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how the colombians freed betancourt

For those of you following the story of the dramatic hostage rescue in Colombia last week, you may wonder how a government helicopter snuck into a leftist rebel camp armed to the teeth. Well, they disguised themselves as members of an NGO.

Since the late 1990s, the NGO practice of dragging the military into court on allegations of human rights violations has destroyed the careers of some of the country\'s finest officers, even though most of these men were found innocent after years of proceedings. \"Judicial warfare\" turned out to be especially effective because under legislation pushed by Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, \"credible\" charges against officers put at risk U.S. military aid unless the accused was removed. The NGOs knew that they only had to point fingers to get rid of an effective leader and demoralize the ranks. Given this history, it\'s not surprising that the FARC thought a helicopter from an NGO was perfectly natural.

Well, in a sense, I suppose we can thank the human rights organizations that make a living out of keeping Colombians in terror, in the interest of the safety of their fellow travelers.

the costs of NOT dropping the atomic bombs

From Wikipedia’s entry for Operation Downfall, the plan for the invasion of Japan:

Nearly 500,000 Purple Heart medals were manufactured in anticipation of the casualties resulting from the invasion of Japan. To the present date, all the American military casualties of the sixty years following the end of World War II — including the Korean and Vietnam Wars — have not exceeded that number. In 2003, there were still 120,000 of these Purple Heart medals in stock.[45] There are so many in surplus that combat units in Iraq and Afghanistan are able to keep Purple Hearts on-hand for immediate award to wounded soldiers on the field.[45]

about those imaginary iraqi terror links

Surprise! Saddam Hussein had links to terrorist organizations. You need a moment? It’s okay. I’ll wait.
. . .
Project Harmony, which is sifting through hundreds of thousands of captured documents from the previous regime, released a report on the various links that Ba’athist Iraq provided training, intelligence, or materiel to groups as diverse as:
* Hamas;
* The Army of Muhammad–a Bahraini terror group linked to Osama bin Laden;
* The Egyptian Islamic Jihad;
* The Palestinian Liberation Front, in addition to Yasser Arafat’s goons;
* Islamists in Somalia, where al-Qaeda was fighting against a US humanitarian mission;
* Sudanese fighters–how about that Darfur, eh?
But, hey, we could’ve just hugged ourselves out of those strategic dangers.

a peek inside the NSC

Duke professor Peter Feaver writes a fascinating article in Commentary magazine about the shift in the administration’s Iraq policy during his two-year tenure from 2005 – 2007. It’s an interesting look into the process of formulating a policy and watching hundreds of opportunistic leaders do their best to rip it to shreds. Those influenced by candidates because they can “talk change” would do well to read this article.

This new and different strategy, now called the “surge” but at one point called by insiders the “bridge,” emerged out of a growing recognition over 2006 that our critics were right about one thing: our Iraq policy was not working. At the same time, however, and whether knowingly or ignorantly, many of those same critics were insisting that the answer lay in pursuing precisely the same strategy we already had in place. That is, they were telling us that we needed (a) to push Iraqi government officials to come together politically and (b) to train Iraqi troops so that they could take over from American forces. We had been doing exactly these things for a year, and we had been driven to the brink.

In fairness, Feaver does leave out the parts about lighting evil cigars with hundred-dollar bills, playing evil darts using Iraqi prisoners as dartboards, and twirling their evil Snively Whiplash mustaches.