Vest supplied free of charge.
Related: This is helpful.

As usual, the go-to guy on this is Michael Totten. Read it all;

UPDATE: Abu Takla in the comments says “one more to go, not 2. If they assassinate one more minister, the cabinet is automatically dissolved, because it would lack the two-thirds + 1 it needs to be constitutional.”
UPDATE: Another member of Lebanon’s political cabinet, Michel Pharaon was targetted with assassination today. He survived. But if the bastards had gotten him, the government would have fallen and stage one of the coup would be over.

More from Claudia Rosset

While heads of state ritually deplore the assassination of a Lebanese cabinet member, Pierre Gemayel, there is nothing to stop the next murder — as the people who have spoken out for a free and independent Lebanon are picked off. It’s a sinister twist, that while so much of the global debate consists of battering America for acting as the world’s top cop, America on many vital fronts is right now doing no such thing. Following last year’s Cedar Revolution, Lebanon has once again been left, for all practical purposes, in the hands of Syria, Iran and the United Nations — a mix that spells more murders of Lebanese democrats, no chance for Lebanese democracy, and the triumphant consolidation of a fascist-terrorist front bordering on Israel, with tentacles reaching into Europe and the Americas. What we need right now in Washington is a Winston Churchill, not the report of a study group co-chaired by James Baker III.

More here, plus a roundup at PajamasMedia.

Via Belmont Club (where there’s more from Bill Roggio).

I’m getting word of a major battle last week in Iraq last week, between terrorists and elements of the 82nd Airborne, east of Baghdad. One U.S. officer described the engagement as “one of the five biggest battles” between U.S. troops and insurgents in recent years. Other reports indicate as many as 100 terrorists were killed in the fighting, which lasted for several days. American casualties were described as “light.” The engagement reportedly began when the 82nd discovered–an attacked–an apparent terrorist training camp. So far, no confirmation of this operation from the “western press” in Iraq, nor the Multi-National Forces in Iraq (MNF-I) public affairs office.

A comment there points to this briefing, which may refer to the same engagement . Worth your time, it includes progress reports on infrastructure projects to this update on Fallujah;

The people in Iraq are showing tremendous perseverance in fighting these foreign influences that seek to destroy their goal of a unified Iraq. Last week, I was in Fallujah and had the opportunity there to see some different examples of this.
Fallujah just was under assault from foreign fighters and terrorists two years ago this very month. It was a city without security, stability or even any hope. The situation was so bad that we mounted a massive rescue effort for the people of that city. In October of 2004, coalition forces launched Operation Al-Fajr, named after the Iraqi word for “dawn.” Led by American Marines, coalition forces took on an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 terrorists who had driven out the legitimate residents of their neighborhoods. The population of Fallujah had largely fled the city, reducing the number of residents to somewhere in the figure of 50,000 to 60,000.
Last week, I saw a city of about 300,000 people, who have made incredible progress over these past two years. I witnessed a city council meeting, where a democratically elected mayor and city council led the deliberations and talked about the people’s business. I saw Iraqis policing their own neighborhoods, enforcing their own laws and transitioning to responsibility for their own security and growth. I saw an Iraqi army that cooperates with an Iraqi police force, a situation few would have believed achievable in Fallujah just one short year ago. I even saw a processing center where Fallujah welcomes persons displaced by instability elsewhere in Iraq.
In the aftermath of Operation Al-Fajr, as late as September of 2005, there were still 3,000 United States Marines and only 300 Iraqi security forces in Fallujah. Today the people of the city are protected by 1,500 members of their own Iraqi security forces, and there are approximately only 300 U.S. Marines.

Taking the historical long view, a food for thought piece – “The Human Calculus”;

As things stand, the conflict with Islamic radicalism involves the lowest average daily military fatality rate of any long run national security era. It may worsen, it may improve. If Congress had been asked on September 12, 2001, to endorse a national defense posture against Islamic radicalism that traded up to 2 military fatalities per day over the subsequent five years in return for no additional homeland attacks, the deposing of terror friendly regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq, the ending of Libya’s nuclear program, what would they have done? Would Congress accept that bargain today?

Finally, this at In From The Cold – Labouchere of Arabia.
That should keep you busy for a while.

Investor’s Business Daily on the question of Iraqis “stepping up to the plate” to defend themselves;

Iraqis — civilians, military and police — are risking their lives for their country every day, from the millions who proudly held up their purple fingers to the young police applicants who are murdered as they line up to serve their country. Then more line up in their place.
Are the Arabs ready for democracy or are they doomed by an ingrained tribalism? We need only to look at Lebanon, where a multicultural democracy once flourished. Beirut was called the Paris of the Middle East until the country became a human shield for the PLO and then Hezbollah terrorists supported by Syria and Iran.
The Lebanese might have sustained their multicultural democracy had we not cut and run after Hezbollah killed 241 Marines in Beirut in 1983, deciding we could no longer afford to be Lebanon’s security blanket. Sometimes democracies need a little help from their friends.
[…]
We’ve been Europe’s security blanket for six decades. We are Japan’s security blanket. We are South Korea’s. It’s been said that were it not for us, the French would be speaking German and the Germans would be speaking Russian. In 1938, the West decided it couldn’t be Czechoslovakia’s security blanket and sold out that country in Munich, Germany. The rest, as they say, is history.

MIchael Totten is pessimistic about developments in Lebanon.

The Lebanese government says Syria and Iran aim to overthrow the elected government in Beirut and reconquer the country. Whether they are actually trying to do this right now or not is unknown. There should be no doubt, though, that if they don’t have a plan to execute now it’s because they want to do it later instead.
Meanwhile, a group that calls itself “Al Qaeda in Lebanon” appeared from Lord-only-knows-where and directly threatened to destroy the March 14 government. “Al Qaeda in Lebanon” may or may not exist as a wing of bin Laden’s Al Qaeda. If they do, they’re serious. If they don’t, they’re a Syrian proxy. Either way, it doesn’t look good. This is not a prank phone call.
These threats to Beirut’s elected government are concurrent with Hezbollah’s and Amal’s resignation from the Lebanese cabinet. Hezbollah and Amal quit for two reasons. The first is that the March 14 bloc refused to give Nasrallah and friends who lost last year’s election more power in a “national unity” government. The second is because it was time for the cabinet to move ahead on the Hariri tribunal. Hezbollah will not tolerate the prosecution of their patron in Damascus.
Once again, the country is bracing itself for sectarian war in the streets. Charles Malik says Christians may sit this one out for the first time in Lebanon’s history. Whatever fighting there may or may not be will likely involve Sunni and Shia.
If this isn’t gruesome enough, Syria and Iran have reportedly replenished all Hezbollah’s destroyed arsenal stocks. Hezbollah, according to the Times of London, now has more rockets than they had before the most recent Israeli invasion. If this is, in fact, true, UNIFIL ought to just go home right now. These foreign soldiers are useless except as human shields.

Emphasis mine.
Consider the hysterical coverage of the taxpayer funded exodus of “Canadians” from Lebanon earlier this year, and you might think developments in the region would be receiving higher scrutiny in Canadian media. Well, you’d think wrong. A search of CBC pulled up nothing, while CTV has only a mention of the threat from the group claiming to be Al Qaeda.
UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon) no longer patrols at night.

One junior officer told Der Spiegel he was glad that his battalion had only left its camp once. “It’s absurd,” he said. “We landed here and set up our tent city, but since then we’ve only left the camp to drive around and to make sure that we’re seen.”
The report cites a long tradition of UNIFIL inaction, which it says allowed time for a Finnish contingent to construct a giant sauna and an Indian contingent to decorate its base with traditional Indian artwork.
The UNIFIL troops and the 14,000 Lebanese soldiers stationed in the region add up to a total of around 20,000 troops in the 18-by 31-mile region of southern Lebanon. Another 6,000 troops are still expected to arrive.
The United Nations itself has admitted that Syria was still successfully smuggling arms to the Hizbullah, which neither UNIFIL nor the Lebanese army plan to stop.

More;

UNIFIL is a disaster in waiting. IT’s been a joke for the past twenty eight years and this one is going to be the same. No clear mandate, no willingness to tame down Hezbollah as seen in the recent episode where Spanish troops stood down at the view of Hezbollah fighters.

Not much left to do but wait for the train wreck.

Last week the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq released an audiotape praising the results of the US midterm elections. Bill Roggio has the translation;

The tape highlights the very real fact that al-Qaeda works to influence elections in the West, and has a real preference in their outcome. This was true in Spain in the spring of 2004, when the Madrid rail suicide bombings killed over 200 commuters just days before the election, and led to the subsequent victory of the current Socialist government and immediate withdrawal of Spanish forces from Iraq. Over the summer, U.S. intelligence uncovered a 66 page document that explained al-Qaeda strategy to manipulate Western elections. The document, which was published on the web in a private al-Qaeda forum, has yet to be declassified.
To influence the American elections, the U.S. mainland didn’t need to be hit. The schwerpunkt of American public opinion was in Iraq. The terror attacks and sectarian killings were ratcheted up to achieve the desired effect: weaken the resolve of the American public, create a sense of hopelessness and despair in the mission. Now, the question is: will the Bush administration and the Democratic Congress hand al-Qaeda a real military victory to accompany the propaganda victory by prematurely withdrawing from Iraq before the security has stabilized?

Bill is planning to return to Iraq as an embed. You can support that effort here.

No matter your position on the Iraq war and the difficulties they face, there is one thing that all reasonable people can agree on – it is home to some of the most courageous people on Earth. Chief Judge Raouf Abdul-Rahman and the others who serve in the fledgling justice system are surely among them.
Reaction from Baghdad – Mohammed and Omar Fadhil (Iraq The Model);

I was overwhelmed with joy and relief as I watched the criminals being read their verdicts. For the first time in our region tyrants are being punished for their crimes through a court of law.
Until this moment and while I’m typing these words I’m still receiving words of congratulations in emails, phone calls and text messages from friends inside and outside the country. These were our only means to share our happiness because of the curfew that limits our movement.
This is the day for Saddam’s lovers to weep and I expect their shock and grieve to be huge. They had always thought their master was immortal so let them live in their disappointment while we live for our future.
This is a day not only for Iraqis but a historic day for the whole region; today new basis for dealing between rulers and peoples are found.
No one is above the law anymore.
[…]
Right now volleys of bullets ring not far from where I sit, some are fired to express joy while others are fired in a desperate expression of denial but I have no doubt who is going to prevail. Although the road is long but we are walking forward and will not look back.
I salute the honorable special tribunal that challenged threats and risks and insisted on keeping up the work until the end, and today it brought back the pride of the land that wrote the world’s first laws.
I salute the witnesses who risked their lives to reveal the truth and expose the crimes of the dictator.
I salute the brave men and women of the coalition who came to this land and made this day possible.
Congratulations to all my Iraqi brothers and sisters on this glorious day.

The perspective of one Iraq veteran, Austin Bay;

PM Maliki makes the key point: “unmatched in Iraq’s history.” That can be extended a bit to read ”unmatched in Mesopotamia’s history.”
[…]
But this grand story is about belated justice, a justice once thought impossible to reach by the real victims, the Iraqi people. It’s also about the slow, difficult birth of a democratic society in a region caught in the terrible yin-yang of tyrants and terrorists — a nation moving from the whim of the Big Man and the fear of terrorist bombs to the rule of law and democratic polity.
I know, the NY Times and John Kerry have told us Iraq is a disaster. No. The US has already gotten about 90 percent of what it needed on September 12, 2001. There’s a democratically elected government in the potentially most powerful (predominantly) Arab Muslim nation, a government trying to learn to crawl under the most trying conditions. It’s a government that is learning by doing — and learning often by failure. However, as long as the US and coalition remain around to coach, train, and respond to crisis, Iraqi failures will be controlled failures.
Yup. Fostering the development of choice in the Middle East — a choice other than tyranny or terror– is a tough process.
But will we get that story? I doubt it.

(Both links via Instapundit, where there’s more.)

Also from the comments;

I like Steve Harrigan… why couldn’t we have waterboarded Alan Colmes?

And your enemies at home in Paris;

After injecting themselves into the Lebanon crisis and making all kinds of promises they didn’t intend to keep, France and the United Nations have made it explicitly clear that they will not use force to disarm Hizballah, or to prevent weapons from being smuggled in from Syria.

They may, however, fire on Israeli overflights.

Over at Iraq The Model, Mohammed has some interesting thoughts about what has gone wrong in Iraq:

First is Sunni stupidity: The Sunni leaderships fell in the gravest mistakes the day they adopted the pan-Arab Baathist ideology of the past regime and stuck to the Saddamist ways without any consideration for the changes in the world in general and in Iraq in particular.
Sunni leaders dragged the Sunni body into a confrontation with a superpower and with other components of the Iraqi people, and happened despite the fact that Sunni communities hardly fired a bullet at the allied forces back during OIF and made an unconditional surrender.

Read it all. This post focuses on what Iraqis have done wrong, but he promises the next one will focus on the American side.

…for Al Qaeda. John Hinderaker at Powerline quotes from a document written by high-ranking al Qaeda officer, discovered in Zarqawi’s “safe house” and released recently by CENTCOM;

You have to plow through a lot of palaver to get to the substance of the letter. What I think is most interesting is the picture that it paints of al Qaeda’s prospects, especially in light of the recently-leaked fragments of the National Intelligence Estimate purportedly saying that the Iraq war has been a recruiting bonanza for al Qaeda, and that al Qaeda’s numbers and support are ever-increasing. Al Qaeda itself seems to see its position quite differently.

Know that we, like all the mujahidin, are still weak. We are in the stage of weakness and a state of paucity. We have not yet reached a level of stability. We have no alternative but to not squander any element of the foundations of strength, or any helper or supporter.
[…]
The most important thing is that you continue in your jihad in Iraq, and that you be patient and forbearing, even in weakness, and even with fewer operations; even if each day had half of the number of current daily operations, that is not a problem, or even less than that. So, do not be hasty. The most important thing is that the jihad continues with steadfastness and firm rooting, and that it grows in terms of supporters, strength, clarity of justification, and visible proof each day. Indeed, prolonging the war is in our interest, with God’s permission.

Though, all things considered, things could be worse for Al Qaeda. Imagine what trouble they’d be in if they also had to contend with a relentless negative media barrage brought about by mid-term elections.

I’m going to sit down in a few minutes to watch this, but those in time zones further east are already blogging their take;

Austin Bay is watching it too: “I see why Clinton is afraid of it. The movie serves as a reminder of all of the terrorist attacks and attempted attacks. Clinton went eight years and Bush eight months playing cops and robbers while Al Qaeda was implementing unrestricted warfare.”
Yes, the Democrats have shown their usual instinct for the capillary. While worrying about minor bits, they’ve missed that the real harm is simply the reminder of the terrorist threat, which they’ve tried to downplay, but which they’ve magnified in people’s minds by making a stink. Going on the offensive like this just reminds people that they’ve been downplaying it for over a decade.
If they’d kept their mouths shut, this would be about the terrorists, which would be bad enough. Now it’s about the terrorists and the Democrats.
[…]
Clinton looks very bad. So does Sandy Berger.

Related, from Byron York, on top Clinton adviser Dick Morris;

“Whenever there was a crisis, I ordered an immediate poll,” Morris recalls. “I was concerned about how Clinton looked in the face of [the attack] and whether people blamed him.”

Frank La Vigne is a friend from a long way back. On September 10, 2001 he was living in lower Manhattan. Here is the beginning of his three part photo essay;

That whole day I was restless. Work was a stessful and I couldn’t concentrate all day. I had decided to take my camera along and take pictures of the WTC/Battery Park City area at lunchtime, but I ended up stuck in a meeting all day.
At the end of the day, I was still quite anxious and tense. So much so, that I decided to walk around a bit before going home. I would have taken pictures but the rain that hit the area pretty much killed that idea. My digital cameras was anything but waterproof.
Even after getting home I was still restless, so I watched a little TV. Then things got wierder.
The intro to the show Third Watch contained a monologue about some guy talking about how fast things can go wrong in life and started mumbling about Chaos Theory. After that show was over, I turned to the History Channel which was playing a [surprise!] WW2 documentary. Suddenly, a few Normandy veterans started saying basically the same thing. They commented about how one minute their friend would be next to them and then the next instant they were dead.
Needless to say, this sort of stuff didn’t sit well with me. So I turned off the tube and went to check my email. Imagine my shock when I saw the Yahoo Question of the Day was about Chaos Theory. At this point, I called my parents to make sure everything was OK. I was certain something bad was about to happen, but I didn’t know what.
Confused, I decided to go out onto my balcony to get some fresh air. To my shock and amazement, I saw a kind of odd glow in the sky and a strange kind calm in the streets. At this point, I ran back in to get my camera and got a few shots of this phenomenon..

Later, I would try to get some sleep, but with all the odd vibes around me, how could I? I finally fell asleep around 1:30 AM only to awaken again around 3AM from a nightmare. At 5 AM, I fell back to sleep, only to be awoken at a quarter to nine, when a loud boom interrupted my sleep.

Romeo St. Martin;

During the last election Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made his denials of the Holocaust and promises to wipe Israel off the map and the national media traveling with Harper and then prime minister Paul Martin never asked once about it.
The day after Ahmadinejad, who is also trying acquire nuclear weapons, made his comments denying the Holocaust, the national media following Martin at a sawmill in B.C. didn’t bother asking the leader of a G8 country for comment.
The bigger concern to some reporters that day was a controversial campaign flyer issued by Conservative MP Rob Anders, who is not trying to acquire nuclear weapons.
[…]
But on the potential threat posed by Iran, do a news search of any of the 10 Liberal leadership candidates on their views of Iran’s recent snubbing of a UN Security Council deadline to suspend its nuclear program and you will get a blank page.
Nobody is asking them about it and none of them is volunteering any information.

Strategy Page;

The 32 months of violence in the Moslem south have so far caused nearly 4,300 casualties (40 percent of them fatal). During that period, there were some 5,500 incidents of Islamic terrorist violence. That’s an average of 5-6 a day, among a population of 2.4 million (some 80 percent Moslem). The violence was largely directed at the 400,000 or so non-Moslems.
[…]
While the number of bombings has increased this year, the casualty rate has gone down. This is largely because of the thousands of additional soldiers and police sent to the south. These security forces are everywhere down there. But the damage has already been done, and thousands of non-Moslem Thais have fled the south. The main objective of the Islamic terrorists is to expel all non-Moslems from the south, and then set up a religious dictatorship.

Previous SDA items on Islamic terrorism in Thailand.
h/t

To bring you breaking news, via ABC News;

Al-Jazeera aired on Thursday what it called previously unshown footage in which al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden is seen meeting with some of the Sept. 11 hijackers. The station did not say how it obtained the video, which was produced by As-Sahab, al-Qaida’s media branch.
The video showed bin Laden sitting with his former lieutenant Mohammed Atef and Ramzi Binalshibh, another suspected planner of the Sept. 11, 2001, suicide hijackings.
Atef, also known as Abu Hafs al-Masri, was killed by a U.S. airstrike in Afghanistan in 2001. Binalshibh was captured four years ago in Pakistan and is currently in U.S. custody, and this week U.S. President George W. Bush announced plans to put him on military trial.
In the video, Bin Laden was wearing a dark robe and white head gear walking outdoors in a mountainous area. He smiled as he received several of what the tape said was several of the Sept. 11 hijackers.

*

CanWest;

Martyrdom celebrations that praised Tamil Tiger soldiers and suicide bombers were held openly in the student centre of the University of Waterloo, where the FBI alleges a ‘’procurement cell’’ for the terrorist organization was located..

Darcey at Dust My Broom has retrieved photos since purged from the WATSA website.;

Waterloo Suresh (aka Suresh Sriskandarajah) who was one of the six Tamil Canadians arrested on terrorism charges last week was involved with WATSA. He had a gallery on their website but it has since been cleaned of files and was also active in their forums. His personal website is located here at www.planetsuresh.com.
Galleries containing photographs of Maaveerar Naal or Hero’s Day have also been removed from the site and the CanWest article suggests that they express deep support and sympathy for the Tamil Tigers.

Check it out.

ABC News transcript via The Corner;

CHARLES GIBSON
Some encouraging news from Baghdad tonight. A few weeks ago, the decision was made to redeploy thousands of US troops to the Baghdad area from other areas of Iraq to secure the city and reduce a number of daily attacks.
Well, the numbers are preliminary, but it seems to be working. After two weeks, Iraqi authorities say the number of violent attacks has gone down by 30%. ABC’s Terry McCarthy got an exclusive chance to travel with a unit through one of Baghdad’s most dangerous areas.
TERRY MCCARTHY
Space-aged vehicles in Baghdad’s side streets. These Stryker armored troop carriers moved in 2 weeks ago with 5,000 extra US troops to patrol the Iraqi capital.
LIEUTENANT PATRICK PATTERSON
It’s new. People don’t know what to expect.
TERRY MCCARTHY
By saturating some of the most dangerous neighborhoods, they have reduced violence across Baghdad by almost a third. US figures, calculated differently, show a 22% drop. Either way, the Americans are fired up.
LIEUTENANT PATRICK PATTERSON
It’s been great. We get a lot of smiles and waves.
TERRY MCCARTHY
One of the most dramatic drops in violence has happened in the Dora neighborhood. In July, up to 20 people here were killed here every day. Then US and Iraqi troops poured in, searching 4,000 buildings in the first 4 days. Their commander, Colonel Michael Beech, was also determined to stop car bombs.
COLONEL MICHAEL BEECH
We established entry control points where we inspect, even now, every single vehicle in and out.
TERRY MCCARTHY
Over 14 days of the stepped-up patrols in Dora, there has been just one killing.
We’re on Mechanic Street in Dora, in Southern Baghdad. A month ago this was one of the most dangerous places in the city. All these stores would have been closed.
But since the extra American troops have moved back in, people feel it’s now safe to do business here. ‘I’m happy because we’re safe,” he says. ‘The stores are open and we can move around freely.” But US commanders told us the additional American fire power can only be a temporary solution.
COLONEL MICHAEL BEECH
It has to be the Iraqi people with the Iraqi security forces that ultimately bring success and security to Baghdad.
TERRY MCCARTHY
Hope has often gone sour in Iraq. If the country’s political leaders cannot make their own peace, America’s later success in Baghdad could quickly be reversed. Terry McCarthy, ABC News, Baghdad.

August 27 Update: After encouraging signs in the past 36 hours or so, the Fox journalists have been freed.

---

Rusty Shackleford is reporting that the group that has claimed responsibility for abducting Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig appears to be at least inspired by Al Qaeda;

More at Michelle Malkin.

RealClearPolitics;

This inability of Europe to get its act together is what suggests 1938. Back then, Churchill was hardly the only one who thought Hitler was intent on war. After all, the German leader was an ideological zealot — and a murderer to boot. Still, England did little.

Similarly, you don’t have to have Churchillian prescience to see that what happened once in Lebanon can happen again. Hezbollah’s avowed aim is to eradicate Israel. Listen to what it says. Pay attention. It will renew its attacks the first chance it gets. This is why it exists.

Or is it 2006?

Story at Toronto Tory.