Medary.com

Mark Steyn, Medary.com's favorite columnist, on our coming long war with radical Islam headed by Iran:

Four years into the "war on terror," the Bush administration has begun promoting a new formulation: "the long war." Not a reassuring name. In a short war, put your money on tanks and bombs--our strengths. In a long war, the better bet is will and manpower--their strengths, and our great weakness. Even a loser can win when he’s up against a defeatist. A big chunk of Western civilization, consciously or otherwise, has given the impression that it’s dying to surrender to somebody, anybody. Reasonably enough, Islam figures: Hey, why not us? If you add to the advantages of will and manpower a nuclear capability, the odds shift dramatically.

Meanwhile, a large portion of the credit for the current world situation can be given to the esteemed former President James E. Carter.

Are you really willing to bet the entirety of western liberal civilization on the premise that the Islamic extremists don't mean exactly what they say?  Jimmy was, and we are now reaping the whirlwind of his misjudgment.  Frankly, I think the Bush Administration is also badly mismanaging the world situation, not by being too aggressive, but by being too timid a la the Carter Administration.  Much of that timidity is due to the rabid resistance of the left.  It's not so much that I'm for Bush, it's just that the alternatives are much, much, much worse.  If there was a Democrat who understood that it's 1936 all over again, I wouldn't be nearly as concerned as I am.

Via Hugh Hewett among others . . .

A fascinating take from Austin Bay at StrategyPage, which may explain the glacially slow progress in forming an Iraqi govnerment.  Bay thinks that it's because Grand Ayatollah Sistani is making a quiet power play to push radical Muqtada Sadr to the sidelines:

Late one afternoon in mid-August, I delivered a brief report to British Maj. Gen. Andrew Graham in his Al Faw Palace office (west of Baghdad). Graham, as deputy commander of Multi-National Corps-Iraq, had been deeply involved in directing the coalition's military response to Sadr's audacious move.

After discussing my report, Graham asked, "Remember what I said about Ayatollah Sistani?"

Graham was referring Iraq's leading Shia cleric, Grand Ayatollah Al-Sayid Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani. A week earlier, Graham had told me: "Sistani is a living example of an apolitical Islamic clergyman. He specifically says his role is that of spiritual guide."

I told Graham I recalled our conversation.

"He's central to resolving the situation Najaf," Graham said. He added that winning the global war against Islamist extremism meant that moderate Muslim clerics had to speak out, but -- and here's the quote I remember -- "The pro-democracy moderate Muslim cleric doesn't have to be found. That's Sistani. Fortunately, he is the most influential religious leader in Iraq."

Within two weeks, Sistani helped engineer a withdrawal of Sadr's militia from the mosque. Tactically (and with little media fanfare), coalition military units had mauled Sadr's militia. Superficially, Sadr had "lived to fight another day." But the mosque wasn't rubble. Damage to the mosque was blamed on Sadr's militiamen. (Iraqi police also found pornographic magazines left by Sadr's men inside the mosque.) The people of Najaf greeted coalition troops as liberators.

Sistani's aides told Iraqi and coalition officers: "Let us deal with Sadr. We know how to handle him and will do so. However, the coalition must not make him a martyr."

I left Iraq with the impression that Sistani's plan for handling Sadr would be a python-like squeeze only an Iraqi insider would fully understand.

Following the January 2005 election, Sadr joined Iraq's political process (though I noticed his militia kept its weapons). After parliamentary elections, Sadr gained control of nearly three-dozen seats and positioned himself as a kingmaker.

But that status appears to be short-lived. One indicator is the March 26 attack by Iraqi commandos on a Mahdi militia facility in Baghdad. The predictable media outrage lasted less than a week -- and Iraq's Interior Ministry pointed out it had acted to stop sectarian vigilantes. Sadr lost "street face" to the Interior Ministry -- and it appears Sadr's political position has subsequently deteriorated.

Outsiders -- including U.S. government officials -- can bewail the Iraqi parliament's lack of progress in forming a government, but since the middle of March I strongly suspect the hidden story has been the Interior Ministry and the Iraqi nationalists' war on Sadr. It's a quiet police and political war waged with the blessing of Ayatollah Sistani. Creating a strong and stable Iraqi government (the so-called "national rescue front") is the goal. Sistani has advised Shia leaders to make concessions to Sunnis in order to establish a "unity government." That's an action anathema to Sadr.

Via Instapundit.

Well, this is no surprise to some of us, but . . .  that whole tizzy about Bush "leaking" information . . .

This just in from the extra-legal Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald:  "Never Mind!"

We are writing to correct a sentence from the Government’s Response to Defendant’s Third Motion to Compel Discovery, filed on April 5, 2006. The sentence, which is the second sentence of the second paragraph on page 23, reads, ‘Defendant understood that he was to tell Miller, among other things, that a key judgment of the NIE held that Iraq was ‘vigorously trying to procure’ uranium.” That sentence should read, “Defendant understood that he was to tell Miller, among other things, some of the key judgments of the NIE, and that the NIE stated that Iraq was ‘vigorously trying to procure’ uranium.”

Even if you're the most determined Bush-Hater, you have to see that this puts things in a completely different light.  Instead of focusing on one specific fact to "leak" to reporters, we now see that Libby's instructions were to convey "some of the key judgments" of the National Intelligence Estimate, one of which is to debunk discredited Ambassador Joe Wilson's rogue report on Niger.

(Actually no, you don't have to see it that way.  I'm pretty sure you won't.  You're so wrapped around the axle that you think the Sun rising in the east is somehow Bush's Fault.  Get a grip.  Go play with your dog or something for a while.)

Meanwhile, if Fitzgerald is this sloppy in this court filing, what else has he misconstrued or mis-stated in his zeal to get someone, anyone to justify his existence?

Rick Moran writes at the American Thinker about what is probably the biggest untold story of the 21st Century so far:

But in concentrating on the mote in the other fellow’s eye, Waas has missed the knife sticking out of the back of the Bush Administration; a knife planted by a group of leakers--organized or not--at the CIA who, unelected though they were, took it upon themselves to first try and prevent the execution of United States policy they were sworn to carry out, and failing that, trying to destroy in the most blatantly partisan manner an Administration with which they had a policy disagreement.

How can anyone possibly understand the motivations, the actions, or the thinking in the White House during this crucial time without taking into account the war being conducted against them by the CIA?

In truth, those predisposed to believe the worst about Bush chalk up all the maneuvering on the part of the White House to "covering up" their supposed misrepresentations and exaggerations of pre-war intelligence in the lead up to the war.

But what if there is a different explanation?

What if everything you think you know and despise about the Bush Administration is, in fact, wrong?

I'm spending a lot of time tweaking the new discussion board for South Dakota State University athletics over on my other site, SDSUFans.com.

A roundup of my insta-take (I suppose Insta-Glenn has that copyrighted?) on some recent news items:

Unauthorized Plame "Leak" authorized by President -- Well, um, that would make it "authorized" then, wouldn't it?

Tom Delay calls it quits -- Mr. Delay seems to be an unpleasant sort. But prosecutor Ronnie Earle is the character in this little play who is the truly dangerous one--a political witch-hunter of the first order.

Senate comes to agreement on illegal immigration -- I haven't paid a lot of attention to this but the more serious and responsible bloggers I read are not encouraged by the Senate's compromise. And, Harry Reid seems to like it, which is never a good sign.

Cynthia McKinney -- Throw the book at her, bounce her from Congress, let her spend some quality time in the friendly local Federal penitentiary. And that's just for her utterly offensive "cry racism" defense ploy.

Sean Lynch over at Catallarchy likes PriceGrabber much more than, say, Froogle.

On hard drives, for example, you can filter by size range, cache size, speed, and manufacturer. The couple times I’ve found errors in either the condition an item was listed in (the vendor had a refurb listed as new) or the availability (the vendor was out of stock but it showed as in stock on PriceGrabber) they’ve always responded within one business day. I have yet to find an incorrect price. Occasionally some of the listings will say “see site” but I generally just skip those. Rebates, which I hate, are also listed right in the comparison list, so you don’t have to visit the price to find out you need to mail in a rebate form and then wait for your money if you’re lucky enough to have the rebate actually fulfilled. They also list stuff that’s available from Amazon, so no more searching Amazon and not knowing whether the item in the list is actually available to buy or if it’s from an Amazon partner and not Amazon themselves!

In an event as shocking as the sun rising in the morning, Microsoft is preparing to send out yet another "critical" Internet Explorer security fix:

Microsoft has confirmed it plans to release a fix for a serious security bug in Internet Explorer next Tuesday (11 April). The fix for the "CreateTextRange" vulnerability - which has become the subject of hacker exploits over recent days - will be released as a cumulative update to Internet Explorer along with four other security bulletins (details here).

Please tell me you're not using Internet Explorer right now.  Pretty please?

at OpinionJournal: New Time, Same Katie:

What's more interesting about Ms. Couric's becoming managing editor of a major network news show is that it will mean the end of the anchor as political cipher. In days past, whatever we suspected about their leanings, anchorpersons felt compelled at least to pose as disinterested reporters of "the way it is." Ms. Couric dropped that veil long ago.

The list of her utterances and leading questions posted on the Media Research Center's fretful Web site (www.mrc.org/projects/couric/welcome.asp) may not fully represent the range of her opinions and peeves. Unless she's a total fake on camera, though, there's little doubt about where Katie stands across the great red-blue divide. Democrats and their pet causes get tender respect; Republican and "conservative" policies get introduced in terms of the alleged threat they represent to our great nation.

Sadly, my Snookums is among the Perky One's big fans . . .

Perhaps, just perhaps God is smarter and cleverer than Intelligent Design proponents . . .

Chaos=Order: Physicists Make Baffling Discovery

But then came the real surprise: When they introduced disorder – forces were applied at random to each oscillator – the system became ordered and synchronized.

"The thing that is counterintuitive is that when you introduce disorder into the system – when the [forces on the pendulums] act at random – the chaos that was present before disappears and there is order," said Sebastian F. Brandt, physics graduate student and lead author of the study which appeared in the January 2006 edition of Physical Review Letters.