HT LGF via Allah at Hotair

RBT has been thinking the samething. Gee now that the big guns are thinking the samething do you suppose the LL and the MSM will begin to report this thread?

I'm not holding my breath.

RBT

*****

Lewis: Ahmadinejad Believes His Apocalyptic Language

At a recent event at the Pew Forum, Professor Bernard Lewis answers a question about Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: Islam and the West: A Conversation with Bernard Lewis.

[...]

MR. LEWIS: I am inclined to believe in the sincerity of Ahmadinejad. I think that he really believes the apocalyptic language that he is using. Remember that Muslims, like Christians and Jews, have a sort of end-of-time scenario in which a Messianic figure will appear. In their case, in the case of the Shiites, the hidden imam who will emerge from hiding, who will fight against the powers of evil, the anti-Christ in Christianity, Gog and Magog in Judaism, and the Dajjal in Islam, a role in which we are being cast now. And he really seems to believe that the apocalyptic age has come, that this is the final struggle that will lead to the final victory and the establishment of the kingdom of heaven on earth.

[...]

I think it is a dangerous situation. And my only hope is that they are not right in their interpretation of the Western world. I have often thought in recently years of World War II — you were told earlier that I’m ancient myself. The most vividly remembered year of my life was the year 1940. And more recently I have been thinking of 1938 rather than of 1940. We seem to be in the mode of Chamberlain and Munich rather than of Churchill.

READ IT ALL

SEE UPDATES BELOW

Good updating sites on this story in the Blogos

Allahpundit at Hotair.com
All Things Beautiful

Others now saying this story is false. OK let's invoke the twenty minute rule of the Blogos and see how this story developes.

RBT

*****

HT Ken Timmerman of FDI and Pajamas Media

It's beginning to look alot like 1938 to the tune of, It's beginning to look like Christmas.

This just in from Kenneth Timmerman, executive director of the Foundation for Democracy in Iran. Timmerman is also an author and reporter.

Time to call a spade a spade. See PJM re the Nazi weren't the first to start badging the Jews.

OK - Enough is Enough! There is no moral equivalency for Islamofascism. This is pure Evil.


RBT

*****

FDI: Iranian Majles to require badges for Jews, Christians

May 19, 2006:The Islamic Republic Majles, or Consultative Counsel, this week ">passed a law that would require Christians and Jews to wear a special badge, reminiscent of the yellow star Nazi Germany and Vichy France imposed on Jews during the 1930s and 1940s. "This is reminiscent of the Holocaust," said Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. Hier predicted that the law, which now must be approved by the Supreme Leader and the Council of Guardians, "will certainly pass unless there's some sort of international outcry."

Read More at www.iran.org

*****

Iran: Badges For Jews

[...]

The first world leader to require Jews to wear distinctive badges (a yellow belt and a yellow conical "dunce" cap) was Haroun al-Rashid, the Abbasid caliph, who ruled in Baghdad in the era of Charlemagne, the late 700s and early 800s.

Haroun's idea was later copied by the popes, but long after it vanished from the Christian world it endured in Islamic countries. Even in our own time, one of the final acts of the Taliban in Afghanistan was to attempt to enforce a distinctive badge on that country's Hindu minority.

Read More

Update:

Michelle and Allahpundit are all over this at Hot Air

Atlas, the Blogos Super Babe, has her usual straight talking remarks on this new emergence of Evil in the world.

What's next - fire up the ovens?

RBT says before we too are herded into the ovens, IT'S TIME TO ROLL and take out these SOBs!

Update II:

HT Israpundit via Michelle:

The New 940 Montreal

Iran report of Holocaust-style badges questioned
2006-05-19 12:01:29

The National Post is sending shockwaves across the country this morning with a report that Iran's Parliament has passed a law requiring mandatory Holocaust style badges to identify Jews and Christians.
But independent reporter Meir Javedanfar, an Israeli Middle East expert who was born and raised in Tehran, says the report is false.
"It's absolutely factually incorrect," he told The New 940 Montreal.
"Nowhere in the law is there any talk of Jews and Christians having to wear different colours. I've checked it with sources both inside Iran and outside."
"The Iranian people would never stand for it. The Iranian government wouldn't be stupid enough to do it."
Political commentator and 940 Montreal host Beryl Waysman says the report is true, that the law was passed two years ago.
"Jews should wear yellow strips, Christians red strips, because according to the Iranian mullahs, if a Mulsim shakes hands with a non-Muslim he becomes unclean."

The National Post cites Iranian expatriots living in Canada as its primary source on the story.
The Post story can be read here:

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=11fbf4a8-282a-4d18-954f-546709b1240f&k=32073

New 940 Montreal Link

Update III:

Kenneth Timmerman just posted these updates to his original post:

UPI reported from Tehran that the Majles passed the law this week."This law recalls the Holocaust immediately to mind when Jews were forced to wear distinctive yellow Stars of David on their clothes," said American Jewish Congress Executive Director Neil Goldstein.

[...]

Sam Kermanian, of the Iranian Jewish Federation in Los Angeles, urged Jewish activists to caution in a mass email today. "So far the two reports we managed to obtain from our own independent sources from inside the country suggest that the original reports are false," he wrote. "Both Mr. Morris Motamed the Jewish member of the Iranian Parliament and Mr Parviz Yeshaya the former head of the community have strongly denied the reports."

Stay tuned....

Note: Mr. Kermanian has acknowledged to FDI that he currently does business in Tehran, but says that he has received a "waiver" from the Treasury Department to sanction his commercial activities.

www.iran.org

*****

Dr. Zin is on this story and will updating shortly

RBT just got off the phone with Dr. Zin of Regime Change Iran who was about to board a plane to return home from DC. He said he will be posting further on this story when he gets back home.

Dr. Zin said he first learned of this in 2004. Dr. Zin' sources have said until recently this has been in the context of a discussion on an Islamic appropriate dress code. The last he heard was it was't in writing but was making it's way through the lower levels of what serves as the Irainian legislative process. [ed note: A stacked deck :--)]

Dr. Zin said the President Ahmadinejad is in support of this dress code. Dr. Zin doesn't know if there is enough agreement to pass and implement it.

Stay tuned as Kenneth Timmerman said . . .

RBT

Update IV:

The Great One Allahpundit himself is on this over at Hotair.com and is posting regular updates as they come in.

I will defer to his diggings on this story. I've got a lot of domestic things to do like pack up the entire house that is set to close next Wednesday.

If Dr. Zin provides me with some more insightful info I will post more.

So for now go to Hot Air for further info on this developing story.

Update V:

HT Kenneth Timmeran

This is more in line with what Dr. Zin told RBT.

Also Alexandria at All Things Beautiful has extensive updates on this story.


*****

ADL Statement on Unconfirmed Reports of Iranian 'Dress Code'

New York, NY, May 19, 2006 … The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today issued the following statement in response to unconfirmed reports that the Iranian parliament may be considering a "dress code" bill that would include badges or other identifying marks for non-Muslims:

While it is factual that the Iranian parliament is considering some kind of dress code, there is no evidence of any discussion or legislation concerning badges or the like for Jews and others. Clearly, dress codes imposed by a government on a people are one more example of the backwardness of the regime, and would be unhealthy for all groups, including minorities. How this could affect Jews, Christians and other minorities is not immediately known.

We will continue to monitor the situation in Iran as this story develops and will make further comment when more information about the proposed Iranian law comes to light.

ADL Link

Update VI:

Powerline has this new info since yst worth a read:

Covering Iran

Today, the news starts to seep into the American press. Many papers, like the New York Times and Minneapolis Star Tribune, confined their coverage to an Associated Press story by Tarek al-Issawi headlined "Iranian Lawmakers Debate Women's Clothing." The AP story notes the National Post report, but goes on to debunk it by quoting three Iranian sources, all of whom declare that it is false.

The New York Post, on the other hand, features a column by Amir Taheri that includes details on the law that I haven't seen anywhere else:

According to Ahmadinejad, the new Islamic uniforms will establish "visual equality" for Iranians as they prepare for the return of the Hidden Imam. A committee that consists of members from the Ministry of Islamic Orientation, the Ministry of Commerce and the Cultural Subcommittee of the Islamic Majlis is scheduled to propose the new uniforms by next autumn. These would then have to be approved by "Supreme Guide" Ali Khamenei before being imposed by law.

Some Islamic experts want a kind of long, almost European-style jacket known as sardari and used in Iran for centuries. Others propose only a waistcoat.

On color schemes, however, there seems to be consensus. Islamic legislators are unanimous that Islam is incompatible with "gay, wild, provocative colors" such as red, yellow and light blue (which are supposed to be favored by Satan). The colors to be imposed by law are expected to be black, brown, dark blue and dark gray.

Religious minorities would have their own color schemes. They will also have to wear special insignia, known as zonnar, to indicate their non-Islamic faiths. Jews would be marked out with a yellow strip of cloth sewn in front of their clothes, while Christians will be assigned the color red. Zoroastrians end up with Persian blue as the color of their zonnar.

The new law imposes a total ban on wearing neckties and bow ties, which are regarded as "symbols of the Cross." Will Iranian Christians be allowed to wear them, nevertheless? No one knows.

By September, the Majlis is expected to approve an initial budget of $800 million to help "the poor and the needy" adopt the new uniforms. All public-sector workers, estimated to number 4.5 million, will be in uniform by 2009 at the latest.

[...]

Read More

Update VI:

Dr. Zin at Regime Change Iran just updated with this:

Update: There has been legislation proposed by Khatami in 2004 for a national dress, much like Mao's national dress standards early in that revolution. Ahmadinejad wants a national dress policy for Iran, but thus far it is only talk. This report, that includes identifying religious minorities with badges has NOT been part of the public debate in the past. It is possible that this will be part of the debate in the future, but the actual text of the dress code proposals do NOT include this language at this time. Ultimately, the decision on such a proposal will be in the hands of the Supreme Leader. So this story if accurate is a long way off from implementation. But it is a proposal that is consistent with the regime's paranoia about its religious minorities.

PORKBUSTING - Interesting application of using the Davids Effect to sort the wheat from the chaff. A novel way of sorting the bridges and RRs to nowhere by holding the pork proponents accountable to the people by the transparency of the net and Blogos.

This is a project of the Sunlight Foundation that appears to trend a little left of center. If this project sheds some light on these boondoggles and reduces real governmental waste, this is a benefit to all American taxpayers regardless of political leanings.

RBT

*****

POLITICAL SCENE -- Congressional pork: an online taste test
By SHARON THEIMER

WASHINGTON — There's an old Washington saying that 'pork' is in the eye of the beholder: A pet project costing thousands or even millions of tax dollars is only a waste if it's in somebody else's town.

A new group is putting that to the test, using the Internet to invite people to weigh in on pork-barrel politics.

To find out what kind of pork is being thrown around -- and what voters think about it -- the Sunlight Foundation is giving the public an assignment: Look at the projects your lawmakers are bringing home and determine whether they are much-needed bacon or plain-old, bottom-of-the-barrel pork.

The foundation helps Web surfers find local projects and rate them. Is that new multimillion-dollar bridge a road to nowhere or a good way to speed up rush-hour traffic? Is your city's new $800,000 bike trail a bonus or boondoggle?

People can post their conclusions to Sunlight's site, at http://www.sunlightfoundation.com/assignments.

Read More

or the power of the Davids Effect:

The Blogos - A Quantum Leap in Distributive Computer Networks [RBT's phrase]

See this post that was sent from a "very close confident" who wishes to remain anonymous that appeared re the avian flu (H5N1) in the Jan/Feb Issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

The bug bloggers

A brigade of self-made bird flu experts is turning the outbreak rumor mill into an online information factory.

RBT has long advocated using the Net and the Blogos to force leverage scarce public resources in matters of common interest.

RBT previously coined the phrase, Mission Focused Strategic Communications. The military has a paralleling concept - Netcentric Warfare

The Davids Effect was first summarized in Hugh Hewitt's book Blog and later refined and defined in Prof. Glenn Reynold's (Instapundit blog) newly released book, An Army of Davids.

See the links below to other applications of the Davids Effect in other human endeavors.

RBT likens the emerging Blogos to the SETI distributive parallel processing network. Only the Blogos is vastly superior in cognitive ability to see relationships/connections between diverse data points/information in real time discussions by multiple nodes in an organic adhoc neuro net. Envision the limitless parallel processing power that can be brought to bare on a problem set that can analyze it simultaneously from many perspectives and frames of reference.

In short the Blogos is comprised of many nodes - each powered by a human brain - with far superior cognitive ability to detect patterns, corellations, and connections accompanied built-in peer review and error checking.

This is a quantum leap beyond the collective processing power of all supercomputers online today.

RBT

*****

The bug bloggers

A brigade of self-made bird flu experts is turning the outbreak rumor mill into an online information factory.

[...]

By Shane Harris
January/February 2006 pp. 38-43 (vol. 62, no. 01) © 2005 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

"Unconfirmed reports that more than 120 people have died from the avian flu in western China increase concerns--and significantly raise the stakes--of a Chinese government cover-up. If true, the consequences could be grave."

So began a June 2005 e-mail dispatched by two renowned Asia watchers at the Manhattan-based Eurasia Group, a private intelligence shop that monitors the globe for impending political crises and has a history of spotting disease outbreaks before the world press. More than 100 deaths was "grave" because such a high fatality rate suggested that avian flu had mutated out of its zoonotic state (spreading among birds and livestock) and was being transmitted human-to-human: the requisite stepping-stone to a global pandemic.

The analysts discovered the China rumor during their regular scans of non-English web sites, user groups, and blogs. A Chinese-language site called Boxun.com, or Abundant News, purportedly maintained by Chinese dissidents, had initially reported the deaths. Its authors claimed the Chinese government had prohibited the media and health monitors from traveling to the outbreak site, the rural Gangcha County in China's second poorest province, Qinghai. Boxun also claimed that authorities had quarantined 1,300 others who may have been infected by the flu strain, known as H5N1, which is the pathological descendent of the 1918 strain that killed more than 600,000 people in the United States.

Beijing denied any human deaths, just as it had during previous suspected outbreaks. But this rumor was worrisome, because it followed the confirmed deaths of more than 100 migratory ducks days earlier at a nearby lake. It didn't take long for the news to spread beyond Boxun. Packs of bug bloggers--who ingest and analyze every online scrap of information about avian flu news--pounced on the report. These self-made experts, whose devotion to their online lives competes with the demands of their day jobs, were shouting from the blogosphere's rooftops long before bird flu became the mass media story du jour. Going forward, they are positioning themselves as key players in preparing for a global outbreak.

[...]

In fact, it was the SARS outbreak that revealed how effectively the online community could circumvent China's tight-lipped secrecy. In February 2003, an analyst at Intellibridge Corp.--whose assets Eurasia Group has since acquired--found a report in a Hong Kong newspaper about a mysterious respiratory virus in nearby Guangzhou, a city of more than 4 million people. The analyst sent the report to ProMED-mail, a web site and mailing list service for reports of disease outbreaks around the world, run by the International Society for Infectious Diseases. The service reaches thousands of members in more than 150 countries and is published in five languages, including Chinese. (The World Health Organization and other official sources "are constrained in their reporting by the need for bureaucratic clearance," the service informs readers. "ProMED-mail . . . has no such constraints, and posts outbreak reports seven days a week.")

[...]

In essence, and in practice, this is no different from how the bug bloggers operate. "Rumor surveillance is basically having people poised and paying attention to the environment around them," says Howard Hill, a private consultant who worked for the CDC in Atlanta for 35 years. Most recently, Hill was the senior adviser to the director of the viral diseases division, which manages CDC's flu program. "When they hear someone has an infection or a condition that's deadly, they know those people need to be treated." That's how CDC operated its sexually transmitted diseases program, in which health workers diagnosed sexually transmitted disease infection by spotting secondary characteristics, such as lesions or unusual hair loss, Hill says. "I found many cases of secondary syphilis just by being observant."

[...]

The blogs also offer something frequently missing in the governmental health world--candor. "There is a time for blunt speaking, and the blog offers that," says "Revere," a prominent public health scientist and academic who maintains the highly regarded web site Effect Measure (effectmeasure.blogspot.com). (The blogger's pseudonym is in honor of Paul Revere, who was a member of the first local board of health in the United States.) "In public, I say, 'CDC has [management] problems,'" says Revere. "On the blog I say, '[CDC director Julie] Gerberding is spineless.'" Indeed, confronted with the possibility of an imminent pandemic, Effect Measure has little tolerance for the posturing of public officials. Revere refers to the WHO as the "World Reassurance Organization," accusing it of downplaying evidence of bird flu outbreaks in Indonesia so as not to offend member governments and disrupt trade and tourism in Asia. Likewise, Effect Measure had harsh words for the European Union, which convened a 25-nation emergency summit on the bird flu in October 2005, only to have the European health commissioner declare, "The fact [that] we have avian flu in Europe does not affect the possibility of a human influenza pandemic." (An irate Revere responded: "I kinda thought that the more infected animals and the more widespread the virus, that would also, kinda, like, you know, increase the risk a little? . . . I don't know about you, but the one thing that makes me want to panic is when the leaders of 25 countries meet in emergency session and tell me not to panic.")

[...]

Bug bloggers have evolved into a "kind of human syndication service," Kilian says. They pull together and analyze information that interests them, often with a precision and institutional memory that escapes the mainstream media. While the bloggers aren't all public health experts, they certainly know more about bird flu than most of the population. And if anyone else wants to become that sophisticated, all he or she has to do is read.

To that end, prominent bloggers such as Mattson and Revere have launched the ambitious Flu Wiki (fluwikie.com). Published in four languages, Flu Wiki acts as a sort of homeland security guide for local communities on how to prepare for and cope with potential flu outbreaks. Its contributors include biologists, epidemiologists, and virologists from all over the world. The site was born out of the apparently unanimous conviction among bug bloggers that the federal government would be of little help during a pandemic--a perspective recently reinforced by Pat Libbey, the executive director of the National Association of County and City Health Officials. "Communities, in large part, will be on their own," he predicted in a recent interview.

[...]

Yet, the circular dance of information exchange can benefit both the bloggers and the media. Some bug bloggers are emerging as expert sources: Recombinomics' Niman, for instance, has been quoted by CNN, United Press International, and the Sydney Morning Herald. Establishment journalists also serve the blogs: Mattson, the Flu Wiki co-creator, says Declan Butler, the European correspondent for Nature, contributes to the blog "and sends me things on a regular basis." And when stories of avian flu show up in the mainstream press, it can drive traffic toward the blogs. After ABC News aired a segment on bird flu earlier this year, Kilian saw his traffic grow dramatically. As he described it in a post: "This was clearly due to viewers of one program, who promptly booted their computers, Googled 'H5N1,' and found my site as No. 2 out of close to two million pages."

And this may be the bug bloggers' biggest contribution to public health. While the WHO and CDC and other official bodies can go that extra mile and deploy experts to the hot zone to scientifically verify a rumor, the bloggers, who have now become as informed as most health professionals, can help the public make sense of what they're hearing and seeing. They help turn the rumor mill into an information factory. Considering that confusion and mass panic in the wake of a global pandemic of H5N1 are to be feared almost as much as the disease itself, bug bloggers are now a valuable addition to public health--the frontline correspondents in the flu war.

READ IT ALL

RBT is posting this TNR article in its entirety as he links to it here in a subsequent post. This article is available by subscription only and since it was first published in 03, hopefully TNR won't object.

This is an excellent piece and is a parallel concept to RBT's, Mission Focused Strategic Communications, that is discussed in the next post.

RBT

*****


The New Republic Online
THE BEST LAID PLANS
Size Matters
by Gregg Easterbrook
Only at TNR Online
Post date: 03.21.03

Previous Entries

As U.S. and British forces begin the assault on Iraq, approximately 250,000 soldiers are available--about half as many as were present for the Gulf war. Does this mean less force will be applied than in 1991?

First, bear in mind that while the 1991 coalition boasted 500,000 "in the theater," fewer than a third participated in the 100-hour ground offensive. The bulk of the force was held in reserve or engaged in logistics and support. Bear in mind also that air power is now more effective than in 1991, while Saddam's army is weaker.

But primarily what is at work is simple continuation of a decades-long trend toward ever-smaller fighting units with ever-more-potent weapons. As the historian and former Army captain Owen Connelly pointed out in his 2002 book On War and Leadership, Britain actually mustered significantly fewer men for World War II than for World War I, yet they fought more effectively, mainly owing to improved tanks and artillery accuracy. (Only one artillery shell in 1,000 killed a soldier during the Great War; by World War II, about 1 in 25 caused a fatality.) During the 1960s, a U.S. division had 16,000 soldiers and 5,000 vehicles. Today a brigade of about one-third that size packs the same firepower and would be expected to take and hold the same objectives once assigned to a division. Advanced armor with fire-control lasers, the advent of attack helicopters and deadly battlefield rockets such as the American MLRS, compact radars that pinpoint the exact source of enemy fire for immediate counterattack, and ever-better anti-tank guided-weapons steadily allow fewer soldiers to do what large units once did.

The U.S. military has become the most powerful in the world--arguably, the most powerful, relative to other nations, in the history of the world--during the very period when its force size has shrunk. In World War II, the United States mustered 14.7 million combatants supported by 35,000 bombers and more than 5,000 ships. Today the Pentagon calls on about 1.4 million full-time personnel (right now reservists enlarge that total) supported by fewer than 250 bombers and 500 ships. Active-duty ranks have declined by almost a million in the last 15 years alone, yet during that time the U.S. military has grown steadily stronger, both compared to its foes and in absolute terms. Fifteen years ago, the United States had at the ready 18 Army divisions and 41 tactical air wings. Today the Pentagon commands 12 divisions and 23 air wings, yet is substantially stronger.

Mainly ever-smaller U.S. forces are stronger because their weapons are ever-less-likely to miss. The current 250,000-person force arrayed against Iraq also benefits from the addition, since 1991, of "network-centric" information devices. "Netcentric" war, currently an internal Pentagon idiom, may become a common buzz phrase by, oh, next week.

In 1997, the Army conducted an "Advanced Warfighting Experiment" at its full-scale war-games facility at Fort Irwin, California. The experiment assumed that cheap new data links could allow everybody, right down to the individual soldier, to know almost everything going on in a battle. The war game showed that having everybody know everything made units far more effective, reacting quickly to problems or acting quickly to exploit enemy weaknesses.

For instance, military units often travel close together--thus commanding less territory while making a more tempting target--in order to communicate. Members of close together units can see what other members are doing, use hand signals, officers can meet to confer, and so on. In the Advanced Warfighting Experiment, units were equipped with a tactical internet that dramatically improved communication and awareness of the position of nearby forces. Tacticians realized this meant units did not have to stay close together. Once widely spread, but still acting with knowledge of each other's moves, war-game forces became much more effective. Smaller units commanded more real estate.

Seeing the results of this war game, the Pentagon made a commitment to realizing data-linked tactics. The first fruits were displayed during the Afghan campaign, during which Army and Marine soldiers on the ground communicated in detail with Air Force and Navy pilots in the air, reaching on-the-spot agreements about what to bomb. At the beginning of the Afghan conflict, target coordinates for bombs were punched in manually. By the end they were being transferred electronically, often in seconds as a ground spotter simply pointed a wand at the target he wanted hit; the wand determined the target's GPS location and beamed the data directly into the chip of the nearest available bomb. U.S. forces got so proficient at this sort of harmonization that B52 bombers would take off not knowing their objectives, fly to a general area of Afghan fighting and simply wait for ground personnel to beam up blips of bomb-settings data.

Even more netcentric apparatus will be in use during the current campaign. One new system enables all fighter pilots to see the same AWACS-generated projection of what's in the local sky. This eliminates confusion regarding who is watching whose tail, while cutting down on the elaborate radio exchanges pilots traditionally engage in about the location and behavior of other planes. Laptop-like devices will allow infantry officers to see almost immediately much of the information collected by AWACS and a newer radar plane called JSTARS; previously, surveillance data would first be transferred to the rear for analysis, not reaching active companies for hours or days. Little GPS devices similar to Blackberries will allow individual U.S. soldiers to know exactly where they are, and quite a bit about where their comrades are. Tank gunners will call up views of what gunners in other tanks see, improving coordination.

Of course data aren't bullets, and netcentric electronics surely contains a hefty dose of sales pitch. ("Cisco's 3200-series mobile wireless router card allows seamless roaming across multiple wireless networks for mission-critical internet protocol applications," the aerospace industry publication Aviation Week & Space Technology recently gushed over a new Navy gizmo.) But in 2001 a surprisingly small U.S. contingent routed the Taliban and Al Qaeda on its home turf--a place similar forces once repulsed a sustained Soviet heavy attack--in part because U.S. units held an incredible information edge. During this war, a large, heavy attacker will again hold such an edge over its opponent. That may make half as many soldiers even more effective than the coalition of 1991.

Copyright 2006, The New Republic

TNR Logo

This should be read in context with an excellent discussion thread over at WOC started by A.L. on 05-15-06:

What To Do About Iran, Indeed.

Sorry for the slow blogging of late. I've shuttled back down to So Cal. House now in escrow. Keeping fingers crossed that all will hang together until its scheduled closing at the end of the month. In the meantime stuffing boxes as fast as possible into yet another storage locker. Staging boxes yet again for another bomber run to WA with another rental truck.

Just saw this must read item over at Dr. Zin's Regime Change Iran blog.

RBT

*****

How to Stop Iran (Without Firing a Shot)

Bret Stephens, The Wall Street Journal:

What can the Bush administration do to persuade Iran's leaders that their bid to develop nuclear weapons will exact an unacceptable price on their regime? What can it do, that is, short of launching air strikes?

Begin by shelving the current approach. For three years, the administration has deferred to European and U.N. diplomacy while seeking to build consensus around the idea that a nuclear-armed Iran poses unacceptable risks to global security. The result: Seven leading Muslim states, including Pakistan and Indonesia, have joined hands with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to affirm his right to develop "peaceful" nuclear technology. China and Russia have again rejected calls for U.N. sanctions. The Europeans are again seeking to sweeten the package of technical, commercial and security incentives the mullahs rejected last year. And that's just last week's news.

Today, the international community is less intent on stopping Tehran from getting the bomb than it is on stopping Washington from stopping Tehran. That's something the administration may not be able to change. But there are steps it can take independently to alter Iran's calculations. Here are four. READ MORE

• Take the diplomatic offensive. "Western countries must push the internal conflicts inside the Iranian government," says Mehdi Khalaji, an Iranian journalist and visiting scholar at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Mr. Khalaji also urges the U.S. government to recast the content of its Farsi-language radio station, known as Radio Farda. The station's programmers, he says, "misunderstand the young generation of Iran, which is very political. The quality is not appropriate for a serious audience. The news isn't professional the way the BBC is." Offering a serious journalistic alternative to the Beeb ought to be an administration priority.

"The administration could say, 'If you halt enrichment, we can negotiate. If you stop supporting Hamas and Hezbollah, we can negotiate. If you release the following political prisoners, we can negotiate. If you stop meddling in Iraq, we can negotiate.' This would provoke a controversy inside the government. Some would say, 'OK, we can give up on these prisoners. We can back away from our relationship with Hamas. And so on.'"

• Target the regime's financial interests. "In many ways, the Islamic Republic of Iran has become the Islamic Republic of Iran, Inc.," says Afshin Molavi, the Iranian-American author of "Persian Pilgrimages." Between 30% and 50% of Iran's economy is controlled by the bunyad, so-called "Revolutionary Foundations" run by key regime figures answerable only to Mr. Khamenei. Hard-line Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, considered to be Mr. Ahmadinejad's spiritual mentor, controls the sugar monopoly, while former President Ali Rafsanjani is said to be the richest man in the country.

Since Mr. Ahmadinejad came to power, these ayatollah-oligarchs have been running for financial cover: Capital outflows from Iran surpassed the $200 billion mark in the past year alone. Much of that money has made its way to banks in the United Arab Emirates, many of which have correspondent banks in the U.S. "We are preventing financial transactions going to the Palestinian Authority because banks are scared they'll be hit by U.S. terrorism-financing laws," says a source who closely tracks the Iranian economy. "Why can't we do the same thing with Iran?"

• Support an independent labor movement. On May Day, 10,000 workers took to Tehran's streets to demand the resignation of Iran's labor minister. And despite last year's $60 billion oil-revenue bonanza, the Iranian government routinely fails to pay its civil servants, leading to chronic, spontaneous work stoppages.

Workers' rights got a boost in January when Tehran's bus drivers went on strike to demand the release of their imprisoned and tortured leader Mansour Ossanloo. In a state that bans independent labor unions, the strike was an unprecedented event, calling to mind the 1980 Gdansk dock strike that became Poland's Solidarity movement. That movement succeeded largely thanks to the support of Lane Kirkland's AFL-CIO, which in turn received funding from the National Endowment for Democracy. The same model needs to be energetically applied to Iran today.

"The neat thing about the labor movement is that wherever it goes, it's welcomed," says a source familiar with Iranian workers' groups. "It actually makes America look good."

• Threaten Iran's gasoline supply. Iran is often said to have an oil weapon pointed at George Bush's head. Rob Andrews, a Democratic congressman from New Jersey, notes the reverse is closer to the truth: Because Iran lacks refining capacity, it must import 40% of its gasoline. Of that amount, fully 60% is handled by a single company, Rotterdam-based Vitol, which has strategic storage and blending facilities in the UAE. The regime also spends $3 billion a year to subsidize below-market gas prices.

With Illinois Republican Mark Kirk, Mr. Andrews has introduced legislation calling for the quarantine of gasoline imports should Iran continue to flout Security Council resolutions. "If gas prices were to soar in Iran," he says, "the regime would be destabilized, the possibility of internal change would increase and the regime would find a way to back away from the precipice."

One objection: A gas quarantine may require the naval blockade of Iranian ports, which is legally tantamount to an act of war. Not a problem, says Mr. Andrews: "I think the development of a nuclear weapon in violation of an international treaty is an act of war, too."

Link to Regime Change Iran