Using WMDs against US troops is a no lose move for Saddam. Recent reports that Iraq tried to buy one million auto-injectors of nerve agent antidote (NAA) led many commentators to claim that Saddam planned to use nerve gas (properly called nerve agent) against allied troops if we invade Iraq.

Saddam has a history of spectacular miscalculation. Before the Gulf War, Secretary of State James Baker warned Iraq's foreign Minister, Tariq Aziz that if Iraq used chemical or bioweapons against US troops, "The American people will demand retribution, and we have the means to exact it." This threat was perfectly credible and, according to the May/June 1996 edition of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists,

It [Iraq] didn't use such weapons because the leadership feared nuclear retaliation. After Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz gave this account of Desert Storm to U.N. representative Rolf Ekeus last August [of 1995], the Washington Post wrote that this was "the first authoritative account for why Iraq did not employ the biological or chemical arms at its disposal."

However, Ekeus said that Aziz was spinning the story. The real reasons, Ekeus said, were that America's attacks quickly and thoroughly disrupted Saddam's ability to command and control his forces. Also, the ground attack was over so fast and American formations moved so fast that Iraqi commanders never had time to formulate a special-weapons attack plan. This lesson is certainly not lost on American planners today.

Former British Prime Minister John Major said in September -

AMERICA will NUKE Baghdad if Saddam Hussein dares unleash weapons of mass destruction, it emerged last night.

The chilling warning to Iraq was revealed by former Tory Premier John Major, who led Britain in the 1991 Gulf War.

During that conflict, allied forces were armed with "battlefield" nuclear weapons and prepared to use them in a counter attack, he said.

Saddam was privately warned his capital would be obliterated if he used weapons of mass destruction against allied troops or Middle East targets - including Israel.

Of course, John Major does not speak for the United States and today even a bluff threat of retaliation in kind by the US is not credible.

In the 1991 Gulf War, Saddam had everything to lose and nothing to gain by using NBC. Based on the texts of the US Congress' authorization for President Bush to make war against Iraq and the text of the UN resolution calling on UN members to eject Iraq from Kuwait, Saddam knew that his regime would not be targeted. The Congress limited its war powers declaration against Iraq to reversing the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, and did not authorize conquest of Iraq. For that matter, President Bush never contemplated doing that.

Saddam knew that his regime was not targeted by the allies even if they succeeded in liberating Kuwait. With his survival thus practically guaranteed in advance, the only thing that could definitely cause his death or downfall would have been to use NBC against allied forces. Furthermore, the US threat to use mass-destructive weapons in retaliation also served as assurance that such weapons would be use only in retaliation. Thus Saddam knew that

he faced an entirely conventional threat, the power of which he never actually comprehended,

his personal survival and that of his regime was assured even if he lost the battle for Kuwait,

and the only way neither of the above facts would be negated was for him to use NBC weapons.

Today, however, Saddam's survival, and that of his regime, is precisely what is threatened. The US made regime change an explicit aim of foreign policy in 1998, and the present administration has emphasized it heavily.

So what has Saddam to lose by using NBC weapons against US troops? Really, nothing. Using NBC against US troops would carry great risk that many Iraqi civilians would die as collateral damage. I once believed this consideration might stay Saddam's hand, but I don't think so any more. His single overriding goal has always been personal survival and holding onto or increasing his power. He is a dictator, and dictators do not rule for the benefit of the people. Saddam has no vision for Iraq that outlives him personally. It is most likely that he would sacrifice Iraqi lives wholesale in order to hang onto life and power.

As I wrote in "Fighting a winter campaign in Iraq," American maneuver units - armor, infantry and their supporting artillery units - would make poor targets for chemical attack because they move too fast to target effectively. But the US logistic tail could be an attractive target.

But the Iraqi military and especially the Republican Guard will suffer terribly for using NBC weapons against US forces. The vengeful fury of combat soldiers, Marines and airmen will be prodigious in the extreme; they will attack and kill Iraqi forces without relent or remorse. Nothing in American military history will compare.

Saddam's use of WMDs cannot possibly assure his victory. But sadly, that fact can't be relied on to dissuade him from using them anyway.

The Defense Department's "Knowledge is Power" Information-Collection Program has caused a lot of hand wringing lately with breathlessly related fears that civil liberties and individual privacy will be chucked out the window once the gummint gets the technology to read every email and intercept every phone call worldwide.

Fortunately, Lynxx Pherrett has gone ad fontes (to the sources) for the real skinny, so everyone take a deep breath and calm down.

More denial and uncritical thinking of American religiousity. I started to fisk this piece, but it is so insufferably foolish that it really just rebuts itself.

Somehow, Saddam's drive to acquire mass destructive weapons is really a "crisis of humanity" generally rather than specifically a threat to America (or Israel). Thus,

only when threats are replaced by principled negotiations, and violence is replaced by nonviolence, the people of Iraq, and the world, will live in greater security, dignity, and harmony with each other.

The writers are contentedly unaware that negotiations have been underway with Iraq for 11 years. All the while Saddam has been rearming. "Principled negotiations" can be done only by principled parties, and it would be nice if the writers had at least have imagined that maybe, just maybe, Saddam is not principled, that Saddam is bent on conquest and uses negotiations only as a foil to gain time rather than achieve a solution.

In war, is it good for the enemy to be "bloodlessly beaten"? After reading about civilian casualties in Germany in World War II, Glenn Reynolds wonders:

I'm all for minimizing civilian casualties to the extent possible, consistent with winning the war. But if people are beaten so bloodlessly that they don't feel beaten, and have no real reason to dread a confrontation with the United States, is this really a good thing?

Of course, the reason so many Germans died was that precision-guided munitions did not exist. There's no question that if they had existed, Allied commanders would have used them. However, inflicting mass casualties on our enemies' populations became a stated aim of the governments of Britain and America.

The primary advantage of PGMs is actually hitting the target. During World War II, when there were no PGMs, the allied air forces sent up to 1,000 heavy bombers over German targets at a time. Yet the number of bombs that actually had militarily significant target effects was small in comparison to the number dropped. The British knew this would be the case from the beginning, and didn't even try to hit their targets except by using the law of averages. "Area bombing" was their tactic. They hoped that if they dropped as many bombs as they could, enough would happen to hit the target to make the mission worthwhile.

American commanders believed that intentionally accurate bombing was possible; they even misnamed their technique "precision" bombing. Yet long before the end of the war, American bomb wings were really conducting area bombing tactics; they just continued to pretend they were conducting "precision" bombing. In all, according to the US Strategic Bombing Survey completed after the war, "2,700,000 tons of bombs were dropped [on Germany], more than 1,440,000 bomber sorties" were flown. Yet the Survey reports that "only about 20% of the bombs aimed at precision targets fell within [the] target area."

The destruction achieved was enormous. Almost 60 years later we can scarcely comprehend what the Germans and Japanese endured. In Germany, says the survey, "3,600,000 dwelling units, approximately 20% of the total, were destroyed or heavily damaged. Survey estimates show some 300,000 civilians killed and 780,000 wounded. The number made homeless aggregates 7,500,000. The principal German cities have been largely reduced to hollow walls and piles of rubble."

Most of this destruction was what we now term, "collateral damage." With an average of 80 percent of the bombs falling outside the target area, it was inevitable that non-target areas would suffer heavy damage. The British intended from the beginning to inflict massive destruction on civilian populations and facilities. Partly, this desire was revenge based, since the German Luftwaffe had terror-bombed England. But it was mostly based on the mistaken notion that heavy bombing of civilian centers would reduce civilian morale to the point where they would not support the war any longer. (Why the British thought that German morale was more frail than their own is an unanswered question.)

The Americans rejected terror bombing, but not for long. As the war went on and on, and German and Japanese resistance failed to slacken, President Roosevelt decided that the German and Japanese peoples must realize after the war that not only had their armed forces been defeated: the entire nation, as a nation, had been beaten. He and Churchill were well aware that German militarism had survived World War I because its apologists had successfully propagated the myth that the Kaiser's army had not really been defeated, it had been "stabbed in the back" by disloyal factions at home. Hence, said, Roosevelt,

It is of utmost importance that every person in Germany should realize that this time Germany is a defeated nation. . . . The fact that they are a defeated nation, collectively and individually, must be so impressed upon them that they will hesitate to start any new war.

(Roosevelt's policy seems not far from Civil War Gen. William T. Sherman's observation of the Confederate States, "War, and war alone, can inspire our enemy with respect, and they will have their belly full of that very soon.")

So, according to historian Richard B. Frank in his award-winning book, Downfall, the End of the Imperial Japanese Empire:

Viewed in this light, massive urban bombing complemented the aim of unconditional surrender. It was not just a handful of vile men who flaunted vile ideologies; whole populations imbibed these beliefs and acted as willing acolytes. Unconditional surrender and vast physical destruction would sear the price of aggression into the minds of the German and Japanese peoples. No soil would be left from which myths might later sprout that Germany and Japan had not really been defeated. These policies would assure that there would be no third world war with Germany, nor would Japan get a second opportunity.

One notes that Japan and Germany have been well behaved since 1945. But we also have to note that massive, destructive bombing was alone not the reason. It was simply impossible for either country's armed forces to claim that they had prevailed, or at least held their own, on the field of battle. German and Japanese orphans, widows and grieving parents were in almost every other household, and a lie that their armed forces had not really lost could not possibly have found legs to stand on.

Most importantly, US forces occupied both countries for several years after the war. In Germany, the division of the country into free and communist states imbued it and Europe with a forced stability that they might not otherwise had. This gave time for democratic institutions to take serious root, and today German democracy is as strong as any in the world. It helped that Germany had no ages-long tradition of centralized authority in monarchs; it had been unified into a single nation only a few decades before.

But in Japan, the situation was quite different. Militarism was deeply rooted; in fact, the entire culture of the country was oriented on producing warriors. The imperial throne had been intact for 2,400 years, although its present polity dated only to the 1860s. Women were politically and socially powerless. And in 1945, its army, navy and air forces virtually eliminated, General of the Army Douglas MacArthur arrived as the first successful invader ever to set foot on the soil of Japan.

In Japan, MacArthur eliminated Japanese militarism first by emplacing a democratically-based constitution and second by liberating Japanese women from centuries of patriarchal oppression. He gave women the rights to vote and to serve in democratic assemblies and government offices, steps MacArthur saw as essential to ending Japanese military aggressiveness. America also bore the brunt of rebuilding Japan's economy and infrastructure. The result: today Japan may fairly be characterized as a Western country. It bears all the hallmarks of Western culture ands tradition: a capitalist economic system, a representative parliament, a toothless monarchy, a vibrant university system and the rule of law.

A comparison to America's present enemies is therefore apt. What made Japan's transition from a medieval culture to a modern one so successful so quickly was the fact that the Japanese people, from top to bottom, realized that the way they had been doing things, in every arena of their society, was no longer tenable and had to be abandoned. This realization was profound and wrenching, but it had been brought about through great violence and enormous cost to their nation.

I have noted before that there is no inherent contradiction between the religion of Islam and democratic institutions. On the contrary, I am convinced that it is state Islam, as practiced in the Arab countries today, that serves to amplify rather than create political and cultural oppression. The real problem with Islam is not actually Islam; it is how Islam is practiced in Arab lands.

Saudi Arabia is a paradigm. According to Prof. Fouad Ajami of The Johns Hopkins University, Islam has been "the handmaiden of the state" since the beginning of the modern Saudi realm, resluting from "an alliance between a desert chieftan, Muhammed bin Saud, and a religious reformer named Muhammed ibn Abd al-Wahhab. This partnership anchored the kingdom. The House of Saud defended the country and struck bargains with world powers, while the descendants of the Wahhab family dominated the judiciary and an educational system suffused with religion.

The real enemy of Western civilization today is not Islam. It is arabism: a system of political and social authoritarianism in Arab lands using Islam as a handmaiden, as Prof. Ajami put it. (Remember, most Muslims are not Arabs.)

Our task is therefore over the long term to bring home to these nations, at every level of their societies, the fact that Japan had to face: the times, they are a-changing. These nations must come to realize at every level that they cannot successfully continue with business as before. They must transition into democratically based insitutions with free-market systems and individual freedoms. The question is, can these reforms be brought about non-violently, with lesser violence, or do they require profound suffering by their peoples?

Let me polish my crystal ball:

The US will not target enemy populations. The possibility that the USA will launch deliberate, highly destructive strikes against mostly civilian areas of the countries of the Axis of Evil is non-existent. The deliberate targeting of civilians by our enemies has been the source of American condemnation of al Qaeda and its supporters. Killing civilians as an end in itself is what the American and European governments have most strongly condemned. The Palestinian murder-suicide bombers have been condemned in the strongest terms by the US government. So B-52 arc lights through downtown Baghdad are not in the cards.

Before taking direct action against Iraq, we need to clearly define what we desire the end state to be. That is, when the day comes when Iraq is no longer of national-security concern to the United States, what will Iraq be like?

U.S. national objectives are implicit in the Bush administration's pronouncements to date. They seem to be:

the destruction of Iraq's capability to use nuclear, biological or chemical weapons, or further to develop them,

ending Iraq's capability to launch conventional attacks beyond its borders

the final end of Saddam's regime.

the emplacement of a democratic, constitutional government in Baghdad.

Accomplishing anything short of these will not solve the problem, and will leave soil from which future confrontations will grow. We should not make the mistake of ridding Iraq of Saddam, only for him to be replaced with another despot who simply seems benign toward the United States. I think that democracy can be inculcated in Iraq, but not easily; Iraq has no democratic history. The American people need to understand that the democratization of Iraq will be a long-term commitment.

Saddam must die or be captured. The destruction of Saddam's regime must include the death or capture of Saddam himself. Even if he is rendered politically and militarily impotent, he will not be seen as defeated unless he is dead or in custody. No exile should be allowed. Personally, I think a Nuremberg-style trial would serve our interests well and enable the Iraqi people to learn the murderousness of the regime.

I think the odds are great the the Iraqi regular military will defect or stack arms as soon as US forces appear. But the Republican Guard must be destroyed and completely wrecked as an operating entity. That means that all of its units will either have to die or be surrendered to the US armed forces. We must not permit soil to remain from which may grow the claim that Iraq was not truly beaten. America must not simply be victorious; our victory must be blindingly obvious to the Baathist hardcore and other nations. Like the Japanese, only when the Iraqi people know that there is no alternative to liberalization and democracy can it occur.

Uday Hussein is pretty much irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. It's Saddam's other, younger son, Qusay, who is the heir apparent. Apparently, Uday is too much of a psychopath even for Saddam, and that's quite a trick.

He [Qusay] is currently presumed to be heir apparent and has reportedly gained wide-ranging powers over Iraq's military apparatus.

He runs the elite Republican Guard - Iraq's best trained and equipped army unit entrusted with the protection of the president.

He also controls the internal security and intelligence, including the Special Security Organisation, the secret police which has suppressed opposition to the Baathist regime.

Is it live or is it Memorex? That's what Rand Simberg wants to know about the latest Osama audio tape. Maybe there is a Arab version of Rich Little?

Iranians take to streets to protest against their government and Glenn Frazier has it covered like a rug.

According to a piece in Hong Kong's Asia Times, the protests did spark off due to complaints over food quality, but then snowballed into demonstrations against the death sentence of dissident academic Hashem Aghajari and against the regime in general.

I note that Glenn has offered the best blog coverage of Iran for a long time.

Out of town until Wednesday - until then I invite you to visit my "best of" index and read the blogs I have linked to in the left column.

Clergy must oppose Iraq war, according to Al Sharpton.

The Rev. Al Sharpton said Sunday he plans to meet with the Iraqi ambassador to the United Nations this week and is urging clergy worldwide to help "avoid bloodshed."

Sharpton, an activist who is exploring a bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004, said he would meet with Iraq's Mohammed Aldouri on Monday in New York. . . .

Sharpton said he and other clergy may visit Iraq to further their message. "Clearly there's so much at stake here that we should try anything we could," he said.

(Let me say here that it is my understanding that Sharpton adopted the title of Reverend without actually having been ordained within the tradition of apostolic succession.) Funny thing is, though, that I think Al may be onto something. At least he's doing something rather than simply protesting what President Bush is doing, which elsewhere I have decried. Sharpton says he "will not do anything to undermine the United States," and for the nonce, I will accept his word on that. (If he wants to contend for the Democratic nomination in 2004, he can't afford to appear to undermine present US policy.) But it's probably too late.

I told my congregation today (before I got Steven Den Beste's email with the link to the Sharpton piece):

I think that the central problem of churches in dealing with war is that nations are permanently organized for war, but churches are permanently organized for self-perpetuation. In the West, especially America, the same people do both. Truly waging peace is nowhere on anyone's "to do" list, certainly not the comfortable classes of Euro-American theologians, who have job and benefit packages that most of the rest of the world can only dream of. It is facile for clergy to scream from the air conditioned comfort of book-lined studies that we should be a people of peace, not war. Peace has been the furthest thing from our minds, else we would equip, organize and train our churches for waging peace as effectively and efficiently as governments train and equip forces for war. . . .

There is, however, a short window of opportunity. You may recall that at God's command, Jonah walked through the enemy city of Nineveh, coincidentally located in what is modern Iraq. Jonah prophesied, "Forty days more and Nineveh will be overthrown."

For 40 days the Ninevites repented and prayed, hoping that God would show compassion, and God did. Nineveh was spared (which infuriated Jonah, who then accused God of injustice because God had not destroyed the enemy).

We have 30 days, not 40, for that is how long the UN gave Iraq from last Friday to provide a full declaration of its weapons programs. Thus, there shall be no war during that time, at least.

There are about 750,000 Iraqi Christians. They are suffering under Saddam's tyranny no less than the rest of the Iraqi people. I believe that American churches should try to make direct contact with Iraqi Christians to offer spiritual, moral and material support to them. I am not naive; I know that very many of the Iraqi Christians are arch Iraqi nationalists. Nor should we think that for any of them to oppose Saddam is to love America. But if these left-wing folks can contact and visit Iraqi Christians, why cannot we more moderate Christians?

As authors Peter Ackerman and Jack DuVall pointed out, Christian non-violence should never be simply symbolic. Nonviolent resistance -

. . . does not typically begin by putting flowers in gun barrels and it does not end when protesters disperse to go home. It involves the use of a panoply of forceful sanctions - strikes, boycotts, civil disobedience, disrupting the functions of government, even nonviolent sabotage - in accordance with a strategy for undermining an oppressor's pillars of support. It is not about making a point, it's about taking power. (italics added)

I would suggest that the contacts of American churches with Iraqi Christians should make the following points clear, at least:

We unite with them in prayer and supplications to God for peace with justice under the provisions of Gods gracious will.

We long for a day when there can be free exchanges of Christian fellowship between the churches of Iraq and America.

We will be generous in material support to the churches and people of Iraq and wish to begin that without delay.

But we should also be honest with them that there are potentially deadly divisions between our two nations, and thus between our churches:

We are convinced that Saddam Hussein intends Americans great harm and will attempt to act when he has the means and the opportunity, and that war is likely as long as this threat continues.

We do not believe that war is a Christian response to this threat, but it would be a greater evil for us passively to submit to destruction at Saddam's hands.

We are determined to support Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state.

Peace at any price cannot be a just aim in the present circumstances because the potential price is simply too high on both sides. The American churches lack the strategic vision and courage to invade Iraq in spiritual warfare, as I suggested last year for Afghanistan. We must bluntly realize it may be that no truly Christian activity is now be possible to contain Iraq's threat. Giving symbolic service to grace, mercy, peace, justice, and love is an empty gesture. If the new UN resolution does not contain Saddam's drive to kill us, and non-war means to remove the threat either don't work or are not attempted, then we must fight or die.

More posting tonight - I'll be gone until then.

A reflection on the Viet Nam Memorial's 20th Anniversary is offered by Geitner Simmons, and is well worth reading. Go here.

Happy Birthday, US Marines!
Today is the anniversary of the founding of the US Marine Corps, 227 years ago. Semper Fi!

The deadly Scottish Knife Culture must have started with that darn big sword Mel Gibson carried around in Braveheart. But now it's really gotten bad.

Scotland's justice minister has described as "unacceptable" the spate of stabbings in Glasgow over the weekend. A number of unrelated incidents have left two people dead and five others in hospital. . . .

[Minister] Jim Wallace said: "I have spoken to Strathclyde Police this morning and what they told me was all too familiar when it comes to the ingredients of violent crime in Scotland. . . . The police... have my full support in trying to end Scotland's unacceptable knife culture."

But is probably less the "knife culture" they have to worry about than their "soaring" gun crimes, in a country that has a near-total ban on private ownership of firearms.

The number of serious shootings related to drug crime in Scotland will reach record levels this year, police have warned. The latest trends for shootings which caused death or injury are set to see this year's figures eclipse those for last year. . . .

In Scotland in 2001 serious shootings went up from 50 to 149 and almost all were a result of battles for control over drug supplies.

Meanwhile, Scotland's police have announced, "people carrying replica weapons run the risk of being shot and killed by armed officers. "

In case you didn't know, "Violent crime in Scotland's largest police force area has jumped by almost 15% compared with a year ago" and "Scottish homicide rate soars."

"Serious shootings [in Scotland] have been going up for the last five years." As opposed to the lighthearted, just-kidding shootings, I presume.

Five years is almost exactly how long Scotland has had draconian gun-control laws in effect. I guess the Scots have never interviewed John Lott. I think I'll post a gratuitous gun pic of a Franchi 612 Sporting, 12-gauge, semi-automatic shotgun:

Baying for Republican blood is what Kim DuToit does in his acerbic and (be warned) sometimes profane style. But he's onto something - a hit list of Republicans, most of them, who need to be shown the door right away. And he's right.

US artillery and precision attack
My posting about the Mobile Tactical High Energy Laser as a defense against artillery shells garnered a few questions from Richard Heddleson, to wit:

What seriously gets me about the field artillery is that it seems not to have embraced precision munitions. The Crusader could not have fired a precision warhead, as I understand it, because the precision electronics cannot survive the acceleration of a tube firing.

Not so. There is a laser guided artillery projectile called Copperhead that has been in inventory about 17 years. Designed as a precision antitank round, it homes on reflected laser light from a laser designator used by a ground or air observer. It is a 155mm round and would have been Crusader-friendly, had Crusader survived. Copperhead can also be used against bunkers and cave openings. The Soviet/Russian clone of this round is called Krasnopol, and is found today in 13 countries' inventories.

The MLRS has to be about 25 years old. Is it just a platform like a B-52 or aircraft carrier that launches weapons that are constantly updated so that it doesn?t really matter how old the platform is, or are there plans for replacing it? Does it currently have a precision warhead?

MLRS was designed to attack enemy rear areas and enemy artillery. About 30 years ago the Army concluded that to attempt to defeat the Soviet hordes en echelon (as they appeared at the front line) was a sure recipe for defeat. From this realization was born the concept of "deep battle." Basically, this doctrine said that we needed to attack simultaneously Soviet front elements and their follow-on echelons, as well as their rear-area command and control and logistics assets.

Hence was born improved versions of US cannon artillery already in inventory, such as the M109 medium howitzer and the M110 heavy howitzer (both self-propelled). Both were upgunned with longer tubes and some chassis improvements. "Super charges" pushed the range out considerably farther than before, but at considerable strain to the automotive systems and the recoil mechanisms.

Also the Army developed the Q36 and Q37 target-acquisition radars, one optimized for detecting Soviet mortars (the Russians love mortars) and the other for cannons and rockets. These were and still are very advanced and capable radars with very long detection ranges. The Multiple Launch Rocket System, MLRS, came into inventory in the early 1980s. I served as operations officer of 3-27 Field Artillery, MLRS, at Fort Bragg in the late 1980s. MLRS was never intended to attack point targets. Each of the 27 MLRS launchers per battalion carries 12 rockets, each rocket's warhead holding 644 Dual Purpose Improved Conventional Munitions, DPICM. (I love acronyms!) One rocket's warhead can cover almost one-fourth of a square kilometer. Rockets may be fired singly or in any series combination. All 12 rockets can be accurately fired in less than a minute and can be independently targeted. The DPICM bomblets can penetrate up to four inches of armor and are devastating against soft targets such as command and control facilities, wheeled vehicles and logistics points. They proved catastrophic against Iraqi artillery in the Gulf War.

MLRS is a highly computerized system from battalion level on down to the launchers themselves. The original rockets have a range of 30 kilometers. A newer rocket version has increased range, achieved by lengthening the solid rocket motor at the expense of warhead space so it is somewhat less lethal.

The Army also developed a large rocket called ATACMS, for Advanced Tactical Missile System, for the MLRS vehicle (actually called the Self Propelled Launcher Loader, SPLL, pronounced, "Spill"). ATACMS rockets take up the space of six MLRS rockets, so a SPLL carries two ATACMS. These rockets have a range of 150 km and can really reach out and touch someone. The warhead is 850 DPICM. They were used in the Gulf War and had an inertial guidance system.

Recently the Army developed a "Block 1A" ATACMS missile with twice the range of its predecessor and precision guidance. Its guidance unit is GPS-linked. Another variant of ATACMS has the GPS-linked guidance and carries 13 Brilliant Anti-Tank munitions, which are terminally guided anti-armor rounds. This rocket enables very deep attack against fully armored targets.

So the basic launch vehicle, the SPLL, is a versatile platform which will continue to be used for follow-on improved rockets. It is heavily computerized, so changing the tactical and technical fire control capability of the system is simple.

More later.

AS I HAVE SAID ALL ALONG, THERE WILL BE NO IRAQ WAR THIS YEAR and today's passage of the UNSC resolution on Iraq makes that certain.

NOW THAT THE UNSC HAS PASSED RESOLUTION NUMBER 17 against Iraq, what will Iraq do? In recent weeks Iraq's ambassador has rejected in advance all drafts that were floated before the UNSC. But he also knew that none of those drafts would ever come to an actual vote. When the current resolution's draft was being staffed, Iraq was strangely silent.

Here's my prediction: Iraq will play along. It will offer Potemkin routines for the inspectors while buttressing pan-Arab support. But the odds that it will actually comply with the tterms of the resolution are somewhere between zero and none. My concern is that the minimal cooperation Iraq will give, stretched out as long as it can, will be promoted by UNSC members as full compliance. The cynic in me says that China and Syria voted for the resolution because they already know they will play it that way.

BLOGSPOT USERS NEED TO REPUBLISH ARCHIVES because some Blogspot sites I have visited don't load. It's gotten to the point that I republish all my archives once per day. Yes, I'd love to use Movable Type on a Sekimori-designed site and an independent server, but 'taint gonna happen.

TODAY'S FEATURE POSTING:
THE ANTI-ARTILLERY LASER IS NOT THE PARADIGM SHIFT some initial reports have made it out to be: why it's not really an invisible shield.

"THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY IS LIKE AN ARMY that dutifully goes off to battle but leaves its ammunition and its principles behind. It's bad enough to lack the firepower that you need to win. It's worse to not even know what you're fighting for." Thus sprach columnist Bob Herbert in "Tiptoeing to Defeat."

CAN SOMEONE EXPLAIN WHY THIS MATTERS IN THE SLIGHTEST? Winona Ryder Found Guilty of 2 Counts in Shoplifting Case.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: "We never really defined our position on the economy, we never said what we would do differently. We have no message this year other than we're not Bush." Thus sprach Dick Hartpootlian, chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party.

Feature Posting:
THE ANTI-ARTILLERY LASER IS NOT THE PARADIGM SHIFT some initial reports have made it out to be. True, using a laser to destroy an artillery shell in flight is a fine technical accomplishment, but let's look at some of the other issues involved.

Development Background

This project was driven from the beginning by Israel. As a result of an April 1996 meeting of Israel's Prime Minister Shimon Peres with President Bill Clinton, the US promised to assist Israel in developing an anti-rocket laser for Israel to use to defend its northern communities against Katyusha and other short-range rockets. A precursor program called Nautilus had already destroyed a rocket in a test conducted in February 1996.

TRW Corp. was awarded the primary contract within a few months of the meeting. The ultimate objective was to develop a transportable, tactical-sized High Energy Laser demonstrator. The near-term objective was to develop an Advanced Concept Technology Demonstrator (ACTD). The ACTD system destroyed an actual Katyusha rocket in flight on June 2000, then destroyed two in sequence in September 2000. Finally, the system was tested by firing rockets at times and from places that the laser crew did not know of. Upon completion of these tests - 25 shootdowns altogether - the THEL ACTD was certified to have Limited Operational Capability.

The program then transitioned to development of the Mobile Tactical High Energy Laser (MTHEL), which was the system that destroyed the artillery shell. The US Army and Israel are examining options for mobility, including flatbed trucks and armored vehicles. The objective now is to develop a tactical-mobile prototype by 2005-2006. Budget lines for an actual weapons prototype begin in FY 2003.

Operational considerations

With its limited intention of being designed for specific uses in northern Israel, the MTHEL does not rewrite the book for modern combat in the field, at least not yet. And there are some reasons it might not ever form a true defensive shield.

The tests took place at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. The range has been used for all kinds of advanced testing for decades. White Sands offers fine weather pretty much year-round. But fine weather isn't found all over the world. Smoke, cloud, smog, rain, snow, fog and battlefield smoke can all serve to degrade the laser's energy. They won't stop the system's radar from tracking the targets, but would almost certainly degenerate the laser's ability to overheat the target so it blows itself up. It is not a death ray; it needs to lase the shell for a few seconds to build up enough heat to detonate the explosive inside the shell. This isn't quick because the shell casing is thick (say, 1.5 - 2.0 centimeters in the middle) and the shell spins, meaning that the MTHEL has to generate a hot circle, not a hot spot.

Lasers can be configured to penetrate atmospheric obscurants of various kinds, but there are always tradeoffs. Different laser frequencies and temperatures can penetrate different obscurants, but as far as I know, no one combination can penetrate all obscurants equally well. The challenge is to use a laser that transmits maximum heat energy to the target while losing the least energy due to obscurants. I don't see how one system would be suitable for battlefields around the world where the US Army may have to fight, in all seasons and all weather.

That doesn't mean that there's no point in developing the system. It does mean that it is almost certainly not a "silver bullet" for troop protection. The decision will be one of costs and benefits. Historically, the Army has held that the best defense against enemy artillery was to destroy it. The only way this tactic would not be effective is if the enemy had so much artillery that our counter-battery fires could not keep up (China, Russia and India come to mind, but only China is even remotely a potential enemy).

Yet that is also exactly what would overwhelm MTHEL. Artillery-shell flight times tend to be pretty short - 30 seconds is a long time of flight and most are not that long. The MTHEL can track and lase only one shell at a time. If an enemy fires a few dozen shells at one time, then repeats once or twice (a pretty typical artillery fire mission), even several MTHELs will be overwhelmed. Probably a third of a shell's trajectory has gone by when the MTHEL's radar detects it, then half has gone by the time it gets a firm track. (The MTHEL's computer needs to track a trajectory segment to ensure the radar has tracked a valid target.)

If there are, say, only 64 shells in flight simultaneously, opposed by a battery of eight MTHELs, and each shell must be lased four seconds to detonate, then only 16-20 shells will be destroyed before terminal impact - if they have long times of flight. With more typical TOFs of 18-22 seconds, the success rate will be much less. As for the enemy, the solution is simple: shoot more ammo; reduce the time of flight by shooting it at faster trajectories, and target the MTHEL's themselves.

So unless there is another real breakthrough in the laser's mobility and most of all, its costs, the best way to handle enemy artillery fire will continue to be destroying the artillery. That gets to the source, "treating the cause and not the symptom," as it were. Destroying shells is exceedingly temporary because the enemy has a few million of them, but a cannon destroyed is destroyed forever.

However, for the purposes Israel has, it sounds like a good technology. Also, other variants may be useful as fixed-base anti-aircraft weapons or countering UAVs. But as a true tactical anti-artillery system, it's not yet ready for prime time.

A LITANY FOR VETERANS DAY is posted on my religious blog site, The Religious News.

There is also a posting about the Aramaic-speaking Christians in northern Iraq; the last group to speak the same language as Christ faces many threats.

A psychological profile of Saddam Hussein is offered in this morning's Washington Times.

Saddam's notorious brutality and his mistakes in launching costly wars against neighboring Iran and Kuwait have earned him the nickname "madman of the Middle East."

Nothing could be further from the truth, according to Said Aburish, a Palestinian writer who once worked for the Iraqi government and has written an account of Saddam's life.

"He is not a lunatic," Mr. Aburish said. "In fact he is very consistent - the most methodical Arab leader of the 20th century." Having set himself a goal, whether it be agricultural development, the perfection of a weapon of mass destruction, or the status of the undisputed leader of the Arab world, he is steadfast in pursuing his purpose. He is also a workaholic, reportedly sleeping only four hours a night.

But Jerrold Post, a former CIA analyst who pioneered political-psychological profiling of foreign leaders, says that Saddam's relentless drive to acquire WMDs is not a direct threat to the US:

"The chances of his yielding on weapons of mass destruction are between zero and none. But he is quite prudent, and I see no chance of him giving such weapons to terrorists or launching a direct attack on the U.S.," because that would bring catastrophic retaliation from Washington.

I tend to agree that if Saddam stays in power and acquires all three of the unholy trinity of WMDs - bio, chemical and nuclear - he will not run right out and try to attack the US with them, either directly or by proxy. But that's for the near term only.

We have to account for what might happen when Saddam realizes he is coming to the end of his life. As I point out (in more detail) in Saddam's most dangerous failure,

Saddam has based his entire regime around a cult centered on him personally.There is no evidence that anywhere in Saddam's government apparatus is there the slightest concern for the mechanism of succession. He has no vision for Iraq that outlives him.

Someday Saddam will die, whether by US action or natural causes. Anyone who thinks he will not do everything he can to strike America and Israel before death robs him of the satisfaction is simply living in cloud-cuckoo land.

The crisis point will be when Saddam knows his death is reasonably imminent. He envisions no future beyond the end of his own life, and therefore will not be dissuaded from striking the US by threats of retaliation against Iraq. The fate of the Iraqi people means nothing to him except as they are able to serve him personally. Does anyone seriously doubt that Saddam would be willing to sacrifice countless more Iraqi lives to strike America, especially if he knew that his own end was near whether he did so or not?

If Saddam ever obtains deliverable WMDs, he can be deterred only as long as he thinks his health is holding up. That is why we must act now.

Photo of Jim Jefford's new office!
Former Republican Senator Jim Jeffords bolted the party to be an "independent," thus giving the reins of the Senate to the Democrats. I quoted Bill Quick's observation about Jeffords' new office now that the Republicans are back in the saddle. Now here's a photo of Jeffords' new office. (Thanks to Rand Simberg for the link.)

Sunset at the Demo Corral
Rand Simberg has some cogent, concise thoughts. I liked this line:

. . . there will be a leadership battle in the House, which is likely to reveal very clearly the schism in the Democratic party, between the left, and the far left.

Indeed.

Also, he points out, "The 'assault weapons' ban expires in September 2004. Guess which newly-elected Congress won't reauthorize it. "

The civil unrest in France . . .
. . . will only get worse. Few Americans know what a lawless society France has become. But it was not always thus.

Back in February '85 my wife and I took a train to Paris from Germany, where we were stationed. Another couple went with us. I had been to Paris before, in 1976, but neither my wife nor the other couple had been there. We had a great time. The dollar was very strong then; we easily got 10 francs per dollar at banks or exchanges. This was a very favorable rate. Americans in Paris were so flushed with cash that everyone was very polite to us. We had a quite extraordinary meal on the Champs Elysees for about $25 per person and saw a show at Folies Bergere with first-class seats for a few bucks.

One evening we decided to visit Sacre Coeur church. The view from Sacre Coeur is the best in Paris except from the top of the Eiffel Tower. I was in my phase of pretending I was a good photographer then, and thought it would be splendid to take some natural-light shots of the church, inside and out, and of the city.

The four of us were on Place de Concorde and we hailed a cab. As I spoke French better than the others (which means I knew eight French words instead of five) I jumped in the front seat of the Peugeot taxi. The driver,a middle-aged man, turned to me with upturned eyebrows, which I had long ago learned was French body language for, "You barbarian, try to speak your pidgin French to me and I will pretend it's okay because I want your money." But I surprised him. I did not speak much French, but what I did speak I spoke exceedingly well, since I happen to have a gift of linguistic mimicry.

So I smiled and said in French, "Nous voudrions aller à Sacre Coeur, sil vous plais," which means, "We would like to go to Sacre Coeur, please."

You would have thought I had asked him to take a hammer to Napoleon's tomb. A gaping look of pure astonishment and concern pasted itself onto his face. Then he froze. Then he exclaimed, "Sacre Couer?!"

"Oui," I replied.

He replied with some French idiom that I don't remember except that it was the equivalent of, "It's your funeral," and off we went.

We did not know that the Montmartre of Paris, where the church is located, is a bad part of the city. The driver drove up the hill without stopping, a look of grim determination on his face. He screeched to a halt in front of the church, took my money and roared off. We went inside the church. It is quite beautiful. There was a late-evening Mass being celebrated, from which we kept a respectful distance.

When we left, it was maybe 10 or 11 p.m. It dawned on Keith and me when we reached the sidewalk that no cab was going to come by. We had no way to get back except to walk. Being blissfully unaware that we were lambs walking through a wolves' den, we headed down the Montmartre to Concorde. We arrived without incident. Probably the only thing that saved us was that it was very cold and the streets were deserted, for who would expect fresh meat to be out at that hour, in that temperature?

Nowadays, though, neither Paris nor France as a whole are not such a civil place. Steven den Beste points the way to an article called, "The Barbarians at the Gates of Paris," which is somewhat misnamed, since today the barbarians are inside the city, not merely at the gates. And what is true for Paris is true for every other French city.

Reported crime in France has risen from 600,000 annually in 1959 to 4 million today, while the population has grown by less than 20 percent (and many think today?s crime number is an underestimate by at least a half). In 2000, one crime was reported for every sixth inhabitant of Paris, and the rate has increased by at least 10 percent a year for the last five years. Reported cases of arson in France have increased 2,500 percent in seven years, from 1,168 in 1993 to 29,192 in 2000; robbery with violence rose by 15.8 percent between 1999 and 2000, and 44.5 percent since 1996 (itself no golden age).

Where does the increase in crime come from? The geographical answer: from the public housing projects [called cités, pronounced see-TAYS] that encircle and increasingly besiege every French city or town of any size, Paris especially. In these housing projects lives an immigrant population numbering several million, from North and West Africa mostly, along with their French-born descendants and a smattering of the least successful members of the French working class. From these projects, the excellence of the French public transport system ensures that the most fashionable arrondissements are within easy reach of the most inveterate thief and vandal. . . .

A kind of anti-society has grown up in them - a population that derives the meaning of its life from the hatred it bears for the other, "official," society in France. This alienation, this gulf of mistrust - ?greater than any I have encountered anywhere else in the world, including in the black townships of South Africa during the apartheid years - is written on the faces of the young men, most of them permanently unemployed, who hang out in the pocked and potholed open spaces between their logements. When you approach to speak to them, their immobile faces betray not a flicker of recognition of your shared humanity; they make no gesture to smooth social intercourse. If you are not one of them, you are against them.

So, says Steven,

And al Qaeda has been operating there for a long time, organizing. It turns out that the synagogue attack in Tunisia last April was organized and carried out by cité dwellers in France. The suicide bomber himself was from France, and the French authorities have arrested 8 people in France suspected of being involved. Which inspires the question: just how widespread is al Qaeda's influence in the cités, and how many others there would join in the fun if violence starts?

We have to consider the possibility of violent uprising in France in the near future, which might approach the level of civil war. It would be ironic indeed if France in its peril found that it needed to ask the US to send in troops from Germany to help suppress insurrection, and doubly ironic if we'd already pulled most of them out because we needed them elsewhere.

Sharon calls for elections in Israel
Right on the heels of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's chief rival, Benjamin Natanyahu, being named to the foreign minister job, Sharon has called for elections in Israel within the next 90 days, eight months ahead of schedule.

"Everything - everything - is now on hold until after the election," a senior Israeli official said. That would include the "road map" for achieving peace and a Palestinian state in 2005 that President Bush recently submitted to Mr. Sharon and the Palestinian leadership.

Mr. Sharon's announcement resounded like a starter's pistol, sending adversaries sprinting to microphones and television cameras. Israel's politics, relatively stable through 19 months of unity government, convulsed in a campaign over the country's security and limping economy - all against the backdrop of a possible attack by the United States on Iraq. . . .

Under Israel's parliamentary system, each voter selects a party, not a candidate, in casting a ballot. Seats in the Parliament are then awarded to each party based on their proportion of the national vote. After the election, Israel's president, Moshe Katsav, will select one member of the Parliament - most likely the leader of the party with the most seats - to form a new government and serve as prime minister.

Israel has had five prime ministers in the last seven years.

Winners and losers in yesterday's elections
William Quick demonstrates why a jillion people per day read his blog. His post on the real winners and losers yesterday is simply outstanding. Excerpt:

James Jeffords: I really, really enjoy this one. The turncoat Vermont RINO who traded Pack control of the Senate to advance his own personal greed is now well and totally screwed. I expect when Trent Lott gets around to assigning him his new office space, it will consist of a suite of cardboard boxes at the far edge of the Senate parking lot. And I expect he'll enjoy his new slots as the junior member of the Subcommittee on Sewage and Solid Waste, the Subcommittee on Junkets to Miserable, Filthy Fifth World Nations, and the Subcommittee on Suppurating Venereal Disease. Even his home state elected a Pack Senator, and may well elect a Pack governor as well. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

Now just read the whole thing!

Click here for ballot referenda results.

Trent Lott just promised to blow it, lays foundation for continued Democratic domination of Senate
In a cable news interview just concluded, Trent Lott, soon to be Senate majority leader, promised to blow it. I was waiting for him to utter the fatal phrase, and he did: "Certainly we are going to try to work across party lines."

Translation: we are still going to let the Democrats bluster, snivel, whine and threaten their way to dominating the legislative agenda even though they are a minority because we Republicans imagine our selves to be cooperative and considerate.

For some reason, too many Republicans think they are somehow obligated to "work with" the Democrats. When their own leadership encourages this, the utility of having a numerical majority in both houses vanishes.

Why won't they ever learn that when Democrats say, "work with us," they mean, "vote like we want"? When the Democrats say, "we urge non-partisanship" on an issue, they mean that Republicans should "vote like we want." The true definition of what Democrats mean by "nonpartisanship" was Rick Kahn's stump speech at the Paul Wellstone memorial service political rally, in which he told the Republicans there that Wellstone's death should impel them to work for and vote for Mondale. Of course: if the Republicans do what the Democrats want, that's collegial nonpartisanship, but if the Republicans do what they want, that's narrow selfishness. And when the Democrats do what Democrats want, that's statemanship, but if they do what the Republicans want . . . never mind, that never happens.

The Democrats have given a tar-and-feather coat to the Republicans with hostile accusations of "partisanship" and "special interests" for so long that the Republicans feel naked without it. Yet once they let the Democrats put it on them, they cave in.

Now, though, the Republicans have a truly historic opportunity. Will they blow it yet again? Yeah, probably, because there is no backbone at the Republican top of either house. I have no confidence in the Senatorial leadership of Lott. Just wait and see - the Democrats will roll him easily.

Meanwhile, back at the UN, the situation is normal - and you know what that means
Just when it seems that France is moving closer to backing a US-sponsored resolution, the Russians say they won't. The draft resolution concerned sets tough inspection standards for Iraq makes a clear threat of military action if compliance is not given.

The latest U.S. draft . . . declares that Iraq "has been and remains in material breach" of its disarmament obligations and warns Baghdad that it has a "final opportunity to comply" with the Security Council's demands. It also warns that any "failure by Iraq" to fully cooperate with the inspectors "shall constitute a further material breach" of its obligations, increasing the prospects for U.S. military action. . . [and would grant the U.N. inspectors "immediate, unimpeded, unconditional, and unrestricted access" throughout Iraq, including eight presidential compounds where inspectors had earlier been subject to procedures that delayed their access for days. . . .

French officials said progress had been made this afternoon during a telephone conversation between Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin. But they would not confirm that a final deal had been struck. One French official said the talks were "encouraging. We think we can find an agreement. It's not so far away."

But now the Russians say they won't support the new resolution.

Is it possible that the Republican victories yesterday will move the resolution along? Astute French and Russian observers of the elections (and they do have such observers) will know that most of the Senate and House races were not really in doubt, and that the gains by the president's party represent the closest thing to a mandate that mid-term American politics gives. That may give a certain air of inevitability to UNSC members' perception of American resolve, with or without the UN.

Republicans now have all the reins of government
In an amazing reversal of the decades-long trend for the president's party to lose seats in Congress in mid-term elections, the Republicans gained control of the US Senate yesterday and increased their dominance of the House. The Republicans picked up three Senate seats and four House seats; they already had a majority in the House.

When the next Congress is seated, look for a slew of judges to be confirmed by the Senate whom the Democrats let languish. There is presently a nine percent vacancy rate on US court benches. President Bush will fill those seats rapidly with Democrat obstructionsim, led by Sen. Patrick Leahy, no longer possible.

Congressional action on the Dept. of Homeland Security should also come pretty soon after the turn of the year.

What about ballot referenda?
Latest Update: Wednesday, Nov. 6, 6:45 a.m.
Here are the results of ballot measures/referenda around the country on Nov. 5. All these results are final, with all states concerned reporting 97+ percent of the vote counted.

Tennessee:

Amend the state constitution to allow the legislature to begin a state lottery. Passed.

Arizona:

Measure to permit "medical use" of marijuana. Failed.

Colorado:

English-only public education measure. Failed.

Florida:

Ban indoor smoking in workplaces. Passed.

Set limits on class sizes in public schools. Passed.

Ohio:

Provide for persons charged with or convicted of illegal possession or use of a drug, in certain circumstances, to choose treatment instead of incarceration. Failed.

Montana:

Invest public funds in stocks. Failed.

Nevada

Define legal marriages only as those between males and females. Passed.

Amend the state constitution to allow the use and possession of three ounces or less of marijuana by persons aged 21 years or older, and seeks to establish a taxation system for sale of marijuana. Failed.

Oregon

require the state to pay for everyone's health care regardless of pre-existing conditions and raises taxes to do it. Failed.

Measure to require genetically-modified foods to be labeled, and define what a GM food is. Failed.

California

Allow eligible persons to register to vote on election day and increases criminal penalties for voter and voter registration fraud. Failed.

Increase funding for before- and after-school care in public schools. Passed.

And this poll didn't turn out to bad. It says I am . . .

Which Founding Father Are You?

Voter News Service admits it's hapless for today's elections
I heard this report on NBC News, and Newsmax has it too:

Voter News Service, the exit polling system misused by media organizations to try to call elections, failed today, so there won't be a repeat of the kind of phony pro-Gore guesstimates that marred the 2000 election.

News networks announced that they would not call races except, shockingly, on the basis of votes actually counted.

VNS, a consortium consisting of ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and the Associated Press, said in a statement that its new computer system was not properly analyzing exit poll data, and that the system's output could not be considered reliable.

As if VNS's output ever was reliable???

Laser defense makes big step forward
The US Army has used a laser to destroy an artillery shell in flight. The test was conducted at White Sands Range, NM.

The Mobile Tactical High Energy Laser (MTHEL) is being developed by the TRW Corporation for use by the US military and the Israeli Defence Ministry.

Two years ago, it successfully shot down a Katyusha rocket, but in Monday's test it managed to destroy a shell moving at a higher speed.

Richard Heddleson, who sent me the link, advised, "it looks like you artillery guys are really out of work now." Well, I said when Rumsfeld canceled the Crusader artillery piece that the field artillery was regrettably not a good career field any more. But this test doesn't make it worse for our artillery.

During the Gulf War, almost no Iraqi artillery battery that fired got off more than two or three rounds before it was destroyed by US counter-battery fire. The Q36 or Q37 radars and the MLRS rocket system were paired so that US counterfire was almost immediate. Iraqi prisoners told interrogators that Iraqi artillerymen learned early that to fire their weapons was to invite near-instant death. They called US counterfire, "steel rain," because of the huge quantity of submunitions the MLRS delivers: one launcher can deliver more than 7,700 bomblets in less than one minute. (I served as operations officer of the MLRS battalion in XVIII Airborne Corps; it is an impressive system!)

If you take that counter-battery system and add laser defense, now the enemy will fire his artillery and die in the knowledge that his shells didn't reach the target anyway.

One of these guys is wrong
Late Shift Appears to Favor GOP - Richard Benedetto, USA Today

Democrats Pull Ahead - Dick Morris, New York Post

Here are some other good reads for the day:

A Party of Corruption? The Democrats bring the sacred low. By William J. Bennett

Is the Nation Trending Republican? - Michael Barone, US News & World Report

Negative Politics is the American Way - Clay Robison, Houston Chronicle

The Left is dumbing down
So says Nicholas Kristoff.

The latest leftist silliness is the suggestion that Senator Paul Wellstone was assassinated. Liberal Web sites are suggesting such a conspiracy. Sample headlines: "Wellstone Murdered? Last Politician Similarly Killed Was Running Against John Ashcroft"; "They Shoot Leftists, Don't They?"; and "Most Liberal D-Sen. Wellstone Plane Shot Down."

The White House team that executed Vincent Foster must have struck again.

Ariel Sharon urges first Iraq, then Iran
Says Iran's missile program will ultimately threaten Europe. Also explicitly says that if Israel is attacked, it will retaliate.

So why hasn't Phil called me?
Phil has called Glenn, my fellow Tennessean, three times, but Phil has never called me even once. Why not? Doesn't my vote count? My self-esteem is damaged.

Udpate: Now George has called Glenn about voting tomorrow, but I assure you, George has never called me. I feel stiffed! My only consolation is that George did invite me to have dinner with him earlier this year. No really, he did, no joke. He invited me - and maybe 5,000 of his other closest friends. For a lot of money (very expensive rubber chicken). I already had a commitment, you see, so I could not go.

But I sure do wish he would call me, him or Phil or Lamar or Van. Heck, at this point I'd even settle for a call from Al. . . . No, on second thought, I wouldn't want a call from Al at all. What was I thinking?

Here's a very good article on Special Forces

The Big Bang was 50 years ago.

Bill Mauldin is in bad shape; Willie and Joe creator suffering from Alzheimer's, other infirmities.



"Able Fox Five to Able fox. I got a target but ya gotta be patient."


As I mentioned in this post, Bill Mauldin created the famous fictional soldiers, Willie and Joe, while Bill was a soldier in the National Guard. Now I discover that Bill, 80, may be nearing the end. He is confined to a nursing home in Orange County, Calif.

He speaks hardly at all. His health is frail - terribly burned in a household accident, his cognitive skills almost gone, he had been in bad spirits lately. But then the World War II guys started showing up to visit with him. Letters began pouring in from across the U.S., and were read to Bill. [Page down on the linked page to find the Mauldin story.]

While he was still in his 20s, Mauldin was awarded the Pulitzer prize for his World War II work, but did not rest on that laurel.

Mauldin was not one to hold on to the past -- he did not want to be categorized by the work he did on the battlefields when he was in his 20s. He went on to have a stellar career in journalism after the war, winning another Pulitzer in 1959. Many Americans, and I'm one of them, consider the drawing he did on deadline on the afternoon John F. Kennedy was assassinated -- the drawing of the Lincoln Memorial, head in hands, weeping -- to be the single greatest editorial cartoon in the history of newspapers.

Anyone who served in the military, especially the Army, instantly identitifes with his cartoons of Willie and Joe, the long-suffering but never complaining infantrymen who stood for all the dogface soldiers who saved the world.

If you wish, you can send him a card:

Bill Mauldin
c/o Gordon Dillow
Orange County Register
625 N. Grand Ave.
Santa Ana, CA 92701

Willie and Joe cartoons are scarce online because they are still under copyright. One of my favorites shows Willie (or Joe, who knows?) sitting on a bench inside a bombed-out house. Beside him is a pried-open can of C-rations. In his left hand he holds the muzzle end of his Garand rifle. He is turned to Joe, holding up his bayonet in his right hand, saying, "Hey, didja know that your can opener fits on the end of your rifle?"

Another: A bathed and pressed company clerk explains to a blood-stained, clothes-torn, filthy, war-weary, battle fatigued medic, "You don't get hazardous duty pay 'cause you're not a combat soldier." (Stephen Ambrose said medics had "the toughest job in the Army.")

Best wishes to Bill Mauldin, an American treasure.

Another scandal!
Headline I spotted today in a supermarket tabloid: "Miss America was secret egghead in highschool!"

My world view is badly shaken.

First Amendment rights and military operations
Bill Quick protests on his site an apparent plan by the Defense Dept. to run a mini--boot camp for reporters who want to accompany US forces in combat areas. Says the news reports Bill cites:

The training will include an assault [meaning, obstacle] course, a 5-mile tactical road march (to be performed while toting a backpack), instructions on how to get on and off a helicopter quickly while carrying equipment, some survival training and training for nuclear, chemical and biological weapons protection.

I fail to see the problem, myself, but Bill seems to think this plan violates the 1st Amendment to the Constitution, which he cites as showing that no such requirements can pass constitutional muster, asking, "Is this just another ploy to circumvent the First Amendment?"

No, it's a ploy to improve the odds that the reporters will live to file their stories. It's a ploy to protect the lives of American soldiers by making it less likely that they will have to pause to aid a wounded reporter who either can't keep up or doesn't know how to don his chemical protective mask in only nine seconds, or doesn't know how to give himself nerve agent antidote. It's a ploy to lessen the chance that a reporter can inhibit the mission and cost more lives because he or she refuses to accept the fact that battlefields are lethal, and adjustments must be made to that fact. Says Bill in a comment,

I don't see anything in there that guarantees freedom of the press only to the fit, the fast, and the un-fat. . . . attempting to keep the press away from gathering news on the basis of physical condition would be an absolute violation of the protections of the First Amendment.

This is not the case, as I shall show.

(Comic relief was provided by Laurence Simon in a comment, though, who said that the presence of reporters on the battlefield offers some advantages:

Reporters make excellent mine detectors.
Reporters can provide several pints of whole blood should a soldier get hit.
The red light on the camera draws fire away from real troops.
Let the reporter eat the MRE on the bottom of the crate. If they don't barf, the shipment's good.
Reporter laptops usually have the best downloaded internet porn.

Anyway, to continue. . . .

There is actually a long history of requiring reporters to meet certain requirements to accompany US forces into battle. In World War II, for example, war correspondents were actually enlisted into the Army. They were a special category of soldier who didn't wear rank or bear arms, but their status entitled them to use military transportation and be present with troops as the angry iron flew. Ernie Pyle, the most famous of them, saw more combat than most soldiers in Europe, then went to Okinawa where he was killed by a Japanese rifleman. Bill Mauldin, creator of the famed Willie and Joe infantry everymen, was a staffer for Stars and Stripes, and not even General George S. Patton, Jr., could blot his acerbic ink. Other such correspondents hit the beaches at Normandy and Iwo Jima, sailed with Halsey's fleet, and flew combat mission over Europe and Asia. Andy Rooney was a war correspondent. Walter Cronkite flew bombing missions over Germany as a correspondent. But all these men had to accept certain inhibitions for the privilege, including submitting their photos, film and stories to a censor before it could be filed. Unconstitutional? No.

The Supreme Court ruled a long time ago that the 1st Amendment guarantees freedom to publish, not freedom of access. By this and other rulings, news media do not have access to military operations any more than ordinary citizens do. I learned this in journalism school years ago.

In other words, the 1st Amendment does not privilege "reporters." The 1st Amendment protects equally everyone's right to publish, but there is no 1st Amendment right to be somewhere just because something is happening there that you want to witness. The New York Times has no 1st Amendment rights that you and I or Joe Doaks do not have, nor does the NYT have those rights more "urgently." Anywhere that ordinary citizens may be blocked from going, so may reporters.

(However, access to government information is sometimes assured by other law, such as the Freedom of Information Act or sunshine laws, but again, every citizen has these guarantees. There has never been any special privilege for news agencies or reporters.)

The courts have never held that reporters or other persons (there being no legal distinction between the two) have a Constitutional right to accompany US military forces. Quite the opposite, in fact: courts have ruled that there is no right even to go onto a military base either in wartime or peacetime. By law, military commanders have total authority on who may enter their areas of responsibility and under what conditions in both peace and war. No court challenge to this authority has ever succeeded in federal courts, including those mounted by national news organizations. Therefore, Mr. Quick's objections to the contrary, it is perfectly Constitutional for the military to require reporters to have a certain level of physical conditioning to accompany US forces.

Robert Spellman, a former journalist and a leading researcher on U.S. press law and military censorship, told RFE/RL that . . . "There's no law that says the Pentagon must provide access to areas under its control," Spellman said.

Spellman explained that there has never been a successful case brought before the U.S. Supreme Court that establishes a constitutional right of access to battle zones where U.S. soldiers are deployed. "The first issue is [whether] there [is] a right of access, period. And that hasn't been established [under the U.S. Constitution]. There are law-review articles arguing that [there is a right of access.] A [court] case [stemming from] the Gulf War says there may be. But it wasn't litigated. I don't think that there is any right of the press to be on military helicopters. That's by grace of the Pentagon or by grace of the theater commander," Spellman said.

Here is a good article by a journalism professor on the subject of media access to the military that includes these two nuggets:

U.S. Supreme Court, 1931, Near v. Minnesota, held that the military must retain the option to review news material, to avoid the inadvertent inclusion in news reports of information that could endanger troop safety or the success of the mission. . . .

The media also should forget about lawsuits. Their track record in the courts has been abysmal on this issue, not only in the cases of Grenada and the Gulf War but also in subsequent related actions, such as the unsuccessful attempt to report on the return of soldiers' bodies to Dover Air Force Base. The Supreme Court remains lukewarm at best, and hostile at worst, when it considers press access to locations not generally open to the public, such as prisons.

None of this inhibits the freedom to publish in the slightest. I am unaware of any ruling that affirms the 1st Amendment requires the government to assist you, me, or anyone in publishing what we want to publish. We can publish what we want, but the government is not constitutionally obligated to help us do it.

That's why the news outfits will scream and kick about whatever they perceive as restrictions, but they won't actually do anything about it, because there is nothing they can do about it.

Fisking France
Robert Kagan says it well:

If you want to see a country punching far above its weight class these days, look at France. . . . At the Security Council, France wields a veto, thanks to Franklin Roosevelt (and FDR didn't even like the French). That lets France's diplomats go toe-to-toe with the American behemoth, to the cheers of a proud French electorate and a grateful European public. It's no surprise that the Security Council negotiations have been endless or that the French want another round of debate later. If you're France, you want these negotiations to go on forever, and then you want inspections to go on forever. When negotiations and inspections stop and fighting begins, the American global superpower goes back to being a global superpower, and France goes back to being France.

Back from my first trapshooting tournament
I left home this morning a little after seven and got back a couple of hours ago. I shot my first course at nine and the second at three. If I had known it would take so long for the second one to come around, I wouldn't have stayed for it. (They were two separate events.)

I hit 82 of 100 targets on the single-target, no-handicap course at nine. This placed me tied fourth in my category as a class D shooter (novice) in the Amateur Trap Association. Typical scores of others in the novice class seemed to center somewhere between 50-60. For the first time out, I am satisfied. The singles handicap course is shot from farther distances, that's the handicap. I shot a 84 (go figure). But there was no competition because there were only two of us shooting that event, and by ATA rules, two shooters does not a competition make. (The other guy beat me.) So it was really just practice. However, the targets still count as "registered" targets for the ATA.

I discovered that I had not been practicing correctly for competition. Competition shooting is much faster paced than I had practiced. Rhythym and pacing are crucial, and it was a little disconcerting to have to establish them anew for the competition. But overall, it wasa good day.

My first trapshooting tournament is tomorrow
As long-time readers of my blog know (assuming I actually have any "long-time" readers other than the ubiquitous Richard Heddleson) , I like to shoot trap. Trap is a shotgun sport; you can read all about it on Remington's excellent web site. I took up target shotgun shooting only two summers ago.

I hunted growing up with shotguns. I had a Browning A5 12 gauge, although mine was Belgian made with French walnut stock and forearm, and was much handsomer than the one shown at the link. The A5 is no longer made. It is a long-recoil gun, meaning it uses the recoil action of firing to cycle the ejection and reloading mechanism. It kicks like a mule. When I got mine, new, back in the 1960s, most shotguns did not come equipped with a recoil-absorbing pad built into the butt plate. But this recoil mechanism, designed by the legendary John Browning about 1901 or so, is ultra-reliable. The A5 was almost impossible to jam. Stories of hunters who dropped them into a mud bog then picked them up and fired them abounded. This design survives today in Italian Benelli shotguns and Turkish Vursan guns, sold in the US as the Stoeger 2000.

Most modern shotguns are gas-recoil guns. They bleed some of the propellant gases from the barrel into the forearm, where the gas travels rearward, pushing a cylinder backward that causes the breech assembly also to move rearward which ejects the used shell. This system attenuates the feel of recoil because the energy of the fired shell is dissipated over three to five milliseconds, instead of one single hit as non-automatic guns give the firer. Tomorrow I am going to use my Beretta AL 391 Urika 12-gauge, gas automatic, in my view the best automatic gun made today, an opinion shared by many professionals.

shot rifle team in college and some competitive pistol when I was stationed at Fort Bragg, NC. But from my teen years until last year, I never fired a shotgun. I saw an ad for Big Springs range and decided to give it a go. I bought the Beretta a few months later, having used the range's rental guns until then (and sometimes since then, because Big Springs' rental guns are truly excellent).

Trap tournaments consist of 100 targets, with the shooter having one shot at each target. I am referring to singles American trap, which is not the only kind there is. But it is what I am shooting tomorrow. Tournaments may also consist of more than 100 targets, and sponsored tourneys do because they have thousands of dollars in prize money to award along with top-flight target guns and competition equipment. As I recall, the Tennessee state championship tourney awarded several thousand dollars to the winner. However, I didn't know there was money to win in this sport until after I had been shooting almost a year. I just enjoy it. (Besides, sponsored tournaments are shot on both Saturdays and Sundays, which makes it pretty tough for me to shoot in them.)

Until last month, I was hitting only about 73 targets out of 100. That is not very good. Then I changed the choke on the gun and bang! I started hitting 90+. In fact, the last time I shot I hit 25 of the last 25 targets. That moves into competition caliber, no pun intended. So when learned about the tournament tomorrow, I decided to enter. I have no idea what the prizes are, but it is not a sponsored shoot, so the prizes will be fairly modest, I imagine. But it'll be fun.

Wellstone's pilot was a felon
The pilot in command of Sen. Paul Wellstone's plane when it crashed served time for felony convictions for mail fraud in 1990.

Richard Conry, the chief pilot who flew U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone, his wife, daughter and three aides on last Friday's fatal flight, had a felony record for mail fraud and served at a federal prison camp in South Dakota in 1990, according to court records and attorneys. . . .

However, two Twin Cities attorneys familiar with aviation law said they knew of no regulation that would require revocation of a pilot's license because of a criminal conviction -- unless it involved drugs or drunken driving.

The fallout from this revelation will be driven by the fact that a US senator and his wife and daughter died in the crash. If the fatal charter had been for the owner of, say, automobile dealerships, there would be a shrug.

Certainly one issue is trust. Whenever people board a plane they literally put their lives in the hands of the man or woman at the controls. But we do that when we board a bus, too, or accept a ride from a friend. What makes an airline pilot different? Nothing, really, in principle. The only real difference is that airplane crashes are more catastrophic and thus less survivable than bus or auto crashes.

There's no question that substance abuse should cause the preemptive yanking of a pilot's license. But mail fraud? I do not defend the crime, but should this conviction have prevented Conry from being a commercial pilot? To give either a yes or a no leaves me wondering whether it's the right answer.

Which would you rather have fly you into bad weather:

A. a pilot with a spotlessly clean record who had to take the FAA final exam twice to pass, and failed his most recent check ride, being recertified only after three additional days of simulator training, or,
B. a pilot who had served time for mail fraud 12 years ago, had been crime-free since then, and whose competence as a pilot has never been called into question?

Let me tell you, as a one-time private pilot myself, there's no contest. "B" wins every time.

However, very few pilots fall into either category. I'm not sure that I'd want a pilot who never had failed a check ride, because the flight tests are supposed to be challenging. They are tests. If an airline gives a flying test that no one ever fails, it speaks poorly about their standards. Simulator training can be even more brutal, because you can do things to a pilot in a simulator that you can't do in a real plane, because you can't fly a real plane into the ground, but you can a simulator - and they often do.

At some point, we have to say to felons who have served their time that they can reenter the mainstream of society. But no universal rule seems adequate. For example, based on what we know now, it seems that child-sex offenders can never be trusted to leave kids alone as long as they live. So certain occupations must always be off limits to them.

But I am unwilling to make a blanket rule that a mail fraud conviction should disqualify someone from commercial aviation. A pilot's main concern is not really that the passenger compartment get there safely. It's something of a cliche that what the pilot really wants to do is get the cockpit there safely. If he does that, the rest of the airplane will be fine. That's what counts.

Then again, I am not about to board a plane, either.

We are winning
In addition to the candidates on the ballot in Tennessee this month, there are two proposed amendments to the state constitution. One amendment has to do with setting the amount of fines courts may impose. The other amends the constitution to allow the legislature to establish a state lottery. (Presently, no form of gambling is legal in the state.)

I have been very active in fighting the lottery. I run two web sites (one a blog) devoted to that fight. We of the opposition have been fighting an uphill battle. As recently as three or four weeks ago, polls showed that Tennesseans were highly in favor of a state lottery. However, the worm has turned. Beginning just last month, public opinion has shifted dramatically. Recent polls showed the lottery barely ahead, and some showed the pros and cons were even.

What shifted the tide? Several things:

Tennessee has a severe budget crisis. The state's entire financial system is a shamble. There is no income tax in Tennesse, and no prospect of one being passed. Almost all the state's revenue comes from sales taxes. Just last summer, the legislature raised the sales tax rate to the highest in the nation - almost 10 percent in some counties, who may add a local surcharge to the state's basic rate of seven percent. Because Tennessee has a balanced-budget law, the legislature must raise taxes to meet expenditures, or slash the budget dramatically. In fact, it has done both, but the cycle of shortfall will continue year after year until the fundamental revenue problem is fixed. And there is no real hope of that happening soon.

But the proposed lottery amendment forbids lottery money from being used to alleviate the annual shortfalls in revenue. Lottery proceeds cannot be used in the state's general fund, and that prohibition will become part of the constitution if the amendment passes. When people learn that fact, they tend rapidly to turn against the lottery.

We have successfully educated large swaths of the public that the lottery will bleed tens of millions of dollars out of state, cost more to run than it brings in (deepening the state's budget crisis) and corrupt a government intended to be "for all the people." The lottery will rob the poor to pay the rich and cannot succeed except by deceit. (I explain in detail with citations on my web sites.)

The principal advocate of the lottery and the amendment's author is Democrat state Senator Steven Cohen of Memphis. He blundered early. He accused lottery opponents of being anti-Semitic, and made sure that everyone in the media knew that he, Cohen, was Jewish - therefore to oppose the lottery was Jew-baiting. So he claimed. But no one - no one - ever talked about his religion except him. That tactic backfired because the media and the public rejected it outright. Then Cohen, having made sure loudly and often that everyone knew he was Jewish, started to lecture the state's Christian denominations about their responsibility to stay out of politics.

Cohen has been on a personal crusade to get gambling of one kind or another legalized in Tennessee for 18 years. The lottery has come to define his public identity. Yet he became so politically offensive so early in this year's fight that politicians who might have allied with him ran away, leaving him to labor almost alone.

One private citizen in favor of the lottery spent a few hundred thousand of his own dollars to make pro-lottery TV ads. These ads stated outright falsehoods about the proposed lottery that even Cohen could not back up, and severely mocked people of religious faith. I challenged Cohen to renounce the ads, and eventually he did. The ads never aired.

Finally, the largest religious denominations of the state have become very active in opposing the lottery, with success. And a great part of this success can be laid squarely at the feet of Steve Cohen, because he, and he alone, injected religion into the issue. He accused opponents of ant-Semitism and he tried to lecture Christians of what their religious duty is. And the churches responded.

The lottery issue united religious voices that cannot otherwise agree on anything. My most liberal clergy colleagues and Vanderbilt divinity professors oppose the lottery. The Southern Baptists have been very active in opposition. United Methodists and the Church of Christ have worked against the lottery. The non-Christian and non-Jewish religions in Tennessee are very small, but they have opposed the lottery in their own circles (Muslims, Eastern mystics and syncretists of various kinds).

Overall, Cohen has been the lottery's most vocal advocate, but its worst enemy. The lottery amendment may still pass, but it will be narrow. And the vote will not actually establish a lottery. It will enable the legislature to do so. If the amendment fails at the polls, the issue is dead and buried. But if it squeaks by, look for more political fights to come, expecially since Cohen tried to change the terms of the amendment just this week. It ain't over til it's over, as Yogi Berra used to say.

Update: I should also mention that Tennessee's political picture was greatly altered when US Senator Fred Thompson announced he would not run for reelection. That vacated one US House seat: Congressmen Bob Clement (D) quickly decided to run for the Senate, and is opposed by Lamar Alexander, who is almost certain to win easily.

Van Hilleary (R) withdrew from his US House office to run for governor against Democrat Phil Bredesen, former mayor of Nashville. No way to predict that race now; we'll have to wait until Tuesday night.

These races caused a kind of "bump up" in the other races as lesser politicos of both parties scrambled to move up in the political pecking order. They pulled campaign talent into the processes that might otherwise have been left sidelined, and pulled donations into candidate races that might have gone to support the lottery campaign. I think Cohen had been counting on an otherwise quiet political season to push the lottery amendment throuhg - can't back that up, I just think so. But the talent and money he thought would be there went to other campaigns instead. The anti-lottery side has also felt this effect, but to a much lesser degree.

No candidate for state office in either party tied his/her campaign to the lottery one way or another, from the governor's race on down. They have flat avoided making any comments about the lottery. This silence by both parties has kept the lottery off the screen. However, in in recent weeks I have some Republican candidates for state office announce they oppose the lottery and include that opposition on campaign literature. Since these candidates were already ahead in the polls, opposing the lottery was seen, minimally, as a no-lose position to take.

How ironic that the Republicans, whom Democrats have often accused of being the party for the rich and privileged, have generally led the fight against the lottery's welfare for the rich, and the Democrats have generally led the campaign to screw the poor with the lottery.

Joe Katzman is taking a sabbatical

Winds of Change.NET is going to be shutting down for a while. I could say that other things need my attention right now, and they do. But the truth is, I'm burned out. It doesn't feel like fun any more. In time, that feeling will return - and so will I.

Joe, you are one of my very best blog buddies, and I hope you'll get recharged soon! Thank you for all your fine insights and essays to date!