… of Macintosh users.

But which world?

Interesting list . . .

First I learned there’s no Santa Claus or Easter Bunny! Now this!

CUSTOMERS of the internet auction site eBay are being defrauded by unscrupulous dealers who secretly bid up the price of items on sale to boost profits.
An investigation by The Sunday Times has indicated that the practice of artificially driving up prices — known as shill bidding — is widespread across the site.

All my last delusions are now shattered.

The Weekly Standard as an article about the kerfuffle over Southern Methodist University’s bid to host the G.W. Bush library.

LATE LAST YEAR, dozens of faculty members at Southern Methodist University publicly opposed plans by President Bush to locate his presidential library on SMU’s campus in Dallas.

Now, ten bishops of the United Methodist Church, which owns the school, and of which President Bush is a member, are urging SMU to reject the library and are circulating a petition for others to sign.

A chief organizer in stopping the Bush library is a former professor at SMU’s Perkins School of Theology, who told the Dallas Morning News that he doesn’t want his school to “hitch its future star” to the war and other aspects of President Bush’s legacy.

President and Mrs. Bush are members of Highland Park United Methodist Church in Dallas. Its pastor, the Rev. Mark Craig, is an SMU trustee who supports the library at SMU. The whole thing is, of course, just another example of Bush Derangement Syndrome, but here’s the kicker:

For decades, United Methodist bishops have largely declined to criticize their denomination’s schools as they slipped away from their Christian moorings and became virtually secular institutions. Typical campus life at Methodist schools is not behaviorally different from most other major universities. The faculty, who often adhere to the same academic fads and ideologies of secular schools, are rarely expected to sign faith statements, belong to churches, or even be reverent towards religion. Even United Methodist seminary professors sometimes reject Christian orthodoxy. Some even reject theism itself.

Bishops have almost always defended their schools’ academic independence, even as they often served on the schools’ boards and helped channel church funding to them. But hosting the presidential library of President Bush, a fellow church member, is apparently a bridge too far for some of the church’s bishops and the 4,000 other signatories to the anti-Bush library petition.

They’ve finally found a heresy which they cannot accept.

As long-time readers here know, I am an ordained pastor on the UMC and while I am utterly unsurprised at the knee-jerkiness of the 10 bishops, I am also heartened to see that at last, at last, dear heaven, they have actually decided to stand firmly for something. Okay, against something, but still . . .

As has been well reported, some Republican senators voted along with Democrats on a resolution opposing sending additional troops to Iraq. How did Tennessee’s two Republican senators come down on the issue?

Lamar Alexander emailed Nashville blogger Bill Hobbs,

The situation in Iraq is worse, and the time has come to change our strategy. I have read the bipartisan Iraq Study Group report, heard recommendations from leaders in the military, and I listened carefully to President Bush’s proposal for success.

Sending 21,500 more American troops temporarily into Iraq to try to stop sectarian violence is not, by itself, new or a strategy for success.

Lamar made it clear that he strongly opposes sending more troops, but when it came time to go on the record with his vote, he did not vote for the resolution. So does he or doesn’t he support or oppose the increase? Who knows?

Our state’s freshman senator, Bob Corker, also voted against the resolution. But what does he really think? His position either has changed since the vote or it wasn’t reported accurately by media to begin with (I’ll give 50-50 either way). Soldier’s Mom reports that at first Corker was quoted thus:

Republican Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., said he didn’t support the resolution because he didn’t believe it would affect administration policy. Instead, he said next time he talks to Tennessee soldiers he will tell them, “I oppose what you are doing but I thank you for your service.”

That was from version one of an FNC story. But now the story has been edited and quotes Corker this way:

Republican Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., said he didn’t support the resolution because he didn’t believe it would affect administration policy, and he believed it wouldn’t give troops the right message.

“So, in essence, what I’ll be doing the next time if I see them, if I vote for this resolution, is to say: I’m opposed to you being there, but thank you for what you’re doing,” Corker said.

That does change the tenor of his position. But it leaves open the question of whether he would have voted aye if he had thought it would change the administration’s policy.

Thanks for taking such a clear stand, guys.

Welcome friends from Down Under! I think this is the first time an Australian media outlet has linked to my site. Thanks for following the link.

So wrote Europe’s premier war theorist, Carl von Clausewitz, which he amplified thus, “Without killing there is no war.” This should seem self evident, but its truth is easy to lose, and easiest for the civilians who (rightfully) finally command our military. Even senior military officers, removed by distance and time from personal battle experience, can fail to remember that truism.

Of all the failings of the previous “strategy” in Iraq, directed by the commanders whom Gen. David Petraeus will very soon replace, the main failing was not keeping the main thing the main thing. In counterinsurgency, as with any other kind of fight, the main thing is killing the insurgents, for which civil assistance to Iraqis must play the supporting, not primary role.

Hence, the “surge” of 21,500 more soldiers and Marines being sent to Iraq does in fact represent a new strategy in the recent history of this war, though not new in the history of warfare. Gen. Petraeus, asked recently by one of the Congress’ armed services committees whether 21,500 was enough new troops, replied that how the new troops are used is more important than the number sent.

And lethality is the focus now, as we saw from the release of an unclassified version of the strategy by the plan’s authors themselves, which I analyzed on Dec. 17. Retired General Jack Keane, a former vice chief of staff of the Army, and Frederick W. Kagan, former West Point professor, wrote (and briefed President Bush) that,

We must change our focus from training Iraqi soldiers to securing the Iraqi population and containing the rising violence. Securing the population has never been the primary mission of the U.S. military effort in Iraq, and now it must become the first priority.

“Securing the population” = “kill the insurgents.” And that is what the troops in Iraq, reinforced by the “surge,” are already doing, says Nibras Kazmi (also posted at Blackfive).

Last October, my sources began telling me about rumblings among the insurgent strategists suggesting that their murderous endeavor was about to run out of steam. This sense of fatigue began registering among mid-level insurgent commanders in late December, and it has devolved to the rank and file since then. The insurgents have begun to feel that the tide has turned against them.

In many ways, the timing of this turnaround was inadvertent, coming at the height of political and bureaucratic mismanagement in Washington and Baghdad. A number of factors contributed to this turnaround, but most important was sustained, stay-the-course counterinsurgency pressure. At the end of the day, more insurgents were ending up dead or behind bars, which generated among them a sense of despair and a feeling that the insurgency was a dead end.

The Washington-initiated “surge” will speed-up the ongoing process of defeating the insurgency. But one should not consider the surge responsible for the turnaround. The lesson to be learned is to keep killing the killers until they realize their fate.

For some reason, this is a lesson that the US seems to have to learn anew every war. It wasn’t until 1863, for example, that the Union Army finally came to understand that the army of the CSA would not be defeated until it had been vanquished in the field one time after another, over and over again. U.S. Grant was the first Union general to understand this fact, for which President Lincoln rewarded him with command of all the Union armies in the field. “I can’t fire this man,” Lincoln told critics, “he fights.”

But I digress. The major, and unsurprisingly unheralded, accomplishment in Iraq in recent months was to squeeze the life (literally and metepahorically) out of the domestic Iraqi insurgencies. That means the Sunni insurgencies, who were mainly oriented toward the preservation of Baathist party and Tikriti tribal power. The Shia militias weren’t really trying to overthrow the central government (PM Maliki was in their pocket, so what’s the point?) but until the end of 2006 the Sunni insurgents entertained the notion that could could wield majority power again.

What changed their mind, at least most of them? Well, Saddam’s short drop and sudden stop had a lot to do with it. But mostly it sank in to them that they cannot win. US and US-led direct action against them (that is, killing them) unintentionally combined with the ruthlessness of the Shia militias made them come to reality, says Kazmi.

The wider Sunni insurgency — the groups beyond Al Qaeda — is being slowly, and surely, defeated. The average insurgent today feels demoralized, disillusioned, and hunted. Those who have not been captured yet are opting for a quieter life outside of Iraq. …

The enormous carnage the media report daily in Iraq is the direct result - in fact, the actual intention - of al Qaeda in Iraq, whose now-dead chief, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, made plain early in 2004 that killing Iraqi Shiites was his only means of finally defeating the US in Iraq. After tacitly admitting that al Qaeda cannot defeat America militarily in Iraq, Zarqawi wrote that al Qaeda must turn to terrorism against the Iraqis in order to destabilize the country so much that its return to sovereignty that summer would not be effective.

“So the solution, and only God knows, is that we need to bring the Shia into the battle,” the writer of the document said. “It is the only way to prolong the duration of the fight between the infidels and us. If we succeed in dragging them into a sectarian war, this will awaken the sleepy Sunnis who are fearful of destruction and death at the hands” of Shiites. …

“You noble brothers, leaders of the jihad [meaning other al Qaeda leaders - DS], we do not consider ourselves people who compete against you, nor would we ever aim to achieve glory for ourselves like you did,” the writer says. “So if you agree with it, and are convinced of the idea of killing the perverse sects, we stand ready as an army for you to work under your guidance and yield to your command” [emphasis added].

Zarqawi went on to write that al Qaeda fighters in Iraq must wage war against the Shiite Iraqi majority (i.e, the “perverse sects”) and that the war on them must be well underway before the US returned sovereignty to the country. That way al Qaeda could propagandize that the Americans are responsible for the sectarian violence.

Like so much that Zarqawi planned, this tactic backfired. The Shia majority in Iraq did not turn against America (in the main), as Zarqawi thought they would, but against the Sunnis, and ferociously so. Kazmi again:

Sunni sectarian attacks, usually conducted by jihadists, finally provoked the Shiites to turn to their most brazen militias — the ones who would not heed Ayatollah Sistani’s call for pacifism — to conduct painful reprisals against Sunnis, usually while wearing official military fatigues and carrying government issued weapons. The Sunnis came to realize that they were no longer facing ragtag fighters, but rather they were confronting a state with resources and with a monopoly on lethal force. The Sunnis realized that by harboring insurgents they were inviting retaliation that they could do little to defend against.

Sadly, it took many thousands of young Sunnis getting abducted by death squads for the Sunnis to understand that in a full-fledged civil war, they would likely lose badly and be evicted from Baghdad. I believe that the Sunnis and insurgents are now war weary, and that this is a turnaround point in the campaign to stabilize Iraq.

The upshot of this is that now there is no significant insurgency in Iraq except al Qaeda. This is a huge accomplishment, though not entirely the doing of American action. Now the focus in Iraq has swung toward two main goals: bringing destruction upon al Qaeda there and bringing to heel the Shia militias, especially the Mahdi militia of Ayatollah Moqtada al Sadr. About these ends PM Maliki spoke to parliament yesterday. As you read this account by Iraqi blogger Mohammed Fadhil, remember the first of “15 rules for understanding the Middle East:” “What people tell you in private in the Middle East is irrelevant. All that matters is what they will defend in public in their own language. … In the Mideast, officials say what they really believe in public. …” So here is Mohammed’s account:

PM Maliki spoke to the parliament to explain the goals and strategy of his new plan and to hear their feedback, suggestions and reservations.

Maliki’s speech was sharp and straightforward. He stressed that the Baghdad plan was not directed against one faction over the other. He called it a plan “enforce the law” and said it would use force to apply the law against those who kill Iraqis and displace them from their homes.

Maliki didn’t forget to criticize the media that accuse the plan of being impartial and he asked the local media to support the plan and encourage the citizens to cooperate with the authorities.

Maliki’s most important warning was when he said that no one and no place would be immune to raids. Mosques (Sunni or Shia), homes or political offices will all be subject to searches and raids if they are used to launch attacks or hide militants.

There was considerable parliamentary, ah, discussion about the PM’s presentation, but it would seem that Maliki has put his personal honor on the line by saying his government will crack down on sectarian death squads. On a b-roll I saw on the news, Maliki emphasized to parliament that these operations were Iraqi led and that coalition forces were in a supporting role, although my guess is that it all depends what “supporting” means.

So can al Qaeda be defeated in Iraq? Most definitely. As more and more Sunnis realize they will never rule Iraq again, they will distance themselves increasingly from al Qaeda, whose leaders and ranks are mostly non-Iraqi. The alliance between Iraqi Sunnis and al Qaeda was only one of convenience for the Sunnis, whose politics remain mostly Baathist secular rather than Islamist religious. Al Qaeda has bungled that relationship, too, over the past few years, by attempting to terrorize Sunnis into supporting them. But murdering Sunni sheiks and other dastardly deeds brought open reprisals from Sunni clans. Now I think that Sunnis will increasingly turn against al Qaeda because they realize there is nothing al Qaeda can do for them in Iraq anymore.

The main task now before us is simply to kill al Qaeda, top to bottom. What I wrote last December is still true: this new tactic “is the final roll of the dice in Iraq that this administration, or the next, can make there. Either we crush the enemy, various as they are, or we lose the war.”

Update: Further evidence of the new focus on lethality is the President’s approval of killing Iranian agents inside Iraq.

For more than a year, U.S. forces in Iraq have been catching Iranian agents, interviewing them and letting them go. The Post says the administration is now convinced that was ineffective because Iran paid no penalty for its mischief.

As one senior administration official told the Post, “There were no costs for the Iranians. They are hurting our mission in Iraq, and we were bending over backwards not to fight back.”

I think this development buttresses the claim that our strategy is indeed different than before. I also think that US political and domestic opinion will “wait and see” no more than six months whether Gen. Petraeus can turn things around, and the general probably knows this. So I expect that al Qaeda is going to have a very rough six months ahead of it, and Maliki will be squeezed even more to clean up his own house.

Update: This kind of focused lethality is working well in Afghanistan, too.

Bill Hobbs says that on the only part of the speech that really matters, the war, President Bush “absolutely nailed the big issues at stake.”

In that part of the speech, Bush said,

And whatever you voted for, you did not vote for failure. Our country is pursuing a new strategy in Iraq, and I ask you to give it a chance to work.

Stephen Green, who sadly (luckily?) does not think governmentally, observes of Bush’s plea, “I don’t remember any stories about FDR talking up D-Day before the fact, and trying to weasel support out of Congress for it.” Well, back then, no one was claiming that FDR and the US military were the ones who carried out the Pearl Harbor attack and that the “New York money people” (cough , Jews, cough) had engineered America’s entry into war to stop the Holocaust or something. Neither was more than a third FDR’s opposition party - and tenth of his own - actually wanting FDR’s military strategy to defeat the Axis to fail. Nor was anyone of either party calling for the withdrawal of US troops from the combat theaters before the enemy was beaten.

Jules Crittenden, blogger and bona fide journalist (excelling at both), is less impressed by media reportage of the speech than by the speech itself. Read it all. He also quotes Stratfor’s excellent point:

“Bush’s poll ratings have now become a geopolitical issue. …

“Bush’s strategy in Iraq, to the extent that it has any viability, depends on the Iraqi — and Iranian — perception that Bush retains control of U.S. policy and that he has freedom to maneuver. Iraqi and Iranian politicians are watching the polls and watching Congress. …

“Bush is now edging from the area where we can call him a crippled president — if not a failed one — to an area where he could genuinely lose the ability to govern.”

Folks, this is not a good thing, no matter where you stand politically.

Joe Gandelman says that Bush’s speech was “less partisan” than before (as if he had a choice) and offers other thoughts as well as a typically link-rich survey of thoughts across the media and the b’sphere.

My own take: despite that the president delivered the speech well, despite its clarity and simplicity, and despite its actual forcefulness on the stakes of the war, the speech was that of a clearly hobbled lame duck. My evidence? When Bush asked Congress to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind Act, Republicans applauded tepidly and Democrats not at all. This despite the fact that NCLB was the most bipartisan intiative this president has ever achieved and the Act itself was practically written by Teddy Kennedy. I was genuinely mystified why the Democrats were silent at this point - not only was NCLB written mainly by their party but it strengthens the federal grip on local education more than ever. Then at Instapundit I read Ruth Marcus’s observation regarding the health care part of the speech:

Listening to Democratic reaction to Bush’s new health insurance proposal, you get the sense that if Bush picked a plank right out of the Democratic platform — if he introduced Hillarycare itself — and stuck it in his State of the Union address, Democrats would churn out press releases denouncing it.

That sounds about right. This president is so politically isolated that the opposition party neither wants nor needs to appear to support him, even when he’s carrying their water.

Dutch police search for man with broken neck:

Amsterdam police are seeking a British man who has a broken neck and may be in risk of severing his spinal cord but doesn’t know it.

The man, identified as 29-year-old Benjamin William O’Connor, was involved in a traffic accident on Saturday in Suffolk, where he lives, police said.

He was released from hospital, but later that day, doctors later examined his X-rays and realised the dangerous nature of his injury – but couldn’t contact him.

British authorities investigating his movements found he had already departed for the Netherlands.

“He is in danger of serious injury or death,” said a spokeswoman for Amsterdam police.

Amsterdam police have published a photo of O’Connor, hoping someone will recognise him and alert him to contact police and seek immediate medical treatment.

Let’s pray authorities find poor Mr. O’Connor quickly. As for the rest, well, there ya go. nationalized health care at its ordinary.

Stephen Green is live blogging the SOTU and wrote when the president set the goal of reducing gasoline usage by 20 percent in five years. Observes Stephen:

9:32 “Let’s reduce gasoline usage by 20 percent in the next ten years.” Or did he say 20? Or five? It doesn’t matter. Even with increased CAFE standards, demand is going to go up for gas. We’ll be lucky just to stay even. Very lucky.

I’m reminded of Doc Brown saying to Marty McFly in the “Back to the Future” series, “You’re not thinking fourth dimensionally.”

Well, Stephen, you’re not thinking governmentally. When federal government factotums talk about reducing something over 10 years (or five or 15, etc.), they aren’t talking about actually, you know, reducing something. They’re talking about reducing the rate of increase over 10 years from its present projection.

So “reduce gasoline usage by 20 percent in the next ten years” really means increase usage over 10 years by 80 percent of what we think right now is the amount that usage will be increased.

Just wait - that’s how the White House will wind up spinning it. Because no matter what, as Stephen says, “demand is going to go up for gas.” A lot, and that’s if we’re lucky. If we are unlucky, demand for gas will not go up a lot. And if it doesn’t, well, I’ll see you in the bread line.