Could Scott Ritter be right?
Former UN weapons inspector may have a point - sort of

Former US Marine officer Scott Ritter, UN weapons inspector in Iraq until 1998, has repeatedly said in recent months that Iraq is no threat to any other country and that it no longer has weapons of mass destructions, WMDs. He has said over and over that 90-95 percent of Iraq's WMD capability was found and destroyed by the UN team, and that Iraq has no reconstituted its WMD program to any significant degree.

And anyway, he insists, another round of inspections would decide the issue once for all.

Could he be right? Let's see.

There is little doubt that Iraq's WMD effort was badly damaged by the UN inspection regime until Dec. 15, 1998, when the inspectors were withdrawn by the order of their executive chairman. The reason was that Iraq refused to grant access to four key sites, a refusal that the US and UK said they would respond to with bombing (which they did the day after the teams left).

I think that Ritter's estimate of the degree to which his and other teams uncovered the WMD program is high. I can't prove it with facts and figures, but from 1991 - 1998, Iraq did almost everything it could to delay and block inspections. US satellite photography showed more than a few times that while soldiers blocked the teams from entering the front of a compound, other soldiers drove trucks out the back. When the trucks were gone, the teams were allowed in. But the terms of the UN Security Council were that the inspections were to be "unrestricted."

So off the top, I would discount Ritter's 90 percent-found number down quite a bit, but let's be generous and lower it by only 20 percent. That means that by the end of 1998, Saddam still had about one-third of his WMD assets. In the four years since then, he could well have doubled that percentage.

But that isn't just a matter of reconstituting up to 1/3 of what he had before. His engineers and scientists will have moved on. A substantial amount of the reconstitution is actual new progress toward usable WMDs, not just rebuilding what Ritter and company had destroyed.

What about new inspections?

Great idea, Scott - it's what the UN Security Council has been demanding for many years and what the Bush administration has repeated many times this year. The renewal of an unrestricted UN inspection regime in Iraq is as solidly grounded in international law and treaty as anything since the end of World War II. So Ritter is right on that, but that makes him no different than every member of the Security Council, the UN General Assembly and the Bush administration and the US Congress.

Problem is, Saddam says no. As lately as today, Iraq slammed the door - again - on UN inspectors. A government official told Fox News that the only inspection team Iraq would accept was a US Congressional delegation (some inspectors, huh?) and then for only a few weeks.

So the impasse remains, no matter how loudly Ritter cries foul.

Ritter, nor those who agree with him, can rationally insist with such certitude that (A) Iraq's military threat in minimal, but (B) we should inspect anyway. They don't match up. If the threat really is nil, why insist on inspections? And if inspections are at least prudent, what makes them so darn certain the threat is nil?

Ritter is right to say that inspections should be restarted. But it would nice to hear him propose what to do in the face of Iraq's concrete refusal to agree. But really, he has no answer because he has become an Iraqi apologist. His points about new inspections are just a smokescreen.

The Mugabe problem
Now he's starving people to death

Vegard Valberg is mad and it shows in this essay about the latest murders of Zimbawean dictator Robert Mugabe. Read it and then read Kim Dutoit's essay on why Africa is a permanent disaster.

Humor break

Reaching the end of a job interview, the Technical Recruiter asked a young engineer fresh out of MIT, "And what starting salary were you looking for?"

The engineer said, "In the neighborhood of $125,000 a year, depending on the benefits package."

The recruiter said, "Well, what would you say to a package of 5 weeks vacation, 14 paid holidays, full medical and dental, company matching retirement fund to 50% of salary, and a company car leased every 2 years - say, a red Corvette?"

The engineer sat up straight and said, "Wow! Are you kidding?"

The recruiter replied, "Yes, but you started it."

A small-scale Iraq war may be possible right now
More than 100,000 allied ground troops already in and around Iraq

I stand by my earlier analysis that a large-scale military campaign against Iraq is not in the offing this year for many reasons. But what about a smaller-scale campaign?

Asia Times reports that more than 100K allied troops are in the Near East now. The huge majority are American, with much smaller British and German (indeed!) contingents. This number does not include seaborne forces or aircraft. The paper says that allied troops in the area numbered 50,000 at year's beginning.

By now, this number has grown to over 100,000, not counting soldiers of and on naval units in the vicinity. It's been a build-up without much fanfare, accelerating since March and accelerating further since June. And these troops are not just sitting on their hands or twiddling their thumbs while waiting for orders to act out some type of D-Day drama. Several thousand are already in Iraq. They are gradually closing in and rattling Saddam's cage. In effect, the war has begun.

There follows a list of locations with troops strengths, but none of the information is attributed, so its accuracy cannot be determined.

Other tidbits:

• Saudi denial of its bases for an anti-Iraq war is no big deal, militarily, for the US.
  
• Iraq's army is only 1/3 the size of its pre-Gulf War numbers, and the so-called "elite" Republican Guard has 70,000, only half its 1990 strength.
  
• There are only 25,000 troops in Baghdad, all specially vetted for loyalty to Saddam and exclusively to used to protect him, not defend the city itself.
  
• The remaining 280,000 soldiers of the Iraqi army are mostly draftees, none of whom like army life and many of whom are of the Shiite minority who "consider themselves ethnic Iranians rather than Iraqis.
  
• "Principal equipment is 2,200 tanks of Soviet-era vintage (including a few hundred T-72s) and 1,900 artillery pieces. The Iraqi air force is reduced to 130 attack aircraft and 180 jet fighters, but only about 90 of the latter are combat ready at any given time. The navy no longer exists."
  
• " Iraq's anti-aircraft defenses consist of some 120 batteries dispersed around the country, and are as technologically degraded as the rest of Iraq's rusting arsenal. The number of Scud missiles is between a minimum of 12 and a maximum of 36. Of these, between six and 16 are Scud-B (Al-Husayn) with a range of 600 kilometers. The remainder are plain Scuds with a 300-kilometer range. The Scud-B missiles are the only ones that pose problems because they can reach targets outside Iraq. They are very inaccurate, however, and have numerous serious technical problems. The biggest of these is that they tend to break up during their descent phase. Their theoretical accuracy is 3,000 meters CEP (Circular Error Probability). This makes them militarily useless, and useful only for terrorizing urban populations if warheads contain chemical or biological agents."
  
• On August 6, US and UK aircraft "destroyed the Iraqi air command and control center at al-Nukhaib in the desert between Iraq and Saudi Arabia. The center is wired to fiber optic networks installed last year by Chinese companies. New types of precision-guided bombs disabled the fiber optic system. The broad aim of recent bombing runs is to thoroughly disrupt Iraqi command, control and communications functions.
  

If I excerpt any more, I may just as well reprint the article. But here is a really key point:

. . . the various "war plans" bandied about in the US press - with the New York Times and the Washington Post trying to outdo each other with the latest scoops - are largely irrelevant as such, whether it's the "Northern Alliance Option" (US troops and intelligence personnel aiding an attack by opposition forces); the original "Franks Plan" (massed attack involving some 250,000 troops); the "inside-out" approach (commando attacks on Baghdad and key Iraqi command centers first, followed by mopping-up action); or the "status-quo" or "do-nothing" option of continued containment of Saddam. Elements of all of these scenarios will eventually be seen as having been incorporated in the removal of the Iraqi leader.

And some we haven't heard of, either.

Thanks to Diffuse Shadows for the link!

Once again, Blogspot is down; once again, permalinks don't

Words fail me....

We don't have "soldiers." We have "activists."

This comment on LGF was so good I have to post it. Simon says (no, really, that's his name):

The 101st Airborne are just American activists.

Headline:
American activists land in Baghdad.

Subhead:
Involved in ongoing dispute with local militias.

Today an estimated 5,000 activists from the 101st Airborne Division landed in down town Baghadad today. They are currently emgaged in a heavy and on going dispute with anti-American elements of Sadam Hussein's Regime.

There's more, but you get the drfit.

If Congress votes reparations, everybody will be black
That which is subsidized, increases - it's the oldest law of economics

I am an African-American. I don't know whether I ever pointed this out before. Actually, to be more specific, I am an American man with African ancestors.

It's true that if you saw me on the street, you would never think so. I have light brown, straight hair (now unfortunately graying), a reasonably thin nose, blue eyes, fair skin - in short, the classic Caucasian feature set. I can trace an unbroken line of ancestors on my dad's side to Herr Jakob Sensing, who immigrated from Germany about 1740 and wound up in North Carolina, where he bought and sold land and had three sons. One stayed there, where his descendants still live (not many people know their 8th cousin, but I do). One went to Georgia and died before siring children. The third came to middle Tennessee and prospered.

Germany, schmermany. I'm African. And when the Congress starts handing out reparations checks, I'll be really African.

Both sides of my family have lived in America for at least 260 years - 382 years on my mom's side. Since about 1800, both sides have lived in the American South. I remember reading a Census Bureau demographic extract years ago that said that anyone whose family tree has that kind of longevity in the South has at least one black ancestor to >90% probability. It seems racial crossbreeding was much more common than we think.

That's good enough for me. I'm black.

Two big problems with reparations:

First, what will be the criteria for determining who gets paid?

Stop and consider the fact that it is not actually obvious who is a black American. Most Americans of African descent look, well, African, but not all. Black families across the nation, especially in the North, can tell stories of one of the cousins or uncles or sisters who were so light-skinned that they were able to "pass," meaning they passed themselves off as whites to the whites of the city. Many succeeded, married white spouses and lived white lives. (Does it bring to mind Garrett Morris' SNL skit, "White Like Me"?). In fact, American Heritage magazine published a detailed academic study of passing a few years ago. (Their online archives are pathetic, so I don't have a link.)

I worked with an officer at the Pentagon whose name was Jacobs. He was lighter-skinned than I am and had blond hair to boot (what there was of it, he was mostly bald). After a year, a senior officer mentioned to me that Jacobs was black.

On the other hand, there are people whose ancestry is predominantly white, and who can prove they have black ancestors. But, like me, they look purely white in lineage.

With the amount of money potentially involved, it would be worthwhile for me to hire a professional genealogist to document my near-certain black ancestry.

The whole point here is that appearance won't do it, not for everyone who is potentially eligible. And since we constitutionally insist on equal protection before the law, we can't allow some "obviously" black people to take money on the basis of their appearance alone, and insist that others document black ancestry because they don't look black.

So what will be the standard of proof of eligibility? Birth certificates? Only your own, or would, say, one black parent's birth certificate also count if your own certificate said you are white? (For that matter, do all states annotate race on birth certificates?) What about a single black grandparent - would that count?

Isn't it racist in the first place for the government to determine by percentage of ancestry or any other method what constitutes "black"?

Countless lawsuits to change certificates or other documents will be filed by formerly white people who will insist that they stated their race as white on forms of one kind or another because of the pernicious racism that they were trying to escape.

Trust me, when the word gets out that there is free money for black people, you'll be astounded at how undercounted blacks have been for decades. Tens of millions of new black people will emerge with their hands out.

The line forms behind me.

Second, non-black Americans (the few that are left once the checks are gone) will insist that racism is now a thing of the past. All debts are paid and all balances have zeroed out. All problems are solved.

If a black person raises a claim of racism again, the answer will be. "You got paid off. Shut up."

An unscientific poll conducted by Black Voices found that 75 percent of black Americans favor reparations, with the 63 percent saying that the amount received should be more than $10,000 per person. But more than half said that reparations would negatively affect race relations because payment would cause resentment by whites and other minorities.

Well, duh.

They support getting the money even though the know it will hurt them.

Will black people want white Americans to help them combat crime in public housing or heavily black parts of town? "You got paid off. Shut up."

Will black people want whites to maintain racial preferences for college admissions? "You got paid off. Shut up."

Will black people want white business owners to hire without regard to race? "You got paid off. Shut up."

Will black political leaders want to raise a stink about racial disparities in voting in Florida or elsewhere? "You got paid off. Shut up."

The next time anyone points out the differences in income between blacks and whites, they will be told, "You got paid off. Shut up."

The list goes on. People urging reparations need to think things through. I don't think they have.

Don't talk about the war - it might make people forget Bush canned the economy!
Dems don't like public debate on war - want to focus on the economy, stupid

The Washington Post reports, "Democrats Worry About Iraq as Issue, Debate on War Seen as Diversion From Economy."

Democrats [are] nervously watching a growing debate over whether the United States should launch a war to oust President Saddam Hussein, fearful that it could shift attention away from the economic issues that now dominate their agenda. . . .

Democrats face a dilemma on Iraq, arguing that a public debate about whether to go to war is in the national interest while knowing that the issue could work more to the benefit of Republicans. The call for more debate comes mainly from Democratic leaders and those with an eye on running for president in 2004. Rank-and-file candidates appear more interested in keeping voters focused on the economy.

Republican politicos not united on Iraq war
Bush needs to cultivate party if he wants to go in large scale

The Washington Times has an excellent news analysis on where the leading lights of the president's own party stand on a potential Iraq war.

The presumed rift is not between hawks and doves, because there are no doves. All agree that Saddam must go and all agree that direct military action may be required to do it. The debate over timing and necessity, not really over means.

But is the rift real? Is it live or is it Memorex?

Some Bush appointees at the State Department and some of his supporters among lawmakers and Republican-allied interest groups speculate that an elaborate game is being played out, that the president has signaled to the "proceed with caution" side that it's OK to go public with their arguments.

Says the State Department official: "I wonder if so-called rift is real between White House on one side and Powell, Scowcroft, [former Secretary of State Lawrence] Eagleburger and the others, or just very smart people playing out on another level, so that the president can delay making his case until the eve of a move against Iraq."

The NEA is a bunch of commies
America-hating educational establishment is why Johnny can't read, and now wants students to detest their own country

The National Educational Association displays its America-hating roots once again. Its 9/11 web site, due to go active Aug. 26, wants to make sure that no one may be blamed for the terrorist attacks -- except America, of course. The more I try to write about it, the madder I get. Just go and read all about it and make up your own mind.

Blogspot is busted again
Have to republish all archives after every post for permalinks to work

Don't you love it when a plan comes together - Part 5
Zbigniew Brzezinski sings my song

In a WaPo piece today entitled, "If We Must Fight . . ." former national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski writes about the potential war against Iraq:

The president himself has to make, in a speech addressed to the nation, a careful, reasoned case, without sloganeering, on the specifics of the threat. Detailed evidence needs to be presented that the threat is both grave and imminent.

I put it this way on May 13: "I say that President Bush has not made the case for war against Iraq. Before the US takes any action, Bush should explain fully to the American people what the reasons for war are. . . ."

An explanation is also needed as to why one member of "the axis of evil" is seen as more menacing than the others.

We just gave North Korea a big pile of money to build nucelar power plants. But I answered Brzezinski's point in my post about that.

War should not start with a bolt from the blue but be the consequence of demonstrated Iraqi unwillingness to accept international rules. . . .

The United States should itself take the lead in formulating detailed plans for a genuinely intrusive and comprehensive inspection regime, one that would define the rules of the game for Iraq's compliance with the will of the international community. America's European allies would find it difficult not to go along with that approach, while Iraq's recalcitrance -- either by an outright refusal or by subsequent efforts to sabotage the inspection process -- would then provide a highly legitimate casus belli for military action.

Again as I said on May 13:

There are existing UN conditions for unfettered inspections of Iraqi military and military-related facilities. These UN demands go back to the end of the Gulf War. Needless to say, they are not being done. I think the Bush administration will follow a strategy basically like this:

Tell NATO and the the other countries of the Arab world that the USA needs no further justification for decisive war against Iraq, is capable of conducting the war entirely on its own if need be, and is ready to start any time.

But will hold off military action and join in demanding Iraq submit to the full inspection regime without delay if and only if the other nations agree that if Iraq fails to comply, a casus belli for decisive American military actions exists with no further debate.

When Saddam does not comply, use their non-compliance as the centerpiece of the casus belli both domestically and internationally.

Don't you love it when a plan comes together - Part 4
Henry Kissinger sings my song

A story on Fox News' web site says,

A Kissinger op-ed in the Washington Post said in part, "The objective of a regime change should be subordinated ... to the need to eliminate weapons of mass destruction from Iraq as required by the U.N. resolutions. It is necessary to propose a stringent inspection system that achieves substantial transparency of Iraqi institutions. A time limit should be set. The case for military intervention then will have been made in the context of seeking a common approach."

I said this a long time ago.

Are violent Islamist terrorists actually going to cause an Islamic Reformation?
Muslim nations most threatened by Islamic terrorists moving toward secularization

An article in the Washington Times, "Fighting an unholy war," explains how Egypt and Algeria are attempting to quash Islamic terrorists. Egypt has had more success than Algeria, which is still riven by high violence.

In Egypt and Algeria, government battles for the heart of Islam and the war on terrorism are one in the same.

When the Muslim faithful flock to Friday prayers, authorities listen to every word. Preachers are vetted by the government.

Those who teach an Islam of tolerance and peace can expect to prosper.

Those who teach the version of Islam espoused by Osama bin Laden wind up in jail, in hiding or waging their wars of terror somewhere else, perhaps in the United States or Europe.

"Sermons at mosques are censored," said a Western diplomat in Cairo. "Anti-Israeli sermons are allowed. But you know you can't go too far ? people know what the red lines are.

"You don't criticize the government in sermons. The government is concerned about stability above all else."

Egypt's two main terrorist groups have pretty much laid down ttheir arms since 1999. But Algeria's are still going strong.

"They burned mosques, tombs of saints ? it was a horror," Justice Minister Ahmed Ouyahia said in a recent interview.

"Girls told of being raped by 50 or 60 men. They say in jihad, destroying the goods of an enemy is just, killing the baby of an enemy is just. We have centers for 20,000 orphans who lost both parents," Mr. Ouyahia said. . . .

The [terrorist groups] GIA and the Salafists method of killing was indeed terrifying. They would enter a village or apartment block, seize everyone they could find and then methodically slit their throats, one by one.

An Algerian official said the Islamists believe that anyone who is not with them deserves to die, along with their families. A recent GIA statement by its head, as quoted by Agence France-Presse in June, followed a massacre of 24 peasants:

"We will continue to destroy their harvests, to take their goods, to rape their women, to decapitate them in the cities, the villages and the deserts. Neither truce, nor dialogue, nor reconciliation, nor security, but blood, blood, destruction, destruction."

Algerian government leaders, while largely secular, realized they could not allow themselves to be painted as "anti-Islamic." So they, too, began the cultural battle to outlaw radical preaching in mosques.

"In 1996, we adopted a constitution that said you cannot use Islam for political gain," Mr. Ouyahia said.

Perhaps this is the first stage of a forthcoming separation of mosque and state.

I'll post later tonight
See below - I posted a bunch of stuff Friday most of the day and evening

I overloaded Friday's postings because I knew I'd be busy today.

Can we really believe in Hell?
Can there be both a God of love and a lake of fire?

Here is my exploration of whether Hell is real.

Wanna see something really scary?
A nightmare with heart-pounding terror

Just go here!

How the House of Saud and Islamic extremist Wahab got together
257-year-old alliance has shaped the world

This is a good summary by Youssef M. Ibrahim.

Speaking of UN inspection teams
Another worthless offer by Iraq

Iraq's foreign minister, Naji Sabri, told the UN today that it could send a negotiation team to Baghdad "to discuss the terms for renewed arms inspections . . . . But Sabri insisted that U.N. inspectors would have to outline precisely what they are searching for before inspections can resume. It remained unlikely that the latest Iraqi offer would be sufficient to persuade the United Nations to send a team of U.N. inspectors to Iraq for the first time since 1998."

No fooling.

This is an offer to discuss a discussion about a discussion to take place later (when? subject to discussion) in Baghdad on specific topics that have yet to be discussed.

This works to our advantage:

• It makes us appear to be patient, willing to let the diplomatic mechanisms grind slowly in the (forlorn) hope that Saddam will agree to the full inspection routine.
• It gives us time to reconstitute and preposition forces and material for a military assault, if that becomes the US course of action.

The US position is clear, but the reason we don't hear anyone in the administration getting exercised about the Iraqi delaying tactics is because it is we who do not wish to be rushed, not they.

Don't you love it when a plan comes together - Part 3
The Washington Post sings my song

E. J. Dionne of the WaPo editorial staff wrote an op-ed piece called, In Search of a War Rationale in which he discussed (quite well, I think) the phases of arguments that proponents of war with Iraq have gone through. He concludes:

If the issue is Hussein's weaponry, one last try with tough, intrusive and uncompromising inspections would have one of two effects. The inspections could succeed and rid us of the threat. Or Hussein would obstruct them and, in the process, force our reluctant allies to the view that there is no alternative to war.

As Richard Heddleson asked me the last time this was suggested (by the Chinese, no less), "Who is the original source here? Or is it merely great minds thinking alike?"