Iran

A week ago, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the winner of the so-called elections in Iran. Supporters of his rival - and opponents of the regime - staged massive protests. Due to personal obligations and the pace of events, I haven't been keeping up with the Iran situation here, but I'm going to try to catch up a little now.

Azarmehr, June 12:

Pro-Ahmadinejad news websites are already announcing Ahmadinejad as the outright winner. Rajanews says 69% have voted for Ahamdienjad and 28% for Moussavi. Islamic Republic News Agency IRNA, has also announced Ahmadienjad as the certain winner.


The picture shows, club wielding pro-Ahmadinejad supporters are already in the streets intimidating the people. [photo at link]

Via Gateway Pundit, the Globe and Mail, June 13:

Thousands of protesters clashed with police after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won an election which his reformist challenger called a “dangerous charade“.

The protests were a rare direct challenge to Iranian authorities. The result and its violent aftermath raised fresh questions about the direction of Iranian policies at a time when U.S. President Barack Obama wants to improve relations with Iran.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told Iranians to respect Ahmadinejad’s victory, which upset expectations that reformist candidate Mirhossein Mousavi might win the race.

Michael Ledeen, June 15:

To start with, the BBC, long considered a shill for the regime by most Iranian dissidents, estimates between one and two million Tehranis demonstrated against the regime on Monday. That’s a big number. So we can say that, at least for the moment, there is a revolutionary mass in the streets of Tehran. There are similar reports from places like Tabriz and Isfahan, so it’s nationwide.

For its part, the regime ordered its (Basij and imported Hezbollah) thugs to open fire on the demonstrators. The Guardian, whose reporting from Iran has always been very good (three correspondents expelled in the last ten years, they tell me), thinks that a dozen or so were killed on Monday. And the reports of brutal assaults against student dormitories in several cities are horrifying, even by the mullahs’ low standards.

Western governments have expressed dismay at the violence, and Obama, in his eternally narcissistic way, said that he was deeply disturbed by it ...

Before I go on, I want to make a few observations about Mousavi. As some of the more cynical commenters on my Facebook page have correctly observed, Mousavi is not, himself, what we would call a "good guy". That is to say, he is not running on a "freedom, democracy, and secularism" platform and he is no less a part of the establishment than Ahmadinejad. He is simply a rival thug. So, what are we to make of the demonstrations?

Here's Ledeen, June 17:

I think that many pundits insist on thinking about the Iran-that-was-five-days-ago, instead of the bubbling cauldron that it is today. The same mistake is repeated when people say that Mousavi, after all, is “one of them,” a member of the founding generation of the Islamic Republic, and so you can’t expect real change from him. The president made that mistake when he said that he didn’t expect any real difference in Iran’s behavior, no matter how this drama plays out.

I think that is wrong; at this point, Mousavi either brings down the Islamic Republic or he hangs. If he wins, and the Islamic Republic comes down, we may well see the whole world change, from an end of the theocratic fascist system, to a cutoff of money, arms, technology, training camps and intelligence to the world’s leading terrorist organizations, and yes, even to a termination of the nuclear weapons program.

I think that, whatever or whoever Mir Hossein Mousavi was five days ago, he is now the leader of a mass movement that demands the creation of a free Iran that will rejoin the Western world. And yes, the wheel could turn again, this revolution could one day be betrayed, all kinds of surprises no doubt await the Iranian people. Yes, but. But today, there is a dramatic chance of a very good thing happening in Iran, and thus in the Middle East, and therefore in the whole world.

And Michael Totten at Commentary, June 18:
I do not trust Iranian opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi. He is part of the Khomeinist establishment, although a crudely sidelined one at the moment. His record as former prime minister isn’t much more attractive than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s record as president.

The democracy movement is rallying around him, but the activists should be careful. Ruhollah Khomeini managed to convince Iranian liberals and leftists to forge an alliance with him to topple the Shah Reza Pahlavi in 1979, but he brutally smashed them once the revolution swept the old regime out of power. Alliances between liberals and Islamists is extraordinarily dangerous – for liberals.

At the same time, though, it’s possible that Mousavi has changed. Michael Ledeen seems to think so. “He is not a revolutionary leader,” he wrote, “he is a leader who has been made into a revolutionary by a movement that grew up around him…Whatever plans Mousavi had for a gradual transformation of the Islamic Republic, they have been overtaken by events.” ...

Please go to the link for the rest, including Totten's commentary on an article by Robert F. Worth in the New York Times.

Now covering the rallies, here's Azarmehr:

Massive crowds, mourning the martyrs of the protests so far, sing the true national anthem of Iran ["Ey Iran"] and not the official Islamic Republic one [video]...
Protests in Rasht. Young girl is caught badly beaten up, God knows what happened to her afterwards at the hands of those savages. [video]

The Spirit of Man posts running updates:

5:34 am ET: Now calling protesters 'terrorists'? Khamenei wants an END TO STREET RALLIES & threatened the protesters with more consequences.

5:37 am: Khamenei said budging under pressure is dictatorship. He is again threatening the heads of the opposition. He says people should try the 'kinder' way and saying if people go another way, then I'll be more blunt. 5:41 am: He's now taking a jab at the US and EU governments. I think he's trying to link the protests to the foreign governments now.

5:50 am et: Khamenei is saying Iran is no Georgia and there'll be no velvet revolution in this country. Now giving food to the stupid leftists in the western world... saying Iraq war is against human rights. Now criticizing Hillary Clinton and her husband for Waco incident. Khamenei says the Iranian govt is the defender of 'human rights' around the world. 5:51 am ET: He is now basically saying that he is willing to give his life to defend the revolution & Islamic state.
-----
My gut feelings: I predict Tiananmen Square in Iran

Stay tuned for more.

Prejudice, Real and Invented

First, the news item, from B. Daniel Blatt aka GayPatriotWest:

The news division of another broadcast network has been staging “news” in an attempt to show the prejudices of the American people. Only this time, it didn’t work out as planned. After planting a gay couple and an actor portraying a loud-mouthed anti-gay bigot at a New Jersey sports bar, ABC News learned that the bar’s patrons are, on the whole, a remarkably tolerant lot.

Surprise, surprise. You might be reminded, as Dan was, of this incident from three years ago:

Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2006 13:05:54 -0800 (PST)
From:
Subject: Looking for Muslim Males to participate in NBC Dateline Segment
[Forwarded]
Salam,
I hope everyone is doing well.
I have been talking with a producer of the NBC Dateline show and he is in the process of filming a piece on anti-Muslim and anti-Arab discrimination in the USA. They are looking for some Muslim male candidates for their show who would be willing to go to non-Muslim gatherings and see if they attract any discriminatory comments or actions while being filmed. ...

That said, I’m urgently looking for someone who can be filmed this April 1st weekend at a Nascar event (and other smaller events) in Virginia. NBC is willing to fly in someone and cover their weekend expenses. The filming would take place all day on Saturday and Sunday.

I'll let the good folks at NASCAR have the last word on that one:

The inference is that NASCAR fans are bigots, and NBC News was hoping to bait fans into making insensitive remarks to the Muslim / Arab people it had planted at the track.

Ramsey Poston, NASCAR's managing director of corporate communications, said Wednesday that no instances of unrest were reported. "No one bothered them," Poston said.

It's hard to imagine that NBC News would try to entrap fans in a ploy to make its Dateline segment juicier. But apparently the network did just that; NBC did not deny its actions when confronted by NASCAR.

So, back to ABC's stunt:

When, however, they dispatched an actor to verbally harass a gay couple they had sent to a New Jersey sports bar, they found more tolerance than bigotry. While a handful of patrons expressed disapproval of the couple’s presence in the bar, the patrons who spoke out the loudest called the actor on his bigotry, in the process challenging the prejudices the ABC News producers apparently harbored against the patrons of a suburban sports bar.

They had the gay couple come into the bar at two different times — first during the mid-day lunch hour, then later in the evening.

In the mid-day visit, no one took much notice of the two men until the aforementioned actor, at the network’s behest, started “stirring the pot,” pretending “to be bothered” by the couple. A few guys seemed to share his sentiments but didn’t act out their animosity.

Yet when the actor pestered a “new arrival” about the gay guys, the new guy did express some animus, though not against the gay couple. He told the ostensibly bigoted actor to shut up, saying that if he had to choose between that irritated individual and the gay couple, he’d probably be asking him, not them, to leave. Indeed, he told the gay men, “I’d rather have twelve of you them than four of him.”

In the evening, the couple turned up the heat by increasing their public displays of affection. At the same time, the producers raised the stakes by having a straight couple, also actors, “appear to be bothered too.” The actor remained obnoxious. A few people grumbled, with one man saying the gay men’s display “disgusts” him. But the most agitated person was a woman who objected not to the their affection, but to the basher’s antics.

Go to the article to read the rest, but this comment from Dan caught my eye: "The only gay bashing that took place at this sports bar was a verbal one staged by ABC."

And that put me in mind of an incident (or series of incidents) in Canada mentioned by Ezra Levant (and cited by Five Feet of Fury):

Who is Canada's largest "hate group", as measured by the number of anti-Semitic, anti-gay, anti-black and pro-Nazi comments published on the Internet?

As I've pointed out before, it's none other than the taxpayers' own Canadian Human Rights Commission.

It is official CHRC policy for their employees to join neo-Nazi groups, and go online in full neo-Nazi drag, spewing filthy venom that would make Joseph Goebbels proud. ...

It's as if liberals have found they haven't got enough real bigots to keep them busy these days, and must invent them, or else lose their own relevance.

Because it's either that, or else be forced to take on the real bigots. And that's dangerous work.

Ledeen on Victory

Michael Ledeen has an excellent piece on President Obama's AfPak strategy. I'll just excerpt this snippet on the Israel/Egypt war and peace:

A few days before his Afpak speech, the president celebrated the 30th anniversary of the Israel/Egypt peace agreement. “As we commemorate this historic event, we recall that peace is always possible even in the face of seemingly intractable conflicts,” he said. And then, referring to his own intentions, he continued:

The success…demonstrated that progress results from sustained efforts at communication and cooperation…we honor the courage and foresight of these leaders…as we seek to expand the circle of peace among Arabs and Israelis, we take inspiration from what Israel and Egypt achieved three decades ago, knowing that the destination is worthy of the struggle.

But that’s not how it happened. Not at all.

First, Egypt was decisively defeated by Israel on the battlefield, convincing Anwar Sadat that there was no possibility of wiping out Israel, and that any attempt to do it would be disastrous for his country. Second, both the United States and the Soviet Union started designing a “peace” deal, and Sadat didn’t like the prospect of a renewed Soviet role in the region. He was even prepared to talk directly to the Israelis. So he went to Jerusalem.

Thus, contrary to Obama’s reconstruction of events in the 1970s, the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel was the result of an Israeli victory on the battlefield. ...

Go read the whole thing.

Stop Iran

The Spirit of Man:

I doubt Obamble would stop the crazy Mullahs from acquiring the atomic weapon but apparently some tough guy in Israel will go the extra mile to stop these crazies in Tehran:

“You don’t want a messianic apocalyptic cult controlling atomic bombs. When the wide-eyed believer gets hold of the reins of power and the weapons of mass death, then the entire world should start worrying, and that is what is happening in Iran.”

Of course the Obama administration lacks the balls to stop anything, let alone the determined Iranian regime.

Netanyahu to Obama: Stop Iran, or I will.

In an interview conducted shortly before he was sworn in today as prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu laid down a challenge for Barack Obama. The American president, he said, must stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons—and quickly—or an imperiled Israel may be forced to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities itself.

“The Obama presidency has two great missions: fixing the economy, and preventing Iran from gaining nuclear weapons,” Netanyahu told me. He said the Iranian nuclear challenge represents a “hinge of history” and added that “Western civilization” will have failed if Iran is allowed to develop nuclear weapons. ...

Arutz Sheva: Israeli covert ops draw Washington disapproval.

Israel plans to continue a covert operation to delay Iran's nuclear program by assassinating key Iranian scientists despite growing opposition from the United States, U.S. officials said. Active for almost a decade, the program involves targeted killings of key Iranian assets as well as disrupting and sabotaging Iran's nuclear technology purchasing network abroad, the sources said.

U.S. opposition to the program has intensified as President Barack Obama makes overtures aimed at relieving tensions between the two countries, partly due to the U.S.'s desire to use Iran's road networks into Afghanistan to help resupply U.S.-NATO forces there. ...

Iranians Defy Regime, Celebrate Chaharshenbe Souri

While President Obama was mouthing his vapid drivel about Iran, Iranian youths were celebrating in defiance of the islamist regime. CRIME Report:

Held on the last Tuesday before the spring equinox - when the Persian new year holiday of Noruz is celebrated - Chaharshanbe Suri marks an ancient tradition where people jump over the bonfires to wish each other a healthy year.

Iran's ruling theocrats do not particularly like these ancient "pagan" feasts, which barely survived the Islamic Revolution. Over the years, the regime has taken steps to co-opt the holidays by inserting new religious elements. For example, a special prayer for Noruz has been introduced. The minute the new year begins all channels in the state-run TV and radio broadcast live Supreme Leader Khamenei's new year speech, where he bestows a thematic name on the year - for instance, "Imam Khomeini Year" or "Responsibility of the Officials to the People."

Yet it is hard to slip ideological symbols into Chaharshanbe Suri. Given the normally harsh legal restrictions on social and civic life, the holiday offers a unique moment where the regime's pressure is largely gone and rowdy behavior is tolerated. This gives youth an opportunity to go "wild" with impunity. Young Iranians have learned to enjoy this night to full by setting off fireworks, mixing in large numbers with the opposite sex, and playing pranks. These outbursts of pent-up energies have turned this ancient feast into a nightmare for the authorities, prompting the security officials go on high alert every year.

Amnesty International is using the Noruz holiday to launch an alert of its own - a call to stand in solidarity with several leading Iranian activist currently behind bars. These include Mansour Ossanloo, previously profiled in The CRIME Report for leading a strike by Tehran's bus drivers and currently sentenced to five years in jail for his activism. The call is to send Noruz greetings to Ossanloo and two Iranian Kurds, one a journalist and the other an artist, who have to celebrate the approach of the spring and the new year in their cold cells. One sad coda: during the holiday last week blogger Omid Reza Mir-Sayafi, who had been jailed for allegedly "insulting" the Supreme Leader committed suicide in Evin Prison.

Iran: Boroujerdi Dispatch

BameAzadi:

Zahra Abdollahvand and Maryam Ghasemi were released after 27 days detention and torture by giving heavy security.

It is necessary to say that each one of the ladies has children and had been detained only because of advocacy of Ayatollah Boroujerdi and protest against continuing the illegal detention of him by the Special court of clergy.

Mrs.Zohreh Sharifi, another follower of Ayatollah Boroujerdi, is still in prison and there is no exact information on her condition.

Background. From an interview with Ayatollah Sayed Hosein Kazemeini Boroujerdi:

This interview was done in the beginning of 1387 [on the Persian calendar; spring of 2008 CE] and in clergy section of Evin prison by a political prisoner from Karaj called Ahmad Najafi Mojtahedi who had been condemned on the charge of publishing a book against Khamenei. This interview has been brought to your ears :
1- Do you call this government ( Iran regime ) legal ?
No, because it was established base on cheating Iran nation and formed by false and unreal promises, then was continued by the obvious breach of its establisher's commitments. Its majors such as: independence, freedom, republication and Islam were never fulfilled and about its minors which were giving national properties to nation ,were fulfilled contrary to their promises and now Iranian people while have the most national and natural wealth, are the most helpless and poorest nation in the world .Economic calculations in governmental incomes and expenses are completely secret and if it is said the majority of people were asking for Islamic regime in 30 years ago ,but now the majority of them are asking for irreligious regime and this world will be proved by a referendum under inspection of the United Nations or by a public and open gathering formed by watch and support of legal and human societies of the world .

2- Do you expect the great governments to help?
The power must be balance between Iran nation and government to people of this country who are owners and inheritors of this country get their legal and incontrovertible rights. Now there is unjust and unequal domination of political regime of Iran on oppressed and miserable people of this country which freedom negation, independence annihilation, lacking of calm and finishing of the finance, credit and life ability of these noble people are its results.

3- please explain the rights and limits of women:
Woman is the partner of man in administrating the life affairs .women have the same position in creation that men has reached and each law violates their personality and credit integrity is worthless .All judgments which lead to humiliating and regressing women are the Human Rights violators. Every kind of limit and restriction which cause reduction in their success and enjoyment of life is unrespectable and unenforceable. Scientific and social fields must not cause limitation and strait for them.

4- How do you analyze the conflict between Palestine and Israel?
Bani Israel is one of the most ancient tribe in Middle East which its evidences and documents are in holy books. Since a long time ago, Arab and Hebrew races which have one root, lived together peacefully in all regions of Shamat that contains: Palestine, Jordan, Hejaz, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon, they traded, exchanged and treated friendly together. It must not be forgotten that all the inhabitants of these states are holy Abraham's children so, every kind of flight and conflict, causes to damage to their origin and separation from their root. Friendship, understanding and unity must be established among all humans in the world as each nation can progress and improve by its method and way. Every kind of war and bloodshed under any title and reason damages human spirit.

5- what's your opinion about other religions in the world? ...

Go to the link to read the rest.

John Milton turns 400 today.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_milton

Happy birthday John!

Update: Posting Break and Career Move

I will be taking a break from regular posting, probably through the end of this calendar year (although I may post occasionally if something big comes up).

I'm in the process of gearing up for a career move into IT in 2009. I've been working in the clerical field - mostly Office Services and Litigation Copy - for most of my time in the private sector; that's the last 15 years. And the truth is, I enjoy clerical work ... but it's a job, not a career.

I've been interested in computers since I was a little kid. I attended the Talcott Mountain Science Center in my grade-school years (around 1974, age 11) and studied BASIC programming. I didn't study programming again until this past year when I began learning C and C++. ("What do you mean, there's no GOTO statment? How can you write a program without GOTO?!?")

I also enrolled in LearnIT! for the CompTIA A+ course - that's the entry-level certification for Windows-based computer techs. After I take (and pass) the certification exam, I'll be able to list myself as A+ certified.

Meanwhile, I'm watching the job postings for openings in the computer, technical, and IT fields that match my current skill set. I've got lots of end-user experience on both Windows and Macintosh. I have good customer service and people skills, and I'm comfortable with technology and problem-solving environments; so I am excited about this decision. If you're curious, here's my LinkedIn public profile: Asher Abrams.

I'll continue to post updates to DiL as time permits.

Mumbai, India Terrorist Attacks

A roundup of articles on the terrorist attacks at Mumbai, India.

Victims remembered. Neocon Express: 'Rabbi Gavriel Noach Holtzberg and his wife Rivka Holtzberg headed up the Chabad Jewish center in Mumbai. The gunmen walked in and murdered them in front of their child who survived, rescued by an Indian employee. Americans Alan Scherr and his 13 year old daughter, Naomi Scherr, were murdered while eating dinner at the Taj Hotel. A gunman simply walked in and shot them in cold blood in the name of "Islam" for no reason other than their mere existence which was offensive to them. ...'

CNN: Witnesses describe horror. CNN:

Anthony Rose, an Australian visiting Mumbai to produce a travel show, told CNN Thursday that he checked into the Taj hotel just a minute before attackers stormed into the lobby Wednesday night.

"They came in with all guns blazing," Rose said. "It was just chaos." Video Watch Rose's comments on terror attacks »

Rose and others found refuge in a hotel ballroom, where they waited for six hours hoping to be rescued.

Although they could hear explosions and gunfire nearby, there were no sirens or police evident, he said.Video Watch how terror attacks have shaken India. »

Help never arrived and the group were forced to smash a thick glass window and climbed down to the street on curtains.

"As soon as the hotel was on fire, we knew we had to go," Rose said.

Meanwhile Manuela Testolini, founder of the In A Perfect World children's foundation and ex-wife of music icon Prince, described how she saw someone shot in front of her at the Taj before sheltering with 250 other terrified people in the darkened ballroom.

Full article at the link.

Footage of capture. Gateway Pundit: 'Caught in a car with its tires blown out the Mumbai terrorist was told by the police to come out with his hands up. Instead, the terrorist pulled out a pistol and shot 3 policemen dead. That's when the Indian crowd decided to do the job the police were meant to do. They beat his a$$ on the street.' From the video:

The footage, which was captured on a mobile phone, shows a furious crowd beating the alleged terrorist, Ajmal Qasab (Azam Amir Kasav), before he is taken away.

It allegedly shows him with other gunmen on Marine Drive, a few streets away from the train station where the group had just carried out a killing spree.

Fleeing the scene of the carnage, the gunmen were forced to stop because the tyres of their getaway car had blown out.

Hostages were tortured. Even hardened doctors used to violent deaths were shocked at what they saw. Rediff:

"Bombay has a long history of terror. I have seen bodies of riot victims, gang war and previous terror attacks like bomb blasts. But this was entirely different. It was shocking and disturbing," a doctor said.

Asked what was different about the victims of the incident, another doctor said: "It was very strange. I have seen so many dead bodies in my life, and was yet traumatised. A bomb blast victim's body might have been torn apart and could be a very disturbing sight. But the bodies of the victims in this attack bore such signs about the kind of violence of urban warfare that I am still unable to put my thoughts to words," he said.

Asked specifically if he was talking of torture marks, he said: "It was apparent that most of the dead were tortured. What shocked me were the telltale signs showing clearly how the hostages were executed in cold blood," one doctor said.

The other doctor, who had also conducted the post-mortem of the victims, said: "Of all the bodies, the Israeli victims bore the maximum torture marks. It was clear that they were killed on the 26th itself. It was obvious that they were tied up and tortured before they were killed. It was so bad that I do not want to go over the details even in my head again," he said.

How an ISI Kashmir operation turned into a massacre at Mumbai. Steve Schippert at The Tank recommends this article in Asia Times Online:

A plan by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) that had been in the pipelines for several months - even though official policy was to ditch it - saw what was to be a low-profile attack in Kashmir turn into the massive attacks on Mumbai last week.

The original plan was highjacked by the Laskar-e-Taiba (LET), a Pakistani militant group that generally focussed on the Kashmir struggle, and al-Qaeda, resulting in the deaths of nearly 200 people in Mumbai as groups of militants sprayed bullets and hand grenades at hotels, restaurants and train stations, as well as a Jewish community center.

The attack has sent shock waves across India and threatens to revive the intense periods of hostility the two countries have endured since their independence from British India in 1947.

There is now the possibility that Pakistan will undergo another about-turn and rethink its support of the "war in terror"; until the end of 2001, it supported the Taliban administration in Afghanistan. It could now back off from its restive tribal areas, leaving the Taliban a free hand to consolidate their Afghan insurgency.

The details of what happened:

Under directives from Pakistan’s army chief, General Ashfaq Kiani, who was then director general (DG) of the ISI, a low-profile plan was prepared to support Kashmiri militancy. That was normal, even in light of the peace process with India. Although Pakistan had closed down its major operations, it still provided some support to the militants so that the Kashmiri movement would not die down completely.

After Kiani was promoted to chief of army staff, Lieutenant General Nadeem Taj was placed as DG of the ISI. The external section under him routinely executed the plan of Kiani and trained a few dozen LET militants near Mangla Dam (near the capital Islamabad). They were sent by sea to Gujrat, from where they had to travel to Kashmir to carry out operations.

Meanwhile, a major reshuffle in the ISI two months ago officially shelved this low-key plan as the country’s whole focus had shifted towards Pakistan’s tribal areas. The director of the external wing was also changed, placing the “game” in the hands of a low-level ISI forward section head (a major) and the LET’s commander-in-chief, Zakiur Rahman.

Zakiur was in Karachi for two months to personally oversee the plan. However, the militant networks in India and Bangladesh comprising the Harkat, which were now in al-Qaeda’s hands, tailored some changes. Instead of Kashmir, they planned to attack Mumbai, using their existent local networks, with Westerners and the Jewish community center as targets.

Read the rest at the link. Schippert adds: 'And keep in mind that the LeT (Lashkar-e-Taiba) was an original signatory to bin Laden's International Islamic Front in 1998, which formally created al-Qaeda as "the base" organization for international Islamic terror groups.' Here, according to Schippert, is the take-away analysis:

1. ISI fingerprints are on the genesis of the attack plan.

2. Upper echelons of ISI delegated seemingly unsupervised to a junior officer, who signed off on the LeT/al-Qaeda alterations from small Kashmir assault to large scale Mumbai killing spree.

3. Upper echelons of ISI & military perhaps unaware of alterations, but not with clean hands. Kashmir or Mumbai, they planned terror attacks.

4. That “major reshuffle in the ISI two months ago,” recall, was when Lt. General Nadeem Taj, a relative of Musharraf, was forced out as Director General of the ISI. It was a Pakistani intelligence shake-up largely by American insistence.
5. While the US had hoped the ‘double dealing’ of Taj would have left with him, it has to be understood that General Kiyani - head of Pakistan’s military and thus effectively its military intelligence (ISI) - while admirably stalwart against al-Qaeda and the Taliban in the North West and tribal areas, has always been equally stalwart regarding the Pakistani conflict with India over disputed Kashmir.

General Kiyani may have intended a minor operation for Kashmir and was almost certainly in the dark about the metamorphosis of the operation into a Mumbai massacre, but the law of unintended consequences holds little acquittal when leaders play with the fire of terrorism.

Commentary. I'm absolutely at a loss to write anything fit to read about this atrocity. A small gang of sadistic psychopaths terrorize a city while the police cower and do nothing. A two-year-old boy is beaten while his parents are murdered. The only real heroes, apparently, were the hotel workers:

They were heroes in cummerbunds and overalls. The staff of the Taj Mahal Palace hotel saved hundreds of wealthy guests as heavily armed gunmen roamed the building, firing indiscriminately, leaving a trail of corpses behind them.

Among the workers there were some whose bravery and sense of duty led them to sacrifice their own lives, witnesses said.

Prashant Mangeshikar, a guest, said that a hotel worker, identified only as Mr Rajan, had put himself between one of the gunmen and Mr Mangeshikar, his wife and two daughters.

“The man in front of my wife shielded us,” Mr Mangeshikar said. “He was a maintenance section staff member. He took the bullets.” For the next 12 hours, before Mr Rajan was finally taken out of the hotel, guests battled to stop the bleeding from a gaping bullet wound in his abdomen. It is not known if he lived. ...

The Belmont Club has more.

It's late, and I don't have time to write any more now. I have a fourteen-month old girl who started walking last week, and who's up past her bedtime; elsewhere in this city, my twelve-year-old son is three weeks away from his thirteenth birthday and his bar mitzvah. I don't know what to say about all of this, or even how to think about it.

Morning Report: 2008-11-14

Unmistakable signs of progress, and a change of focus, in the war on terror.

"The war is over and we won." So says Michael Yon thru Instapundit:

Michael Yon just phoned from Baghdad, and reports that things are much better than he had expected, and he had expected things to be good. "There's nothing going on. I'm with the 10th Mountain Division, and about half of the guys I'm with haven't fired their weapons on this tour and they've been here eight months. And the place we're at, South Baghdad, used to be one of the worst places in Iraq. And now there's nothing going on. I've been walking my feet off and haven't seen anything. I've been asking Iraqis, 'do you think the violence will kick up again,' but even the Iraqi journalists are sounding optimistic now and they're usually dour." There's a little bit of violence here and there, but nothing that's a threat to the general situation. Plus, not only the Iraqi Army, but even the National Police are well thought of by the populace. Training from U.S. toops has paid off, he says, in building a rapport.

He says the big problem everybody is talking about now is corruption. But hey, we have that here, too. He'll be heading to Afghanistan next week. "Afghanistan is a bad situation, but on Iraq I can't believe things have turned out so well."

Voters more optimistic than ever about war on terror, Rasmussen says. Another grim milestone for the MSM: Rasmussen reports:

Voter confidence in the War on Terror has reached its highest level ever, with 60% now saying the United States and its allies are winning, according to the first Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey on the issue since Election Day. ...

Just 15% of voters say the terrorists are winning the War on Terror, which is the lowest level seen in tracking history dating back to April 2004. Another 18% say neither side is winning.

BTW, the paragraph at my ellipsis discusses lower voter confidence in "bringing the troops home from Iraq" during Obama's term, in case you were wondering. But that's a separate issue from winning or losing the WOT; and see Instapundit's comment. Shmuel Rosner at Commentary says: 'With more than two months until inauguration day–if these trends continue–it’s possible that all Obama will have to do by the time he takes the oath is to promise a continuation of Bush’s winning policies in Iraq.'

Britain to send 2,000 more troops to Afghanistan ... per request. The Telegraph:

The Government is considering sending extra reinforcements in order to meet an anticipated request from Barack Obama, the US president-elect, after he takes office in January, according to the BBC.

US strikes in Pakistan to continue. Bill Roggio at The Standard:

The U.S. military has struck yet again inside Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas. U.S. Predators hit an al Qaeda safe house in the Taliban-controlled tribal agency of North Waziristan. Twelve people, including five “foreigners” were killed in the attack.
The strike occurred just one day after Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari protested the attacks. “It’s undermining my sovereignty and it’s not helping win the war on the hearts and minds of people,” Zardari said in an interview. On the same day, a spokesman for Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry described the attacks as a “violation of international law.”
But the United States is stuck between a rock and a hard place on this issue. On one hand, the attacks risk destabilizing Pakistan’s government and turn Pakistanis toward the extremists. On the other, U.S. intelligence strongly believes al Qaeda has regrouped in the tribal areas and is actively plotting strikes against the West, using men with Western passports.

Commentary. Tony Bey recommends Michael Rubin's article at Forbes arguing against the strategy of trying to "pry Syria away from Iran". Rubin:

It is tempting to believe that U.S. diplomacy can flip Syria. The last rejectionist Arab state, Syria is a lynchpin not only in the Arab-Israeli peace process, but also in efforts to resolve Iraqi insurgency and Lebanese instability. Alas, as audacious as Obama's hope might be, Syria cannot be flipped. It may be fashionable to blame Bush for the failure to seize a Damascus olive branch, but the real problem has less to do with any U.S. administration and much more to do with Arab history and political culture.

For more than a millennium, Damascus, Baghdad and Cairo have competed for the leadership of the Arab world. ...

Diplomats seeking to flip Assad are asking him to commit political suicide. Syria has less than 20 million citizens to Egypt's 80 million; for Damascus to work in the same coalition as Cairo is to subordinate itself to it. Absent the crisis of resistance, Assad has little reason to justify rule by his Alawite clan, a minority Shiite sect, among a disenfranchised Sunni Arab majority.

Go read it all.

73,380

Total hits to date on DiL - Blogger: 73,380.

Thank you, and keep 'em coming.

Four Years

Tomorrow, April 21, marks four years of posting at Dreams Into Lightning and four years here on Blogger. The main site for this blog is now Dreams Into Lightning - TypePad, which has been in action for two years.

Since I started posting on TypePad, I've been cross-posting here more or less regularly, to maintain Dreams Into Lightning - Blogger as a backup and archive site.

I'm now going to discontinue my practice of copying identical posts from TypePad to Blogger. This site will remain up, but posting will be less frequent and will consist of summaries of, and links to, my most important posts at DiL - TypePad.

Thanks for visitng, and if you haven't done so yet, please bookmark Dreams Into Lightning - TypePad as the main location for this blog.