STRATEGYPAGE REPORTS:

American troops now control all of Fallujah and have found extensive evidence of terrorist and criminal gangs using the city as a headquarters. Evidence was found of torture chambers, and video sets used for filming the execution of kidnap victims. Moreover, the body of a woman, thought to be foreign aid executive (Care International) Margaret Hassan, was also found in Fallujah. A video of her murder was recently released by her killers, and it appears that the killing was done in Fallujah. Without Fallujah as a “safe area” for keeping hostages, killing them, and getting away with it, the terrorists have to do their dirty work in cities where there is a strong police presence, and nearby American troops. That’s what’s happening in Baghdad, Mosul and other cities right now. The gangs are trying to control neighborhoods in these cities, and are not succeeding.

The government has ordered the police and army to enter mosques and arrest clerics who continue to preach violence against the government. This has led to a familiar drill where American troops surround a mosque, and Iraqi commandos go in and arrest those wanted, and often find weapons and other incriminating evidence.

Opinion surveys continue to show the majority of Iraqis determined to have elections, democracy and an end of terrorism and Sunni Arab dictatorship. Iraqis are not happy with the way the international (especially Arab) media portrays anti-government forces and terrorists as “freedom fighters.” Iraqis know exactly what the fighters are fighting for, and it isn’t freedom. The violent gangs want to revive Sunni Arab rule over the Shia Arab and Kurd majority. Even many Sunni Arabs don’t care for this outcome, because only a minority of Sunni Arabs benefit when someone like Saddam Hussein is in charge.

By the way, you can subscribe to StrategyPage’s email service from their front page. I’ve found it quite good.

I’M NOT CATBLOGGING TONIGHT, but Brendan Loy is.

TOM WOLFE SPOKE IN — AND TO — SAN FRANCISCO YESTERDAY: Ed Driscoll has a report:

The whole thing reminded me of the Star Trek episode where Captain Kirk explains to a marooned Zefram Cochrane that there’s a whole, growing galaxy out there teaming with life that he can explore. Except that Wolfe was essentially telling an insular and emotionally walled-in left to go visit America for themselves.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Several readers note that Wolfe continues to plug James Webb’s new book. Yeah, I had noticed that. It seems to be selling quite well: it’s at #133 on Amazon.

VW EMAILS ME WITH A HUSH-HUSH LOOK AT THE NEW JETTA: I think it looks like a Prius.

UPDATE: More Jetta pics here. (Via Jalopnik, a new Gawker car-blog I hadn’t seen before.)

KEEP UP WITH THE INDIAN BLOGOSPHERE: This week’s Blog Mela is up!

PAUL BOUTIN: “As a San Franciscan, I need to point out that a stuffed animal fetish is perfectly normal. It’s your neighbors who have the problem.”

THIS WEEK’S CARNIVAL OF THE RECIPES IS UP: Yum.

THE SPACE TOURISM BILL, which looked dead, is coming up for a vote this afternoon according to the folks at XCOR Aerospace.

GOOD NEWS ON CLONING: “U.N. diplomats abandoned contentious efforts to draft a treaty that would outlaw human cloning and will likely settle for a weaker declaration that won’t seek a comprehensive ban, officials said. The last-minute agreement on Thursday appeared to be a major blow to President Bush, who had called for a total ban on cloning when he spoke before the U.N. General Assembly in August.”

It’s a blow I’m happy to see.

MORE ON WEB VIDEO over at GlennReynolds.com — and Howard Owens’ award-winning work for the Ventura County Star gets a mention.

THE VOLOKH CONSPIRACY has taken the Boeing. Bravo!

DAVID ADESNIK NOTES that even Juan Cole — who is, to put it mildly, no friend of the Bush Administration, or its Iraq strategy — is saying that:

The Marines at Fallujah are operating in accordance with a UNSC Resolution and have all the legitimacy in international law that flows from that. The Allawi government asked them to undertake this Fallujah mission.

To compare them to the murderous thugs who kidnapped CARE worker Margaret Hassan, held her hostage, terrified her, and then killed her is frankly monstrous. The multinational forces are soldiers fighting a war in which they are targetting combatants and sometimes accidentally killing innocents. The hostage-takers are terrorists deliberately killing innocents. It is simply not the same thing.

Indeed.

I STILL THINK THAT GILLIGAN IS BETTER, but if you’re into Survivor: Vanuatu, Jeff Harrell has been following it.

ON MONDAY, I MENTIONED a collection of house remixes of Lawrence Welk.

The weirdness continues, as several readers emailed about The Pink Panther’s Penthouse Party, a Henry Mancini remix collection that includes, among other things, a Fischerspooner remix of the Pink Panther theme, and similar efforts by the likes of Dmitri from Paris, Fatboy Slim, and Ursula 1000. (You can hear samples — which, really, is probably all you’d want to hear . . . — by following the link.)

What’s next? Hard-house versions of Pat Boone? Why not? It’d be bangin’. . . .

UPDATE: It’s not quite hard house, but reader Rob Port notes that Pat Boone did release a collection of heavy metal tunes some years back, entitled No More Mr. Nice Guy. I had forgotten that. There are streamable samples there, too — I think his cover of “Crazy Train” is my favorite. Er, if “favorite” is the right word. . . .

Lisa Lashes, call your office!

THOUGHTS ON FALLUJAH, IN SLATE:

The very job of a rifleman is to close with and destroy his enemy—in essence, to kill the bad guy before he can kill you. But what separates the Marines from the rabble is their professional discipline—what a Harvard political scientist called the “management of violence” in describing the U.S. military. And so, this incident stands out for two reasons. First, it shows a breach of discipline, albeit under very stressful circumstances. But it also shows the extent to which the U.S. military will throw the book at one of its own. Already, the entire 1st Marine Division staff is involved with the case, and the top U.S. commander in Iraq said Tuesday that “[I]t’s being investigated, and justice will be done.”

On the same day as this story, the tragic news broke that CARE International worker Margaret Hassan had been executed by her captors in Iraq. Already, there have been cries of moral equivalence. One Iraqi told the Los Angeles Times: “It goes to show that [Marines] are not any better than the so-called terrorists.” Al Jazeera fanned these flames of anti-American sentiment by broadcasting the shooting incident in full while censoring Hassan’s execution snuff tape. (U.S. networks refused to air actual footage of both killings.) There is a simplistic appeal to such arguments because both events involve the killing of a human being and, more specifically, the apparent execution of a noncombatant in the context of war.

Yet it is the differences between these two killings that reveal the most important truths about the Marine shooting in Fallujah. Hassan was, in every sense of the word, a noncombatant. She worked for more than 20 years to help Iraqis obtain basic necessities: food, running water, medical care, electricity, and education. The Iraqi insurgents kidnapped her and murdered her in order to terrorize the Iraqi population and the aid workers trying to help them.

By contrast, the Marines entered a building in Fallujah and found several men who, until moments before, had been enemy insurgents engaged in mortal combat. A hidden grenade would have changed everything, and the Marine would have been lauded. As it turned out, the Iraqi was entitled to mercy, but Hassan was truly innocent. There is no legitimate moral equivalence between a soldier asking for quarter and a noncombatant like Hassan.

There is another key difference that reveals a great moral divide between the Marines and insurgents they fought this week in Fallujah. The insurgents choose the killing of innocents as their modus operandi and glorify these killings with videos distributed via the Internet and Al Jazeera. They recognize no civilized norms of conduct, let alone the rules of warfare. The Marines, on the other hand, distinguish themselves by killing innocents so rarely and only by exception or mistake.

Nice that someone’s noticing.

UPDATE: More here, in a must-read post by military blogger Baldilocks.

Meanwhile, in Baghdad the reaction to the shooting is “good riddance.”

HOWARD KURTZ: “I don’t remember anything like all this live coverage when Bush 41 opened his library, do you?”

SLATE’S EMILY YOFFE LEARNS TO SHOOT:

So anathema are guns among my friends that when one learned I was doing this piece, he opened his wallet, silently pulled out an NRA membership card, then (after I recovered from the sight) asked me not to spread it around lest his son be kicked out of nursery school. My entire experience with guns consisted of a riflery class at summer camp back when Millard Fillmore was president, and an afternoon 20 years ago shooting at tin cans with a friend.

But things soon change:

The ammo itself made me uneasy, as if it could explode on contact, and I fumbled as I tried to load the shotgun. The first few shots didn’t go well. I could hear my blood pumping in my ears, and I realized that when you close both eyes as you pull the trigger, your clay target will fall to the ground intact. I slowed my breath, forced myself to keep one eye opened, and miraculously hit the thing. In the end I blasted 11 out of 25. Ricardo was thrilled and so was I. I felt even better about myself when, after I made Ricardo shoot a box of ammo, he hit only two more targets than I did.

It’s not unusual for a woman to quickly shoot well, he said. “She tends to listen to detail more precisely, and she has no preconceived notion she knows what to do.” . . .

Before I slinked back to my now-embarrassing Volvo, I stopped to watch two men shooting. They were fast and fluid and the targets shattered one after another. I am happily married, but I found myself thinking these two—whose faces I couldn’t even make out—were awfully attractive.

Another bellicose woman is born. What’s next? This?

CONDI RICE ON THE SECOND AMENDMENT: Dave Kopel has the scoop.

THIS IS INTERESTING:

UN employees were readying on Friday to make a historic vote of no confidence in scandal-plagued Secretary General Kofi Annan, sources told AFP.

The UN staff union, in what officials said was the first vote of its kind in the more than 50-year history of the United Nations, was set to approve a resolution withdrawing its support for the embattled Annan and UN management.

Annan has been in the line of fire over a high-profile series of scandals including controversy about a UN aid programme that investigators say allowed deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to embezzle billions of dollars.

But staffers said the trigger for the no-confidence measure was an announcement this week that Annan had pardoned the UN’s top oversight official, who was facing allegations of favouritism and sexual harassment.

Stay tuned.

RAND SIMBERG RESPONDS to Alex Tabarrok’s piece on space tourism and safety, noted below.

KARL ROVE’S BRILLIANT, SECRET PLOT to get rid of Michael Moore!

Daniel Casey observes: “Karl Rove, you magnificent bastard.
It is genius. And it can’t be traced back to you at all . . . ”

UPDATE: A contrary theory, here.

THE HIDDEN COST of media-circus trials. I think Fox, CNN, and MSNBC ought to pick up the tab. . . .

I KNEW I WOULD COME TO REGRET IT, when my brother started to blog.

TODAY MAY HAVE BEEN the last nice day where the leaves were still on the trees. Here are a couple of pictures from campus.

SOME ADVICE TO CONDI RICE from some anonymous insiders at State.