WHEN DO WE TAKE IRAQ’S TRAINING WHEELS OFF?
The time for our soldiers to depart from Iraq is most certainly not now, and seems far away. But the Iraqi army and police are getting larger and more capable with each passing month. I now think the benefits of setting a timetable for the withdrawal of American conventional units exceed the liabilities of doing so. Neither the Iraqi nor the American publics will stand much longer for an indefinite commitment. The deadline should be flexible, but a deadline should be set. The Iraqis aren't ready to stand on their own yet, but at some point the training wheels must come off.
SMUGGLERS’ PARADISE
This is a story about 21st century Persian smugglers and 19th century British soldiers driven crazy by literally going "around the bend." It takes place in one of the world's most inhospitable and strategically critical places in the world - the Strait of Hormuz. This is where the sharp tip of Arabia, known as the Musandam Point, sticks into the Persian Gulf, separating it from the Indian Ocean. The Strait of Hormuz is only 30 miles wide from Musandam Point to the coast of Iran, and through it passes a substantial fraction of the world's crude oil, pumped out of the Saudi, Kuwaiti, Iraqi, Iranian, and Emirati oil fields, and into giant supertankers which snake through the Strait in continuous succession. That's where I am right now, writing this overlooking the Strait of Hormuz. The sun is setting, and I can see it lighting up the cliffs of Iran. There's a direct flight from Arbil in Iraqi Kurdistan to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. From there I drove through the other Emirates like Sharjah and Umm al Qawain, then up into the wasteland of Musandam to here. I had come to see a Persian smuggling operation running contraband across the Strait by speedboat into Iran. But first, let's talk about those crazy Brits...
TURTLE SOUP
Grand Cayman, The Cayman Islands Turtle Farm. If people were not allowed to own chickens and if chicken eggs and meat could not be legally sold, how many chickens would there be? The reason chickens, cattle, catfish, and goldfish are not endangered is because they are owned by private parties, bred and raised in captivity, and sold for commercial profit - hence there are billions of these animals. The poor sea turtle is endangered precisely because the global environmental lobby refuses to let sea turtles be commercially farmed and marketed like chickens and cattle and catfish.
RICE AND “REASONABLES”
She's a Renaissance woman, whose talents run from scholarship to music and sport. But in this interview with Bret Stephens of the Wall St. Journal, Condoleezza Rice often seems oddly detached from the life-and-death quality of the war against the terror masters. Indeed, she doesn't even call it a war, and the things she says about it are sometimes striking - headline quality remarks - but more often very peculiar. To begin with, she doesn't expect us to win this "battle, if you will, or a struggle," during the Bush presidency. Her mission for the next two years is not victory, but to put "some fundamentals in place." I wish the interviewer had asked her to define these "fundamentals," so that we could better judge whether or not they are worth the lives and limbs of our children.
STOCK SCAMS A GROWING THREAT
Here we are, well on our way into the 21st century. The human race has been around for at least 5,767 years as of last weekend (the Jewish New Year), and we've been working with e-mail, Internet and spam for over a decade already. With those credentials, you'd think people would know better.
Well, we do know better - but some people never learn. The proof? Many people are following the advice offered in the flood of stock-scam spam that has hit the Internet in recent months, leaving virtually no computer immune.
I'm sure that some To The Pointers are among them.
According to a recent study by Internet researchers at Harvard and Purdue Universities, the prices of "penny stocks" being touted in mass mailings to suckers actually rose significantly after a batch of messages were sent - as if recipients were rushing to their online brokers to buy the likes of Cyberhand Tech and ThermaFreeze Products in the hope that they could double their money.
Well, the come-ons are certainly appealing, but it's a scam, of course; all part of "pump and dump" schemes, where scammers buy stock in companies that exist mainly on paper and are traded on unsupervised exchanges, and then dump the shares on those who respond to their spam.
It must be working, because in the past few months stock spam has begun edging out fat pills and Viagra messages in my inbox!
WITH THE PESHMERGA
The moon was a little over a quarter full. It would be setting in an hour or so, leaving us without its meager light. I longed for night vision goggles, but the men I was with seemed to have no need of them and moved confidently in the dark. They were Kurdish guerrilla fighters known as Peshmerga, "Those who face death." We were armed, but not heavily. Holstered on my belt was a Webley Mark IV .38 revolver, and slung over my back was an AK-47 Kalashnikov, Type 2 with a wooden stock. The famous banana clip only holds 30 rounds, but I had no vest for extra magazines. One of the men showed me he was carrying eight and motioned for me not to worry. The Peshmerga were all carrying AKs of course, with vests for extra magazines and pouches for hand grenades. But that was it - no RPGs (rocket-propelled grenade launchers), no heavy machine guns. We were traveling light, as this was an insertion team. The mission was to insert me into Iran.
JOKE INTELLIGENCE
There is an "intelligence website" emanating from Israel called Debka. This Monday (September 24), it breathlessly blared Iran and Turkey Prepare for War in Iraqi Kurdistan. Debka's "exclusive military sources in Iraq" have revealed just to the website alone that "Turkish and Iranian air units as well as armored, paratroop, special operations and artillery forces are poised for an imminent coordinated invasion of the northern Iraqi autonomous province of Kurdistan." Since I am in Iraqi Kurdistan meeting with Kurdish resistance movements operating in Iran, I showed them the story. They laughed their heads off.
THE NEW YORK TIMES DESERVES A HORSEWHIPPING
The New York Times who, along with the Washington Post did stories last Sunday on a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) issued in April deserves a horsewhipping. The NIE represents the collective judgment of the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies. The stories insinuated the intelligence chiefs had concluded the war in Iraq was a mistake. "Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Worsens Terrorism Threat," said the headline in the New York Times. "Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Hurting U.S. Terror Fight," said the headline in the Washington Post. "We assess that the Iraq jihad is shaping a new generation of terrorist leaders and operatives; perceived jihadist success there would inspire more fighters to continue the struggle elsewhere," the NIE said. The Times and the Post reported only the first half of that sentence.
CHOOSING A PRINTER
When I moved to Israel years ago, I brought with me all my worldly possessions, among them a 300 dpi laser printer - quite an expensive gadget in those days.
It was so pricey, in fact, that I remember having to leave a huge deposit at the airport; the customs inspectors said that I would have to return with paperwork proving that I needed it for business if I wanted to get my money back.
And now? Printers are practically throwaway items! Actually, there ain't so such animal as a "printer" anymore. Nowadays, the only printers with decent output are part of "all-in-one" machines that include faxes and scanners as well as three- and even four-color printing.
Though printers are more powerful and cheaper than they have ever been, and they come with a raft of features, they are, for the most part, really and truly flimsy.
Compare these printers with the one I brought with me to Israel. It was solid enough to make the trip in an airline luggage hold and survive to tell the tale. I dare you to try that with most of the printers you can pick up in stores such as Office Depot nowadays.
THE KURDISH KEY TO THE MIDDLE EAST
Among the most fascinating folks in the world are people known as the Kurds. They are older than history. The Land of Kurda is mentioned in Sumerian clay tablets - the world's oldest writing - over 5,000 years ago. The Land of Kurda - Kurdistan - was ancient five millennia ago. The Kurds had been living there for thousands of years before 3,000 BC - and they are still living there today, in the mountains of what is now northwestern Iran, northern Iraq, northeastern Syria, and southeastern Turkey. They number in the tens of millions - five million in Iraq, ten million in Iran, three million in Syria, between twenty and thirty million in Turkey. They are by far the largest ethnic group on earth without their own country. This has always made them a threat to the countries that divide up their homeland of Kurdistan. Always. The Kurds have been fighting the Persians for 2,500 years, the Arabs for 1,300 years, the Turks for 500 years. Western governments look upon the Kurds as a problem which threatens to break apart the fragile map of the Middle East into chaotic pieces. Now at last, the time has arrived to look upon the Kurds as an opportunity rather than a threat, not as a problem but a solution. The emerging reality is that the Kurds are the key to peace, freedom, and democracy throughout the entire Middle East. That's why I am in northern Iraq right now, as I am writing this.