How The Blue States See The Military

Rochelle Reed, the Features Editor of the Tribune in San Luis Obispo, California, wrote a column about her shock when her son, Evan, enlisted in the army out of the blue:

"Two years ago in September, as my friends were sending their kids off to Berkeley or Stanford or UCLA, I drove my son, Evan, to our local recruitment center where he joined the U.S. Army. ...

"Never in a million years did I imagine my son would join the Army. Nor did Evan. In high school, he’d hang up on recruiters who called the house. He’d blurt, 'Get away from me!' to the ones who trawled the local hangouts. Our home was liberal Democrat and anti-war and now, at 21, he was a Michael Moore fan. The night before he left, he spent his time reading 'Stupid White Men.'"

It must be quite a shock for a Blue State Mom to spend all that time indoctrinating her kid, teaching him the military is stupid and Michael Moore is a genius, only to have it all go horribly, tragically wrong. Here he could have been safely smoking dope at Berkeley and being lectured by tenured hippie radicals on the evils of capitalism and he throws it all away to be a grunt infantryman. Kids!

"When I tell people that Evan has joined the Army, their reactions are almost always the same: their faces freeze, they pause way too long, and then they say, 'I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry for you.'

"I hang my head and look mournful, accepting their sympathy for the worry that lives in me. But as it dawns on them that Evan wasn’t drafted—Vietnam still clings to my generation—their expressions become quizzical, then disbelieving."

The shame of it all! Why didn't he become a drug dealer or something respectable instead of a warmonger razing villages in a manner reminiscent of Genghis Khan?

"I know what they’re thinking: Why in the world would any kid in his right mind choose to enlist when we’re in the middle of a war?"

Why? Why? Why? Why would anyone risk their life for their country? It's a pretty puzzling riddle for the Me Generation of the Baby Boomers.

"I begin telling them the story, desperate to assure them it wasn’t arrogant patriotism or murderous blood lust that persuaded him to join. What finally hooked him was a recruiter’s comment that if he thought the country’s role in Iraq was so screwed up, he should try to fix it."

She's got a point. My friends in the Air Force all signed up for the arrogant patriotism and murderous blood lust. You know who you are. Me, I signed up for the chow. I LOVED those C-rations, especially the beans & weiners. And the boned chicken, c'est magnifique!

"And on a deeper, personal level, he signed up hoping that somehow the Army would help him find what young men these days often try to fill with alcohol, drugs and video games: a sense of purpose."

Alcohol, drugs, video games, or the army. For lefty moms, the world is full of bad choices for their sons.

Thanks to Best Of The Web

It Sucks Being Bin Laden

It's been a bad year for Bin Laden. It wasn't so long ago he was sitting on top of the Muslim world, having struck a death blow to the Great Satan which would surely then fold like the paper tiger it was. But America didn't die nor did it suffer the same fate as the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. To Bin Laden's surprise, America took Afghanistan from him, took down most of his lieutenants, and chased him into a cave in Waziristan, where the worst he could do is make threats by video.

Osama had hope that Iraq might revive Al Qaeda's fortunes but now that's been shot to hell, too, by those damned infidel Crusaders. In his last videotape, "A Message to the People of Iraq," he's given up threatening America and been reduced to bitching about how bad the jihad is going. It sucks being Bin Laden these days.

Mistakes have been made, Bin Laden admits. Insurgents have done bad things, very bad things. Says Osama, "The mujahideen are the children of this nation ... they do right things and wrong things. ... Those who are accused of violations of God's commandments should face trial." Trial? What's Al Qaeda coming to when its terror chieftain starts advocating rule of law? What kind of friggin' terrorist obeys the law?

Bin Laden goes on to caution his followers against extremism: "I advise ... our brothers, particularly those in al Qaeda wherever they may be, to avoid fanatically following a person or a group." It appears that Bin Laden has finally figured out that he isn't winning any recruits with snuff videos or forced marriages or killing people's children to win their support.

Bin Laden even bitch-slapped himself for being too extreme: "I advise myself, Muslims in general and brothers in al-Qaida everywhere to avoid extremism among men and groups." Ya think?

Bin Laden bitched about the insurgents breaking into factions and fighting among themselves: "Some of you have been lax in one duty, which is to unite your ranks. ... Beware of division ... Muslims are waiting for you to gather under a single banner to champion righteousness. Be keen to oblige with this duty."

Bin Laden's problem is that the Sunni minority in Iraq who initially supported Al Qaeda has not only abandoned them but is now actively hunting them down and killing them. Bin Laden's thugs didn't know the first rule of guerrilla warfare is to gain the support of the people. As Mao said, a guerrilla must move among the people like a fish swims in the sea. Al Qaeda in Iraq alienated their Sunni supporters by trampling on them like an elephant, thinking they could force their support. Their bad.

In an audiotape, Bin Laden admitted that Al Qaeda had lost the war in Iraq. Fortunately for him, the liberal media hasn't heard about it. They still think he's winning and the war is bringing him loads of fresh recruits. Don't hold your breath hoping to read anything different from the "Iraq Is Vietnam" meme in the New York Times.

When Al-Jazeera broadcast Bin Laden's bout of pessimism and defeatism, Islamists were shamed and outraged that the network would show weakness or admit defeat. "God fight Al-Jazeera," cursed one Muslim yahoo who called Al-Jazeera a "collaborator with the Crusaders." The Islamist nutcases at the Al-Fajr Media Center, which distributes Al Qaeda propanda online, accused Al-Jazeera of "counterfeiting the facts" by editing Osama's speech to make it appear negative about the jihad. Said Al-Fajr, "Al-Jazeera directors have shamefully chosen to back the Crusaders' side, and the defenders of hypocrites and the thugs and traitors of Iraq." One wack job Muslim wrote a poem calling Al-Jazeera a "miserable fly in the garbage," concluding, "Your day will come, vile one. As long as we live, you won't be safe, Jazeera."

I will pause briefly here while I laugh my ass off.

The problem with pandering to an audience of bloodthirsty Muslim fanatics is that eventually they will turn on you when you don't toe their radical line. Violent revolutionaries eventually turn on each other and their violent revolutions eventually consume themselves. Robespierre, while head of the Committee of Public Safety, sent thousands to the guillotine during The Reign of Terror of the French Revolution, only to find himself sent to the same guillotine at the end. It is likely that Al-Jazeera, which happily served the terrorist jihad by broadcasting Al Qaeda propaganda and snuff videos, will one day be featuring the videos of its own managers and reporters being snuffed by Islamists as a lesson.

We're winning.

Space Aliens Attack Sicily

The good people of Canneto di Caronia in northern Sicily were alarmed when their household goods spontaneously combusted. Cookers, electrical appliances, wedding gifts, and even furniture were catching fire for no apparent reason.

At first, it seemed like it could all be explained by poltergeist. The Vatican’s chief exorcist Father Gabriele Amorth said, "I’ve seen things like this before. Demons occupy a house and appear in electrical goods. Let’s not forget that Satan and his followers have immense powers." Excellent point. Let's not forget the Clinton White House.

Fortunately, reason prevailed when the government ordered the Civil Protection Department to investigate. They think the most likely cause was space aliens. The Italian government, after a two year investigation costing two million bucks says the fires were "caused by a high power electro magnetic emissions which were not man made and reached a power of between 12 and 15 gigawatts." The space aliens left behind their telltale footprint: "burnt imprints which have not been explained were found in a field." The Italians think that it could be a UFO landing site.

Francesco Mantegna Venerando, Sicily’s Civil Protection chief and coordinator of the report, said: "We are not saying that little green men from Mars started the fires but that unnatural forces capable of creating a large amount of electromagnetic energy were responsible. ... This is just one possibility we are also looking at another one which involves the testing of top secret weapons by an unknown power which are also capable of producing an enormous amount of energy."

It sounds like the Sicilians are a breath away from blaming Bush and his militarists from making their microwaves catch on fire.

Islamophobia

Magdi Khalil writes about "Islamophobia and the Islamist Scarecrow" in the American Thinker:

"According to the ["Global Patterns of Terrorism"] report, 14,352 terrorist operations took place across the world in 2006, and as a result 74545 military persons and 20,570 civilians were killed; 1800 children were wounded and killed, 430 students, 215 teachers and 129 reporters lost their lives; 8,200 policemen were wounded and killed, in addition to 1300 public leaders and guards. The number of individuals abducted during 2006 is estimated to be around 15,855; and the number of buildings, schools and governmental institutions targeted amounted to 19,500; 300 terrorist groups took responsibility for these operations, in addition to the individual incidents of terrorism.

"The report indicates that at least 50% of those operations targeted Muslims and were carried out by Muslims as well, and during that same period, 350 mosques were subject to terrorist attacks. When so much death and destruction takes place during a single year, and given that 90% of that horror was unleashed by Muslim terrorists, it is highly absurd to talk about Islamophobia in relation to the current state of affairs. Fear and misgivings are completely warranted in this situation. People are entitled to react in fear when they face a lethal situation, otherwise they would be lacking sensibility and good judgement.

"The term "Islamophobia" is a tool of deception that serves to mislead the world, blackmail the West, terrorize whoever dares to criticize Islam, fuel the anger of Muslim youth, and minimize the danger of Islamic terrorism, in addition to being a threat to the freedoms of thought, creativity and criticism in the West, ultimately the term can serve the interests of the terrorists."

Muslims rarely address criticism rationally or directly. Most usually, they respond to criticism, however valid, with wild counter-accusations. It's a form of fallacious reasoning called "ignoratio elenchi" where the rebuttal has no logical connection to the argument made. If you assert the violent nature of Islam by pointing out the plethora of terrorist attacks in its name, a Muslim is most likely to say Hiroshima proves America is the greatest terrorist.

The charge of "Islamophobia" is another form of ignoratio elenchi. It's pretty foolish to claim that the thousands killed on Sep 11 by Muslim terrorists are not a primary reason for the bad reputation of Islam nor the train bombings nor the snuff videos nor the new terror plots uncovered every month, but rather that the West simply has an irrational aversion to Islam with no basis in fact. You would have to overlook a lot to reduce it down to simple bigotry. Islamophobia is a red herring meant to divert the argument against Islam away from the painful truth that Islam is a bad and backward religion.

Hello Kitty Assault Rifle

In case you were wondering what to get the rug rats for Christmas.

Thanks to BoingBoing

Why No Nuns Have Been Successful Skyjackers

Hats off to the TSA for not taking the cheap and easy route of ethnically profiling young Muslim males as potential threats at security checkpoints and taking the politically correct approach of regarding everyone equally as a threat. We can rest easy knowing that Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta is having his troops search elderly nuns for box cutters. And that's why no gang of nuns has ever successfully hijacked a jumbo jet and flown it into Mecca.

Thanks to Michelle Malkin

The Beautiful Country

James Fallows of The Atlantic Magazine had been away on assignment in China for seven months when he returned to America last March. His first impression of America after a long stay in China:

"It is obvious, but: The wealth. The things. The overall abundance. (And, yeah, well, that you can speak English.) Plus, how clean the air is, and how many trees and birds and flowers there are, and how few unfinished edges -- open ditches, stacks of construction beams -- you come across. Since I'm in Northern California I haven't yet had the cliched reaction of how large the people themselves look. But I notice how sparse they seem to be on the streets, compared with any Chinese town.

"The name for America in Chinese and several other Asian languages is ... meiguo, "beautiful country." ...

"I realize an error of logic I had been making. China is so fast-changing, so ambitious, so covered with construction cranes, so on-the-move and on-the-rise, so dotted with localized pockets of affluence and big new projects like its Olympics sites and its giant factories and its 'Mag-Lev' trains, that I had begun, without thinking, to assume that it was 'rich.' Not even close. I am reminded of where the country actually stands. ...

"Once again, the beauty, wealth, polish, finished-ness, natural abundance, cleanliness, order, consumer choice, etc of America’s polished cities is just stupefying. Yes, this was a clear and perfect autumn afternoon in a prosperous capital. Still: my wife and I walked into a run-of-the-mill drug store and stood for a moment, stunned: there was a wider array of stuff on shelves within our immediate range of vision than we’d seen in months in Shanghai, the cosmopolitan pride of China.

"Americans read so many reports about the dynamism of China’s industries and the skyscrapers of its big cities that they may begin to think there is some overall comparability between the two economies. No. There isn’t. Not to mention: at the friends’ house where we’re staying, we drank water… out of the tap!"

Barack Obama

It's true. A picture is worth a thousand words. I'm thinking the caption on this should be:

"Please elect me to be president of an America I don't respect."

The Museum of Broken Relationships

Zvonimir Dobrovic got the idea for his Museum of Broken Relationships in Berlin from two Croatian artists who broke up and put all the artifacts of their lost love on display. The idea was to disconnect themselves from the emotional energy of the objects yet preserve them, allow them to convalesce, and act as a collective emotional therapy for the greater world.

A woman from Ljubljana donated her coffee pot which she used to brew coffee for her long ago love, even after they broke up and he came back to visit. Sometimes she would make herself coffee to remember him. "As I would like to break this endless circle I decided to donate it to the museum."

Another mad as hell woman from Sarajevo gave the museum a pen: "I'm just really sorry I didn’t break this pen as soon as I got it, because if I did I wouldn’t have written all that romantic crap he did not deserve."

A Croatian war veteran donated his artificial leg to commemorate his dead romance with the "beautiful, young and ambitious social worker" who helped him get back no his feet: "The prosthetic limb endured longer than our love. It was made of better material!"

Another woman from Berlin (it's mostly women) donated an ax:

"She was the first woman that I let move in with me. All my friends thought I needed to learn to let people in more. After a few months …I was offered the opportunity to travel to the US. She could not come with me. We said goodbye tearfully at the airport with assurances from her that she could not survive three weeks without me. When I returned after three weeks she said: 'I fell in love with someone else. I've known her for four days but I know that she gives me all that you cannot give me.'

"I kicked her out. She went immediately with her new girlfriend on holiday while her furniture stayed with me. Not knowing what to do with my anger, I bought this ax to blow off some steam and to give her at least a small feeling of loss. I started to ax one piece of furniture a day. The more her room filled up with chopped up furniture, the more I started to feel better. Two weeks after she was kicked out she came to take the furniture. It was neatly arranged into small heaps and fragments of wood."

Nonie Darwish

Nonie Darwish is an Egyptian turned American writer and public speaker who grew up in Cairo. Darwish rebelled against the tyranny and hate-mongering of Islam, detailing it in her book, "Now they Call Me Infidel; Why I Renounced Jihad for America, Israel and the War on Terror."

Darwish spoke at University of California Berkeley last night, Tuesday, October 23, in the face of harrassment from radicals, captured in photos by Zombie. Her lecture was part of a series of events on dozens of campuses across the US for "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week," organized by conservative intellectual David Horowitz to highlight Islamic extremism. You can read the whole speech here, but here are some excerpts:

"I moved to the US in 1978. In my first visit to a mosque in America, we were told not to assimilate in America and that Islam is here to become the dominant religion. I was told to cover up in Islamic clothes; but how can I do that when I have never worn Islamic clothes in Egypt? Women in Egypt until the 1980’s did not wear Islamic clothes.

"In August 2001, I visited my birthplace, Cairo, Egypt. I was stunned to see how radical Islam had taken over. The level of anger and hate speech was alarming. I saw extreme poverty, pollution, hazardous material and garbage along the Nile. There was high unemployment, inflation and widespread corruption. But when I read Arab media, all I saw was Israel and America bashing. Citizens were unaware of Muslim against Muslim atrocities in Iraq, Algeria, Sudan etc. ...

"I was happy to return to the US on the evening of Sept. 10th. 2001. The next morning I saw the second airplane hit the twin towers, I knew ‘Jihad has come to America.’ Muhammad Attah was from Cairo, the same city I came from.

"I called several friends in Cairo, they were all in denial and said ‘How dare you say that Arabs did this? Don’t you know this is a Jewish conspiracy?'

"These were not radicals, but ordinary Egyptians who otherwise are very nice people. I hung up the phone and felt alone and disconnected from my culture of origin. Once again, my people are accusing the Jewish people of something we know very well, we Arabs have done ourselves. In any religion this is considered a sin, but in the eyes of radial Islam, Jews do not deserve the truth, justice or mercy. The Jews that we describe in our mosques, Arab textbooks and media don't exist. We, Arabs are fighting an imaginary Jew of our own creation. ...

"On Arab TV, I once saw a Muslim preacher telling little children that lying is not allowed except under three conditions 1- Lying to non-Muslims when it is in the best interest of Islam. 2- Lying to Muslims if it will end conflict between them. And 3rd: Lying to one’s wife to improve the relationship.

"Lying thus has become an obligation in international relationships, Muslim relationships and family relationships. Any wonder why Muslims were silent after 9/11? Those who expose the lying game are considered traitors. By allowing lying, Muslims have created a culture unable to distinguish between lies from truth; truth has become a convoluted game of saving face for the best interest of Islam.

"The Times of London reported that Muslim students in Britain are being taught to despise non-Muslims as ‘filth’. The Arabic word for this is ‘Nagas.’ That is why many Arabs believe that the existence of non-Muslims on Muslim land is a desecration or occupation.

"US soldiers, at the request of Saudi Arabia, sacrificed their lives to protect it from Saddam. Under normal conditions that could have been met with appreciation, but instead, the Arab street reaction was “how dare the infidels desecrate Muslim land.” That is why America’s defense of the Muslims against the Serbs, the Afghani Muslims against the Soviet Union, feeding the Somali Muslims starved by their own leadership, all did not get the US any credit in the Muslim world; just the opposite, the more America tries to help stabilize the region, the more it is despised. Arab-Muslims do not want to be rescued by infidels. This is a proud culture that is easily shamed by feelings of dependency on the non-Muslims. This is the psychology of the Arab Street.

"That is how the West is perceived. In the Judeo Christian culture they say: “we are all sinners” -- but in the Muslim culture “they are all sinners; but we are Muslims”. Non-Muslim are “Cafir”, non-Muslims are not innocent; they are viewed as sinners who need Islam and Islamists have given themselves the role of Allah to force Islam on the world, against their will, through the principle of Jihad."

Sixty-Seven Is Not Enough

Shahadeh Abu Arrar, 58, is a dirt poor Arab Israeli Bedouin with eight wives. Under Muslim law, you can have up to four at a time, but the Bedouins see that more as a guideline than a law. Men marry women and legally divorce them but everyone, wink, wink, knows they are still married. Says Shahadeh, "My first wife is my age, and today I hardly spend any time with her. Her children are big, and I leave her alone. I have younger wives to spend time with. Every night I decide which wife to be with."

Abu Arrar is the father of 53 children by Arab Israeli wives. He has another 14 children by Palestinian wives over in the West Bank. That's 67 total. How he supports them all is something of a mystery. He raises some camels, goats and cows and gets welfare payments worth about $1,700. That can go a long way if you are living a simple Bedouin life and put your wives to work. By contrast, the average Israeli family, who are paying for Abu Arrar's family, have about 2.3 children.

Abu Arrar brags that he knows all his children's names and is shooting for a longer list: "I'm thinking about a new wife, No. 9. There are many women who wish to marry me and there is no lack of women. I never had a problem with such things."

So there you are, ladies. If Nine is your lucky number, you better move fast. However, if Ten is your lucky number, you can probably take your time.

Thank You, America

Majhid Hamid Majeed is a 33-year-old shop owner and father of five in the Adhamiyah neighborhood in northern Baghdad who was kidnapped last Tuesday by thugs who beat the hell out of him. They stuffed him in a small room on a cot. They told him that if his family didn't pony up a ten thousand dollar ransom, they'd kill him.

The word spread through the neighborhood. The Iraqis in Baghdad have had it with violence. They're sick of being trapped in their own homes. Many of them have figured out that there isn't any difference between the criminals and insurgents and have been going over to the US to clean up their town. Somebody called the local tip line with the names and hideout of the kidnappers on Wednesday. That happens more and more lately.

A platoon from Troop C, 3rd Battalion, 7th Cavalry (Custer's unit) kicked through the door of the hideout, scaring the kidnapper guarding Majeed clean out of his shoes. They caught him before the barefoot bastard could make his escape to the roof. They found a confused Majeed, who thought he was going to be killed, and told him he was being rescued to which he exclaimed, “Thank you America!”

Bring Me My 72 Virgins!

Amrozi bin Nurhasyim, the Smiling Assassin held on death row in Indonesia for the bombings in Bali which killed 202 people and wounded 209, spoke to reporters about the Australian prime minister's criticism of Indonesia's slowness to carry out the executions of the Muslim bombers:

"I'm very happy, especially after hearing that John Howard is very angry with us. The more he is angry, the more I will get rewards from God, right? The more I make infidels angry, the more I will get my reward, so I'm more relaxed."

Prime Minister John Howard complained about soft treatment of the Muslim terrorists who slaughtered eighty-eight young Australians on vacation in Bali after Indonesia considered cutting the prison terms of ten Muslim terrorists involved in that bombing in Bali and another one. Australians were outraged when Indonesia's anti-terror chief invited "reformed" Muslim terrorists from prison to a party at his home last month.

Amrozi, his older brother Ali Ghufron, and Imam Samudra are all being held in Batu Prison in Java for the mass murder. They refuse to ask for a pardon and are eager to be executed. Samudra says,

"We apologise for the victims, but only the Muslims. The infidels will go to hell anyway. ... Absolutely, we are not afraid. With execution we will go to heaven, and our wish to see God and the angels is far higher than the wish of the infidels for our death. ... Why would we be scared of death? Even now we are not scared to be executed. (US President George W) Bush and his allies, you all will go to hell but me and all my friends in the world will go to heaven."

SLAPPing Down The Soft Jihad

Muslims are waging both a hard jihad of violent terror against the non-Muslim world and a soft jihad of intimidation, using the legal system to attack their critics and suppress their criticism. A California law called “strategic litigation against public participation” (SLAPP) is helping defeat this intimidation which is fueled by Saudi petrodollars, as told by Judith Miller in the City Journal:

"Over the last few years, Islamists have tried silencing reporters, scholars, and citizens by suing them for defamation, often successfully. But recent legal cases in California, Massachusetts, and Minnesota suggest that the tactic may finally be backfiring, at least in the United States, if not in Britain, where libel laws overwhelmingly favor plaintiffs. The American lawsuits’ outcomes—poorly covered by the media—represent victories for the free expression and public participation that the First Amendment guarantees."

The radical recipients of Saudi largesse in America wage jihad by lawsuit, attempting to overmatch their opponents with the expense of defending against a contrived defamation suit for telling the truth about them:

"Last May, the Islamic Society of Boston dropped its suit against the Boston Herald, a local Fox news channel, journalist Steven Emerson, and 14 others. The Society had accused the defendants of libel and of infringing its civil rights by claiming that it had funded terrorist organizations, received money from Saudi Arabia, and bought land for a mosque below market value from the City of Boston.

"Though Massachusetts’s anti-SLAPP law does not cover media firms, ten of the non-media defendants filed a motion to quash the Society’s suit. When a state judge rejected the motion, a legal discovery process got under way while the defendants appealed. Bank records and other documents revealed that, contrary to its claims, the Society had raised over $7 million from Saudi and other Middle Eastern sources and had funded two groups that the Bush administration has designated terrorist entities: the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development and the Benevolence International Foundation.

"Records also showed that Society directors had deleted all e-mails about the Society’s land purchase. Finally, discovery revealed that the deputy director of the Boston city agency in charge of negotiating the land deal not only was a Society member whom it had paid to raise money in the Middle East, but also secretly advised the group about obtaining the land cheaply—a clear conflict of interest.

"On May 29, soon after the state appellate court heard arguments on the anti-SLAPP appeal, the Society abandoned the suit. Though its lawyers did not respond to requests for comment and its website tried to put a good face on the surrender, Jeff Robbins, who represented several defendants in the complex lawsuit, expressed their belief that the Society had caved, fearing the prospect of paying what could have been millions of dollars in court and legal fees. “The anti-SLAPP motion clearly played a role,” said Robbins, who represented two clients for free because First Amendment issues were involved. Another factor, he said, was the Society’s fear that the court would order it to answer questions under oath and release information that it had tried to keep secret, such as the names of its donors."

Mark Daily

US Army Lieutenant Mark Jennings Daily of Irvine, California, born on the Fourth of July twenty-three years ago, was killed in action on January 15, 2007 while leading a patrol in Mosul, Iraq. His Humvee was blown up by an improvised explosive device packing the equivalent of 1500 pounds of high explosive. Three other soldiers and an Iraqi interpreter died with him.

Get to know him.

The Al Qaeda Blues

News you won't see in the liberal media from Strategy Page about Al Qaeda's quagmire in Iraq:

"Al Qaeda has lost half its leadership over the Summer, and American intelligence collectors have amassed a huge number of desperate messages from al Qaeda leaders and operatives. Terror attacks are down by more than half because al Qaeda keeps getting run out of their refuges, and, in desperation, keeps asking each other for help.

"There is not much help. Couriers are still getting through with cash, to buy people and bomb making materials. But most of this stuff is now getting captured, as safe houses are quickly abandoned. When the terrorists are unable to escape, they more frequently surrender, rather than fight to the death. This is a sign of falling morale. This is what the psychologists predicted as the number of desperate messages grew.

"For the troops, this is a mixed blessings. But as more of the hard core are cornered, you also come up against heavily armed men, ready to fight to the death. Sure, you can eventually clear out the civilians, back away and let the smart bombs finish the job. But that initial encounter with desperate terrorists, determined to take an infidel with him, can be unnerving, and dangerous. Increasingly, large groups of terrorists are being cornered. Over the weekend, at least sixty terrorists were killed in several engagements."