| May 28, 2007 Edition |
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Steel, ground zero, 9/11, Pataki, Freedom Tower, Brian LyonsEsquireTwo hundred thousand tons of steel went into making the World Trade Center's Twin Towers. Almost six years after 9/11, ground zero, barren until now and buffeted by politics, greed, and grief, is once again filling up with steel. A new skyscraper is going up. The fourth in a series of exclusive reports. Governor Pataki, the Father of the Freedom Tower, is running late -- twenty minutes, plus or minus five long years -- not that it matters any on this fine December morning. A lanky, whey-faced, round-shouldered man with all the charisma of a poached egg, he's still head honcho of New York State for two more weeks, and this is a special day: George Pataki's last giddyap at ground zero. So what the hey -- they'll wait. They -- the work crews, machines, and media -- are, yes, waiting. Rock anchors, 165 of them, have been set -- long, tensioned three-inch-diameter steel rods lanced and grouted eighty feet deep into 120-ton bedrock -- and twelve hundred cubic yards and more of concrete have been poured over curving rebar cages, forming a part of the four-foot-thick shear walls that'll define the Freedom Tower's perimeter and help bear the load as the structure itself climbs, column by column, 1,776 feet into the blue. The climb starts here, in a sixteen-acre pit seventy feet below street level, in the northwest quadrant of the Manhattan plain where, once, the World Trade Center stood. The climbing, in fact, starts this morning, when George Pataki arrives, at last, after five years and three months of empty promises and endless posturing, of milking mass murder for the sake of politics, of multibillion-dollar real estate hardball, engineering savvy, and knuckle-busting work -- and, above all, after five years and three months of stunning stupidity. It was never going to be a quick and easy job. Even before Pataki picked a rebuilding plan drawn up by an architect who'd never built a building taller than four stories, a plan that placed the tallest building on the site at its toughest spot to build on and put it so close to an eight-lane highway that the NYPD insisted that it be moved and redesigned for safety's sake, wasting another year; even before Pataki, wanting a legacy, named it Freedom Tower -- the NYPD just loved that -- and before deciding that it, not a memorial, would be the first thing built at ground zero, and before vowing that it would be topped off by September 11, 2006. Even before all that, it was going to be a slog. Because that's how a superskyscraper gets designed, engineered, and built under the best circumstances: slowly, precisely, one step at a time. And that's why today truly is so special: Today, they're planting Freedom Tower steel. Full Story |
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| QUOTE OF THE WEEK |
| A man does what he must - in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures - and that is the basis of all human morality. John F. Kennedy |
| PROFESSIONAL ARTICLES, EDITORIALS AND OPINIONS |
Liberal Hawks, an Endangered SpeciesWhat Iraq has done to the interventionists of the Democratic party.Weekly StandardMatthew Continetti There once was a political subspecies known as the liberal Iraq hawk. These were liberals who saw American interests and ideals at stake in the future of Iraq, and who believed in presidential leadership in waging war. Relatively few in number, the liberal Iraq hawks nonetheless tended to be opinion leaders. Some worked in think tanks or at policy journals, and wrote articles and books in support of the war. Some served in Congress, and voted to authorize and finance it. Democrats in the broader electorate paid attention to the liberal Iraq hawks, and when the war came, and America invaded Iraq, support for intervention among Democrats stood at more than 50 percent. Not for long. The American-led coalition toppled Saddam's regime only to discover there were no weapons of mass destruction. Baathists, assorted Sunni insurgents, and soon al Qaeda in Iraq began attacking American troops. Saddam was still missing. The Iraqi democratic process was stalled. Back home, the 2004 presidential campaign was underway. The liberal Iraq hawks started moving away from the war, criticizing the decision to fight and the Bush administration's incompetence. And the public followed the liberal Iraq hawks' lead. Support for the war among Democrats plummeted, and even the capture of Saddam on December 13, 2003, failed to revive it. In March 2004 it stood at around 30 percent. By September 2004 it had dropped to around 20 percent. It was all downhill from there. One by one the liberal Iraq hawks died out. They backed away from Iraq, inch by inch, until they could no longer support an American presence in that embattled country. In November 2005, Jack Murtha, who had voted for the war, pronounced that it was lost and that American troops should return home as quickly as possible. In 2006 the most prominent and consistent liberal Iraq hawk, Joe Lieberman, lost his state party's primary to antiwar challenger Ned Lamont. So far in 2007, Congress has passed an emergency defense supplemental appropriation bill mandating that troops begin withdrawing from Iraq by October 1. Senate majority leader Harry Reid has said Murtha is right and America has lost in Iraq. The most famous liberal Iraq hawk, British prime minister Tony Blair, has announced he will retire from office on June 27. Full Story Broken Borders, Broken PromisesWashington PostGeorge F. Will Compromise is incessantly praised, and it has produced the proposed immigration legislation. But compromise is the mother of complexity, which, regarding immigration, virtually guarantees -- as the public understands -- weak enforcement and noncompliance. Although the compromise was announced the day the Census Bureau reported that there now are 100 million nonwhites in America, Americans are skeptical about the legislation, but not because they have suddenly succumbed to nativism. Rather, the public has slowly come to the conclusion that the government cannot be trusted to mean what it says about immigration. In 1986, when there probably were 3 million to 5 million illegal immigrants, Americans accepted an amnesty because they were promised that border control would promptly follow. Today the 12 million illegal immigrants, 60 percent of whom have been here five or more years, are as numerous as Pennsylvanians; 44 states have populations smaller than 12 million. Deporting the 12 million would require police resources and methods from which the nation would rightly flinch. So, why not leave bad enough alone? Concentrate on border control and on workplace enforcement facilitated by a biometric identification card issued to immigrants who are or will arrive here legally. Treat the problem of the 12 million with benign neglect. Their children born here are American citizens; the parents of these children will pass away. Under current immigration policies, America is importing another underclass, one "with the potential to expand indefinitely," according to Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. To sentimentalists who cling to "the myth of the redeeming power of Hispanic family values, the Hispanic work ethic, and Hispanic virtue," she says: Full Story E-Mails Reveal a Fallen Soldier's StoryUS News and World ReportAlex Kingsbury Four days before his death, Army Staff Sgt. Darrell Ray Griffin Jr., an infantry squad leader in Baghdad, sent an E-mail to his wife, Diana. "Spartan women of Greece used to tell their husbands, before they went into battle, to come back with their shields or laying on them, dying honorably in battle. But if they did not return with their shield, this showed that they ran away from the battle. Cowardice was not a Spartan virtue ... Tell me that you love me the same by me coming back with my shield or on it." A few days later, Diana replied. "Are you ok??? I haven't heard from you since Sunday and it is now Wednesday ... I know you said you were going on a dangerous mission ... I get so nervous when I don't hear from you ... phone call or e-mail ... I just hope and pray your ok honey ... " It was an E-mail Griffin would never read. As the Baghdad security plan draws thousands more troops into densely populated parts of the Iraqi capital, the danger from roadside bombs and small-arms fire grows exponentially. The city has now surpassed Anbar province as the deadliest region for U.S. troops. Since the war began, more than 3,370 American soldiers and marines have been killed and more than 25,000 wounded in Iraq, and, in terms of American casualties, the past six months have been the costliest of the war. American commanders say they expect casualties to increase in the next three months. Full Story |
| BREAKING NEWS FOR THE PROFESSIONAL |
After the SurgeThe Administration Floats Ideas for a New Approach in IraqWashington PostDavid Ignatius President Bush and his senior military and foreign policy advisers are beginning to discuss a "post-surge" strategy for Iraq that they hope could gain bipartisan political support. The new policy would focus on training and advising Iraqi troops rather than the broader goal of achieving a political reconciliation in Iraq, which senior officials recognize may be unachievable within the time available. The revamped policy, as outlined by senior administration officials, would be premised on the idea that, as the current surge of U.S. troops succeeds in reducing sectarian violence, America's role will be increasingly to help prepare the Iraqi military to take greater responsibility for securing the country. "Sectarian violence is not a problem we can fix," said one senior official. "The Iraqi government needs to show that it can take control of the capital." U.S. officials offer a somber evaluation of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki: His Shiite-dominated government is weak and sectarian, but they have concluded that, going forward, there is no practical alternative. Full Story Is al-Qaeda on the Run in Iraq?TimeJoe Klein There is good news from Iraq, believe it or not. It comes from the most unlikely place: Anbar province, home of the Sunni insurgency. The level of violence has plummeted in recent weeks. An alliance of U.S. troops and local tribes has been very effective in moving against the al-Qaeda foreign fighters. A senior U.S. military official told me - confirming reports from several other sources - that there have been "a couple of days recently during which there were zero effective attacks and less than 10 attacks overall in the province (keep in mind that an attack can be as little as one round fired). This is a result of sheiks stepping up and opposing AQI [al-Qaeda in Iraq] and volunteering their young men to serve in the police and army units there." The success in Anbar has led sheiks in at least two other Sunni-dominated provinces, Nineveh and Salahaddin, to ask for similar alliances against the foreign fighters. And, as TIME's Bobby Ghosh has reported, an influential leader of the Sunni insurgency, Harith al-Dari, has turned against al-Qaeda as well. It is possible that al-Qaeda is being rejected like a mismatched liver transplant by the body of the Iraqi insurgency. The good news comes with caveats, of course. The removal of AQI's havens in Anbar may ultimately hurt the terrorists' ability to blow up markets in Baghdad, but it hasn't yet. As I reported in September 2005, there is also the scandalous reality that an alliance with the tribes was proposed by U.S. Army intelligence officers as early as October 2003 and rejected by L. Paul Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority on the grounds that "tribes are part of the past. Full Story The U.S. Seen Through Muslim EyesThomas OmestadUS News and World Report When it comes to renovating America's image in the greater Islamic world, the news is not getting any better. An extensive, new public opinion survey conducted in four predominantly Muslim countries finds not only that hard feelings toward the United States' global role persist but that something more ominous is happening as well: Large majorities believe that the United States is in some kind of a war against Islam itself. Roughly 8 in 10 people surveyed in Egypt, Indonesia, Morocco, and Pakistan agreed that the United States is trying to "weaken and divide the Islamic world." Bush administration officials, including the president, have frequently said that they are doing nothing of the sort, and that they respect Islam as a great religion. These views are particularly troubling since they come from four countries that, traditionally, have had good relations with the United States and that play an outsize role in the politics of the Islamic world. Full Story How terrorism finds root in the WestChristian Science MonitorJohn K. Cooley It's conventional wisdom that Middle Eastern, North African, and South Asian terrorists attack Western societies partly as reactions to conflicts in their own regions, such as the Palestinian-Israeli strife. But there's plenty of evidence that extremist ideologies, even if born abroad, are often nurtured in the West. New French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his advisers and supporters in the academic world realize this. It's why they recommend that France, Britain, and their European neighbors strengthen integration of their Muslim and other immigrant populations - in the way, for example, that millions of Arab-Americans, Iranian-Americans, and Hispanics have been helped to be successful members of US society. Leading French Islamic expert Olivier Roy has pointed out what this journalist has experienced over decades of reporting: Domestic extremism in North Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia isn't just domestic. Sometimes it even originates or is nourished in the West. Full Story The Counterinsurgency Fight: Think Globally, Lose LocallyWashington PostJames T. Quinlivan and Bruce R. Nardulli For nearly 50 years, many Americans saw the communist states as a vast monolith, able to act as one in the service of a single unified doctrine. Because that monolith was able to reach anywhere in its attack on democracy, America's leaders believed it needed to be confronted everywhere. As a result, the United States tried to confront the monolith around the globe at immense expense in blood and treasure. In retrospect, that view and the policies it led to were mistaken in many ways. Beneath the flag of international communism marched a motley array of nations, parties and personalities with a welter of conflicting beliefs, interests and loyalties, most united only in their dependence on the Soviet Union or the People's Republic of China. Sometimes -- very occasionally -- they could act in concert. More often, they could lend empty rhetorical support to political causes as a coalition of those wanting to appear willing while not acting. The United States was least successful in dealing with Global Communism when America approached it as a monolithic opponent. The U.S. was most successful when it developed a sense of the nuances that differentiated the interests of the communist states and worked to exploit those differences by dealing with the special features and needs of each country individually. Full Story |
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The Link Between Lebanon and GazaTimeRobert Baer Talk about the heart of darkness: The Israeli army shelling the Palestinians in Gaza, the Lebanese army bombarding the Palestinians in a refugee camp outside of Tripoli. It may take a while for the smoke to clear, but one thing is for certain: neither Lebanon nor Israel fully understands their enemy and the nature of the relationship between the Palestinians and al-Qaeda, which is strengthening. The hope is that overwhelming military firepower will defeat unbendable faith, and, for our part, let's hope they have better success than we've had in Iraq Lebanon's government would like us to believe Fatah Islam started the fighting there on Sunday on the orders of Damascus. I hope they know better. Whether Syria is providing tactical help or not, at the end of the day Fatah Islam is the Syrian regime's mortal enemy. If the fighting were to somehow lead to an all-out civil war, Syrian stability will be undermined. Lebanon has had a Sunni fundamentalist element in the north for more than 25 years. As I've written before in this column, the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood used northern Lebanon as a rear base to seize the Syrian city of Hama in 1982. Lebanese Sunni, including fundamentalist Palestinians, were instrumental in the attack. In 2000, a Qaeda-affiliated group in northern Lebanon attacked the Lebanese army. Iraq and Afghanistan have only exacerbated the problem. Full Story Sadr Back in Iraq, U.S. Generals SayNewsweekOwen Matthews and Anna Nemtsova Moqtada al-Sadr, the influential Shiite cleric and militia leader who went into hiding before the launch of a U.S.-Iraqi security offensive in February, is in the southern city of Kufa, senior U.S. military commanders said Thursday. Sadr, who has long opposed the U.S. occupation and is ratcheting up pressure for a withdrawal of American troops from Iraq, has returned from neighboring Iran, perhaps as recently as this week, they said. "He's been very quiet since he's come back," said Maj. Gen. Joseph F. Fil Jr., commander of the U.S. Army's 1st Cavalry Division, which is spearheading the offensive in and around Baghdad, now in its fourth month. Sadr's aides said their leader has remained in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, adjacent to Kufa. Sadr's movement is wooing Sunni leaders and purging extremists in his Mahdi Army militia in an attempt to strengthen his image as a nationalist who can lead all Iraqis at a time when antiwar sentiments are growing in the United States and Iraq's political landscape is increasingly fractured. Full Story U.S. Pays Pakistan to Fight Terror, but Patrols EbbNew York TimesDavid E. Sanger and David Rhode The United States is continuing to make large payments of roughly $1 billion a year to Pakistan for what it calls reimbursements to the country's military for conducting counterterrorism efforts along the border with Afghanistan, even though Pakistan's president decided eight months ago to slash patrols through the area where Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters are most active. The monthly payments, called coalition support funds, are not widely advertised. Buried in public budget numbers, the payments are intended to reimburse Pakistan's military for the cost of the operations. So far, Pakistan has received more than $5.6 billion under the program over five years, more than half of the total aid the United States has sent to the country since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, not counting covert funds. Some American military officials in the region have recommended that the money be tied to Pakistan's performance in pursuing Al Qaeda and keeping the Taliban from gaining a haven from which to attack the government of Afghanistan. American officials have been surprised by the speed at which both organizations have gained strength in the past year. Full Story Iran's nuclear plans are advancing, admits IAEATimes OnlineSam Knight Iran is expanding its nuclear programme and the ability of international inspectors to monitor its activities is deteriorating, according to a confidential report from the world's nuclear watchdog. The White House described the latest International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report as "a laundry list of Iran's continued defiance of the international community" while diplomats expressed concern that Tehran's nuclear capability was now reaching the point of no return. Nine months after the UN Security Council first ordered Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment, and one day before a second deadline to halt the programme, the IAEA admitted that Tehran was now closer to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's boast of "industrial scale" uranium enrichment than before. Equally troubling for the IAEA was its diminishing power to monitor Iran's nuclear activities, with the agency's director, Mohammed ElBaradei admitting that inspectors have a "deteriorating" understanding of unexplored aspects of the programme. Full Story US crime rises as police focus on terrorReutersAfter a night of dancing, Chiara Levin was shot in the head by a stray bullet from a gunfight as she sat in a Cadillac sport utility vehicle. Hours later she was dead. The killing of the 22-year-old Kentucky native, who recently graduated university with honours, in a tough neighborhood in Boston's Dorchester district on March 24 sparked weeks of outcry in a city where the murder rate neared a 10-year high last year. Like Boston, many US cities are struggling to stem a wave of violent crime and murder that has raised questions of whether police are fighting terrorism at the expense of street crime, and whether a widening wealth gap feeds the problem. "We're at a tipping point in violent crime in many cities," said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a Washington-based law enforcement think tank that released data in March showing the murder rate rising by more than 10 percent in dozens of big US cities since 2004. Full Story |
| TACTICAL TRAINING & INTELLIGENCE RESOURCES FOR THE PROFESSIONAL |
Mirror Image Training: Training to Combat TerrorismMirror Image is a tactical and strategic training course developed and owned by the Terrorism Research Center. TRC instructors have trained hundreds of military personnel that are subsequently deployed to active combat operations, as well as large numbers of first responders, law enforcement, and security professionals. Mirror Image is an intensive one-week classroom and field-training program, designed to realistically simulate terrorist recruiting, training techniques, and operational tactics. During the course, participants will receive insight into the mindset and rationale of the terrorist through hands-on experience with the methods and means terrorist employ, education about terrorist ideologies and the cultural dimensions that influence their decision making process. Military, law enforcement, intelligence, and security professionals will, in turn, be able to see themselves as the terrorists see them and understand the weaknesses in their own environment that the terrorists will seek to exploit, and which all too often they miss. Armed with these insights participants will leave the course better able to anticipate, prevent and respond to multiple terrorist threats. June 17-22, 2007: Blackwater Training Center, Moyock, NC A detailed brochure may be downloaded at: www.terrorism.com Questions on TRC training, please contact Betty O'Hearns-Hines, Training Coordinator for the Terrorism Research Center. Email: betty@terrorism.com Phone: (727)360-4302 voice or (727)409-1754 The Responder Knowledge Base: An Invaluable Guide for Emergency RespondersThe administrative details of emergency response are taxing on our nation's law enforcement, firefighter, and EMS personnel. Time is lost mulling over the details of responder equipment, government grants, recommended training, etc...The Responder Knowledge Base (RKB) was created to help relieve this logistical burden. Funded by the Department of Homeland security through the National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism, the mission of this free service is "To provide Emergency Responders, purchasers, and planners with a trusted, integrated, on-line source of information on products, standards, certifications, grants, and other equipment-related information." In collaboration with the InterAgency Board (IAB) and subject matter experts, the RKB has established an online "first-stop" for responders, collating information from sources once scattered though numerous cumbersome databases. Content includes the DHS Authorized Equipment List, the IAB Standardized Equipment List, nearly 4,000 products, operational suitability testing for hundreds of products, the results of the DHS radiation detector testing, a decontamination efficacy matrix, Lessons Learned and Information Sharing documents, Homeland Security Grant Program information, responder training, and more. The ability to "Ask an Expert" on the RKB provides responders with a reliable resource for all responder-related questions. Additionally, the ability of RKB users to provide offline "User Opinions" helps further increase the utility of the RKB. With its vast content and sophisticated integration scheme, the RKB succeeds in helping responders answer all their equipment related needs.Please register with the RKB at www.rkb.mipt.org View the IAB website at www.iab.gov | |
| FRANKS REVIEW |
Tactical Equipment EvaluationTrain Your Brain: “Combat Focus Shooting” by Rob PincusIt was interesting, not that long ago, to see a fellow writer refer to a book as "software for the brain". Quite so. No matter how good our hardware (body) is, or how competent we are with our tools, if the software is faulty then the system will fail - eventually. At about the same time as I heard that statement from the fellow writer I also received the book that is the subject of this week's review: Rob Pincus' "Combat Focus Shooting: Intuitive Shooting Fundamentals." Let me first delve into the structure of the book and then I'll offer up my subjective opinion. Full Story Can Be Viewed At: http://www.borelliconsulting.com/evals/other/cfshooting.htm Recreational Equipment ReviewThe Poncho HoochNew SCUBA Gear for 2007With spring having arrived several weeks ago, I've had that "go get in the water" itch. My wife (usual dive buddy) and I have been into the local dive shop several times. The itch is getting worse. I was in there today chatting with the owner / operator about some new gear that's been released for 2007 and it occurred to me that the readers might be interested in some of this stuff too. Bear in mind as you read this that I've not tried out this gear... yet. Full Story Can Be Viewed At: http://www.borelliconsulting.com/recevals/scuba/new07.htm |
| CHAPLAINS CORNER |
MEMORIAL..If we do not remember where we have been and learn from the past we will lose our way... Then we will repeat all of the errors of past civilizations and countries.As I walked my assigned area of patrol yesterday I read the signs erected along our Boardwalk giving the historical details of our wars and memorable battles. As I absorbed each message and set of details I became more and more thankful that we are here in this nation and in this time... and that we are who we are. I was greeted yesterday by many who have served in keeping the peace in times past and I noted that in each life I could see the marks of the cost if I looked closely. I was greeted by some to whom I had ministered in the more difficult times of their past and it was good to see that they were doing better... but their better was still far from where they would like to be and deserve to be both in economics and in health.... May we as a nation find more and better ways to assist our veterans. Full Story Can Be Viewed At:http://www.blackwaterusa.com/btw2007/article/052807chaplain.htm |
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