Impossible Scissors

My greatest concern about the Bush Admin's current Iraq strategy is that the preident, vice president, and Secretary Rumsfeld are, in spite of all public appearances, scaling back our goals in Iraq due to terrorist violence and public pressure. The administration is pushing Iraqis to finish their constitution by August 15. Further, the defense department may be planning on cutting our presence in Iraq to 60,000 by the end of 2006.

Impatience will not bode well for the noble experiment that is Iraqi democracy. A rapid drawdown of American forces will put to the test an Iraqi army that is several years away from holding its own against a hardened insurgency.

Additionally, the arbitrary hurrying of the Iraqi constitution could lead to a weak government that cannot act as a strong, nationalistic force for fighting the anti-Iraqi forces. It's already been said that Iraq's new constitution will not allow civil laws to violate the laws of Islam. It's feared that property, inheritance, and other women's rights will suffer as a result. The constitution has also rejected the idea of federalism, even though stronger local and provincial governments would give political minorities a greater voice than they would receive under a stronger central government.

Now the constitutional committee is wrangling over the role of militias and Kurdish autonomy. If either the militias or the Kurds become too strong, the country will slide further towards civil war. The issues faced by the constitutional committee are so great that pundit Charles Krauthammer (whose opinions I value highly) suggests that the constitution be postponed indefinitely until these problems naturally work themselves out. While I think that an indefinite postponement is too long to wait, some delay is necessary. After all, Washington, Franklin, Madison, and Hamilton didn't work under arbitrary deadlines, yet they ended up producing the greatest model for government ever conceived by man.

Militarily, the Iraqis should have to prove that they can be trusted with the security of their country before we turn over fourteen of the eighteen provinces. The turnover should be on a province-by-province basis. Calmer parts of Iraq like Basra and an Nasiriyah could be turned over to Iraqi forces in their totality. This would allow coalition partners like Britain, Poland, and Italy to withdraw their forces and please the populations who were largely unsupportive of the war from the get-go.

The Iraqi forces can show that they are competent (and not insurgent-infiltrated) in the southern provinces. As they grow in experience and as more Iraqi forces are trained, more provinces can be turned over. The last province to make the switch would be Anbar province. In the case of Anbar, more American forces will be needed to fight the infiltration of anti-Iraqi forces from Syria. As a long-term solution, the Syrian border should be turned into a fortified, demilitarized zone that is so lethal, it makes the Korean demilitarized zone look like Disney Land.

The Iraqi experiment is too important to be rushed. Unfortunately, partisan politics and fanatical violence are hastening a process that should be gradual and logical. Haste makes waste; we should work to make sure that the transition is not too hasty, lest the sacrifices of our fighting men and women, the great humanitarian advance of toppling Saddam Hussein, and the creation of an Arab democracy be wasted.

A recent news report states that North Korea hasn't actually built a working nuclear weapon--it's merely procured the components to build one. With the poor state of US human intelligence on North Korea, and the decade-long failure to detect Iraq's disarmament, such a claim has some credibility to it. Yet there is plenty of evidence to suggest otherwise; that North Korea has had nuclear weapons for a decade or more, and that it also has a secret program to enrich Uranium for bombs, in addition to its well-known plutonium production.

When Jimmy Carter negotiated a halt to plutonium production at the Yongbyon reactor in 1994, the Pentagon believed that North Korea had sufficient plutonium to build at least one bomb. Despite the frozen activity at Yongbyon, the CIA became convinced by 1999 that North Korea had a nuclear weapon. Some experts have speculated that North Korea was in possession of a nuke as early as 1993.

Further evidence of North Korea's activities comes from the worst nuclear proliferator since Klaus Fuchs and Ted Hall--Abdul Qadeer Khan. When interrogated, the Pakistani scientist admitted that in 1996, he began negotiations with North Korea to sell them centrifuges for enriching uranium. Such a program violated the spirit, if not the letter, of Jimmy Carter's agreed framework. Further, Khan claimed that on one of his visits to North Korea, he actually observed one of the Stalinist state's nuclear weapons.

The last anecdote creates three possibilities:
1) Khan is lying, which is consistent with his utterly incorrigible character.
2) North Korea built a dummy nuke that was convincing enough to fool Khan (and for all we know, Khan could merelybe a facilitator for moving Chinese nuke technology to Pakistan and other rogue states.)
3) North Korea has nuclear weapons.

We'll never know for sure without better human intelligence--or a mushroom cloud over the Korean peninsula. The best we can tell is that North Korea wants nukes to extort concessions from the west and rescue the failed state from its starvation and poverty. If we believed that Kim Jong Il needed nukes for deterrence, we'd have to ignore the deterrent effect posed by the conventional and chemical artillery that the North has pointed at cities in the South.

While the nukes may not be real, North Korea's ABILITY to build a nuke cannot be denied. That danger is what has the US, Japan, and South Korea scrambling.

How should we react to the media's reports about the foam shedding issue with Space Shuttle Discovery? Largely, it should be viewed as a dramatic story angle, wholly manufactured by the media. The foam that was shed from Discovery's tank did not inflect any damage to the shuttle which represents a safety of flight issue.

At the same time, NASA made the right decision by delaying the September launch of Atlantis. It's clear that the foam issue has not been fixed. Although it may be impossible for foam from the PAL ramp area to strike the orbiter (due to the pressure patterns between the tank and orbiter,) the foam shedding is still a ticking time bomb.

Media reports would lead us to believe that the shuttle may never fly again. This quote from a NASA official is a shot of realism in the arm of sensationalism. The PAL ramp, like the previous bipod ramp, was covered in foam that was shaped by the human hand. If the bipod was fixed (by replacing the foam with heaters,) can't we find a similar solution for the PAL ramp?

The foam shedding problem gives us a tempting excuse to retire the space shuttle and accelerate the development of the Crew Exploration Vehicle. Yet the reason behind returning the shuttle to flight remains: expendible rockets cannot resupply or build the International Space Station. Unless our international partners release us from our commitment and abandon the space station, we'll fly the shuttle perhaps sixteen times over the next five years.

After nearly two and a half years, America's government space program is back on track with the launch of Space Shuttle Discovery. Yet NASA knows that now is not a time for celebrations, at least not for the time being.

Thanks to the impressive array of cameras aboard the orbiter, external tank, on the ground, and on chase planes, this has been the best documented launch in history. Already it has told us about the damage Discovery took during launch. The external tank struck a bird as the shuttle lifted off. A tile near the nose gear doors is chipped. At least one debris anomaly occurred when the solid rocket boosters separated, and it may take some time to figure out exactly what went on.

The damaged nose tile is probably indignificant, yet that attitude of dismissal can prove fatal, as it did with Columbia. The location of the chipped tile is critical, because the edges of the landing gear doors are seen as "weak spots" where a flaw in the heat shield can lead to a fatal breach of the orbiter's aluminum skin.

If NASA feels that the damage poses a safety of flight issue, what is a crew to do? Do we evacuate the crew to the space station and send the orbiter to a fiery (and probably needless) death in the Pacific Ocean? Will the crew attempt a repair using the unproven patch techniques that they probably don't trust?

With more time, perhaps NASA could have found a way to do both: evacuate the crew, but fly the damaged orbiter back to earth unmanned. After all, the shuttle can be autonomously controlled from liftoff all the way until final approach to the runway. It's been said that the final leg of guidance was omitted so the pilots could enjoy some job security. From my perspective, the pilots will have no job security if their shuttles keep getting tossed into the ocean with minor tile damage.

This weighty decision of losing an orbiter versus trusting a sporty repair method, as bad as it is, isn't available to a crew visiting the Hubble Space Telescope. With no way of reaching the space station, the crew would have to use the patch kit. This is something that administrator Michael "Don't call me Peter" Griffin should consider before reinstating the Hubble repair.

Godspeed Discovery, and may the crew do whatever it takes to come home safely.

With the Service Employees International Union and the Teamsters abandoning the AFL-CIO, what does this say about the health of the labor union movement in the US, and how does this bode for American workers?

For many years, right-wing opponents of the unions have claimed that they've become too powerful and too corrupt. Left-wing union supporters have complained that unions have been marginalized, and that workers were suffering. I happen to believe that both points of view can coexist and that they both provide an accurate description of the AFL-CIO's fall from grace.

It's impossible to talk about the AFL-CIO without discussing corruption, political clout, and indifference to the concerns of workers. Over the years, the union leadership has become an elevated class unto itself (much like how the Soviet leadership elevated themselves over the proliteriat.) Politically, the unions have been able to wield amazing amounts of power in the Democratic machine. The lobbyists, campaign contributions, and get-out-the-vote efforts have made a large segment of the population captive to the Democratic party.

At the same time, what kind of results have been delivered for all of the efforts of the AFL-CIO? The union's main issue, protectionism, has not gained the widespread acceptance amongst Democrats that the union would hope for. Further, the union's inseparable marriage to the Democrats has made Republicans even more reluctant to support the issue.

The best course of action for labor unions is to forego the partisan campaign contributions and instead make a concerted effort to build bipartisan support for issues that are important to all American workers. The unions will have to accept partial solutions to their demands on health care and trade issues, because it's better to have a part of the whole than it is to have all of nothing. The unions will only be taken seriously if they can cultivate an atmosphere of fairness and real concern for the real needs of their workers.

The pithy title of this post comes from a friend of mine who is working for Boeing on the Space Shuttle program. In addition to celebrating his birthday today, and marking the 36th anniversary of Apollo 11's splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, he will probably be running computer simulations of debris strikes against the Shuttle orbiter.

In the exploration of space, NASA has always wrestled with the challenge of defining "acceptable risk." When we were going to the moon, that threshold was quite high. After all, Apollo 12 was hit by lightning on ascent, yet the mission continued.

The space shuttle program was supposed to make spaceflight cheap, routine, and safe. It failed on all three counts. Risk has always been inherent during the program, from the tile loss on the first mission to the abort-to-orbit of STS-51F in July 1985. The loss of Challenger on STS-51L created a temporary shift back to a culture of safety. Had the managers adopted a "prove its safe to fly" policy instead of making engfineers prove that Challenger was unsafe, perhaps the accident could have been avoided.

The program stayed relatively safe during the years, although the debris shedding from the eexternal tank became an accident waiting to happen. It nearly caused the loss of Atlantis on STS-27 back in December 1988. A similar problem with Atlantis, falling foam from the tank's bipod structure, occurred on STS-112 back in 2002. The program continued to treat the foam issue as an accepted risk, a practice that ended in the flames of tragedy on February 1, 2003.

The July 13 launch attempt for Discovery was pushed back because a hydrogen sensor (one of four) failed as the external tank was filled with its cryogenic propellants. Although flight rules traditionally said that two of the four sensors had to be working correctly to launch, NASA had changed them for this mission so that all four had to work. I can understand NASA's desire to make this flight as safe as possible, but it's just plain ridiculous to insist on double redundancy in a sensor like that to launch.

At the same time, it's beter that NASA "act like pussies" than continue pressing on by treating major issues as accepted risk. The SRB problems that doomed Challenger went ignored for five years until tragedy prompted a fix. The falling foam dilemma that destroyed Columbia was blown off for almost 15 years. With an excessively-complex system like the space shuttle, even the tiniest and most acceptable risk can snowball under the right circumstances into something that results in loss of crew and vehicle.

At this stage, the most pusilanimous thing NASA can do is to fly the shuttle into 2010 so it can finish the space station. The ultiamte act bravery would be a plan to retire the shuttle sooner (perhaps by 2008,) let unmanned rockets handle the ISS assembly, and not reuse shuttle hardware for the system that will take us to the moon. The dangerous, penny-wise and pound-foolish approach taken by the space shuttle should become a cautionary tale as we take our baby-steps out from the cradle and into the galaxy.

There has been a lot of hand-wringing in Britain over that country's Iraq policies in the aftermath of the subway and bus bombings. Many people feel that the bombers, while misguided, were simply trying to get Britain out of Iraq (a position popular among the British public.) The conventional view is that the 7/7 bombings were an attempt at redoing Madrid and bringing about a policy change in the same way.

Yet the belief that our problems with militant Muslims will go away if we abandon Iraq is delusional. The Wahhabist laundry list of western offenses has been growing for years, long before Iraq was invaded. For starters, the militants want us out of Afghanistan, too. After all, they supported the Taliban, and they're angry that we removed the Taliban and occupied the country. Iraq and Afghanistan are both seen by Islamic militants that the west is launching a renewed crusade against Islam.

The ultimate goal of the al Qaeda movement is the removal of all non-Muslims from the middle east, followed by the creation of Taliban-style governments. Evidence of their grand strategy came last summer, when Lockheed technician Paul Johnson was kidnapped and beheaded by al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia. Johnson was not the first westerner attacked by nativist forces in a Muslim nation, and he will not be the last.

To understand al Qaeda's political goal, one must understand the Islamic fundamanetalist approach to politics and laws. The only law is the law of Allah. No civil laws will appease Him, because His law is perfect. Therefore, the laws of the state will match the laws of Allah, and the laws will be applied and enforced by those who understand them best: the clerics. All who disagree with the laws are thus infidels and are not ddemed worthy to live in this "idealized"Islamic state.

When Moses laid down the laws for the ancient Hebrews, he would be best remembered for the instruction "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." The interpretation of this phrase has traditionally compelled people to support the death penalty in capital murder cases.

I generally believe that the death penalty is inappropriate for "average" murder cases and should be reserved only for the most heinous crimes. The murder of Samantha Runnion is what I would deem a heinous crime.

What motivates predators like Alejandro Avila to use children as sexual meat before murdering them? Frankly, I don't care about their motivations. I believe that people who commit such unspeakable acts are truly wicked and not capable of reform or repentance. Society should not be burdened with keeping them alive in jail.

July 22, 2003. It's been two years since Saddam Hussein's sons Uday and Qusay assumed room temperature in a gun battle with the 101st Airborne. Their reign of terror is over, and to that we should all throw back a beer and bid them "good riddance."

I learned from reading Oliver North's War Stories that Uday and Qusay are the Iraqi Arabic words for "Wolf" and "Snake." No names could be more appropriate for a pair of predators.

The US government is now considering the use of volunteers to police the nation's borders. This represents a bold new step by a government that is too hesitant to change policies that do not work.

There is no doubt that the Minutemen in Arizona (and their sister groups in New Mexico and other states) have inspired this new policy. There is a danger behind allowing the Minutemen to perform their duties unchecked. They have no legal authority to apprehend or use force or to deport illegal immigrants. At the same time, the Minutemen represent a group of volunteers who can potentially assist an important federal organization (the border patrol) that is hopelessly undermanned. The solution is for the federal border guards to train, deploy, and monitor these volunteers, using them as deputy border guards.

At the same time, the volunteers need to realize that their presence is not an end-all solution to the illegal immigration problem. More Mexicans should be elligible for work visas so they can come legally to this country and perform legitimate work to support their families. Americans who hire illegal immigrants should face draconian penalties. The message our nation sends is clear: we will welcome all who come here through legal channels, we will not tolerate illegal immigrants, and we will strive to make it impossible for illegal immigrants to find work or enjoy the privileges of citizenship.

I'm cautiously happy about the president's choice of John G. Roberts to fill the vacancy left by Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court.

When it comes to the high court, I do have one litmus test: the judge must take a strict interpretation of the constitution, and he or she must respect state right when the constitution is silent on the issue. In modern history, the most egregious violation of this litmus test was the Roe v. Wade ruling. The constitution does not grant us abortion rights, nor does it give us an absolute right to privacy (if a crime is suspected, that right can be taken away via search warrant.) Thomas Jefferson would be rolling in his grave at the loose way the constitution has been construed over the years.

For liberal Democrats, a strict constructionist like Roberts will probably be met with great hostility. Prominent Democrats have made support for Roe v. Wade a litmus test for federal judges, with the Supreme Court being the most important test of this policy.

The president should probably have gone with a female justice to preserve the demographics of the court, and there were plenty of good picks he could have made. Still, if Roberts is confirmed, he will replace a justice who often failed the litmus test of interpreting the constitution, legislating from the bench instead.

I half-expect Senate Democrats to block a vote on Roberts. When Ronald Reagan wanted to appoint a real conservative, Robert Bork, Democrats defeated him and forced Reagan to appoint the mediocre Anthony Kennedy. Clarence Thomas, another conservative, was nearly defeated with allegations that he was a chauvanist pig.

The only thing working in Roberts's favor is the fact that he's not well-known. In the case of President Bush's father, picking an unknown judge can also backfire. Bush 41's choice of David Souter sailed through the Senate. Once Souter took the bench, he became a card-carrying member of the court's liberal block. The appointment of David Souter was one of the most disappointing acts made by a disappointing president.

Here's to hoping that George W. will not repeat the mistakes of George H.W., and that John Roberts will not be a David Souter.

Life was comparatively easy back in the good old days of the Soviet Union. If the U.S. was subjected to a nuclear attack, the response was obvious: take out the Russian ICBM silos, bomber bases, and submarine pens. This policy formed the basis of nuclear strategy for over 40 years.

In the age of militant Islam and non-state terrorist groups, the American response to a nuclear attack is not so clear, and that may be the scariest aspect of the scenario. Imagine a mushroom cloud appearing in the sky over a major city without any warning. After the fear and panic subsides and the massive task of clearing away the carnage begins, how would the nation react?

U.S. representative Tom Tancredo offers one policy option: attack Islamic holy sites. If this became the official U.S. policy, perhaps it would deter an Islamist bomb from being detonated in an American city.

At least the godless Communists valued their own lives and the lives of their families; it would be highly unlikely that they would seriously think about using nuclear weapons. With Islamic militants, life on earth has no value compared to the virgin-vault that is Paradise. Under this mindset, who would care if a million Muslims were killed by the infidels? The million dead Muslims will find their ultimate happiness, putting the screws to seventy million virgins.

The Tancredo mentality holds that if you take away what extremists hold most dear, their holy sites and their very faith itself, it might deter them. The idea's strategic flaws are obvious. Attacking Muslim holy sites will have the predictable effect of turning all Muslims into supporters of the extremists. If you're going to nuke Mecca, you may as well evacuate all the Christians and start nuking the whole region--it has now become your enemy.

Is there a rational answer to the question posed in the title of this post? Tom Clancy tried to find a good solution in his excellent book Sum of All Fears. In the story, the nuclear terrorists are eventually captured, then beheaded in Saudi Arabia. When the terrorists are first captured, they claim to have received encouragement from an Iranian cleric in the town of Qum. While the president (who has lost his marbles) is about to erase Qum from the maps, Jack Ryan is the only level-headed guy who can figure out that the terrorists wanted to incite a larger war between the West and the Muslims.

The only sense that can come in answering this question comes from a fictional novel. But the happy ending may only be a fiction. The best we can do is stay vigilant against nuclear terrorism by non-states, and nuclear attack by rogue states. If the unthinkable should happen, we'd better hope that we will be able to figure out who the bad guys really are.

A necessity in the state of New Mexico is a shade to put in the windshield of your car. Otherwise, the incessant sun will turn your car into an oven and lead to the bleaching and embrittlement of your interior.

Unfortunately, it's too hard to find a good sun shade for the windshield of a 2000 Dodge Neon. My car's original owner bought a set of jumbo sun shades (the ones that fold up into discs.) They're the right height for the windshield, but they're so long that they knock off my rearview mirror.

The other day I bought a new shield, consisting of a piece of foam coated with a reflective surface. It folds up like an accordian. Alas, the "standard" size is too short in the vertical direction and too long in the horizontal direction. The packaging was deceptive, as it claimed that the shield would fit a Plymouth Neon (the identical car under the Dodge nameplate was strangely omitted from the packaging.)

Whatever happened to the cardboard shades that people used to put in the windshields? I can't find them in the stores anymore. I suspect that this solution was too "low-tech" for some people. Low-tech, but it WORKED!

Almost as disturbing as our move away from effective, low-tech solutions is our insistence on "one-size-fits-all" solutions. Cars are very different from each other, yet the "standard," "jumbo," and "super jumbo" sizes are supposed to appease us all. My message to the aftermarket auto industry is that this is not the case. We need far more options to protect our cars from heat and UV radiation.

Robert Pape has been getting a lot of attention lately for his book "Dying to Win" and its controversial premise, that most suicide bombers are motivated by a desire to remove occupiers from their homeland. In my dispute with Pape's hypothesis, I have to point out that he conveniently ignores the longest and most destructive suicide campaign in modern history: the Japanese Kamikaze attacks of World War II.

The historical context behind the Kamikazes is that these pilots were willing to die rather than sacrifice their honor. They also had a religious desire to protect their homeland and their emperor. In a broader sense, the Kamikaze attacks were the last, desperate gasps of a dying regime that wanted to win at all costs. They complimented the suicidal zeal of the Japanese soldiers who either fought against impossible odds from their caves on Iwo Jima and Okinawa, or those who marched off cliffs rather than surrender. Note also that the kamikaze attacks and other forms of suicide bombing ended after the US occupied Japan.

Pape's strongest argument in favor of his theory is the Tamal Tigers of Sri Lanka. For the Tamal Tigers, his argument may prove to be correct. But I would refrain from lumping all suicide attackers together in one group. The motivations of Islamic militants, Tamal Tigers, Japanese Kamikazes, or even self-immolating monks in South Vietnam are entirely different. The strongest tie between all of these groups is that they believe in the effectiveness of suicide bombing, and they place their cause above their own lives.

More recently, the London 7/7 bombings do a bit to debunk the theories of Pape. The suicide bombers were British citizens. Which occupation were they protesting? Three bombers were Pakistanis and the other was Jamaican. Surely they were not protesting non-occupations of their homelands. I suspect that it was motivated by an overall condemnation of British policy in the terror wars.

I have my suspicions that Pape's purpose in writing his book is to convince Americans that we need to withdraw from Iraq to end the unending stream of suicide tactics. Yet in Iraq we find that the Iraqi nationalists who are opposed to our presence would rather use small arms or remotely-detonated bombs, thus living to fight another day. The sucide attacks are coming from Islamically-motivated killers, the vast majority of whom are non-Iraqis. For the foreign jihadis, their motivation, from their perspective, is to liberate their Muslim brothers from the infidels.

Should the US leave Iraq, the next target of jihad would be the "infidel" democracy we established in Iraq. I am convinced that the jihadis ultimately want to create an Iraqi Taliban, similar to the "Mujahedeen Shura" that ruled Fallujah from April through November 2004. As one devout Muslim explained to me, Muslims believe the laws of Islam to be perfect. To logically extend that concept, why should devout Muslims have any sort of civil law if the laws of Islam are perfect? For that matter, shouldn't Muslims be led by the clerics who best understand the perfect laws of Islam? Such is the mentality of our enemies, and all Americans would be wise to learn it quickly and apply it in our dealings with them.

As much as we might not like to admit it, the United States has a huge problem with Pakistan. After all, this is a nation that has sheltered Osama bin Laden, and it a place where he continues to enjoy the support of the people. Of the world's active Islamic militants, Pakistan has supplied a large portion. It also ranks with Saudi Arabia in terms of madras terrorist-factories located in the country. Further, Pakistan has stockpiled nuclear weapons for use against democratic India, and it has proliferated nuclear technologies to the dangerous regimes in North Korea and Iran. In short, Pakistan is the festering swamp in which the mosquitos of terrorism lay their eggs.

In spite of all this, the state department has approved the sale of at least 24 F-16CJ fighters to Pakistan. These weapons systems will not be applied in Pakistan's half-hearted war with al Qaeda; instead, they will only aggrivate tensions with India, as they will give Pakistan a credible defense against India's SU-30 fighters and a potent platform for delivering free-fall nuclear bombs and guided conventional weapons.

The wisest policy option for the United States is to tilt its support in the India-Pakistan conflict towards India. After all, India is a fellow democracy. India is not a hotbed of extremism. Most importantly, India's nuclear weapons are a powerful tool that can be leveraged against Pakistan, a country that is an enemy for all intents and purposes. Aside from the "nuke the Paki bastards till they glow" option, a pro-India stance can be used to twist more concessions out of Pakistan's dictatorship in the search for al Qaeda and Taliban leaders.

Standing in between this logical policy shift and the current policy of Pakistani appeasement are the F-16's. Now that they have been offered to Pakistan, we cannot simply take the deal off the table. Pakistan's likely reaction to such a move would be reduced or discontinued support for our battle against Taliban and al Qaeda remnants.

They key to scuttling the deal is to give the Pakistanis a deal that they will reject. A little-known fact behind military arms sales is that the US rarely sells its best equipment. Specific components are de-rated to ensure that American equipment maintains an edge over similar systems that are exported. For the F-16's, this can mean radars with less range, weaker threat detection systems, weaker and less reliable Pratt & Whitney engines (instead of the better ones from GE,) and removing the capability to carry certain weapons. Pakistan should be offered F-16's that are so emasculated that they will either be rejected by Pakistan, or they will not pose a credible threat to India.

Further, India should be offered the best fighters and weapons we have to offer. As a minimum, India should be offered the more-capable F-16E. Other options include F-15 Strike Eagles and F/A-18E/F Super Hornets. India also has a requirement for naval fighters, so we can offer them either new or used naval fighters to fly from their Russian-built carrier.

The US neglected India for far too long because of cold war jealousies and Indian arms purchases from the Soviets. With the cold war behind us and the terror wars heating up, we may find that in India we have no better friend.

One of this year's pleasant surprises in the DVD market has been the release of seasons 2 & 3 of the TV series "Tour of Duty." The show, which ran from 1987-1990, offered a realistic, no-holds-barred look at a company of soldiers in Vietnam from 1967-8. While the show fell victim to constant retooling and time-slot changes, the DVD release allows someone like myself, who missed out on that period of history, to understand what was going on during a turbulent period in history.

With that being said, I have to say that most of the people making comparisons between Iraq and Vietnam know very little about either Iraq or Vietnam. The Iraqi insurgency has very little public support, no charismatic leadership (aside from assclowns like Zarqawi and Moqtada al Sadr,) no political ideology, and, most importantly, no standing army to back it up or hold territory.

The only area where I feel the comparison has some legitimacy is the American practice of taking back enemy-held territory, then abandoning it for the enemy to reclaim. The "Tour of Duty" season 1 finale cuts to the heart of the issue, when the company is ordered to take a hill that has changed hands between the Americans and the communists several times. In 2005, towns like Tal Afar have become the equivalent of Vietnam's "Hill 1000." Marines sweep the town, kick but, and then leave. Before too long, the foreign fighters and Baathists are back.

The only solution is to send more soldiers and Marines who will stay in these insurgent bastions, deter further infiltration, and reassure the locals that we will look after their safety. The obstacle to sending more men is the fact that our armed forces don't have more men to send.

The military drawdown of the 1990's sapped our military of the manpower needed to conduct a major theatre war like Iraq. I suspect that the Iraq war planners knew this, and that's why they never committed a sufficient number of men to police postwar Iraq. It's also why the generals refuse to ask for more men.

We could go about increasing the size of the Army, a move I support 110%. The question is how best to fill those extra spots. I think the recruiting difficulties we've faced are exaggerated, but still real. The controversial neo-con thinker Max Boot offers the proposal to integrate more immigrants into the armed forces, in exchange for citizenship. While I think his plan should be a last resort, it's a more favorable option than reinstating the draft or significant force reductions in Iraq.

An ignored option is to pull members of the Air Force and stick them in the Army. With the Air Force's role in counter-insurgency warfare declining, the service is reducing its budgets and its manpower levels. People are being forced out left and right. Yet right now it is very difficult, under Pentagon rules, for an Airman to become a Soldier.

If the US wishes to prevail in Iraq and avoid a repeat of Vietnam, it has to face reality: its force levels in Iraq are insufficient, the size of America's army is unable to meet the demands placed on the Army, and we need to get serious about fixing this.

The president's speech at Fort Bragg was undoubtedly a necessary step towards shopring support for our mission in Iraq on the homefront. However, if the president feels that one speech will solve his problems, he is sorely mistaken.

The greatest weakness I see in President Bush is his speaking abilities. He doesn't speak to the public often enough. When he does, he often delivers repetitive and simplistically-worded speeches that are often filled with "the smirk" and unwanted, "Bring 'em on"-style retorts.

At the same time, the president needs to keep a muzzle on his vice president. Dick Cheney may be leaps and bounds ahead of the president in terms of his delivery, but the substance of his speeches oftencreates a liability for the administration. When Cheney said that "the insurgency is in its last throes," the Democrats were quick to adopt the mantra that the White House wasn't being honest with the American people. The reality of the "credibility gap" is that the President and Secretary Rumsfeld haven't said anything that contradicts the assessment of the military commanders. But as long as Dick Cheney's bold and unsubstantiated claims are on the record, the Democrats will be able to evoke the spectre of the Vietnam credibility gap.

In spite of my dispute with "The New Deal," I greatly admire Franklin Roosevelt's wartime leadership. His ability to keep public morale high during the second world war came in part from his direct and effective communication with the Amerrican people. President Bush needs to take a page from the book of FDR and give the American people "Fireside Chats" on a routine basis (at least once per month) to preserve support for our mission in Iraq.

The administration has never leveled with the American people about what I suspect is the philosophy behind deposing Saddam and democratizing Iraq. The White House views the middle east as a struggle between two equally-disgusting political movements: corrupt tyrants like the house of Saud, and Islamic militants like Osama bin Laden. Our goal in Iraq is to remove the region's most awful tyrant and replace him with a third political alternative for the region: representative, republican government. Iraq is supposed to be a model for reform throughout the region. Perhaps it will work, and perhaps it won't. We'll never know unless we see this noble experiment through until the very end. If we don't pursue it, we can look forward to the rise of militant Islam as the corrupt tyrannies crumble from the inside, as we are seeing with the house of Saud.

The larger strategy behind our policies in Iraq and Afghanistan has been lost on the public, who could care less if Iraq becomes a beacon of democracy for the region. The specific target of the "beacon of democracy" is Iran. Nation-building in Iraq and Afghanistan puts Iran in a vice, which the administration hopes will topple the despotic regime in Iran and end its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

At this point, the Bush administation has only said things like "Saddam was a threat" and "fight the terrorists in Iraq before they come here." At the same time, the left-wing pundits are too dumb to figure out what the real agenda is. So we have the Bush people making weak arguments and the president's enemies setting them on fire. The problem with strawman arguments is that they hurt you when the public doesn't know what your real arguments are.

The first fireside chat should explain to the American people what our fundamental philosophy in this global terror war really is. We view democracy as an antidote to fundamentalism and totalitarianism. We also know that terrorists choose their tactics because these methods have worked in the past. We must not reward terrorists for their actions by changing our policies. We must never show weakness in the face of terrorists, because (to borrow the wisest observation of our vice president) terrorists attack our weaknesses, not our strengths.

Further fireside chats must inform Americans about the progress and good works we are making in Iraq and Afghanistan. Otherwise, Americans will listen to douches like Joe Galloway and conclude that there is no progress in Iraq or Afghanistan. The president must also level with us about the evolving challenges and what our strategy is for overcoming them. Assessments from military commanders would also bolster the president's case.

In spite of the energy this administration is expending on fighting our jihadist enemies, it is currently surrendering the media war to the left-wing pundits and Jihadist TV stations. To make up for the lost ground, an all-out media assault is vital to our victory.