Today is Veteran's Day, and we offer our heartiest and most humble thanks for those who have served, and those who are currently serving, in our nation's armed forces.

"Across America, there are more than 25 million veterans. Their ranks include generations of citizens who have risked their lives while serving in military conflicts, including World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf and the war on terror. They have fought for the security of our country and the peace of the world. They have defended our founding ideals, protected the innocent and liberated the oppressed from tyranny and terror. They have known the hardships and the fears and the tragic losses of war. Our veterans know that in the harshest hours of conflict they serve just and honorable purposes. Every veteran has lived by a strict code of discipline. Every veteran understands the meaning of personal accountability and loyalty and shared sacrifice. From the moment you repeated the oath to the day of your honorable discharge, your time belonged to America; your country came before all else." --President George W. Bush

This was in my inbox this morning. The Monsters and the Weak
by Michael Marks The sun beat like a hammer, not a cloud was in the sky.
The mid-day air ran thick with dust, my throat was parched and dry.
With microphone clutched tight in hand and cameraman in tow,
I ducked beneath a fallen roof, surprised to hear "stay low." My eyes blinked several times before in shadow I could see,
the figure stretched across the rubble, steps away from me.
He wore a cloak of burlap strips, all shades of grey and brown,
that hung in tatters till he seemed to melt into the ground.
He never turned his head or took his eye from off the scope
but pointed through the broken wall and down the rocky slope.
"About eight hundred yards," he said, his whispered words concise,
"beneath the baggy jacket he is wearing a device." A chill ran up my spine despite the swelter of the heat,
"You think he's gonna set it off along the crowded street?"
The sniper gave a weary sigh and said "I wouldn't doubt it,"
"unless there's something this old gun and I can do about it." A thunderclap, a tongue of flame, the still abruptly shattered;
while citizens that walked the street were just as quickly scattered.
Till only one remained, a body crumpled on the ground,
The threat to oh so many ended by a single round. And yet the sniper had no cheer, no hint of any gloat,
instead he pulled a logbook out and quietly he wrote.
"Hey, I could put you on TV, that shot was quite a story!"
But he surprised me once again - "I got no wish for glory." "Are you for real?" I asked in awe, "You don't want fame or credit?"
He looked at me with saddened eyes and said "you just don't get it."
"You see that shot-up length of wall, the one without a door?
Before a mortar hit, it used to be a grocery store." "But don't go thinking that to bomb a store is all that cruel,
the rubble just across the street - it used to be a school.
The little kids played soccer in the field out by the road,"
His head hung low, "They never thought a car would just explode." "As bad as all this is though, it could be a whole lot worse,"
He swallowed hard, the words came from his mouth just like a curse.
"Today the fight's on foreign land, on streets that aren't my own,
I'm here today 'cause if I fail, the next fight's back at home." "And I won't let my Safeway burn, my neighbors dead inside,
don't wanna get a call from school that says my daughter died;
I pray that not a one of them will know the things I see,
nor have the work of terrorists etched in their memory." "So you can keep your trophies and your fleeting bit of fame,
I don't care if I make the news, or if they speak my name."
He glanced toward the camera and his brow began to knot,
"If you're looking for a story, why not give this one a shot." "Just tell the truth of what you see, without the slant or spin;
that most of us are OK and we're coming home again.
And why not tell our folks back home about the good we've done,
how when they see Americans, the kids come at a run." "You tell 'em what it means to folks here just to speak their mind,
without the fear that tyranny is just a step behind;
Describe the desert miles they walk in their first chance to vote,
or ask a soldier if he's proud, I'm sure you'll get a quote." He turned and slid the rifle in a drag bag thickly padded,
then looked again with eyes of steel as quietly he added;
"And maybe just remind the few, if ill of us they speak,
that we are all that stands between the monsters and the weak."

Two members of the U.S. Navy SEALs, killed fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan, will be posthumously awarded the Navy Cross, the service's second-highest medal. Danny Dietz and Matthew Axelson, along with a third SEAL, Michael Murphy, were killed while fighting a large enemy force, giving a fourth SEAL teammate a chance to escape. As the anniversary of September 11th approaches, let us also remember those who struck back at those who struck us, and in doing so, paid the ultimate price. Please consider a donation to the Naval Special Warfare Foundation or the Special Operations Warrior Foundation in names of Dietz, Axelson, and Murphy. "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." --John 15:13

From the "You've Got To Be Kidding Me Department", Massachusetts State Police have lost eight ounces of Semtex being used in a drill for bomb-sniffing dogs. More proof that more money can't buy you intelligence. (Massachusetts has some of the highest tax rates in the nation.) [Via Schneier.]

From the Toadpond:

It does not require much observation to understand that there is a large faction on this planet that lives only to see Israel's destruction. But to stand up in public and declare that Hezbollah is anything but a terrorist organization demonstrates how this deep this hatred runs, and how oblivious to truth these minds have become. I keep thinking no politician can be as looney as Howard Dean, but then George Galloway keeps popping up to snatch the title.

Bret Stephens:

Tel Aviv may be the economic and cultural capital of Israel, Jerusalem its political and symbolic capital. But the Galilee is where Israelis come to play, the forested and breezy getaway from the sweltering coast and the incessant dramas of everyday life in this region. Israelis were prepared to give up sandy Gaza and might also have been prepared to do the same with the rocky West Bank, if only the Palestinians would behave themselves. Yet places make a nation as much as principles do, and the Galilee was one place no Israeli could part with if his country was still going to be worth living in.

So even as terror-stricken residents of the north flee, the rest of the country is prepared to fight, whatever the cost: A recent poll found that 80% of Israelis support the present military operations, and three-quarters of those would be prepared to launch a full-scale invasion of Lebanon if that is what it takes to defeat Hezbollah. No similar consensus has existed among Israelis since the 1967 Six Day War.

Up in his winery, Mr. Haviv fears that if the war continues, he will have no one to tend the vines and take in the harvest, and an entire season's worth of business will be ruined. Yet as we stand beside one of his fields, watching an Apache helicopter fire missiles at a Lebanese village visible in the far distance, he muses on what his decision to remain here means. "Being here is part of defending the country. If Hezbollah wins this, the terrorists win this war, and not just against us but against the free world. You think I'm coming down from here? Never." Once again, the Israelis seem to grasp the concept of unity in the Long War on Terror, while it eludes many in our nation.

This whole "Numa Numa" thing is out of control.

Tim Zimmerman:

What swims at 20 miles per hour, can carve out hunks of human flesh, and will attack anything that moves? The Humboldt squid. Brace yourself for a dive with the eeriest beast in the ocean. A fascinating read.

Jeff has an outstanding parable of the recent Hezbollah attacks on Israel.

If you'd like a first-person account of the Hezbollah attacks on Israel, and the Israeli response, head over to David Dolan's site and subscribe to his e-mail list. David is a Christian pastor and author who has been resident in Israel for many years. Last year, David spoke at our church, and even for someone like me, who has followed the Mideast conflict, and the region's history, for many years, it was eye-opening.

It's nice to see anti-Semitism alive and well at the Guardian. Then again, at least it's nice to see a major media source wear its bias on its sleeve, rather than pretend it's purely neutral. Will Hutton decides to rebuke Israel for its recent incursions into Gaza, which netted eight cabinet members, thirty members of parliament, and thirty other officials of the Hamas-led Palestinian government, calling these acts, as well as the bombings of infrastructure targets in Gaza, a declaration of war by the Israeli state. Memo to Mr. Hutton: Well, duh. Hutton notes "Missiles from Gaza are regularly fired at Israel." Yet in Hutton's world, this apparently does not constitute an act of war against Israel by the Palestinian state, despite his earlier statement, "The Hamas government has not yet renounced its commitment to the elimination of Israel or to the use of terrorism." The "elimination of Israel" as a tenant of what Hutton claims is a legitimate and sovereign government is not a "declaration of war"? I'm not sure how much clearer Hamas, and thus, the Palestinian people, who put Hamas in power, have to be in their declaration of war against Israel to satisfy Mr. Hutton. Far from being, as Hutton claims, an inexcusable act of war, Israel's bombings of and raids in to Gaza are more of what Israel needs to be doing to stand strong in the face of an enemy which seeks its utter annihilation. There may be a sliver of hope for peace between Israel and the Palestinians, if Palestinian Prime Minister Abbas were not being undermined by the Hamas majority in the government. But when a majority of a nation seeks not only the defeat of its neighbor, but the elimination of that nation's people, there is little reasoning that can be done with such persons to secure peace. Israel must project strength to protect itself, to assure the Palestinians and any other group or nation that it is willing to do whatever it takes to ensure "Never again." Writers such as Mr. Hutton would do well to pack away their double standards for the Israeli state and, well, "remain silent" would be the polite term.

Oh, by the way, there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. A lesser man might say something like, "Suck it, mouth-foamers", but I'll refrain from engaging in such childish behavior.

Tony Blankley:

At journalism conferences, the question is often brought up whether a journalist should see himself as an American first or a journalist first. Often the consensus is that they are journalists first.

I wonder how many of them would report a story if it would mean the death of their own child. And would any of those reporters who would be journalists first in even that appalling instant cheerfully mis-report a story in order to cause the death of their child? I suspect virtually none would.

If only they loved their country's young and willing warriors as much as they loved their own children.

But the journalists today are too swept up in their own dance macabre to even notice the murderous consequences of their own malfeasance -- or to hear the demands of simple decency.

A majority of those who support the war on terror have long noted this war is with the fringe element of radical Islam, not the entire Muslim world. The Bush administration has made this point in countless speeches on the issue, to the point of nausea whenever the President says "religion of peace". Yet what are we to think about this, that it is only "radical" Islam we are fighting, when those supposedly in the mainstream of the Muslim faith, knowing of the spreading of jihadist propoganda in their midst, and perhaps even knowing of jihadist plans of attack, fail to alert the authorities regarding these matters? Is that not tantamount to collusion, and if so, does this not mean we are finding ourselves at war with the entire Muslim world?

From the You've-Got-To-Be-Kidding-Me Department, if you're an illegal alien, get thee to Virginia! Apparently, so long as you're not commiting a felony, you won't get detained and possibly deported. No state law "to make arrests solely on the basis of a person's immigration status"? Is this a Twilight Zone episode? Is Alan Funt hiding in the bushes somewhere with the camera? Do not law enforcement officers make arrests based on federal law as well as state law? The state of Virginia may not do the prosecuting and deporting, but surely they should be doing the arresting, no? "I'm sorry for the delay, Mr. Atta. Despite your expired visa, your paperwork for your radiation-materials transport van appears to be in order. Drive safely, and have a nice day." Why don't we just give up right now and hand over the nuclear bomb the jihadists want to wipe us out with, complete with AAA road maps so they can miss the construction on their way to the District?

"Abu Musab al-Zarqawi Killed in Bombing Raid" I wonder if the F-16 pilot who dropped the Zarqawi-killing bombs gets to collect the $25 million bounty. That would be a nice retirement package.

I don't need anything else special to remember my wedding anniversary. Circumstances of life dictated that forever shall the day of our wedding be shared with that of the invasion of Normandy, and the enormous sacrifice made there by so many. Yesterday marked the second anniversary of President Reagan's passing, I can think of no better words to remember D-Day, than those spoken by him on the fortieth anniversary of the invasion:

Forty summers have passed since the battle that you fought here. You were young that day and you took these cliffs; some of you were hardly more than boys, with the deepest joys of life before you. Yet, you risked everything here. Why? Why did you do it? What impelled you to put aside the instinct for self-preservation and risk your lives to take these cliffs? What inspired all the men of the armies that met here?

We look at you, and somehow we know the answer. It was faith and belief; it was loyalty and love. The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would grant them mercy on this beachhead or on the next. It was the deep knowledge--and pray God we have not lost it--that there is a profound moral difference between the use of force of liberation and the use of force for conquest. You were here to liberate, not to conquer... You all knew that some things are worth dying for.

It says a lot about our nation in that too few of us think about those who have given their lives in military service, much less participate in events to commemorate them, on Memorial Day. This was what ran through my head as we drove the Maine coastline today, noting the hundreds, perhaps thousands, on the beaches of York. To honor those who have made the ultimate sacrifice, I humbly offer these words from one of our greatest Presidents:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that this nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow, this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." [With thanks to KnowledgeNews for the text of the Gettysburg Address.]

The iPatch.

This likely has made its rounds through the blogosphere already, but I just read in the latest dead-tree edition of Wired that Choose Your Own Adventure books are getting republished, updated for the 21st century. Though he's not old enough yet to read on his own and appreciate them, I may have to pick up these titles for my little phisch. I had a great time with them when I was eleven, though I don't believe I was ever able to successfully navigate The Abominable Snowman without "cheating".

What happened to all that wreckage from the Twin Towers after 9/11? Twenty-four tons of steel girders ended up in one of the Navy's latest ships.

There have been many acts of heroism in the Iraq War and continuing liberation that have gone under- or unreported by the media. One such underreported act is that of Paul Ray Smith, the only Medal of Honor winner of the conflict. Sergeant First Class Smith gave his life near the Saddam Hussein International Airport on 4 April 2003, defending his comrades and the wounded in a nearby aid station. Ralph Kinney Bennett has the story.

Vietnam-era traitor Jeffry House, now a "prominent human-rights lawyer" in Toronto, is helping current-day traitors flee from the service they voluntarily enlisted for. (I feel it worth noting that Mr. House is not performing this work pro bono.) As a father, I can certainly feel for Jeremy Hinzman in that he doesn't want to go to Iraq, get killed, and leave his son fatherless. I so totally get that. The fact remains, however, that Mr. Hinzman voluntarily enlisted in the United States Army. Therefore, during the terms of his enlistment, he is to go where the Army tells him to go, even if it is to a place he doesn't want to go because he thinks the United States, vis-a-vis its armed services, shouldn't be there. Mr. Hinzman had a chance to legally leave the Army, and he chose to stay. He should be returned to the United States to stand trial for desertion, and be sent to prison. It would appear the maximum sentence is only five years; still plenty of life to spend with his son.

Stephan Rider:

Please note: You're not allowed to call yourselves followers of a "religion of peace" if you riot and make death threats over a political cartoon.

[...]

A lot of people decry such statements, saying that this is the actions of some muslims, but not most of them. I'm still waiting for the major leaders of Islam to rise up and denounce such violence. Until that starts happening on a regular basis, I have a hard time believing those arguments. [Via Jeff.]

A Patriot Post reader:

In their eagerness to inflict as much damage as possible to the Bush administration record, the Democrats once again are being reckless with the truth and with national security. Some say that the president is spying on American citizens. The president has made clear from the start that the wiretaps were limited to targeting communications from outside the country to individuals in the U.S. with known links to terrorist groups. It's not an "unreasonable search" to look for the bad guys when fighting international terrorism. The Democrats don't have a leg to stand on in this issue...and they know it.

How can the Democrats in all honesty criticize the president for intelligence failures and then attack him for being too aggressive in doing surveillance? How do you explain dismantling protections in the midst of a terror war? The Democrats by their duplicity are playing a very dangerous game that could derail the president's strategy to defeat a deadly enemy. The Fourth Amendment to the constitution protects its citizens from "unreasonable searches and seizures" but who will protect us from "unreasonable" self-serving, seditious and self-destructive politicians?" --Fredericktown, Ohio

Paul Greenberg:

Dana Priest of The Washington Post sounds shocked - shocked! - to discover that George W. Bush ordered a complete remobilization and reinvigoration of the CIA immediately after September 11th:

The effort President Bush authorized shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, to fight al-Qaida has grown into the largest CIA covert-action program since the height of the Cold War, expanding in size and ambition despite a growing outcry at home and abroad over clandestine tactics...

This is news? Isn't this just what W. told the country he would do in the aftermath of September 11th?

[...]

Apparently W. meant it. According to the Post's Ms. Priest, the president signed an order six days after September 11th empowering American intelligence agencies in a way not seen since the Second World War.

Gosh, just as if we had suffered a surprise attack and thousands of our people had been killed in a second Pearl Harbor.

Do you think maybe the president decided to fight this like a world war because, far ahead of his critics, he realized we were in one?

John Fund has a note on Barbara Boxer's Bush obsession in today's Political Diary.

Some Democrats have become so obsessed with President Bush's National Security Agency surveillance activities that they are putting the most rabid of the anti-Clinton Republicans of the 1990s to shame. Take Senator Barbara Boxer, the California Democrat who serves as her party's Chief Deputy Whip. Last month, during the holiday season, she sent a letter to legal scholars asking their opinions as to whether the Bush NSA program should compel Congress to start impeachment hearings. With the 2006 midterm elections now upon us, if the Democrats want the American public to take them seriously on matters of national security, perhaps they should quietly decide to make someone else the Chief Deputy Whip. Ms. Boxer's letter had been prompted by a December 16 appearance she made at Temple Emanuel in Los Angeles with former Nixon White House Counsel John Dean, who has since become a sort of understudy to former Attorney General Ramsey Clark in his willingness to ascribe all manner of evil intent to conservative presidents. Mr. Dean, who declared the Bush record on civil liberties "worse than Watergate," told the Temple Emanuel audience that Mr. Bush is "the first president to admit to an impeachable offense." Ms. Boxer called that "a startling assertion" worthy of Congressional attention. During her duet with Mr. Dean, she made her own startling statement, blurting out that she feared Mr. Bush "would prefer to do away with Congress," calling for the House and Senate to be disbanded during wartime. The "worse than Watergate" assertion would be one of the funniest things I've read today if it weren't for Boxer's own comment about Bush wanting to disband Congress. One has to wonder if she's truly serious when she utters such nonsense, or is she simply playing to the anti-war radical left? Either way, I think it shows that Boxer isn't fit for such a high position in one of this country's two major political parties. Democrats such as Ms. Boxer are in danger of being viewed as overheated and irrational in their reaction to the NSA story. Ya think? I think we're well past the "in danger of" stage. A new Rasmussen poll finds that 32% of voters think our legal system worries too much about individual rights at the expense of national security. Another 27% say the current balance is about right. Only 29% say there is too much concern for national security at the expense of individual liberties and only one-third of Americans believe that Mr. Bush broke the law by authorizing the NSA to monitor phone calls between terrorist suspects. Only 26% believe that President Bush is the first to authorize a program allowing the NSA to intercept such calls.

If Ms. Boxer and Mr. Dean continue to urge Democrats down the impeachment route, they should recall how much the issue flopped for Republicans in the 1998 mid-term elections. Mr. Clinton became the first president since FDR to see his party gain seats during a mid-term election, in part because voters felt Republicans were spending too much time attacking him rather than addressing other issues.

John Fund:

[T]he establishment media clearly leans toward the view that the NSA leak was in the public interest. Unlike the Plame probe, the Justice Department career employees trying to investigate the NSA case can expect no laudatory editorials urging them to pursue their job relentlessly and, above all, no media bloodhounds conducting their own parallel investigations.

The old adage that politics should stop at the water's edge was abandoned long ago. Now the idea that all of us, regardless of political stripe, have a stake in preventing harm to national security from unauthorized intelligence leaks seems to have similarly entered the dustbin of history.

John Hawkins:

The last major war the United States was involved in was Vietnam. The modern Democratic Party leadership all came of age during that war, as did most of the editorial staff in the manistream media. It wasn’t just a defining moment in the modern American left, it was the defining moment, the prism through which the left would view the world from that moment on. Vietnam was justification for every pacifist tendency that every liberal has ever had. When they said that war didn’t solve anything, they could point to Vietnam. When they wanted to show the consequences of war, they could point to Vietnam. When they wanted to show the failure of military force as a tool for political change, they could point to Vietnam. It was the last major war this country was ever involved in. Sure we’ve had military operations, from Grenada to the Gulf War to the Balkans, but Vietnam our last big one, and it was a war we ended up losing. Vietnam has been their de facto answer for everything for the past 30 years.

Iraq threatens their entire belief system. [Emphasis added. --R]