The New York Times is gleefully reporting on a yet to be released National Intelligence Estimate supposedly attributing rising global jihad to the Iraq war.

A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.

The classified National Intelligence Estimate attributes a more direct role to the Iraq war in fueling radicalism than that presented either in recent White House documents or in a report released Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee, according to several officials in Washington involved in preparing the assessment or who have read the final document.

The intelligence estimate, completed in April, is the first formal appraisal of global terrorism by United States intelligence agencies since the Iraq war began, and represents a consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services inside government. Titled ?Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States,?? it asserts that Islamic radicalism, rather than being in retreat, has metastasized and spread across the globe.

Absent from the NYT’s report, however, is any semblance of logic. Captain Ed of Captain’s Quarters correctly points out the article’s fallacies:

It makes the classic logical fallacy of confusing correlation with causation, and the basic premise can easily be dismissed with a reminder of some basic facts.

First and foremost, Islamist radicalism didn’t just start expanding in 2003. The most massive expansion of Islamist radicalism came after the end of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, when the Islamists defeated one of the world’s superpowers. Shortly afterwards, the staging of American forces in Saudi Arabia to drive Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait created the most significant impulse for the expansion of organized Islamist radicalism and led directly to the formation of al-Qaeda. It put the US in Wahhabi jihadist crosshairs for the first time.

Of course there has been an increase in jihadist activities since Iraq. But, as Captain Ed points out, correlation is not causation. And in this particular case, the cause lies in the fundamental nature of the enemy we are fighting, not in the actions we have taken to combat them. The competency to which we have carried out that action is another question, however.

If I place a lamp over the edge of a table and leave it perilously close to falling over the edge - knowing full well that any disturbance will cause it to fall and break - is the next person who walks into the room and causes it to fall the one to blame, or am I?

Radical Islamic Jihad ideology has been bombarded upon the populations of the Middle East for decades now. A primary part of that ideological assault is the assertion that the West, specifically the US, is determined to destroy Islam and conquer all the countries in the Middle East.

Some think this is reason for us not to take any action that could possibly be interpreted in that manner. The assumption behind that position - that the radicals rely on even the tiniest bit of truth in order to spread their filth - is fatally flawed. They have such total control over the media that they can claim any manner of outlandish nonsense and it will be believed. These people get on national television and claim that jews kill children and use their blood for passover. Any belief that these people rely on us actually doing what they claim we are doing in order to convince their public it is so should be dropped.

The brainwashing applied to these people since birth has put them in a position where they are ready to believe any aggressive Western action is a new crusade. It is that indoctrination that is to blame for knocking them over the edge, not our efforts to combat them. And that is where this report (or more likely, the NYT’s account of this report) misses the mark.

The enemy has ingeniously designed a system in which our efforts to fight back results in an increase of their numbers. They rely on that fact to paralyze us into inaction, hoping that our resolve will waver and they will be allowed to operate virtually unimpeded, as they did all through the 90’s. But we must continue on until we have eliminated the true cause, the stranglehold that virulent Islamic Jihad has on their media and culture. Expecting the enemy to just roll over as a response to our efforts is foolish and naive.

Fish and Wildlife Service puts woodpecker ahead of people, gets results good for neither.

The chain saws started in February when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service put Boiling Spring Lakes, a state-designated bird sanctuary, on notice that rapid development threatened to squeeze out the woodpecker.

The agency issued a map marking 15 active woodpecker “clusters” and announced it was working on a new one that could potentially designate whole neighborhoods in the southeastern North Carolina town as protected habitat _ and subject to more stringent building restrictions.

Hoping to beat the mapmakers to the printer, landowners swarmed city hall to apply for lot-clearing permits. Treeless land, after all, needn’t be set aside for woodpeckers. Since February, the city has issued 368 logging permits, 90 in May alone, the vast majority without accompanying building permits.

. . .Bonner Stiller has been holding onto two wooded, half-acre lakefront lots for 23 years to pay for his kids’ college educations or cushion his retirement. He had both lots stripped of longleaf pines before the government could issue its new map.

“They have finally developed a value,” says Stiller, a state legislator who gave away the trees in exchange for the clearing. “And then to have that taken away from you?”

This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone with common sense. When you threaten to take away control of peoples property (which often amounts to a majority of their livelyhood), they are going to try to stop you. In this case, that means preempting any possible declarations of endangered habitat. Private property shouldn’t mean jumping through government hoops and having to go through endless bureaucratic redtape anytime you want to build on [i]your[/i] property. So, rather than risk that possibility, the people sensibility removed the problem trees before government said otherwise.

This is what happens when you place the welfare of birds ahead of people. It’s time to move past this unnatural notion that any endangered species must be protected, whatever the cost. Species come and go, it’s a fact of nature. The willingness of some to destroy the lives of human beings, as often happens, in order to protect them shows shockingly misaligned moral compasses.

A leaked French memo claims Saudi intelligence believes Osama bin Laden to be dead since last month, most likely from typhoid fever.

A leaked French intelligence document raises the possibility Osama bin Laden died of typhoid, but President Jacques Chirac said Saturday the report was “in no way whatsoever confirmed” and officials from Kabul to Washington expressed skepticism about its accuracy.

There have been numerous reports over the years that bin Laden had been killed or that he was dangerously ill, but the al-Qaida leader has periodically released audiotapes appealing to followers and commenting on current news events.

The regional French newspaper l’Est Republicain printed what it described as a copy of a confidential document from the DGSE intelligence service citing an uncorroborated report from a “usually reliable source” who said Saudi secret services were convinced that bin Laden had died.

Both French and American officials are insisting the information is unconfirmed, and sound very skeptical as to the reports accuracy.

American and French officials cast serious doubts Saturday on a French newspaper’s report that Usama bin Laden was believed to have died in Pakistan last month.

. . .A U.S. official told FOX News that he had seen no evidence to suggest the Al Qaeda leader was dead. “Don’t believe it,” he said. “I would not give credence to that report.”

It turns out that the illness he supposedly died from, typhoid fever, is not very common in the part of Pakistan where bin Laden has been suspected to be. Threatswatch reports that, “A 2005 CDC study reflected fewer than 400 incidences per 100,000 in Pakistan and a death rate of <5. The risk is highest among the poorest with little medical care. Usama bin Laden likely lacks little for health care, given his wealth and stature."

They also cite an India Daily article suggesting that the report of bin Laden’s death could be a disinformation campaign on the part of al-Qaeda.

Pakistan has spread the rumor that typhoid killed Osama Bin Laden in August. Report on Osama Bin Laden?s death from typhoid is a set up by Pakistan?s ISI after truce with Taliban.

. . .French secret service got the information from their ISI dual agent bases working to protect France from Pakistan based Islamic terrorists.

A senior official in Pakistan?s Interior Ministry also said: ?We have no information about Osama?s death.?

At this point it’s impossible to make heads or tails of this. But one thing I do know for sure, we can expect to see lots of hysterical conspiracy mongery to come from the left. Question the timing.

Commerce Department is missing 1,100 laptops

A Commerce Department review found that 249 laptop computers with personal information have been lost or stolen over the last five years, the agency announced Sept. 21.

Commerce said that 888 other laptops that did not contain personal information have also been lost or stolen since 2001.

. . .?Perhaps the most shocking thing here is that the public might not have ever known of these breaches, and their scope, if we hadn?t specifically asked for the information,? Davis said. ?Why aren?t these inventories taken automatically, instinctively??

The only thing government bureaucracy does instinctively is cover its own ass.

I never realized New York was home to so many genocidal dictators (discounting, of course, the ones that merely visit from time to time) that it needed a Human Rights Commission. Appearantly, I was wrong.

Hear the phrase “human-rights violator” and one usually thinks of Slobodan Milosevic or some other thuggish despot. In New York City these days, though, the phrase might apply to an advertising executive whose firm hasn’t hired enough African-American managers or to the makers of an “insensitive” video game.

For this astonishing development, blame New York’s Commission on Human Rights, an agency that investigates and prosecutes violations of the city’s very liberal civil-rights laws. Such laws target not only racial and religious discrimination but bias against women, the elderly, the disabled, noncitizens, gays, ex-cons, the transgendered, victims of domestic violence, and other protected classes. And of course the commission interprets “discrimination” in the most extraordinary ways.

. . .It’s easier to find discrimination if you’ve got an expansive notion of it, of course, and the current commission has expanded its definition to the point of absurdity. Ask New York’s advertising firms. In early September, the commission trumpeted that it had reached agreements with several top agencies, forcing them to recruit and promote more blacks. The companies, seeking to avoid fines of up to $250,000 and litigation, will set numerical goals–quotas–for increasing black representation, establish “diversity boards” and submit to three years of monitoring.

Naturally, the commission offers zero evidence that racism is to blame for minority “underrepresentation” in advertising firms. An advertising executive quoted in the New York Times gives a far more plausible explanation: “Minorities are targeted broadly by everyone: Wall Street, Fortune 100 companies. Your top minority students have lots of opportunities outside advertising.” The notion that New York advertisers are bigots who won’t voluntarily hire and advance qualified blacks is preposterous in this day and age. It’s the commission’s retrograde racial-preference mandate that’s truly racist, since it likely will require the ad firms to hire certain job candidates–and reject others–simply because of their skin color.

The threat of a commission investigation a while back was sufficient to get Take-Two Interactive Software, makers of the video game Grand Theft Auto, to promise to remove an instruction–”Kill the Haitians”–from one version of the game. “I believe that this New York City-based company has gained a greater appreciation for the diversity which makes this city great,” Mr. Bloomberg announced. You don’t have to be a fan of Grand Theft Auto to find in such intimidation less protection of a human right than violation of the First Amendment.

In the perfect left-wingers world, there is no First Amendment. After all, freedom of speech so often leads to that condition which liberals tend to find most intolerable, offense. Some people just refuse to go along with the liberal thought police and dare to say things that other people don’t like.

Thankfully, we have Human Rights Commissions diligently on the lookout for such flagrant troublemakers, ready to ship them off to reeducation centers, also known as “sensitivity training” in the liberal newspeak, at a moments notice.

This is unbelievable. Rep. Peter King, Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, has an op-ed titled “Now is the time to raise the minimum wage” that is little more than a copy/paste of socialist, left-wing talking points on the minimum wage. That he could be this ignorant is rather shocking.

It has been far too long since Congress last increased the minimum wage. In September 1997, minimum wage was increased from $4.75 to $5.15- where it still stands. Since then, Americans have seen a steady increase in living expenses. The price of food has increased by 21 percent, rent by 28 percent, childcare and preschool by 48 percent and gasoline by 81 percent.

It is getting increasingly difficult for a person making $5.15 an hour, even if they are working a full forty hours a week, to live off of this wage. That is a total of only $10,700 per annum! For a single mother or father with two children, this wage leaves them well below the federal poverty line. Hard working Americans who are just getting by on minimum wage are too often faced with the decision of paying their rent, or paying for groceries; paying their heating bill, or paying for medication. That is entirely unacceptable.

Once again, we see rank economic ignorance and disinformation on display at the highest levels of government. Rep. King wants you to believe that minimum wage workers are, by and large, family bread winners. Hard workers struggling to provide for their family and never catching a break. This is false. Only 19% of minimum wage earners fall below the poverty line. The average household income for minimum wage earners is $40,000. This is due to the fact that, of the 1.9 million minimum-wage earners, more than half are under the age of 24. And of minimum wage earners, 2 out of 3 will be earning 10% more within the year.

What King won’t tell you, but any economist can, is that minimum wage laws hurt, rather than help, the poor. Minimum wage laws increase poverty. They deny low skilled workers the opportunity to gain experience by increasing the costs to businesses that hire them.

Compendium File: Minimum wage laws

I’m completely flabbergasted by this one:

ran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said he is not an anti-Semite.

“Jews are respected by everyone, by all human beings,” he told a news conference at the United Nations headquarters in New York.

The remarks come months after Mr Ahmadinejad called for Israel to be wiped off the map - and described the Holocaust as “myth”.

I smell the plot for a twilight zone episode here.

Next up: Micheal Moore details his secret crush on President Bush.

House Approves Voter ID Act to Democrats’ Dismay

In a vote of 228 to 196, the House Wednesday approved a bill that requires Americans to show proof of citizenship in order to vote, but Democrats said the measure amounts to a Republican voter suppression bill.

The Federal Election Integrity Act of 2006 (H.R. 4844), also known as the Voter ID Act, would take effect in 2010 and require voters to present a photo ID that could not have been obtained without proof of U.S. citizenship.

“Every election cycle we hear stories of voter fraud and stories of non-citizens voting in our elections. That is why the Voter ID Act is the common sense step towards bringing integrity to our elections,” said House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) in a statement.

According to Hastert, the Voter ID Act builds on the REAL ID Act and follows the recommendation of the bipartisan Carter-Baker Commission on Federal Election Reform.

But Democrats were less than pleased with the bill’s passage. House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland said the bill is “tantamount to a 21st century poll tax.”

“It will disenfranchise large numbers of legal voters,” the Associated Press quoted Hoyer as saying.

Democrat whining about a “poll tax” may offer a catchy soundbyte, a bit of red meat for their base, but it makes little logical sense. Poll taxes were implemented to prevent eligible voters from voting. ID’s are required to keep ineligible voters from voting. But when your party depends on, and even encourages, the votes of these ineligible voters, such distinctions become necessarily muddied.

Nor does the disenfranchisement argument hold much water. The bill won’t take affect until 2010, allowing more than enough time for anyone lacking such identification to get it; which the bill also enables them to do for free. Spending a little time to verify the legal status of voters is worth the price to ensure the process is not tainted by illegal or fraudulent votes.

Naturally, Pelosi had this bit of race-baiting nonsense to add:

“Though the right to vote is the foundation of our democracy, the bill we debate today would in effect disenfranchise millions of American voters: the elderly, African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, people with disabilities; and the list goes on,” Pelosi said.

How, exactly, it would do any of this Pelosi didn’t bother to say. Appearantly, it was sufficient to her objectives to demagogue the issue, with no explanation necessary.

From Corruption Chronicals:

An Indian tribe, whose members regularly help smuggle illegal immigrants and drugs into the U.S., will not allow a fence to be erected along a vulnerable stretch of the Mexican border which happens to be on tribal land.

The Tohono O?odham Indians own the second biggest reservation in the country, about 2.8 million acres in the Arizona desert, and it happens to include a 75-mile border with Mexico that is used daily to smuggle drugs and migrants. Tribal members have vowed to fight the double-layered fence, approved by the House and set to be approved by the Senate this week, along their portion of the Mexican border.

Evidently the tribe of around 15,000 wants to keep the privilege of crossing the border regularly to visit relatives and friends and even perform native ceremonies in both countries. One tribal council member said ?animals and our people need to cross freely.?

Congress should give them a real simple answer: Too bad.

. . .the Jooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooos.

Sudan’s president said on Tuesday his country would never allow U.N. peacekeepers into Darfur and charged that the West wanted to dismember his country in order to help Israel.

“It is very clear there is a plan to redraw the region,” especially after the invasion of Iraq, President Omar Hassan al-Bashir told a news conference on the sidelines of a ministerial U.N. General Assembly session.

“The main purpose is the security of Israel. Any state in the region should be weakened, dismembered in order to protect the Israelis, to guarantee the Israeli security,” he said.

Asked about Sunday’s rallies Darfur peace rallies from Rwanda to San Francisco, Bashir said they were “invariably organised by Zionist Jewish organisations.”

Yeah, that San Francisco is a veritable Israel away from Israel; a hotbed for Zionist activities. Just don’t tell the lefties around there, they may not be pleased to hear about a Zionist infiltration of their safehaven.