perfidy

George Will's got an interesting column up.
 

The President and his staff are re-thinking how they manage the reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Condi Rice will oversee the "Iraq Stabilization Group," which will be an interdepartmental force to get shit done in-country. Read the article for the details, but it appears that it's an effort to cut across the bureaucratic boundaries and work on managing, you know, the little details, like roads, schools, security, power, the Taliban, and all that. Hope this works.

From the article: "'The president knows his legacy, and maybe his re-election, depends on getting this right,' another administration official said. 'This is as close as anyone will come to acknowledging that it's not working.'"

Well, they don't have to acknowledge it, as long as they do something about it.

[moreover] Does anybody else think that Condoleeza Rice sits home at night, practicing her signature, "Vice President Condoleeza Rice"? I mean, I'm not saying that's her ambition, just that if there's one person in the Bush administration ideally situated to take over from Dick Cheney, it's her. And I think she'd be good at it. Besides, she's a hardcore Cleveland Browns fan, so she can't be all bad.

[moreover] Go Browns! Beating the Steelers for the FIRST time since coming back from the dead! In! Your! Face!, John Cole!!

This makes Jimmy at Welcome to Rantville want to "vomit." I think it's the system working like it's supposed to.

The world renowned Hindustan Times is reporting that:

Kuwaiti security authorities have foiled an attempt to smuggle $60 million worth of chemical weapons and biological warheads from Iraq to an unnamed European country, a Kuwaiti newspaper said on Wednesday.

A desultory google search showed no other articles on this event. Meanwhile, the long expected Kay report is expected to show no hard evidence of WMD, though many dual use facilities that could be quickly converted to evil uses - and extensive efforts to conceal those capabilities.

The Hindustan Times article came out almost a day ago, its surprising that no other news outlet has commented on it.

In related news, North Korea has three times as many nukes as we thought, and is making more.

The ever expanding story about espionage amongst the translators at Guantanamo has, well, expanded. Johno's favorite TV station, WCVB-TV channel 5 (modestly self described as the "Boston Channel") has a report that a third person was arrested at Logan airport, right under Johno's nose. And he says he's serious about the war on terror.

That American military personnel are passing information to the enemy is a very serious problem. This is treason. If they are guilty, the constitution is very specific about what the penalty is.

The Don has a post over at the Post about nation building in Iraq and elsewhere. This is an interesting piece, for several reasons.

He examines, as too few people have done, the different results of different types of nation building - in Europe after WWII, Kosovo, and East Timor.

Also, he focuses on the efforts to involve Iraqis in the reconstruction - physical, moral and political - of the their country.

Back in the day, before the libervasion, I thought that we could make a go of civilizing Iraq, and helping them build a republic of law. And that the key would be setting up the institutions of local government before letting them have a go at national government. It seems that we are doing that, and that makes me happy for two reasons. One, I'm right; and two, the Iraqis will have some experience with how democracy works before the training wheels come off.

The contrast that he points out between the current efforts in Iraq and the UN led efforts in Timor and Kosovo are significant. The fact that our desire to leave is obvious will I think contribute to our success.

Two years ago, on a clear, sunny day just like today in every respect but one, over 3000 people died. They died at the hands of terrorists willing to sacrifice their lives to kill the innocent, in the service of an insane and evil cause.

Some ways, we were lucky. Had the planes hit the towers later, many more might have died. Had the towers collapsed sooner, the death toll might have been in the tens of thousands. Had the plane hit the Pentagon on the inside of the north side, it would have missed the mostly untenanted, newly remodeled section on the south. Had the passengers not taken action over rural Pennsylvania, the Capitol or White House might have been hit instead of a field. We should give thanks that only 3000 died.

We have hunted those responsible, with some success, though their leader remains at large. We have sought to end terrorism, and the governments that make it possible. We have not had a terrorist attack on American soil since that terrible day. That must count as at least provisional success in the war on terror.

Over 250 American soldiers, marines and pilots have died in the war on terror. We must remember them also. They fight, and sacrifice, so that we may be safe and free.

But for the 3000, and the 250, we have to continue the fight, to give meaning to the sacrifice of the dead. We have to win. The cost of terrorism to its practitioners must be made so high that no one will ever think to do it again.
I have already mentioned the 9/11 Digital archive, which is well worth seeing. You should also go to Voices: Stories From 9/11 And Beyond at A Small Victory. Bill Whittle has a new post that adds some perspective.

For more links, simply go to the Winds of Change which has the best round up I've seen.

The September 11 Digital Archive is being added to the Library of Congress's permanent collection, and the LC will host a day-long symposium on Wednesday, September 10, 2003. If you're in DC, play hooky and go. In the meantime, you can view the collection of images, video and stories here.

I don't normally even notice when foreign and domestic media play up discontent in the ranks of US soldiers in Iraq. After all, they need to sell papers and gain ratings, and that's part of the game. The truth will out.

Besides, Lord knows the troops have plenty to complain about-- I will NEVER understand why the Army issues the same socks to troops in Labrador and Iraq.

But sometimes, you just have to shake your head in wonder. Like at this Reuters story.

If they had the chance, U.S. soldiers at a base in Iraq would have had one question for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld -- When are we going home?.

But Rumsfeld canceled a speech he was due to give on Friday to the troops at their base at the palace of deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in his hometown of Tikrit.

"I don't give a damn about Rumsfeld. All I give a damn about is going home," Specialist Rue Gretton said, humping packs of water bottles on his shoulders from a truck.

"The only thing his visit meant for us was we had to clean up a lot of mess to make the place look pretty. And he didn't even look at it anyway," Gretton said after soldiers swept the dusty streets around the complex of lakes and mansions. . . .

Rumsfeld has been criticized for sending too few troops to Iraq leaving them stretched thin on extended deployments trying to help rebuild the country and fight a guerrilla war. He has urged allies to supply some 15,000 additional troops and hopes training Iraqi forces will ease the burden on U.S. troops.

When the Armed Forces Network showed earlier footage of Rumsfeld saying that fresh U.S. troops were unnecessary in Iraq, soldiers at the base threw their hands in the air and shouted "No way" at the television.

"I ain't happy. No way am I happy seeing that," said Specialist Devon Pierce, whose wife was due to give birth to his first son in two weeks. "This tour is hard, real hard. It's too much. It should be six months."

So the US military is a bunch of crybaby milquetoasts who can't stand a little sand in their shorts? Well, sandwiched down at the bottom is this closing nugget: "Many also said that while they wanted to be with their families at backyard barbecues or on trips to the baseball park, they knew what they signed up for by joining the army and were committed to stabilizing Iraq."

Goddamn it. Look, there is no way under the sun to stop soldiers bitching. Every workplace bitches, and when your workplace is an active combat zone in the desert, maybe you do a little more bitching. Rumsfeld is being proven wrong, or at least is losing the tug-of-war. It's just so. . . so. . . maddening that this is the image of our troops that the international press chooses to promulgate.

But I shouldn't be surprised. The lead story coughed up just now by Google News is an MSNBC bit titled "French suppress schadenfreude over U.S. Iraq woes," the gist of which is about how, now that the US is asking for UN support in Iraq, the Europeans get to jeer and point a little at our shattered cowboy hubris.

Well eff you effing bunch of bureaucrats and cowards. I seem to remember a long, long Kabuki dance some months ago, where resolution after resolution after resolution demanding prompt action by Iraq (or else suffer the consequences) was deemed empty of meaning by the very body that passed all eighteen of them. And when the US stepped up to act, the UN chose not to, out of protest for the US' percieved motives. Well, sorry, assholes, for trying to get something done.

I don't agree fully with President Bush's Iraq policy, which has proven disastrously short on the long-term planning and infrastructure management. (In fact, eff him too for putting us in this position!) Bush and his folks did bungle the presentation of case for libervading Iraq to the international community, and they have been less than forthcoming about long-term goals, but I can't stand to see the US as a whole indicted for trying to do something about "eeevil," whatever else is at stake. The US is arrogant, our system can be corrupt, venal, inward-looking, and sometimes cruel. But have these critics looked at what else is out there, at what we are struggling against?

I don't get it. I'm the KING of "yes...but..." and the Emperor of "but have you considered....", which should make me a natural ally of the UN, but FUCK! Have your little laugh at our expense, ha ha, yes thank you, and fucking LEND A FUCKING HAND ALREADY if we ask for it, why not?

God, I hope we don't need to ask for it.

In response to Johno's recent post, I have this to say: 

What kind of commie, pinko, terror-loving, raghead son of a....

Wait, what I meant to say was that he is exactly right.

David Brin has talked a lot about this, as well. Not so much about the Patriot Act in particular, but about what the most effective defense is. He believes, as I do, that an empowered and informed citizenry is the most effective defense. A distributed defense far more effective and responsive than anything the goverment could create by restricting our freedom. One might even say it would be... a general militia.

Two things - the events on flight 97 on the day, and the sniper madhunt in DC. The passengers on flight 97, in 90 minutes, used advanced communications technology and their own initiative to discover the intentions of the hijackers, formulate a plan, and foil the plot. Their example has made it unlikely that any American airliner will ever be hijacked again. Sadly, they lost their lives, but the principle still holds.

In the DC sniper situation, the police attempted to withhold critical information. The snipers were only caught when information accidently leaked, and a citizen put it all together and the suspects were arrested while sleeping in a rest area.

We are the first line of defense. In a terror war, we are on the front lines. Things like the Patriot Act are reprehensible not so much for infringements of our liberty, though they are guilty of that, but because they are ineffective. They get in the way of a proper defense. They try to sustain the myth of government omnicompetence.

We should not be reporting information to be collected in government deebees, there to be pondered by "experts," classified, and never to see the light of day unless the information gets in the hands of the DEA and some pot grower gets arrested.

The government should be releasing information to us. Websites tracking the activities of suspected terrorists should be published. The same monomaniacal geeks who engage in anal retentive fact checking of Michael Moore movies or Wolfowitz speeches could go nuts. Instead of a few government experts, you'd have thousands of people examining the data, weeding out the chaff, and forming consensus on the rest.

And if those fuckers ever come here, their faces would be all over the web.

These ideas would provoke horror in the minds of most bureaucrats. But stuff like that will be necessary, before too long. And in the long run, its the only way we can preserve our liberty and our security. 

He's so good, we stole our name from his idea. Today's bleat:

Why not nuke North Korea's nuke test? They've said they're going to have a test; I presume we know where that will be. So we nuke it the day before. There's a big explosion, a mushroom cloud; they blame us. We say what are you talking about? You said you were going to light one off. And you did. No! You did it! Right. We nuked your nuke test. And that makes sense . . .  how, exactly? It would certainly keep them off their game. And just after we nuke the test - and every subsequent test, of course - we put a call to Li'l Kim's cellphone, and someone with a Texas accent says oh, I'm sorry, wrong number. I was tryin' to reach a live man.

The AP is reporting that North Korea has announced to the six nation conference that

"it has nuclear weapons and has plans to test one, a U.S. official said Thursday. However, other participants said delegates agreed on the need for a second round of talks. The remarks by North Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Kim Yong Il set a negative tone at the conference and raised questions about the success of the negotiations"

Well, no shit.

U.S. officials say they believe North Korea has one or two nuclear weapons, and experts believe it could produce five to six more in a few months.

While I have been saying on this blog that we should wait, and let them collapse - if they test a nuke we might want to step it up a little.

The psychotic regime in Pyongyang is a threat to everyone.

I have just recently read two comments on the coming lack of attention to the anniversary of one of the worst days in American history. I commented on Robert Prather's Insults Unpunished that I want to remember what happened that day. Johno's post hit me, and reminded me about why we should be remembering.

I want to be reminded of the shock of the planes hitting the towers. I want to remember the horror I felt when I realized people were jumping from the top of the towers. I want that for many reasons.

But the reason I can never forget is that for months after the Eleventh, I drove by this every day on my way to work and back: 

Every day I would turn the corner on Rt 27 and see that, and every day I'd get a knot in my throat. 

I felt anger, and one of the few bright spots in the days right after the attack was the point-counterpoint article in the Onion - should we retaliate with blind rage or measured, focused rage? It helped a little to put it in perspective.

On the day, I was in my office a block from the White House and blissfully unaware of events. I walked by the conference room and saw everyone gathered around a 3" B&W TV. The first tower had been hit. As I watched, the second plane hit.

Astonishment, disbelief. Fifty thousand people work in those buildings. Over the next hour, we heard that the Pentagon was hit, and rumors that there was a bomb at the State Department. Six planes were unaccounted for. Eventually someone did the math, and the decision to evacuate was made. Everyone was kicked out of the government offices downtown. Everyone figured that one of the missing planes was coming for the White House or for the Capitol.

The metro had already closed, and the streets were gridlocked with federal workers and cars. The cell networks had crashed - but I had managed to get a hold of my dad at the Air and Space Museum on a landline before we were told to leave.

I started walking toward the mall. Every few feet I'd see someone dial a number on their cell phone, hold it to their ear, then say, "Shit." Cars were barely moving.

Ten blocks later, I got to the mall. I was never so relieved as when I looked to my right and saw the Washington Monument, and to the left and saw the Capitol. Both were still standing. Except for the panic, it was as beautiful a day as you ever get in swampy DC.

I got to the museum, which had never opened, and sweet talked my way in. Dad and I watched the news on a small tv in the library for a couple hours. When we emerged, the city was deserted. No cars, no pedestrians. It was the eeriest thing I have ever seen. Bright, sunny, clear day in DC, and not a tourist in sight.

I finally boarded the reopened metro, and when we came above ground just before National Airport we all turned back and saw the plume of smoke from the Pentagon. It was still smoking when they reopened some of the roads around the Pentagon.

So the decision has been made: network television is going to treat September 11th, 2003 like just another day, mostly. Well, I might just be a hick, but I don't think that's a good idea. I don't particularly want to forgive or forget what happened two Septembers ago. The shock might have faded but the memory should not.

I know this is a leetle early, but forgive me. My anniversary, the goodwife's birthday, and several other happy occasions fall on or near the eleventh, so if I'm going to bicker an' argue about 'oo killed 'oo, I'll get it out of the way now.

When I lived in New York, I used to travel from Queens to Jersey City every Sunday to play music with my friends Darrell and Bruce. It was the best part of my week. When I made it to the World Trade Center subway station, I always felt a little better because fun was just a PATH ride away. The WTC station was nifty too-- the underground mall, the half-attractive artsy inlays, the rumble of the downtown A going by. The Commuter Bar, entirely decorated in beige naugahyde and aged winos. Loved it, loved it.

Oddly enough, the World Trade Center was one of my favorite places in New York. It was how I oriented myself walking around the city. It gave balance and heft to the southern end of Manhattan. You could see it for miles, driving in on the Jersey Pike or I-95. It was like a huge, ungainly guardian watching over my city.

---------

On the 108th floor of the World Trade Center's north tower, there was a little conference room/ lounge area with a baby grand piano. I discovered this by accident one night in February of 2000.

I was at the Windows On The World on the 110th floor to see a rockabilly band managed by a co-worker's boyfriend, and Samir and Bruce were kinda late, because they got lost. (Even after I moved away from New York, I'd occasionally get calls from Samir.... "Johno... I'm on Park Avenue and 25th Street. How do I get to Grand Central Station from here?")

In the midst of getting lost, Samir and Bruce managed to give the World Trade Center elevator operators the slip and got off on the wrong floor... the 108th to be exact, where they found the piano lounge.

After we had our fill of rockabilly and high-up views of Staten Island, we went back down to the 108th floor, and hung out for a couple hours, playing the piano and staring out at the Verrazano Narrows Bridge from one of the darkened grottoes. It was one of the best nights I had in New York. Later, Bruce would take his future wife there on a crucial and historic date.

---------

As I sat in a bar in Massachusetts downstairs from the office, watching the television play images of the assault on New York, my mind was occupied like most people's was, trying to cut through the shock and disbelief, choking back horror and confused rage. I was a mess.

As the north tower of the World Trade Center fell impossibly slowly into its own rising cloud of dust, I started to cover my eyes, then stopped, and stared dumbly. I couldn't process what was happening. I didn't understand thousands dead. I didn't understand how the world was changing, even though I knew it had. Everyone had theories, but we were all in shock.

My mind was reeling, and the one sharp, tiny realization that stabbed me in the heart and made it all real was how much it TOTALLY SUCKED that my Secret New York Piano Lounge was gone-- I could never play the piano in the World Trade Center again.

Then I went back upstairs to see if all my friends were still alive.

David Warren, after a month long absence, is back with a wonderful essay on where we stand in Iraq and the war on terrah. This article does a good job of explaining what the administration seems unable to do - why we are where we are.

It should be obvious to everyone why we are fighting the war on terror. That this is a necessary conflict should be clear to even the most blinkered of liberals. As I stated in the comments to one of Johno's earlier posts, the first steps of the war were the obvious ones. Al Qaida hits us. They are in Afghanistan. We hit Afghanistan. Straightforward.

After Afghanistan, we entered the area where reasonable people might differ on how to prosecute the war on terror. However, most of the opposition was predicated not on the basis of "Iraq is not the right target" but on "No war for oil" and similar idiocies. The protracted argument over the invasion of Iraq was fueled by the administration's lack of clarity and inability to articulate what is to be done, and why.

Part of this muddle was due to the decision to go to the United Nations. This forced the administration to lean its arguments in one direction - WMD - and slight the other arguments for moving on Iraq. This gave further ammunition to those who opposed the war on terror.

Steven den Beste has argued that the administration cannot tell us what the plan is, because revealing the plan would spoil it. This is true on the small scale, but not the large. We should not reveal the exact timetables and plans for an invasion. That is not only stupid but treasonous. But the larger plan, the geopolitical master scheme should be open and above board.

The more I think about this, the more I am convinced that the administration is making a serious error in not taking the larger case to the public here in the US, and to the rest of the world. Various people, including Clueless and Trent Telenko over at Winds of Change have analyzed the minutia of reports from around the world, and concluded that see the signs of the master plan. I agree, and have talked about that plan here.

The American public can be trusted with this information. In fact, it must be. If we reveal that the heart of our strategy in the War on Terror is to remake the Middle East and transform North Korea, to set a real precedent that any nation that supports terror is responsible for it, and will suffer the consequences at the hands of the civilized world, what have we given away? Nothing. If we make the case, clearly and repeatedly that those who support terrorism will be put up against the wall, it will not allow our enemies to resist our actions any better than currently.

There would be benefits for doing this. By clearly stating the our specific aims, and in broad terms our methods, we build support domestically, and co-opt or isolate opponents. The opponents of the war on terror have two choices - argue against specific decisions on grounds of whether or not that action would advance the cause (which could only help the effort, as constructive criticism is always useful) or continue as they are, and make clear that they are against the war on terror in general.

Internationally, we would not have to make the kind of tortured arguments that many have criticized. We would not need to justify an invasion on WMD, or any other single criteria. We need merely fall back on the original justification for the war on terror - and explain how whatever nation is in our crosshairs will serve the cause of peace by ceasing to exist.

The argument for Iraq is much stronger when you add in all the other reasons besides WMD. The coherence offered by stating our strategy would reassure our allies and make clear who are opponents are, while forcing our opponents to be clearer about their motives.

But the best reason for doing so is because we are a republic, and the citizens of this republic have a right to be informed and to participate in the decision making in an informed manner. The columnists and bloggers who are speculating on America's strategy are doing their best to justify the individual decisions in the war on terror, but properly, this isn't their job - it is the job of our leadership.

Everybody seems to be very proud of President Bush for how he handled 9/11/2001 and thereafter.

Let me ask you this: short of Naderite self-flagellation and naval gazing, who would have handled things any differently, or indeed, less well, had they been in his position?

(Please don't take this as an endorsement of the "illegitimate President" meme. I don't know what the hell happened in Florida, and don't care. My tinfoil hat is put away in the coat closet for the time being.)

Virginia Postrel has a well-written and pithy post up about the President and the War on Terra.

Excerpts follow (emphases are mine). I have no comments, except for "(mostly) what she said." (I'm not voting for Bush.)

Listening to President Bush's speech today, I found myself sympathizing with Josh Marshall's post on the problems of a vaguely articulated cause. The problem isn't that Bush is inarticulate, though he's no great speaker. The problem is that the administration deliberately obfuscates about who and why we are fighting. A "war on terror" is like a war on tanks--it's a war on a tactic, not an enemy. If al Qaeda had hit the Pentagon with a missile rather than a civilian airliner, that attack on a military target wouldn't have been an act of terrorism, but it would have been an act of war. And there's no reason to think al Qaeda wouldn't have used a missile if it could have.

Because the administration won't say bluntly who and why we're fighting, it tends either to step on its own strategy or to mislead the public about the reasons for U.S. actions. No, I don't think the Bush administration "lied" about weapons of mass destruction; Occam's Razor suggests that officials were in fact worried abou that threat. But I think the administration overemphasized the importance of WMD, compared to other reasons for intervening, to placate the State Department, the "international community," and the Saudis. Getting rid of Saddam reduces the chances of Islamicist terrorism on American soil, but not merely by ending his WMD programs, whatever their status.

I'm sympathetic to the diplomatic reasons for not spelling out certain goals, such as the pressures a U.S-friendly Iraq puts on the Saudis. But Bush's vagueness is maddening to people who are paying attention and confusing to people who aren't. (Unlike Josh, I'm neither a Wilsonian nor a Bush basher--I voted for him once and expect to do so again--but that doesn't mean we can't agree about this.)

My close personal friend "Geek Lethal," who was actually IN the army [update: during]* Gulf War I: First Blood, responds to yesterday's posts (here and here) about Kalashnikovs and M-16s.

In an earlier phase of life I found myself taking a short (40 hours) course on OPFOR ("Opposing Force"... an entirely unneccessary euphemism for "Russian", since we all knew who we were talking about) small arms.

I trained on the whole Kalishnakov product line: AK47, AKM, AK74, your S (ie folding stock) variant; crummy Egyptian AKMs that nearly fell apart when disassembled; VERY nice East German AK74S', as well as other stuff: your Makarov and Tokarev pistols; your SVD sniper rifle (awesome weapon); RPK machine gun; PK machine gun; the uber-macho DSHKM crew-served machine gun, and various and sundry other lethal Rooskie tchochkes. At the end of the week, range day was a hoot.

Yes, it is true: AKs can take a remarkable beating and still function. Which is great. Yes they are simple to operate and understand.... I taught a 6 year old girl, assisted by my rudimentary German, how to diassamble, reassemble, load, sight, and unload an AKM, with a level of proficiency that she could do it all herself, in under 10 minutes.

But simply functioning is not enough. They aren't alot of use beyond about 250m, which is not great if you're doing alot of fighting in the open, and they aren't terrifically accurate within those 250m. But yes, I can see how their ubiquity and ease of maintenance (ie, none at all) make them preferable to the Colt product they sort of compete with. Now, if you want to accurately shoot at bad guys past 300m, instead of spraying randomly and hoping for a good hit, I'd go with a '16. But that's me. Shit if I had a choice give everybody the good ol' M14. Or revamp the current infantry weapon to a more robust round. Sure a 5.56 will kill you just as dead as a 7.62 round will, but combining M16 accuracy with that beefier round might be a swell thing. Consider the Bundeswehr's G3, for example, as a modern example. Mmmm, maybe not...WAY too many pins and thingies to keep track of and/or lose.

OK rambling now...moving on....

I would also ask the larger question of why dismounted tank crews are running foot patrols in urban back alleys, as in this recent CSM article. Of course they pick up AKs, because there aren't enough M4/16 in the unit TO&E for every crew; they get 9mm pistols as an afterthought because THEY ARE TANK CREWS AND SHOULD BE FIGHTING FROM TANKS! Leave foot patrols to the infantry and MPs.

* n.b. Original post had Mr. Lethal in the sand, shooting at Iraqis. This is untrue. Mr. Lethal's Gulf-War duty was restricted to cavorting with buxom German lasses and dodging half-ton mountain warthogs during the long cold European winter.

Johno, as for the AK-47 (and its successors, the AK-74 and AKM) it is a wonderful weapon, designed by a genius, Kalishnikov. But the vast majority of Russian products are no where near the AK in reliability or effectiveness. The thing with the Russians is, most of their military equipment is by American standards overengineered. Guns, tanks, planes are designed with the limitations of Russian industry and Russian conscript soldiers in mind.

In some instances, as with their assault rifles, a great engineer can come up with a design that performs very well, and yet is rugged and easy to manufacture. In most other circumstances, the result is shoddy design, limited capabilities and high maintenance. The problem is even worse in the civilian sector. The other example you mentioned, soviet rockets, were designed in the fifties and sixties by another genius, Korolev. The Russians are still using the Soyuz capsule created when Korolev was the Chief Designer for the Soviet space program. Their rocket technology still uses the technology developed under his watch, and slowly refined since then.

In other areas, Soviet technology is notably poor. When we got our hands on the MIG-25, which had been rumored to be an amazing fighter, American engineers were shocked by the crudity of the design. Heavy steel construction, vacuum tube electronics, and so on. Sure, it was fast. But that was about it. Any contemporary American fighter could fly circles around it. Because they didn't have the capability to make fighters out of carbon fiber composites, beryllium alloys, and so forth, they made it out of steel. Areas where computer aided design and other techniques would allow American designers to cut weight and make the design more efficient are clumsy and overengineered.

This ruggedness has advantages, but it is not everything. Better trained American mechanics can keep their more complicated fighters, helicopters and tech wizardry in the fight - and when they are in the fight, that design advantage is overpowering, as we have seen. Russian tanks can not compare to the M1, not even remotely. M1's can engage a Russkiy tank a thousand yards outside the Russian tank's range, while driving 40mph over rough ground, hit it on the first shot, and the round will go all the way through the Russian tank. A T-80 might (might) have lower maintenance requirements. But it doesn't matter if one American tank can kill ten for every one we lose.

In very specific, limited areas of technology the Russians could outclass us. Sometimes, because a genius was behind the drawing board. Other times, as with the MIG-15 in Korea, it was because the idiot labor government of Britain gave the Soviets their most advanced jet engine design. But that excellence came at a high cost - it took the Russians a lot more effort, money and time to achieve those levels of competence than it would for your average American defense contractor.

It all comes down to the system. Russians are of course no denser than we are. They have notable gifts in mathematics and other disciplines. They have as many geniuses as we do. But - the American system allows efficient teamwork, cross fertilization between different disciplines, and much greater creativity. An average American design team can approximate genius anywhere else in the world, due to our skill at organizing things. When you actually have a genius in charge of a team, you get things like the SR-71, or the Saturn rocket.

Free development in all types of technology - commercial and military - allows development to speed up in every single technology. The computer technology created in the US allowed vast improvements in aeronautical design, in targeting, control systems, stealth, etc. The result is the $200mil F-22. But that fighter is the best. These kind of interacting developments are what make us so frightfully lethal. And it's our system that allows it to happen.

Not that the result is always perfect. People have complained about the M-16 ever since it was introduced. It's twitchy, has a lightweight round, jams easily, and it doesn't look lethal or ominous. Yet we've used it for almost forty years because it's good enough. (We're right around the corner from a new standard issue weapon. The OICW will have all kinds of goodies.)

But on the average, the vastly higher overall American technology base allows us to create weapons that benefit from the capabilities of American industry, and can assume the high education and skill levels of American soldiers.

The World Trib is reporting that US Intelligence believes that the Iraqi WMD are located not in Iraq, but in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley. Some have suspected this before - along with suspicions that top level Iraqi gov't officials had also fled to Syria. The Bekaa Valley is in some senses the best place for the WMD to go - a lawless region home to Hizbollah, Syrian forces, and Iranian agents.

If this report is true, it makes for problems. If we have a fix on where they are, and high confidence that the reports are true, do we go get them? This could provoke further conflict with Syria, and get us enmeshed in the rat's nest of Palestinian terror groups. While there is little doubt that American forces could defeat any of these groups, the action would put further pressure on already overstretched American forces, and the diplomatic blowback of another unilateral (without the approval of France) action would be annoying at best.

Assuming that the report is true, and that we went after the WMD, certain elements would cry even louder about Bush=Hitler and all that, even if we took the smoking gun out of Iraqi intelligence forces' hands.

This could be interesting.