U.S. officials are starting to suggest strongly that Saddam Hussein was killed in the March 19 attack on a Baghdad bunker that inaugurated the war effort. Gen. Peter Pace, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, raised questions about Saddam's whereabouts earlier tonight: "That doesn't mean he's dead, but he's not visible publicly and he's not been seen or reported to have been seen by anybody."

American officials have also emphasized that there is little evidence of centralized control over Iraq's armed forces. Gen. Pace said: "There's no evidence of coordinated actions on the battlefield by these units. They're being destroyed in place without much leadership from above."

It seems likely that Saddam is dead or disabled. If he were alive, and if the Iraqi government were functioning at all, it would be easy to broadcast a video of him exhorting the troops to continue resisting the allies' advance, and to include references that would leave no doubt as to when the tape was made. The Iraqis presumably would do this if they could.

The only alternative explanation that I can see is that Saddam may be alive, but he and other Iraqi leaders may be in worse peril than we realize. They may be in hiding, largely out of communication with their armed forces, and reluctant to surface even briefly for fear of assassination either by our forces or by dissident Iraqis. On that scenario, the Administration may be trying to goad Saddam into emerging from hiding, and thereby exposing himself, by suggesting that he is dead. One way or another, it seems clear that Saddam is either dead or in desperate straits.

Anti-American "war correspondent" Peter Arnett lost no time after being fired by MSNBC. He is now working for London's Daily Mirror, a viciously anti-American and anti-war tabloid.

Arnett "apologized" for his support of the Baath party line earlier today, but his apology was transparently insincere. Now he says "I report the truth of what is happening here in Baghdad and will not apologise for it." Arnett is a sick person; he and his patron Saddam Hussein are well matched. No serious person has paid attention to Arnett since he fabricated a story that falsely accused the U.S. Army of using the nerve gas sarin in Laos, which cost him his job with CNN some years ago.

The Associated Press reports that American and Kurdish forces have searched the compound formerly occupied by Ansar al-Islam Islamofascists in northern Iraq, and have found "what may be the strongest evidence yet linking the group to al-Qaida." The search also yielded documents and computer data identifying Ansar members or sympathizers around the world. General Richard Myers says that the Ansar compound is believed to be the source of the ricin that was found in London a couple of months ago.

I understand the desire to find links between a group like Ansar al-Islam and al Qaeda, but the reality is that the Islamofascists are loosely organized. Not only do the various organizations cooperate on an ad hoc basis, but individual Islamofascists also move from group to group. Groups arise, merge with others, go out of existence. "Al Qaeda" is not the problem; Islamofascism is the problem.

I'm getting ready to hit the road again, so I may not be posting for a few days. This is a bad time to be away from one's family, but a good time to be away from Washington, D.C. As I type these words, some guy with a megaphone is shrilly addressing peace demonstrators assemble at Dupont Circle. I can't make out exactly what he's saying, but I hear the phrase "hijacked the White House" and the word "fascist." In Reading, Pennsylvania, where I'm headed, one doesn't hear these sorts of things. The patriotic feeling there is palpable, as I'm sure it is in most places, but not here in the Nation's Capital.

Fred Hiatt of the Washington Post takes on the "orthodox" view that President Bush alienated the world even before beginning his diplomacy on Iraq by thumbing his nose at the International Criminal Court, the Kyoto Protocol, and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. He notes tha Clinton also thumbed his nose at this "big three" because he too was unwilling to shackle America's economy or cede judicial control over U.S. troops abroad.

Jonah Goldberg adds his thoughts on why the Arab world doesn't get the war against Saddam. He wonders whether even the Iraqis get it.

The latest Gallup Poll, released this morning, shows undiminished support for the Iraq war, still running at around 70%. The only finding that represents a significant change, compared to one week ago, is that the percentage who think the war is going "very well" has declined from 53% to 33%, while those thinking the war is going "moderately well" have increased from 37% to 52%--hardly a surprising finding, given the non-stop media questioning of the war effort in recent days. The noteworthy fact, however, is that the percentage who think the war is going "moderately badly" or "very badly" has changed hardly at all, remaining at a very low 14% (11% moderately badly, 3% very badly).

The American people seem to have a realistic view of the war's likely consequences. 86% are either "very confident" or "somewhat confident" that we can remove Saddam Hussein from power; 84% that we will find weapons of mass destruction; 70% that we will capture or kill Saddam; and 65% that we will establish a stable democracy in Iraq.

Meanwhile, President Bush's job approval remains steady at 71%.

...against the charges of "conflict of interest" that caused him to resign as Chairman of the Defense Policy Board in today's Wall Street Journal.

Debka File reports that the 101st Airborne Division, one of the world's most formidable fighting forces, has broken through Iraqi lines in what may be a decisive development in the war. Iraqis have now opened the Euphrates-Tigris floodgates in an effort to stop the advancing Americans.

Debka also has an interesting evaluation of the war as of Day 12, under the title "Saddam Eyes Endgame":

"The Iraq war is resolving itself into a battle of wits....The protagonists are US General Tommy Franks and Saddam Hussein. The score on Day 12 of the war is even. DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources and military analysts stress that both are perfectly aware that the war will end in an American battlefield victory. With an eye on the endgame, the two are maneuvering over its cost.

"Franks’ goal is a victory with the lowest number of American casualties, whereas Saddam, who has no inhibitions about the human cost to his army and people, seeks to extract from the conflict enough leverage to dictate the conditions for his and his sons’ survival."

Ralph Peters pays tribute this morning to the special forces operating in Iraq: "Behind enemy lines." And David Horowitz surveys those in our midst who support the enemy: "Moment of truth for the (anti-American) left."

Last night, in a series of blogs, I tried to explain the folly of basing, even in part, our policy decisions in the war on terrorism on their effects on the "hearts and minds" of Arabs. I argued that the populations in question view the world through a prism so distorted by hatred and irrationality that efforts to win them over are, in the short term, futile. Some might object that I am painting a cartoonish picture of Arabs. There are, of course, many sophisticated, well-educated, and even relatively moderate citizens of Arab countries. Isn't it possible to make these people kindly disposed to us through policy choices that are consistent with our national interests?

Perhaps the best way for me to answer this question is by describing my experiences with Iranians. My wife spent many years living in Iran, and I have met many Iranians, nearly all of whom are well-educated. Incredibly, I found a consensus among Iranians of a certain age that the British were behind everything of consequence that happened in Iran through the 1979 revolution and even into the 1990s. This belief stems from the massive influence that the British exercised in the region up through World War II. By the 1950s, the Americans were pulling the strings in Iran, and continued to do so until the revolution, after which, of course, no western country had any real influence. Nonetheless, smart, well-educated, and pro-western Iranians remained convinced that the British were controlling events. This was true, I found out, even of the most influential figures of the Shah's regime. My old law firm represented the Shah's son during the 1990s. The lead attorney in the representation, who had gotten to know most of the inner circle, told me that, almost to a person, they were obsessed with the British.

To several generation of Arabs, we are "the British." If we withdrew from the region completely, we would still be blamed for everything adverse that occurs in the Middle East for the next 30, or perhaps even 50, years. It is tempting, and very American, to believe that by doing good deeds in the Middle East, we can improve perceptions of us there. Liberals and conservatives share this view. For liberals, the good deed is resolving the Israeli-Arab view. For conservatives, it is liberating Iraq and making it a successful, prosperous democracy. These happy scenarios are not beyond the realm of possbility. In my view, however, we should not count on them.

Last Wednesday Nicholas de Genova, an anthropology professor at Columbia, while addressing an antiwar "teach-in" (are these guys lost in a time warp, or what?), told the crowd that "the only true heroes are those who find ways that help defeat the U.S. military," while Americans who call themselves "patriots" are actually white supremacists. So far so good. But de Genova strayed beyond the pale when he added, "I personally would like to see a million Mogadishus." This was too much, even at Columbia, and de Genova has been keeping his head down since Wednesday, hoping to ride out the controversy.

I wondered what sort of person hopes for American servicemen to be killed and their bodies dragged through the streets by triumphant savages; thanks to the miracle of Google, such questions can pretty easily be answered. De Genova is, it seems, a depressingly familiar sort of leftist academic.

His dissertation, titled "Working the Boundaries, Making the Difference: Race and Space in Mexican Chicago," "posits a Mexican Chicago as a standpoint of critique from which to interrogate the U.S. nation-state, political economy, racialized citizenship, and immigration law."

De Genova's writing is amusingly incompetent. Check out this paragraph, which is not a parody:

"While we are foregrounding the salience of Latino and Asian racial formations, it is likewise crucial that the gendered, sexualized, and class-specific dimensions of these social processes also be emphasized. Indeed, one of the central concerns of the conference will be to examine some of the ways that Latinos and Asians together are implicated in an on-going transnationalized reconfiguration of the broader social formation of the U.S. nation-state itself."

As a professor of Latino studies, de Genova feeds at the ethnic-studies trough; he presents papers whose titles refer ironically to "'illegal' immigration," and gives speeches on "the new internment;" i.e., the government's anti-terrorism efforts. Touching all the bases, he has also spoken at programs supporting the University of Michigan's racially discriminatory practices.

So de Genova can be taken as a typical leftist professor. He is typical in another way as well. In today's world, where there is leftism, anti-Semitism usually lurks nearby. Sure enough; last April 17, de Genova spoke at an anti-Israel hate rally where he said: "The heritage of the victims of the Holocaust belongs to the Palestinian people. The state of Israel has no claim to the heritage of the Holocaust.”

So we have here a typically vicious, hate-filled, leftist "intellectual." His hope that a million American servicemen will die is of a piece with the rest of his ideology; indeed, his whole academic career is based on hatred of America. And this is, for reasons that I can't really fathom, a successful academic strategy. Despite the laughable incompetence of his writing and his cartoonish ideas, De Genova has enjoyed appointments at both Stanford and Columbia.

I assume that leftist academics flourish mostly because no one takes what they say seriously. At least one person, however, took offense at de Genova's homicidal hatred of American servicemen: Columbia senior William Pratt, whose father, a colonel in the Army, is currently serving with Central Command in Kuwait.

Pratt said he was "appalled and devastated" that a Columbia professor "wished death upon the father of a Columbia University student." He sent de Genova an email in which he noted that: "My father has clearance to attend graduation at Columbia and I dare you to make those comments to him. I doubt you will - you wouldn't know a true hero if you were standing in front of one."

De Genova has gone to ground; he did not respond to Pratt's email and is not answering his telephone. It is pleasant to contemplate the outcome of an encounter between the Army colonel and the professor, but, of course, such an encounter will never take place. In a slightly different world, one can imagine that an American academic would think twice about publicly wishing death on a million American soldiers. But no doubt it never occurred to de Genova that he had anything to fear from American servicemen, notwithstanding that he claims they are fascists and baby-killers. I suspect that deep inside, de Genova knows that they are better men than he. And that no one with any sense takes what he says seriously.

I have researched several of the legal issues related to the war on terrorism in connection with public speaking appearances in which I have been the desperate last resort of forums looking for an advocate of the Bush administration's war-related positions. For various speeches over the past couple of months I have researched issues related to the congressional authorization for the use of force to respond to 9/11, the congressional authorization for the use of force against Iraq, the PATRIOT Act, the establishment of military tribunals to try prisoners, and the detention of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

In doing the research on these issues I have been struck by the scruplous correctness of the positions adopted by the Bush administration and by the baselessness of the charges to the contrary made by commentators like Michael Kinsley in his Friday Washington Post column linked to by Deacon below. The issue of the treatment of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay is a perfect example.

Here is a column that provides a lucid explanation of the law applicable to this and some related issues: "WHAT IS AN 'UNLAWFUL COMBATANT,' AND WHY IT MATTERS: The Status Of Detained Al Qaeda And Taliban Fighters." Also helpful in this context is an eloquent defense of the administration's treatment of the Guatanamo prisoners by the Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues, Pierre-Richard Prosper, via the U.S. embassy in Stockholm: "U.S. in line with international law at Guantanamo."

I didn't get around to reading Daniel Hennninger's weekly Wall Street Journal Wonder Land column until yesterday, but as always it's a good one: "Taking sides." It has one paragraph that I have not been able to get out of my mind: "A few nights ago, during that high sandstorm [referred to earlier in the column], an embedded TV reporter stood over a soldier who was lying on his stomach, exposed to the wind and grit, holding his rifle and staring through goggles into nothing. The reporter said, 'What do you think of being here in conditions like this.' The soldier said: 'I love it, sir. I truly do. I wouldn't want to be anywhere else right now.'"

Dafydd ab Hugh is one of our most eagle eyed readers and frequent correspondents. He has written to share two predictions about the upcoming battle of Baghdad that we submit for your consideration:

"1) There will NOT be a general uprising against Saddam when we begin fighting the Nebudchadnezer, Hammurabbi, and Medina divisions; the civilians will pretty much sit tight and see what develops, or else flee. But, 2) The much vaunted Special Republican Guards will turn out to be paper panzers; they will collapse a lot faster than anyone is currently predicting. The battle will be shorter than people think; Baghdad will be much easier to conquer than anticipated. Everyone who can actually fight has long since been purged and executed as a danger to Saddam."

On the other hand, some of what I hear about the war on television strikes me as just plain funny. A few hours ago, I heard one of those retired Generals say that the war is like a football game that's in the second quarter and we're winning 32-0.

Commentators on several networks have started pointing fingers at Bush Adminsitration "officials" who predicted that the going in Iraq would be easy. Putting aside the fact that these predictions cannot yet said to be erroneous, the individuals accused of making them are not Administration officials. One is Ken Adelman who apparently used the term "cakewalk" in an article written more than a year ago. To my knowledge, Adelman holds no position in the Adminstration. The other -- Richard Perle -- sits on (and until recently chaired) a committee that advises the Defense Department. Attempts to attribute these predictions to the Bush Administration would be funny were they not so vicious.

One criticism we're hearing of the war effort is that we didn't send enough troops to Iraq initially. The fact that we're sending more now is presented by some as indisputable evidence of miscalcualtion by the Admnistration. It is certainly possible that the Adminstration miscalculated. However, to me it seems more likely that it calculated wisely. There was always a good chance that Iraqi resistance would be limited to the point that the initial force we sent in (a substantial one) would defeat the regime. In that event, it would have been a mistake to have sent a larger force because it would have resulted in unnecessary cost. It turned out that a larger force is necessary, or at least desirable. That force is on the way. Since the initial force was large enough to get to Baghdad without suffering defeat or real damage, little has been lost by not sending in a larger force at the outset.

When I described the status of the Afghans at Guantanamo Bay as "complicated," I was giving Kinsley the benefit of the doubt. Thanks for taking the time to research the issue, so as to remove that doubt.

Rocket Man, I agree with you that the battle for hearts and minds that matters is the one that will be waged here at home. The important Democrats naturally aren't saying much now. They are relying on the New York Times and liberal commentators to present what you aptly describe as their pathetic arguments. But, even though the Democrats don't have their fingerprints on these arguments, unfair criticism of President Bush by a carping media this early in the war helps rally public support for the president. The constant repetition that you anticipate will only create more support, unless things truly go badly. In that regard, the liberal media will try to set the bar very high. However, I'm guessing that the public won't buy it. The standard for success will probably be a decisive military victory this year and no subsequent debacle. Terrorist acts on our soil would more likely cause the public to rally behind Bush than to blame his decision to go to war. The "blame America first" approach is very bad politics in the current environment. In my view, the biggest political banana peel for this President Bush, as for the last one, is the economy.

We have been focused mostly on the war lately, but there are interesting developments on other fronts. The New York Times has an encouraging report on race discrimination in education. Two civil rights groups, the Center for Equal Opportunity and the American Civil Rights Institute, are about to file lawsuits against thirty colleges and universities to stop race discrimination in connection with various "awards and academic enrichment programs." Some universities have already stopped discriminating in the face of threatened litigation. The Times quotes the general counsel of Iowa State University: "We have to face the fact that the direction of the courts has been very much against the consideration of race at all."

Whether that direction continues will depend largely on what the Supreme Court does in the two cases now pending against the University of Michigan.

In a press briefing today, General Tommy Franks responded angrily to criticism of his army's progress to date, and denied published reports that he requested more troops but was turned down by Secretary Rumsfeld. The Associated Press wasn't fooled, however. Its lead paragraph noted that Franks "sidestepped" a question about whether the war might last into the summer. Franks replied, "One never knows how long a war will take."

...the main battle going on is for the hearts and minds of Americans, specifically in the context of the 2004 elections. The Democrats are hard at work, trying to portray the war as a failure so as to deprive the President of credit for his anticipated victory. Today's New York Times features an article by R.W. Apple titled "Bush's Peril: Shifting Sand and Fickle Opinion." Apple poses the question: "Is [Bush's] luck about to turn in the winds and sands of Iraq?" Needless to say, Apple and his colleagues at the Times hope so.

The Times sounds themes that we can expect to hear from Democrats for many months to come; Apple criticizes the Administration's diplomacy as well as its military strategy. But the Democrats' real hope is that: "The war could last so long that the American public loses patience, having been conditioned by predictions from American officials (to quote one of them, Vice President Dick Cheney) that Mr. Hussein's government would prove to be 'a house of cards.'" So far, as Apple admits, there are no signs of such "fickleness."

On the contrary, today's Washington Times collects current poll data under the title "Americans support Bush's war strategy;" the polls show huge and growing support for the President and his war policies, including a willingness to persist indefinitely and to suffer substantial casualties.

But the Democrats aren't worried yet. They know that in the months and years to come, they will control public discussion of the war. They have just begun to sound their themes, and they know better than to expect their arguments to gain ready acceptance. They rarely do.

In the longer term, the Democrats are preparing to argue that the war--no matter what its outcome may prove to be--was a failure. Apple quotes Richard Holbrooke, the former U.N. Ambassador:

"Saddam won't win. Unlike L.B.J. in Vietnam, Bush won't quit. He's a different kind of Texan. He'll escalate and keep escalating. In the end his military strategy will probably succeed in destroying Saddam.

"But it may result in a Muslim jihad against us and our friends. Achieving our narrow objective of regime change may take so long and trigger so many consequences that it's no victory at all. Our ultimate goal, which is promoting stability in the Middle East, may well prove elusive."

Notice a couple of things here. First, Democrats think it always helps to mention Vietnam. Believing their own revisionist history, they forget that even after six long years of mismanagement, the majority of Americans never did turn against that war.

Second, note the claim that the Iraq war "may result in a Muslim jihad." Actually, as everyone knows, this war resulted from a Muslim jihad. Nevertheless, from this point forward, the Democrats will blame all acts of terror against us or our allies on the Iraq war--and, therefore, on President Bush.

Finally, one can only express awe at Mr. Holbrooke's insightful observation that "stability in the Middle East may prove elusive." D'ya think? I mean, the Democrats' efforts to achieve stability in the Middle East were going so well, it would be a tragedy if our cowboy President were to screw up the great progress that they had made.

These are pathetic arguments, but that won't prevent the Democrats from making them. It remains to be seen whether by constant repetition the American people can be persuaded to believe them.

Michael Kelly is an excellent editor, columnist and reporter. Now with with the 3rd Infantry Division in Iraq, his reports are mandatory reading. His column this morning is "Limited war, so far."

On the home front, we have Mark Steyn to help us keep our eye on the big picture and to keep our morale up: "Believe it or not, we're winning." Steyn reviews the media's hysterical performance regarding Iraq and notes that "Gen. Tommy Franks has been transformed from the new MacArthur into the new MacArthur Park: Someone left his cakewalk in the rain, we don't think that he can take it 'cause it took so long to bake it and he'll never find that recipe again. Oh, no."

In the news, one notes a certain similarity between the enemy we are facing in Iraq -- "Enemy unleashes suicide bombers" -- and the one the Israelis are facing -- "Dozens hurt in Netanya suicide attack."

Ralph Peters takes a look at the peculiarities of Arab culture that have manifested themselves during the war in Iraq: "Tragedy of the Arabs." Peters offers the following overview: "No Arab state is a true democracy. No Arab state genuinely respects human rights. No Arab state hosts a responsible media. No Arab society fully respects the rights of women or minorities. No Arab government has ever accepted public responsibility for its own shortcomings."

I would add two points. The Arab contribution to civilization in the past hundred years appears to be limited to the suicide bomber. And the Arabs with the greatest civil and political rights in the Middle East are of course the Arab citizens of Israel.

Great series of posts last night, guys. The Kinsley column equating our purportedly "illegal" treatment of detainees with Saddam's war crimes is vintage Kinsley--clever but fundamentally stupid. This ties in with the Michelle Malkin column I linked to yesterday, which quoted several detainees describing their own treatment:

"[N]early all of the former detainees enthusiastically praised the conditions at Guantanamo and expressed little bitterness about losing a year of their lives in captivity, saying they were treated better there than in three days in squalid cells in Kabul. None complained of torture during questioning or coerced confessions."

"The freed detainees said they were allowed to pray five times daily, exercise, and were given books written in Pashtu. Upon their release, as parting gifts, the Afghan men received new shirts, jeans, tennis shoes and gym bags (to carry their Korans)."

"Sirajuddin, 24, a Kandahar taxi driver, said: 'The conditions were even better than our homes. We were given three meals a day -- eggs in the morning and meat twice a day; facilities to wash, and if we didn't wash, they'd wash us; and there was even entertainment with video games.'"

"'There is no need to lie,' Sayed Abasin, 21, told the Chicago Tribune. 'I'm telling you the facts. They treated us very well.'"

If any Americans survive captivity in Iraq, we can contrast their accounts with these. In the meantime, Kinsley's cynical anti-Americanism shows once again how low the left has fallen.

Deacon, I've been looking at the legal issues related to our detention of the prisoners being held at Guantanamo Bay. As I understand it, if we have properly classified the prisoners under the applicable criteria as "enemy combatants" rather than as "prisoners of war," we are treating them within the bounds of international law. If they should rather be classified as "prisoners of war," we may not be treating them as required. But the question whether we have properly classified the prisoners is not a close one. Under the applicable criteria, they are enemy combatants. Without going into the details, I don't think it's that complicated. Kinsley's assertion that we are violating international law is scurrilous.

is this piece by Michael Kinsley. The column makes the left's point du jour that we lack standing to complain about Saddam Hussein's violations of international law (which he dishonestly implies are limited to things like showing photographs of prisoners of war) because we ourselves feel free to ignore international law. But Kinsley fails to point to any action we have taken against Saddam Hussein that violates international law. He complains that we went to war without the consent of the U.N. Security Council, but does not show, or even claim, that this violates international law. Kinsley does say that the imprisonment of Afghans at Guantanamo Bay violates international law, but he does not demonstrate any violation. The status of these Afghans under international law is a complicated issue that Kinsley evidently prefers not to address, lest it stand in the way of his cynical effort to imply that our willingness to abide by international law is comparable to that of Saddam Hussein.

Shortly after posting the piece by Shibley Telhami, I heard Professor Telhami on local radio intoning that the U.S. is losing the battle for the "hearts and minds" of Arabs each day that we wage war against Saddam. If we are fighting a battle for hearts and minds, then we deserve to lose it. The war against Islamofascism should no more be a battle for the hearts and minds of Arabs than the war against Hitler's fascism was a battle for the hearts and minds of Germans.

The problem with the "hearts and minds" conceit is that it casts members of Arab street mobs as rational arbiters of a dispute between the U.S. and the likes of Saddam Hussein and bin Laden. The mindless assumption is that ordinary Arabs are sitting on the fence waiting to be persuaded that we are morally superior to these adversaries, but unable to reach that conclusion in good conscience because we persist in supporting Israel and dropping bombs on civilians. In reality, of course, the hearts and minds we are supposed to be trying to win hate the U.S. for irrational reasons -- a combination of ignorance, exposure to vile propaganda, intense jealousy, and relgious fervor. They hated us when we liberated Kuwait, when we rescued the Muslims of Kosovo, and when we forced Israel to make concessions to Arafat. If we bombed Tel Aviv, they might stop hating us for a little while, but they still wouldn't like us much. In short, these folks don't hate the U.S. because they hate our war effort in Iraq, they hate our war effort because they hate the United States. Our approach to these residents of the Arab street should be straightforward -- you can like us, you can hate us, or you can be indifferent, but if you attack us we will destroy you.

It is very difficult for an outsider to write the worst Washington Post op-ed on a Friday because the columns of E.J. Dionne and Michael Kinsley appear that day. However, Shibley Telhami of the University of Maryland and the Brookings Institution accomplished this feat yesterday (aided, to be sure, by the fact that Dionne's piece was a tribute to Daniel Patrick Moynihan). Telhami attacks "the prevailing view in Washington that military victory will fix everything in the end." He objects that the defeat of Iraq will only cause despairing Arabs to turn to non-state miltant groups. Thus, he continues, military victory will not bring about peace throughout the Middle East.

The first problem with Telhami's argument is that no one is arguing that military victory in Iraq will "fix everything" or bring about peace throughout the Middle East. The Administration is promising that victory will fix two things -- it will bring about the substantial disarmament of Iraq and it will make Iraq a far better place for its citizens. In addition, the Administration probably hopes that victory will help undermine the regime in Iran and that it will at least deter states like Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia from supporting terrorism. In the longer term, it may also hope that a relatively free and successful Iraqi state might one day provide inspiration to the region as a whole, but I don't think anyone expects this to occur soon.

The second problem with Telhami's piece is that he seems to assume that little is gained when states cease to be the instrument of Arab militancy because the militants turn to informal organizations. But the issue isn't whether the U.S. is better off being threatened by states or by informal terrorists organizations. The issue is whether the informal organizations that threaten us will have access to the vast resources of states like Iraq. The war against Iraq is an attempt to ensure that they won't.

Telhami points to Israel's experience. He says that the defeat of Nasser led to the emergence of independent Palestinian groups, and that military action against Lebanon has not ended militancy in Lebanon. However, Nasser posed a far greater short-term threat to Israel's existence than any Palestinian group does, and military action against Lebanon, to the extent that it was sustained, made Israel safer. These military actions didn't "fix everything," but they kept Israel ahead in its ongoing struggle to survive, which was their crucial purpose.

The final problem with Telhami's article pertains to his conclusion that we should reject "the overwhelming use of force as a primary instrument of foreign policy." The problem here centers around Telhami's view of what we should replace that instrument with, namely (big surprise) Arab-Israeli "peacemaking." Telhami assumes that "a fair, negotiated settlement of the Arab-Israeli dispute" would, essentially, fix everything. In reality it likely would fix nothing because only the elimination of Israel will satisfy Arab militants. Concessions only persuade these militants that Israel and the U.S. are weak, and thus fuel new acts of militancy. This is the experience of the 1990s, which Telhami, for all of discussion of historical record, overlooks. Our two major military excursions of the 1990s -- in Kuwait and Kosovo -- both assisted Muslims. The same would have been true of Clinton's primary diplomatic initiative, the one that culminated at Camp David with Arafat turning down Israel's overly generous offer. None of this curbed Arab militancy; to the contrary such militancy increased to unprecedented levels. Ossam bin Laden himself has said that various instances of perceived U.S. weakness were crucial to the success of his organization. The overwhelming use of force may not fix everything, but it should help fix that one thing, which is sorely in need of fixing.

The headline on an Associated Press story: "Experts: Saddam Trying to Prolong War." We appreciate that insight.

A nice story:

"Iraqi civilians fleeing heavy fighting [in central Iraq] have stunned and delighted hungry US marines by giving them food.

"'They had slaughtered lambs and chickens and boiled eggs and potatoes for their journey out of the frontlines,' [a Marine sergeant] said. At one camp, the buses stopped and women passed out food to the troops, who have had to ration their army-issue packets of ready-to-eat meals due to disruptions to supply lines by fierce fighting further south.

"In broken English [an Iraqi] told a correspondent travelling with the marines: 'We like Americans,' adding that no one liked Saddam Hussein because 'he was not kind.'"

The New York Times reports that "[t]he antiwar movement in France has turned anti-Israeli, as demonstrations against the war in Iraq have evolved into a battleground for French Arab Muslims to attack Israel and even Jews to protest Israeli treatment of the Palestinians."

This isn't new, of course; the "antiwar" movement in France has always been largely anti-Semitic. Today, 5,000 Parisian policemen tried to prevent a repetition of the last "antiwar" event, in which "protesters marching with a pro-Palestinian group attacked members of the left-wing Zionist youth group, Hachomer Hatzair," and beat the Jewish marchers with metal bars, sending several to the hospital. Today, the Times reports that "marshals in white caps struggled, with limited success, to keep the protest free of racist and anti-Semitic symbols and messages."

The French have a terrible problem with their Muslim population, and they have no idea what to do about it. For now, the French are in a state of denial. The Times cites a recent survey in which "39 percent of French people thought that Arabs were the main victims of racism in France, while only 5 percent thought they were Jews."

The photo below shows a French Arab at today's demonstration waving a pro-Saddam Hussein flag, while flashing a "peace" sign. "Peace" isn't quite what it used to be.

Popular uprisings are now being reported in Baghdad; as in Basra, they are being suppressed by Saddam's Fedayeen death squads.

Army Times is a good source of news from the soldiers' perspective. It also has good photos from Iraq; click on Frontline Photos. Here are a few:

American tanks roll past a sign that says "To Baghdad."

An American paratrooper and a Kurdish militiaman stand guard in northern Iraq; the Kurd looks happy to be in action.

A B2 stealth bomber completes a mission.

American Marines south of Baghdad walk alongside an Iraqi man and his son.

I saw this article in the Sydney Morning Herald a couple of days ago: "Why Arab intellectuals are now praying for Saddam." The theme of the article, reported from Saudi Arabia, is that Arab intellectuals who have long despised Saddam Hussein are now praying "that God preserve him for a few more weeks":

"They want Saddam Hussein to go and they expect him to go eventually, but they want him to hold on a little longer because they want to teach the Americans a lesson," says the manager of a Saudi newspaper.

It strikes me that, if you substitute "President Bush" for "the Americans," that pretty well sums up the attitude of the American media toward the war. American newscasters, reporters and editors, virtually all of whom are Democrats, don't--with a few exceptions--actually want the U.S. to lose the war. Nor do they want large numbers of American soldiers killed. But to them, domestic political considerations mean much more than issues of war and peace. So they want the war to be successful, but not to be perceived as successful, so as to deprive President Bush of a victory that would probably make any Democrat's 2004 challenge futile. Hence the current non-stop barrage of negativism in the American press. Amazingly enough, the Democrats' virtual monopoly on the "mainstream" press makes it a realistic goal for them to cause a successful war to go down in the public mind as unsuccessful.

This past Tuesday the Wall Street Journal ran a column by Spain's foreign minister Ana Palacio. This morning the Journal has made the column available on its OpinionJournal Web site. It is course no longer news that Spain is supporting us in the war, but the column is striking for its powerful dissent from the Franco/Prussian axis: "Allies, not counterweights."

Palacio concludes her column with an invocation of Don Quixote: "As our Cervantes had Don Quixote say, liberty is 'one of the most precious gifts heaven has bestowed upon Man. No treasures the earth contains or the sea conceals can be compared to it. For liberty one can rightfully risk one's life.'"

Palacio's column illustrates a point made by George Melloan in his Journal column on the opposite page the same day: "One thing about a war, it exposes who are friends and who are enemies, not to mention the disgusting behavior of some enemies. One hopes that the U.S. is keeping a good scorecard as it pursues its efforts to wipe out the regime of one of the world's most vicious villains."

The New York Times has a remarkable after-action report from Troop C, First Brigade, Third Infantry Division: "Haunting thoughts after a battle." David Tucker of No Left Turns directed our attention to the article (and gave us the heading above), saying that "I think this article from the New York Times is the best reporting I have read on the war. It probably makes the best case for the essential justice of our cause."

The guys at RealClearPolitics have a couple of excellent columns that serve as compaion pieces depicting the face of the enemy: Ben MacIntyre's "Alone in a world of lies...the last days of Saddam," and Rick Brookhiser's "Saddam's barbarity proves our case."

The war had been on for barely a week before the Washington Post, or at least some of its writers, went into an oppositionist mode. Today's Post includes this article by Alan Sipress: "Image Is Everything at Centcom". The subtitle reads: "Senior Officials Shift Focus Away From U.S. Military Problems."

Sipress' article is a hatchet job on the military leaders at Central Command: "[A]t daily news conferences and private briefings, senior Centcom officials have been more determined to paint Iraqi forces in the darkest possible hues than to shed light on the difficult progress of the military campaign that began nine days ago." And so on.

Sipress is one of the loudest of the "this is turning out to be more difficult than we thought" chorus. Really, though, his own experience should warn him against getting too hysterical. On November 9, 2001, Sipress wrote an article in the Post titled "Vajpayee Says U.S. Wasn't Ready for War", in which he quoted, with obvious approval, the Indian Prime Minister who said that "the United States had not been adequately prepared for the [Afghanistan] campaign;" "it appears the Taliban are well entrenched;" "the U.S. military campaign has suffered from a lack of adequate intelligence;" and "the campaign [will] continue to move slowly" because "it appears America was not prepared for this kind of war."

Kabul fell four days later.

Debka File cites unnamed American intelligence sources for a report that Iraq has been able to deploy "chemical and biological weapons to within missile-striking distance of Israel in western Iraq despite US-UK presence in region." Debka also says taht some of the chemical and biological weapons were taken out of hiding in Syria.

Further, Debka says that several hundred Lebanese Hezbollah gunmen have crossed the Syrian-Iraqi border to join Saddam's army.

There have been many news accounts of Iraqi civilians trying to flee Basra and being blocked by Saddam Fedeheen death squads. CNN has a more detailed report via a reporter on the scene:

"More than 1,000 women and children, escorted by some men, tried to make it to safety from the city of Basra across one of the main bridges to the southern side, where British forces are encamped.

"[A]s the main group tried to make it across, a four-by-four vehicle drove onto the bridge. Behind it was mounted a machine gun that opened fire at what appeared to be the civilians on the bridge and the British forces at the other end of the bridge.

"About 200 or 300 of the civilians fled back to the north side of the river. The others made it across to safety, although some casualties were taken."

The other half of conservatism's most dynamic duo, Ann Coulter, also has a new column today, titled "The Enemy Within." She could have been referring to Helen Thomas, but she means the New York Times:

"Five days after the Baghdad Times was morosely reporting that no one viewed the war with gladness, things had gotten even worse. In a single editorial, the Times said our troops were 'faced with battlefield death, human error and other tragedies.' The task 'looks increasingly formidable.' There were 'disturbing events,' and American forces were engaged in a 'fierce firefight – an early glimpse of urban warfare.' There were 'downsides,' 'disheartening events' and 'grievous blows.'

"We're losing this war! The Elite Republican Guard is assembling outside New York City! Head for the hills! The 'fierce firefight' referred to in the editorial concerned a battle in Nasiriyah in which American troops took an entire city with nine casualties. That's what most people call a 'triumphal a**-kicking.'"

Michelle Malkin administers a much-deserved thrashing to the appalling Helen Thomas, "the crusty ex-journalist-turned-White House heckler." Michelle contrasts Ms. Thomas' indifference to the plight of American prisoners of war with her obsessive concern for the poor detainees in Guantanamo--who, by their own account, have been well treated:

"Sirajuddin, 24, a Kandahar taxi driver, said: 'The conditions were even better than our homes. We were given three meals a day -- eggs in the morning and meat twice a day; facilities to wash, and if we didn't wash, they'd wash us; and there was even entertainment with video games.'''

Read it all.

Chris Ayres of the London Times is traveling toward Baghdad with the U.S. Marines. This is a nice account of an attack on the Marine column, strung out in the mud along Iraq's unfinished Highway 1, in the middle of the night in a howling sandstorm, by Iraqi tanks. Ayers was understandably scared out of his wits, but his fear seems not to have been shared by the Marine officer perceived only as a "bass monotone" on the radio.

Victor Davis Hanson also knows what he is talking about, and his column today is the usual must-read: "History or hysteria." Like Ralph Peters, he notes: "The commentators need to listen to history. By any fair standard of even the most dazzling charges in military history — the German blast through the Ardennes in spring 1940, or Patton’s romp in July — the present race to Baghdad is unprecedented in its speed and daring, and in the lightness of its causalities. We can nit-pick about the need for another armored division, pockets of irregulars, a need to mop up here and there, plenty of hard fighting ahead, this and that. But the fact remains that, so far, the campaign has been historically unprecedented in getting so many tens of thousands of soldiers so quickly to Baghdad without losses — and its logistics will be studied for decades."

Hanson concludes by expressing what appears to be an utterly unrealistic hope: "When this is all over — and I expect it will be soon — besides a great moral accounting, I hope that there will deep introspection and sober public discussion about the peculiar ignorance and de[str]uctive pessimism on the part of our elites. In the meantime, all we can insist on is absolute and unconditional surrender — no peace process, no exit strategy, no U.N. votes, no Arab League parley, no EU expressions of concern, no French, no anything but our absolute victory and Saddam’s utter ruin. Unlike in 1991, commanders in the field must be given explicit instructions from the White House about negotiations: There are to be absolutely none — other than the acceptance of unconditional surrender."

Ralph Peters not only sounds like he knows what he's talking about, his is one of the few analylses of the war that is not a fount of pessimism: "Guts and glory." Peters summarizes the week past as follows: "From the ships at sea, to the youngest infantrymen on the land, this has been a proud week in American military history." He concludes with words that could usefully be appended to every news report today on the progress of the war: "My heartfelt advice to every reader is the same as it was on the eve of this war: Be patient with our troops. The collapse of Saddam's regime could be very sudden, or it could drag on for weeks. In either case, the outcome remains certain. "

UPDATE: A reader kindly pointed out that in my post regarding Karl Zinsmeister's on the scene report from Kuwait regarding the efficacy of missile defense I forgot to include the link to Zinsmeister's column. I have added the link to his column in the post headlined "Missile defense works II."

Regular Power Line readers know that formerly-liberal Minnesota has been trending strongly to the right for some years. Tomorrow's Minneapolis Star Tribune will report that "Minnesotans back Bush and war in Iraq."

According to the Strib's Minnesota Poll, 61 percent of Minnesotans say the United States was right to start military action in Iraq; Bush's job approval among Minnesotans is currently at 63 percent; and 67 percent approve of Bush's handling of the war, with 52 percent approving strongly. Given what we know about the Strib's polling methodology, these numbers can be assumed to be minimums.

The left has been after Richard Perle for some time, most recently focusing on an alleged "conflict of interest" relating to his work on behalf of Global Crossing and its proposed sale of assets to a group of Asian investors. I haven't followed this story closely enough to be able to explain what the alleged "conflict" is, but tonight the liberals got their man, as Perle resigned as Chairman of the Defense Policy Board, a group which advises the Pentagon.

Donald Rumsfeld accepted Perle's resignation as chairman but said that he had asked Perle to remain as a board member.

The BBC offers its typically helpful take on events, for those who may be in doubt as to how this story should be interpreted:

"A former assistant secretary of defence under Ronald Reagan, Mr Perle was nicknamed the 'Prince of Darkness' for his opposition to arms control.

"Mr Perle had also not only argued for the need to go to war with Iraq, he had strongly suggested that the Iraqis would put up minimal resistance.

"BBC correspondent Jon Leyne says that his days of power in Washington now appear to be over."

Perle has been shown by history to have been right about arms control; I am not aware that he ever counselled that the Iraqis would put up "minimal resistance;" and I am quite sure that Perle's "days of power" are by no means over, since he is one of the ablest men in Washington.

Glenn Reynolds made a good point tonight--why haven't we seen video (or even audio) tapes of Osama bin Laden expressing solidarity with Saddam Hussein and urging Muslims to fight on his behalf against the Great Satan? It is hard to think of any explanation other than--he's dead. A living Osama would surely have risen to the occasion, no matter how carefully he may be hidden. If the war ends without another peep from bin Laden, I'll go back to my original view--as Mark Steyn said, he's been laiden six feet under.

the more they stay the same. Palestinians continue to name their babies after Saddam in record numbers, and to urge him to attack Israel with chemical weapons, while at the same time expecting that once Saddam is defeated the U.S. will force Israel to re-start the "peace process" by making new concessions. It happened after the first Gulf War and will probably happen again. This time, the pretext will be sham democratic reforms on the part of Arafat. The pressure on President Bush to repeat the error of his father will come from Colin Powell and Tony Blair, and will probably be irresistible. The "road map" for this scenario is spelled out in this column by the vapid Richard Cohen. Notice how, even as Cohen leads the cheers for a new peace process, he stops short of claimng that it will actually bring about peace.

As for the notion that the Palestinians are about to embrace democracy, Barbara Lerner peels away that fig-leaf in this piece for National Review Online. She argues that the Palestinians will never organize themselves democratically. Lerner reasons that democracy holds little appeal to Arabs living in the nations of the southern half of the Middle East, such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and that the Palestinians, lacking any culture that pre-dates their current hatreds, are even less likely than the Egyptians and the Saudis to develop the non-predatory national identity that is the prerequisite for democracy.

Lerner's argument is elegant and plausible. But "never" is a long time, and it is far from clear that the conditions she describes preclude the eventual establishment of a Palestinian democracy. On the other hand, Lerner is probably closer to mark than our State Department, which is ready to vouch for the existence of a fledgling Palestinian democracy based solely on its desire to begin coercing Israel.

News reports yesterday indicated that chemical/biological weapons suits were discovered among Iraqi military supplies; captured Iraqi soldiers related plans to use chemical warheads; and reports tonight say that Iraqi forces south of Baghdad may have just been supplied with chemical weapons.

All of this raises the question: Why hasn't Iraq already used its chemical and biological arsenal? Its tactics have been desperate, unconventional, despicable. Using weapons of mass destruction is about the only thing Saddam and his Baath party haven't done, and such weapons would be far more effective, militarily, than the suicide attacks and other tactics recently engaged in. So why haven't Saddam's chemical and biological weapons been used?

The answer, I think, is pretty clear. Saddam Hussein knows that he cannot win this war militarily. His only hope is political. He will be dead within 60 days unless his political supporters--most of the Arab world, Maxine Waters, the BBC, France, Tom Daschle, Germany, the New York Times, Kofi Annan, American antiwar demonstrators, Howard Dean, Robert Byrd, etc.--come to his rescue and somehow compel President Bush and Tony Blair to call off the military campaign. Absent such a political victory, he and his sons will soon be killed. The one thing that would cause most of his political supporters to give up their effort to preserve his tyranny is his own use of weapons of mass destruction. Such tactics would vindicate the case against him and cause opposition to President Bush's war effort to melt away. Hence Saddam will not use his chemical and biological arsenal--at least not while any hope remains.

...to the men and women of the United States armed forces, courtesy of Free Republic.

Reader Chris Acksel has kindly alerted us to Mark Steyn's new Spectator column: "War is purgatory." Chris adds: "God bless our troops!"

One of the highlights of the pro-war rally sponsored by the Yale College Students for Democracy yesterday was the speech of star faculty member David Gelernter. We don't have a link to Professor Gelernter's speech, but we have obtained the text. Here it is...a Power Line special.

"Among supporters of the war in Iraq I doubt there's a single one who's 'pro-war.' No one wants war, no one likes war; but now is the time to recall that no one likes the word 'duty' very much either, or 'obligation,' or 'responsibility.'

"But I think we're here today to talk about our obligations and our duties: our duties as Americans to protect this country and support our troops; our duties as human beings, and especially as Americans, to listen when suffering people cry out; to hear them and not turn away.

"We know how easy it is to turn away. We know that when a bestial dictator systematically tortures and dismembers, and rapes women and hacks men to pieces and murders thousands on whim -- we know that most natural thing in the world is to turn away. And we know also: it's our duty not to.

"We know we have a duty to protect our country; we know that September 10th, 2001 would have been a better day to start worrying about terrorist mass attacks than September 12th turned out to be. We know that today is a better day to worry about nuclear- or poison gas- or smallpox-armed terrorists than the day after they strike.

"When we look at Saddam Hussein we see a man who's proved he loves to fight, proved he loves to kill, proved he loves weapons of mass murder, proved he hates America; a man who's spent a whole lifetime creating misery.

"The