil.

Plenty of Democrats resentful of the way he made them vote before the election. With reasonable legislators he could use shame to keep them from flipping on the Use of Force resolution. But, I can hear NPR reporting already, "In light of the rejection of his policies by both World opinion and the American People, the President must re-submit the Authorization of Use of Force to a new Congress, one with the gravitas that only Solons like Teddy Kennedy, Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy can bring to the issue." And he's got a pretty good shot at joining dad as the Adams Family II, father-son one-termers.

The next Congress will not possibly "flip" on the Use of Force resolution.

Under the old rules, he might have had a better shot at getting the UN to go along had he not been such a cowboy and had he explained, in nuanced tones, that the status quo constitutes a clear and imminent, if not present, danger to the national security of the United States (an arguable position, especially at the UN, unless one defines the interests of the US very broadly). It would have been an endless debate like the fiasco going on right now. Should he have then waited for the UN to get Congressional approval? Before or after the midterms?

No, I am saying that had he been less concretized, at least in public diplomacy, about force and the UN, we would have already had a vote in the UNSC.

But he's not playing by the old rules. Bush is making new rules for the post-9/11 world. That is what the Russians, the Germans, and the French (as well as a lot of Americans) have not figured out, because they have all consistently underestimated W, just as they did Reagan. And now they are on the spot. If they vote down the Iraq resolution, they have to live with the consequences. Bush will clean Saddam's clock without the UN, without France, without Germany and without Russia. And that is why Bush is in a win-win position at the UN.

Only in the near term. We do not need the UN to fight Iraq, true. But we do need the UN to continue a years-long anti-terrorism effort with other nations. The reason is that the other nations do need the UN; it is often the only common ground they can find with one another, and forms the canvas of the common ground they can stand on with the US. Whether we like it or not, UN mechanisms, forums and processes do offer international legitimacy of many nations relations with the US.

Here's the rest of Richard's letter, which I provide for your perusal without further reply on my part.

But, why would those diplomatic geniuses from France, Germany and Russia allow this to happen?

The Russians have never had a lot of love for the UN. They will have even less after the investigation into the use of gas on the terrorists now being started up "under international law." Putin would love to have the precedent of the US ignoring a UNSC resolution so that he could invade Georgia to clean out all the Islamist (Chechen) Terrorists, just like Bush in Iraq. We will then be amazed at the number of Islamist Terrorists to be found in the Near Abroad. Even more amazing will be the enthusiasm with which Putin roots them out, or at least establishes a Russian ongoing military presence in the Near Abroad to root them out, just like Bush's ongoing military presence in Iraq to root them out.

The French love the UN because all one does there is talk. And if the US goes into Iraq without UN permission, the French will be able to talk about it for eternity. And it will become the main reason the World should look to the United States of Europe (led by France) for leadership instead of the cowboys of America. (This is not 100% cynicism. The really do think this way.)

The Germans are so dizzy from the botched jobs of reunification, the Euro and the alienation of America in the last election they don't realize they're playing "Who's on first?" with France as Abbot. So they'll follow along, thinking we'll all just go back to the UN and put those evil Americans in their place, under French leadership.

But that is where Bush has yet another surprise. It won't be his father's UN after a war in Iraq fought without UN approval. What Bush will "propose" to the General Assembly after he finishes reading them The Little Red Hen is still a mystery to me, but I'll bet Condi has discussed several drafts with W. already.

Congratulations to Photodude!
Reid Stott married a lovely lady last Saturday and has some great photos on his site. Reid and I both went to Wake Forest University back in the 70s, but not in the same class. We had a couple of years of overlap and did not know each other until we were both blogging. I wish Reid and Susan the very best, and I pray they have a wonderful life together.

Occupying Iraq vs. occupying Japan
CPO Sparkey has some very good answers to those who point out that the occupation of Japan was a cakewalk next to the possible occupation of Iraq.

Why the US is losing the debate about Iraq in the UN - we gave an ultimatum to the wrong people.
It does not appear likely that the UN Security Council will vote in favor of the US resolution that calls on Iraq to accept unfettered weapons inspections or be subjected to military force. It takes nine yes votes for a resolution to pass the UNSC, and according to news reports today, there are no more than eight. The ninth vote is proving extremely difficult to get. Russia and France remain firm, and may team up to offer their own resolution.

I am wondering whether the US position is failing because we revealed all our cards before the betting was finished, to use a poker analogy. From the first, President Bush said that the US was committed to disarming and/or overthrowing Saddam - just which has not always been entirely clear. The persistent talk by the administration of forcing a regime change in Iraq has undercut, not reinforced, the USA's requests to the UNSC for a stiff inspection resolution. The insistence by the president that if the UN doesn't authorize military force the US and its handful of allies will use it anyway places the UN in the role of rubber stamping what the US has already decided to do.

In the minds of President Bush and his administrations, as well as the Blair government, the danger posed by the status quo is unacceptable. We see Saddam as a clear danger, though not precisely yet a present danger, to the lives of our citizens and a very real threat to the other states of the Middle East, especially Israel. I agree, and I believe that American unilateralism is justified in this case. But what is the view from elsewhere in the world?

Europe does not accept claims of a connection between al Qaeda and Saddam, evidence of which really is not conclusive. So they do not see an Iraqi hand at work in the attacks of 9/11. Neither do they believe that Saddam poses a threat to them (and they are right on that score. Outside the Middle East, Saddam threatens only US and Great Britain, and mostly the US). To the other countries, the status quo is acceptable. Thus, they do not agree that there exists a casus belli for war upon Iraq.

The fact that Saddam has ignored 16 UN resolutions does not disturb them. They pretty much viewed all those resolutions as symbolic rather than substantive anyway. When Saddam shut down the inspection teams in 1998, causing their withdrawal, the other countries believe that their work was pretty much done anyway, and that Saddam had been disarmed 90 percent or more.

But President Bush presented the UN with an ultimatum on Sept.. 12: Pass resolutions that we tell you to, or we'll do what we want to do anyway. The rest of the UN was left to wonder, "What in this for us?" And the answer is, "nothing." We wrongly believed that the rightness of our cause - we were attacked on our home soil! - would cause other countries to flock to our colors. But it didn't happen.

Of course all hindsight is 20-20. I wonder now whether the smarter move at the UN would have been to lay out our case against Iraq, including its flouting of the 16 resolutions, and explain that the status quo constitutes a clear and imminent danger to the national security of the United States - but not proclaim that we would attack Iraq even without UN approval. We could have said that as a member state, we were asking the UN to take immediate steps to address our concerns and enforce its own will, as expressed in the 16 previous resolutions. But we might have more elegantly expressed our commitment to go it alone if need be by affirming that the US government's first responsibility in national security is to actively protect the lives of its people, a responsibility that we are determined to carry out.

Absent the explicit threat of unilateral force, I think we would have received a much better reception in the UNSC. Diplomats hate being backed into a corner, and that seems to be what we have done by giving an ultimatum to them. Even if the UNSC failed to do what we want, we would still be free to act without their prior approval.

Al Qaeda may already have dirty bombs
Enough uranium-238 has been found in former al Qaeda caves in Afghanistan to make a radiological weapon, or dirty bomb. A dirty bomb does not produce an atomic explosion; it uses conventional explosives to spread radioactive material over a large area. Although there is no consensus among intelliegence experts about the matter,

It is, however, a working assumption in security circles now that the terror group does have nuclear capabilities. Al Qaeda's secret nuclear stash is assumed to be somewhere in Afghanistan, although finding it is proving to be as hard as locating Osama bin Laden. . . .

There is also concern that al Qaeda may have obtained one or more so-called suitcase nukes that were produced in enormous numbers by the Soviet Union, each of which has a design yield of one kiloton.

Financing their "nomadic lifestyle"
Police are investigating how John Muhammed and Lee Malvo got the money to pay for their "nomadic lifestyle with a deadly nationwide crime spree."

Investigators, police sources said, want to know how Mr. Muhammad and Mr. Malvo apparently survived months of unemployment while financing extensive travel prior to the sniper attacks. They are reported to have been together for five years, during which Mr. Muhammad failed in at least two business ventures.

On several occasions, the sources said, Mr. Muhammad displayed large amounts of cash to friends and acquaintances. They said that in addition to paying for daily expenses and motels, Mr. Muhammad also contacted travel agents for air trips to cities across the country and to the Caribbean.

Investigators, the sources said, believe that the sniper suspect and his teenage companion were involved in several unsolved robberies nationwide.

Additions made to Essays Index
I have made several new entries to my Essays Index. Usually, essays on the index originally first appeared as a daily entries. But I consider their topics to be of enduring interest.

Melissa Ethridge just screwed up the National Anthem before the World Series
Why is it that the "names" sports teams get to sing the national Anthem before the games always screw it up? I think it is because they are performers, not just singers. And so they "perform" the anthem rather than simply sing it. Melissa Ethridge and other performers take the people's anthem and try to make it uniquely their own. They interpret it, stylize it, personalize it and so generally screw it up.

Anybody got ideas how to end this pernicious practice?

Where did Muhammed get his money?
Several days before John Muhammed and his, uh, companion were turned in by citizens to the cops, I started to write a post on what level of money and other resources it would take to support The Snipers while they did their murders. I never thought it was credible that The Snipers (I always thought it was two men, not one) worked jobs and then killed people, because the amount of traveling and reconnaissance they had to do obviated that. So, did they just save up a couple of thousand dollars so they could go sniping? I never finished the posting, so it never appeared.

Recently, though, William Quick wondered the same thing, and so did Robin Goodfellow, who wrote:

In many ways the actions of John Muhammed and Lee Malvo fit the profile of an al Qaeda operation very well. They were not wealthy yet they were able to buy a gun and accessories which would cost around a thousand dollars, as well as an automobile, and apparently traveled frequently by airplane. That reeks of outside funding. Giving a few thousand dollars to a disgruntled ex-soldier with a plan to raise havoc in the nation's capitol is precisely the sort of thing that al Qaeda would do. I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if that is where Muhammed's funding came from.

Maybe, but I don't think that Muhammed was working either for or with al Qaeda. (For one, I don't think that any al Qaeda operative would trust any former US soldier, no matter how embittered he claimed to be, even if his name was Muhammed.) But, as I commented on Bill Quick's posting, I think that Muhammed's funding source needs to be explained.

More uncritical thinking from American religious leaders
It was only a matter of time, I suppose, until the bishops of my denomination, the United Methodist Church, came out with a collective statement on The War (link may be perishable). I have no problem at all with the bishops issuing a statement of some kind. War and peace are too important for clergy to be silent on them; I have preached about them more than once, both before and after 9/11.

In the UMC, the bishops cannot speak on behalf of the whole denomination. Only the quadrennial meeting of the denomination's General Conference can set doctrine and issue denominational statements. It will next meet in 2004. So the statement by the Council of Bishops represents only the view of the Council itself, and no one else.

I am disappointed at the poor scholarship - and much worse, the near absence of pastoral concern - in the letter, which is signed by the Council's president, Bishop Sharon A. Brown Christopher.

The letter starts off well enough:

I write to you with a sense of urgency about the present perilous state of our world. I do so because 1) the Gospel of peace needs to be heard; 2) our United Methodist Social Principles offer guidance, and 3) our General Conference expects the Council of Bishops to "speak to the Church and from the Church to the world."

Nothing controversial there, except, perhaps, that by the end of the letter we are left wondering when the council will speak "to the world" rather than merely "to the Church" - because the world is pretty much ignored in the letter.

Rather than examine the letter line by line, let me urge you to read it and then consider my comments:

There are merely perfunctory nods about the evil of Saddam Hussein et. al., and no acknowledgement at all of the possibility that Saddam poses a real and reasonably imminent threat to the lives of Americans and Israelis (a threat Saddam reissued just this week). I can only conclude that Bishop Christopher and the rest of the Council of Bishops have not attempted to acquaint themselves of the facts and opinions of America's national security in the age of terrorism. I do not demand that the bishops simply accept the Bush administration's claims. I do expect that they would know what they are, and would treat them with at least the seriousness that the US Congress and the national commentaries have.

Understand, all of the bishops have at least one post-graduate academic degree, and most (I am certain) hold Ph.D.'s or another doctorate. They know how to do research. They are supposed to know how to do critical thinking. But this letter does not display evidence thereof. Instead, it comes perilously close to simply advising, "don't worry, be happy, make love, not war." By the end of the letter, the bishops have called the church to prayer, which is good; we can't have too much of that.

But that's pretty much it. The letter simply restates a denominational position . . .

". . . that the first moral duty of all nations is to resolve by peaceful means every dispute that arises between or among them." . . . The United States and the United Nations should take the steps necessary to ensure [Iraqi] compliance [with UN resolutions].

Yet that is exactly what President Bush is doing vis-a-vis Iraq. He has said that war is the last resort. He continues to work within the United Nations to ensure Iraq's compliance with 16 existing UN resolutions that Saddam has ignored despite the fact that the president already has congressional authority to make war upon Iraq. But it seems the bishops do not know this. So their letter actually urges the president to keep doing what he is doing, but did the bishops intend that? Only if the present course of action maintains the status quo, because the bishops expressly excoriate "preemptive war."

Again, I have no problem with the bishops urging there be no preemptive war. Indeed, it would be repugnant for persons of their office to urge such a war. The problem is is their apparent lack of acquaintance with the history of the last 11 years and what has brought the US to the point of considering preemptive war.

As I have said before, it would be well if, when rejecting the potential course of action that the president and the Congress have chosen to protect the lives of Americans and security of the entire Middle East, clergy leaders could offer some alternative that:

Hasn't been tried before and failed,

Has a reasonable prospect of success, and

Offers high assurance that it will protect the lives of my children at least as well as what the administration proposes.

If religious leaders cannot offer even the minimum outlines of such a plan, then their moral authority to speak to the present stuation is very much diminished. It would be nice if once in awhile theologians would consult with a politically diverse, broad range of people expert in other field, such as arms control, international relations, military strategy and tactics, threat analysis, etc., before issuing such letters. The dismissive way religious leaders treat other disciplines is inexcusable; no wonder that I have discovered that so many people, in the Church and out, have no patience for theology. "Official" theology as done today seems uninterested in the real lives of ordinary people, existing for its own benefit in a vacuum.

Absent evidence that the bishops were even casually interested in the details of the international situation, I am forced to conclude that the bishops really think that the status quo is acceptable and is not a serious problem. But the status quo is a terrorist regime in Iraq that now possesses some weapons of mass destruction and is racing to acquire others. Yet the bishops do not explain why the status quo should continue.

Bishop Christopher and her episcopal colleagues also offer not a syllable of comfort to the countless Methodists and other Americans who are genuinely fearful for their own safety or that of their loved ones and for the security of their country. Millions of Americans, myself included, believe that Saddam and his regime harbor murderous intentions toward us and are working to carry those intentions out. Do the bishops know of our fears and worries? Have they no word of assurance for us? No, they do not. This fairly complete absence of pastoral concern for the flock is very disturbing.

The bishops offer no plan for an alternative course of action. But such pacifist plans have been offered. Peter Ackerman and Jack DuVall, writing in Sojourners Online, offered such a plan. Tellingly, they wrote of Saddam,

. . . anyone who opposes U.S. military action to dethrone him has a responsibility to suggest how he might otherwise be ushered out the backdoor of Baghdad.

(I explored their article in some detail and then took their ideas several steps further.)

As an elder in full connection of the United Methodist Church, I found this episcopal letter deeply disappointing.

Index of recent posts
John Muhammed qualified expert with M16 - it's no big deal

The differences between Islam and Nation of Islam - why worldwide Islam does not include NOI in the Muslim fold

Bud Uronner, Legal Appeals Specialist - more signatories to the Not In Our Name online, antiwar petition

Did police willfully back away from going after John Muhammed? - erroneous forensic profiles of The Sniper and the lives they might have cost

As predicted, Muhammed shot people from inside his vehicle

BBC online posters weigh in on American gun control - they are not all against the US 2d Amendment

Fisking the claim that John Muhammed's murderousness was the Army's fault - you knew it would take no time for the murders to be blamed on the Army.

Fisking the claim that Muhammed's murderousness was the Army's fault
Glenn Reynolds links to Working for Change, where we read these nuggets of noodlism by Geov Parrish:

A second troubling note is that the "sniper" case is likely to justify further racial and especially religious profiling. Somewhere, as you read this, the list of Muslims who know how to handle firearms is already probably being massaged.

Yes, the FBI and CIA and INS, which didn't even have a list of Muslims taking flight training, somehow has a secret list of Muslims who know how to handle firearms. Cripes, what a moron. . .

But just as central to the threat Muhammad posed was his 15 years in the Army, including Gulf War service. (And, of course, it was inevitable that the sniper was a guy; we scarcely even comment on that, it's so completely taken for granted.) It's astonishing how much violence, up to and including serial killings, is inflicted on our society by men who went through the military, were taught at a young age both how to kill and that in some circumstances it's a wonderful thing to do, and either discovered they had a taste for it, or through wartime service, were emotionally crippled by it.

Parrish shows his abject ignorance of the military. Muhammed was not a combat soldier. There is no record that he actually saw combat in the Gulf War. (The vast majority of soliders who deployed to the Persian Gulf in 1991 did not see combat.)

Muhammed was a machinist, a sort of glorified version of high school shop. Sure, he was issued an M16, but the only time he fired it was for his annual qualification requirement. The Army's Standards in Training manual (the STRAC manual) specifiies what kind of units fire what kind of weapons and how often. I served in combat units, artillery. We never fired our rifles except to qualify. We did fire prodigious amounts of artillery ammo. But Muhammed's military specialty did not take him to units that used weapons to accomplish their mission. Once per year, he fired 40 rounds. Yeah, that's training for murder, all right.

I have never, ever known any combat veteran who came to think that killing other human beings was in some circumstances "a wonderful thing to do." I have never thought so myself. May I point out also that when the Gulf War occurred, Muhammed was hardly a young man. He was 30.

But in the hobgoblins of Parrish's foolish, unimaginative mind, membership in the US Army somehow automatically turns peaceable, gentle men to raving mass murderers. Well, where are they? Millions - millions - of men (and Parrish specifies it is only men who kill) have served in the Army and Marines. If serial murder is the military's fault, then why have we not been stricken with a series of serial snipers for 200 years?

An enormous amount of violence -- against self, against spouses and children, against innocents caught in the crossfire -- can and does result.

Guess Parrish didn't do any actual research for this idiotic claim. In fact, according to a Bureau of Justice Statistics report of January 2000, Male military veterans are incarcerated at less than half the rate of non-veterans. The BJS states,

Male military veterans are incarcerated in the nation's prisons and jails at less than half the rate of non-veterans, the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) announced today. In a new study BJS found that there were 937 incarcerated adult male veterans per 100,000 U.S. veteran residents in 1998, compared to 1,971 per 100,000 among adult male non-veterans. Males make up 95 percent of the U.S. veteran population.

Parrish continues:

For both Muslims and military personnel, an additional pathology is needed for the person to snap -- more, perhaps, for Islam, since religion is neither intrinsically violent nor associated (usually) with PTSD.

Let's see - Islam is not instrinsically violent? Not even Muslims claim that. A basic tenet of Islam is that jihad, including violent jihad is not only necessary but actually desirable between Muslims and infidels. As I pointed out earlier, the renunciation of violence by America's Nation of Islam is one of the reasons that worldwide Islam hold NOI to be heretical.

Peruse LGF's verbatim quotes of Muslim preachers in the Middle East and determine for yourself whether Islam, as practiced there today, is intrinsically violent.

John Allen Muhammad never had sniper training, but he -- like millions of other current and former military personnel -- had very good training in the art of killing, and he spent 15 years steeped in that culture. That, too, is a form of religion.

No, Muhammed had little training in "the art of killing." But to Parrish and his ilk, facts aren't important because facts might get in the way of The Truth About The Military.

Update: I was the chief of public affairs for US Army Criminal Investigation Command when Timothy McVeigh blew up the Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995. Immediately, the hysterics in the media and elsewhere began accusing the Army of being the real instigator of the attack. Covert Action Quarterly, a conspiracist rag, published an article that claimed,

The Oklahoma bombing exposed links between the Army and the militias. The militias use Army training grounds, buy their surplus weapons, and share a militarist mindset. . . .

Links between the Army and the militias became the focus of much unwanted attention when it was discovered that the two men charged with the federal office building bombing in Oklahoma City, Timothy McVeigh and Terry L. Nichols, had trained and served together for about a year with the First Infantry Division in 1988-89. McVeigh's service included combat duty as a gunner in a Bradley Fighting Vehicle in the Gulf. . . . Army officials . . . were quick to disassociate the military from the bombing. "It's got nothing to do with the Army. No one taught that young man to blow up federal buildings or day care centers," fumed Maj. Don Sensing, Army Criminal Investigation Command's public affairs officer.

Fumed? I don't remember "fuming." But then, having been steeped in a murderous culture for many years, I was probably really planning my next baby-killing spree.

One of the results of the end of the military draft is that proportionately fewer and fewer men and women know anything at all about the military. What they think they know is mostly the result of Hollywood fantasies, who only rarely get it right. By their lights, we are all Rambos waiting to detonate.

Just wait, the accusations that Muhammed was "taught to kill" innocent people by the Army will increase in days and weeks to come. Stay tuned.

Update 2: The Dept. of Defense released some details of Muhammed's military record:

The Persian Gulf War veteran held three military job specialties: metalworker, combat engineer and water transport specialist.

I rest my case. Combat engineers, by the way, build field fortifications or obstacles, or assist in demolishing those of the enemy. They are not expected to engage the enemy in combat as part of their mission. Obviously, metalworkers and water transporters don't.

BBC online posters weigh in on American gun control
On Daily Pundit yesterday there is a link to a BBC page entitled, "Can gun control reduce crime?" It's a pretty good window into what Brits andf some Europeans think about America's right to bear arms. As you might think, it's tilted toward stricter gun-control laws here. But it's not all one sided:

As an Brit in the States, I can tell you that while the UK may have a small (but rising) number of gun murders, the petty crime (burglary, robbery, mugging) and assault rates would be considered unbearable in the US. Our neighbour's son was beaten to death by a gang of thugs in Bristol's town square. Things like that wouldn't happen if the government trusted the people with guns. Neil, Holmdel USA

This sniper would have had a gun anyway, no matter what the law was. Living in south Tottenham myself I never leave the house without my (illegal) gun. And it saved me from being robbed twice already. As long as the government is unable to protect me, I will take matters into my own hand. Anon, UK

I am in the UK and I know what the Americans think of our gun laws and of us. But listen, I am a keen shooter and often wish we had rifles legal here. But in the US you have everything. I think that the laws in the U.S should be tightened. Why on earth would you need a machine gun? They are only used against people! Rifles and shotguns are okay because you do use them for hunting and defence, so I hope you get my point. Paul, U,K

Uh, Paul, machine guns are illegal here. It's possible for a private citizen to possess legally a fully automatic weapon, but there a special licenses that must be obtained, and they are not cheap. The hopps to be jumped through are not casual.

So I posted on the BBC page a link to my essay, "Civilization, Violence, Sovereignty and the Second Amendment - Why the right to keep and bear arms is the fundamental right of a sovereign people." We'll see whether the BBC puts my posting online.

Muhammed shot victims from inside his car
According to this CNN story, John Muhammed converted his Chevy Caprice into a homemade sniper platform:

The Chevrolet Caprice used by the sniper suspects was a "killing machine" with two holes in the trunk, one for the rifle, the other for the scope, a senior law enforcement official told CNN Thursday.

The two holes were there so that shots could be fired without opening the trunk, a source said, adding that the back seat could fold down, enabling a potential shooter to stretch out in the back without stepping foot outside.

I predicted back on Oct. 4 that he was shooting from inside his vehicle, although I said it was a van then, because that was what the police were saying, and pointed out, "More and more, this sounds like a well-prepared attack, not some 'wilding' or casual undertaking." Seems so.

John "NOTA" Muhammed
A summary of erroneous forensic profiles was offered by Michelle Malkin:

Dr. Michael Welner, a forensic psychiatrist at New York University Medical Center, described the shooter as "white, male, single, 20s-30s . . . (with a) longtime fascination with hunting and shooting."

Chris Whitcomb, former FBI hostage rescue team member, told NBC's Katie Couric that "statistically, it's going to be a white male, and it's going to be a young person, young 20s emotionally, but also because that's the age most likely statistically somebody's going to commit a crime like this."

Brian Levin, the director of something called the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism in San Bernardino, Calif., stated confidently that the killer "is kind of a wallpaper white male, a disenfranchised, disrespected man who's getting back at society. That's one of the reasons he's kept his distance from inner D.C., where he might lose his cover."

The correct answer, of course, is NOTA - None Of The Above.

On Tuesday of last week, Chief Moose said that the task force had at least a "partial" description of suspects who he suggested are minorities. But he elected not to release the information, explaining it might "paint some group."

Now, go read Andrew Sullivan's pieces today. The questions he asks are ones that need to be asked, and asked hard. Once the relief phase is over, I think people will want to know how many people got shot because the police willfully backed away from considering the killer was either or both Muslim and minority.

These are too funny to pass up
According to Best of the Web Today, here are some signatories of the "Not In Our Name" peitition:

Mike L. Angelo, "artist, ceiling specialist"
Ben Arnold, "war veteran, friend of peace through compromise"
Bie Tmai Arze
Jack Asse
Jack Assis, "Another Lefty"
Ivan Awfulitch
Seymour Buttes, "Taranto Society"
Madonna Cantsingh
Oliver Clozoff, "Fellow, American Association of Amateur Gynecologists"
I.P. Freylie
Kilacomie Furchrist
Ikant Belib Issnautbuttar, "Denier of All Things Obvious"

To which I might add the following names:

Mike Easter, seat cushion tester
Candace Guy, downsizing specialist
Imelda Czechs, Accounts Payable Administrator
Carmine Dioxide, Air-Quality Monitor
Ulanda U. Lucky, Air Traffic Controller
Will Price Randomly, Airline Reservation Manager
Rush Inuit, Alaskan Prenuptial Advisor
Bud Uronner, Legal Appeals Specialist
Stu Earley, Appointment Secretary
Phyllis Steen, Art Critic
Luciano Pavearoadi, Asphalt Contractor
Lois Steem, Assertiveness Training Coach
Kurt Reply, Assistant Customer Care Representive
Hugo Gurll, Assistant Director of Moral Support
Kent C. Detrees, Assistant Director of Strategic Planning
Joaquin D'Planque, Assistant Disciplinarian
Lisa Carr, Automotive Fleet Manager
Orson Buggy, Amish Transportation Coordinator
James Bondo, Auto-Body Expert
Dr. Denton Fender, Automotive Medical Researcher
Megan Model, Automotive Registrar
Frieda Gogh, Bail Bond Provider
Tilda Plierslip, Bolt Tightener
Hadley Newham , Boston Funeral Director
Hugo First, Bunji Jumping Instructor
Euripedes Ibreakayourlegs, Bar Bouncer
Barbara Seville, Opera Critic
Alan Greasepan, Chairman, Federal Lubrication Board
Art Majors, Liberal Arts Unemployment Counselor
Wayne Back, Chief of Stadium Seating
Yasir Itsaflat, Chief of Tire Technology
Bea Ferrone, Children's Menu Adviser
Amos Muhmahmi, Children's Sleepover Coordinator
Ophelia Paine, Compassion Coordinator
C. Colin Backslash, Computer Hardware Specialist
Dustin Dubree, Construction Manager
Cody Pendant, Coordinator, 12-Step Recovery Program
Pat Pending, Copyright Attorney
Hugh Lyon Sack, Al Qaeda Spokesperson
Ivana Michelin, Director of Firestone Tire Recalls
Nomar Winter, Global Warming Researcher
Len Scapon, Director of Photography

I ripped off all of these from the Car Talk web site, featuring two of the funniest guys on radio. There are dozens more examples there.

The differences between Islam and Nation of Islam
Here is information about the Nation of Islam (NOI) from its official web site, along with how it contrasts or contradicts the beliefs of worldwide Islam.

NOI: NOI is only for Black people.

Islam: Islam is for everyone.

NOI: The chosen people are descended from the Tribe of Shabazz from the Lost Nation of Asia, a people originally of African descent.

Islam: Arabs, the original Muslims, are descended from the tribe of Ishmael, a son of the patriarch Abraham, who also founded the tribes of Israel. But there is no tribal affiliation necessary to be a Muslim.

NOI: Elijah Muhammed (nee Poole), founder of the NOI, was the Mahdi, a "divinely guided One."

Islam: The Mahdi is associated with the Twelfth and Hidden Imam of the Iranian Shiites. The Mahdi, a precursor figure to the Day of Judgment, "will fight the oppressors, unite the Muslims, bring peace and justice to the world, rule over the Arabs . . . ." The identification of the mahdi with the Arabs is central to worldwide Islam.

According to the University of Southern California website's Islam section, NOI claims that Allah "appeared in the Person of Master W.Fard Muhammad, July, 1930," but the Quran specifically warns that Allah cannot be appertained by anyone, and Islam emphatically rejects any incarnation of Allah in creaturely form (this being the main reason Muslims reject the deity of Jesus Christ).

NOI: "We are taught never to carry arms, to make war or to be the aggressor, for this is against the nature of the righteous."

Islam: Waging war against non-Muslims is sometimes justified (see below).

NOI: "We are trained to eat and to prepare the best of foods for the longevity of life, without the use of alcohol, smoking and substance abuse which endangers the ethics of healthy living."

Islam: Same, although smoking is a widespread habit among Muslims and as far as I know, is not proscribed.

The USC website also explains:

The followers of the Nation Of Islam further believe "in the resurrection of the dead--not in physical resurrection--but in mental resurrection. We also believe that the so-called Negroes are most in need of mental resurrection; therefore, they will be resurrected first." But the Qur`an states in chapter 20, verse 55, "From the earth did We Create you, and into it Shall We return you, and from it shall We bring you out once again." Even more pointedly, the Qur'an also states in 64:7,

The Unbelievers think that they will not be raised up (for Judgement). Say: "Yea, by my Lord, Ye shall surely be Raised up: then shall ye Be told (the truth) of All that ye did. And that is easy for Allah."

Besides the above two differences, the followers of the Nation of Islam also believe in other things contrary to Islam as defined in the Qur'an and Sunnah, such as:

[We, the Black Muslims, believe] "in the truth of the Bible, but we believe that it has been tampered with and must be reinterpreted so that mankind will not be snared by the falsehoods that have been added to it".
The problem with this belief: The true Prophet of Islam ordered Muslims to neither accept the Bible nor reject it - certainly there was no mention of reinterpretation.

"That we who declare ourselves to be righteous Muslims, should not participate in wars which take the lives of humans. We do not believe this nation should force us to take part in such wars, for we have nothing to gain from it unless America agrees to give us the necessary territory wherein we may have something to fight for".
The problem with this belief: The Qur'an and Sunnah are crystal clear on the necessity of going to war when the situation demands it.

Now, I am not about to jump into the middle of internecine arguments about what constitutes "true" Islam, because not even all the adherents of worldwide Islam can agree on that. Wahabists, for example, insist that only they practice true Islam, but so did the Taliban and so do al Qaeda's members.

But I do think that we need to recognize that --

Nation of Islam is a late-arriving American religious group that is not recognized as legitimate Islam by other Muslims, and therefore,

To lump Sniper John Muhammed in with al Qaeda terrorists is not a supportable stretch, provided that he is a member of Nation of Islam rather than some other denomination of Islam. However violent al Qaeda's members are, as Arab-Islamic purists, they would not recognize any member of the NOI as a true Muslim. (Yet I am sure al Qaeda would accept others' services and assistance as their own version of "useful fools.")

But we really are not sure what kind of Islam John Muhammed adheres to. Even if he started off in the NOI, he may well have left it in favor of more conventional Islam.

Postscript: Here is another Muslim site that renounces NOI:

[NOI leader Minister] Louis Gene Walcott Farrakhan is not a Muslim, nor is his doctrine Islam. Farrakhan is the leader of a black racist cult called "the Nation of Islam," (NOI) founded in Detroit, Michigan in the 1930's. While the group calls its followers Muslims, in reality, they have very little to do with the faith of Islam. Islam believes in the total transcendance of almighty God (called in Arabic, Allaah), the NOI teaches that black people are angelic gods. Islam maintains universal brotherhood, the NOI says that Islam is for blacks only. Islam teaches that prophethood ended with Muhammad ibn Abdullah, more than 1400 years ago. The NOI teaches that Farrakhan's teacher, Elijah Muhammad, is the last prophet. Islam teaches principles of spiritual and moral decorum such prayer, fasting, charity, pilgimage, etc., Elijah Muhammad cast these out or altered them beyond recognition.

The website of The Institute Of Islamic Information And Education also presents a detailed, point-by-point comparison of NOI and "regular" Islam.

Is John Muhammed a member of Islam or Nation of Islam?
Very few Musims outside America consider adherents of the Nation of Islam to be Muslims. I have read that Muhammed (nee Williams) converted to Islam, but I have also read that he really joined the Nation of Islam. I'll try to write about why worldwide Islam does not include Nation of Islam within the fold. Remember, though, that Malcolm X started out in Nation of Islam but broke with it after sojourning in the Middle East, where he became acquainted with Islam there. Says Best of the Web Today:

The AP report suggests, however, that Muhammad may have connections with a homegrown form of radical Islam: "Muhammad had helped provide security for Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan's 'Million Man March' in Washington, D.C., according to Leo Dudley, a former Marine who lived a block from Muhammad."

And Fox News just confirme Nation of Islam membership. So before we start to call Muhammed a Muslim it might be well to try to figure this out. Stand by.

I think it's way, way early to call John Muhammed an Islamofascist. As of now, he seems just a whacko, murderous, greedy fantasist. There is no hint, so far, of anything religious or political motivation for his murders.

You don't say!
Kathy Pilgrim on CNN, commenting on media coverage of The Sniper: "Very little of what was offered as expert analysis turned out to be true."

So, John Muhammed qualified expert on the M16. . . .
Which is isn't all that hard to do - just a matter of applying the training. It's certainly not sniper level skill.

Reports say rifle found in arrestees' car is a Bushmaster .223
The authorities have not officially released information about what they have found in the car seized in relation to The Sniping arrests of John Muhammed and Lee Malvo. But cable news reports say that the car contained a Bushmaster .223-caliber rifle.

Bushmaster corporation specializes in rifles derived from the military M16. A Bushmaster rifle (not the only product Bushmaster sells) is in appearance very close to the M16. But it is a semi-automatic rifle, unlike the M16, which can be fired fully automatic. Therefore, the media will almost certainly characterize them as "assault weapons," which is a non-term. "Assault weapon" is not a military term and is not used by soldiers. It was really made up by gun controllers and adopted by the media. It means nothing, really, except, "looks fierce."

Update: The AP is apparently announcing that the rifle's toolmarks match those on the bullets recovered from victims.

The coincidences of Civil War ancestors
Geitner Simmons has a post that explains that both he and blogger Brink Lindsey had Civil War ancestors held as prisoners at the same time in Maryland's Point Lookout prison. Lindsey writes, "Geitner and I know each other only through email and reading each others' blogs, but perhaps our forebears knew each other better."

That made me think of the scene in We Were Soldiers when UPI correspondent Joe Galloway explains his military heritage to Lt. Col. Hal Moore one night during the battle at Ia Drang valley. Galloway says that two of his great-grandfathers each had a leg shot off during the Civil War, one a right leg, the other the left. They met by happenstance at a shoe store after the war, discovered that they wore the same shoe size, and henceforth bought a pair of shoes together. One had a daughter, the other a son, who married.

I have no coincidences in my Civil War ancestry like Geitner and Brink have, but I told their stories here

Myths and truths about America
Sgt Stryker has been running a short series of the myths Britons have about America these days, and the truth - as explained by another Briton. Pretty good, give them a read!

Boo and hiss to the Washington Post!
When you browse to the WaPo site, your entire screen is taken over for several seconds by a Flash ad for MSN. This really stinks. I used Netscape to go there and the ad did not appear because I do not have the appropriate driver loaded in Netscape. But I would not want to have to use two browsers to use the internet. So what's up with WaPo?

Will the media be honest with The Sniper's real name?
One of the men arrested last night in The Sniper investgation is named John Mohammed. He was born John Williams but changed his name to an Arab name when he converted to Islam many years ago, as is required for non-Arabs who adopt Islam.

Which name will the media use? My bet is that they'll ignore Mohammed's free choice to change his name and will call him by his renounced name, Williams.

As I pointed out, the media can't seem to abide calling Americans converted to Islam by their real name - their Muslim name - unless they are sports heros. But killers? No. That's intolerant.

Two sniper suspects worked alone, say police
Police are announcing this morning that the two men taken into custody as suspects in The Sniping investigation are the only suspects. Police say that there are no other suspects. They also say that the two men have no connections to any group and that they worked alone. (I barely beat them to that conclusion.)

Jesus was not "incidentally Jewish, he was fundamentally Jewish"
The Jerusalem Post has an excellent article, an interview with Hershel Shanks a scholar who is founder and editor of Biblical Archaeological Review. Shanks was "was instrumental in freeing the Dead Sea Scrolls from 'a small coterie of scholars who had kept them from public view for over three decades.'"

In the interview, Shanks explains the very technical examinations of the first-century Jewish ossuary that recently came to public attention, bearing an inscription, "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus." And he says,

[Q:] Is there a Jewish angle to this story?
[A:] It illustrates for the Christian world that Jesus was not incidentally Jewish; he was fundamentally Jewish.

If you want to understand Jesus, you have to understand the Jewish world in which he lived; his vernacular was Aramaic. His brother was buried according to Jewish practice. He was born a Jew and he died a Jew.

[Q:] For Christians, this could have major theological significance.
[A:] Yes. It depends on how you interpret the word 'brother' in the New Testament. For Roman Catholics, Mary has perpetual virginity, so Jesus couldn't have had a biological younger brother. Catholics would say that "brother" really means kin - the kin was a cousin. But this box specifically mentions Joseph as James's father. This creates problems to the view that "brother" means "kin" in this case.

Another interpretation of brother [also shared by Protestants] is the Eastern Orthodox one - that James was the son of Joseph by a previous marriage. This is OK as a possibility consistent with this inscription.

This last interpretation of the relationship of James with Jesus, that James was the son of Joseph by a previous marriage, is not supported in the slightest by Scripture. It is simply made up in order to preserve the biological virginity of Mary. Myself, I consider the whole issue of Mary's enduring virginity inconsequential to the divinity of Jesus. I'll post more about that later, but right now I have to go to work.

First war against Iraq and then against North Korea?
Some left-wing voices have in recent weeks snootily asked why are we planning war against Iraq but not North Korea, if both countries are card-carrying members of the Axis of Evil?

It's a stupid question, of course. The questioners seem to think that such a question should cause the administration to suddenly have a light bulb go on over its collective head and say, "Yeah! It would be unfair to fight Iraq and not North Korea! So we won't do either one!" But of course, the question also begs a different answer: "Yes, first Iraq, then North Korea. Glad you approve!"

But neither answer is the real one. Says William Safire in today's NYT:

America and its allies will not use our military to take out the Pyongyang gang for the simple reason that North Korea already has the conventional troop strength and artillery power to inflict horrendous casualties on the South (including 40,000 U.S. tripwire troops) as well as in Japan, which Pyongyang will soon be able to reach with nuclear missiles.

That strategic fact of life and death invites the question that coolly consistent sophists love to ask: If we are disinclined to attack the nuclear buildup in North Korea, why are we hot to attack a somewhat less imminent threat of mass destruction from Iraq?

Saddam Hussein is a recent, serial aggressor, while totalitarian North Korea has not launched an invasion in the past half-century. Moreover, the potentially high human cost of wiping out the Korean threat should be an unforgettable lesson to every nation: The world must not allow Iraq to gain the level of destructive power that appeasement and misplaced trust permitted North Korea to achieve.

Seems pretty clear to me.

Today's match: Cohen vs. Fleischer!
Richard Cohen says that there are good reasons to go to war with Iraq, but that President Bush and his aides, "have exaggerated the Iraqi threat, creating links and evidence where they do not exist. Even before this war starts, its first victim has been truth." For example, says Cohen,

Bush appears to be alone in thinking that Iraq has a growing fleet of unmanned aircraft that could be used "for missions targeting the United States." As my Post colleague Dana Milbank has reported, the CIA indicates Iraq may have such aircraft, but their range is another matter altogether. In all likelihood, Baghdad has nothing -- no plane, no missile, no box kite -- capable of reaching the United States.

One the same page is a letter to the editor from White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, who says that the Post :

wrongly interprets the president to be saying that Iraq would launch the UAVs from Iraq. The president never suggested that. The threat from UAVs would come from their being launched from a ship or a truck or by their being smuggled into the United States. . . . It is The Post's reporting that is dubious, if not wrong.

I report, you decide!

Sen. John McCain says it well
The real lesson from the news that North Korea is now nuclear, according to John McCain:

The dangers posed by Iraq and North Korea are different, but as any surviving member of the Taliban will attest -- and as Saddam Hussein may soon learn -- in this new era, rogue regimes that openly defy and gravely threaten the United States put themselves in peril when they doubt our resolve to end challenges to our security. If we had met the North Korean nuclear challenge with resolve rather than accommodation a decade ago, we would be more secure now. North Korea teaches us that if we sleep in the face of the Iraq threat today, we may be sleepless tomorrow.

"If U.S. is out for oil, that's all right with me"
A letter to the editor in this morning's Nasville Tennessean newspaper:

I love to hear the far left-wing voices connecting President Bush's hard-line approach to Iraq as a battle for the oil companies. I am a taxi driver and I use gasoline to make a living. If the United States attacks Iraq and an American friendly regime takes its place to trade with us, that is a good thing.

If it takes a temporary shutdown of oil supplies from the Middle East to liberate an entire country from a sadistic despotic ruler, then what is wrong with that? I really don't care if the oil companies and a sovereign nation make a profit on me using fair trade. Please, quit trying to hyper-intellectualize the situation. The average American couldn't care less.

Henry Brand

MSNBC, Charles Johnson, and networked slot machines!
I am probably about the last major blogger (nice pat on my own back, eh?) to post a defense of Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs, but I want to do so anyway.

I shan't recuperate the reason why he became the center of an online controversy recently. That has been more than adequately covered elsewhere, including the lead story in WSJ's Best of the Web Today. You can also read about it at Glenn Frazier and of course Glenn Reynolds. Heck, if you read many of the same blogs I do, you already know the reason.

I think there are larger issues at work here. One, MSNBC is a mainline media outlet that doesn't seem editorially comfortable with the blog explosion. Of the mainline web sites that even address or recognize private blogs at all, there seems to be an approach-avoidance syndrome at work: some are interesting, some are even informative, but we don't want anyone to know about them because we want them to read us, not them.

We bloggers are competitive media to the mainline media, and they have started to notice and don't much like it. The WSJ's site and perhaps Fox News seems to be the only exceptions.

Yes, MSNBC's daily readership is Mount Everest compared to mine. Even Glenn Reynolds' Instapundit doesn't get close to the hits that it does, or CNN or the other major-media sites do. And no blogger I know of has even a small fraction of the resources for research and site development that MSNBC does. In every conventional measurement, we bloggers are badly outgunned.

But blogs represent a technology the defies conventional measurement. Here's why: Casinos saw slot machines as minor money-makers and simple draws to get people to table games until fairly recently. Now slots are huge money makers for casinos and in some casinos they dominate the floor space. Why the change? Computerization of the machines and computer networking of slots around the nation. There used to be a very few ultra-large-jackpot paying machines because mechanical rotors take up a lot of room. The achieve the odds that the gambling industry felt justified a potential million-dollar payout required a slot machine that had dozens and dozens of rotors. It took up 20 feet or more of floor space for just one machine.

But now the slots are computerized. They use simulated rotors. You gamble against a computer. For ultra-payouts, the machines are standard size. They are networked with other slots in other casinos around the country to achieve the odds needed to make ultra-payouts profitable for the casinos.

That's what blogs do to information media. No blog succeeds on its own. Blogs must be networked, or bilaterally linked, just to exist. And this unmodulated but self-policing network is a growing threat to the mainline sites. The explosion of potential payout - in information, not money - means that media sites really are threatened by blogs. Media sites want you to think they have all the information you need. Bloggers thrive by letting you know they don't, but someone else does, and here's the link. Linking is life for bloggers, but death for mainline sites.

That's a subtle sub-text in MSNBC's attack on Charles. But not all. Along with the infonet explosion comes the possibility that almost any kind of information can be located through blogs. The mainline media are being forced out as information gatekeepers. But no gatekeepers are taking their place. Beginning now, there simply are no information gatekeepers because there are a practically unlimited number of information gates.

The kind of information about Islamic hate speech and radicalism that Charles regularly posts is information that the mainline media have proscribed. They know it, they just refuse to carry it, probably because they think that carrying it would make them seem "intolerant." And when Charles does carry it, unexpurgated, they accuse him of "ethics" problems.

But the real problem is not Charles ethics, but their world view. Charles must not carry Islamic hate sermons because it is forbidden! People might see it! And it cuts us out!

Do blogs threaten mainline media? You betcha! We can expect more howls of MSNBC's kind to come. The mainline sites will have to adapt or fade.

The Maryland-Virginia shootings are not Islamic terrorism
Jason Rubenstein posted a few days ago the opinion of a former Green Beret, John Moore, who is also a retired homicide detective, that The Sniper is conducting "market research."
http://www.tonecluster.com/2002_10_01_tonecluster_archive.html#85575184

"What's going on is what I like to call 'marketing research,'" said Moore, who is also the author of several Special Forces classified studies on Islamic terrorism. "It may just be a test tactic for future use."

He said if the shootings are the work of a terrorist cell - and he believes they are - they "may want to learn just how much shooting they have to do in order to get the desired effect."

This hypothesis had a certain attraction at the time. Many people in and out of the investigation pondered whether there was an al Qaeda connection and the FBI even looked into it. But I think this idea can be discarded now.

The shootings continue. Whatever market research Mr. Moore may have had in mind that The Sniper was doing would surely be finished by now. There's just so long you need to test a new product before you know how it will sell, and there have been quite enough murders now to determine how the people and the authorities will react - if that is all these killings were intended to do.

So while I once thought it credible that The Sniper might be an advance killer for al Qaeda, I don't think so now. (Another reason that obviates that conclusion is the utter lack of reaction in the Middle East - if The Sniper was an Islamist terrorist, al Qaeda would have spread the word and The Sniper's exploits would be the buzz of the Arab street. But no one over there is celebrating it or rumormonging it.)

However, a chilling thought strikes me that The Sniper's success could give al Qaeda ideas. I have no doubt that al Qaeda would much prefer to kill mass numbers of Americans at one time rather than pick us off here and there, one by one. But I think they'll take what they can get.

This guy is not al Qaeda. But if there is a next one, he will be.

Houses of Worship and Political Speech
David Limbaugh, writing in the Washington Times, bemoans the defeat of the Houses of Worship Political Speech Act (H.R. 2357), "which was designed to remove the authority of the Internal Revenue Service to revoke a church's tax-exempt status for engaging in "partisan" political activity." The he proceeds to misstate what the act would have done.

There is a widespread misperception that it is illegal for pastors or rabbis (or mullahs, for that matter) to stand in an American pulpit and give an overtly political sermon or speech. It is not. Or, some think, if a preacher does so, it is no illegal, but the church or synagogue must surrender its tax exempt status. That's not true, either.

Under present law, clergy and lay people of a religious congregation may energetically engage in all the partisan politics they want even if they use the church's name explicitly for that purpose. It is quite legal for a preacher to stand in the pulpit on a Sunday morning and say, "Go vote for these candidates." (Stupid, but legal.) A church's governing board may legally decide to put partisan campaign signs on the church's property - all without affecting the church's tax-exempt status, granted under Section 501(c)3 of the IRS code.

The tax-exempt status would be threatened only by the expenditure of church money for partisan political purposes. The IRS code is explicit that the only test is whether a church's monetary expenditures cross a threshold that indicates the church is mainly engaging in political activities rather than religious ones. The threshold is ill-defined, but that is the test.

If a church is willing to surrender its tax exemption, it may spend whatever it wants on political activities.

Limbaugh makes a good point in that the more political a preacher's speech becomes, the less religious it is, so how could such speech violate the Establishment Clause since purely political speech is mostly bereft of religious content. But that misses the point. The effect of the present law has indeed been to chill political speech in churches, but that's because pastors and lay people tend to be uninformed about what the IRS code says. That's their fault. However, the present law has the salutary effect of preventing political organizations from gaining an IRS Section 501(c)3 tax exemption, then campaigning away. Section 501(c)3 is intended to protect charitable and non-profit organizations from taxation because they serve the general good, rather than specific segments of society. The section does not protect political organizations from taxation, and should not be used for that purpose.

The risk of the defeated bill was not that churches would suddenly become political action groups, but that political action groups would suddenly become churches. The bill was rightly defeated.

Maryland-Virginia killer directly threatens children
Montgomery County, Maryland's Chief of Police Charles Moose just announced that The Sniper (he or they now needs no prior referent anymore) has communicated to the police that no one's children are safe.

No more smug commentators explaining his psyche now. No more news anchors interviewing former detectives explaining how things are done "in cases like these."

There are no cases like these. Nothing like this has ever happened, not Son of Sam, not Zodiac, not anybody. The Sniper is a new chapter in criminology. We are all blindfolded, feeling our way in a dark room.