Cindy Sheehan's Declining Numbers

Cindy Sheehan now owns five acres of land near the Presidential Ranch. Five acres that just can't compete with the lure of a ditch.

Cindy Sheehan and about 10 others protested the war with Iraq in a ditch across from a roadblock near President Bush's ranch Monday - not on their own 5-acre shaded lot closer to town.

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Sheehan said she bought the $52,500 lot, more than seven miles from the ranch, last month as the main site for weekend rallies and other activities during August, as well as other protests when Bush is in town.

But Sheehan said she plans to be at the checkpoint a few hours a day in case the president drives by.

Ten protesters? Ten? Aw Cindy, say it ain't so. What a difference a year makes.

North Korea Claims "Capture" Of "U.S." "Submersible"

FOXNews is reporting that North Korea is claiming that an "ultra-small unmanned submersible vessel was captured during a reconnaissance mission in waters off North Korea's eastern city of Hamhung" sometime last year. I found what I'm pretty sure is a picture of what they're claiming is the "spy vessel", and it looks a lot like a non-American exercise torpedo. More over at my submarine blog.

Re: "Peaceful" Cuban Succession

Peggy Noonan says its time for some "free-market love bombing". (Perhaps the first, and only time, we'll ever hear that term in a context that both makes sense and is feasible.)

How about this: Treat it as an opportunity. Use the change of facts to announce a change of course. Declare the old way over. Declare a new U.S.-Cuban relationship, blow open the doors of commerce and human interaction, allow American investment and tourism, mix it up, reach out one by one and person by person to the people of Cuba. "Flood the zone." Flood it with incipient prosperity and the insinuation of democratic values. Let Castroism drown in it. .................... With Castro gone, why not seize the moment for some wise, judicious, free-market love-bombing?

As in: Allow Americans to go to Cuba. Allow U.S. private money into Cuba. Let hotels, homes, restaurants, stores be developed, bought, opened, reopened. Use Fidel's death to reintroduce Cubans on the ground to Americans, American ways, American money and American freedom. Remind them of what they wanted, what they thought they were getting when the bearded one came down from the Sierra Maestre. Use his death/illness/collapse/disappearing act as an excuse to turn the past 40 years of policy on its head. Declare him over. Create new ties. Ignore the dictator, make partnerships with the people.

Jon Lee Anderon's "Letter From Cuba" is a good look at the current state of and potential aftermath of Fidel's rule. What kind of post-Communist rule could we be looking at here? A Chinese style capitalism with few limits and no political freedoms, a Balkans-esque mess of drug lords and streets gang or something more enduring and peaceful like Eastern Europe or Mongolia?

"Peaceful Succession" in Cuba?

A CUBAN GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL announces that a "peaceful succession" has been set in motion in that country.

"They (the U.S. government) had not expected that a peaceful succession was possible. A peaceful succession has taken place in Cuba," Fernandez Retamar said at a news conference.

Is Fidel alive or dead? Where is Raul? Who's in charge down there?

What's going on???

Re: Photo Analysis

It's not just photos, Hawk. Follow the link for an instance where Reuters hijacks the Lebanese response to the UN proposal..by quoting as an authority one of the terrorists who killed Petty Officer Stethem.

Photo Analysis

Expect a lot of purple scrutiny in the wake of the Reuters story. Here's a good starting point.

Some claims will be stronger than others, but this doesn't diminish the significance of the obvious examples.

I'm seeing the terms "reutered photo" and "reutering a photo" used widely - wonder if that will stick.

Our Friend Tom Ricks

According to this blog, Ricks says the Israelis are having their own people killed on purpose.

THOMAS RICKS, REPORTER, "THE WASHINGTON POST": I think it will be. But I think civilian casualties are also part of the battlefield play for both sides here. One of the things that is going on, according to some military analysts, is that Israel purposely has left pockets of Hezbollah rockets in Lebanon, because as long as they're being rocketed, they can continue to have a sort of moral equivalency in their operations in Lebanon.

KURTZ: Hold on, you're suggesting that Israel has deliberately allowed Hezbollah to retain some of it's fire power, essentially for PR purposes, because having Israeli civilians killed helps them in the public relations war here?

RICKS: Yes, that's what military analysts have told me.

RE: Information War

Chap referenced the Reuters photoshop incident below - it's well covered throughout the blogosphere, but for the record, here's the link to the original.

This is an obvious Photoshop (or to be fair, Paintshop Pro) effort - there's nothing subtle about it. Not sure how Reuters allowed it to happen.

Chap's link is a must-read too.

Update:

BEIRUT, Lebanon (CNN) -- Lebanon's prime minister said Monday an Israeli airstrike on the southern village of Houla left 40 people dead.

"An hour ago, there was a horrific massacre in the village of Houla in which more than 40 martyrs were victims of deliberate bombing," Fouad Siniora told Arab foreign ministers in Beirut.

Lebanon’s Prime Minister Siniora now says one dead in Houla, not 40 as he said earlier.

Look What Happened To My Friend On Sunday

One of my best friends had a nice little happening on Sunday... here's a hint as to what it was:

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Psycho-Social Warfare?

Maj. Gen Robert H. Scales in the latestArmed Forces Journal

One thing is certain, however: We are in for decades of psycho-social warfare. We must begin now to harness the potential of the social sciences in a manner not dissimilar to the Manhattan Project or the Apollo Project. Perhaps we will need to assemble an A team and build social science institutions similar to Los Alamos or the Kennedy Space Center. Such a transformational change is beyond the resources of a single service, particularly the ground services.

Thus a human and biological revolution will have to be managed and driven by the highest authorities in the nation. I sincerely hope they are listening

Makes for intriguing reading, especially the introduction of historian Alan Beyerchen's "amplifier" principle:

Beyerchen has developed a taxonomy of war in the modern era in terms of four world wars. Each war was shaped by what he calls "amplifying factors." Amplifiers are not "multipliers" or "enablers" in that their influence on the course of war is nonlinear rather than linear; amplifiers don't simply accelerate the trends of the past, they make war different.

For example, World War I was a chemists' war in that the decisive strategic advantage on the battlefield was driven in large measure by new applications of chemistry and chemical engineering. The war should have ended for the Germans in 1915 when their supplies of gunpowder nitrates exhausted. But the synthesis of nitrates by German scientists allowed the war to continue for another three horrific years. World War II was a physicists' war. To paraphrase Churchill, the atom bomb ended the conflict, but exploitation of the electromagnetic spectrum in the form of the wireless and radar won it for the allies. "World War III" was the "information researchers'" war, a war in which intelligence and knowledge of the enemy and the ability to fully exploit that knowledge allowed the U.S. to defeat the Soviet Union with relatively small loss of life.

America's finest - LTC Rudolph C. White, Jr.

If you have not seen his American Spartan speech, you are missing something unique and hard hitting. If we could all speak to our Soldiers, Airmen, Marines, and Sailors like this man - well, just watch it and you will know what I mean.

INS Hanit Back Out To Sea

In what's got to be a disappointing piece of news for Hezbollah and their Iranian missile suppliers, the Eliat-class frigate INS Hanit, hit by a C-802 missile off the coast of Lebanon last month, is back out to sea. While the article says the ship "reassumed its combat role in Lebanon", I think it's more likely that it's out on post-repair sea trials. Still, it shows the Israeli naval establishment was able to do a good job repairing combat damage, so that's another upcheck for them from this story.

It's An Information War

Some clumsy work this weekend by Reuters revealed to others how easy it is to manipulate information flow in the press. Here, the Jerusalem Post editorializes on the nature of the information fight.

If you know "Green Helmet Guy" or "cloned smoke" you see what's obvious and on the surface; imagine what else is going on.