Inside Hezbollah’s Free Fire Zone
NORTHERN ISRAEL – I teamed up with Noah Pollak, Assistant Editor at Azure Magazine in Jerusalem, and took a rental car through Hezbollah’s shooting gallery to the front line on the Lebanese/Israeli border. Famed military historian Michael Oren, author of…

This is a refreshing first person article of the war from Israel. No photoshopping or staging required to write this article as it focused on the some of the less politicized aspects of this war. I found that the pictures complemented the description of how civilian life has been altered in Northern Israel. Their life has been disrupted but there is considerably less destruction and loss of life in Israel than in Lebanon. Their attitudes are serious and pensive. The bullets and rockets are not images from a far away place. They are in the war and the rockets are exploding nearby. Friends and enemy are going to die and the military and political results are likely to leave a hole in the soul that only God can heal. There are no atheists in foxholes.

Americans favor repealing the death tax not because they think it will help them directly. They’re more principled than that. Two-thirds of the public wants to repeal it because they think taxing a lifetime of thrift due to the accident of death is unfair, and even immoral. They also understand that the really rich won’t pay the tax anyway because they hire lawyers to avoid it.

[Via OpinionJournal.com]

One of the best summaries advocating the repeal of the death tax. The man or woman on the street understands these issues and that is why repealing the death tax makes sense to them.

It has come to my attention that the art of civil disobedience has fallen on hard times. The ousting of Mary McCarthy is the latest example of the poor state of this time honored art. Though Martin Luther King is the great modern day example, it is “Deep Throat” appears to be the role model for today’s pretenders. Before we knew her name we could empathize with her plight of knowing about prisons that most people would consider to be not representative of American policy and that revealing that secret information was illegal and disloyal to her employer. Now that we know her name and her background, we are dismayed, cynical, and our priorities have shifted. The issue of the “greater good” is overwhelmed by Mary’s conspicuous history of political appointments and donations. The focus would have remained on the prison issue if she was apolitical. Since she is so political, the focus has moved to Mary’s political motives. The important issue has become about a CIA employee abusing the trust given her to further her personal political agenda. I doubt the CIA promotes politicizing secret information as an employee fringe benefit. For her personal gain she has further damaged a wounded organization. Both Mary and Valerie Plame are examples of what we do not want to see in role models. Both woman abused their position with the CIA to further their political agenda. My wife was aghast to hear that the person who leaked secret information about the prisons was a woman with a history of Democratic party contributions. In a year with so much discussion about a potential woman president and the good characteristics of women, this a sad reminder that each woman must be judged individually. Some women behave badly.

Plame’s “outing” was the result of either CIA incompetence or an effort to undermine the White House.

[Via OpinionJournal.com]

Shortly after the Libby indictments I started to wonder about Valerie Plame and the CIA’s responsibility in this affair. I was tempted to write a piece titled, “Who is Valerie Plame sleeping with?”, but ultimately decided against it. Did she know that her husband’s action were ending her career at the CIA? My fascination with this subject goes directly to the point all married men eventually confront, “What is the responsibility of the husband to his wife’s career?” Should a husband or wife sacrifice their spouse’s career for their own gain? Assuming that Valerie is no dummy I have to conclude she must of have been okay with the idea that her husband’s action would do bring attention to himself and exposing her employment at the CIA.

I guess I should write this off as a presidential political shenanigan. What reeks is that the CIA was overtly participating in presidential politics and they were so sloppy at it. I guess the TV and movies raised my expectations that the folks at the CIA are a lot smarter and sophisticated than the average folks. I did not expect them to demonstrate such incompetence managing a simple intelligence operation. Now I am reading about top secret prisons being exposed in the press. I am concerned about possibly illegal torture of prisoners but I am actually more alarmed that the CIA cannot keep a secret. It is easy to see that the CIA was and still is seriously dysfunctional. Loyalty, morale, and operational effectiveness must be at an all time low. With as many foreign threats as there are, we need the CIA to operating at 100%. Unfortunately the bad news will continue to come. I am afraid that the Libby trial will focus a lot more attention on the CIA’s internal problems.

My predictions: if Harriet Miers is lucky enough to make it through the judiciary committee, she will be voted down by the full senate. Then what? Following the rejection, President Bush makes a phone call to Senator Frist and asks: now are you willing to fight for the type of candidate that you claim to want?

Then again, I could be wrong. 🙂

[Via baldilocks]

In New Orleans, by contrast, the mayor seemed panicked, the governor seemed medicated, and the airborne wasn’t there until it was there and peace was restored. Until then no one took responsibility. There was a vacuum. But nature abhors a vacuum, so rumors and chaos came in to fill it. Which made things worse.

No one took charge. Thus the postgame commentary in which everyone blamed someone else: The mayor fumbled the ball, the governor didn’t call the play, the president didn’t have a ground game.

[Via OpinionJournal.com]

A reflective piece about the mishaps of Katrina and the failure of our leaders to be preceived as in charge. Whether we like it or not, our media will try to fix the situation by the only means they know how. They will report the story in a way that results in quick action. If we do not like the job the media did in this disaster, we need better leadership by our governments.

NOLA.com: OPINION – A Weblog By The Times Picayune

During Hurricane Betsey, then-Mayor Vic Schiro famously said, “Don’t believe any false rumors unless you hear them from me.” Unfortunately, during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, some of the most lurid rumors of violence in the Superdome and the New Orleans Convention Center came from those in charge: Mayor Ray Nagin and Police Superintendent Eddie Compass. And now it appears they were mostly false.

Here is another article lamenting the rumors spread by people we would normally trust.

Katrina Takes a Toll on Truth, News Accuracy – Los Angeles Times

This article is probably the first of several articles that will state the obvious, journalists failed to check their stories. The harm from their reporting is obvious. From my viewpoint it appears that the inquisition of FEMA is based on the furor created by these stories.