So what was the point?

In the seemingly interminable back and forth between Left and Right over enhanced interrogation techniques, the self-righteous fulmination of liberals over waterboarding was nearly matched by the efforts of more than a few conservative partisans to infinitesimalize the physical and psychological distress caused by the practice. The textbook example of this minimization is that of Sean Hannity offering to be waterboarded for charity. To be charitable, Hannity's point - well taken, if not well said - was twofold: 1) while waterboarding is in and of itself admittedly (WARNING: understatement alert!!!) unpleasant, it is this unpleasantness that makes it effective and 2) as it is conducted as a routine part of training for the military's Special Operations units, it is hard to argue that waterboarding conducted by our government is categorically torture.

But to the point of Hannity's detractors, nor is waterboarding some sort of exotic carnival event akin to a dunk tank. Yet it was a carnival atmosphere that prevailed for a while in the radio studios of Mancow and Cassidy last Friday. Having lost a listener vote, it was co-host Erich "Mancow" Muller who was chosen to be waterboarded on the air. As the video above shows, Mr. Muller found his experience with waterboarding to be - not to be redundant - a tad unpleasant. And as his comments after the fact indicate (according to The Raw Story), Muller came to a different opinion after his time on the waterboard than he had before.

"I wanted to prove it wasn't torture," Mancow said. "They cut off our heads, we put water on their face... I got voted to do this but I really thought 'I'm going to laugh this off.' "

The upshot? "It is way worse than I thought it would be, and that's no joke," Mancow told listeners. "It is such an odd feeling to have water poured down your nose with your head back... It was instantaneous... and I don't want to say this: absolutely torture."

Not to minimize things myself, but after all of five seconds, Muller learned firsthand what Khalid Sheikh Mohammed or Abu Zubaydah could have told him; waterboarding is both unpleasant and effective.

But is it torture?

The Left's presumption that it is adds a sense of urgency to Nancy Pelosi's credulity-straining attempts to slime the CIA. (How interesting is it that the MSM was so exercised about a perceived Republican attack on a lone CIA operative, but is relatively nonplussed by a Democrat's smearing of the entire agency.) As a means to malign Bush, Cheney, et. al, waterboarding fits right into the elastic definition of torture espoused by progressives. But as a legal matter, torture has a statutory definition (see Section 2340 and 2340A of the Federal Penal Code), and it is not at all clear that waterboarding would meet the clear that definitional hurdle.

"[T]orture" means an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control. (Emphasis added.)

It was certainly unclear to Barack Obama's Attorney General. In recent testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, Eric Holder was questioned by two Republican House members about his thoughts on what exactly is required under statute for an activity constitute torture. According to Human Events, Rep. Dan Lungren (R-CA), a former California Attorney General asked Holder about the Justice Department's definition of torture.

In one of the rare times he gave a straight answer, Holder stated at the hearing that in his view water-boarding is torture. Lundgren asked if it was the Justice Department's position that Navy SEALS subjected to waterboarding as part of their training were being tortured.

Holder: No, it's not torture in the legal sense because you’re not doing it with the intention of harming these people physically or mentally, all we’re trying to do is train them.

Lungren: So it's the question of intent?

Holder: Intent is a huge part.

Lungren: So if the intent was to solicit information but not do permanent harm, how is that torture?

Holder: Well, it… uh… it… one has to look at... ah… it comes out to question of fact as one is determining the intention of the person who is administering the waterboarding. When the Communist Chinese did it, when the Japanese did it, when they did it in the Spanish Inquisition we knew then that was not a training exercise they were engaging in. They were doing it in a way that was violative of all of the statutes recognizing what torture is. What we are doing to our own troops to equip them to deal with any illegal act - that is not torture.

But as National Review Online's Andrew McCarthy points out, the statutory issue is not whether waterboarding is done as part of training, but whether there is specific intent to inflict severe physical or mental pain.

What removes an act from the ambit of torture (besides lack of severe pain) is intent. Lungren pressed this point, and Holder admitted that the training was "not torture in the legal sense because we're not doing it with the intention of harming these people physically or mentally." Intent, he acknowledged, was the key question.

Then, Lungren pounced. The CIA interrogators who questioned top al-Qaeda captives like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah intended no more harm to them than Navy instructors intended to their SEAL trainees. In fact, we know that the CIA went to great lengths, under Justice Department guidance, precisely to avoid severe harm. Their purpose, Rep. Lungren observed, was to "solicit information," not to inflict torture.

Rep. Lungren was followed by Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX), a former judge who followed Lungren's line of questioning on intent.

Gohmert: Whether waterboarding is torture you say is an issue of intent. If our officers when waterboarding have no intent and in fact knew absolutely they would do no permanent harm to the person being waterboarded, and the only intent was to get information to save people in this country then they would not have tortured under your definition, isn't that correct?

Holder: No, not at all. Intent is a fact question, it's a fact specific question.

Gohmert: So what kind of intent were you talking about?

Holder: Well, what is the intention of the person doing the act? Was it logical that the result of doing the act would have been to physically or mentally harm the person?

Gohmert: I said that in my question. The intent was not to physically harm them because they knew there would be no permanent harm - there would be discomfort but there would be no permanent harm - knew that for sure. So, is the intent, are you saying it's in the mind of the one being water-boarded, whether they felt they had been tortured. Or is the intent in the mind of the actor who knows beyond any question that he is doing no permanent harm, that he is only making them think he's doing harm.

Holder: The intent is in the person who would be charged with the offense, the actor, as determined by a trier of fact looking at all of the circumstances. That is ultimately how one decides whether or not that person has the requisite intent.

McCarthy comes to the rescue again by clarifying that Holder was conflating a "general intent" offense - which could be adjudicated with the help of a neutral "trier of fact" (i.e.: a jury) - with torture, which again requires specific intent.

To state the matter plainly, the CIA interrogators did not inflict severe pain and had no intention of doing so. The law of the United States holds that, even where an actor does inflict severe pain, there is still no torture unless it was his objective to do so. It doesn't matter what the average person might think the "logical" result of the action would be; it matters what specifically was in the mind of the alleged torturer - if his motive was not to torture, it is not torture.

Of course if the head of the Department of Justice could be confused by finer points of the torture statutes, Mr. Muller could be forgiven for his verbal promiscuity in defining his adventure with waterboarding as "absolutely torture." What he and his co-host can't be excused for is turning a controversial interrogation method into an on-air stunt. Rather than garnering attention and interest from unlikely quarters, this feeble attempt at shock-jock shtick should be considered as far beyond the pale as holding one's wee for a Wii.

On the general theme of intent, was it Muller's intent to establish that waterboarding is - again - unpleasant? If so, then point made. If on the other hand, as his previous statements would indicate, Muller was trying to establish that waterboarding is not torture because it is as relatively benign as tickling a terrorist with a feather, then his effort was patently misguided. And if he now wishes to conclude based upon his experience that waterboarding is torture as a matter of law (and therefore illegal), he would be well served to leave those interpretations to others better versed in the appropriate statutes.

I would not suggest that he seek advice from Eric Holder.

Frienemies

Barack Obama's sales pitch during the 2008 campaign included the notion that he would - almost single-handedly, by virtue of his unique background and life experiences - restore America's standing in the world, and strengthen alliances with our partners. After his star turn at last week's G20 Summit, President Obama paid a call on NATO in the hopes of gaining Europe's assent to increase their troop contribution to the military effort in Afghanistan.

But when Obama made his plaintiff plea for more military support, to describe the NATO response as muted would be a rebuff to the mute.

The current plan is that NATO will send a grand total of 5,000 military personnel to help with the effort in Afghanistan. To make matters worse, 3,000 of those to be deployed are only committed for a temporary deployment to secure Afghan national elections in August. Another contingent will be utilized to beef up Afghanistan's military so that it can more effectively police the country.

A bit of perspective is in order. Given the naked contempt in which George W. Bush was held in the capitols of Europe and the adoration that all of Europa lavished on Candidate Obama, one would assume that European heads of state would have gone through all manner of contortions to meet this request from the Great Himself. As much would seem especially true given that Afghanistan was the war that the U.S. and its allies considered - after the September 11, 2001 attacks as well as the 3/11 Madrid train bombings - to be the "just war."

Unfortunately, out of 28 NATO member countries, only nine - to include Germany, Britain, Poland, Spain and Italy - even bothered to pony up anything at all. This may be a reflection of the fact that (as noted by the Financial Times) "clear majorities of people in the UK, France, Italy and Germany believe that their governments must not send more forces to Afghanistan."

Some 60 percent of German respondents to the survey said they would not wish Berlin to send more troops to Afghanistan under any circumstances. Even in the UK, the second largest contributor to NATO's mission in Afghanistan, some 57 percent of respondents rejected calls for any more British troops to be sent.

In both France and Italy, some 53 percent of people said their countries should not send troops. Only in Spain is there a majority willing to consider sending additional troop numbers.

Europe's recalcitrance does not entirely surprise. According to Gallup polling, 42 percent of Americans (and 53 percent of Democrats) now view the Afghan war as "a mistake."

As the globe turns east, the problems hardly cease. With North Korea's most recent ballistic missile launch attempt having fizzled, the Obama administration made the case that longer term international security interests are served by reducing nuclear weapons stockpiles, as well as enforcing sanctions against the North Korean regime. While he has made some progress with the former in discussions with his Russian counterpart, Dmitri Medvedev, he has had considerable resistance from Russia in the way of their refusal to denounce the missile launch as a violation of the 2006 sanctions imposed on North Korea.

So even as Obama has essentially bowed to Russia's wish that a missile defense system not be deployed in Poland and the Czech Republic, it has been a struggle to get any sort of Russian reciprocity in an attempt to disrupt North Korea's nuclear program (or for that matter, Iran's.)

It becomes evident that there are many people here and abroad who are at best indifferent to the notion of a muscular American foreign policy. In contrast to the Bush years, the natural impulse of Obama and the Democrats is to apologize and then act. As discussed elsewhere, the lack of meaningful activity on the part of our "allies" vis-a-vis terrorism can be explained by the fact that - as Mark Stein so correctly described it in a December 2003 Wall Street Journal op-ed - the Left resents the idea of a struggle against the existential threat of terror, in as much as it distracts from their "ushering in the era of lots and lots of itsy bits of small government."

They loved the '90s because you never heard a thing about macho stuff like war: it was all micro-politics, new regulations for this, new entitlements for that - education, environment, "social justice." For hard-core Democrats, the whole war thing is an unwelcome intrusion on what large numbers of people had assumed to be a permanent post-Martian politics.

As long as our erstwhile European stalwarts are more concerned about global climate change, assimilating Arab immigrants, redistributing (as opposed to creating) wealth and social equality, wars and rumors of wars will always be an unwelcome interruption. To the progressive, terrorist acts are a symptom of the diseases of American imperialism and militarism, with Western pacifism being the only cure.

So much for good friends!

How not to keep secrets (or win wars)

According to the L.A. Times, in a disclosure "likely to embarrass the Pakistani government and complicate its counterterrorism collaboration with the United States," the Senate Intelligence Committee chairwoman let a big cat out of a small bag last week.

A senior U.S. lawmaker said Thursday that unmanned CIA Predator aircraft operating in Pakistan are flown from an air base in that country... The disclosure by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)... marked the first time a U.S. official had publicly commented on where the Predator aircraft patrolling Pakistan take off and land.

At a hearing, Feinstein expressed surprise at Pakistani opposition to Predator-launched CIA missile strikes against Al Qaeda targets along Pakistan's northwest border.

"As I understand it, these are flown out of Pakistani base," she said.

The basing of the pilotless aircraft in Pakistan suggests a much deeper relationship with the United States on counter-terrorism matters than has been publicly acknowledged. Such an arrangement would be at odds with protests lodged by officials in Islamabad... and could inflame anti-American sentiment in the country. (Emphasis added.)

Tribune reporting goes on to inform us that a spokesman for Feinstein said "her comment was based solely on previous news reports that Predators were operated from bases near Islamabad."

For many, the default explanation might be to suggest that this represents much ado about nothing, with Feinstein simply being open about a poorly kept secret involving a nominal ally in the GWOT. And as much could be said with a straight face; according to the "previous news reports," the "uneven performance" of the Pakistani military requires U.S. forces to pursue Al Qaeda across the Afghan border without the approval of Pakistani officials "who at best lack commitment and resolve and at worst lack sympathy for U.S. interests."

One could also argue that it's tough to expect 535 people to keep any secret, and that lawmakers of both parties make these kinds of slips all the time. Representative Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) also got into his own barrel of hot water last week when it was revealed that he used his Twitter page to update those who may have been concerned of his whereabouts in Mesopotamia. By all media accounts, Hoekstra provided blow-by-blow details of where he was while in Iraq, as well as his observations on the relative level of safety in and around the Green Zone.

But while the Feinstein and Hoekstra cases appear relatively similar and equally benign, the longer-term impacts of each could not be more disparate. At worst, Hoekstra endangered his own safety while traveling in a theater of conflict. For her part, DiFi has unnecessarily complicated ongoing operations against Al Qaeda both in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and she has contributed to the perception that, as the Weekly Standard described it, the United States is "the big, bad bully that violates Pakistan's sovereignty without a care for the people."

Feinstein has also added to the perception that the Pakistani government is either duplicitous or incompetent, neither of which will improve its standing with the population. And she did so at a time when the country's President Asif Zardari described himself as being in a fight "for the survival of Pakistan."

The big question, as put by Ejaz Haider of the Pakistan Daily Times is "why would [Feinstein] say what she said?" Haider proposes that either "President Barack Obama wants to settle this issue by getting Pakistan to take the pain of this disclosure, grapple with its fallout, and shut up," or "not exclusive of the first [explanation]... the Obama administration thinks it better to get other actors to do what they must, and as the necessary price for the move away from [George W.] Bush's unilateralism to Obama's multilateralism."

In any event, Haider concludes that while "the policy of denial was unsustainable in the longer run," to force a disclosure now "is pure idiocy."

Feinstein's statement has not only effectively buried the policy of denial, it has also left Islamabad to bear this cross. Given the credibility problem for this government, it is going to be a heavy one. Also, if this disclosure has been deliberate, someone in Washington didn't think hard enough about its consequences.

In their quest for the cover of ideological purity, consequences are something that the Obama administration and the Democratic Party have paid minimal attention to. How else is one to explain Obama moving to close Guantanamo Bay before considering how un-Mirandized detainees would be tried in U.S. courts? And why else would a senator who was a chief beneficiary of the largess of banking executives turn around and add a provision to the stimulus bill that limits the bonuses of said executives?

These actions and nearly every other act taken by this government serve as proof positive that the Left is not to be trusted with the reins of power. Unfortunately, it appears that by the time a majority of the American people recognize the mistake they made last November, we will already have been unwittingly transported into a future that we will scarcely be able to deal with, let alone reverse.

Israel's Worst Enemy

This is certainly food for thought. Would that this were required viewing for the Sarah Silvermans, Al Frankens and John Stewarts of the world.

What liberals have learned from terrorists (and vice versa)

"I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice."

This line from Barry Goldwater's speech to the 1964 Republican Convention has since lent itself to frequent (mis)quotation, as the idea that motivated Goldwater's comment can easily be bastardized - even as the remark itself has often been taken out of context. Over time, people of every political stripe have justified extreme behaviors by way of an overarching pursuit of a greater good.

For whatever reason, when we thought of domestic extremism, we were given to imagine pro-life activists protesting (or worse) outside of abortion clinics, the Oklahoma City bombing or the religiously demented hoisting "God Hates Fags" signs at military funerals.

At least until last week.

Our vision of home-grown extremism must now include that directed against targets of liberal umbrage. In the wake of the bombing of the Armed Forces Recruiting Station in New York's Times Square, along with the recent firebombing of five luxury model homes north of Seattle, we have had to rethink what militant zealotry looks like.

The New York Times reports that the Times Square attack may be similar to two other bombings, one on the British Consulate in 2005 and the other at the Mexican Consulate in 2007. Whatever conclusion investigators are able to draw on that score, I would submit that the underlying intent of this attack - if not the means - was of a piece with attacks perpetrated by the Leftist-affiliated Earth Liberation Front (ELF)/Animal Liberation Front (ALF), Earth First!, Primate Freedom Project, Justice Department and the Revolutionary Cells Animal Liberation Brigade: namely, to utilize violence to advance a radical liberal agenda.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), ELF/ALF have been responsible for more than 600 criminal acts since 1996, with their activities reaching at least as far back as 1984. (To be sure, the lineage of these groups extends to the 17 year reign of terror visited by Left-wing Luddite Theodore Kaczynski and further yet to the Black Liberation Army and the SDS/Weathermen.) The SPLC also indicates that - contrary to their previous eschewal of violence against humans - radical eco-terror groups have begun targeting people that they deem guilty of sufficiently atrocious offenses.

By way of the Left's unchallenged control over the institutions of opinion, liberals have been able to cow those with dissenting viewpoints into embarrassed silence. And those who would still deviate from the progressive memes are made subject to either ridicule, anathema or increasingly, terroristic violence. The Left's monopoly of viewpoint has facilitated a near monopoly of legitimized (read: exculpated) violence, such violence mitigated in the eyes of liberals by the perpetrators' stated goal of equality. (That liberals are forgiving of their own is evidenced by the fact that both Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers live free from opprobrium for their acts as members of the Weather Underground; to the eternal embarrassment of all Chicagoans, both Dohrn and Ayers are professors at Northwestern and the University of Illinois at Chicago respectively.)

Given that liberals have long embraced a "radical chic" persona that legitimized the barbarity of murderous despots (as long as they were anti-American), it does not surprise that they have felt free to embrace acts of violence as a means to their ends. Much like our Islamist enemies, the Left has come to denigrate individual freedom as too dangerous to be entrusted to individuals, progressives holding equality more to be prized than freedom. In their pursuit of a faux equality - be it of races, genders, sexual orientations, economic classes or species - liberals forswear disparity of outcome resulting from the diversity engendered by liberty (liberty of course being distinct from equality, with both often at cross-purposes, each existing at the peril of the other.)

And while liberals and Islamists employ variant definitions of "freedom" (with Islam defining freedom as the opportunity to be subject to the will of Allah), the logical ends of liberalism and Islamism are remarkably similar, with both devolving into a state of unabated tyranny. Both Islamism and liberalism are radicalized by the idea of unfettered self-determination. The former confronts freedom with an all-encompassing religious orthodoxy, while the latter simply creates a bureaucratic orthodoxy to stifle personal sovereignty. Neither is above using violence as a means to establish their peculiar dogmas.

Much like Islamists, liberals use both our rule of law - and the core thereof, our inherent decency - to their devious advantage. Because the developed West holds fast to individual legal protections (it does not escape notice that eco-terror in particular is almost non-existent in places such as Cuba, China, North Korea, Iran, etc.), Left-wing terror is a fairly consequence-free endeavor.
But beyond utilizing specific provisions of occidental jurisprudence, terrorists of both sorts are not above using the judicial system itself to facilitate a sort of litigation in terrorem.

Lawsuits against telecommunication companies over their assistance with the NSA wiretapping program, along with legal action against the Bush administration on behalf of Guantanamo Bay detainees and climate change zealots have had a chilling effect on activities that might otherwise be seen as part of the benign course of normal events. This too serves the ends of those who fear the freedom of the individual more than the dictatorship of doctrine.

Just so you know I'm not afraid

Six Years Hence

With some understandable difficulty, I went to work today and followed my other routines when the workday was over. The terrorists did not win, not on my watch. Thankfully, the sky was clear and the weather was pleasant... all as it was on that other Tuesday.

We are six years hence from that other Tuesday, and being Americans, we have accrued to ourselves several luxuries in the interim. Senators and Congressmen can now indulge themselves in debating whether fighting terrorists in Iraq is contributing to winning the War on Terror. We hardly allowed for such opulent sophisms in years past; our enemies were our enemies back then, and we did not attempt to compartmentalize them into those that we should fight to the death versus those that we should negotiate with as "regional partners." Organized cadres of cry-babies and bed-wetters can besmirch and smear our truest heroes, and do so under the auspices of patriotic "dissent." This is yet another extravagance denied to our forebears.

But if there is one lavishness yet denied us, it is that of blissful ignorance. Dates on calendars notwithstanding, there will never, ever be a September 10th again. 9/11 split the history of our present age as was time by the birth of Christ. We will always look over our shoulders and watch the skies. Everything now gets at least a second look.

Would that such were the case in Septembers past. The sordid record of the failures and missteps of our pre-9/11 C.I.A. were recently summarized for all to review.

The [Joint Inquiry] concluded that, before 9/11, neither the US Government nor the [intelligence community] had a comprehensive strategy for combating al-Qa'ida. It charged that the Director of Central Intellignce (DCI) was either unwilling or unable to marshall the full range of IC resources necessary to combat the growing threat to the United States. The [C.I.A. Office of Inspector General] Team also found that the IC did not have a documented, comprehensive approach to al-Qa'ida and that the DCI did not use all of his authorities in leading the IC's strategic effort against [Osama bin Laden].

And while the report notes that George Tenet signed a December 1998 memorandum declaring "We are at war" against al-Qaeda, it goes on to condemn him and the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence (DDCI) for not "creating a documented, comprehensive plan to guide the counterterrorism effort at the Intelligence Community level." As the report clearly indicates, the comedy(?) of errors that led up to 9/11 can be laid at Tenet's feet; this was his C.I.A.

Of course if there is such a thing as historical precision, it would demand that we not be neglectful of the fact that this was also Bill Clinton's C.I.A. The man who professed to being "obsessed" with bin Laden seemed willing to do little to organize Central Intelligence such that OBL could be captured or killed. If anything, Clinton can be faulted for failing to do enough to bring bin Laden to justice; he surely remained obtuse to the warnings issued about bin Laden by the U.S. State Department. Indeed, his own words from a February 2002 speech are the strongest rebuttal to the idea that Clinton was concerned - let alone obsessed - with anything other than Monica Lewinsky's thong. (Audio from an interview with Bill on the matter, along with Hillary Clinton's more recent attempts at obfuscation, can be heard here. H/T: NewsMax.com)

Mr. bin Laden used to live in Sudan. He was expelled from Saudi Arabia in '91 and he went to the Sudan. We'd been hearing that the Sudanese wanted America to start dealing with them again. They released him. At the time, '96, he had committed no crime against America, so I did not bring him here because we had no basis on which to hold him, though we knew he wanted to commit crimes against America. So I pleaded with the Saudis to take him, 'cause they could have, but they thought it was a hot potato. They didn't and that's how he wound up in Afghanistan.

To be sure, Bill Clinton has repeatedly expressed "regret" for his failure to kill or capture bin Laden.

But even beyond Clinton's foibles vis-a-vis the nascent threat of Islamic terrorism, it should be noted that this was Michael Scheuer's C.I.A., as it was Paul Pillar's and Valarie Plame's. None of these now-vocal critics of the current administration could - by themselves or in collaboration with their peers - prevent or disrupt any of what occurred on September 11, 2001. Nor (as discussed elsewhere) could they...

...preempt the April 1983 Embassy bombing in Beirut, the October 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, the attack on the World Trade Center in February of 1993, the suicide attack on the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in June of 1996, the bombings of American Embassies in the East African cities of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya in 1998, the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000 or the deadly attacks of September 11, 2001, all of which would seem to fall under [their] agency's purview.

Scheuer, Pillar and Plame - among many other standard-bearers of Bush hatred - would have us all believe that we were one Presidential Daily Briefing away from stopping the 9/11 attacks before they started. As the aforementioned C.I.A. mea culpa indicates, the truth is far more damning than any of them would let on. Pillar's concern over politicization of intelligence gathering should be the least of our concerns.

Most important of all, this was the C.I.A. that the Left built. Some of the same braying asses in the Senate - who on this very day dared to launch verbal assaults against David Petraeus and Ryan Crocker - were the very persons who emasculated the intelligence services (and never sought to remove a single brick from the much-discussed Janet Reno-Jamie Gorelick "wall" between law enforcement and intelligence.) And while they strutted and fretted before the cameras about "politicized intelligence" in the run-up to the Iraq War, they have become the politicizers, blithely attempting to de-link the Iraq War from the war on Terror.

And so in spite of ourselves, the terrorists did not win today. We are still Americans, and we still crave our indulgences. And American politicians being who they are still yield to their indulgence of choice. We would do well to remember that those with whom we struggle do not crave luxury for themselves. They seek only our deaths, as they made evident six years ago. Ignorance of the threat did not set us in good stead then, and arrogance or wishful thinking will bring us no closer to victory in the long war.

Terrorism...What terrorism? - I wonder where the New York Times will bury the German terror plot story, given where the Times saw fit to place news about the JFK Airport plot. (Devoted NYT readers will recall that the June 3, 2007 story was buried on page 30 in the national edition, and page 37 in the New York metro edition.)

The Times must have figured out that they stepped in it - and deep. About a week later, the public editor commented on the controversy that resulted from the paper's decision.

My own view is that The Times story was very well reported and written. It quickly made clear that the accused men were a long way from action and that despite the apocalyptic comments of the U.S. attorney, their ability to carry out an attack on the airport was very much open to question.

But instead of being a reason to put the story inside, I think this was a compelling reason to keep it on Page 1. This reporting put the story in an appropriate perspective, far calmer than the day's television coverage. Giving the story subdued play on the front page — toward the bottom, with a single-column headline — would have told readers that The Times knew what they were concerned about, that there was something real here, but that it wasn't anywhere near happening and there was no need for alarm.

For his part, Clark Hoyt went on to note that "[n]ewspapers cannot take sometimes overheated rhetoric from public officials at face value."

That's rich.

If Mr. Hoyt is to be taken at face value, then the same principle should apply to the newspaper's treatment of statements from public officials as it regards topics such as global warming. But at every turn, the Times has erred on the side of hyperbole and alarmism, as its own record would indicate. One could be forgiven for feeling a twinge of skepticism when the Times uncritically paraphrases NASA scientist James E. Hansen in a July 16, 2006 article to the effect that we have 10 years to "alter the trajectory of global greenhouse emissions" before it is too late.

Moreover, given the paper's reporting of Dr. Hansen's prediction that global average surface temperatures for 2003 would be higher than those in 1998 versus the recent corrections that were made to the temperature records (as discussed elsewhere), it would be hoped that the Times would apply a bit of healthy journalistic skepticism to any further "overheated rhetoric" from Dr. Hansen.

As for myself, I hope that I can be forgiven for ascribing a darker motive to the Times' relative sanguineness vis-a-vis terrorism versus the clamor that global climate change inspires in the editorial suites. My personal sense is - as Mark Stein so correctly described it in a December 2003 Wall Street Journal op-ed - that the Left resents the idea of war in Iraq or a struggle against the existential threat of Islamic terror, in as much as it distracts from their "ushering in the era of lots and lots of itsy bits of small government."

They loved the '90s because you never heard a thing about macho stuff like war: it was all micro-politics, new regulations for this, new entitlements for that--education, environment, "social justice." For hard-core Democrats, the whole war thing is an unwelcome intrusion on what large numbers of people had assumed to be a permanent post-Martian politics.

To be sure, it might well be easier for liberals to get Americans exercised over gay marriage, "equal" pay for men and women, climate change or any other component of their micro-agenda. But given what is at stake - both here and around the globe - it behooves the civilized world to rally around the only cause that really matters at this point. For all of the other "rights" that the Left so assiduously defends are contingent on the right to exist unmolested by those who would eliminate us without prejudice were they so able.