AUSTIN BAY AND REUTERS LOOK AT NATO IN AFGHANISTAN:

Since early last summer, the Taliban and its remaining Al Qaeda allies have been testing the NATO force. The Taliban wanted to inflict at least one casualty-heavy defeat on a NATO ally, and then magnify that in the media. The Talibs goal: a “Spanish-style” withdrawal from Afghanistan by a NATO nation.

The Taliban has failed –and failed miserably.

Good.

CALL ME CRAZY, but I don’t see why the federal government should be spending tax money to tell grownups not to have sex:

Now the government is targeting unmarried adults up to age 29 as part of its abstinence-only programs, which include millions of dollars in federal money that will be available to the states under revised federal grant guidelines for 2007.

The government says the change is a clarification. But critics say it’s a clear signal of a more directed policy targeting the sexual behavior of adults.

“They’ve stepped over the line of common sense,” said James Wagoner, president of Advocates for Youth, a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit that supports sex education. “To be preaching abstinence when 90% of people are having sex is in essence to lose touch with reality. It’s an ideological campaign. It has nothing to do with public health.”

Abstinence education programs, which have focused on preteens and teens, teach that abstaining from sex is the only effective or acceptable method to prevent pregnancy or disease. They give no instruction on birth control or safe sex.

The National Center for Health Statistics says well over 90% of adults ages 20-29 have had sexual intercourse.

I should certainly hope so.

A LOOK AT MOB RULE ON COLLEGE CAMPUSES: This is only a problem in a few, mostly elitist, institutions, but it is a problem.

A LOOK AT MOB RULE ON COLLEGE CAMPUSES: This is only a problem in a few, mostly elitist, institutions, but it is a problem.

UNSCAM UPDATE: Claudia Rosett reports on an oil-for-food investigation done right:

For starters, the Cole inquiry has set a standard of clarity and transparency that the U.N. itself has yet to adopt — and shows no signs of doing so. The Cole commission conducted public hearings, and appears to have posted the vital underlying documents in full on the web. The interviews of the U.N.-authorized inquiry into Oil-for-Food, chaired by Paul Volcker, were all done in secret, with snippets released at the sole discretion of Volcker and his team. And although Volcker’s $35 million inquiry — the only investigation with full access to the U.N. itself — went to the trouble of amassing an archive of some 12 million pages, much of that digitally searchable, Volcker never released many of the vital underlying documents. He now appears poised to hand the trove back at the end of next month to the same U.N. where Annan’s former chief of staff, Iqbal Riza, spent months shredding executive office papers potentially relevant to the investigation.

The Cole report exemplifies why Volcker’s archives need to be delivered into the public domain — or at the very least, entrusted to authorities with a less glaring conflict of interest in handling any potentially damning information not yet disclosed. Cole’s findings, which in the AWB case go well beyond the Volcker report, are presented in a style so clear and direct that one might infer the investigators genuinely wish to communicate to the public the full extent of their discoveries. That’s quite a contrast with the reports released last year by Volcker’s committee.

Indeed. Plus there’s this: “Lest this seem a problem solely of the past, it bears noting that U.N. secrecy goes well beyond Oil-for-Food. Even now, the U.N. keeps secret many of the germane terms of its global business in procurement contracts, through which it spends billions of taxpayer dollars every year on everything from printer paper to peacekeeper rations. This secrecy paved the way for another U.N. scandal, the bribery saga still unfolding in the U.N. procurement division — in which one U.N. staffer pleaded guilty in 2005, in U.S. federal court, and two more have since been indicted (both have pleaded not guilty).”

AN AMERICAN CIVIL WAR? More thoughts on Orson Scott Card’s Empire, in my TCS Daily column this week.

THE EXAMINER EDITORIALIZES:

President Bush was right to declare yesterday in Latvia that he will not withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq until the “mission is complete” because “we can accept nothing less than victory for our children and our grandchildren.” It appears Bush’s characteristic Texas stubbornness is the only thing standing between victory and the U.S. defeat that has all but been proclaimed by Washington’s foreign policy establishment and its friends in the mainstream media like “60 Minutes” reporter Lara Logan. She insisted in her weekend interview with Gen. John Abizaid that “managing the defeat” is America’s only option.

It is to be hoped that Bush’s main target with yesterday’s declaration was his father’s former Secretary of State, James Baker, head of the soon-to-be-sainted Iraq Study Group. The ISG is widely reported to be preparing a recommendation that Bush seek the aid of Iran and Syria in resolving the war in Iraq. Iran and Syria may be U.S. opponents, but they have a common interest with us in establishing a stable regime in Baghdad, we are told by the Foggy Bottom Realpolitikers and the media experts for whom NBC’s decision to call it a civil war represents a “Cronkite Moment.”

Such advice is worse than wrong-headed, it is a denial of reality. Iran and Syria have one primary interest — U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and ultimately out of the entire Middle East.

Read the whole thing. And note this observation, too: “There is another crucially important denial of reality akin to the ‘managing defeat’ syndrome. Evidence is rapidly accumulating that major Western media organizations are being had on a daily basis by the propaganda efforts of the Jihadist insurgency.” What’s worse is that they don’t seem to mind.

UPDATE: “The Iraq War: ‘Proxy,’ not ‘Civil.'” Yes, and they’re the proxies of Iran and Syria. These people are not our friends.

SWAT TEAM OVERKILL: The folks at Popular Mechanics have posted my column on the subject early.

Plus, here’s more on that Atlanta shooting.

HEH: “Glenn might know how to produce these podcasts. But I know how to sell ‘em.”

KIND OF DUMB, yet also kind of cool: A TV wristwatch.

MORE ON RACIAL DISCRIMINATION in university admissions. What’s interesting is that people are so unselfconscious. That’ll probably change once the lawsuits gather momentum.

LAURIE DAVID ON SCIENCE EDUCATION.

TPM MUCKRAKER REPORTS that Alcee Hastings is dropping out of the race to head the House Intelligence Committee. That’s bad news for the GOP, but good news for the Democrats, and the country.

UPDATE: A look at some revisionist history on Hastings, revised again.

PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE: “If not Harman, who?”

PAUL BELIEN on Ralph Peters on Europe. And I should have linked this item from Mark Steyn the other day, too.

LOOKING INTO THE ETYMOLOGY OF “Christianism.”

I continue to think that the term draws an unfair equivalence between Islamist terror, and mere Christian social conservatism, which are hardly comparable. I disagree with the latter, but those people aren’t the enemy, just people with whom I disagree.

UPDATE: Now this is beyond the pale.

But apparently the “Christianists” continue to wreak destruction:

The controversial broadcast of MADONNA’s CONFESSIONS tour special on US TV failed to lure viewers and ended up finishing fourth in its time slot.

Either that or she’s just, you know, over.

ANOTHER UPDATE: What he said: “It says quite a lot about Sullivan and his ilk that they’ve managed to get a person like me — who deeply loathes Christian fundamentalism and supports gay marriage — to actually defend fundamentalist Christians against unfair smears by gay marriage supporters.”

Yeah, I dread the day Sullivan starts promoting nanotechnology or digital cameras . . . .

More on that here: “I think it’s intended to do more than link those Christians whose politics Sullivan doesn’t like with Islamists; it is also meant to be undefinable, which, by being unfair to everyone, does great mischief. Because, if only Andrew Sullivan knows what the word means (assuming he does), then he gets to behave as the Red Queen and label anyone he wishes as a Christianist. Or not. . . . I’m sorry, but this is getting really wacky.”

Yes, it is. But the illustration is amusing!

MORE: Further thoughts from the suddenly reenergized Prof. Bainbridge.

OUTDOOR SURVIVAL TIPS, from the folks at Popular Mechanics. Not quite the same as the disaster-preparedness stuff that has been covered here before, but close enough that some people may be interested. “Got a condom aging in your wallet? In a pinch, it can carry a gallon of water. (Unlubricated tastes best.)”

OVER AT RAND SIMBERG’S they’re discussing innovative policy ideas from the Democrats.

HOWARD KURTZ on Secretary of State Matt Lauer.

UPDATE: If you don’t defer to Lauer’s expertise, you might want to read John Keegan on the subject.

FOUAD AJAMI ON “THE REALISTS” AND REALITY:

It was not naive idealism, it should be recalled, that gave birth to Bush’s diplomacy of freedom. That diplomacy issued out of a reading of the Arab-Muslim political condition and of America’s vulnerability to the disorder of Arab politics. The ruling regimes in the region had displaced their troubles onto America; their stability had come at America’s expense, as the scapegoating and the anti-Americanism had poisoned Arab political life. Iraq and the struggle for a decent polity in it had been America’s way of trying to extirpate these Arab troubles. The American project in Iraq has been unimaginably difficult, its heartbreak a grim daily affair. But the impulse that gave rise to the war was shrewd and justified.

Nowadays, more and more people despair of the Iraq venture. And voices could be heard counseling that the matter of Iraq is, for all practical purposes, sealed and that failure is around the corner. Now and then, the memory of the Vietnam War is summoned. America had lost the battle for Vietnam but had won the war for East Asia. That American defeat had brought ruin to Vietnam and Cambodia, but the systems of political and economic freedom in Asia had held, and the region had cushioned the American defeat, and left a huge protective role for American power. Fair enough: There was Japan in East Asia, providing political anchorage and an example of economic success. There is no Japan in that arc of trouble in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf. Saudi Arabia and Egypt are poor pillars, themselves prey to forces of radicalism–the first weak in the scales of military power, the second a brittle, crowded land with immense troubles of its own. That overall strategic landscape, too, should be considered as we debate and anguish over Iraq.

If, as seems disturbingly likely, Bush takes the Baker approach, I think we’ll pay dearly in the future.

ATLANTA SHOOTING UPDATE:

Officials say the FBI will lead an investigation into the fatal shooting of an elderly Atlanta woman during a drug raid last week.

The announcement was made by Police Chief Richard Pennington at a news conference Monday afternoon, where he was joined by officials from the FBI, the US Attorney’s Office, the GBI and Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard. . . .

Police have said “Sam” had sold drugs from inside Johnston’s home to an informant, prompting the officers to seek a “no-knock” warrant. Such warrants are frequently used by police to get inside a home before suspects have a chance to get rid of drugs.

But a local television station aired an interview on Monday evening with a man who said he was the informant, and he said he never told officers that he bought drugs at Johnston’s house.

Pennington said at a news conference on Sunday that the department will review its policy on “no-knock” warrants and its use of confidential informants.

I think that should be happening nationwide. In fact, I think it’s time for federal legislation.

CATHY YOUNG:

Maybe the next frontier in the academic battle against all varieties of oppression should be “drunk studies.” Why not an academic program championing the idea that “alcohol abuse” is an artificial construct based on the mainstream culture’s oppressive notions of what constitutes appropriate and inappropriate consumption of alcohol? “Drunk studies” could tell us that the stigmatization of drunkenness stems from the Western valorization of such dubious values as self-control, rationality, and obedience to social norms, and reflects a pernicious fear of rebellion against inhibitions and authority. Of course, it would also question conventional wisdom — supposedly based on scientific evidence, but really rooted in anti-drunk bias — about the deleterious health consequences of alcohol abuse and the dangers of drunk driving. After all, the goal of “drunk studies” would be to empower drunks!

And I know just the guy to head up the program: Professor Zane Lamprey of MOJOHD’s Three Sheets. Hell, that show’s an education all in itself.

BRUCE KESLER has more on the big media’s problem with stringers in Iraq reporting, with a list of some of the bogus stories it has produced. “The key question that must be answered is where the funding will come from for a major, credible examination of major media reporting in Iraq? It’s not coming from the major media, or J-schools, or J-journals. Their paychecks depend upon not revealing the Emperor’s illusory threads.”

A LOOK AT THE ROLE OF OUTSIDERS in university tenure decisions. This seems right to me: “Educational institutions may appoint whomever they wish, but they cannot expect immunity from public criticism.”