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Victor Davis Hansen offers the Dems a chance to outflank GWB as defenders of American safety:
The Democratic leadership should step up to the plate and, in Truman-esque fashion, forge a bipartisan front to confront Iran and make the most of their multilateral moment. If the Democrats feel they have lost the public’s confidence in their stewardship of national security, then the threat of Iran offers a Hillary Clinton, Howard Dean, or John Kerry an opportunity to get out front now and pledge support for a united effort — attacking Bush from the right about too tepid a stance rather from the predictable left that we are “hegemonic” and “imperialistic” every time we use force abroad.
Finally, the public must be warned that dealing with a nuclear Iran is not a matter of a good versus a bad choice, but between a very bad one now and something far, far worse to come.
The Dems won't do it, of course. They don't appear to care about a nuclear Iran dedicated to the destruction of the West. All they care about is a poorly-constructed strategy for getting elected.
But showing strength in defending America militarily, might be their best chance at doing so.
Many of us ask how there can be so many suicide bombings in Iraq. It turns out that there is quite a bit Iraq can do to reduce the number of such incidents:
By contrast, no suicide bomber in Israel has managed to kill more than six people in a single blast for well over a year.
Iraq's vulnerability to such attacks was exposed again on Monday when two bombers dressed as senior police officers walked through the main checkpoint of the Interior Ministry compound in Baghdad and killed 28 people.
With the U.S. ambassador at a nearby police ceremony, security should have been solid, but al Qaeda, which claimed responsibility, said the bombers evaded nine checkpoints.
They also got hold of high-level security passes that enabled them to get inside the compound and would have admitted them to the ministry building itself.
It is hard to imagine such a security breach in Israel.
"The system here for going after these groups is much more effective than in Iraq," said Assaf Heffetz, a former Israeli police chief and counter-terrorism expert. "Public safety measures are also not as good there, for example at shopping centers. That is what makes the difference."
...The target of last week's Ramadi bomb was a line of around 1,000 men queuing for jobs at a police recruiting station.
Western security experts say they are amazed police even considered gathering so many obvious targets together in one place, particularly in a city as dangerous as Ramadi.
They said recruitment should have been staggered over several days to keep crowd numbers down, and those wanting to join the queue should have been filtered through a checkpoint and searched one by one.
The conduct of Iraqi police and soldiers at checkpoints has also been criticized. They sometimes stand together chatting -- easy prey for a bomber on foot or in a car -- rather than remaining spaced out as is standard military practice.
...While analysts say the U.S. and Iraqi authorities can do more to bring death tolls down, for example by redesigning checkpoints and using random stop-and-search techniques, a change of attitude is needed from ordinary Iraqis too.
In the event that the Iraqis get their security act together, the number of suicide bombings will be reduced.
Buried in this article is this interesting note:
Only about 100,000 residents have returned since the hurricane, and much of the city is uninhabitable. Redevelopment already has stalled as residents complain of getting little or no assistance from FEMA or private insurance companies.
A rather unusual plan has been floated in New Orleans, to the effect that if less than half the residents of a neighborhood return to rebuild, all the property owners there will be bought out by the city, whether they like it or not:
The proposal drew loud "boos" and shouts of anger from residents who crowded a downtown hotel meeting room for its announcement.
"I'm ready to rebuild. I'm not going to let you take everything. I'm ready to fight to get my property together," one man shouted from the back of the room.
Carolyn Parker, a resident of the ruined Lower Ninth, told the panel: "I don't think it's right that you try to take my property.
"Over my dead body," she said. "I didn't die with Katrina."
If a neighborhood is not deemed habitable, or too few residents return, the city could ban redevelopment and turn it into a park or open space. Property owners could be compensated in a proposed federal buyback program that would provide 100 percent of their homes' pre-storm value.
...The concept of getting rid of certain neighborhoods altogether has angered many black residents of the Lower Ninth Ward who fear theirs is among the most likely to be closed.
Odd as it is, the plan sounds like it's worth discussing. With sufficient compensation to the homeowners, this might be preferable to having a bunch of neighborhoods in which the majority of homes have been abandoned.
At this point the plan is for discussion only:
"This report is controversial. It pushes the envelope," the mayor told the crowd. "Let's discuss it, let's debate it, let's analyze it and let's tweak it.
