Fifty five percent of Americans trust McCain to handle the war on Iraq, the highest of any of the major candidates. Only 37% trust Mitt Romney and 39% trust Fred Thompson, numbers that are substantially below even Obama and Hillary. On terrorism, 66% trust McCain to handle it, while 38% trust Romney and 42% trust Thompson.
McCain's relatively strong position on terrorism (and Iraq) suggests that despite news reports that his campaign is struggling, he still maintains a positive position in the minds of many Americans on core national security issues.
Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily “victory” but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.
After the furnace-like heat, the first thing you notice when you land in Baghdad is the morale of our troops. In previous trips to Iraq we often found American troops angry and frustrated — many sensed they had the wrong strategy, were using the wrong tactics and were risking their lives in pursuit of an approach that could not work.
Of course, reality is one thing and perception is another. I suspect that after being bombarded with media coverage indicating we're losing the war, the American public will be slow to come around to the notion that's not inevitable.
I haven't been paying much attention to the Left/Right battles these days, so I may just be behind the curve on this story. After Downing Street, a website that sprang up after the famous Downing Street Memo, has always been pretty far left, but I wasn't aware that they had gotten into the complete crackpot stuff as illustrated by this hyperventilating article written by David Lindorff:
Put this together with the wholly secret construction now under way--courtesy of a $385-million grant by the US Army Corps of Engineers to Halliburton subsidiary KBR Inc--of detention camps reportedly capable of confining as many as 400,000 people, and a recent report that the Pentagon has a document, dated June 1, 2007, classified Top Secret, which declares there to be a developing “insurgency” within the U.S, and which lays out a whole martial law counterinsurgency campaign against legal dissent, and you have all the ingredients for a military takeover of the United States.
The wholly secret? It's such a secret that the Houston Business Journal has an article about it, dated 1/24/06. And the article makes it clear that these detention camps are not intended for Americans:
The contract provides for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities to augment existing ICE Detention and Removal Operations program facilities in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the United States, or to support the rapid development of new programs.
So there's a pretty simple reason for it. Now I know the paranoid fringe will always see these immigration and detention camps as having potential to be used against US citizens, but what does David really propose in the event this happens:
As we go about our daily lives--our shopping, our escapist movie watching, and even our protesting and political organizing—we need to be aware that there is a real risk that it could all blow up, and that we could find ourselves facing armed, uniformed troops at our doors.
Have the jackbooted thugs become the nightmare of the paranoid left?
If Only Franklin Foer Had Been Editing the New Republic in 1969
Cambodia Diarist, by Johnny Forbes
It was a dark and stormy Christmas Eve on the Mekong. We had left Sa Dec a few hours earlier, and were still exhilarated over the adventure of the drawbridge. As we came out of the town we realized that even with the drawbridge up all the way, we'd have very little clearance. But we decided to gun it rather than wait for low tide and made it through with about an inch to spare. The villagers who had come to watch us smash up applauded politely.
We were in that nebulous area between Cambodia and South Vietnam. The CIA spook was applying lampblack to his face. The hat was lying on the table between us. It was big and floppy and camo and I lusted after it.
The CIA man grunted. He was featureless like all spooks; after 4-5 missions they all started to look the same. But his voice was pure Southern farmboy.
"Y'all want the hat?" Before he could withdraw the offer I snatched it up and put it on my head a jaunty angle. He smiled, but it was a cold smile. "Y'all gotta swap one of yours."
I hesitated. The only hat besides my regulation Navy equipment was my old Red Sox cap, autographed by Eddie Yost himself. I liked to think of it as my lucky cap. But it wasn't camo, and it wasn't the hat of a real CIA man. So I handed over the baseball cap.
This was one of those unofficial missions that I chafed at. "Surely Nixon can't be running the government already," I had complained to Elliot when receiving my orders. "He's not the President yet!"
Commander Elliot had winked. "This has been Nixon's war all along, you know that as well as I do."
Gardner poked his head in the door. "Couple PBJs--err, PBRs coming up, Skippy--err, Skipper." I could see him surpressing a grin and wondered why, then cursed and whipped off the camo hat. Later that night I would have to put it in the secret compartment of my attache case. Otherwise Gardner and the other guys would undoubtedly visit indignities on it, which would probably lead to mildew.
I groaned at the news of the PBRs. The f'ing Navy couldn't do anything right. Elliot had assured me this area would be clear. But as the craft approached us, a mortar whistled overhead. "What was that?" I yelled. The second one hit the water only a few yards away.
The PBRs took off and we darted into Cambodia. Again, but not for the last time.
I have to admit feeling just a bit of schadenfreude at this one. The New York Times covers TNR's Baghdad Diarist story.
The magazine granted anonymity to the writer to keep him from being punished by his military superiors and to allow him to write candidly, Mr. Foer said. He said that he had met the writer and that he knows with “near certainty” that he is, in fact, a soldier.
Of course, Foer must have known how weak that sounds, so he revised his claim upwards to "absolute" certainty at the website.
Michael Goldfarb has much more from military people in the position to know.
First: I have never seen a woman on the FOB that was disfigured. FOB Falcon is full of combat Soldiers (men). There are very few female Soldiers on the FOB. After being here a year surrounded by men, I can tell you what every woman on this FOB looks like. IF there had been a woman with burns covering her face, and IF some undisciplined Soldier(s) had done something like described in this guys story, he would have been dealt with swiftly and harshly. The dining facility here is small and usually crowded. Any NCO or officer that had heard or seen someone committing this type behavior would have immediately approached that group and reacted to that situation. Those Soldiers would have had UCMJ actions taken against them. No one I know, NCO, officer, or even lower enlisted, would have tolerated this.
The New Republic looks to have gotten stung again. Back in the 1990s, Stephen Glass wrote a series of highly amusing and highly dubious articles for the New Republic. The articles confirmed the biases of the editors, and so they got published even though there were red flags all over the place.
For example, Glass wrote a book about a group of Republicans who worshipped George H.W. Bush. Well, to the editors of TNR, Republicans are sort of a cult anyway, so it sounded reasonable to them. He also wrote a story about a third-grader who was a computer hacker who became the object of a bidding war between high-tech firms. To the editors of TNR, business has always seemed illogical anyway, so it's possible that an eight-year-old would be coveted by industry.
The current story involves how evil our military personnel are, and hoo-boy, that's a meme that sells well to liberal editors everywhere. The individual anecdotes have been picked apart quite well over at the standard, but this is the one that has a flashing neon sign:
The first episode puts "Thomas"'s unit at a "chow hall" at an unnamed base. A woman eating there is wearing "an unrecognizable tan uniform, so I couldn’t really tell whether she was a soldier or a civilian contractor." The woman's face is described as having been "more or less melted, along with all the hair on that side of her head," by an IED. She sits down for lunch next to the men. Here's how "Thomas" describes what happens next:
We were already halfway through our meals when she arrived. After a minute or two of eating in silence, one of my friends stabbed his spoon violently into his pile of mashed potatoes and left it there. “Man, I can’t eat like this,” he said. “Like what?” I said. “Chow hall food getting to you?” “No—with that fucking freak behind us!” he exclaimed, loud enough for not only her to hear us, but everyone at the surrounding tables. I looked over at the woman, and she was intently staring into each forkful of food before it entered her half-melted mouth. “Are you kidding? I think she’s fucking hot!” I blurted out. “What?” said my friend, half-smiling. “Yeah man,” I continued. “I love chicks that have been intimate—with IEDs. It really turns me on—melted skin, missing limbs, plastic noses . . . .” “You’re crazy, man!” my friend said, doubling over with laughter. I took it as my cue to continue. “In fact, I was thinking of getting some girls together and doing a photo shoot. Maybe for a calendar? ‘IED Babes.’ We could have them pose in thongs and bikinis on top of the hoods of their blown-up vehicles.” My friend was practically falling out of his chair laughing. The disfigured woman slammed her cup down and ran out of the chow hall, her half-finished tray of food nearly falling to the ground.
Now, note particularly that the "I" character is our New Republic writer. Now I suppose it is quite likely that the writer goes on to make some point about how if even he, a sensitive writer-type guy, could behave so atrociously, it makes some sort of point about what being in Iraq does to our troops. But is anybody so self-aware and yet so callous? It just doesn't fit.
As the criticism mounts, Foer says he sees an ideological agenda.
"A lot of the questions raised by the conservative blogosphere boil down to, would American soldiers be capable of doing things like the things described in the diarist. The practical jokes are exceptionally mild compared to things that have been documented by the U.S. military. Conservative bloggers make a bit of a living denying any bad news that emanates from Iraq."
Hey guys, the coverup is always worse than the crime!
Is illustrated by Mitt Romney, who stood in front of (and held up) a sign saying "No to Osama, Obama, and Hillary's Mama". Cute little rhyme, but I agree with the guy in the video that no American should be compared to Osama.
In an apparent violation of the law, a controversial aide to ex-Gov. Mitt Romney created phony law enforcement badges that he and other staffers used on the campaign trail to strong-arm reporters, avoid paying tolls and trick security guards into giving them immediate access to campaign venues, sources told the Herald.
The bogus badges were part of the bizarre security tactics allegedly employed by Jay Garrity, the director of operations for Romney who is under investigation for impersonating a law enforcement officer in two states. Garrity is on a leave of absence from the campaign while the probe is ongoing.
Two other Romney aides are implicated in the phony badge story.
You may recall that Garrity first came to our attention when he pulled over a New York Times reporter who was covering the campaign.
By a 5 percentage point margin, voters say they would back Clinton over Giuliani (46 percent to 41 percent) if the election were held today. Clinton also leads McCain by 3 points (45 percent to 42 percent), Romney by 15 points (50 percent to 35 percent) and the yet-to-announce Fred Thompson by 9 points (47 percent to 38 percent).
So on a net basis, McCain does better than Giuliani by 2 points, better than Romney by 12 points, and better than Thompson by 6 points. Yes, they're all losing right now to Hillary, which just points out the necessity of putting forward the man who has the best chance to win!
The countdown has now reached #4, with Lawrence Taylor. Looking at the list, it's pretty obvious who the remaining three players are: Joe Montana, Jerry Rice, and Walter Payton. I'm pleased to see Montana outlast the rest of the QBs; whether USA Today will do the right thing and crown him the king has yet to be seen. Rice is clearly the greatest wide receiver of all time. I would pick Emmitt over Sweetness, but neither would be a bad #3 pick on this list.
Heheh, we've all enjoyed laughing at John Edwards' primping for the cameras and $400 haircuts, but it turns out that Mitt Romney spent $300 for "makeup consulting".
Romney spokesman Kevin Madden confirmed that the payments -- actually two separate $150 charges -- were for makeup, though he said the former Massachusetts governor had only one session with Hidden Beauty of West Hills, Calif. That was before the May 3 Republican presidential debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif., co-sponsored by MSNBC and The Politico.
Details:
"We basically put a drop of foundation on him … and we powdered him a little bit."
This is a common enough meme that I thought I would spend a couple minutes on it:
McCain's fate should be a warning to all Republicans seeking office in 2008: continue to back the president's war policy at your own risk.
This is a convenient analysis for liberals who opposed the war like Airiheadda, but the fact is that the war is not terribly unpopular among Republicans. And it's not like the other candidates are running on an antiwar platform.
Like all Americans, Rudy Giuliani prays for the success of our troops in Iraq and their safe return home. But he believes setting an artificial timetable for withdrawal from Iraq now would be a terrible mistake, because it would only embolden our enemies. Iraq is only one front in the larger war on terror, and failure there would lead to a broader and bloodier regional conflict in the near future. Building an accountable Iraq will assist in reducing the threat of terrorism.
"The road ahead will be difficult but success is still possible in Iraq. I believe it is in America's national security interest to achieve it."
In fact, the only Republican presidential candidates who oppose the war are Ron Paul (who's got tremendous internet buzz and about 1% support in the polls) and Chuck Hagel, who decided not to run because he was so unpopular.
British history teachers are no longer required to teach students about Winston Churchill.
Britain's World War II prime minister Winston Churchill has been cut from a list of key historical figures recommended for teaching in English secondary schools, a government agency says.
The radical overhaul of the school curriculum for 11- to 14-year-olds is designed to bring secondary education up to date and allow teachers more flexibility in the subjects they teach, the Government said.
That's just plain ridiculous. Churchill is one of the central figures of the 20th century; the article notes that a recent poll chose him as the greatest Briton ever. I argued for 20 years that Time would name him the man of the century; that they didn't just shows how deluded the mainstream media are.
He was a superb wartime commander, a brilliant writer, and clearly the man of the hour during the dark days of 1940, when it seemed quite likely that all of Europe would fall to the Nazis. I believe that in Bartlett's familiar quotations, the only man with more famed epigrams than Churchill was Shakespeare.
Rudy Giuliani’s presidential campaign moved quickly yesterday to blunt what it sees as a sensationalist Swift Boat-style attack by a firefighters’ union.
Seeking to avoid the mistake of delay that so hurt the presidential campaign of Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) in 2004, the former New York City mayor’s campaign went on the offensive before the attack was even formally released, dismissing the union as politically motivated.
But actually Giuliani's team got it right:
Howard Safir, former New York City Fire Department commissioner, said firefighters across the country “are very supportive of Rudy and what he did.”
He added, “Firefighter unions are not firefighters. This is bogus stuff. This is not Swift Boat.”
Get it? This is bogus stuff, unlike the Swift Boat Vets. Kudos to Safir!
ABC reports that an Al Qaeda cell may already be in the United States:
Senior U.S. intelligence officials tell ABC News new intelligence suggests a small al Qaeda cell is on its way to the United States, or may already be here.
The White House has convened an urgent multi-agency meeting for Thursday afternoon to deal with the new threat.
Well, you can imagine the reaction at the liberal blogs. Surely they are talking about how we have to leave the partisanship behind in order to combat this new threat?
What gives Chertoff the right to tell the country that he has a “gut” feeling that we’re going to be hit with a terrorist attack this summer?
Yes, how dare he? Just when everything was going so nice for the Democrats! I question the timing!
This is a calculated move to ratchet up the terror in this country to help Republican candidates—PERIOD. They are far behind in raising money and in all the polls. He should be fired, but of course since he’s being instructed to say these things (sounds like a Cheney/Rove play) he won’t be.
Shouldn't it concern us that Republicans are constantly talking about how people will all wise up when the next terrorist attack at home comes?
I mean, they really seem to be looking forward to it, and they take great delight in the thought that, by God, people will see things differently when it happens.
They relish the thought. They hunger for that terrorist attack they need to save their Party.
I, Not Atrios, think Democrats would be wise to talk on TV about how the last thing we need is to put people in power who have such a stake in having terrorists attack Americans.
I can easily start with the obvious - we were attacked in the fall, that is, September 2001. So I would think that the fall is "appealing" to "them," whomever they are.
Uh, Larissa, the fall starts on September 21, so September 11 is in the summer.
The Firedogs want to remind us that any terror attack means a failure of the Iraq war to do what it was supposed to.
The American people can figure out that if there really were a genuine, imminent threat of another attack on US soil it would mean (1) the policy of “fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them here” has both failed and even worse, likely provoked another attack here and (2) it’s foolhardy to have our forces, including much of your National Guard, bogged down in Iraq.
Just might be Cindy Sheehan. As you're no doubt aware by now, Cindy has unretired herself from activism and is threatening to run for Nancy Pelosi's seat in Congress if Pelosi doesn't introduce articles of impeachment against President Bush in the next two weeks. Better still, some kook bloggers are now talking about running as well.
So, I'm going to issue this challenge to my readers and fellow bloggers: If you think this liberal Democrat should give Mr. Ryan a run for his money, I'd like you to spread the word. Political bloggers blog because they want to be catalysts for political change and spread their messages through the internets; so, let's use this medium for all it's worth! Link this post to every lefty blog you read. Link to this post in a bulletin with your MySpace accounts. E-mail a link to this post to all your friends, families and acquaintances who still believes there's some hope left for this country and for the way of life we once knew. If we, as bloggers, readers of blogs, and citizens of this nation can make a difference on the netroots level, then by golly, let's do it!
And yes, she is a typical liberal blogger; lots of foul-mouthed posts. Anyway, the good news is that people like this give us a fighting chance that the Left will go too far in this election. Unfortunately, they seem helpless to prevent the Hillary steamroller.
I find that to be quite unacceptable for a journalist. He can question Paul’s viability, but “no chance in hell” isn’t the attitude a journalist should display publicly.
Putting it it quotes like that certainly implies that Stephanopolous said those words, but he didn't.
I’m not a huge fan of Ron Paul, but I do think what Stephanopoulos said was absolutely disgusting and I doubt he would say it to Joe Biden or Chris Dodd....
I don't see anything disgusting about George's observation. He's not doing a straight news show, he's doing news analysis. The point about Biden and Dodd is valid, but I'd argue that just shows that he should be discounting their chances as well, not pretending that Ron Paul is going to win the nomination.
Looking at the comments on any news article about Paul, it strikes me how much the Paul groundswell is a twisted, funhouse version of Barack Obama’s own rise. Both men are running personality-based candidacies, positioning themselves as outsiders who are bringing new ideas to the conversation after years of the same old crap. Both men are raising incredible amounts of money that is disproportionate to their polling–though it has to be said that Obama has a much better chance of winning his party’s nod than Paul does his. And both are selling their candidacies using returns to ideals classically held by their parties–Obama the Kennedyesque appeals to hope, good government, and principle, and Paul the belief in low taxes, less government, etc. Whether or not they support these principles isn’t the point–it’s how they’re selling the principles, and people are buying.
The notion that people are buying Ron Paul is quite a stretch. He's got cash in the bank, yes, but he's not spending it, which should tell everybody something.
Mark Steyn has the same thought I did: Couldn't the Islamic nutjob doctors in the UK have done far more damage with a hypodermic needle than they did with a car bomb?
Maybe their mistake was trying to blow up the airport instead of wreaking subtler havoc on the infidels. Did you see this week's scare-of-the-week from the Chinese health system? "About 420 bottles of fake blood protein, albumin, were found at hospitals in Hubei province but none had been used to treat patients, said Liu Jinai, an official with the inspection division of the provincial food and drug administration."
Well, this being China, where public lies about public health are routine, we just have to take Liu Jinai's word that "none had been used to treat patients." But imagine what Doctor Jihad could get up to if he stopped trying to use the syringe as a detonator and just resumed using it as a syringe?
Doctors are very much in a position to do real damage. Thank god this set did not pursue that course, but who's to say the next ones won't?
Republicans, by an 80% to 16% margin, say that the President should not be impeached. Despite the fact that the President recently alienated his political base over the immigration issue. Republican support for impeachment shows is little changed from the earlier survey.
Hillary Clinton is going to be the next President of the United States, and she's going to have a dominating majority of the House and Senate as well. The Republicans are going to get decimated in 2008.
According to Romney, additional reductions in farm subsidies at this time would not be wise. "Europe and other nations continue to protect their farmers with a heavy subsidization program and we're not going to take action which would put us at a competitive disadvantage for our farmers," Romney says.
Personally, I liked Romney's position then better than now.
He ranks his top starting quarterbacks from 1-32. Now this guy knows football, but this list is a joke. It's insane.
Let's start at the top. Peyton Manning is a heckuva player, but Tom Brady is still Tom Terrific. Nobody would rank Manning above Brady without the Colt's comeback against New England, and one game does not topple the leader of the Pats. Brees and Palmer there's not an ounce of difference between, Bulger and Hasselbeck are both quality players and....
Vince Young? Now I'm sorry, but Vince Young is not the seventh best quarterback in the NFL right now, and his selection in that spot is embarrassing. Young has the lowest yards per attempt among the QBs ranked from 1-29. He has the lowest completion percentage among anybody ranked from 1-31. Yeah, he ran for 552 yards last year. So what? We've been through this who thing before, with Michael Vick, remember? Heck, Vick had better stats than Young last year, why is it that he ranks #21 compared to Young's #7?
Obvious answer: Because everybody's caught onto the fact that Vick's a bust. Not a terrible player, but nothing like what we expected from him. If the media want to push a good black QB, how about Byron Leftwich, who's still only 27 and a better player than either of them, and ridiculously underrated at #28 based on an injury last season.
Ben Roethisberger at #17? That's just plain silly. There are no reasons to rank Roethlisberger behind Jay Cutler and Tony Romo; I'd put him in the top 5 easily. Favre at #14? Puh-lease! One of my favorite players of all time, but he's washed up.
Here's my top ten:
1. Tom Brady 2. Peyton Manning 3. Ben Roethlisberger 4. Carson Palmer 5. Drew Brees 6. Matt Hasselbeck 7. Jake Delhomme 8. Marc Bulger 9. Donovan McNabb 10. Byron Leftwich
The Rabbit and I sat there for a few moments staring at each other in silence before he angrily dismissed me.
"Now it will be very bad for you, Mac Kane. Go back to your room."
I did as instructed and awaited the moment when the Rabbit's prediction would come true.
That same day [July 4, 1968] my father assumed command of all U.S. forces in the Pacific.
Let me point out as well that in the much-reported fund-raising discussion, McCain did not do all that poorly. McCain dropped from $13 million to $11.2 million. Romney saw an even larger decline, from $20.5 million to $14 million (although he "loaned" $6.5 million to his campaign so he could claim to have kept pace with the earlier quarter). Giuliani did manage to bump his numbers a bit, but it was only from $16.6 million to $17 million.
I also tend to think that "lending" money to one's own campaign is the kind of thing that makes future donors nervous. If I contribute to Mitt Romney's campaign today, is that money going to go towards campaign ads and phone banks? Or is Mitt going to put it back in his pocket? We hear a lot about how much money Mitt has on hand ($12 million to McCain's $2 million), but Romney loaned something like $2.5 million to his campaign in the first quarter and $6.5 million in the second, so Romney's total is artificially inflated by $9 million in money that he presumably does not want to spend.
The Babe Ruth of hot dog eating loses his championship despite breaking the prior world record.
Joey Chestnut, a California graduate student, unseated six-time defending champion Takeru Kobayashi of Japan at the 2007 Nathan's Famous International July Fourth Hot Dog Eating Contest.
The greatest moment in the history of American sports? Uh, sure.
Al Gore's son was arrested for drug possession. The good news is he was driving an environmentally friendly vehicle.
Al Gore III, 24, was stopped as he was driving a blue Toyota Prius, a hybrid car, along a freeway near San Diego, southern California, about 100 mile per hour.
Sheriff's deputies who stopped him said they smelled marijuana in the car and recovered less than an ounce of the drug. The officers also found the prescription drugs Xanax, Valium, both tranquillisers, the pain killer Vicodin and Adderall, a drug for attention deficit disorder.
Gore's son has had several run-ins with the law. Obviously no real reflection on his dad.
Which I am pretty sure will be waived. I did find his description of the fight quite interesting:
"The guy in the passenger seat was wearing a white T-shirt. He got out carrying what looked like a petrol bomb and seconds later the Jeep was in flames.
"Then he kicked and punched a man to the ground before punching a policeman square in the face. That's when I saw red. That sort of thing just isn't on.
"I told my passenger to run for her life, then I went for the man in the T-shirt and managed to skelp him in the face. I followed it up by booting him twice.
"By that time some other people had joined in and it seemed like the T-shirt guy was trying to get back into the Jeep.
"Then the driver got out of the car. He was already in flames. It was obvious he was the real psycho of the pair.
"Someone was hosing him down but the flames seemed to jump up again just as it looked like they had gone out.
"It was obvious the driver wanted into the boot of the Jeep for something and I was worried about what it was. I thought it must be a gun.
"He was going crazy, just lashing out at everyone and babbling p*sh in a foreign language the whole time.
"I've heard people say since that he was shouting 'Allah!' but I didn't hear that. It just sounded like a lot of c**p to me.
"I ran for the guy and punched him twice in the face with pretty good right hooks.
"Then I kicked him with full force right in the balls but he didn't go down. He just kept on babbling his rubbish.
Not used to calling a guy who kicked somebody in the nuts a hero, but it applies in this case.
I don't know why I found this story about a writer finding out what it was liked to get choked by an Ultimate Fighting Champ, but I did.
What does it feel like after getting choked out? Your neck and Adam's apple hurt, of course. It's a brutal sore throat, and it lasts a few days. But that pain comes later. In the first few hours, it feels like you woke up too soon after taking a sleeping pill. You know you're going to be OK, but for now everything is cloudy. Your brain isn't quite where it ought to be. Twice in the ensuing two hours I lost a credit card, and no, I'm not joking.
The answer, of course, is shortages, as you can see in this story from Zimbabwe:
Shelves in supermarkets across Harare are swiftly emptying and police in full riot gear linger outside.
The new controls force supermarkets to sell food at below its cost from wholesalers. Unless the regime relents, there will be food shortages, empty shelves and, eventually, the closure of all shops.
"We won't be restocking. If need be, we might have to close shop rather than stick to government prices," said the manager of one store.
The cause of the price controls is inflation, which recently ran 300 percent in one week. The cause of the inflation is huge government deficits. And the cause of the deficits?
This immense borrowing requirement is, in turn, the result of the wider economic failure caused mainly by the seizure of white-owned farms.
The British continue to arrest suspects in the Glasgow and London car-bombing rings, including some professionals:
An Iraqi junior doctor and a brilliant neurologist working for the NHS are among the suspects being quizzed over the series of bomb attacks across Britain, it emerged today.
Details of the suspects were revealed as police staged a controlled explosion at a hospital near Glasgow today.
The junior doctor has been named as Bilal Abdulla, who is said to have completed his medical training in Baghdad.
The suspected ringleader of the Al Qaeda car bombers is a brilliant neurologist working for the NHS.
Saudi Mohammed Asha, 26, was arrested with his 27-year-old wife, who was in traditional Muslim dress, on the M6 in Cheshire on Saturday night.
"There is no doubt whatsoever that there will continue to be attacks against the British government, its interests and the home front as long as we see the continued British and American occupation of Muslim land in Iraq and Afghanistan, support for criminal Israel, and draconian measures taken against Muslims in the UK," said Anjem Choudary, founder and former chief of two Islamic groups disbanded by the British authorities under antiterror legislation.
"This is reminiscent of the warnings and intelligence we were getting in the summer of 2001," the official told ABCNews.com.
U.S. officials have kept the information secret, and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said today on ABC News' "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" that the United States did not have "have any specific credible evidence that there's an attack focused on the United States at this point."
