General observations on the operation:
1. The Africa Corps did not enter the Somali arena with a clear vision,
specifically a strategic vision, either militarily or politically.
2. Likewise, Americans did not enter the Somali arena with a clear vision
of the objectives of its presence. Moreover, its vision of East Africa and
the Horn of Africa failed to crystallize. I believe that the buffoon
Clinton was motivated by election considerations and a personal
inclination toward flamboyance, as if for a fleeting moment he believed
the falsehood that he was the leader of the most powerful country in the
world.
These are not just my words. Rather, this is the considered opinion of many
inside America and abroad. What was the result? The result was that our
amazing Corps was equal to America for the first time, but in a limited area
—the area of darkness regarding a strategic vision. So how were our
amazing Corps and its starving African Muslim allies able to be victorious
over the greatest power in the world today?

This next excerpt I also found to be rather interesting:

The Somali experience confirmed the spurious nature of American
power and that it has not recovered from the Vietnam complex. It fears
getting bogged down in a real war that would reveal its psychological
collapse at the level of personnel and leadership. Since Vietnam
America has been seeking easy battles that are completely guaranteed. It
entered into a shameful series of adventures on the island of Grenada,
then Panama, then bombing Libya, and then the Gulf War farce, which
was the greatest military, political, and ideological swindle in history.
The outcomes were 100 percent guaranteed. Even so, the Americans
brought with them forces from 30 countries to take the blows on their
behalf, should events not turn out the way they were supposed to. In the
end, the Arabs, the Europeans, and Japan paid the costs of the war, plus
fees!
America wanted to continue this series of farces. It assumed that Somalia
was an appropriate space for another ridiculous act. But the Muslims were
there—so the great disaster occurred. They fled in panic before their true
capabilities could be exposed.
6. In Mogadishu and Beirut, urban deterrence operations caused the
American forces to flee in a shameful and humiliating manner. Doesn’t
this demonstrate the importance of this type of warfare and the need to
develop our warfare capabilities in terms of personnel, training syllabi,
equipment being used, its level of technological advancement,
development of security syllabi, development of security procedures, and
training of competent elements for the security field.
On the subject of security, it should be noted that the enemy’s greatest effort
to pursue and eliminate Islamic action has become so dependent on his
security agencies that the military apparatus is gradually being transformed
into something resembling advanced Central Security…

Much more on Austin Bay

The Red Cross put the death toll in Maiduguri and Katsina at 28, but the Christian Association of Nigeria said it had counted at least 50 dead bodies in Maiduguri alone.

Monday's death count reached at least 13 with two more churches torched after an argument between a teacher and a pupil over the confiscation of a Koran in school:

...But rumours swept the city that the book had been desecrated and that was the cue for youths, some armed with machetes, to rampage in the streets.

The violence comes just two days after protests against Danish cartoons in two northern cities left at least 25 dead.

Reports say two churches were burnt in Bauchi before police fired tear gas and live rounds to disperse the crowd.

The state governor and senior security officials in the state are meeting to discuss security and consider whether to hold an inquiry into the incident.

The Red Cross say they have recovered 13 bodies but this may rise as they hope to recover more bodies.

The riot was not directly related to the violence over the weekend in the two northern towns of Maiduguri and Katsina, which began as demonstrations against the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.

There are also reports of Christians being burned inside churches. 

 

Jack Kelly's weekly Pittsburgh Post Gazette column reviews the evidence Able Danger and brings the story up to date. Kelly concludes: "It's unclear why the Bush administration is covering up [Able Danger], since the suppression of Able Danger occurred on President Clinton's watch. But it is clear there is a cover-up. One would think a Washington press corps obsessing about a hunting accident in Texas would be more curious about it."

I think that's an observation that broadly applies to events of the past week including the administration's approval of the sale of six American ports to the United Arab Emirates, Al Gore's giving one of the most disgusting speeches in American history in a hotbed of Islamism, and the restarting of uranium enrichment in Iran combined with Iran's bald terrorist threats.

UPDATE:  Michelle Malkin covers the media's Cheney Derangement Syndrome and also links to video of Powerline's Scott Johnson's appearance on CNN's Reliable Sources to discuss what he calls the "deranged sophmoric hysteria" of the leftist media.

UPDATE2:  The liberals in the media criticized Cheney's decision to talk to Fox News and not to them, because Fox News would be a more friendly venue (never mind that they have the most viewers).  Expose The Left has video of a Fox News segment where media critic Neal Gabler suggests that Cheney shot his friend on purpose to distract the public from the Abu Gharib story.  I won't dignify that allegation with a response, but so much for the idea that Fox News only gives one side of the debate.

The reason for this work, Miller said, was "an explosion from my gut reaction of what's happening now." He can't stand entertainers who lack the moxie of their '40s counterparts who stood up to Hitler. Holy Terror is "a reminder to people who seem to have forgotten who we're up against."

We'll have to wait for the book to see how the Caped Crusader handles sticky situations like this:

What is to be said of a man who stood a heartbeat away from the presidency of the United States and now feels free to defame his country as he has done?

Sari Hanafi, an associate professor at the American University in Beirut, said for Arab governments resentful of the Western push for democracy, the protests presented an opportunity to undercut the appeal of the West to Arab citizens. The freedom pushed by the West, they seemed to say, brought with it disrespect for Islam. Hanafi said the demonstrations "started as a visceral reaction — of course they were offended — and then you had regimes taking advantage, saying, 'Look, this is the democracy they're talking about.' The protests also allowed governments to outflank a growing challenge from Islamic opposition movements by defending Islam."

And note this:

"The wave swept many in the region. Sheik Muhammed Abu Zaid, an imam from the Lebanese town of Saida, said he began hearing of the caricatures from several Palestinian friends visiting from Denmark in December but made little of it. 'For me, honestly, this didn't seem so important,' Abu Zaid said, comparing the drawings to those made of Jesus Christ in Christian countries. 'I thought, I know that this is something typical in such countries,' he recalled."

Like race riots in the early 20th Century, this is a case of ignorant yahoos being exploited by elites in order to protect the elites' power against civilizing influences.

UPDATE:  Also consider this by Michael Kinsley on Slate:

“The bewildered prime minister of Denmark, trying to calm the whirlwind that has descended on his innocent, unsuspecting country, gets it spectacularly wrong when he reassures disgruntled Muslims that Denmark supports "freedom of religion" and is "one of the world's most tolerant and open societies." Tolerance, openness, and freedom of religion are not what they have in mind. A lively debate is going on about whether Islam really does forbid any portrayal of the prophet, however benign, or whether that is a recent innovation of some subset of the faithful with possible ulterior motives. This debate misses the point. Some Christians believe they are required to wear particular sorts of clothing. Some Jews and Muslims don't eat pork. They don't claim that their religion requires other people to wear special clothing or avoid eating pork. Tolerance and ecumenism can only do so much. They have nothing to offer a Muslim in Afghanistan who is personally insulted and enraged about an image that appears in a newspaper in Denmark."

The Dems will exploit this accident to smear Cheney as incapable of being trusted, weak of mind, etc. The resignation rumors will fly again. And the biography of a man who has served this country so well and so honorably for so many years will be overshadowed by a single, ill-fated hunting mishap.

"Five foreigners were killed in the U.S. attack in Bajur," Musharraf told tribal elders in the city of Charsada. "One of them was a close relative of Ayman al-Zawahri and the other man was wanted by the U.S. and had a $5 million reward on his head."

The Pakistani president added that al-Zawahri _ al-Qaida's No. 2 leader _ was also expected to be in the town, where the suspects were meeting for a dinner. But Pakistani officials have said al-Zawahri skipped the event and instead sent his deputies.

More on who the terrorists were:

Umar, 52, an Egyptian, has been cited by the U.S. Justice Department as an explosives expert and poisons instructor. He is suspected of training hundreds of mujahedeen, or holy warriors, at a terrorist camp in Afghanistan before the ouster of the hard-line Taliban regime in late 2001.

This also seems to raise some insight as to the recent tapes released by Al Queda's #1 and #2.  We hit them where it hurts and they try to intimidate us by sounding like Congressional Democrats.

The President has the legal authority to launch missles at terrorists but many are still convinced that it would be illegal to listen to them when they call phone numbers in the United States.  More on that later.

I think I already addressed the legal arguments (exhaustively) in another post but a quick summary:

American Presidents since Jimmy Carter and beyond have performed warrantless searches of electronic communications for national security. The courts have consistently ruled -- as recently as 2002 -- that such searches do not violate the 4th Amendment and additionally that legislation such as FISA can not limit or "unduly fustrate" the President's Constitutional powers.

Information from these warrantless searches for national seucrity can NOT be used to obtain a criminal warrant. Today's Wall Street Journal explains this with further commentary:

"They decided that pertinent information gleaned from a warrantless wiretap should never be used later to justify a domestic warrant. But why not? If a tip gathered from an email from Pakistan leads to suspicion about an American-based contact, what's wrong with using that news to get a legal warrant to track that suspect in the U.S.? It might even prevent a domestic attack."

But lets get back to this nebulous concern of "privacy". In this debate we hear things like "police state" and "big brother" in this argument. So far I have yet to see a single person step before a microphone and explain how their privacy or rights have been compromised by "King George's Police State". Sure if you take an absolutist interpretation of the 4th Amendment these rights have been violated, but no US court has EVER interpreted the 4th Amendment in this manner -- one that would preempt the President's other Constitutional powers.

There are these wild perceptions out there by the tin-foil-hat community but in my opinion there is little to no demonstrable evidence to justify such perceptions.

Yet this same crowd that worries about the police state, insists that the President's claims that 10 terror attempts were thwarted in recent years -- including the US Bank tower in Los Angeles in 2002, were likely a fabrication created by the Administration to justify their "domestic spying".

So in summary their argument is that they fear a police state, but can provide no evidence beyond abstract concepts and concerns, but any suggestion that there is any kind of terrorist threat is a trumped up fear. If this trend continues, soon many Americans will have a perception of 9-11 that mirrors Iran's perceptions of the holocaust.

Our lives and our privacy are so paramount that how dare anyone listen in on our international phone calls to steal grandma's secret recipes, under the prextext of national security? For crying out loud, as Stephen Hayes continues to report we have only translated less than 3% of the documents we have captured in Iraq -- some of which appear to possibly contain information on terror links. I guess the NSA needs to pull more spooks off of investigating our collective nocturnal activites and doing some real spy work.

Wow, sounds like quite a revelation. The article, by Eric Lipton, reports that President Bush has said that he didn't learn that the levee in New Orleans had broken until Tuesday, August 30. But new documents made public by Congressional investigators reveal that ... drum roll ... the White House received an email on the levee breaking at midnight on the night of August 29! Which means that Bush learned about the levee on August 30. Not exactly a scoop.

That was just a misleading headline. But Lipton made an outright misrepresentation just a few paragraphs later. In its original version, which I assume appeared in print this morning, his article said:

But the alert did not seem to register. Even the next morning, President Bush, on vacation in Texas, was feeling relieved that New Orleans had "dodged the bullet," he later recalled.

Only Bush was not on vacation in Texas. Lipton just made that part up. Actually, on the morning of August 30 he was in California, meeting with soldiers who were wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. So the Times has done a sub silentio correction. The article now reads:

But the alert did not seem to register. Even the next morning, President Bush was feeling relieved that New Orleans had "dodged the bullet," he later recalled.

Just another hit-and-run by the Times.

The question from both Democratic and Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee at a hearing Monday was: Why stop there? Why not intercept domestic calls, as well?

 

"I don't understand why you would limit your eavesdropping only to foreign conversations," Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) told Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton on Wednesday accused Republicans of "playing the fear card" of terrorism to win elections and said Democrats cannot keep quiet if they want to win in November.

 

The New York Democrat, facing re-election this year and considered a potential White House candidate in 2008, said Republicans won the past two elections on the issue of national security and "they're doing it to us again."

Referring to fugitive al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, Clinton said, "You cannot explain to me why we have not captured or killed the tallest man in Afghanistan."

As both Powerline and Michelle Malkin have pointed out, fears of fueling controversy did not stop CNN from publishing Abu Gharib photos.  And when crucifixes in urine offended sensibilities, liberals waved the Constitution claiming free speech and warning about censorship -- which arguably is what CNN is doing now.

A French Magazine called Charlie Hebdo has published a cartoon depicting Mohammad on the front cover.  President Chirac criticized "overt provocations", but an editor for the magazine explained the decision:

"When extremists extract concessions from democracies on points of principle, either by blackmail or terror, democracies do not have long left," Charlie Hebdo editor Philippe Val wrote.

I think that's more or less correct.

UPDATE:  Sister Toldjah has more including that the NYTimes published a photo of the Virgin Mary splattered in elephant dung today.

Democrats said they had not yet figured out how to counter the White House's long assault on their national security credentials.

And they said their opportunities to break through to voters with a coherent message on domestic and foreign policy — should they settle on one — were restricted by the lack of an established, nationally known leader to carry their message this fall.

"We're selling our party short; you've got to stand for a lot more than just blasting the other side," said Gov. Phil Bredesen of Tennessee. "The country is wide open to hear some alternatives, but I don't think it's wide open to all these criticisms. I am sitting here and getting all my e-mail about the things we are supposed to say about the president's speech, but it's extremely light on ideas. It's like, 'We're for jobs and we're for America.' "

IRISH rocker-turned-global do-gooder Bono has been keeping busy lately, challenging the president to increase aid to the world's poor and launching his new "Red" campaign to fight HIV and AIDS in Africa. But behind the scenes, the New York Post reports that his firm, Elevation Partners, is in talks to buy Take-Two Interactive, the troubled video-game company responsible for the not-so-globally-conscious game "Grand Theft Auto"....

 

So is Bono a world-uniting figure whose mission is to alleviate the world of hunger, poverty and disease? Or is he a business mogul out to make a profit even if the business goes against that message?

Bono has proven he can be many things. But in this case, he can't be both.

I agree with the Choronicle (for once) that this seems like very un-Bonoesque behavior.

But perhaps it is possible that by acquiring the company, Bono and his fis firm intend to somehow suppress the gratuiously violent video game in which players simulate violent and felonious crimes on civilians. 

I find this video game offensive and a social ill and would not lose any sleep if it were no longer published.  Then again that doesn't make this move make much sense economically, but at the same time I have a hard time beleiving that Bono intends to profit from such a violent franchise -- especially considering his strong gun control opinions.

We'll have to wait and see if in the next version of GTA your mission is to Bullet the Blue Sky...