Troop Movements

This is a story worth watching - two soldiers are missing after an attack on a checkpoint outside Baghdad. Have the insurgents changed tactics in order to regain the advantage - figuring that they might get the media to push harder for the US to leave Iraq as soon as possible if they start showing pictures of US soldiers being held - along with death threats if their demands aren't met? This is still a developing story. US armed forces are conducting searches for the missing soldiers.

At the same time a leading insurgeny leader laments Zarqawi's death because it was a great loss. Too bad. So sad. Not.

Meanwhile, coalition forces are giving the Taliban a pasting in Afghanistan. MSNBC calls it a severe blow to the Taliban. And speaking of the Taliban, documents captured in Iraq in the aftermath of deposing Saddam and the Ba'athists found that Saddam was entertaining links with the Taliban.

Initial Haditha Investigation Report Completed

The initial Haditha investigation report has been completed and submitted.

Bargewell has just one piece of the investigation — whether the Marines followed proper procedures in reporting about the incident to commanders, or whether anyone engaged in a cover-up. His investigation also may consider whether any criminal charges should be brought in connection with deliberate attempts to lie about the incident.

A second probe is also under way by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service into what exactly happened that day, and whether criminal — or even murder — charges should be brought against those involved.

Officials have been expecting Bargewell's report. Members of Congress have said they want to hold hearings into the matter and said they would like to hear first from Bargewell.

Martin-Hing added that Chiarelli will make no public statements on the report that could interfere with the ongoing criminal investigation.

Expect leaks of portions of the report to come out in the coming weeks and months despite the hope that there will be no public statements made. Holding Congressional hearings on the matter will only increase the possibility that potentially damaging leaks will occur. The New York Times calls the situation thus far one that is clouded in contradictions and yet proceeds to declare that the situation is grim and that one of the Marines may be cooperating with investigators.

Investigators and townspeople have said that marines overreacted to a fatal roadside bombing and shot the civilians, only one of whom was armed, in cold blood.

Marines and their lawyers, who are only now beginning to speak out after months of harsh portrayals of their actions, contend that they believed they were under a concerted attack, and entitled under their rules of engagement to use lethal force against those who they believed were responsible for a roadside bomb that killed a marine.

The 24 Iraqis killed included 5 men in a taxi and 19 other civilians in several houses, where, marines have contended, their use of grenades and blind fire was permitted under their combat guidelines when they believed their lives were threatened.

However, investigators have found evidence that the men in the taxi were not fleeing the bombing scene, as the marines have told military officials. Investigators have also concluded that most of the victims in three houses died from well-aimed rifle shots, not shrapnel or random fire, according to military officials familiar with the initial findings.

The houses where the killings took place show no evidence of the violent room-clearing assault described by the marines and their lawyers, the officials said.

The bodies have not yet been exhumed for autopsies, and defense lawyers can be expected to challenge the narrow use of photographic evidence on these points. But according to two people briefed on the investigation, one member of the Marine squad at Haditha, himself closely tied to some of the deaths, is now cooperating with investigators.

The taxi shootings appear to be the most troubling for investigators. And key pieces of forensic evidence may be compromised because we're relying on a situation that occurred months ago. Autopsies have not been conducted because the families refuse to allow the exhumations because of religious objections. Lawyers for one of the Marines implicated in the Haditha incident have serious questions about one of the people making claims who happens to run a human rights group and produced a tape of the incident months after the incident occurred about what happened. Sweetness and Light has the details. The man in question, 43-year-old Thaer Thabit al-Hadithi, was originally described by Time magazine as a journalism student but is in fact the founder of Hammurabi human rights group and one of only two employees. One of the two members of the group happened to have relatives detained by coalition forces because they were considered insurgents. But here's the kicker:

Abdul Rahman al-Mashhadani, director of Hammurabi Human Rights and Democracy Monitoring, declined to answer questions from Reuters about the organization.

"We don’t answer such questions that we consider as intelligence and information gathering," he said. "They (Reuters) should have monitored the media so that they can get a good image of us."

Curious. They claim to be a human rights group, but refuse to answer questions about their own actions and what they've done? Very curious.


Meanwhile, the seven Marines and one Navy corpsman who have been detained by the military at Camp Pendelton over another alleged incident in Iraq have had their security situation improved. To this point, they had been detained in solitary confinement with leg shackles at all times. In other words, they were being more harshly treated than many of the worst enemy combatants held at GitMo. After an outcry over their situation this past week, their situation has improved:

Military officials on Friday said they have decided to remove shackles put on seven confined Marines and one sailor whenever they’re outside their individual cells at the Camp Pendleton brig, a Marine Corps spokesman said.

The eight men, confined at the brig since May 24, were being held with “maximum” restraints based on their battalion commander’s decision following an initial investigation into the shooting. As of Friday, they were shifted into what’s called “medium-in” restraint in pre-trial custody, which does not require shackles to be worn, although they remain escorted anytime they are outside their cell, according to 2nd Lt. Lawton King, a base spokesman.


Under “medium-in,” they won’t have any personal restraint while inside the brig, but once outside – such as to go to a court hearing – each “is restrained with handcuffs attached to a leather belt … and their respective escorts carry along leg cuffs in the event they are needed,” King said.

The decision to lower the restraint level came after a June 15 review by the brig commander, he said.

The seven Marines and Navy corpsman, all members of the Pendleton-based 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines currently deployed in Iraq, were first confined to quarters in Iraq on May 12 after allegations rose over the April 26 death of an Iraqi man in the village of Hamdaniya.

UPDATE:
Others noting the confinement issue at Camp Pendelton: Michelle Malkin, Blue Crab Boulevard, Coalition of the Swilling, memeorandum

Gateway Pundit notes that the initial investigation has been completed and also relates a claim that some of those killed may have been shot by AK-47s, which is a common weapon used by insurgents and terrorists - not US armed forces. If confirmed, that would significantly change the story.


Posted to Wizbang's Carnival of Trackbacks, Stop the ACLU's Friday Free for all,

The Intrepid Heading For Drydock Repairs

The USS Intrepid, which is the centerpiece of the Intrepid Sea Air Space Museum in New York City is going to be undergoing a series of repairs in a drydock, which means that the ship will be out of commission as a musuem and learning center for several months. The museum attracts more than 500,000 visitors a year:

The buzz about the Intrepid's impending shore leave has been making the rounds of the ship's former crewmen. Charles Coppess, who spent two years aboard the Intrepid from 1959 to 1961 and now lives in Portage, Ind., said he heard talk at a reunion of the ship's alumni last week in Louisville, Ky., that it might be headed for a dry dock in Bayonne.

Executives of Bayonne Dry Dock and Repair Corporation, which was frequently mentioned as a possible site for the repairs, did not respond to several requests for comment this week.

If city officials knew more about the plans for moving one of the city's better-known attractions, they were not saying.

Three members of Community Board 4 met yesterday morning aboard the Intrepid with executives of the Intrepid Museum Foundation. But they came away with few details about the plan, said John Doswell, a co-chairman of the board's waterfront and parks committee.

Mr. Doswell said that William White, president of the foundation, had indicated that the ship's removal for repair would coincide with the replacement of Pier 86, the city-owned dock that the Intrepid is tied to.

The work on the pier could take up to two years, Mr. Doswell said, but he added that he did not yet know when the Intrepid would leave its berth or when it would return. He said Mr. White promised to lay out his plans in detail at the next public meeting of Community Board 4, on July 13.

The Intrepid has become a landmark on the West Side of Manhattan, and the Essex class carrier is joined by the submarine Growler, and a collection of aircraft, and other artifacts including a Concorde, an A-12 spyplane (relative of the SR-71 Blackbird, F-16, F-14, A/V-8 Harrier, and other historic aircraft.

No Indictment for Rep. McKinney

And so ends another episode of members of Congress gone wild. It would actually appear that Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) got off easier for her incident with the authorities than did Rep. Patrick Kennedy. A grand jury could not find sufficient evidence to indict Rep. Cynthia McKinney for an incident at a security checkpoint at the Rayburn House Office Building. That incident including McKinney shoving or otherwise hitting a Capitol Police officer who sought to obtain proper identification from McKinney.

The grand jury had been considering the case since shortly after the March 29 incident, which has led to much discussion on Capitol Hill about race and the conduct of lawmakers and the officers who protect them.

"We respect the decision of the grand jury in this difficult matter," said U.S. Attorney Kenneth Wainstein.

His statement, released late Friday, also included support for the officer involved, Paul McKenna, and the Capitol Police. He said, "This is a tremendously difficult job, and it is one that Officer McKenna and his colleagues perform with the utmost professionalism and dignity."

With that, Wainstein closed a case that has simmered with racial and political tension.

"I am relieved that this unfortunate incident is behind me," McKinney said in a statement Friday night. "I accept today's grand jury finding of 'no probable cause' as right and just and the proper resolution of this case."

The encounter began when McKinney, D-Ga., tried to enter a House office building without walking through a metal detector or wearing the lapel pin that identifies members of Congress.

McKenna did not recognize her as a member of Congress and asked her three times to stop. When she ignored him, he tried to stop her. McKinney then hit him.

McKinney described the encounter as "racial profiling," insisting she had been assaulted and had done nothing wrong.

McKinney is black. McKenna is white.

Others noting McKinney's non-indictment: Stop the ACLU, Hot Air, Sister Toldjah, and Outside the Beltway.

Unlawful Command Influence

Get used to hearing the term, unlawful command influence, used alot in coming weeks and months. According to United States vs. Gore, No. 03-6003, 60 MJ 178, unlawful command influence can be defined as:

No authority convening a general, special, or summary court-martial, nor any other commanding officer, may censure, reprimand, or admonish the court or any member, military judge, or counsel thereof, with respect to the findings or sentence adjudged by the court, or with respect to any other exercises of its or his functions in the conduct of the proceedings. No person subject to this chapter may attempt to coerce or, by any unauthorized means, influence the action of a court-martial or any other military tribunal or any member thereof, in reaching the findings or sentence in any case. . . .

Such statements have the effect of depriving the accused of their rights:

“The exercise of command influence tends to deprive servicemembers of their constitutional rights. If directed against prospective defense witnesses, it transgresses the accused’s right to have access to favorable evidence.”

Confederate Yankee sums it up thusly:

John Murtha took the extraordinary step of accusing Marines of a war crime before the investigation was complete, and perhaps has compromised justice in this process entirely. Someone should ask Murtha if his political grandstanding was worth becoming the "mortal enemy of military justice" and jeopardizing the constitutional rights of these Marines. Someone should, but they aren't likely to get an answer. According the author of the Times article, Murtha’s spokesman did not return a call seeking comment.

It appears that someone may be defense attorneys for the accused, who will use those statements to enlighten the proceeding about the potential railroading of their clients without having the benefit of a completed investigation.

Is Document Recovered From Zarqawi Raid Fake?

I wrote about the strategy document and its potential impact on the conflict here. However, there is reason to believe that the document is fake. Michael Ledeen gives his rationale here. Are we looking at another fake, but accurate situation?

Jihadists Continue to Make Gains in Somolia

Islamist militia, who control the Somali capital, Mogadishu, and other strategic towns, are seeking to expand their grip on Somalia by pushing northeast to the semiautonomous Puntland region, an official said.

Militias loyal to sharia courts ousted rival secular warlords from Mogadishu last week after battles that have killed 350 people since February.

They also seized the warlords' last stronghold of Jowhar, about 55 miles (90 kilometers) north, and appear to be flanking the weak interim government's base in nearby Baidoa in a rapid march across the Horn of Africa nation.

Militias backed by local clerics early Thursday surrounded Baladwayne, a government-allied town near the Ethiopian border -- in striking distance of Baidoa.

Dollars to donuts, al Qaeda and their acolytes will head towards Somolia, knowing that they'll have a safe haven in the making.

Iraq War Debate or Soundbite Generator: You Decide

In a move Democrats criticized as gamesmanship, Senate Republicans brought up the withdrawal measure and quickly dispatched it — for now — on a 93-6 vote.

The proposal would have allowed "only forces that are critical to completing the mission of standing up Iraqi security forces" to remain in Iraq in 2007.

Across Capitol Hill in a daylong House debate, Republicans defended the Iraq war as a key part of the global fight against terrorism while Democrats assailed President Bush's war policies and called for a new direction in the conflict.

"When our freedom is challenged, Americans do not run," House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., said in remarks laden with references to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

"This is a war that is a grotesque mistake," countered House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California. She called for a fresh strategy — "one that will make us safer, strengthen our military, and restore our reputation in the world."

When a Senate vote to withdraw troops from Iraq is defeated by a 93-6 count, is it a sign that there is an actual debate on the issue or is it simply a way for Democrats to get up before Congress and provide a bunch of soundbites for the upcoming election? The House is expected to vote on a similar measure today.

Democrats complain that the Republicans put the matter to a vote, but all it does is point out the serious inconsistencies in the Democrats' position on Iraq. They're being repeatedly forced to decide whether to show their support for the war by voting for these measures, or vote on measures that outline precisely what the likes of John Murtha and John Kerry call for - an immediate withdrawal of troops or a repositioning of troops to areas outside of Iraq leaving only some minimum figure to be drawn down over time.

And each time the vote comes up, the Democrats vote to kill the measure - in an overwhelming fashion. Is it any wonder that the anti-war left is throwing hissy fits each time this happens? They keep seeing their so-called standard bearers getting hoisted upon their petards and watching their position get no support whatsoever when it actually counts - in the actual votes.

The Democrats claim that they're for a fresh approach, but can't offer anything up other than say they'd do something differently. It isn't exactly a good time to make that argument when US forces dispatched Zarqawi, and followed that up with coalition raids on hundreds of sites netting even more terrorists and intel. And the Iraqi security forces are operating with increasing efficiency, allowing US forces to provide more guidance and less front line roles.

The Republican position is staked upon winning in Iraq, which stands in contrast to how the Democrats are framing the matter, especially by their most vocal members, who see the current situation as one of defeat and despair. Well, there is defeat and despair, but it's among Democrats who are seeing success in Iraq undermining their chances to win elections in November.

UPDATE:
The House measure passed 256-153. CNN notes that "the measure labels the Iraq war part of a global fight on terrorism and says an "arbitrary date for the withdrawal or redeployment" of troops is not in the national interest." In other word, it extends upon what Vice President Cheney said yesterday.

The vote was pretty much along party lines, and goes further on tying Iraq to the larger war on terror campaign than what the Senate measure, which hewed closely to the issue of withdrawal from Iraq in a speedy manner.

The House vote decries the setting of arbitrary dates for withdrawal or redeployment. That's as it should be. Why give our enemies a cheap and easy victory by letting them know when the US will leave the area - and let them know that if they simply hold out through a set date, they'll win by default.

UPDATE:
Here's the roll call for the House vote. 42 Democrats broke ranks to join with Republicans in approving the measure while 3 Republicans broke with the party to join with Democrats opposing the measure.

The Battle For Ground Zero, Part 147

Construction work is ramping up throughout the site despite the problems with the Freedom Tower. The temporary PATH terminal is going to be relocated to Vesey Street from its current location on Church, so that the permanent PATH terminal designed by Santiago Calatrava can be built. The new temporary PATH terminal entrance will eventually be replaced by Frank Gehry's performing arts center.

The Post reports that the size of the WTC memorial is shrinking in response to the call by Pataki, Bloomberg, and others to get the costs under control.

Gov. Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg got their first look at the proposed design changes during a closed-door meeting with builder Frank Sciame, who was tapped several weeks ago to help bring the memorial's soaring costs under control.

Among the proposals delivered by Sciame - designed to slash the memorial cost from $1 billion to $500 million - is a dramatic scaling back of the galleries beneath the plaza, where architect Michael Arad had envisioned displaying the names of all the victims on parapets ringing the two reflecting pools, sources said.

Under the new plan, the names would be inscribed at the plaza level, a move many victims' relatives strongly favor.

Eliminating most of the public space beneath the plaza would also reduce the number of entrances and exits needed to move people from one level to the other, lowering both construction and operating costs, sources said.

A 9/11 museum, however, would remain under the plaza, with its own entrance, according to plans reviewed by Pataki and Bloomberg.

It certainly appears that the Arad design is being completely reworked because the costs were out of control and safety concerns required massive expenditures to provide adequate access to the site in an emergency.

Sciame was able to reduce the $300 million in estimated infrastructure costs at the memorial to $150 million, of which the Port Authority has already committed to pay $100 million out of savings extracted from its new deal with developer Larry Silverstein.

Sources said the builder suggested that additional savings could be found by shifting responsibility for construction of the project from the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation to the Port Authority - an idea that was first floated several months ago.

So, we've gotten to within $50 million of the figure needed to get the infrastructure for the memorial done. That's good. So where is the remainder going to come from and should the Port Authority kick in the extra $50 million just to get the whole process going?

Meanwhile, some thefts of 9/11 related materials, including donated supplies to relief workers and artifacts taken from Ground Zero were not prosecuted.

Kieger Enterprises of Lino Lakes, Minn., dispatched trucks to a Long Island warehouse and loaded hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of donated bottled water, clothes, tools and generators to be moved to Minnesota in a plot to sell some for profit, according to government records and interviews.

Dan L'Allier said he witnessed 45 tons of the New York loot being unloaded in Minnesota at his company's headquarters. He and disaster specialist Chris Christopherson complained to a company executive, but were ordered to keep quiet. They persisted, going instead to the FBI.

The two whistleblowers eventually lost their jobs, received death threats and were blackballed in the disaster relief industry. But they remained convinced their sacrifice was worth seeing justice done.

They were wrong.

As a result, most Americans were kept in the dark about a major fraud involving their donated goods even as new requests for charity emerged with disasters like Hurricane Katrina. And Christopherson and L'Allier were left disillusioned.

"I wouldn't open my mouth again for all the tea in China," L'Allier said. Added Christopherson, a 34-year-old father of two: "I paid a big price."

As firefighters searched for survivors after the Sept. 11 attacks, heat from the World Trade Center's smoldering ruins burned the soles off their boots. They needed new ones every few hours, and Christopherson made sure they got them. The moment that crushed Christopherson's faith was when his employer dispatched the trucks to the warehouse for those supplies, donated by Americans.

The government ultimately gave the whistleblowers $30,000 each after expenses, their share in a civil settlement against KEI. They say the sum was hardly worth their trouble.

Technorati: World Trade Center, WTC, Pataki, LMDC, urban policy, Freedom Tower, IFC, International Freedom Center, spitzer, silverstein.

Democrats Move On Jefferson

This is definitely a positive step from House Democrats in the case of Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA). They voted to remove Jefferson from the House Ways and Means committee. The vote was 99-58 in favor of removal and among those continuing to defend Jefferson are the Congressional Black Caucus. The motion now goes to the full House.

I have to credit Pelosi and the leadership for trying to deal with this issue in a forthright manner. She had been pushing Jefferson to step down quietly from the committee while the investigation continues, but Jefferson has defiantly refused. Jefferson's actions forced Pelosi's hand and meant that the caucus had to decide what to do next - and this vote shows that while there is strong support for tossing Jefferson from the committee, more than a few members of Congress are uncomfortable with such a move, despite the evidence presented thus far.

Jefferson is a disgrace and has yet to provide a good explanation for why investigators found all manner of incriminating evidence in their searches of his townhome and office, including $90,000 found wrapped in aluminum foil and plastic containers in his townhome freezer.

UPDATE:
I only alluded to this above, but some in Congress, especially the Congressional Black Caucus are seeing this action against Jefferson through the prism of race. They wonder whether a white member of Congress, say Patrick Kennedy would be tossed from a committee because of alleged misdeeds.

They have a point. There is a certain amount of inconsistency among the members of Congress - on both sides of the aisle over corrupt and shady politicians. And we shouldn't leave the policing of the matter up to Congress itself.

Now, Jefferson does make sense with this comment as well:

"[Pelosi's] behavior is rooted in a political strategy she believes will enable the Democrats to gain the majority in the House and realize her dream of becoming Speaker of the House, which disregards the interests of the people of Louisiana, ignores firmly established House precedent, and fails to observe the rules of fairness and nondiscrimination," Jefferson wrote.

He noted that he has not been charged with a crime, and that "historically, even when a member of Congress has been so charged, he or she steps aside from a committee or subcommittee chairmanship, but not from the committee itself."

Pelosi denied that she is being unfairly harsh. "I told all my colleagues, anybody with $90,000 in their freezer, you have a problem at that point."

Well, of course Pelosi is thinking about whether dumping Jefferson will help the entire party regain the House. That's part of her job description in leading the party. If she wasn't thinking along those lines, there would be a serious problem with her leading the Democrats in the House. Of course, Jefferson thinks he's being tossed under the bus in order to speed along Pelosi's personal ambitions, but it's also the ambition of the Democrats to retake the house, and one of their ongoing themes throughout the past several months has been the GOP culture of corruption. Having a Democrat on the Ways and Means committee who is under an ongoing and growing investigation into bribery, corruption, and other assorted criminal activites, and was found with $90,000 in the freezer undercuts the entire theory that the culture of corruption is solely on the GOP side of the aisle.

I wish GOPers would take similar steps against their own as well.

Hamas Wants Hudna

Hamas needs a strategic break in the action to regroup and rearm. They want to call a 'ceasefire.' Israel shouldn't fall for this trick, for that is precisely what it is. Every time a ceasefire is called, it only serves to extend the conflict not shorten it. Time is not on Hamas' side, and they know it.

The Hamas government wants a ceasefire with Israel and is willing to ask Palestinian militants to stop firing rockets from Gaza into the Jewish state, a spokesman said on Thursday.

But Ghazi Hamad said Israel had to first stop military activity in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

The Islamic militant group scrapped a 16-month truce with Israel last Friday and soon after launched a barrage of makeshift rockets at the Jewish state from Gaza.

"I spoke today with the prime minister and he said we definitely want quiet everywhere. We are interested in a ceasefire everywhere," Hamad, speaking in Hebrew, said in an interview on Israel Radio.

The terrorists have been firing mortars and rockets into Israel on a regular basis over the entire time since Hamas came into power. The increase in attacks came as a response to Israel eliminating several terrorist leaders, and in response to an alleged artillery strike that killed Palestinian civilians. That attack on a Gaza beach appears to have been caused by the Palestinians themselves, not Israel.

Gathering Steam

The Zarqawi airstrike and subsequent raids on 17 compounds has snowballed into 452 raids, killing more than 100 insurgents, and obtaining yet more intel. Was the Zarqawi raid a victory? Absolutely. In every which way imaginable.

Among the documents recovered from the Zarqawi raid is this particular document:

As an overall picture, time has been an element in affecting negatively the forces of the occupying countries, due to the losses they sustain economically in human lives, which are increasing with time. However, here in Iraq, time is now beginning to be of service to the American forces and harmful to the resistance for the following reasons:

1. By allowing the American forces to form the forces of the National Guard, to reinforce them and enable them to undertake military operations against the resistance.

2. By undertaking massive arrest operations, invading regions that have an impact on the resistance, and hence causing the resistance to lose many of its elements.

3. By undertaking a media campaign against the resistance resulting in weakening its influence inside the country and presenting its work as harmful to the population rather than being beneficial to the population.

4. By tightening the resistance's financial outlets, restricting its moral options and by confiscating its ammunition and weapons.

5. By creating a big division among the ranks of the resistance and jeopardizing its attack operations, it has weakened its influence and internal support of its elements, thus resulting in a decline of the resistance's assaults.

6. By allowing an increase in the number of countries and elements supporting the occupation or at least allowing to become neutral in their stand toward us in contrast to their previous stand or refusal of the occupation.

7. By taking advantage of the resistance's mistakes and magnifying them in order to misinform.

In other words, Zarqawi and his advisors knew the writing was on the wall - they were losing and had to figure out some way to regain the advantage. Unfortunately for them, they were killed in the airstrike before they were able to implement what to do next. The follow up raids have a snowballing effect - resulting in even more intel, captured insurgents, and even discovering kidnap victims and arms caches.

So what does al Qaeda do? They've announced Zarqawi's successor. Bad news for him is that the US has identified him as well. It's Abu Ayyub al-Masri, the same guy that experts thought would be Zarqawi's successor last week. It's a pseudonym, but they've got a photo and something to work with and it's only a matter of time before al-Masri meets Zarqawi in hell.

At the same time, the Pentagon has announced that the 2,500th soldier has died in the Iraq campaign. My thoughts and prayers go out to all those who lost loved ones in this conflict, but know that they have done good work in eliminating a genocidal dictator and improved the lives of millions of people by giving them hope.

House Hunting Redux

As some of you know, I've been trying to find and purchase a house in Bergen County, New Jersey. It's convenient to New York City where Mrs. Lawhawk and I both work, and is close to our respective families. We've made a number of offers - had one accepted only to lose it when someone showed for an open house and offered significantly more. The kicker is that the buyer in that deal ended up talking down the price to only $1,000 more than our final offer, and it took an extra month to sell.

Well, we found another house recently, and it was quite a nice house. 3br, 3 full baths, fireplace, living room, dining room, den, full finished basement, and convenient to transportation, shopping, and town facilities. We got the offer accepted and went to attorney review.

Everything was going great until we heard from our lawyer that we needed to await word from the seller on whether the banks would allow a short sale. For those who don't quite know what a short sale is - the seller was trying to convince the banks to take less money than the mortgage committments were. The seller's financial situation is a mess and was asking for time to get the banks to agree to the short sale. Attorney review, which is normally a 3-day process, was dragged on for nearly three weeks.

We got the news earlier this week that the banks refused to allow a short sale - they want their money and have stated that the seller cannot sell the house for less than the amount necessary to cover the bank committments. That's the banks absolute right. In other words, the seller is screwed.

We, on the other hand, are out only the attorney fees (couple hundred bucks) and have to keep looking.

Our broker has said this is the first instance he's seen in quite a few years where the seller's financial situation killed a deal, and not the buyer's finances. We would have been able to get the mortgage done within 7-days after the inspection. Our credit was excellent, but none of that mattered because the sellers were not allowed to sell the house at our agreed-upon price.

So, where does this leave the seller? Well, they can try to rent the house to recover some of the carrying costs, but that's a losing proposition and only lengthens the time they circle the financial drain. They can try to sell the house at the price necessary to cover their costs, but that is increasingly unlikely in the market - as mortgage rate pressures and the summer season lessen the number of buyers which simultaneously increases the buyers' ability to negotiate prices in their favor.

On the other hand, the banks will continue to demand payment right until the moment the sellers can't afford to pay - at which time they'll probably foreclose.

But the end result is that we're still in the market for a house and we're seeing more price adjustments downward into our price range. Just yesterday, we saw a house that was entering our price range, after a $40,000 price drop from the initial listing price. I expect to see more of these price drops, but know that good houses or houses that are fairly valued will still go quickly. Hopefully we'll find something nice in our range in the area we're looking at. Sooner or later, something nice will cross our paths and I can then report that we've got our house.

Bush Creates Largest Marine Sanctuary In World

So what are environmentalists supposed to do with this story, except bury it? President Bush circumvented a prolonged fight over regulations in classifying more than 140,000 square miles of waters northwest of the big island of Hawaii a marine sanctuary and instead declared it a national monument under a 100-year-old law.

The national monument would create the worlds largest protected marine habitat - surpassing even Australia's Great Barrier Reef.

Establishing the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands as a strictly protected marine reserve, which Bush is slated to announce this afternoon, could prove to be the administration's most enduring environmental legacy. The roughly 100-mile-wide area encompasses a string of uninhabited islands that support more than 7,000 marine species, at least a fourth of which are found nowhere else on Earth.

The islands include almost 70 percent of the nation's tropical, shallow-water coral reefs, a rookery for 14 million seabirds, and the last refuge for the endangered Hawaiian monk seal and the threatened green sea turtle. The area also has an abundance of large predatory fish at a time when 90 percent of such species have disappeared from the world's oceans.

Encompassing nearly 140,000 square miles, an area nearly the size of Montana and larger than all the national parks combined, the reserve will just surpass Australia's Great Barrier Reef Marine Park as the largest protected marine area in the world. It will also, however, be one of the least accessible.

"This is a landmark conservation event," said Joshua Reichert, who heads the Pew Charitable Trusts' environment programs and had pushed to have the area designated as a marine sanctuary. "The government is saying in certain places, for certain reasons, it is important to restrict activities that have the potential to damage the marine environment, of which fishing is a big one."

"The Northwestern Hawaiian Islands represent an incredible opportunity to preserve nature much as it was, or has been, for millions of years, because the hand of man has not wreaked the same kind of havoc as we have elsewhere in the world," said Rep. Ed Case (D-Hawaii), who has lobbied for the designation since he was elected in 2002.

The plan had been resisted by local Hawaiian fishing interests that feared losing access to traditional fishing grounds.

So how can this be spun as a negative? Simple: Women and minorities worst affect - after all, eight Hawaiian fishermen with rights to ply those waters will need to be bought out. The Senators from Hawaii have been lobbying against any such designation because they were protecting those same fishermen. Instead, the country and the world get a protected ecological area. Good on Bush.

All Hail Cuba's Glorious Infrastructure

The Castro government said earlier Tuesday that the Bush administration and Miami-based Cuban-American groups were seeking a pretext to close the mission and end limited cooperation between the long-time ideological foes on immigration and other matters.

"They lie blatantly ... We categorically deny that there have been premeditated electricity cuts," a statement carried by all state-run media said.

The Communist government blamed a faulty underground electric circuit for the week-long power outage. The U.S. mission had been operating on generator power.

The Americans also complained the water flow to the building was periodically reduced, which Cuba attributed to normal water supply problems in the capital.

And the power problems aren't just confined to bickering between the US and Cuba. Everyday Cubans are getting screwed by Castro and his socialist policies. Val Prieto has the details of power problems and rice cookers - here and here.

Some here in the US like to point to Cuba as being a paradise. But they couldn't be more hopelessly wrong. The basic infrastructure is in shambles - common rainstorms cause buildings all over the country to crumble, cut power, and otherwise make Cubans even more miserable than usual. And yet the Castro cult of personality persists.

UPDATE:
Castro's brother Raul has categorically stated that Cuba will remain a communist country. [ed: I'm sure that's because that's what the people want /snicker]. Babalu Blog points to this posting's comments (#22) that notes that Cuba's problems aren't due to the US embargo, but the simple fact that there are no jobs for Cubans and that Cuba lacks any products worth buying other than tobacco, coconuts and sugar cane.

I'd also point out that the claim that Cuba's health care is comparable to the US health care system is pure unadulterated nonsense. Not when Cuban hospitals are falling apart, lack basic medical equipment and sanitation. Oh, but it's free and available to all Cubans. Sorry, I'll stick to the US health care system.

The Battle For Ground Zero, Part 146

Is the Freedom Tower in serious trouble, despite the fact that the foundation excavations are under way? That certainly seems to be the case. Who's to blame? The usual suspects of course, for the usual reasons and even the likely successor to Governor Pataki chimes in:

The project has been criticized by some real estate executives and civic leaders, who have called it too big, in the wrong location and unlikely to attract corporate tenants. The Democratic nominee for governor, Eliot Spitzer, has expressed concern that it could turn into "a white elephant."

Too big? That's because it would probably compete with the various other projects developers are pushing. Wrong location? As opposed to Forest City Ratner's Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn, which detractors say would increase congestion at the corners of Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues to gridlock proportions - and worse on game days.

No, this is another attempt at ankle biting the construction at Ground Zero just as momentum is building to get steel rising. Unnamed civic groups and unnamed developers. The only person in this article who has attached their name to a position on the Freedom Tower is Spitzer, and his is really the only person's opinion who should count. Instead of predicting that this will be a white elephant, he should do his best to make sure that doesn't come to pass.

The NY Post warns that the Port Authority may be on the verge of killing the Freedom Tower because it can't get the financials to work out. No one can blame Silverstein for this mess - he's out of the way - forced out by the Port Authority.

In other words, the signature element of the Libeskind master plan is on the verge of being significantly redesigned or canned - and where's Governor Pataki to get this done? *crickets chirping*

What makes this whole mess all the more intriguing is that the Port Authority's contractors are already preparing the site for the foundations. So, we're watching the Port Authority spending money on a building that might not even get built? Who's going to pay for that? This is all rather exasperating and makes you wonder if Silverstein shouldn't have been put in charge of rebuilding the entire site and not the Port Authority and master plan by committee*, since he's the only one to actually get one of the sites destroyed on 9/11 completely rebuilt with a permanent structure.

*I know that it's officially the Libeskind master plan, but it's been reworked so many times by the Port Authority and even by Silverstein's team, that it's a mere shell of its original look.

Technorati: World Trade Center, WTC, Pataki, LMDC, urban policy, Freedom Tower, IFC, International Freedom Center, spitzer, silverstein.

One Man Crime Spree

A rash of stabbings in New York City got a whole lot of attention, especially on the heels of a report saying that violent crime was up a tick over last year but still well below recent averages.

Well, it turns out that a single person was arrested in connection with four of the stabbings.

The police arrested Kenny Alexis early today in the Times Square area after two young women, Canadian tourists, were stabbed in the back as they stood in Duffy Square. A doorman at the nearby W hotel had called the police after witnessing the attack, and a doorman and a cabdriver had followed the suspect to a nearby McDonald's, where the police took him into custody.

Between the attack on Tuesday afternoon, on a C train in northern Manhattan, and the arrest this morning in Times Square, the police said, a man fitting the description of Mr. Alexis stabbed a man on the subway platform for the southbound F train in Rockefeller Center then stopped in a delicatessen on Broadway, where he took and drank a bottle of water then tried to take two beers without paying. When an employee confronted the man, he pulled a knife and fled, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said at a news conference.

This afternoon three of the four stabbing victims remained hospitalized. Christopher McCarthy, a 21-year-old tourist from Texas, was in critical but stable condition today at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center on West 114th Street, where he underwent surgery after being stabbed multiple times in the left side of his chest on Tuesday, the police said. Ambrosio Castro, 30, who was attacked on the F train platform was in stable condition at St. Vincent's Hospital Manhattan. And Melanie Currier, 22, of Montreal, was in stable condition at St. Vincent's.

As we repeatedly see over time, criminals tend to commit more than one crime - and individuals who commit petty crimes often turn more violent over time. Taking one such criminal off the streets can prevent literally dozens of crimes, if not more.

Oh, and he apparently had a record of criminal activity in Atlantic City and Boston as well. Those were petty crimes - farebeating, shoplifting, and criminal mischief. In other words, this one person is responsible for at least seven crimes over the past few years. And those are the ones that he was arrested for.

There's a reason that NYC is much safer now than it was just a decade ago. It's because NYPD was directed to go after petty crimes - quality of life crimes.

Kofi Annan Can't Be That Dumb?!

"The Israeli claim that the beach blast was caused by an explosive charge at the site sounds strange to me. I don't believe it is plausible that the Palestinians planted charges in a place where civilians often spend their time," Annan told the London-based Al-Hayat daily.

Secretary General Kofi Annan has gone on the record as saying that the Palestinians couldn't possibly have mined the beach where Palestinian civilians were killed. The Palestinians claim, without any actual evidence that they haven't drummed up, invented, or otherwise forged, that Israel dropped artillery shells on the area causing the deaths.

Israel refutes the claims, and points out that not only did Israel stop any artillery shelling well before the explosion occurred, but that the explosion, damage patterns, and shrapnel recovered from the injured do not match Israeli artillery shells.

In other words, the Palestinians are making this up to cover for one of their own goals.

Consider then, Kofi, all the hundreds of suicide bombings, car bombings, and other terrorist attacks against civilian populations and wonder whether the Palestinian terrorists are capable of attacking civilian populations.

Or, consider the Palestinian terrorists' extensive and pervasive use of human shields to deter reprisal attacks - terrorists openly operating from known civilian areas where women and children are present in order to launch rockets, attack Israeli troop deployments, or otherwise plan, stage, or carry out attacks on Israel.

The pattern of evidence is overwhelming that the terrorists regularly operate from civilian areas to attack Israel. They hide behind civilians all while posing as civilians themselves in order to launch deadly attacks - and often kill other Palestinians in the process.

Burn Baby Burn

Will there a 28th Amendment to the US Constitution in the offing? Possibly. The subject matter: The United States Flag - and a prohibition against certain kinds of flag burning.

The proposed text of this amendment:

`The Congress shall have power to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States.'.

The Senate is one vote away from having the requisite number of votes (67) to send the resolution to the states for ratification after the House has already passed the resolution. Amendments to the US Constitution require that 2/3 majority pass the bill in each house of Congress followed by ratification by 3/4 of the states (38 of 50).

So, where do I stand on this? Simple. I think it's a bad idea.

You have the freedom of speech - which includes the right to make a complete and total ass of yourself.

You also open yourself up to withering criticism for such speech because that's part of the freedom of speech the rest of us have.

This amendment may help people feel better that a symbol of this country are better protected, but in reality, it will do little to actually protect the flag. However, protecting the flag isn't the only purpose of this amendment. It's to thwart courts from interjecting their opinion on the matter - effectively taking the whole subject matter out of realm of the courts, which have ruled that flag burning is permissible when the burning is done by the owner of the flag. Such an amendment would effectively render those decisions moot.

Federal law provides the proper manner for displaying and caring for the US Flag. 4 USC 1 et seq.

Cash and Carry

Hours after cash-starved civil servants stormed parliament, the Palestinian foreign minister returned Wednesday from a trip to Muslim nations with $20 million in a suitcase, a sign of Hamas' desperation for money in the face of a Western boycott.

Dozens of the civil servants had burst into the parliament building in the West Bank to demand their long-overdue salaries, throwing water bottles at Hamas lawmakers and forcing the parliament speaker to flee.

The second attack on the parliament this week, along with the shooting death of a Hamas gunmen in the Gaza Strip, cast doubt on renewed efforts by leaders of the rival Fatah and Hamas parties to halt deadly infighting.

Anyone want to take a crack at how Hamas managed to get $20 million? Illicitly? Charity from pro-terrorist Islamic groups in Europe? Useful idiots who don't realize they're funding terrorism and not humanitarian aid?

All of the above?

Oh, and just be sure that you don't call this a civil war. That would be very uncivil of you.

Bali Bomber Released From Prison

I have a bad feeling about this. A real bad feeling. Radical Indonesian cleric Abu Bakar Bashir was released from an Indonesian jail after serving reduced time for links to the 2002 Bali bombings. He's completely unrepentant and states plainly:

"I will maintain my struggle to uphold sharia (Islamic law), he added, before getting into a black van.

That would include jihad - the violent struggle kind, not the deeply intense personal kind of struggle.

Seen by the West as the spiritual head of the al Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiah (JI) regional militant network, Bashir was convicted of being part of a conspiracy behind the Bali bombings that killed 202 people, many of them Australian tourists.

In Australia, Prime Minister John Howard told parliament: "I want (Indonesia's politicians) to understand from me, on behalf of the government, how extremely disappointed, even distressed, millions of Australians will be at the release."

Brian Deegan, whose son Josh was one of 88 Australians killed in the Bali attack, told Sky television: "Abu Bashir really is to us what Osama bin Laden was to the Americans."

In Jakarta, U.S. embassy spokesman Max Kwak said: "we were deeply disappointed that a person convicted of a 'sinister conspiracy' was given such a short prison sentence."

His sentence was originally 30 months, and even that was reduced on 'good behavior.' I think his sentence came out to a couple of days per victim killed in the Bali bombings. And JI isn't just a regional terrorist group, but one with significant ties to al Qaeda and espouses the same brand of militant Islam.

Well done Indonesia. As we saw with Zarqawi - revolving door justice is no justice at all. Zarqawi had been released from Jordanian prison in 1999 in an amnesty following the death of King Hussein. Zarqawi proceeded to Iraq where he became one of the most ruthless and bloodthirsty terrorists in the world, with the death of thousands on his head. Will we be saying the same thing of Abu Bakar Bashir in a few years? I pray that isn't the case, but know full well that we may be hearing about how he was the mastermind or inspiration for some other mass casualty attack in South East Asia/Pacific Rim.

UPDATE:
Doing the math, this murderous bastard did 3.81 days ((26months*30 days)/202 victims)of time for each of the 202 people he was found responsible for murdering. Yeah, that's justice alright.

UPDATE:
Others taking note of Abu Bakar Bashir's release and his glorious reception by his followers, which stands in stark contrast to the muted cries of horror from the families of the 202 victims who were murdered by terrorists affiliated with, and who took direction from Bashir: Little Green Footballs, Clarity & Resolve, Global Security, and Don Singleton.

Democrats Throwing Lieberman Under The Bus

Joe Lieberman was the vice presidential candidate in 2000 alongside Al Gore. In only six short years, Democrats and the netroots have turned on Lieberman and are doing everything imaginable to force this loyal Democrat from the party. From supporting his opponent in the primary election to undercutting him at every turn, even Lieberman's supposed ally is suggesting that he run as an independent.

Why should Joe have to do any such thing? Oh wait, it's because the Democrats have moved fully to the far left of Lieberman and he's not tacking to the left with them. Lieberman supports the war in Iraq and the general war on terror, much to the chagrin of the anti-war left, and this is all part of their revenge. There is no big tent for Democrats - you either are an anti-war candidate, or you're going to suffer the consequences. Never mind that Lieberman has been to Iraq and has seen first hand teh reconstruction and hard work done by the US Armed Forces unlike say Rep. Murtha, and has supported the military time and time again, the anti-war types want him gone.

Well, this move may very well backfire on the Democrats, who instead of retaining a loyal party backer, will push him into the open arms of Republicans.

Oh, and for all this talk about how Lieberman is in trouble, the article waits until the 19th paragraph to state that Lieberman holds a 57-32 advantage over challenger Ned Lamont.

Smith said the poll is no reason for Lieberman to bolt the party. While his lead shrank, he still leads Lamont, 57 percent to 32 percent, among all Democrats and 55 percent to 40 percent among likely primary voters.

"Joe Lieberman has a 15- to 25-point lead over Ned Lamont with eight weeks to go," Smith said. "We're going to be the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate."

While this is a tougher road to reelection than usual, Lieberman will likely win the nomination handily. And the netroots who have been supporting Lamont will be left to cheer a moral victory of losing to a veteran politician by 15-20 points.

Thanks For Waiting

Apparently someone talked some sense to Rep. Jack Murtha (D-PA) into not politicking for the Majority leader slot until after the November elections. Someone must have informed Murtha that the Democrats have to first win sufficient seats for this to even become a possibility and that Murtha's own statements do not help that cause.

Panel: Churchill Should Be Fired

This is not a surprise. There were serious questions about Churchill's conduct, including plagarism and other misconduct. The panel voted 6-3 to recommend firing Churchill from the University of Colorado for the misconduct.

A University of Colorado committee says the professor who called some of the World Trade Center victims "little Eichmanns" should be fired for repeated and deliberate infractions of scholarship rules.

The school's Standing Committee on Research Misconduct made the recommendation on a 6 to 3 vote in its final report, which now goes to university officials for a final decision.

Churchill is a tenured professor of ethnic studies who has said he would sue if officials tried to fire him. The committee's report asks school officials to reassure other faculty members that CU still values academic freedom.

Churchill has repeatedly denied misconduct. He says the report is "baloney." Churchill says the call for his termination is based on an illegitimate investigation.

The school's investigation focused on allegations that Churchill committed research misconduct and plagiarism. It didn't address his comments about the terrorism victims. School officials in the past have said those comments were protected under the First Amendment.

Truth is an absolute defense, and I'm looking forward to any kind of lawsuit filed here - because it will show Churchill to be an academic fraud who also happened to make a bunch of truly outrageous statements, including the one about how the 9/11 victims at the WTC were nothing but a bunch of "little Eichmanns."

UPDATE:
The Denver Post notes the panel did not address the "little Eichmann's' comment and instead focused completely on the academic misconduct. That's as it should be. Churchill is free to speak freely and make a complete and utter ass of himself. However, he doesn't have the right to plagarize, and commit other acts of academic misconduct. Those are fireable offenses - and the panel properly concluded as such.

Of course Churchill and his supporters will try and claim that this is crimping his free speech rights, but that's nothing but empty rhetoric.

QandO hopes that the panel looks at the academic misconduct and not the comments. I concur.

Others blogging: LGF, Blue Crab Boulevard, Coalition of the Swilling, Hot Air, Dangerous Professors, and Sweetness and Light.

Freudian Slip of the Tongue

Memri.org has a video clip of an interview of the Iranian Foreign Minister Monouchehr Mottaki on a local news station in Iran. He makes a little slip during the interview - commenting on Iran's nuclear weapons.

"Nuclear weapons for peace"

Ummm. In the hands of Iranian mullahs they aren't.

Hot Air and Flopping Aces have the details. Curt at Flopping Aces provides a transcription:

Transcript:

Mottaki - We emphasize the peaceful nature of our nuclear weapons…I mean of our nuclear power plant, and nuclear energy and activities.

We have no need for nuclear weapons as we’ve often said.

Nuclear weapons are not part of our defense doctrine.

Say Anything also comments.

Plea Deal Reached in Rep. Kennedy DUI Case

Rep. Patrick Kennedy has reached a deal with prosecutors to plead guilty to a charge of driving under the influence of prescription drugs.

Rep. Patrick Kennedy has reached a deal with prosecutors to plead guilty to a charge of driving under the influence of prescription drugs in connection for his middle-of-the-night car crash last month near the U.S. Capitol.

Two additional charges of reckless driving and failure to exhibit a driving permit will be dismissed under the plea agreement reached with prosecutors.

"As congressman Kennedy has said all along, he will take full responsibility for his actions and that is what he is doing today," Kennedy's chief of staff, Sean Richardson, said Tuesday.

UPDATE:
The following sites also note Kennedy's plea deal: Stuck on Stupid, Assorted Babble, Stop the ACLU, Lorie Byrd at Wizbang, Michelle Malkin, and California Conservative.

Technorati: patrick kennedy, misconduct, capitol police, dui.

Rocket Man No More

Israeli airstrikes killed more Palestinian terrorists along with civilians in the area.

The Israeli military said its aircraft targeted militants on a mission to launch Katyusha rockets at southern Israel. Palestinian witnesses said the first missile missed the vehicle, which then hit a curb and was struck by two other missiles.

The last two missiles killed the civilians and wounded 32 others, three of them seriously. Also killed was Hamoud Wadiya, Islamic Jihad's top rocket launcher, and an unidentified person in his van, whom the Israeli military identified as another Palestinian militant.

Islamic Jihad swiftly vowed revenge.

"The Zionist enemy insists on shedding Palestinian blood and we insist on going ahead with our holy war and resistance," said Khader Abib, an Islamic Jihad leader in Gaza. "God willing, the resistance groups ... will deliver a harsh response. All options are open."

Palestinian terrorists operate in crowds of civilians, hoping that Israel's compassion and humanity will shield them from retaliation. Those deaths are on the terrorists - not Israel.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian civil war is going strong - as noted by the ransacking of the Prime Minister's offices and continued gunfights between Fatah and Hamas.

Ann Coulter: Plagarist?

Does anyone think that folks who plagarize will manage to get away with it for very long with the wayback machine (aka the Internet) available to run searches or with sophisticated programs designed to ferret out plagarism? Apparently they still think so, if the run of highly publicized incidents is a sign that folks aren't doing a good job sourcing their materials and giving proper citation.

Well, it appears that Ann Coulter has some explaining to do about some of the text from her latest book, Godless. If confirmed, she's definitely hurt her own cause (which among other things is shameless self promotion). I don't care for her schtick, and some of her comments are outlandish and over the top.

I can forgive some of the over the top comments, but I can't forgive the plagarism. She better have a good explanation, or her career is going to be heading for a fall.

Step Away From the Ledge

There will be no Fitzmas. There will be no Rove perp walk. Karl Rove will not be indicted, much to the chagrin of the rabid left. More to the point, there was no crime committed by anyone actually 'leaking' the name of Valerie Plame. The only indictment obtained by Fitzgerald was for obstruction of justice and perjury for Scooter Libby, who contradicted himself in testimony before the Grand Jury.

AJ Strata calls this quitting while behind. Stop the ACLU notes that the DUers are shocked. Well, if they weren't blinded by their partisan hackery, they would have seen that the facts simply didn't support any contention that the alleged crime of leaking the identity of a CIA agent had occurred.

Tom Maguire has a good roundup and notes that while he had considered a Rove indictment, he had been lengthening the odds as time went on because Fitzgerald simply didn't have a case and couldn't get anyone to flip on anyone else.

Others noting the Left's bitter disappointment, and otherwise commenting on the lack of Fitzmas: Tigerhawk, Don Surber, Rick Moran, and Hot Air.

Scott Ott at Scrappleface has the best headline of the week:

Rove Cleared, Zarqawi Dead, GOP Doomed. Poor Jason Leopold, who still clings to hope beyond all hope that a Rove indictment will come. No truth for you.

UPDATE:
Decision 08 has a roundup of the top 10 themes running at the Lefty websites. From conspriacy to bad timing, with a smattering of hopeful holdouts, the Left has it covered.

UPDATE:
Christopher Rose, of megafirm Proskauer Rose LLP, who represents Wilson and Plame, issued a statement today:

We have become aware of the communication between Mr. Fitzgerald and Mr. Luskin concerning Karl Rove's status in the criminal investigation. We have no first-hand knowledge of the reason for the communication or what further developments in the criminal investigation it may signal. While it appears that Mr. Rove will not be called to answer in criminal court for his participation in the wrongful disclosure of Valerie Wilson's classified employment status at the CIA in retaliation against Joe Wilson for questioning the rationale for war in Iraq, that obviously does not end the matter. The day still may come when Mr. Rove and others are called to account in a court of law for their attacks on the Wilsons.

Last time I checked, truth is an absolute defense to the tort of defamation. Unless they've got some novel legal theory cooked up (and would be a dubious one at that), this is sound and fury signifying a big nothing. It's a pandering to the holdouts on the Left hoping for some kind of legal action against Rove (and in effect Bush) for Plame's 'outing.'

Can you imagine the circus surrounding any legal action taken by Plame or Wilson against Rove or Cheney or anyone else in the Bush Administration for that matter? Those folks would have a field day with a witness list that would include everyone from Matt Cooper to Judith Miller, Woodward to Russert, and that's before getting into the likes of Armitage and Novak.

No, this statement is nothing more than saving face - knowing full well that there will be no further legal action because it can't possibly help their cause.

UPDATE:
Roger L. Simon asks the salient question that has remained unanswered all these years - who sent Joe Wilson to Africa and why was he chosen.

Super Fun Power Hour has the mother of all Rovian roundups.

Jeff Goldstein and Pajamas Media note this has been a pretty bad week for the left.

Others blogging: Big Dog's Weblog, Politburo Diktat, Sister Toldjah, Flopping Aces, Confederate Yankee, Pretend Pundit.

Milberg Weiss Has Democrat Defenders

The embattled securities class-action law firm Milberg Weiss Bershad & Schulman received some political backing late last week with the release of a statement signed by four Democrats from the House of Representatives condemning last month's indictment of the firm on criminal charges.

"The Justice Department's crusade against trial lawyers, the first line in the average citizen's protection against corporate greed, has taken a new low in the indictment of an entire leading law firm in the plaintiffs' bar," said the statement, which was released Friday.

The statement was signed by three representatives from New York — Charles B. Rangel, Carolyn McCarthy and Gary L. Ackerman — and Robert Wexler from Florida.

One of the founders of the law firm, Melvyn I. Weiss, who was not indicted but remains a target in the continuing investigation by federal prosecutors in Los Angeles, is a high-profile fund-raiser for the Democratic Party.

Is it a surprise that some prominent Democrats are coming to the defense of the embattled law firm Milberg Weiss? Open Secrets.org reveals that the firm has given money exclusively to Democrats. In fact, according to that invaluable resource, nearly $1.5 million for 2001/2002 or more than $2 million in soft money through 2003, was given to Democrats, while the GOP received not a single dollar. These same politicians also received funds from the American Trial Lawyers Association.

Lo and behold, one of the indicted partners, David Bershad, gave money to Rep. McCarthy, who signed the letter.

Curiosities abound. Democrats claim a witchhunt, and the Times doesn't mention that among those who received money from the firm and its lawyers was one of the Congressmembers who signed the letter.

Meanwhile, trying to move this case forward is difficult because the firm was involved in so much litigation that finding a judge who was not involved in any proceedings is quite difficult. Five judges have already recused themselves.

Refreshing Honesty

Representative James Moran (D-VA), said the following:

If Democrats win back control of the U.S. House of Representatives in November, U.S. Rep. Jim Moran said he would use his position in the majority to help funnel more funds to his Northern Virginia district.

Moran, D-8th, told those attending the Arlington County Democratic Committee's annual Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner on June 9 that while he in theory might oppose the fiscal irresponsibility of “earmarks” - funneling money to projects in a member of Congress's district - he understands the value they have to constituents.

“When I become chairman [of a House appropriations subcommittee], I'm going to earmark the s*** [redacted the curse word-ed] out of it,” Moran buoyantly told a crowd of 450 attending the event.

Ah yes. It's refreshing to hear someone honestly say that they're going to screw all American taxpayers the moment they grab power. Of course, Moran has to hope that Democrats win enough additional seats in November to be in a position where Moran could become the chair of the subcommittee. And that's not a sure thing - especially if Democrats keep making refreshingly honest statements like this.

Darth Sidious Wins Tony Award

Ian McDiarmid, who plays evil Darth Sidious/Emperor Palpatine in the Star Wars saga, won a Tony Award for featured actor in a play for his role in Faith Healer.

Darth Vader would approve.

Own Goal

The purported Israeli artillery attack on a Gaza beach resulting in civilian casualties was nothing of the sort.

It was a Hamas terrorist operation gone awry, which is what I ha[d] surmised. Here are the particulars:

An Israel Defense Forces intelligence officer has confirmed that the explosion that killed eight Palestinians on Friday, was caused by a stockpile of Hamas explosives.

"Shortly after we stopped defensive firing at Hamas rocket launch pads which were deployed behind Palestinian human shields, members of Hamas scrambled to fire more rockets at our positions," said Col. M. "We have eyes on every meter of Gaza, from the sky, from the ground and from the sea. One of their rocket tripods collapsed inadvertently setting off an explosion of a stockpile of Qassam rockets. The Palestinians killed their own children. And this was not the first time."

Hamas terrorists fired rockets and mortar bombs from a crowded Gaza beach at southern Israel. Some of the rockets fell near the Israel city of Ashkelon. Some 17 rockets were fired between Saturday and Sunday morning. A man at a school in the Israel town of Sderot was wounded, Israel officials said.

It isn't the first time that the Palestinians have killed their own in terrorist operations.

More importantly, it isn't the first time that Hamas and the Palestinians have smeared the Israelis for killing Palestinians despite the fact that the facts and circumstances all point to Palestinians doing the killing.

Israel shouldn't be apologizing for the deaths, but instead holding the Palestinians and Hamas in particular accountable for their heinous actions. Indeed, Hamas used the self-inflicted casualties as an excuse for further rocket and missile attacks against Israel. Israel should not limit its retaliatory response only to those firing the rockets, but expand its response to include the Palestinian leadership who is extolling and exhorting the foot-minions to kill Israelis. This is a war of the Palestinians own making and the leadership should be made to feel the pain they're inflicting on Israel and on the Palestinian civilian population (though one has to wonder just what a bunch of civilians were doing hanging around terrorists setting up rockets and mortars - knowing full well that Israel could and would fire counterbattery fire to eliminate threats).

And on that question, there is unequivocable evidence that the Palestinians simply use civilian populations (especially women and children) as cannon fodder for this kind of media outrage against Israel. The Palestinians know that the media will quickly cover any deaths of civilians, and never pay heed to the questionable circumstances - or bald-faced lies of the Palestinians.

UPDATE:
Fixed typo above.

The Jerusalem Post has a report confirming the earlier report that chances are slim that the casualties were the result of Israeli shelling of the area.

According to Channel 2, the findings, expected to be formally released on Tuesday, showed an inconsistency between the shrapnel found in the body of one of the wounded babies and the metal used in IDF artillery. Moreover, the investigation noted the absence of a large enough crater at the site of the explosion, as would be expected if an IDF shell had landed there.

The third observation casting doubt on the possibility of IDF shelling was the gap between the time when the army shot the artillery and when the commotion on the beach began. According to the probe’s findings, several minutes past after the shelling, before the Palestinians on the beach reacted. ...

The leading theory currently entertained, suggested that an explosive charge, buried by Palestinians on the Gaza beach to prevent Israeli infiltration, was behind the explosion.

Throughout the whole investigation, army officials complained about the lack of Palestinian cooperation. Unconfirmed reports further suggested attempts by Palestinians to remove shrapnel from the bodies of the wounded, treated in Israeli hospitals, thus impeding the investigation.

Of course the Palestinians wouldn't cooperate and otherwise impede investigations into the cause of the casualties. The Palestinians wouldn't want to have the truth exposed to light - that it was the Palestinians themselves who killed their own in yet another attempt to kill Israelis.

Others blogging: John Hawkins, Biased BBC, Captain Ed, Blue Star Chronicles, The Daily Tidbit, The City Troll, and Partisan Times.

The Zarqawi Raid Redux

We now know that Zarqawi survived the US airstrike for 52 minutes only to die after being captured by US and Iraqi forces as a result of trauma from the airstrike. We have also learned that Zarqawi's wife and child were also among those killed at the Baquba compound.

His 16-year-old wife.

The raid was keyed on Zarqawi's spiritual advisor, Abdul-Rahman, and when the meeting took place, the coordinated airstrike took place. Intel may have come from al Qaeda associates who gave up Zarqawi's whereabouts.

How old was this girl when Zarqawi married her? Thus far, we know at least two of the others killed in the raid were related to Zarqawi (the wife and the 18-month-old child). Were the others killed in the airstrike also related to Zarqawi or Rahman? If so, it would further indicate that al Qaeda continues to strongly associate with family members - instead of bringing in outsiders at the highest levels. That is a possibility that you can be assured will be exploited - tracking other family members of at-large terrorists to try and glean intel to capture or kill these dangerous terrorists before they can kill again.

Now, Zarqawi's 18-month old child was also killed in the airstrike. That would mean that his 16 year old wife was probably 12 or 13 when the baby was conceived. But let's not pass judgment on Zarqawi or the Islamists who have no problem having sex with minors. It's their culture after all. [that's sarcasm for you sarcasm challenged out there.]

Now comes word that another US raid in the area where Zarqawi was killed may have killed nine people, including two children. Insurgents and terrorists operate freely among civilian populations - knowing full well that it will be the US that receives the ire of the media and local populace, not the terrorists who are clearly using the civilians as human shields.

The Battle for Ground Zero, Part 145

Foundation work is going ahead tomorrow. That work may include blasting away the bedrock so that the foundations can be laid. Such blasting would reduce the time to complete this portion of the excavation to two months. The alternative would be thousands of hours of men using jackhammers and heavy machinery. The contractors are planning a test blast tomorrow, and if everything checks out, additional blasting would begin within days. Expect lots of 911 calls from concerned folks who don't know that this blasting will occur.

The blasting would require the closure of some nearby streets and PATH service would be stopped while the blasting occurred.

A firefighers' memorial at Station House Number 10 across the street from Ground Zero has opened. The memorial was paid for by Holland and Knight after one of their partners, who was a volunteer firefighter, died trying to rescue people from the Twin Towers. The New York Times has an interactive feature allowing you to learn about the various details of the memorial. Meanwhile, the offical 9/11 memorial is still in limbo. What's the appropriate cost for building the memorial?

The Australian thinks that New York City needs its own Eiffel Tower. Sorry, but any tower built is going to be a target, whether it's an office building or a spire like the CN tower in Canada or the Eiffel Tower in Paris. I still think that building a Freedom Tower is the right thing to do, and the criticism about how it is far away from the transit hub is a weak one. Considering that much of the East Side of Manhattan is without a subway line, the fact that the Freedom Tower is situated at a point only a few thousand feet from the transit hub (PATH and subways), the argument does ring hollow - after all, you don't hear how construction projects on the East Side of Manhattan are going to fail because there isn't a subway within blocks of various building sites.

Also, Ground Zero workers are pressing for a meeting with President Bush to demand health care coverage for ailments related to their work.

Technorati: World Trade Center, WTC, Pataki, LMDC, urban policy, Freedom Tower, IFC, International Freedom Center, spitzer, silverstein.

Anticipated Consequences

CNN has a bunch of interesting headlines tonite, but two stand out because they remind me of postings made quite a while back.

CNN Article I:
Report: Added armor causing Humvees to roll
Uparmored Humvees became a major issue when insurgents grew increasingly reliant on IEDs to attack US armed forces in Iraq. At the time, there was a good counterargument to up armoring - namely that the Humvees weren't designed for the heavy armor packages, that it would increase wear and tear, and that when under fire, speed is life - and the armor packages reduce the speed at which those Humvees can travel.

Well, it turns out that the up armor packages don't come without a heavy price.

Thousands of pounds of armor added to military Humvees, intended to protect U.S. troops, have made the vehicles more likely to roll over, killing and injuring soldiers in Iraq, a newspaper reported.

"I believe the up-armoring has caused more deaths than it has saved," said Scott Badenoch, a former Delphi Corp. vehicle dynamics expert told the Dayton Daily News for Sunday editions.

Since the start of the war, Congress and the Army have spent tens of millions of dollars on armor for the Humvee fleet in Iraq, the newspaper reported Sunday.

That armor -- much of it installed on the M1114 Humvee built at the Armor Holdings Inc. plant north of Cincinnati, Ohio -- has shielded soldiers from harm.

But serious accidents involving the M1114 have increased as the war has progressed, and the accidents were much more likely to be rollovers than those of other Humvee models, the newspaper reported.

An analysis of the Army's ground accident database, which includes records from March 2003 through November 2005, found that 60 of the 85 soldiers who died in Humvee accidents in Iraq -- or 70 percent -- were killed when the vehicle rolled, the newspaper reported. Of the 337 injuries, 149 occurred in rollovers.

There's a reason that the Humvees were not built with armor packages - they were never designed for armored combat operations and the added weight degrades the performance of the Humvees in certain combat situations - namely getting out of harms way. The military now has to adjust its operating procedures to deal with this situation and lessen the likelyhood that drivers will flip their Humvees, killing or injuring themselves or their crewmates.

Article II:
Owners find insurance won't rebuild homes

Behind the sign he hung from his porch is a story all-too-common in this once-posh neighborhood of pummeled homes: Even New Orleans' affluent homeowners, who thought they had done the right thing by properly insuring their investment, are finding that technicalities are keeping them from securing enough from their insurers to rebuild.

The insurance industry says it has settled more than 90 percent of its Hurricane Katrina claims, proving it's meeting its obligations to policyholders. But consumer advocates say insurers settled numerous claims for only a fraction of the actual damages, using numerous exclusions to reduce payouts. Insurance modeling firm ISO estimates Louisiana had $24.3 billion in insured losses, but the state Department of Insurance says only $12.5 billion had been paid out as of the end of April, the last month for which figures were available.

Without enough money from their insurers to rebuild, homeowners are left with two choices: Give up and leave, or else rebuild by hand, using their savings to pay for labor and materials.

This is the scenario I wrote about just days after Katrina came ashore. Lawsuits will end up deciding what gets rebuilt in many areas and insurance companies will be reluctant to pay claims. People will not get enough money to cover their damages, leaving them to decide whether to stay and attempt to rebuild or go elsewhere.

New Questions Arise Over Gaza Beach Incident

Charles at Little Green Footballs wonders whether this is just the latest Pallywood hoax. Good question.

The Israelis have investigated and determined that the explosion could not have been caused by them. They stopped any kind of artillery shelling 15 minutes prior to the explosion that killed an indeterminate number of people (the Palestinians keep shifting the number, but it appears to be anywhere from 6 to 20 people). Now, it is still possible that an errant artillery shell was fired into the area, and exploded in the crowd 15 minutes after the last artillery shell was fired, but that is a remote possibility.

A far more likely possibility? Terrorists were trying to assemble a bomb and it went off in their faces - taking out a bunch of nearby civilians.

And to top it off, Hamas has levelled the entire area - eliminating any chance to examine whatever forensic evidence may have been available to anyone seeking answers about the incident.

Are You Ready For Some Football?

World Cup fever is here, and pity those poor Iranian soccer players. Their team lost to Mexico, 3-1, there are mass protests against Ahmadinejad's presence in Germany, and who knows how the Iranian mullahs will treat the team when they get back home.

Senior politicians, Jewish groups and a prominent German TV host will join a demonstration today in Nuremberg hours before Iran play their opening match of the tournament against Mexico in the city. They are furious that Ahmadinejad's deputy, Mohammad Aliabadi, has been allowed into the country after the Iranian President called the Holocaust 'a fairytale' and called for the destruction of Israel.

Germany has very strict laws on Holocaust denial - which can and do result in criminal sanctions against Holocaust deniers and others who deny the fact that the Nazis sought to exterminate Jews, gays, lesbians, and gypsies.

As for those protests, you've got Jews and exiled Iranians who are protesting Ahmadinejad's presence at the Cup. More than 1,000 attended the demonstrations.

Now, I actually watched part of the Iran-Mexico match, and quickly found myself rooting for the Mexicans, but at the same time worried about those Iranian players. Would they face harsh repercussions if they lost at the World Cup? They're pawns for the mullahs - and while they were doing their best, and best to avoid political discussions, the mullahs sure can't be happy about the loss.

UPDATE:
Apparently even casual watching of the World Cup is illegal under Islamic law. Riots ensued when an Islamic Court in Somolia tried to enforce the no-watch edict. Two people were killed and gunmen were roaming the streets ready to enforce swift and harsh justice on anyone trying to catch a glimpse of the World Cup.

The gunmen loyal to the Joint Islamic Courts (JIC), cut electricity, cleared cinema halls and warned residents against watching the football tournament in areas they control, forcing a violent protest late on Saturday in which two people were killed, residents said Sunday.

The JIC deputy chairman AbdulKadir Ali Omar said the Islamic tribunals would crackdown on halls that defy the order to show western films and video, including the World Cup.

"This is war against all people who show films that promote pornography, drug dealing and all forms of evil," Omar told AFP.

"We shall not even allow the showing of the World Cup because they corrupt the morals of our children whom we endeavour to teach the Islamic way of life," he added.

Islamic courts officials said they were against some elements of World Cup, notably the advertisements for alcohol.

On Sunday, residents said Islamic gunmen were roaming in Sukahola and Huriwa neighbourhoods in northern Mogadishu to ensure that the ban was enforced.

A strict interpretation of Islamic teachings often bans Western films and television as immoral.

"The Islamic courts have ordered the closure of three cinema halls," said Sukahola resident Abdulaziz Hanad told AFP. "They want to make sure that nobody in Mogadishu watches the World Cup."

"Since the Islamic courts took control of Mogadishu, we knew they would not allow us to watch football," said a dejected Dahir Abubakar Hassan, a resident of northern Mogadishu.