New Analysis of Global Jihad from Scheuer

I keep waiting to find somebody that can show me where Mike Scheuer is way out in left or right field with his analysis of "The GWOT" (a term I don't believe I've ever seen him use), but I've yet to find anybody who can refute it other than saying "He's wrong!" without backing it up with something cogent.

His latest piece will run in Jamestown Foundation's upcoming issue of Terrorism Focus (#18), and he makes a good case for this becoming a more difficult fight, not less. He concluded that the next generation of al Qaeda will be more numerous, more fervent in their religious belief, more professional and less cowboy, and even more adept at utilizing modern technology and media to their advantage. Scheuer says,

"Despite satellites, electronic intercept equipment, and expanding human intelligence, the West does not understand al-Qaeda the way it knew the Soviet Union. Transnational targets are substantially more difficult collection targets than nation-states. We are, for example, unlikely to build an accurate al-Qaeda order-of-battle or recruit assets to penetrate the al-Qaeda equivalent of Moscow's politburo. As a result, Western analysts must closely track broad trends within al-Qaeda and its allies, and the trends toward greater piety, professionalism, numbers and modernity merit particular attention."

In sum, we have no idea who we're fighting or even where we're supposed to be fighting them. Infiltrate this! Please.


Scheuer gives them great credit for quickly responding with their own analysis, countersurveillance techniques, and countermeasures to US technology to foil IEDs in Iraq.

Anyone suggesting that the leadership or populous in The West has a handle on this thing has no idea what time it is.

I welcome corrections and refutions. I really don't want to be right about this.

Cubs (Still) Lose at Home Because of Day Games

Manager Dusty Baker said in the last few days that playing more night games should give the Cubs an edge over, uh, themselves I guess. They have 3 more night games coming up in 2006. This may make sense in Cub World, but I'm not really sure how this all squares in the real world. The Cubs were 11-15 during night games this year with 2 extra night games and finished 38-43 at home. The Cubs were 48-33 in 2001 and 2003 with 3 less night games than they had this year. I suggest catching, throwing and hitting the ball better would help more than time of day. Running the bases correctly would be an added bonus.

Fisk Turned Away from US

From the Free New Mexican:
Lannan speaker delayed in Canada

"U.S. immigration officials refused Tuesday to allow Robert Fisk, longtime Middle East correspondent for the London newspaper, The Independent, to board a plane from Toronto to Denver. Fisk was on his way to Santa Fe for a sold-out appearance in the Lannan FoundationÂ’s readings-and-conversations series Wednesday night.

According to Christie Mazuera Davis, a Lannan program officer, Fisk was told that his papers were not in order."


And he's highly critical of many US moves in the Middle East and generally operates out of the sphere of Western media hypnosis, so of course we don't want him to speak in Santa Fe.

Don't Do Me Any Favors

From Cubs.com "I look at ourselves as trying to win ballgames and finish over .500," Baker said. "I do owe it to baseball and I do owe it to the Phillies, the Florida Marlins, Washington Nationals. I owe it to them to put my best lineup out there.

"Everybody says, 'Play the kids, play the kids.' But I've got seven games against Houston," Baker said. "Against Houston, I've got to play my best team. We could have a direct impact on who goes. There's always something to play for."

What favor does Baker think he's doing for Baseball and the other teams in the playoff race by playing the players that got a $100 million payroll team to 4 games under .500 after 152 games? What favor is he doing the fans who want to see the kids we've got coming up play against major league players?

PLAY THE KIDS and cut the BS, Dusty.

TSA Writes Back

Got this email back from our government at work. I particularly enjoy the assertion that "staff suggestions...will not result in a reduction in aviation security." How could sitting next to a person with a 4" blade NOT be a reduction in aviation security? Perhaps it is less likely that they will be able to commandeer a plane and fly it into a building than it was 4 years ago, but I fail to see how empowering someone to slaughter passengers and crew in the back of the plane is not a reduction in aviation security."

From: "TSA-Contact Center"
Date: September 20, 2005 2:22:46 AM CDT
Subject: Re: Relaxing Screening Procedures

Thank you for your email offering your comments and concerns regarding this issue. TSA receives many suggestions and recommendations for improving all facets of aviation security and all suggestions, such as yours, are taken into consideration.

Staff suggestions to Assistant Secretary Kip Hawley for possibly changing air passenger screening procedures will not result in a reduction in aviation security. Rather, they are part of a larger effort implemented by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff to challenge measures now in place in order to ensure that security policies and procedures are based to threats, vulnerabilities and consequences.

The Department of Homeland Security and TSA are working closely together in this review in order to focus limited resources where the threat is greatest. After a thorough review of security and resource considerations, it will be decided whether to make policy and/or procedural changes. At this time, no decisions have been made.

TSA continues to raise the bar on security in several areas. They include deploying explosives trace portals in the nation's busiest airports, aggressively testing new screening technologies, and developing the Secure Flight prescreening system.

We are committed to excellence in both security and customer service and appreciate your taking the time to share your thoughts and suggestions with us.

TSA Contact Center

TSA Relaxing Screening Procedures?

Annie Jacobsen's latest entry in her "Terror in the Skies" series is even more hair raising than usual and includes an anecdote of a passenger being caught with a 4" drywall saw in his shoe, which was presumably confiscated, who was allowed to board his flight.

If you feel inspired, write the TSA here:
TellTSA@dhs.gov
tsa-contactcenter@dhs.gov

My letter to the TSA follows:

I have recently learned that TSA is considering relaxing the list of items that will be allowed onto airplanes. I fly regularly and screening can be a hassle on the traveler, however being dead is a much bigger problem than 15 minutes in line and a few questions.

While I understand that it may be more difficult for an attacker to gain entrance to the cockpit, I find it untenable that the lives of those passengers and crew outside the armored cockpit would now be put at risk in order to lessen the hassle of screening. My understanding is that all of the screening would still take place, just as it does now, but that a larger list of items would be allowed through the checkpoint and onto the plane. The screening will still happen. The lines will still happen. The searches will still happen.

The only person who will be inconvenienced a little less is the person that wants to board a plane with an ice pick, bow and arrow, or a throwing star. What percentage of the traveling public would that be exactly and why are we worried about making their travel experience more bearable?

If anything, I would urge added vigilance, not less. Do a better job screen for explosives AND remove potential weapons that can harm not only pilots but the crew and passengers in the back of the plane as well. Anything less and TSA is failing the public it was established to protect.

The Executioner's Last Songs

Was lucky and privileged enough to catch a performance of Jon Langford's multimedia show on Saturday night. Like his anti-death penalty benefit CD's, it is called "The Executioner's Last Songs." For this performance, the band consisted of longtime collaborator & Mekoness Sally Timms (vocals, ukelele) along with Tony Maimone (bass & bass banjo), Dan Massey (drums), Jean Cook (violin) and Barry Mills (video).

The real time video was a major component of the show, emphasized by the fact that Mills was up front stage left with keyboard trigger and powerbook mixing and matching on the fly, interspersing the scripted, chronological images with clips from Mills' 90's cable access show for which eye-patch sporting Pirate Langford read sea shanties while seated in a boat, floating in a bathroom sink, which were used to take Jonboy down a notch when he got a bit too full of himself. Worth the price of admission alone. Fortunately, there was much more.

The performance is an autobiographical survey of Langford's life from childhood, to the shock and release of art school for the kid from the country, to the liberating electricity of punk and the founding of the beloved Mekons, their courting & broken marriages to major labels Virgin and A&M, their influence by folk music, Langford's move to Chicago and his infatuation with American country music, especially Chicago's longtime kings of underground honky tonk, The Sundowners, Tony Fitzpatrick & the rebirth of his painting, and his work against the death penalty.

Songs from the Mekons' canon are interspersed with songs written for the show and covers and other snippets broken up with readings by Langford, Timms and Cook that range from the poignant to the absurd. While I didn't realize it at the time, the show was quite long; however, the only part that actually dragged for me was the intermission.

For Mekons fans, this is a must see. For fans of 70's punk, alt.country, social commentary, and performance art, there should be more than enough here to entertain. Unfortunately, you most likely won't be lucky enough to catch it in a bar, as the upcoming shows are at art museums. Shiner Bock can do nothing but help. Nonetheless, I'm sure they'll liven it up somehow and find some way to poke a hole in the over-reverent surroundings.

Upcoming performances:

In Chicago January 20+21, 2006 at the MCA

In Minneapolis Feb 10+11, 2006 at the Walker Art Center

Go.


high heat

Warnings on Top of Warnings

Today ABC News and Good Morning America aired a portion of a new video from California teenager turned Al Qaeda trained Islamist, Western mouthpiece of Sauron, and prized jumping monkey Adam Gadahn of Orange County, CA. Along with the video, chilling in its English presentation, ABC also released an "edited transcript" that appears to be that of the entire 11 minute video. I have no way of knowing what was edited out. The video makes explicit threats to LA and to Melbourne, Australia.

I have not yet dug for any analysis of this tape, and the ABC story is very dry and factual in its presentation; however, I can take a couple of not too giant leaps as to what intelligent and informed folks may say about it. Al Qaeda have now released the third video in two months, and the second in ten days' time, to both claim responsibility for recent attacks, and more urgently, I think, to warn the West that our time is up. It seems very important to their leadership that they not only score propaganda points with these videos, but that they also fill a religious obligation to warn the Infidel (that's us) to either convert, withdraw, or face the consequences of inaction on either of these fronts. It is a religious duty for Muslims to first warn the Infidel of their crimes and offer them a chance to repent and change their actions and apparently Al Qaeda took some grief from some quarters over the severity of the 9/11 attacks only because there was not sufficient warning before taking so many civilian lives. We have now received three (3) such explicit warnings in a very short amount of time.

What is most alarming to me is that this latest video by Gadahn appears to fulfill this obligation in such a way that it is undeniable that we could not now know Al Qaeda's intentions and the rationale behind their actions. And after an attack, even if our leadership is disingenuous enough to claim either ignorance or arrogant denial, the rest of the world now knows better. As that notorious hothead Mike Scheuer always says, never has America faced an enemy that was so direct in stating their desires, goals and intentions. Now to have them delivered on a platter in our own language, and by one of our own, there can be no doubt from either side that Al Qaeda has been heard and understood.

God help us, but when some WMD fires off in one or more American cities, no one will be able to say that "nobody imagined this" or that it came out of the blue. Though they will try, nor should anyone in power be able to pawn off the idea that " they hate our freedoms" here in the US. No, they hate our policies in the Middle East and South Asia, the governments we help prop up both directly and indirectly, and the perceived suffering of their fellow Muslims at the hands of the Israelis.

Say what you want about US and Western policies in each of these areas, debate them all until the harvest moon rises, but nobody should be able to say that we have no idea when or why these "Stone Age madmen" keep attacking us. They have told us why. They have told us it will be soon. And they have told us it will be big. By their accounts, they reckon they can take 3 million of ours for the estimated 3 million of theirs we have cost.

As we have seen from past attacks, "soon" is a relative term to the incredibly patient Al Qaeda leadership. Their long view appears almost geologic when compared to our short, sometimes almost nonexistent, Western time horizon. And if I were a thinking Jihadi with satellite internet access and a plan on the back burner, what better time to fire it off than when 30% of our National Guard are in Iraq now on extended deployment, 50% of the rest are down on the Gulf Coast along with a host of regular military, and we've increased our presence in Afghanistan to fight off the Taliban insurgency there in front of the September 18 parliamentary and provincial elections? Well, I can't think of many, really. And after three explicit warnings, I'm going to guess that they've warned enough and that we're due for something soon.

I'll go further out on a limb and predict that it won't be what we expect. I don't know what it will be, but something this long in the planning, and following a slew of warnings of increased pain for the next attack, well, it could get uglier around here than most folks have considered possible. And our ability to respond on a federal and state level is now severely compromised.

Our government had left us with what appeared to be the slimmest of margins to deal with any such emergency, and now Katrina seems to have destroyed even that wafer thin safety net, pulling it from under us like a birthday party magician removing the cheap, red table cloth from beneath an Italian dinner setting for two. I guess it is now debatable whether we ever even actually had a margin, but to mix the metaphor into a protein shake from Hell, THE EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES. We are hemorrhaging money. Our responders are stretched beyond breaking in some cases and/or are absent in others. We are half-fighting two wars overseas and thus losing both. By all accounts, outside that of the Whitehouse, the disbursed Al Qaeda is more dangerous now than prior to October 2001. Iraq fulfills Rumsfeld's worry that our actions are creating jihadis faster than we can kill them. One recipe for further and even greater disaster. Nothing up my sleeve....PRESTO!

Keith Olbermann hit the nail on the head last week with his Bloggerman entry about the mess in New Orleans. In that entry, he attributes a quotation to Winston Churchill that I can find nowhere else. I'll trust Olbermann on this one, but even if inaccurate, it gets to the heart of the matter with the current administration and I think speaks much more to the wider Bush Whitehouse paradigm for dealing with the world than just their inability to deal with Katrina and the Gulf Coast. If, as Churchill says, the prima facia responsibility of government is the public safety, the failure of Bush and Co. to provide for it is both laughable (considering that was the whole of their 2004 campaign platform) but also criminal. The current administration's failure is so far advanced that whether it is by idiotic negligence or willful malfeasance matters not. Whatever the cause, the end result is the same. I think and fear that many more chickens of failure are right now returning home to roost.

Soldier Speaks the Truth Politicians Deny

From Reuters:

One National Guard soldier who asked not to be named for fear of punishment from his commanding officer said of the lack of medical attention at the center, "They (the Bush administration) care more about Iraq and Afghanistan than here."

The Louisiana National Guard soldier said, "We are doing the best we can with the resources we have, but almost all of our guys are in Iraq."

Here's the link to the New Orleans Times Picayune story from 2002 detailing the fact that somebody could indeed "imagine this" exact problem that is happening right now in New Orleans.

Our National Shame

On Sunday I watched President Bush lean into the camera on one elbow, smile, and tell America not to worry about Hurricane Katrina because "We are ready." As the dangerous storm bared down on the Gulf Coast, I actually felt reassured that the federal government was mobilized and prepared to take care of what all the experts said would be a catastrophic situation.

Four days later, I have never been as embarrassed to be an American.

Four days after President Bush made his statement of preparedness, people are still dying all over the south coast of our country with no help or hope in sight. People on the ground have no information about attempts to help them, where to go, or what to do. In New Orleans, dead bodies pile up next to refuse and sewage at the Superdome and convention center. People desperate for food and water are told by the mayor to leave the places where they were originally directed because there is no food, water, or help where they were originally sent. Four days later, despondent doctors at New Orleans hospitals are calling news organizations begging for help of any kind and working without supplies, food, water, electricity or security. Patients die awaiting evacuation while medical personnel hand pump air into their lungs. Police officers must siphon gas from cars to power their vehicles. The only person "in charge" at the New Orleans convention center is Harry Connick, Jr., bless his heart, with no police, FEMA or National Guard assistance. The first small air drops of food and water to the center come on the afternoon of the fourth day.

The mayor of New Orleans feels so powerless and desperate that he publicly calls out for help in a "desperate SOS" and requests troops that should already be in place. Half of those National Guard troops he needs are fighting in a foreign country where they're not wanted and where 3 years later residents don't even have enough electricity to make ice cubes. The US House of Representatives waits until Friday to convene a special session to authorize extra funding to help the situation. Speaker of the House Hastert, (R.-Ill) not only conceives, but actually voices, the idea that rebuilding New Orleans "doesn't make sense to me." Rats eat bodies still lying on the ground in Biloxi. Rescue coordination is so tenuous that Houston must turn away refugees as the buses stack up because no one bothered to count how many people the Astrodome could hold and direct buses appropriately. Four days later, only 1 Navy vessel with 6 helicopters sits off the coast. Water continues to flow into New Orleans through breached levies while the Army Corps of Engineers tries to work out a solution to a problem of which everyone has been aware for years.

Billions of our tax dollars have been spent setting up the Department of Homeland Security. Tens of billions more have been spent on the war in Iraq. Fellow citizens in our own country wonder if they will have water or a meal today, waiting for any sign of help from a federal government unprepared to assist, led by a President out of touch with the real world.

NGC Inside 9/11

Looking forward to this 4 hour, 2 part documentary with some anticipation and some anxiety.

Anticipation because I'm always eager to hear tidbits about the Global Jihad that I've not heard, perspectives I've not considered, or ways of thinking about the whole thing that I've not yet gotten my head around.

Anxiety because, well, it's a damned unpleasant thing to dredge up and I'm sure that some of the anger and hopelessness of it all will most likely resurface.

Curious to see if Scheuer (or anybody else for that matter) adds anything new.

Scheuer's new posting at lewrockwell.com makes some good points. I wish he'd tone down the shoe pounding just a leetle bit as it sometimes gets hard to see his usually valid points through the angry rhetoric. Not that there's nothing to be angry about. There's plenty, and I think his new article hits on a good chunk of that, but experience shows that it's hard to find a point when somebody's screaming buzzwords at you.

Take a deep breathe, Mike, and head back toward the more pedantic style of Imperial Hubris while keeping some of the more fiery style.

More after digesting the NGC special.

Robert Fisk's latest pieces on Iraq, FROM IRAQ, seem to be showing a side of Iraq that we're not seeing to much of from the Green Zone entrenched big media. Kudos to him for his bravery, fortitude and forthrightness. Thanks, Robert.

Cubs lose today 8-2, their eighth in a row and follows losses of 3-8, 4-9, 1-6, 0-2, and 5-9.

Pitching not good.

The White Sox have scored about the same amount of runs over the last 2 weeks but are winning games while the Cubs are losing. I've already pounded on the defense, so let's look at pitching.

Cubs have fallen to 10th in NL in ERA, wins, earned runs allowed, 15th in home runs allowed, 15th in walks allowed,

On the plus side, they are leading the league in strike outs. So they've got that going for them. Which is nice.

So, how to sum up? While the Sox still show no regular started hitting over .300, they've won 74 games and just took 2 of three from the $200mil Yanks in Yanktown. The Cubs have twice the Sox payroll, and just got swept by the Mets and Reds. Why? Pitching and defense. As Kenny Williams and the Sox marketing department call 'em...Grinders.

Meanwhile, the Cubs have Wood, Zambrano, Garciaparra, and now Aramis Ramirez playing hurt. Do your 3 million paying fans a favor and REST THEM. Please. Shut Wood down. Put Ramirez on the DL. Play Nomar every other day and if Carlos really isn't healthy with his back and toe, then rest him too.

September call ups can't come soon enough. Hopefully Hendry will give Dusty orders to play the kids for the month so we can see what we've got.

On the horizon, 7 games against St. Louis and Houston, with the entire SL staff coming in with an extra day's rest. My best guess is they might win 1 of 4 from the Cardinals.

Great article today on the Global Internet Jihad/Insurgency courtesy of the Washington Post and MSNBC. Nothing I haven't read before. Again Scheuer was on the money here.

The only thing I can really question is Scheuer's continued insistence that the AQ higher ups are somehow directing the troops. I'm not saying that they aren't pleased as camel flies about what the kids are doing in their name, and that they don't deserve tons of credit for creating the climate for these actions and making the tools available for the willing to carry them out, but I just can't see them directing these numbskulls in Britain. Sharm al-Sheikh maybe, but not Britain.

Another game this week and another loss. Our third game with the cavalry, our third loss.

Pitching and hitting aside, where they put themselves anyway, by the fourth inning poor Cubs defense had already killed us. Two errors were charged, but here's the real tally:

Ramirez-error leading to run
Macias-slow to ball and poor throw leading to run
Hollandsworth-slow to ground ball leading to run, bobble on ball leading to extra base and run
Lawton-off line throw home on shallow fly ball that also misses cut-off man
Barrett (passed ball allowing runner to advance that later scores

Say what you want about anything else, but teams that play like this don't win games, much less series, divisions or wild cards. Who's fault? I'm not sure, but I'd eliminate as many of these folks as possible next season. Assuming that Ramirez is the keeper group, bye bye to the other four in favor of folks who can catch the ball, throw to the the right base, hit the cut-off man, and take the ball to the opposite field when necessary.

Disgusting.

Dusty received a letter from somebody purporting to be a Cubs fan wishing his cancer was back so he'd die and the Cubs would get a new manager. I'm not sure how much of the current plight is Dusty's fault, but the only folks I can conceive of wishing had cancer are right now praying to Allah for an a-bomb to go off in one of our cities. Wishing that on somebody involved with sports, yes even here in Chicago, is so out of hand that I can't even conceive. Get a life, d00d. It's only sports. Dissect it. Bum out about it. Cheer and yell. Then get over it. It's entertainment. We've got kids being killed and maimed in Iraq and Afghanistan. That's worth taking seriously. It is life and death. Professional baseball isn't.

Great coverage to 1B by Wuertz on a double play groundball. Props where props are due.

Carlos leaves after the fourth inning. The hurt toe has turned into a hurting back as well. Perhaps it hurts from carrying the weight of his anemic offense and defense on his shoulders.

Began today with another predictable dose of Cubs waiting to catch the inevitable wave of a prolonged winning streak. To wit, this from Jim Hendry:

''Two years ago today, we were two games over, right around the same time in '03, and got on a heck of a run,'' he said. ''It's time. We have a lot of work to do. We got quality teams ahead of us that have played better baseball up to now.''

I am reminded of reading almost daily for all of 2003 news from somebody in the White Sox organization, especially Jerry Manual, about the winning streak that was always just around the corner. My question to them then, and to the Cubs now, is aside from the blind optimism of the hypercompetitive professional athlete, WHY should anyone think that this mythical win streak is really coming? No evidence exists anywhere I can see for this. Too many impatient hitters swinging at pitchers pitches out of the strike zone and either striking out, popping up, or hitting weakly to an infielder, baserunning mistakes and pitches left over the middle of the plate with two strikes.

Hey look! A pitcher (Maddux of course) covering first base in the sixth inning!

After dropping their national TV game today against the Mets, there are now 6 teams in front of the Cubs for the wild card. The feeling here is that they need to head back to spring training with a retooled lineup and work on the fundamentals that the White Sox have mastered, under a manager that actually emphasizes then, and try again some other time. When it's August and you're trailing the Brewers, something is seriously, seriously wrong with your $100 million baseball team.

Looks like pitchers have decided that pitching D Lee down and in and then higher than high (the Patterson) is the way to get him out. And from the looks of it over the last 18 days, they may be right, at least until Lee makes some adjustments.

Cubs fall to 1-3 on the road trip since declaring that:
*Each game is a must win game.
*Dusty does all the yelling he needs to behind doors to get guys' attention.
*We're practically making three trades with all of the guys we'll get off the DL this week.

The cavalry's here and we used 6 pitchers in a must win game to lose by 4 runs and fall behind the freakin' Milwaukee Seligs by a 1/2 game with 5 teams in front of us.

Uh huh.

"How many of our guys can we sneak through wavers to trade in August?" is the question we need to be posing, not the more commonly asked opposite. Cut the payroll, play the kids and find a nice, face-saving landing pad for Hendry's guy Dusty.

All that and Nomar's average dropped to .145 on his 0-fer. Welcome back, Superstar.



Today's music goodie is the last ever album by Epic Soundtracks "Good Things". Gorgeous. We miss him.

The two attacks on London and the horrific, apparently Bedouin abetted, attacks at Sharm al-Sheikh seem to me to provide further proof of Michael Scheuer's analysis of the "global war on terror" actually existing as a war on the West by a global Islamic Jihad insurgency, a completely different paradigm than the leadership seems to be on or seems able to admit.

After Zawahiri's latest love letter to Blair and Bush, it has really crystallized for me the fact that Bin Laden's second greatest wish, following our foolhardy invasion of Iraq, has finally come true. The seeds that Al-Qaeda has been planting for 10+ years in the Sudan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan seem to have taken fervent root and are approaching full bloom. Much discussion in the West seems to be centered on whether the good Egyptian doctor actually was taking credit for any of the July bombings. I think that this discussion, outside of a bar room argument with as much meaning as who should be the fourth pitcher out of the Cubs bullpen, is really beside the point.

Even if Al-Qaeda's leadership didn't order some or all of these attacks, they were clearly abbetted by the decade of training for asymmetric warfare and modern information dissemination capabilities supplied by Al-Qaeda. By training up to 100,000 bodies by some estimates at their camps and then dispersing their trainees all over the globe, from upstate NY and Oregon to Indonesia, Thailand, Australia, the Caucasus and Western Europe, and then providing all like-minded jihadis with enough information to make the Anarchist's Cookbook look more like The Joy of Cooking, I don't think the leadership needs to order anything but the highest profile attacks necessary to steer the overall global situation to their advantage. And in between these more spectacular attacks, the jihadi sprouts have more than enough motivation, support, information and rich targets to keep the authorities busy, acting as force multipliers for the parent organization, and fulfilling Usama's whimsical prophesy about sending a few guys to the furthest point the globe to wave a flag and send the Western leadership into an expensive conniption.

So it seems doubtful to me that Ayman and Usama somehow passed on the go-ahead for the relatively primitive attacks by the London bombers, but with the unquestioned the ability for the leadership to focus the worldwide Muslim anger onto the governments of Western Europe and the USA and then provide those angered with all the information they could ever need to make effective anti-personnel weapons on the cheap from a sporting goods store and hardware store, they've already done most of the heavy lifting. With the additional anger over the continued images in Iraq, the big two mostly need to sit back, make sure the AC's working in their high tech cave, and then fire up the video camera when the latest event falls their way, only further stirring the pot.

It seems pretty safe to say that one of the only places on Earth that didn't have a problem with jihadis was Iraq. Now we've got a self-fulfilling prophecy where we actually can take the fight to the terrorists in Iraq because Iraq is now "the Woodstock" of this generation of Muslim youth, as they said on Over There this week. We've turned a primarily secular society almost completely devoid of Islamic terrorism (outside of the US controlled no-fly zones where Ansar al-Islam had taken root), into one huge training camp (so attractive that message boards are telling young Muslims to stay away for the moment unless they have specialized skills because they're more a burden than a help) AND propaganda tool suitable for worldwide recruiting and inspiration.

How we fix this and refocus, I'm still not sure and I've not seen a ton of ideas. I see tons of suggestions about what not to do, some obvious, some potentially helpful, and all apparently ignored by the Vicious Bastards in DC, but I have yet to see anybody throw out a sort of all-encompassing plan that would at least get us started on the right road. It could be that as long as we're in Iraq, and making kissy face with the Saudi monarchy AND Sharon at the same time, not much of a plan is really possible.

But boy the blue bonnets sure are pretty in Central Texas in the spring, aren't they?

The Cubs head into tonight 54-54, with 54 games to play and without their center fielder, Jerry Hairston, who will miss the next months with a torn ligament in his non-throwing elbow. Expect to see a lot of Jeremy Burnitz in CF, with Corey Patterson mired below .220 in the minors.

For the weekend's series, we have Rich Hill vs. Tom Glavine (2.72 ERA in last 4 stars), which smells like a loss to me, then Maddux vs. Ishii where I see Maddux winning one after his last outing, wrapped up by Zambrano vs. Zambrano which I'll also chalk up to the Mets w/Carlos' raw big toe. Cubs come back to Wrigley 55-56 to face Cinci and St. Louis.

Curious to see how quickly the pitchers get over to cover first base tonight after the last few days of mishaps in that regard.

The Dusty to Someplace Else rumors have officially started on radio and in print. I like Dusty for the most part, but I'm really sick of seeing his team do things that "Dusty teams just don't do" like play poor D and mental mistakes in the "heat" of a wild card race. I can't tell you who would be better, but I can't tell you Dusty's team next year will be any better either.

Next week, politics.

Cedric Benson, get they West Texas Ass into training camp, pronto! Pronto!

The 2005 Cubs have turned into the 2004 Mets. $100,000,000.00 in payroll and no better 2/3 of the way through the season than when they started. The high water mark for this year's Cubs came on June 11, at 33-27, six games over when Todd Wellemeyer got the W against the world champs at Wrigley. On either side of that mark, the Cubs have shown a unique ability to combine short streaks of hot bats and ace pitching with:

Blunders on the bases-Dusty promised would be fixed in spring training. One would have though that the exit of Alou couldn't help but elevate the Cubs baserunning, but some of the most astonishingly poor baserunning I've ever seen has come this year thanks to Burnitz, Patterson, Lee and Ramirez.

shaky defense-Last year the Cubs ranked fifth in defensive efficiency, this year third. However, when the cozy confines of Wrigley are taken into account, they drop down to the bottom third of the league. Likewise, their fielding percentage ranks 13th of 16 teams, in spite of the dollars spent. Dusty has said more than once that "his teams don't play defense like this." Evidently they do. And they are.

From the Wayback Machine of Spring Training, Derrek Lee had this to say: "Last year, we didn't execute on the bases or defensively at all, really," first baseman Derrek Lee says. "This year, the coaching staff has put more emphasis on it. The players have, too. I just think it was a lack of concentration, maybe," Lee says. "Defense and baserunning basically come down to concentration."

Sadly, this hasn't changed.

Poor decision making and mental mistakes-Witness Barrett's play to lose last night's game when he neglected to run at the player stuck in the run down, which is taught at the earliest levels of Little League. Physical mistakes do happen. Mental mistakes that come from either a lack of concentration and focus by the player or a lack of emphasis by the lose ballgames and pennants.

The vaunted pitching staff "nobody wants to face in a short series"-Our team ERA is 8th in the league. If that's the marker, then I'm sure nobody wants to face the Milwaukee Brewers or Detroit Tigers in a short series either, because they both sport better team pitching than the Cubs at the 2/3 mark. Wood's hurt and wild (but struck out a ton of guys one day a few years,back). Prior's horribly inconsistent when healthy (but has huge calves). Maddux has one or two good game for every day he throws softballs instead of cutters. Jerome Williams and Rich Hill are young and show promise, but they're not taking anybody anywhere this year.

Tomorrow we get back Kerry Wood in the bullpen (how he's supposed to pitch 3 or 4 times a week out of the bullpen when his arm or shoulder couldn't handle once every 5 days is a mystery to me), Scott Williamson in the bullpen (same issues except he's coming back from Tommy John surgery 6 months early!) and Nomar Garciaparra (coming back from a torn groin muscle and who says he still can't go 100% out of the box). These three guys are being heralded as the cavalry, when in effect they're three gimpy guys who used to be good players. The odds of any of them making it to the last week of September are slim, and the odds of all of them making it are off the books. Wood will be shut down by mid-September to get him ready for next year. Williamson will be pitching every 4-5 days out of the pen if at all and Garciaparra at best will be seeing action 3 out of 5 days.

Welcome the cavalry!

I've been saying since late April that this is a .500 team. I was hoping to be proven wrong, but sadly that doesn't appear to be the case. I now find myself rooting not to fall below it.

On the happy side, I've rediscovered 1980's "Harder...Faster" by Canadians April Wine. What a great rock record! It's not going to scare anybody off with its ferocity, but it has a wonderful blend of arena rock and catchy as hell pop, perfectly captured in the stadium shaking anthem "I Like to Rock" that leads off the album and is quickly followed by the perfect pop tune "Say Hello" with it's bubbling synthy rhythms and Gibson echo. I loved this album in high school and damn if I don't love it now.