Iranians Doctored Missile Fauxtographs

The Western media has a penchent for accepting anything uncritically from Middle Eastern sources but fortunately, Charles Johnson, a debunker, noticed how the Iranians fudged their recent missile launches.

Home-Grown Terrorism Hits Turkey

The showdown outside the U.S. consulate in Istanbul, Turkey which left six people dead was clearly terrorism and the latest in a test of Western defenses. Gunmen simply pulled up in a car and opened fire at a police security checkpoint at the consulate entrance. Three police officers and three assailants were killed in the shootout. Two other police officers were wounded in the attack. No American assets were hurt.

This is the latest attack in Turkey since November 2003 when a string of bombings targeted the British consulate, two synagogues, and a British-owned bank. The blasts killed more than 70 people.

Turkey faces its own battles with terrorists, including battles between secularist and traditional Muslims, and the ongoing difficulties between Kurdish separatists and the central government. No one has claimed responsibility for the attacks just yet but I suspect this is as much a home-grown terrorism as anything else. It is not spectacular enough nor deadly enough to be the markings of an AQ attack.

Iran and the Strait

The Iranians can not claim to be the most rational folks on the planet but I do not think they would be foolish enough to challenge the world on the Strait of Hormuz. And, although the Coalition has conducted a naval exercise designed to maintain international shipping, the practice seemed to be more saber-rattling than anything else. The exercise was helpfully subtle.

Since the mid-seventies, the Strait of Hormuz has been considered a major political point of contention in the region. The Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, pretended to be the region’s police officer so that he could spank the socialist Iraq. Once the West's lackey Shah was ousted by Ayatollah Ruhollah, the Khomeini revolution and Tehran’s policy began to threaten blocking the strait thus Western presence was required.

The Strait has evolved to be congested with battleships and nonstop maneuvers while nearby nations are embroiled in a constant vigilant state of security.

Nonetheless, just as in the case of the Suez Canal, or other critical waterways, there is international resolution against Iran's arbitrary approach to a Strait that they share with their neighbors. The Sultanate of Oman overlooks the Strait as well. Further, the Strait of Hormuz represents the only exporting exit for Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar, while the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Oman overlook the Gulf of Oman, and Saudi Arabia overlooks the Red Sea.

Critically, most of the Gulf oil goes to China, Japan, and India, as well as to European countries.

And, as I often will advocate on this blog, this is another excellent opportunity for both rising powers, China and Japan, to step up to the plate and offer security resources. Japan already has pledged to increase its security presence in the region as a result of more support for the Coalition in Afghanistan.

McCain Old, Obama Outsider, Poll Shows

The presidential candidates, John McCain and Barack Obama, according to an Associated Press-Yahoo News poll are perceived in particular ways. The percentage of people who provided these answers is listed and bear in mind that more than one response was allowed.

John McCain:

1. Old, 19 percent

2. Military service, 9 percent

3. Record, qualifications, 8 percent

4. Bush, 7 percent

5. Strength, 7 percent

6. Insider, politician, 7 percent

7. Iraq, terrorism, 6 percent

8. Honest, 5 percent

9. Republican, 5 percent

10. (tie) Moral/good and dishonest, 4 percent

Barack Obama:

1. Outsider, change, 20 percent

2. Lack of experience, 13 percent

3. Dishonest, 9 percent

4. Inspiring, 8 percent

5. Liberal, 6 percent

6, 7 (tie). Obama's race, young, 6 percent

8. Not likable, 5 percent

9. Intelligent, 4 percent

10. Muslim, 3 percent

The only double-percentage word association regarding McCain is age. Outsider and inexperience are the double-digit terms associated with Obama. I wonder if McCain should be defeated because of age discrimination as the leading negative association. And, Obama does not seem to be favorably viewed in any case. It makes one lament the sad state of candidates who can be taken seriously as presidential candidates. I mean, this is the best that American democracy can do?

Apostate, or Reverting?

One of the profound difficulties America will have, if we elect a Muslim apostate, would be to further inflame Middle Eastern tensions. Edward Luttwack, a military historian, writes revealingly of the point in an article in The New York Times. In fact, I don't know which is worst, Obama as a Muslim apostate, or, if he decides to revert to his childhood upbringing in a Saudi madrassa. Neither scenario would increase the security of the U.S.

AQ Pressed in Af-Pak Region, Expands to Central Asia

An undated image from a video released by the U.S. military claims to show an al Qaeda in Iraq training operation involving child recruits. Graphic source: AP Photo/US Military

Al Qaeda has said to have successfully established a network for recruiting boys as young as 12 from across central Asia according to senior security officials from the Middle East and as revealed to CBS News.

Last May, a senior Pakistani security official screened a video clip to CBS News documenting a boy, barely 12 years old, using a machete to severe the head of a middle-aged man whom militants suspected of being a spy for the U.S.

The central Asian nations, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, appear to be the most likely areas to recruit AQ adherents because of lack of Coalition presence and the largely Muslim population.

The anonymous security spokesperson indicated that there are "maybe a few hundred such cases."

With the Coalition pressing in on AQ in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the organization is seeking areas of less resistance.

July Order of Battle Iraq

Graphic source: The Long War Journal

On this day of liberty I publish the July Order of Battle in Iraq. Most of the Order concerns the increasing rate of Iraqi defenders of their country. The Coalition is standing down and turning over security all over the country to native defenders.

Note on How the Wars of the Past Still Determine How We Fight, How We Live, and How We Think

Yes, this is one of the preeminent historians of war writing today. Yes, we should expect a great deal from his work. With these points in mind, Victor Davis Hanson, former professor of classics at California State University, Fresno, describes how particular battles persist and therefore ripple through the centuries. In Ripples of Battle, Hanson begins on a engrossing and fascinating starting point, his own family military history, and weaves the fateful account of his father's first cousin who was to die tragically, and as Hanson argues, unnecessarily, on Okinawa. His cousin died without progeny and his branch of the family ended. Hanson speculates later on in the work who is know what kind of contribution the dead may have made. He seems to be aware of the futility, though tragic necessity for war. War is central in the human experience. This is the high point of the work. It is written with a great deal of passion and verve.

As to the remainder of the work, it is less successful, and in summary reverse order, Hanson reviews the Athenian defeat at Delium in 424 BCE that brought tactical innovations to infantry fighting; it also assured--which is a flaw in Hanson's argument--the influence of the philosophy of Socrates, who fought well in the battle. Nearly twenty-three hundred years later, the debacle at Shiloh and the death of the brilliant Southern strategist Albert Sidney Johnson inspired a sense of fateful tragedy that would endure and stymie Southern culture for decades. The Northern victory would also bolster the reputation of William Tecumseh Sherman, and most critically according to Hanson, inspire Lew Wallace to pen the widely popular Ben Hur. And, most poignantly, the agony of Okinawa forced the Japanese to sanction state-supported suicide, a tactic so fanatical, it haunts our view of non-Western combatants to this day. Okinawa also provoked the appropriate level of response, the controversial deployment of atomic weapons.

The odd thing of Hanson's argument is that he loses force the further back in history he reaches. He correctly places Okinawa front and center in American thinking that led to dropping atomic bombs on the Japanese mainland. Okinawa was far bloodier than American field commanders expected and he shows that most likely only the unfortunate death of General Simon Bolivar Buckner, during the battle, prevented an inquiry into his unimaginative and flawed tactics that did nothing to avoid the unwarranted deaths of so many Marines. Buckner ignored the credible alternatives of his staff and plunged many more to their deaths without cause.

Hanson's argument is less effective than his review of Okinawa in his account of Shiloh. Shiloh was of course a tragedy but he does not make a clear connection between Johnson's death, and the brilliance of General Nathan Bedford Forrest at the battle. The mistake is that by simply relating a cataclysmic event, and drawing a connection to much of what follows chronologically, is not enough. Shiloh was a tragedy on so many levels, the amount of casualties, the unmitigated carnage, and who is to say that Forrest would have become the leader of the Ku Klux Klan regardless of his important role at Shiloh. The Northern victory of course bolstered the reputation of Sherman and he is widely recognized for inventing a more comprehensive, if not brutal tactic of devastating the enemy's infrastructure to demolish your opponent, an American military trademark since then. The fact that Wallace wrote the incredibly popular Ben Hur as an allegory and defense of his flawed role in the battle would escape later readers. In fact, in more recent times, the story is best known for the classic film adaptation, and is no longer even associated with a Civil War general, much less Shiloh. Hanson gives Americans too much credit, and attributes a much profounder appreciation of history than the story would warrant.

Even more troubling is Hanson's review of the Athenian defeat at Delium. I'm with him when he argues that the battle initiated tactical innovations to infantry fighting. However, I must part company when he states categorically, that since Socrates lived to tell the tale of his personal involvement in the battle, he therefore has been a huge influence in philosophy. Once again, he mistakes the personal appearance of a participant in a battle as proof of how wars determine our thinking and how we live.

The failure is the lack of evidence which is the hallmark of historical analysis. As Plato relates the ideas of Socrates, did Socrates argue this point? Did Socrates agree that Delium was a personal watershed? Is there any evidence for such a statement? It is true of course that we only have evidence of Socrates through second-hand sources, since he did not write, but surely we should some Socratic statements indicating that this traumatic battle is the wellspring of his thought.

In the final analysis, we know where Hanson is going with all this. He wants to argue that 9/11 is a defining moment for the West. The West will fight vociferously, will think of non-Westeners as we have in the past, and will determine how we will fight the war on terror. In a final section, this is what he has been driving at which he reveals. However, it is simply still an open question of how the defining moment of 9/11 will be addressed. We are too close to the events in question and since the West is characterized at least as much by its ambiguity, defeatism, and misunderstandings in the face of a resurgent Middle Eastern Islam, Hanson's argument fails to persuade. If he were correct, the West's response would be swift, ferocious, and devastating. That day may come but it has not arrived, not yet anyway.

Note on Benjamin & Simon, Sacred Terror

A "treasure trove" (p. xii) exists of information about sacred terror. The authors note that much of their information is readily available in 50,000 pages of testimony against terrorists therefore their information is hidden right before us.

What has not happened though is that the government institutions, sworn to our safety, have not responded well enough or quickly enough to protect us. In this contentious debate various scapegoats have been found but upon reading the work I think the blame can be spread equally amongst both administrations: Democrat and Republican, Clinton and Bush. There are plenty of mistakes to go around.

The institutions of federal protection, the NSA, the FBI, the CIA, the DOD, the State Department, and both White House administrations failed to share critical data and collaborate. This is a major stumbling block and a "failure of imagination" on the part of government institutions to recognize, and respond appropriately, to a new post-Cold War threat.

The roots of contemporary jihadist terrorism are profound. In 1990, Meir Kahane, the Jewish leader of the JDL (Jewish Defense League) was murdered which gave birth to the brand of terrorism reflected in, and which influenced 9/11. By dating contemporary terrorism so deeply, the authors are making the point that terrorism has been with us for some time. Even the first WTC bombing in 1993 though failed to garnish an appropriate response against Middle Eastern terrorism. Not even an attack on CIA headquarters itself a month and a day later, by a Pakistani Mir Aimal Kansi, who killed two and wounded three, failed to elicit a response by policy-makers. They did not heed the message jihadists sent.

The authors note that this violent, contemporary brand of terrorism was spawned some time ago, with Ibn Taymiyya, b. 1269, the Wahhabists, and more recently, by Sayyid Qutb. The "Warrior Prince," Bin Laden, was born and bred in this strain of Islam. The movement he began, by the raiders and in the fields, attempted to capture and hold land according to this theology, against the "near enemy."

The question is: why were American policy-makers so slow to react given this history and the roots of violent Islam? In the 90s, the authors note the paradigm shift that took place amongst the field operatives and mid-level analysts such as Richard Clarke. This shift did not occur amongst the high-level decision-makers though. The higher-level policy makers remain mired in only recognizing the terrorism of the state-sponsored variety. Under the radar, then, terroristic efforts were taking a more ominous and deadly turn. Policy makers still considered terrorism a low-level threat and sought state sponsorship, something eschewed by jihadists.

During the same period, overseas assets of the U.S. were attacked and Americans were killed, yet these incidents were not recognized by policy-makers, as the lower and middle-level analysts identified, as part of a larger whole, a jihad against the West begun by Middle-Eastern Muslims.

Policy-makers did not connect the dots. Only in 1995 do we have the first mention of Bin Laden stated by a U.S. official (p. 235). During the same period, the CIA was in transition, if not disarray, and the Clinton administration was unresponsive to warnings about a more significant jihadist movement afoot.

When Clinton did respond, as in the '98 al-Shifa bombing, Bill was denounced by the media as a 'wag the dog' President. The mainstream news services failed in their duty to investigate and reveal the newsworthy story of rising jihadist sentiment and the violent terrorists who emerged at the time.

Bin Laden at least began to be viewed as a more significant threat during the Clinton administration, in fact, missiles were readied three times to take him out (p. 380). The period was marked unfortunately by legal ambiguities, and hand-wringing which tied the Administration's hands and effective options failed to develop in American security services to eliminate Bin Laden.

The CIA did not develop options and assets in al Qaeda's region which may have initiated effective means against Bin Laden. George Tenet, personally popular though marginally effective as CIA chief, began to advocate the necessity of addressing the rising Bin Laden threat.

Their counterparts at the FBI were in even worse shape to pursue Bin Laden or jihadists. Their crime-fighting expertise in fact worked against them in developing an appropriate response to Bin Laden. AQ (al Qaeda) was out of their bailiwick. FBI Director Louis Freeh performed dreadfully in countering terrorism, and although there were individuals of excellence who pointed out the AQ threat, such as the FBI's John O'Neill, these prescient analysts were drowned out by organizational lethargy and incompetence.

Since Tenet came in late to the game during the Clinton-Bush transition, he began to sound the alarm about Bin Laden. The Bush administration was slow to recognize the Bin Laden threat, failed to act on AQ effectively, and did not promote the proper tools to handle AQ.

Both administrations failed to protect Americans. The policy makers dedicated to security, the CIA and the FBI in particular, did not collaborate and develop an effective counter-strategy. Only in the field operatives and mid-level analysts did the more violent strain of Islam become identified as a more significant threat to American interests. The authors have traced the violent, and older strains of Islam that have become much more popular, and represent the mainstream view of contemporary Islam. The authors make a compelling case for examining both the evidence and the incidents which led us to our current clash between Islamism and the West. The quagmire that we are in is due to the West failing to understand the severity and the violent opposition of Middle Eastern Muslims.

"Mookie" Chameleon

Widely reported on this blog has been the recent dismantling of Sadr's militia. Omar Fadhil, co-author of the blog Iraq the Model, and a two time winner of the Weblog Awards, cogently summarized on The Long War Journal the next moves for "Mookie," as Sadr has been referred to.

Through his decision to trim Mahdi Army, Sadr hopes to salvage some of Mahdi Army’s best trained and most loyal units, and put them under one command to operate in a secretive manner and, ostensibly, only against US targets. If Muqtada’s plan is to make his militia operate in manner akin to al Qaeda Iraq by keeping a low profile and using selective targeting of opponents and occasional spectacular attacks like the recent car-bombing in Hurriyah district, then Mahdi Army will continue to be a source of trouble; but not of the magnitude seen 2006 and 2007. However, the problem for Sadr is that al Qaeda Iraq itself is on the verge of being defeated; trying to copy the methods of a defeated power isn’t likely to lead Sadr to a better end.

Other possible rationales for Sadr’s decision to disband the larger Mahdi Army include:

• Shedding extra unnecessary “weight:” The current larger Mahdi Army has many thousands of poorly trained foot soldiers. Those were proven to be effective in paralyzing life and spreading fear in several cities over the last few years. However, Muqtada’s ability to deploy these mobs to take over the streets has been drastically compromised following the recent crackdowns by US troops and Iraqi security forces. Sadr may get rid of these soldiers simply because they are no longer suitable for his goals. These untrained mobs could easily act as a shadow army for the shadow government Sadr wanted to establish, but they are not qualified to be members of a professional guerrilla army.

• Leaderless resistance: Sadr’s announcement could be a trick: vowing to fight the occupier until victory or death, while concurrently giving this “honor” to a small, select group. He’s basically telling his followers that fighting is good, but you shouldn’t do it. The result would be that some or many of those followers will indeed go against his orders and continue fighting. In this case, Sadr gets the service he needs from those men, while maintaining the ability to claim that Mahdi Army is not responsible and those men do not represent him.

• Preventing infiltration by informants/Iraqi security forces: Sadr’s emphasis on secrecy in his letter may indicate that he’s trying to limit the number of people that have access to information concerning the planning, operations, structure, command and control, logistics, and other secretive information of the Mahdi Army in order to prevent any security breaches. Sadr’s advisors may have convinced him that the smaller the army, the less likely it will be infiltrated, and the less likely that civilian locals will be able to get information to relay to Iraqi security forces and US troops. Muqtada’s fear from infiltration may have been exacerbated by the formation of Awakening groups in his main stronghold of Sadr City; especially that many of the Awakening men are relatives or neighbors of Mahdi Army fighters, if not were themselves members of the Mahdi Army.

• Emulating Hezbollah: Since Hezbollah plays a significant role in training and organizing the Mahdi army, this decision may be an attempt to reform the militia and make it evolve into something similar to Hezbollah. It is common knowledge that Hezbollah maintains a force of 2-3 thousand well-trained, active fighters prepared for immediate duty. Thousands of others Hezbollah operative serve in the social, financial and other civil society networks of the group, in addition to a reserve paramilitary force. In fact, rebuilding the Mahdi army following Hezbollah’s example of a clear separation between the armed and civil wings is what Sadr literally said in his letter a few weeks back.

Whatever the rationale, it is clear that Sadr is scrambling to make adjustments to his plans. The results of the recent fighting with the Iraqi security forces and US troops rendered the Mahdi army incapable of sustaining Sadr’s Plan ‘A,’ forcing him to accept a new plan with a smaller army. Cf. http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2008/07/analysis.php.

My personal view is the latter, the Mahdi are evolving into a Hezbollah-type counter-society directed by Iran. With the failure of AQ to be competitive, and largely viewed as a foreign oppressor, AQ did not capture the hearts and minds of Iraqis. Sadr, due to the respect bestowed on his father, is still seen as an Iraqi power player. He will sacrifice anyone he needs to, as did Arafat, in order to advance the agenda of his co-religionists, the Shi'ite Iranians.

Update on AQ Theorist Naji

Abu Bakr Naji, who I recently commented on here, portrayed AQ differently in times past. In 2004, in his book, The Management of Savagery, Abu Bakr Naji did not simply advance a religious agenda, but a careful reading of Western political theories.

Naji says that the jihadis had to provoke the United States to invade a country in the Middle East which proved to be hauntingly true and he argued that this is the only way jihadists could prevail.

We know the result: 1) Muslims railed against local governments allied with the U.S.; 2) the U.S. aura of invincibility was tarnished through the media; and 3) sympathy for the jihadis was created since they are viewed as standing up to Crusader aggression. Moreover, the invasion would bleed the U.S. economy and sap its military power, leading to social unrest at home and its ultimate withdrawal from the Middle East.

In his previous work though, just as in the latest one, The plan is to conduct small- to medium-scale attacks on crucial infrastructure (like oil or tourism), which will cause the government to draw in its security forces. Chaos or "savagery" will erupt in the unpoliced areas. Then, the jihadis will move into these security vacuums and provide basic services to people, who will welcome an end to the instability. The final result is the same, a single global state ruled by a pious Muslim, the caliph, who will implement a strict interpretation of sharia.

Naji deserves a listen. He was correct as events unfolded before, he may well be right again.

Insurgency Gone, Criminals Sought

Graphic source: Michael Gisick/S&S

Iraqi troops pass a poster memorializing fallen Jaish al-Mahdi fighters in Shula.

With Jaish al-Mahdi banished, the Arabic name for al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army, Coalition troops are walking the neighborhood to root out the last vestiges of the insurgency. American troops don't care for the name, Army, or miltia for example, "I don’t like to call them that," said Lt. Col. Gregory Baine, commander of the 2nd Battalion, 30th Infantry Regiment in eastern Baghdad. "They’re criminals, thugs, terrorists. ‘Militia’ could have a positive connotation," according to a statement in Stars and Stripes.

Comforting to a Theater Near You

Since the insurgency is doing so poorly, you may wonder if AQ has a back up plan. It turns out they do.

The Islamists will turn the world into "wildernesses" where only those under jihadi rule enjoy security. According to al Qaeda's chief theoretician, Sheik Abu-Bakar Naji, this is the world depicted in his new book "Governance in the Wilderness" (Edarat al-Wahsh). From the sounds of it, it looks like they see the world much as apocalyptics, and other end-time groups do. If correct, AQ is changing its strategy. AQ has failed in its tactical objectives. The Coalition is making slow, but marked progress. AQ has failed to obtain a needed homeland, or land. Something must be done.

Naji divides the jihadi movement into five concentric circles: ranging from first Sunni Salafi (traditionalist) Muslims (who, though not personally violent, are prepared to give moral and material support to militants); to Islamist groups with national rather than pan-Islamist agendas; (such as the Palestinian Hamas and the Filipino Moro Liberation Front). The fall of the Ottoman Empire and the abolition of the Islamic Caliphate in 1924 meanes that the "infidel" rules today via native proxies. Even the Taliban has not established, or rather re-established the Caliphate so they failed. Today, the Islamic movement must be global, fighting everywhere, all the time, and on all fronts.

After 9/11, the infidel U.S. failed to collapse. On the contrary, the "Great Satan" slapped back, hard. That said, the smaller and slower path but with steadier attacks has been advocated by Ayman al-Zawahiri, AQ No. 2 leader. The "near" jihad targets oppressive Muslim regions close to home first. Naji states that the low-intensity near battles must extend the war wherever there is a significant Muslim presence.

Islamist "wilderness" zones will create a parallel society alongside existing nation-states. If we are formless, we can not be defeated.

Daily life would be insecure, unstable, and unsafe. This would be a major departure from the previous AQ strategy of a few, spectacular, impressive attacks such as 9/11.

Parallel sharia societies would exert pressure on non-Muslims to submit and thus the killings, kidnapping, and local atrocities would end. The tactics would be a major change but the strategy is based on the same basic AQ point. Naji believes that, subjected to constant intimidation and fear of death, most non-Muslims (especially in the West) would submit: "The West has no stomach for a long fight."

Naji identifies that the United States is the practically the soke, exclusive target.

Naji targets the tactical objectives of oilfields, sea and airports, tourist facilities, and especially banking and financial services in "a very long war," a war of attrition.

Naji's theory is based on Mohammed who practiced the tactic by making his enemies in Medina, where he ran his version of the "wilderness," pay "the maximum price" for any deviance, and through constant raids on trade caravans belonging to his enemies in Mecca.

According to Naji, America lacks the will for a long war. The "infidel" loves life and treats it as an endless feast. Jihadis have to ruin that feast and persuade the "infidel" to abandon this world in exchange for greater rewards in the next.

Note on Keegan, Intelligence in War

Nothing about the prose seemed compelling though there were points of interest that are notable in this work. Keegan took classic incidents in war where intelligence proved crucial for the action--Napoleonic wars, Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley, the invention of the wireless, Crete in WW II, Midway, the Atlantic War in WW II, and German advances late in WW II--then, he notes the limitation of intelligence and how it did not prove to be the crucial factor in the outcome. On Crete, for example, the British had detailed intelligence and yet, lost the engagement. He makes the point that force predominates over intelligence, advance knowledge or inside information does not always determine the outcome. More importantly, in the section on intelligence after 1945, he points out that intelligence can not ascertain the appropriate course of action. Saddam proved to be exceptionally obtuse and the Coalition acted on the limited intelligence available to them. The knowledge of intelligence can only go so far. Force is required although the popularizers of intelligence, mostly from novels, gives us the impression that intelligence reveals all. It does not. The key to Keegan's work, as a pre-eminent military historian, is in the subtitle: "The value--and limitations--of what the military can learn about the enemy."

Note on Strassler, The Landmark Thucydides

As important as Thucydides is, the difficulty for the layperson to grasp him and understand his work, is to overcome certain limitations in his presentation of the war. Robert Strassler's supplemental edition provides resources by providing a commentary of the narrative, and the necessary background of an easily misunderstood cultural tradition that we do not share in order to provide a useful context for modern readers. The work is amply bolstered by a plethora of unique maps, substantive appendices by leading classical scholars, such as Victor Davis Hanson, explanatory marginalia, and a helpful and complete index. Thucydides is much more easily understood by using this volume.

Note on Kagan, The Peloponnesian War

Along with using Robert Strassler's, The Landmark Thucydides, while reading the original text in translation, Donald Kagan's, The Peloponnesian War, is a masterpiece of elucidation. The text is clear and well-written while expounding on the War mostly covered by Thucydides. Kagan also is supplemented by maps not available in Strassler that I found extremely helpful to understand Thucydides while imagining the personalities involved, such as Alcibiades, the terrain, and battle conditions. This is a masterful one-volume work for general readers of the period which is much more than a simple summary of his four-volume corpus for specialists published by Cornell University Press.

Jihadists Denounce Osama and AQ

Graphic source: al-Khansa

Umm Osama, the founder of Al-Qaeda's first women-only website is said to be announcing her renunciation of the organization on Saudi TV. The al-Khansa women's website have denounced jihadism. An interview with the Egyptian-born Abu Azza al-Ansari will also be aired; he was the director of the al-Qaeda linked 'Echoes of Jihad' online magazine.

There Goes the Neighborhood: AQ on the Run

Al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden’s terrorist organisation, driven out of Afghanistan and defeated in Iraq, is re-emerging in Pakistan, Somalia, and Algeria as safe havens for training, operational planning, and recruiting.

15 of 18 Iraq Benchmarks "Satisfactory"

Iraq achieved 15 of 18 benchmarks and are now "satisfactory," almost twice of what it determined to be the case a year ago. The May 2008 report card determines that only two of the benchmarks, enacting and implementing laws to disarm militias and distribute oil revenues, are unsatisfactory.

Iraq's Violence Down to U.S. Levels

Iraq's gun related violence dropped dramatically to just over 6 deaths per day in June. If adjusted for population this would result in a murder rate of 8/100,000 people. The murder rate in the US is 4 per 100,000 people.