Doug Ross @ Journal

George Will on the Nuclear Threat

As the GOP gathers, just blocks away from the site of the most deadly enemy attack on American soil in history, George Will takes a moment to reflect on the single highest priority for candidates: fighting the threat of nuclear terrorism.

Will reviews Graham Allison's new book Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe. Allison, an advisor to the Kerry campaign, outlines Extremist Islam's goal of killing four million Americans by detonating nuclear devices in four large cities. Allison outlines why this is an achievable goal for the terrorists.

...at least four times between 1992 and 1999 weapons-useable materials were stolen from Russian research institutes but recovered. How many thefts have not been reported? ...Russia denies that ``suitcase" nuclear weapons exist, so it denies reports that at least 80 are missing. Soviet military forces deployed 22,000 tactical nuclear warheads -- without individual identification numbers. Who thinks all have been accounted for? ...In December 1994, Czech police seized more than eight pounds of HEU in a parked car on a side street. A senior al Qaeda aide's proclaimed goal of killing 4 million Americans would require 1,400 9/11s, or one 10-kiloton nuclear explosion -- from a softball-sized lump of fissionable material -- in four large American cities... ...Allison argues that any hope for preventing, by diplomacy, nuclear terrorism depends on ``readiness to use covert and overt military force if necessary" against two potential sources of fissile material -- Iran and North Korea. But the candidate Allison [Kerry] is advising has opposed virtually every use of U.S. force in his adult lifetime...

The Nuclear Threat

Straight out of London

I wonder what our friends outside the US think about the whole SwiftVets affair? Hmmm, if I could only read a columnist from the UK who writes for one of the major papers there...

...How cocooned from reality do you have to be to think you can transform one of the most divisive periods in American history - in which you were largely responsible for much of the divisiveness - into a sappy, happy-clappy, soft-focus patriotic blur without anybody objecting? Most Vietnam veterans of my acquaintance loathe John Kerry, and, if he wasn't aware of that, he's too out of it to be President... ...Still, he's doing his best. After going around huffing and a-puffing that, if Bush wanted a debate about Vietnam, "Here is my answer: BRING. IT. ON," he's now gone to ground and is demanding Bush call it off. Meanwhile, his lawyers are threatening suits and the campaign's complained to the Federal Election Commission to get the Swift vets taken off air. His hagiographer Douglas Brinkley, after an intriguing interview with the Telegraph's David Rennie, seems to have entered the witness protection programme. If this campaign were any more inept, Michael Moore would be making a documentary claiming Kerry's a Republican plant secretly controlled by Karl Rove and the House of Saud.

Kerry: strange, stuck-up... and stupid

The Quagmire

Excellent recap of the current state of the campaign from Mark Alexander. The term 'unraveling' comes to mind, as do a few other choice terms.

...Last March, [the] Demo National Committee... estimated that Kerry would have to win the hearts and minds of veterans in order to defeat George W. Bush. So he wrapped Kerry in his embellished war record and, a month later, took a cheap shot at President Bush, proclaiming that he was AWOL during his last year of service as an Air National Guard fighter pilot... Right about now, McAuliffe and Kerry are wishing they'd never fired that shot... [Bush] wanted to fly fighter jets, he earned his wings, and he logged many air defense hours in an F-102 Delta Dagger with the 147th Fighter Group and its subordinate 111th FIS, Texas ANG. Mr. Bush's unit was subject to rotation in Vietnam under the Palace Alert Program. In fact, 15 F-102 pilots were killed in Vietnam, but American involvement in that conflict was de-escalating by 1972, and Bush was honorably discharged from his service with the ANG... After graduating, Kerry petitioned his draft board for a student deferment so he could study in... Paris. His deferment denied, Kerry then calculated that he could avoid Vietnam by joining the Naval Reserves, where he'd likely be able to serve stateside even if his unit was activated. Kerry's service record indicates that on 18 February 1966 he enlisted in the USNR under "inactive" status. This... [counters the] assertion that Kerry "volunteered" for dangerous swift boat duty while George W. Bush somehow slunk off to fly fighter-jets. As fate would have it, Kerry's reserve unit was activated, while the President's ANG unit remained stateside -- yet both circumstances were far beyond the control of these two junior officers...

Kerry's Quagmire

The Kerry Petition

There are over 125,000 signers of an online petition that John Kerry should be "...Prosecuted and Disqualifed from National Office". Might this be a tad over the top? Read on. Disclaimer: I haven't made up my mind yet. It is interesting that, according to Fox News, Kerry admitted to war crimes while under oath. You have to wonder whether he simply perjured himself, or whether he is a self-confessed war criminal. Either way, it's a problem.

...Kerry has a long and well-documented history of providing "aid and comfort" to the enemy in time of war -- particularly in the case of North Vietnam, Nicaragua and Cuba. Kerry, by his own account of his actions and protests, violated the UCMJ, the Geneva Conventions and the U.S. Code while serving as a Navy officer. Kerry met, on two occasions, with North Vietnamese negotiators in 1970 and 1971, willingly placing himself in violation of Article three, Section three of the U.S. Constitution, which defines treason as "giving aid and comfort" to the enemy in time of warfare. Thus, in accordance with the Constitution's Fourteenth Amendment, Section 3, which states, "No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President ... having previously taken an oath ... to support the Constitution of the United States, [who has] engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof...

Online Petition

Pay no attention to Hillary behind the curtain

T believes that Hillary is secretly funding the SwiftVets, if only because the Kerry campaign has, within just a few weeks, become stuck in a La Brea-sized tarpit dug by John O'Neill and friends. C'mon, that has to be the work of the Clintons! There are rumors that Sandy Berger was seen furtively leaving John O'Neill's condo last week with an empty suitcase, but that's probably just a coincidence.

...Delegates to next week’s Democratic National Convention already have an idea about 2008 if presidential candidate John Kerry should lose this fall: They would favor Hillary Rodham Clinton over John Edwards as their next standardbearer...

Delegates would pick Hillary in 2008

Note: Berger was not seen leaving O'Neill's condo. This is an Internet rumor, which I have officially just started for personal reasons involving irony and sarcasm. Now, just move along, there's nothing to see here.