My friend Bill Roggio, an Army veteran and Web logger who was embedded with U.S. Marines in Iraq last fall, was a guest this week on a segment of the CNN show "On the Story."  The topic was news coverage from Iraq.

"On the Story" gets even lower ratings than the average CNN show, so there's a question of how representative of American public opinion audience reaction is.  But before the segment with Bill began, host Ali Velshi conducted a little poll.

"Give me a show of hands if you have confidence in the news coming out of Iraq," Mr. Velshi asked the studio audience.  "It looks like about 30 percent of you."

"Let's see a show of hands of those of you who don't have confidence like (Defense Secretary) Donald Rumsfeld says," he asked.  "That looks like 90 percent of you."

If it hasn't already arrived in your community, it will be there soon:  the nightmare of addiction to methamphetamine.  Supplanting cocaine in drug use, it's much easier and cheaper to make than coke.  A "meth lab" requires only simple equipment like bottles and tubing, easily acquired ingredients, and can be set up in a small space in most any building.

Not only is it cheaper than coke, the high the addict gets from meth is far more intense - and thus far more addictive.  Meth users get a sudden rush of pleasure lasting several minutes, followed by a euphoric high that continues for up to 12 hours.  It leaves cocaine in the dust.

Both cocaine and meth cause the excessive release of the brain chemical or neurotransmitter that controls pleasure called dopamine.  Having sex raises dopamine levels in the brain to about 200 units.  Cocaine spikes dopamine levels to 350 units.  Methamphetamine spikes at 1,250 - more than 12 times the base level of 100.

When I was an undergraduate at UCLA, my favorite professor was Dr. H. L. Kostanick.  He taught political geography.  He never used a lectern or notes.  Always dressed impeccably in a coat, tie, and sweater vest, he would stand before us, hands in his pockets, and explain the world to us.

Every lecture, no matter about what part of the world, was fascinating.  But most memorable of all was his lecture on the Middle East.  "Ladies and gentlemen, the most critical thing to understand about conflict in the Middle East," he told us, "is that it is not a conflict between Arab and Jew.  It is a conflict between the 10th century and the 20th."

On March 3, Mohammed Taheri-azar, a 22-year-old graduate of the University of North Carolina, rented an SUV and drove it into "the Pit," an area between two libraries on the UNC campus in Chapel Hill where students congregate, injuring nine.

Mr. Taheri-azar told police he made the attack "to avenge the deaths of Moslems around the world." He smiled and waved at his arraignment, and told reporters he was "thankful for the opportunity to spread the will of Allah."

In Chapel Hill, university officials have refused to characterize Mr. Taheri-azar's assault as either a hate crime or an act of terror.   When some students protested the attack, there was a counter protest.

"By calling it religious violence, you are telling people that Moslems are violent," sophomore Johnathon Pourzal complained to the Durham Herald Sun.

Journalists will be paying rapt attention when Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman go on trial next month for violation of the Espionage Act of 1917.

Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman were officials of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee.  They received classified information from Lawrence Franklin, an analyst at the Department of Defense, which they passed on to an Israeli diplomat, and to journalists.  They are the first private citizens ever to be prosecuted under the Espionage Act.

Mr. Franklin pled guilty Jan. 20th and was sentenced to more than 12 years in prison, though his sentence could be reduced in exchange for testimony against Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman.

Journalists note there is little difference between what Mr. Rosen and Weissman are accused of doing, and what reporters who have published stories based on leaks of classified information have done, and beads of sweat form on their brows. 

In Dubai, everyone refers to their ruler, Emir Mohammed Bin Rashid al-Maktoum, as "MBR."  Just to give you an idea of how he is into tourism not terrorism, here's a quick story.

He has closed circuit television in his private office.  And what are the cameras trained on?  Immigration/passport control lines at the airport.  If MBR sees the lines are getting too long, he picks up the phone and orders more personnel to reduce the lines.  Again, his focus is tourism not terrorism.

The US Navy docks its ships at Dubai more often than at any other non-US port in the world.  25,000 Americans (and 100,000 Brits) live and work in the Emirates now.

The realization that Dubai and the UAE is the most pro-American Arab country on earth is sinking in to fevered Congressional brains as their spasm of knee-jerk xenophobia dissipates. 

The next morning, Cortez assembled the Cholulan caciques, commanders, nobles, and priests, together with the Tlaxcalan commanders, in the freshly swept courtyard.  Mounted on his horse, he had the Mesheeka ambassadors standing on one side, and Malinali on the other.  Behind him were arrayed his officers, resplendent in polished armor, and a contingent of Totonac warriors led by Mamexi, all in their finest feather headdresses.  Cortez began speaking to the Cholulans sternly:

"Two days ago, the king of Cholula was guilty of a great treachery, which he and his followers paid for with their lives.  The entire city of Cholula deserves to be destroyed for this treachery, and your enemies of Tlaxcala wished to do so.  But you are subjects of the Lord Montezuma, and it is out of my respect for him that I will forgive Cholula.  I will pardon and forgive Cholula on one condition:  that the Cholulans make peace with Tlaxcala.  Nobles and leaders of Cholula:  have you chosen one among you to now be your king?"

The Associated Press reported Monday (2/27) that Sunni Arabs in Iraq are prepared to end their boycott of talks to form a national unity government, thus disappointing yet again those journalists who've been telling us for two years civil war is imminent.

It seemed last Wednesday (2/22) as if the pessimists might finally be right after terrorists destroyed the Golden Mosque in Samarra, one of the holiest sites in Shia Islam.  Shia militias attacked more than a dozen Sunni mosques in retaliation.  An unprecedented three day curfew was imposed in Baghdad in order to curb sectarian violence in which more than 100 people were killed.

To the grave disappointment of the New York Times, both Sunni and Shia religious leaders have called for calm.  "We have much more evidence of a strong national unity movement in Iraq," says Iraqi Web logger Haider Ajina of the weekend demonstrations.  "This attack was supposed to plunge Iraq into sectarian mayhem and senseless massive killing.  This did not happen."

These peaceful demonstrations for peace drew little attention from a news media that is eager to report on a civil war, even if it isn't happening.

It is my great pleasure to announce our First Annual To The Point Members' Conference, to be held in Washington DC from April 21-23.

I'll be your host and master of ceremonies.  It's a marvelous opportunity for folks in our To The Point family to get to know each other.

Friday evening, April 21, we'll assemble at the Doubletree Inn in Pentagon City overlooking the Potomac River for a reception and dinner in the revolving restaurant with an extraordinary view of Washington.  Yep, I'll give a speech.

Saturday morning, April 22, is devoted to panels and speeches by our To The Point writers - with lots of Q&A.  You'll meet Dr. Joel Wade, Neal Asbury, Jack Kelly, Michael Ledeen, Ariel Cohen of the Heritage Foundation, Enders Wimbush of the Hudson Institute, and Alex Alexiev, one of the world's grandmasters of geopolitics.

Your mind will be stretched wide and crammed full of insights about what's really going on in the world.

What do the arrests of three suspected Moslem terrorists in Ohio have to do with the purchase by an Arab company of the firm that manages facilities at six U.S. seaports?

Nothing...and everything.

The Justice Department indicted Tuesday Mohammad Zaki Amawi, 26, of Toledo; Marwan Othman al-Hindi, 42, of Toledo, and Wassim Mazloum, 24, of Cleveland, on charges of plotting to kill U.S. military personnel.

Today's (2/17) Wall Street Journal has an op-ed by a CIA intelligence officer, Guillermo Christensen, entitled Un-Intelligence.  The article exposes the self-serving attack on President Bush and the War in Iraq by a fellow CIA officer named Paul Pillar in the current issue of Foreign Affairs.

Pillar is now being lionized by the left for his anti-Bush screed - but you first learned about him here at To The Point in October 2004.

Porter At The Pass revealed that Paul Pillar and his left wing cabal at the CIA, which I named The Pillar Gang, was conducting a covert campaign of leaks and disclosures to damage George Bush's chances of re-election and help John Kerry's.

As explained in "Porter At The Pass":

Former Vice President Al Gore is bitterly disappointed he was not elected president.  Periodically, he expresses his disappointment in ways that gives us reason to be thankful he wasn't.

The most recent was last weekend, when he traveled to Saudi Arabia to make a speech denouncing the United States. The occasion was the annual Jeddah economic forum, which is sponsored in part by the family of Osama bin Laden (which claims to have distanced itself from the family black sheep). 

Mr. Gore has not disclosed how much he was paid for his words of wisdom.  It probably is less than the $267,000 former president Bill Clinton was paid for speaking to the group in 2002, but odds are his fee was in six figures.

The Jade Steps

Chapter Twenty One: The  Trap of Cholula

They spent most of the siesta, the Spaniards' period of rest after the mid-day meal, having fun turning Spanish words into Nahuatl. Malinali was having so much fun it made her forgetful. She shook her head. "I must leave," she told them. "Our Mesheeka guests have come for their daily ceremony of complaining to Captain Cortez, and I must be there, for it is through me that they address their complaints."

"Have fun," Aguilar joked. Malinali sighed. "Our talking - that was fun. But ‘fun' and ‘Mesheeka' are two words that don't go together - in Spanish or Nahuatl."

Today is the nineteenth day here in Tlaxcala, she thought as she walked to Cortez's quarters, and for every one of those days, the Mesheeka emissaries who had accompanied them from Xocotlan had come to complain to Cortez about what terrible people the Tlaxcalans were, how they were all traitors and thieves and poor and wicked and not fit even to be slaves. It was so tiresome to hear and translate, and how Cortez could pretend to always be courteous and polite, or even stay awake, during the daily moaning, she didn't know.

When she saw the crowd of soldiers in front of Cortez's quarters, she realized something was different.

On the heels of record freezing weather in Europe, there was a story this week (carried by the Drudge Report and WorldNetDaily so you may have seen it) about a Russian scientist predicting global cooling. Russian astronomer Khabibulo Absudamatov expects a “decrease in the flow of the Sun’s radiation,” over the next several years which will lead to cooling, not continued warming of the planet. While his prediction may be right, he is wrong about the cause. As discussed in Solar Warming last September, it’s not the sun’s heat radiation causing a warmer earth, it’s the sun’s magnetic activity. In Solar Warming, we discussed the cost-free solution to global warming: Let the world’s airlines use high-sulfur jet fuel while flying at cruise altitude. The solution to global cooling is the mirror image of this: Have international jetliners burn their fuel “rich” at altitude. Give them a tax credit as an inducement.

Would you prefer to live in a country that has: (1) The rule of law with an honest civil service, strong protection of private property and minority rights, free trade, free markets, very low taxes, and full freedom of the speech, press and religion, but not a democracy? (2) Democracy and a corrupt court and civil service, many restrictions on economic freedom, including very high taxes, with limited rights for minority religions, peoples and speech? Many mistakenly believe democracy means liberty, but a quick review of world democracies show that is not true. Almost all democracies restrict economic liberties more than necessary. Many have corrupt court and civil service systems, inhibit women's rights, constrain press freedom and do not protect minority rights and views.

The New York Times had an editorial Tuesday, February 7, on the controversy triggered by publication in a Danish newspaper of 12 caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed. "The New York Times and much of the rest of the nation's news media have reported on the cartoons but refrained from showing them," the editors said. "That seems a reasonable choice for news organizations that usually refrain from gratuitous assaults on religious symbols..." The very next day, Wednesday, February 8, the Times published, gratuitously, an image of the Virgin Mary in elephant dung. And the New York Times was one of many newspapers which in 1989 published a photograph of Christ on a crucifix submerged in a vat of urine. Washington Post executive editor Len Downie told Editor & Publisher he wouldn't publish the Danish cartoons because of "general good taste." Had Mr. Downie developed his good taste a week earlier, the Post might not have published a cartoon of a quadruple amputee soldier so vile all six members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff wrote a letter to the editor protesting it. Most in the news media don't mind offending people who express their outrage by writing letters to the editor. But when the offended threaten to cut off the editor's head, editors become more "culturally sensitive."