REALISTIC OPTIMISM FROM ONE TOUGH GENERAL
Baghdad. "Al Qaeda's worn out their welcome," Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno told me. Probably the tallest, and just maybe the toughest, man in Iraq, the Rockaway, New York native also has a vigorous intellect at odds with the stereotype of generals. Even though he looks like he could've had a parallel career in the World Wrestling Federation. In a forthright interview, the commanding general of the Multinational Corps-Iraq - the man who leads the day-to-day fight in support of Gen. David Petraeus - noted that, while foreign terrorists remain a threat, al Qaeda's been wounded so deeply by the Sunni Arab shift against them that he now feels other issues take priority. He outlined them for me.
THE SECRET STORY OF THE SOVIET PLATES
Yesterday (8/28), the State Department announced it was issuing new diplomatic license plates to the foreign embassies here in Washington. Since the old design was similar to that of some US states, the new plates' design is supposed to reduce the confusion. Here is the old/new comparison from the State press release: 
Which gives me an opportunity to tell you the coolest story you ever heard about license plates. It's about Soviet license plates during the Cold War, and the true name of "The Reagan Doctrine." The story begins with my getting a phone call in 1985 from a buddy of mine working in the Reagan White House, Dana Rohrabacher (who has been a Congressman, R-CA, since 1988). The conversation went like this:
A TALE OF TWO SORDID WASHINGTONIANS
Last Saturday (8.18), a once enormously influential man in Washington died. He was eulogized in every important newspaper from the New York Times to the Wall St. Journal to the Washington Times. Let me tell you a completely unknown story about him. Before his presidency, Ronald Reagan lived for many years in California. On a regular basis, he had his hair cut at his favorite barbershop in Beverly Hills. After his election and before he moved to Washington, a friend of mine was assigned to his transition team. Thus he accompanied Mr. Reagan to his barbershop appointment. My friend was startled to see an elderly man who just happened to be getting a haircut in the very next chair to which Mr. Reagan was seated. The elderly man immediately began chatting up Mr. Reagan. My friend was startled because the man was a Communist, the son of the founder of the Communist Party USA, one of America's richest and most powerful men who had made his fortune doing business with the Soviet Union since the days of Lenin. His name was Armand Hammer. My friend was seriously alarmed. The president-elect's personal schedule and whereabouts was a highly-kept secret. For someone in league with the Soviets to know it meant that someone - Armand Hammer - had a mole within Mr. Reagan's team on his payroll. It took my friend years to find out the mole's identity. It was the lionized man who died last Saturday.
THE PHONY CLICHÉS OF HILLARY AND OBAMA
Every political season gives birth to one or two instant clichés. Outside of politics, a phrase often takes generations to be spoiled as an effective term by long familiarity, or to become dull and meaningless by overuse. In today's politics, a genuine cliché can be created in a month due to its intense repetition by TV and print pundits as well as by a myriad of bloggers. But at least non-political clichés have the advantage of pointing out something usually true. Go outside at 4 a.m. and you will note the truth of the cliché that it is always darkest before the dawn. Have a small tear in a piece of clothing promptly sewed up and you learn that a stitch in time does save nine (stitches). Or perhaps, more accurately, don't have it promptly repaired and have to pay for extensive stitching. But this season's premier political clichés are already both hackneyed and trite, while having no obvious truth to them. I am referring to the claims that Sen. Barack Obama would bring "real change to America," while Sen. Hillary Clinton would bring "extensive experience to the office."
THE JIG OF MEDIA FRAUD
A great moment in journalism it wasn't. At 6:58 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time on Tuesday, Aug. 14, Agence France Presse distributed a photograph by Wissam al-Okaili, an AFP stringer, of an elderly Iraqi woman holding two cartridges in one hand. The caption that accompanied the photo read: "An elderly Iraqi woman shows two bullets which she said hit her house following an early coalition forces raid in the predominantly Shiite Baghdad suburb of Sadr City." I used the word "cartridges." The caption writer used the word "bullets." Let me explain the difference for the benefit of the photo editors at AFP. A cartridge consists of three elements: the bullet (the pointy thing at one end); the propellant (the gunpowder stuff) that forces the bullet through the barrel of the gun when the trigger is pulled; and the casing, in which the bullet and the propellant are held together until the cartridge is fired. Once the cartridge is fired, the bullet and the casing go their separate ways. So here's the AFP photo:
INDIANA JONES AND THE ALAWITE APOSTASY
Last Monday (8/20), Senator Joe Lieberman came quite close, in the op-ed page of the Wall St. Journal, to publicly calling for regime change in Syria. He couched it as calling for a boycott of Damascus Airport by international airlines as it is "the main terminal for international terror," through which flow foreign suicide bombers to be sent into Iraq and kill Iraqi civilians and American soldiers. Privately, he wants the "terrorist regime" of Bashar al-Assad removed from power, and is in close consultation on how to do so with the only folks possessing real cajones in the Bush White House, Dick Cheney and his staff. This is giving the Little Lord Fauntleroys in the seventh floor of the State Department the vapors. Condi has become their stooge, totally wimping out to the permanent (and permanently invertebrate) State bureaucracy. Thus she is blocking any attempt of Cheney and Lieberman's to get Bush to approve a plan for regime change in Syria. Now it looks like they've got allies, the richest and most influential allies in all the Middle East. The Saudis have decided that the Bashar regime must go, and Cheney and Lieberman are only too happy to accept their help. Finally, the Syrian dictatorship's Alawite Apostasy has caught up with it. And that brings up Indiana Jones.
PRIMARY INSANITY
America's democracy has always had its flaws, but it has long been considered the best. Our political "leaders" are changing that. Those of you who have lives may not have noticed that our presidential nominating process, which in recent years has been teetering on the brink of insanity, has plunged into madness. The Iowa caucuses traditionally have been held eight days before the New Hampshire primary. If New Hampshire moves its primary to Jan. 8, and Iowa keeps the normal separation, then the Iowa caucuses would be held on New Year's Day. Though caucus goers may make better choices when they're roaring drunk, and it would be delightful to make political reporters work that day, this is unlikely to happen. New Hampshire is likely to opt for its first ever Saturday primary, so Iowa can hold its caucus during the election year, though barely after the college football bowl games have ended. But at this writing it is possible the voting for president in 2008 will begin in 2007.
WE ARE WINNING IN IRAQ – WHEN DO WE GET TO WIN IN IRAN?
In reality - for what little it matters nowadays, either here or in the Middle East - we are winning the battle of Iraq. The percentage increase in Iranian activity, combined with a drop in the number of attacks, is another way of saying that al Qaeda is being destroyed for a second time, and the Iranians are scrambling to fill the void. But they are on the run, just as is al Qaeda, as you can tell by the back-and-forth shuttling of their factotum Moqtadah al Sadr, between Iran and Iraq. If their scheme was working in Iraq, he'd sit still. He's scrambling because they're in trouble. They're in trouble at home, too. Indeed, things are so bad that the government itself has open fissures, the latest caused by the resignation of the minister of industry and mines, and by the public testimony of the minister of welfare:
EURIPIDES’ RECIPE
Last month, Tom "Take ‘Em Out" Tancredo (R-CO) set off another political tsunami when he proclaimed on a talk radio show that if Moslem terrorists attacked America with nuclear weapons, we should respond in kind by wiping out Mecca. Everyone from the terrorist accomplices at CAIR to the terrorist appeasers at State was suitably outraged. Which was fine with Tom, for the whole purpose of his remark was to rattle their cages. And to add a whiff of substance to the whispers about Project Ultimate Deterrence. You learned about it almost three years ago (10/04) in Mad in Mecca -- the possibility that there already is a W-80 warhead from a cruise missile secretly buried somewhere in Mecca and satellite signal-ready to detonate with enough plutonium to render Islam's holiest site uninhabitable for several thousand years. This was further discussed (1/05) in George Bush and the Sword of Damocles: Why There hasn't Been Another 9-11. Yet holding Mecca as a nuclear hostage is not the only strategy in Ultimate Deterrence. There is another: Project Jahannam. You learned about it a little over a year ago (4/06) in No Moslems Go To Heaven, and again this spring (4/07) in Jahannam in Jolo. Jahannam is Arabic for Islam's Hell. It's all part of something called Euripides' Recipe.
BY WANTING AMERICA TO LOSE, DEMOCRATS WILL LOSE IN 2008
The Democrats, after spending the winter, spring and early summer frantically calling for getting out of Iraq as fast as their little feet can carry them, are now, as autumn approaches, demonstrating their Olympic-class back-pedaling skills. By winter (with the complicity of the drive-by media) the Democrats hope to expunge the historic record of their failure of war nerve this spring. This is the moment for Republicans from the president, to the candidates for president, to the incumbents and challengers for offices all the way down to dog catcher (and especially dog catcher) to remind the public of the springtime Democrat Party defeatism and lost nerve. The leadership of the Democrat Party has, by its public words this spring, disgraced themselves for a generation. Republicans have the right - and the duty - to engrave in the public mind the springtime Democrat perfidy and cowardice in the face of the enemy.