TSA: Total Security Abyss

(Hat tip: KimR) - While a TSA agent pawed my hair bun this weekend, presumably on high alert for improvised explosive bobby pins, I pondered the latest news on the Somalia airplane terror attack. Intelligence officials released video footage of airport employees in Mogadishu handing a laptop to a jihadist suspect before he boarded Daallo Airlines Airbus Flight D3159 last week... Read more at Townhall.com Read More......

What We Lose if We Give Up Privacy

Peggy Noonan - What is privacy? Why should we want to hold onto it? Why is it important, necessary, precious? ✧ Is it just some prissy relic of the pretechnological past? ✧ We talk about this now because of Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency revelations, and new fears that we are operating, all of us, within what has become or is becoming a massive surveillance state. They log your calls here, they can listen in, they can read your emails. They keep the data in mammoth machines that contain a huge collection of information about you and yours. This of course is in pursuit of a laudable goal, security in the age of terror. ✧ Is it excessive? It certainly appears to be. Does that matter? Yes. Among other reasons: The end of the expectation that citizens' communications are and will remain private will probably change us as a people, and a country.

Read more at Wall Street Journal... Read More......

Interesting local letters

Gazette-Times, 12/15/2010 by Linda Weimer - Letter: There’s nothing funny about soda that references Communism. (Also read some interesting comments.

Gazette-Times, 12/15/2010 by Jane Newton - Letter: Thanks to FBI, TSA; local Muslims could start anti-terrorism effort. Read More......

FYI: Copy Machines, a Security Risk?

CBS News
(Hat tip: Stella Guenther) Read More......

Analysis: US role in Iraq doesn't end just yet

BREITBART.COM, 6/20/2009 by Robert Burns - WASHINGTON (AP): U.S. troops are out of Iraq's cities but not its future. Even a best-case scenario is likely to feature an American role there for years—militarily as well as diplomatically. ∴ That does not mean a permanent large U.S. troop presence in Iraq. Under a security deal struck with the Bush administration, American forces are to be out by the end of 2011. ∴ But it's no secret that Iraq's security forces are not fully ready to handle even a diminished insurgency on their own. ∴ Some senior U.S. military officers say privately they anticipate Iraqi setbacks in coming months, particularly if the insurgents regroup. But by partnering with American forces, the Iraqis stand a good chance of succeeding. That is why a number of U.S. troops will remain in the cities to assist and advise. Read more at Breitbart...

Related
Blast kills 33 as Iraq takes charge of security Read More......

A War We Just Might Win

New York Times
July 30, 2007
By Michael E. O’Hanlon and Kenneth M. Pollack

Washington -- Viewed from Iraq, where we just spent eight days meeting with American and Iraqi military and civilian personnel, the political debate in Washington is surreal. The Bush administration has over four years lost essentially all credibility. Yet now the administration’s critics, in part as a result, seem unaware of the significant changes taking place.

Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily “victory” but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.

After the furnace-like heat, the first thing you notice when you land in Baghdad is the morale of our troops. In previous trips to Iraq we often found American troops angry and frustrated — many sensed they had the wrong strategy, were using the wrong tactics and were risking their lives in pursuit of an approach that could not work.

Today, morale is high. The soldiers and marines told us they feel that they now have a superb commander in Gen. David Petraeus; they are confident in his strategy, they see real results, and they feel now they have the numbers needed to make a real difference.

Everywhere, Army and Marine units were focused on securing the Iraqi population, working with Iraqi security units, creating new political and economic arrangements at the local level and providing basic services — electricity, fuel, clean water and sanitation — to the people. Yet in each place, operations had been appropriately tailored to the specific needs of the community. As a result, civilian fatality rates are down roughly a third since the surge began — though they remain very high, underscoring how much more still needs to be done.

In Ramadi, for example, we talked with an outstanding Marine captain whose company was living in harmony in a complex with a (largely Sunni) Iraqi police company and a (largely Shiite) Iraqi Army unit. He and his men had built an Arab-style living room, where he met with the local Sunni sheiks — all formerly allies of Al Qaeda and other jihadist groups — who were now competing to secure his friendship.

In Baghdad’s Ghazaliya neighborhood, which has seen some of the worst sectarian combat, we walked a street slowly coming back to life with stores and shoppers. The Sunni residents were unhappy with the nearby police checkpoint, where Shiite officers reportedly abused them, but they seemed genuinely happy with the American soldiers and a mostly Kurdish Iraqi Army company patrolling the street. The local Sunni militia even had agreed to confine itself to its compound once the Americans and Iraqi units arrived.

We traveled to the northern cities of Tal Afar and Mosul. This is an ethnically rich area, with large numbers of Sunni Arabs, Kurds and Turkmens. American troop levels in both cities now number only in the hundreds because the Iraqis have stepped up to the plate. Reliable police officers man the checkpoints in the cities, while Iraqi Army troops cover the countryside. A local mayor told us his greatest fear was an overly rapid American departure from Iraq. All across the country, the dependability of Iraqi security forces over the long term remains a major question mark.

But for now, things look much better than before. American advisers told us that many of the corrupt and sectarian Iraqi commanders who once infested the force have been removed. The American high command assesses that more than three-quarters of the Iraqi Army battalion commanders in Baghdad are now reliable partners (at least for as long as American forces remain in Iraq).

In addition, far more Iraqi units are well integrated in terms of ethnicity and religion. The Iraqi Army’s highly effective Third Infantry Division started out as overwhelmingly Kurdish in 2005. Today, it is 45 percent Shiite, 28 percent Kurdish, and 27 percent Sunni Arab.

In the past, few Iraqi units could do more than provide a few “jundis” (soldiers) to put a thin Iraqi face on largely American operations. Today, in only a few sectors did we find American commanders complaining that their Iraqi formations were useless — something that was the rule, not the exception, on a previous trip to Iraq in late 2005.
The additional American military formations brought in as part of the surge, General Petraeus’s determination to hold areas until they are truly secure before redeploying units, and the increasing competence of the Iraqis has had another critical effect: no more whack-a-mole, with insurgents popping back up after the Americans leave.

In war, sometimes it’s important to pick the right adversary, and in Iraq we seem to have done so. A major factor in the sudden change in American fortunes has been the outpouring of popular animus against Al Qaeda and other Salafist groups, as well as (to a lesser extent) against Moktada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army.

These groups have tried to impose Shariah law, brutalized average Iraqis to keep them in line, killed important local leaders and seized young women to marry off to their loyalists. The result has been that in the last six months Iraqis have begun to turn on the extremists and turn to the Americans for security and help. The most important and best-known example of this is in Anbar Province, which in less than six months has gone from the worst part of Iraq to the best (outside the Kurdish areas). Today the Sunni sheiks there are close to crippling Al Qaeda and its Salafist allies. Just a few months ago, American marines were fighting for every yard of Ramadi; last week we strolled down its streets without body armor.

Another surprise was how well the coalition’s new Embedded Provincial Reconstruction Teams are working. Wherever we found a fully staffed team, we also found local Iraqi leaders and businessmen cooperating with it to revive the local economy and build new political structures. Although much more needs to be done to create jobs, a new emphasis on microloans and small-scale projects was having some success where the previous aid programs often built white elephants.

In some places where we have failed to provide the civilian manpower to fill out the reconstruction teams, the surge has still allowed the military to fashion its own advisory groups from battalion, brigade and division staffs. We talked to dozens of military officers who before the war had known little about governance or business but were now ably immersing themselves in projects to provide the average Iraqi with a decent life.

Outside Baghdad, one of the biggest factors in the progress so far has been the efforts to decentralize power to the provinces and local governments. But more must be done. For example, the Iraqi National Police, which are controlled by the Interior Ministry, remain mostly a disaster. In response, many towns and neighborhoods are standing up local police forces, which generally prove more effective, less corrupt and less sectarian. The coalition has to force the warlords in Baghdad to allow the creation of neutral security forces beyond their control.

In the end, the situation in Iraq remains grave. In particular, we still face huge hurdles on the political front. Iraqi politicians of all stripes continue to dawdle and maneuver for position against one another when major steps towards reconciliation — or at least accommodation — are needed. This cannot continue indefinitely. Otherwise, once we begin to downsize, important communities may not feel committed to the status quo, and Iraqi security forces may splinter along ethnic and religious lines.

How much longer should American troops keep fighting and dying to build a new Iraq while Iraqi leaders fail to do their part? And how much longer can we wear down our forces in this mission? These haunting questions underscore the reality that the surge cannot go on forever. But there is enough good happening on the battlefields of Iraq today that Congress should plan on sustaining the effort at least into 2008.

Michael E. O’Hanlon is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Kenneth M. Pollack is the director of research at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings. Read More......

More Security Turned Over to Iraqi's

As of May 30, seven of Iraq’s eighteen provinces have been turned over to Iraqi security. In the Kurdish north, as Gateway Pundit puts it, “The Peshmerga Women Steal the Show at Iraqi Handover Ceremonies.” (See a collection of photos here.)

ARBIL, Iraq (AFP) - In a blaze of pomp showcasing Kurdish military muscle, US forces handed over responsibility for security in Iraq's three northern provinces to the Kurdish regional government on Wednesday...Sulaimaniyah, Arbil and Dohuk provinces are ruled by the Kurdish Regional Government, which has its own executive and ministries and has been spared much of the unrest wracking the rest of Iraq."Today is another success in the process of rebuilding Iraq," Kurdish Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani said at a ceremony in his capital, Arbil.

The handover was followed by a parade of Kurdish soldiers, including an all-female martial arts display."This is the result of the experience of 16 years," he said referring to Iraqi Kurdistan's history of de facto independence since the 1991 Gulf War weakened Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's grip on the mountainous north.

Kurdish security officers, or peshmerga, stand next to a portrait of Mustafa Barazani, founder of the peshmerga, during a handover ceremony in the northern city of Arbil May 30, 2007. U.S. forces handed over security control of the three northern Kurdish provinces of Dohuk, Sulaimaniya and Arbil to Iraq on Wednesday.

REUTERS/Ahmad Al-Rubaye/Pool (IRAQ) Iraqi-American Haider Ajina reported this earlier this week:

Kurdistan in its three provinces of Arbil, Sulaimaniya and Dehuck covers 14673.4 sq mi of Iraqi territory and a population of 3.8 million Iraqis. This represents 3.4% of Iraq’s territory and 15.2% of the population. In the south the provinces of Maysan, Nejaf, Muthena & Dhi Qar are already under Iraqi provincial control. By the time the hand over of the Kurdish provinces is complete seven out of eighteen Iraqi provinces will be under provincial control. The provinces under full Iraqi control, after the Kurdish provinces are handed over, will be a total of 35.4% of Iraq’s territory and 29% of the population. All this has been achieved, in a country with little experience in democracy and the rule of law in its recent history and after 30 years of tyrannical rule, and only 4 short years since the liberation, and combating terrorists trying to destabilize an elected government.

Read More......

Roosevelt’s or Reagan’s America?

A Time for Choosing.
Imprimis (Hillsdale College), March 2007 – John Marini, University of Nevada, Reno
Commentary and quotes: Adapted from a speech delivered at Hillsdale College on January 29, 2007

On January 11, 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt sent the text of his Annual Message to Congress. Under normal conditions, he would have delivered the message in person that evening at the Capitol. But he was recovering from the flu, and his doctor advised him not to leave the White House. So he delivered it as a fireside chat to the American people. It has been called the greatest speech of the century by Cass Sunstein, a prominent liberal law professor at the University of Chicago. It is an important speech because it is probably the most far-reaching attempt by an American president to legitimize the administrative or welfare state, based on the idea that government must guarantee social and economic security for all.

Thirty-seven years later, in his First Inaugural Address on January 20, 1981, President Ronald Reagan would deny that government could provide such a broad guarantee of security in a manner consistent with the protection of American liberty. Indeed, he would insist that bureaucratic government had become a danger to the survival of our freedom. In looking at the differences between the views of Roosevelt and Reagan, we can discern the distinction between a constitutional regime—in which the power of government is limited so as to enable the people to rule—and an administrative state, which presupposes the rule of a bureaucratic or intellectual elite. Continued...

Reprinted by permission from IMPRIMIS, the national speech digest of Hillsdale College, www.hillsdale.edu. Read More......