JUST PULLED 3850 MESSAGES off the server, accounting for one week’s email to the InstaPundit account. If I haven’t replied to your email, that’s probably why. Sorry — I do the best I can.

LOTS OF EURO-TERROR NEWS: First, this story:

The French police are convinced that their country has escaped a planned chemical or biological attack by an Islamist cell linked to al-Qaida.

An interior ministry official said evidence from Islamist militants arrested in the Lyon area last week made it “very plain” that an attack with the deadly botulism or ricin toxins was being actively prepared.

Then there’s this:

Swiss authorities have arrested and detained eight people in connection with last May’s terrorist attacks on Westerners in Saudi Arabia.

The Federal Police Office said those arrested, all foreign nationals, were being held on suspicion of providing logistical support to a criminal organisation.

And this:

For at least a year, investigators claim, the 30-year-old Algerian had been a key part of a network of Islamic militants dedicated to recruiting and dispatching suicide bombers to the Middle East. Several volunteers had got through, wreaking havoc in a series of attacks in Iraq. Many more were on their way, along with bombers focused on targets in Europe.

Even worse, his associates were planning bombs in Western Europe. At least two European intelligence services had made previous attempts to take Mahdjoub out. Now, finally, it was the Germans’ turn. This weekend, just over a month after his arrest, Mahdjoub remains in prison at an undisclosed location. He is likely to remain incarcerated for some time. . . .

The investigation has also revealed that, despite moves by the government there to crack down, Saudi Arabia remains the key source of funds for al-Qaeda and related militant groups.

Go figure. Follow that last link for a roundup on the Islamic terror presence in Europe. There seems to be a lot of it.

UPDATE: Here’s a roundup on terrorism in Thailand. More here. It seems to be Islamic in nature.

ANOTHER UPDATE: D’oh! I forgot to link this story about an apparently foiled suicide bombing in Britiain.

GO TO AMAZON.COM, TYPE IN “OLD FART” at the search window, and see what you get. If it doesn’t work, click here.

A READER SENDS MORE EVIDENCE that Paul O’Neill’s alleged bombshell — that Bush wanted to get rid of Saddam before 9/11 — isn’t exactly news:

MR. LEHRER: With Saddam Hussein, you mean?

GOV. BUSH: Yes, and —

MR. LEHRER: You could get him out of there?

GOV. BUSH: I’d like to, of course, and I presume this
administration would as well.

That’s how to keep a secret — say it out loud during the Presidential debates, and nobody will notice!

JUSTIN KATZ has a new blog.

TODAY’S MEET THE PRESS featured an interesting discussion about blogs, including some guy named Roger Simon who’s not the real Roger Simon. (Summary at The Command Post.)

It also included a minor John Kerry gaffe:

This has been a disorganized, haphazard effort. They failed in Afghanistan, to capture Saddam Hussein in Tora-Bora.

I guess that’s why we had to go look for him in Iraq!

UPDATE: Jeff Jarvis comments on the blog segment.

WILL THIS BE AN INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS SCANDAL?

Hundreds of reformist candidates in Iran have been barred from standing in general elections next month by an unelected conservative body.

And if not, why not?

MY EARLIER RECOMMENDATION of the Lord Darcy mysteries by Randall Garrett seems to have found favor with at least one reader: “I hereby give them a 9/10. . . . Give them a try, they’re quite good.”

STILL MORE INTERNET CENSORSHIP: I blame John Ashcroft.

DAVID ADESNIK: “Eric Schmitt seems decisively committed to up-ending all of his NYT colleagues’ bad news stories about Iraq.”

Adesnik is also making fun of Maureen Dowd’s column on Wesley Clark’s sweaters.

IT WASN’T A LOT OF SNOW FRIDAY, but we had a pretty good time sledding before it melted.

A Flexible Flyer would have laughed at our miserable inch or so, but the cheapo plastic toboggans favored in this region do just fine on that. The Insta-Daughter had a good time, as did the rest of us.

I can’t believe that they closed the schools for it, but the Insta-Daughter was delighted.

BILL WHITTLE has a new essay up.

READER MICHAEL HICKINS EMAILS:

hurry up guy we’re all waiting to hear what you and the other fascist apologists are going to say about Paul O’Neill’s book

Well, I haven’t read O’Neill’s book, but as I understand it the big hype is that he says (1) that Bush can talk a lot in meetings; and (2) the Administration wanted to topple Saddam before 9/11.

The first is kind of a bombshell — I’ve been hearing since 2000, often from the same all-little-letters lefty emailers, that Bush is too dumb to form sentences. But it turns out that the emailers are wrong, and he can actually talk for an extended period. Go figure!

The second bit, though, isn’t news at all. After all, the Clinton Administration repeatedly described Saddam as a threat who needed to be dealt with. Here’s a sample quote:

“Saddam’s goal … is to achieve the lifting of U.N. sanctions while retaining and enhancing Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction programs. We cannot, we must not and we will not let him succeed.” — Madeline Albright, 1998

And there’s this:

MR. CLINTON TOLD REPORTERS AFTER THE NATIONAL SECURITY
COUNCIL MEETING — THE SECOND IN AS MANY DAYS ON IRAQ — THAT NO OPTIONS FOR RESPONDING TO SADDAM HUSSEIN’S LATEST MOVE WERE BEING RULED OUT.

So Clinton was considering war in 1998, and Bush was considering it in 2001. Big deal. Opposition to Saddam’s rule has been the policy of three Administrations. Only the current Administration was willing to do something about it, but that represents a difference in aggressiveness, not a different characterization of Saddam. (There’s more information here.) Aren’t the Saddam defenders the actual “fascist apologists” here?

And dude, the “shift” key is to the left and right of the keyboard. Use it.

UPDATE: Several readers note that Bill Clinton in fact signed into law H.R. 4655, the “Iraq Liberation Act of 1998.” As Clinton said when he signed it:

The United States favors an Iraq that offers its people freedom at home. I categorically reject arguments that this is unattainable due to Iraq’s history or its ethnic or sectarian make-up. Iraqis deserve and desire freedom like everyone else. The United States looks forward to a democratically supported regime that would permit us to enter into a dialogue leading to the reintegration of Iraq into normal international life.

Fortunately, this Clinton Administration policy is finally bearing fruit! And what’s interesting is that the Clinton signing statement linked above places freedom and democracy for Iraq, coupled with an end to Saddam’s crimes against humanity, at the top of the priority list, and only then adds:

There are, of course, other important elements of U.S. policy. These include the maintenance of U.N. Security Council support efforts to eliminate Iraq’s weapons and missile programs and economic sanctions that continue to deny the regime the means to reconstitute those threats to international peace and security. United States support for the Iraqi opposition will be carried out consistent with those policy objectives as well.

Me, Bush, and Clinton: all agreed on proper policy toward Iraq! Who knew that Clinton had drunk the Wolfowitz Kool-aid?

ANOTHER UPDATE: D’oh! I told you I hadn’t read the book, but several readers email to say that I have O’Neill wrong — that in fact, he says that Bush doesn’t talk a lot in meetings. At least, not in meetings where O’Neill was talking. . . .

So there’s really nothing new here at all. Oh, well.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Yeah, it’s overkill. But here’s Al Gore:

Our most important immediate task is to continue to tear up the Al Qaeda network, and since it is present in many countries, it will be an operation, which requires new forms of sustained cooperation with other governments.

Even if we give first priority to the destruction of terrorist networks, and even if we succeed, there are still governments that could bring us great harm. And there is a clear case that one of these governments in particular represents a virulent threat in a class by itself: Iraq.

As far as I am concerned, a final reckoning with that government should be on the table. To my way of thinking, the real question is not the principle of the thing, but of making sure that this time we will finish the matter on our terms.

Me, Clinton, Bush, and Gore: Bringing realism to foreign relations since 1998!

MORE: Reader Jason Gustafson emails: “So, basically, President Bush is being accused of wanting to fight terrorism before 9/11?”

Yeah, that seems to be O’Neill’s bombshell. Just call Bush a “premature anti-terrorist,” I guess!

Meanwhile, O’Neill is already being mocked.

EVERYBODY KEEPS EMAILING ME this story about mustard gas being found in Iraq. It appears to be genuine, but it’s hardly news: Saddam gassed people, after all, so we know he had WMD. (Just ask Bill Clinton!) And I don’t intend to make a big deal out of this discovery, because I never regarded WMD as the main reason to go to war. The real reason to go to war was (1) to establish a military and democratic presence in the Arab world (which we’ve done); (2) to make an example of Saddam to intimidate other Arab leaders (which we’ve done); and (3) to cut off Saddam as a source of support — both existing and potential — for terrorists, which we’ve also done. The WMD was a nontrivial issue, and required for playing the UN game (which I always regarded as a mistake) but not, to me, the most important issue.

The WMD was an alligator, but the point of the exercise is to drain the swamp.

UPDATE: Reader Dan Cassaro emails:

That sound you hear is the left ripping up the “Saddam never had WMD” goalposts and moving them back to “Saddam wasn’t a threat the US with 36 old rusty shells”. No matter what we find in Iraq, it won’t be “enough to justify the war.”

Not to people who were unalterably opposed to it from day one.

MORE ON POLITICAL CORRECTNESS IN THE UK: As usual, it’s thoroughly one-sided in its censorship.

UPDATE: Another double standard at the BBC: Saying Jews should be shot: No problem. Complaining about Arab terrorism — loss of show and possible jail for “hate speech.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: More here.

THERE’S AN Instapundit interview over on NormBlog.

UK POLICE ARREST MAN IN SUICIDE BOMB PLAN: Sounds serious.

ROGER SIMON WRITES on opinion monoculture among the university class. “The University Class is one of the most rigid in America in its thinking. The interesting question is why.”

I actually think that the world of academia is in for a big change, which is already getting underway. Here’s a column I wrote a couple of years ago offering advice for academics — though it’s advice that is, for the most part, being ignored.

TROUBLE AT SF INDYMEDIA:

Our IMC has now split into two groups. When a few of the tech members began to have personal problems with other members of the collective, these tech members demanded a split of the collective. The resulting dynamics within the group continued to worsen. It created an environment that made it difficult to continue working together and also discouraged potential new people from joining the collective. While most members of the collective opposed any kind of split, the aforementioned tech members insisted that they would split anyway, because they wanted to and because they could.

The tech members who wanted the split also had convinced the rest of the group to agree to move the site to the linefeed.org server. They claimed that this was merely a technical issue which would enable the site to run faster.

The members of the splitting group also began making viscious and false accusations about other members of the collective. This even went as far as accusing some members of being security risks and/or police informants.

The splitting group began to take control of the linefeed.org server that the SF Bay Area IMC website had been hosted on by kicking off all other IMC members from access to it. At the same time, they also cut off access to other local activist websites (such as the Food Not Bombs News website, liberationradio.net and passionbomb.com) that were being hosted on their linefeed.org server.

Sigh.

STILL MORE CRUSHING OF DISSENT: Apparently, the drop in actual crime has produced a surplus of free time among police forces.

I think a round of layoffs is in order.

WELL, THIS IS NO SURPRISE:

WASHINGTON — U.S. officials have found evidence corroborating the Bush administration’s allegations that Russian companies sold Saddam Hussein high-tech military equipment that threatened U.S. forces during the invasion of Iraq last March, a senior State Department official said Friday.

The United States has found proof that Russian firms exported night-vision goggles and radar-jamming equipment to Iraq, the official said. The evidence includes the equipment itself and proof that it was used during the war, said the official.

Such exports would violate the terms of United Nations sanctions against Baghdad.

This, of course, is why the Bush Administration’s efforts to keep the UN relevant were a bad idea. The Security Council was — and is — packed with people who were on the other side.

UPDATE: David Boxenhorn emails: “Not only that, they were violating UN rules while insisting that the US abide by them.”

Yeah. Kind of like Kyoto.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader James V. Somers emails:

More evidence, it seems to me, of other nations being just as “unilateral” (i.e., acting in THEIR own best interests) as us. It strikes me that I have never seen a really detailed argument made – say, in National Review, or the Weekly Standard, or MSNBC’s Opinion column section – that one reason that the U.S. should not be overly constrained by “multilateralism” is that almost nobody else is, either.

That’s what really frightens me about the general approach of the Democratic Party to foreign policy – many of their politicians seem to really believe that the whole world would function agreeably and cooperatively in regard to addressing terrorism, weapons proliferation, and a host of other really serious problems if the darned Bush Administration would just stop being so difficult. And it seems to me that that position is taken despite a veritable mountain of evidence to the contrary.

Good point.

YESTERDAY, I linked to a story saying that Wesley Clark was trying to soften his image with Argyle sweaters. But judging from this picture, he’s actually going for the John Belushi look.

Well, that’s a voter demographic too. . . .

UPDATE: Jonathan Hendry emails: “Appropriate attire for that visit with a Dartmouth fraternity, I should think.”

Like I said, it’s just another demographic.

COLORADO COMPUTER CASE UPDATE: The ACLU has gotten a Temporary Restraining Order against the Greeley, Colorado police department, and secured the return of Thomas Mink’s computer. More information over at TalkLeft.

UPDATE: Reader Ron Morris emails:

To one who lives in the region, the most astonishing thing about the Colorado computer case is that the police apparently have nothing better to do.

Hmm. Sounds like there’s some fat in their budget! Or some administrators who need to be replaced with folks with different priorities. Or both!

STILL MORE CRUSHING OF DISSENT, at the BBC.

ANOTHER BOOK that I haven’t read yet, though I’ve meant to, is Bob Zubrin’s The Holy Land. But Adam Keiper has reviewed it in NRO and writes: “The duplicity, mendacity, and hypocrisy that characterize the present predicament of the Middle East are laid bare in Zubrin’s engaging romp, with verve and biting wit.”