War Bulletins

How many of you remember The Magnificent Seven? The 1960 western about "An oppressed Mexican peasant village [that] assembles seven gunfighters to help defend their homes."

Well, the seven home-grown al Qaeda wannabes arrested in Miami yesterday ain't them:

Seven people were arrested Thursday in connection with the early stages of a plot to attack Chicago's Sears Tower and other buildings in the U.S., including the FBI office here, a federal law enforcement official said.

As part of the raids related to the arrests, FBI agents swarmed a warehouse in Miami's Liberty City area, using a blowtorch to take off a metal door. A neighbor said the suspects had been sleeping in the warehouse while running what seemed to be a "military boot camp."…

Residents living near the warehouse said the men taken into custody described themselves as Muslims and had tried to recruit young people to join their group, which seemed militaristic…

[Tashawn Rose, 29] talked to one of the men about a month ago: "They seemed brainwashed. They said they had given their lives to Allah."

This "brotherhood of mutants" embodied a unique duality - bumbling foolishness and, as today's indictment indicates, deadly serious objectives. Kind of the Islamic equivalent of the spirit being willing, but the flesh being weak:

A federal indictment against seven men revealed Friday details of what the government said was a plan intended to "kill all the devils we can."

The mission was intended to be "as good or greater than 9/11," beginning with the destruction of Chicago's Sears Tower, according to court documents obtained Friday by CNN.

Named in the grand jury indictment is Narseal Batiste, who allegedly told a federal undercover agent, who he thought was a member of al Qaeda, that he was organizing a mission to build an Islamic army to wage a jihad in the United States.

The document says that Batiste "recruited and supervised individuals in order to organize and train for a mission to wage war against the United States government, which included a plot to destroy by explosives the Sears Tower in Chicago, Illinois," the nation's tallest building.

Yet while Batiste's band of merry men had bin Ladenesque ambitions, they evidently didn't have the mental wattage to distinguish an IED from an IUD:

The indictment itself contains enough allegations to prove that these terrorist wannabes have some serious cognitive difficulties. For instance, the first count of the indictment charges the defendants with attempting to provide material support to al-Qaeda, and it outlines the actions of the conspirators showing their explicit intent. Some of these would make a great comedy routine but for the fact that these idiots took it seriously. Those actions include providing a list of shoe sizes to an undercover agent posing as an AQ representative, supposedly to get the "soldiers" combat boots. One wonders why they just didn't buy their own shoes. A week later, the leader, Narseal Baptiste, accepted the boots from the agent.

Still, I imagine much the same thing could have been said about Timothy McVeigh and the Nichols brothers if their Oklahoma City plot had been disrupted in its early stages. The interesting difference between McVeigh's trial and this one will be the context - "right-wing militias" then, which liberals trumped up as a mortal threat to the Republic (and secretly led and fed by Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, and Bob Dole, of course), and Islamic Fundamentalism now, which is considered a mortal threat to the Republic by everybody BUT liberals - and the fact that McVeigh was white, whereas the shit-for-brains septet is not only Muslim - the one religion lefties don't persecute - but BLACK Muslim as well.

Look for the Left to rally to the defendants' defense on multi-culti grounds, mark my words. After all, the Sears Tower IS a racist eyesore of "corporate America," right?

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The American Bolshevikery may stubbornly sticking to their "See no good news from Iraq, hear no good news from Iraq, speak no good news from Iraq" template, but in the meantime the WMD finds in Iraq have been confirmed by no less than Big Dog himself:

QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, there has been a lot made on Capitol Hill about these chemical weapons that were found and may be quite old. But do you have a real concern of these weapons from Saddam's past perhaps having an impact on U.S. troops who are on the ground in Iraq right now?

RUMSFELD : Certainly. What has been announced is accurate, that there have been hundreds of canisters or weapons of various types found that either currently have sarin in them or had sarin in them, and sarin is dangerous. And it's dangerous to our forces, and it's a concern.

So obviously, to the extent we can locate these and destroy them, it is important that we do so. And they are dangerous. Anyone - I'm sure General Casey or anyone else in that country would be concerned if they got in the wrong hands.

They are weapons of mass destruction . They are harmful to human beings. And they have been found. And that had not been by Saddam Hussein, as he inaccurately alleged that he had reported all of his weapons . And they are still being found and discovered.

Why did Rummy have to confirm the WMDs personally? Because, "intel bureaucrats were apparently uncomfortable with the revelation that they had been wrong on Iraqi WMD, not once, not twice, but a total of three times" - and, ipso facto, that President Bush (you know, their BOSS) was right even once - are therefore continuing to mindlessly downplay it. Because heaven knows saving face for left-wing partisan pride is more important that winning the war against the Islamic fanatics who are trying to kill us all.

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Elsewhere in Mesopotamia, the "insurgency" tail continued to wag the Extreme Media dog:

The Iraqi government declared a state of emergency and imposed a curfew Friday after insurgent gunmen set up roadblocks in central Baghdad and opened fire on U.S. and Iraqi troops just north of the heavily fortified Green Zone.

With just two hours notice, the prime minister ordered everyone off the streets of the capital from 2 p.m. Friday until 6 a.m. Saturday. U.S. and Iraqi forces also were engaged in firefights with insurgents in the dangerous Dora neighborhood in south Baghdad.

As the state of emergency was announced in the capital, a car bomb ripped through a market and nearby gas station in the increasingly volatile southern city of Basra Friday, killing at least five people and wounding 18, including two policemen, police said.

At least 19 other deaths were reported in Baghdad….Two Iraqi soldiers and a policeman were wounded in the fighting, said police Lieutenant Maitham Abdul Razzaq said….The U.S. military on Friday said a Marine had died in combat and a soldier was killed in an unspecified non-hostile incident three days earlier. Their deaths raise to at least 2,514 members of the U.S. military who have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

The new security measures came as Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki sought to rein in unrelenting insurgent and sectarian violence. He launched a massive security operation in Baghdad 10 days ago, deploying tens of thousands of troops who flooded the city, snarling traffic with hundreds of checkpoints.

All the elements of the Extreme Media's Iraq template are present in this story:

1) An ironic obsession with violence and complete ignoring of everything else;

2) The "insurgency" is depicted as ubiquitous, uncapturable, and unstoppable;

3) Prominent attention is paid to Coalition and Iraqi civilian casualties (which were far too few to merit such a breathless story); there's no mention whatsoever of how many "insurgents" were sent home to Allah;

4) The Maliki government is made out to look weak and helpless.

Want the proper take on this story? The "insurgency," never strategically viable, and now in its tactical death throes following the snuffing of "Emir" Zarqawi, is, like the proverbial post-decapitation chicken, flopping around furiously before it finally keels over. And Prime Minister Maliki isn't pussy-footing around, but is going for its throat.

But, boy howdy, Iraq declaring a "state of emergency" sure does make a hyperventilating headline, huh?

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No matter how hard he tries, Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez still comes across as more buffoon than national security threat. Always haranguing and ranting and raving about George W. Bush and the "US Empire" and the imminent American invasion he relentlessly and paranoiacally claims is coming, Fidel Castro's Mini-Me seems more like a yapping little mongrel trying desperately to get Cujo's attention, as though getting messily devoured would be a sort of personal and professional vindication.

But the man does have assets. Like a huge reservoir of petroleum beneath his country. And Venezuela's geographic proximity to the United States (think nuclear weapons from the below-mentioned). And the active economic and military assistance of Russia, Red China, and Iran. And the cash from his oil exports to fund a massive military buildup:

Venezuela is going on a "buying spree" for military equipment that goes beyond the country's legitimate needs, according to the U.S. State Department.

The warning comes on the heels of U.S. efforts to block a proposed sales of military aircraft - including 20 planes costing $200 million - and other equipment to Venezuela by Spain and Brazil.

Such sales are part of what "we would consider an outsized military buildup in Venezuela," according to State Department spokesman Sean McCormack who added that the government of President Hugo Chavez - considered by some to be a younger version of Fidel Castro - plans to activate its reserves and to create a
million-person militia.

Chavez purchased 30,000 Kalishnikov AK-103 rifles from the Russians, who have contracted to build Hugo his own factory. Reportedly AK-103s are the weapon of choice for guerillas (or, to employ the contemporary synonym, "insurgents") worldwide. Putin is also selling Chavez Sukhoi fighter jets and attack helicopters, against whom it is difficult to imagine him needing them for self-defense other than his imagined, and almost cherished, American "invaders".

Why do I bring up Chavez again if he seems like Carlos Mencia lampooning Castro? Or the Russian rifles, which may seem comparatively penny-ante?

This is why:

Washington insiders say that something negative about Venezuela's Uncle Sam-bashing strongman Hugo Chavez appears almost every day in President George W. Bush's briefing book. Matters about Mexico (unrelated to immigration) may cross his desk once - at most, twice - a week.

This inattention is unfortunate, because Mexico will elect a new president on July 2, and a top contender is Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the messianic ex-mayor of Mexico City and nominee of the leftist-nationalist Democratic Revolutionary Party. A victory by the self-styled "little ray of hope" threatens to convert the flood of illegal immigrants from Mexico into a tidal wave.

And why would this be? Because Obrador is, like Bolivia's also recently-elected leftist ruler Evo Morales, a disciple of….Hugo Chavez:

In contrast to the chief executive, Vicente Fox, who has worked through diplomatic channels to lobby for additional visas, more guest workers and amnesty for his 12 million countrymen residing unlawfully north of the Rio Grande, López Obrador prefers rabble-rousing to gentility. His platform, if implemented, would thwart the sustained economic development that is imperative to staunch the northbound flow….

López Obrador presents himself as a savior who will rescue the dispossessed from venal politicians and their heinous liberalization strategy that has yielded "monstrous social inequality" and dependence on multinational firms, the International Monetary Fund and the United States.

He's avoided attacking Washington and emphasized his readiness to follow Fox's sound economic trajectory. Yet López Obrador has crudely denigrated the central bank president, treasury secretary and other technocrats who charted Fox's successful economic course and unveiled a platform marred by inconsistencies, wooly headed initiatives and ignorance of the global arena.

Why do you think Obrador has avoided attacking the United States and promised to emulate Fox? Because he doesn't want to sound like his Venezuelan role model. As it stands right now, Mexico has about the best of all worlds - they can export their impoverished population northward with impunity and without practical limit, and our "El Presidente" just grins and says, "Si, senor, usted tienen gusto de salsa con eso?" If Obrador starts his Hugoesque blustering prematurely, the alarm bells will go off in Washington (at least I hope they would) about the imminent advance of the new Castroite alliance to the Rio Grande itself.

And if Obrador does win, that is exactly what will happen. Mexico will become not just a nuisance, a source of unwanted, unsustainable social dislocation, but an enemy power allied with other enemies who, let's just say, wish us ill. Suddenly those tens of thousands of Kalishnikovs would loom a lot larger, as would the need not just to control our southern border, but actively fortify and even militarize it.

Yes, that's a worst-case scenario. But the international trend has been flowing in that direction the last few years, particularly in Latin America. And I would much prefer that we err on the side of caution.

Which makes President Bush's pledge to "work with whoever is chosen by the Mexican people," persuade me that perhaps democracy isn't quite all he's cracked it up to be. And that we might need a whole lot more than just the return of the Magnificent Seven.