Religion of Peace

The American Thinker has a review of Robert Spencer's book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades). Spencer, as the title implies, does not shrink from portraying Islam as it is, and the picture is not pretty. Consider a few examples:

On Dhimmitude: Dhimma or dhimmi status...is one of the results of the jihad or holy war. Connected with the notion of jihad is the distinction between dar al-harb (territory or "house" of war) and dar al-islam (house of Islam). The latter includes all territories subject to Moslem authority. It is in a state of perpetual war with the dar al-harb. The inhabitants of the dar al-harb are harbis, who are not answerable to the Islamic authority and whose persons and goods are mubah, that is, at the mercy of Believers. However, when Moslems are in a subordinate state, they can negotiate a truce with the Harbis lasting no more than ten years, which they are obliged to revoke unilaterally as soon as they regain the upper hand, following the example of the Prophet after Hudaibiyya...

Even today, the study of the jihad is part of the curriculum of all the Islamic institutes. In the universities of Al-Azhar, Nagaf (Najaf), and Zaitoune, students are still taught that the holy war [jihad] is a binding prescriptive decree, pronounced against the Infidels, which will only be revoked with the end of the world... If he [the dhimmi] is tolerated, it is for reasons of a spiritual nature, since there is always the hope that he might be converted; or of a material nature, since he bears almost the whole tax burden. He has his place in society, but he is constantly reminded of his inferiority...In no way is the dhimmi the equal of the Muslim. He is marked out for social inequality and belongs to a despised caste; unequal in regard to individual rights; unequal in the Law Courts as his evidence is not admitted by any Muslim tribunal and for the same crime his punishment is greater than that imposed on Muslims...No social relationship, no fellowship is possible between Muslims and dhimmis...

On Muhammad vs. Jesus (quoted in ch. 6, "Islamic Law", p. 85): "You have heard that it was said to the men of old, 'You shall not kill; and whoever kills shall be liable to judgment. But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother shall be liable to the council, and whoever says, 'You fool!', shall be liable to the hell of fire." Jesus (Matthew 5:21-22) ; "Therefore, when ye meet the unbelievers in fight, smite at their necks: at length, when ye have thoroughly subdued them, bind a bond firmly on them; thereafter is the time for either generosity or ransom, until the war lays down its burdens....But those who are slain in the Way of Allah, He will never let their deeds be lost." Qur'an 47:4

On Islam and Peace: [The PC myth is that] Islam is a religion of peace that has been hijacked by a tiny minority of extremists. (from ch.3, "Islam: Religion of War", pp. 41-42): Aptly termed by Spencer, "...the mother of all PC [politically correct] myths about Islam", the author explains that the persistence of this canard transcends even the prevailing multicultural ethos, or cynical mendacity about Islam's unsavory aspects. Citing the brilliant 20th century Muslim scholar and ideologue, Sayyid Qutb (d. 1966), Spencer observes that this unabashed proponent of aggressive jihad war, "...taught (without a trace of irony) that Islam is a religion of peace. However, he [Qutb] had a very specific kind of peace in mind: [citing Qutb] 'When Islam strives for peace, its objective is not that superficial peace which requires only that part of the earth where the followers of Islam are residing remain secure.

The peace which Islam desires is that the religion (i.e., the law of the society) be purified for God, that the obedience of all people be for God alone, and that some people should not be lords over others. After the period of the Prophet-peace be upon him-only the final stages of the movement of Jihaad [Jihad] are to be followed; the initial or middle stages are not applicable'. And Spencer elucidates the meaning of Qutb's words: "Islam is a religion of peace that will come when everyone is a Muslim or at least subject to the Islamic state. And to establish that peace, Muslims must wage war."

The review closes with this:

Robert Spencer's The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) is a very readable, highly informed critique of living Islamic institutions and historical practices incompatible with modern constructs of human rights, and peaceful international relations. One hopes his trenchant observations will motivate the public to cajole media and policymaking elites into initiating a candid discussion of Islam - a discussion these elites have thus far scrupulously avoided.

It sounds like a book everyone in the West should read in order to understand more clearly the nature of the contemporary threat to the lives and well-being of our children, and the urgency of continuing the good fight against bloodthirsty orcs wherever they may be found.

Brits "Deter" a Gas Attack

The Brits dodge a big bullet thanks to a high level informer (referred to below as a "supergrass"):

Scotland Yard believes it has thwarted an Al-Qaeda gas attack aimed at ministers and MPs in parliament. The plot, hatched last year, is understood to have been discovered in coded e-mails on computers seized from terror suspects in Britain and Pakistan. Police and MI5 then identified an Al-Qaeda cell that had carried out extensive research and video-recorded reconnaissance missions in preparation for the attack.

The encrypted e-mails are said to have been decoded with the help of an Al-Qaeda "supergrass". By revealing the terrorists' code he was also able to help MI5 and GCHQ, the government's eavesdropping centre at Cheltenham, to crack several more plots.

The operation to deter the sarin gas attack is referred to in an internal police document obtained by The Sunday Times. It is a minute of a meeting of senior police officers held last month at Specialist Operations 17 (SO17), the unit responsible for protecting parliament, and reveals that the team were waiting to be briefed on the plot.

This weekend a senior officer disclosed that the thwarted plot mentioned in the document involved a gas or chemical "dirty bomb" attack against parliament. "The House of Commons was one of their targets as well as the Tube," he said. "They were planning to use chemicals, a dirty bomb and sarin gas. They looked at all sorts of ways of delivering it."

One wonders how the Brits "deterred" the attack. Will there be charges filed against the plotters? Are there any plotters left against whom to file charges? If the answer is "no" are there any Brits upset by the implications?

What's the Attraction?

Strategy Page has some interesting thoughts on the situation in Iraq. Here are some highlights. Follow the link for more details:

August 19, 2005: Suicide bombings have become less common, and arrests of terrorists have risen sharply in the past month. Actually, incarcerations have been climbing since last Fall, as more terrorists and gangsters are caught red-handed. Before that, many of the 50,000 arrests made by American troops resulted in a brief interrogation, and release of the suspect. But now more bad people are being identified and kept incarcerated. Many of these are career criminals who had been freed by Saddam in 2002, or escaped in the confusion of the 2003 invasion. While the Iraqi police, and prisons, get the criminals, those that drifted into terrorism usually remain in American custody.

The crime wave these thugs have generated in the past two years is coming to an end. The rampant criminality is the one thing all Iraqis are united in opposition to. More tribal vigilantes are being formed, and either killing gangsters, or pointing them out to police or coalition troops.

August 17, 2005: There is a horrific murder campaign going on in Baghdad, with more people being killed by gunfire, knives and blunt instruments, than by terrorist bomb attacks. Over a thousand people a month are being killed in Baghdad, which is a death rate of 200 per 100,000 population. This is nearly twice what the rate was in Colombia, at the height of the drug and political violence in that country.

What is going on in Baghdad is a war of terror and revenge. The terrorists are trying to intimidate people for political, religious or economic reasons. But most of the deaths appear to be revenge killings, with Kurds and Shia Arabs hunting down and killing Sunni Arabs who worked, and killed, for Saddam. These attacks have been going on since Saddam's government fell, and have been increasing as Sunni Arab gangs lose, to the growing police force, control of their neighborhoods. This is the Sunni Arab nightmare, the a major reason (besides money) for Sunni Arabs supporting anti-government terrorism.

The Iraqis did not deliver their new constitution by the August 15th deadline, and the legislature allowed another week to complete the task. The Sunni Arab leadership are trying to get safeguards in the constitution that would limit the revenge the Kurds and Shia Arabs will take on the Sunni Arab community for atrocities committed during the decades of Saddam's rule.

Religion is an issue because Islamic conservatives in the Sunni and Shia community want the law of the land to reflect conservative Islam. Most Iraqis, especially the women, do not want this, but they do want honest government (which is very rare in the Moslem world), and also note that Islamic rule in neighboring Iran has not produced honest government, and has imposed unpleasant rules on the citizens.

It's of interest that Islam seems unable to produce honest government. A religion so concerned with whether a man is ritually purified and whether he bows to Mecca five times a day seems ineffective in inculcating genuine virtue in its leaders. Indeed, one wonders what it is about Islam that has proven so attractive to people that millions around the world willingly embrace it. It's a religion of violence, punishment, brutality and oppression and lacks any real basis for love, peace, the celebration of beauty, or human progress. How and why people, especially women, find this satisfying and fulfilling is a mystery.

But, to each his, or her, own.

Senator Frist Endorses ID

Senator Bill Frist weighs in in favor of teaching the controversy. Evidently a candidate's stance on the ID/Darwinism controversy is shaping up to be a major issue in the 2006 and 2008 elections. We're anxious to hear Hillary explain her position:

Frist, a Republican from Tennessee, spoke to a Rotary Club meeting Friday and told reporters afterward that students need to be exposed to different ideas, including intelligent design. "I think today a pluralistic society should have access to a broad range of fact, of science, including faith," Frist said.

My friend Ryan Miller at The Buckingham Inquirer argues that such suggestions as Sen. Frist's are impractical. Teaching all sides of this issue, he believes, would be exceedingly time-consuming since there are so many possible alternatives that one couldn't possibly discuss them all and still cover the rest of the curriculum.

Ryan and I disagree on this. There are really only two points of view on the matter of creation that are contending for serious consideration: One claims that everything is ultimately explicable in terms of purely natural processes and forces, and the other is the denial of that proposition. Do the universe and life show evidence of being purposefully designed or do they not? Those are the two major options, and the myriad of other creation myths, legends, and hypotheses all gather on one side of that question or the other.

The assertion that ID should be "taught" in public school science classrooms suffers, however, from a lack of precision. When one asks specifically what it is that should be taught the answer is not always clear. Indeed, what should be taught are the empirical facts of science, but the philosophical assumptions that underlie those facts and which are employed to interpret those facts should be discussed as well, and that's where ID fits in.

In other words, there is little formal content specific to ID that needs to be taught in science classrooms apart from a discussion, perhaps, of how human beings infer design. What teachers could do when they discuss, for instance, the structure of bio-molecules like proteins, bio-machines like the flagellum, or bio-processes like the blood-clotting cascade; or when they explain the exquisite fine-tuning of cosmic forces and parameters, or the incredible coincidences that we find in the astonishing fit between atomic structure, the properties of elements like carbon and oxygen, and the properties of carbon dioxide and water with the physiological requirements of living things -- when these things are presented it could be mentioned to students that there are essentially two ways to think about it all. One way is to see these marvelous facts of the natural world as a grand coincidence, highly improbable and wondrously fortuitous, and the other is to see them as the result of intention, purpose and intelligence. The teacher need not feel obliged to say anything more than that, but if her students ask questions about it neither should she feel she is transgressing some boundary if she seeks to answer those questions as honestly as she can.

Teachers should teach the facts of science and not shy away from discussing the philosophical implications of those facts. That's one way to make science classes exciting.

The objection that philosophy has no place in the science classroom is absurd. Not only has good science instruction always been replete with philosophical assumptions and concepts, it is also, if it is quality instruction, richly spiced with allusions to the historical context in which science has developed. History is not science, of course, but no one suggests it should be purged from our classrooms.

Not only the history of science, but bioethical issues (such as stem cell research and cloning) as well as social and political issues associated with science (e.g. nuclear power and other environmental issues) are all discussed daily in science classes in every school in the nation. Why should one controversy in the philosophy of science be disallowed when so many other philosophical, historical, political, and economic controversies are admitted?

Moreover, for the past thirty years teachers have been frequently reminded that the best learning occurs when students see relationships between different subjects. Nothing should be taught in isolation, the theory goes, but rather instruction should tie together each field in the curriculum. We think that's true and we wonder why all of a sudden there's been a stark change of mind just because one of the disciplines vying for inclusion, the philosophy of science, raises a challenge to the sacred Darwinian orthodoxy.

Gaza Gambit

National Review OnLine runs this piece by its editors on the Gaza pullout. No doubt they're largely correct:

The pictures from Gaza are wrenching: children crying and trying to push away the Israeli soldiers - some of them also in tears - who have arrived to chase them from their homes. On the other hand, they are heartening too. This is a civilized, democratic society at work. Prime Minister Sharon's decision to pull out of Gaza represents the lawful will of the Israeli majority, and it will not be frustrated by a minority, no matter how passionate or committed.

Sharon is making a hard-headed calculation that Israel should, absent a reliable negotiating partner on the Palestinian side, unilaterally attempt to establish defensible boundaries for itself. The security fence has been one (successful) element of this strategy, the withdrawal of Israeli settlers who have to be protected with a large military presence in Gaza is another. Israel had little enthusiasm for occupying this hellhole in the first place, but acquired it through the exigencies of the Six Day War. The settlement policy in Gaza - crafted by Sharon himself years ago - has been a fizzle, with only around 9,000 Israelis settling there.

There are, of course, risks to a pullout. Terrorists will claim victory - as some already have. But the move has to be seen in context. This is not Ehud Barak pulling out from Lebanon in 2000 at a time the Israeli government was pathetically desperate to deal with Yasser Arafat and signaling weakness in nearly every way. Sharon has dealt punishing blows to the intifada in recent years. Who can doubt that he will again if necessary? And there are many other ways to signal strength other than preserving settlements in Gaza indefinitely for no very good reason.

The pullout will help focus attention on the chief problem in Israeli-Palestinian relations: the continued inability of the Palestinians to create a decent policy. Mahmoud Abbas now faces an enormous test of his capabilities and intentions, as we will soon learn whether the Palestinian Authority can exert control over Gaza. No one can be very confident that he will pass it, which will be another chapter in the tragedy of the Palestinians. Israel, meanwhile, will be doing what it can to try to move on.

It might also be noted that if Gaza becomes a staging ground for terrorist activity against Israel, and it will, of course, then Israel will be under tremendous pressure to turn it into an uninhabited region by evicting the Palestinians. There's simply no possibility that they will allow terrorists to operate from Gaza with impunity and the only way to stop it, short of a costly and probably futile occupation, will be to make it a depopulated zone. The Palestinians are celebrating now, but if they cannot control the radicals in their midst the sweet taste they're presently rejoicing over will soon enough turn bitter.

UPDATE: Charles Krauthammer has written an essay in which he makes similar point. It can be read here.

The NYT on ID

The New York Times weighs in with the first of two articles on Intelligent Design to appear this weekend. The Times works hard to convince the reader that ID is tainted by its association with political and religious conservatives, but nevertheless there is more straight reporting on ID and the Discovery Institute in this piece than one might have expected from the Times.

The Coming Nightmare

This article by William F. Buckley will put a damper on your normally sunny disposition, but we do need to be aware of what hazards lay ahead:

Raymond J. Learsy has written a book memorable in the special sense that nightmares can be memorable, but also useful. If the nightmare is that you died of an overdose of drugs, and the memory of it causes you when in command to draw back from the marginal dose, then the nightmare has served a purpose. Raymond Learsy writes (his book is called Over a Barrel: Breaking the Middle East Oil Cartel ) about what could happen if we continue to go as we are going. The price of gasoline as I write is 60 percent higher than it was a year ago. Such data require extrapolation....here is what we might be facing if oil rose to $100 per barrel.

I paraphrase the author: Commuters suddenly forced to pay double for a gallon of gas begin to brown-bag their lunches, inching away from restaurants and sandwich shops. Americans who can still afford a vacation go on shorter trips, putting a major dent in the tourist industry. Trucking companies hauling everything from wines and spirits to furniture to automobile parts impose a hefty surcharge on shippers, who pass it on to their customers, who then pass it further down the line to the retail buyer if they can.

The crunch forces many truckers to sell their rigs, playing havoc with both cross-country and local shipping. Higher fuel costs send the Postal Service deeper into the red and threaten the survival of rival package shippers FedEx and UPS. With the break-even point for airlines a distant memory at $31 a barrel and carriers already operating with skeleton staffs, sharp fare boosts are the only option. Traffic spirals into a tailspin, and one airline after another declares bankruptcy.

But of course, oil is vital to everything from plastic picnic forks to printer's ink to asphalt. Manufacturers raise prices across the board, and potholes go unfilled in city streets around the nation. At first, municipal and factory employees lose overtime, then they are laid off or fired outright.

Foodstuffs of every kind - from beef in the butcher case to fresh fruits and vegetables in the produce aisle, to milk and cheese in the dairy section - reflect the higher costs incurred by growers and shoppers.

Runaway prices on just about everything take the Federal Reserve Board by surprise. Determined to keep interest rates low and dulled by their own assurances that inflation is somnolent, the Federal Reserve's governors are ill-prepared for the economic crisis. The Fed belatedly boosts interest rates a full 2 percentage points.

The heretofore unheard-of move jams on the economic brakes so swiftly and so sharply that you can almost smell the stink of burning rubber. Higher mortgage rates stop would-be home buyers dead in their tracks and cast a pall over the building industry. The real-estate market crashes almost overnight, wiping out billions of dollars of paper profits and putting holders of adjustable-rate mortgages and home-equity loans in peril. Foreclosures and tax-default auctions become common, consumer spending dries up, and soon the entire world is in a recession.

The rise in oil prices is not a fancy of Ray Learsy, and the unpredictability of that rise manifestly requires self-protection. How? Again, paraphrasing the author:

First, we must cut back energy usage by taking steps to control demand (just as OPEC works to control supply).

Second, we must become energy self-reliant.

We should use the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (700 million barrels) to douse incendiary shoots of inflationary fire. Those uses of national oil would be loans, not grants, repayable in kind when the price of oil has stabilized.

We will need to encourage alternative energy sources while adopting a voucher-based gas-distribution program. For the duration of the emergency, gas users will have access to magnetic debit cards in which are embedded a national quarterly target of per-consumer gasoline. Drivers whose allotted amount of gas doesn't meet their needs can buy part or all of someone else's allotment. For the average driver, this distribution plan would not increase gasoline costs. A consumer would pay the same out-of-pocket cash per gallon, and the government wouldn't get its hands on any more of the taxpayers' dollars. It is a more efficient way of distributing energy because it employs market incentives to allow heavier gasoline users to get what they need without increasing overall consumption of energy.

It was 20 years ago that the Saudis and the United States arrived at a deal. The Saudis would set prices so as to protect the U.S. oil industry. And the U.S. would protect the Saudis' independence. We regret that, and should make the Saudis regret it also.

Actually, it seems that Buckley and Learsy are understating the dimensions of the calamity high oil prices will wreak. If energy prices go ballistic there will be a world-wide economic depression that will almost certainly lead to war, perhaps on a global scale, as nations contest with each other for access to fuel. Such a war will almost certainly wind up going nuclear as one side or the other begins to prevail.

Have a nice day.

Off With His Head

Arthur Scopenhauer observed that, "All truth passes through three stages; First, it is ridiculed; second, it is violently opposed; and third, it is accepted as self-evident." Intelligent Design has moved from stage one to deep into stage two. An illustration can be found in the strange tale of the scientific establishment's reaction to Richard Sternberg. First a little background.

One of the criticisms levelled at ID theorists is that they don't publish in peer-reviewed journals. ID theorists respond to the charge by pointing out how hard it is to get journals to accept anything critical of Darwinian orthodoxy. Darwinians typically scoff at the implausibility of this reply.

Well, about a year ago Cambridge-educated philosopher of science Stephen Meyer managed to get a paper published in an obscure little journal that called into question the ability of purely Darwinian processes to account for the Cambrian explosion of phyla 530 million years ago. The roof then quickly caved in on the publisher for having the temerity to carry a paper skeptical of the received wisdom of the Darwinians. It was as if one of the Vatican's minions had permitted an article on Satan worship into an official publication of the Church.

The Inquisition of the scientific establishment was thrown into high gear and the editor, a man named Richard Sternberg who possesses not just one, but two PH.Ds in evolutionary biology, was all but burned at the stake for the crime of open-mindedness. His critics argued at the time that he was not in any way mistreated, evidently thinking that professional persecution is appropriate punishment for facilitating free and open debate, but a subsequent investigation by the Office of the Special Counsel has shown that, as ID advocates and Creationists have been saying for years, there are no people less tolerant of contrary opinion than the talibanic members of the church of Darwin. The OSC's findings are reprised in a letter to Sternberg which can be read here. It's a disillusioning eye-opener for anyone who thinks scientists are fair-minded and tolerant folk willing to allow a diversity of hypotheses to compete in the marketplace of ideas.

The Washington Post has a summary of the most recent developments. Here are some excerpts:

Within hours of publication, senior scientists at the Smithsonian Institution -- which has helped fund and run the journal -- lashed out at Sternberg as a shoddy scientist and a closet Bible thumper. "They were saying I accepted money under the table, that I was a crypto-priest, that I was a sleeper cell operative for the creationists," said Steinberg, 42 , who is a Smithsonian research associate. "I was basically run out of there." An independent agency has come to the same conclusion, accusing top scientists at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History of retaliating against Sternberg by investigating his religion and smearing him as a "creationist."

The U.S. Office of Special Counsel, which was established to protect federal employees from reprisals, examined e-mail traffic from these scientists and noted that "retaliation came in many forms . . . misinformation was disseminated through the Smithsonian Institution and to outside sources. The allegations against you were later determined to be false."

"The rumor mill became so infected," James McVay, the principal legal adviser in the Office of Special Counsel, wrote to Sternberg, "that one of your colleagues had to circulate [your resume] simply to dispel the rumor that you were not a scientist."

Sternberg's case has sent ripples far beyond the Beltway. The special counsel accused the National Center for Science Education, an Oakland, Calif.-based think tank that defends the teaching of evolution, of orchestrating attacks on Sternberg. "The NCSE worked closely with" the Smithsonian "in outlining a strategy to have you investigated and discredited," McVay wrote to Sternberg.

A senior Smithsonian scientist wrote in an e-mail: "We are evolutionary biologists and I am sorry to see us made into the laughing stock of the world, even if this kind of rubbish sells well in backwoods USA." An e-mail stated, falsely, that Sternberg had "training as an orthodox priest." Another labeled him a "Young Earth Creationist," meaning a person who believes God created the world in the past 10,000 years.

Eugenie Scott, of the NCSE, insisted that Smithsonian scientists had no choice but to explore Sternberg's religious beliefs. "They don't care if you are religious, but they do care a lot if you are a creationist," Scott said. "Sternberg denies it, but if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it argues for zealotry."

Sternberg has seen stress piled upon stress in the past year. His marriage has dissolved, and he no longer comes into the Smithsonian. When the biological society issued a statement disavowing Meyer's article, Sternberg was advised not to attend. "I was told that feelings were running so high, they could not guarantee me that they could keep order," Sternberg said.

We particularly like Eugenie Scott's claim. In her world if you're sympathetic to the notion that other points of view deserve a hearing then you're a "zealot." That pretty much says everything that needs to be said about the modern scientific mindset.

Why Did They Shoot?

The shooting of an innocent Brazilian by British police was tragic enough. Now it seems that nothing about their story is true. He didn't run from the police, he wasn't wearing a bulky coat, he didn't jump the turnstile to board the tube train, and he may not even have left the house which was under surveillance as a terrorist hide-out.

The Brazilian electrician shot dead by police on the London Underground last month was being restrained when he was killed by officers from Scotland Yard's firearms unit, according to documents leaked last night.

Jean Charles de Menezes, 27, was shot seven times in the head by two plainclothes policemen who had followed him on to the train at Stockwell station in the mistaken belief that he was a potential suicide bomber. Documents and photographs leaked to ITV News also confirmed that Mr de Menezes did not run from the police, as had been reported, had used his Tube pass to enter the station, rather than vault the barrier, and had taken a seat on the train before being grabbed by an officer. He was wearing a light denim jacket and not as previously reported a padded coat which could have concealed explosives.

The documents, which contain witness statements made to the Independent Police Complaints Commission, also suggest that the intelligence operation may have been botched because an officer watching a flat believed to be the hideout of one of the suspects in the abortive July 21 attack was "relieving himself".

Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, has apologised for the death of Mr de Menezes and a senior officer has visited Brazil to talk to his family. However, the latest disclosures will cast fresh light on Sir Ian's insistence that the death was the tragic consequence of a legitimate operation.

Shortly after the shooting, Sir Ian said: "Whatever else they were doing, they clearly thought they were faced with a suicide bomber and they were running towards him. Had that person been a suicide bomber and had the officers not fired and 25 yards up the track the bomb had exploded, the officers would be in a worse situation than they are now."

He insisted that lethal force was the only option available to his officers once they had satisfied themselves Mr de Menezes was a suicide bomber. Yet a few days later, West Midlands police used a Taser stun weapon to arrest Yasin Hassan Omar, one of the July 21 suspects. Mr de Menezes was killed the day after the failed attacks on Tube trains and a bus.

Guidelines issued since the September 11 attacks emphasise that police must not challenge suicide bombers or identify themselves for fear of prompting the bomber to detonate his device. Instead, they may fire a "critical head shot ... prior to challenge".

The complaints commission has taken statements from officers in the operation. Among the questions being asked is why the intelligence on the occupants of the flats suspected of harbouring the terror suspects failed to identify Mr de Menezes as an innocent party. It will also seek to establish why he was allowed to board a bus when buses had been targets in the two previous attacks. His family cannot reconcile the police assertion that he had to be stopped once he had boarded a Tube train with the fact that he got on to a bus.

Questions will also be asked over why the impression that he was wearing a padded fleece was given continued credence when the photographs broadcast last night show him dressed differently. Wearing bulky clothing not in keeping with the weather is considered a sign of a potential suicide bomber. Scotland Yard said last night that it was unable to comment on any reports about the incident while it was being investigated.

If all of this is true then the British police have hindered anti-terror efforts everywhere human and civil rights are observed. In the wake of their overly hasty reaction more restraints will inevitably be placed on police to ensure that such a terrible thing doesn't happen again. Those restraints may save an innocent life, like that of de Menezes, or they may, because of a moment's indecision, cost more lives. The mystery is why they shot at all.

Risky Business

Being a big cheese in al Qaida is risky business anywhere but especially in Saudi Arabia. The third jihadi to head up the Saudi chapter of al Qaida in the last year or so has bitten the bullet, so to speak.

RIYADH (Reuters) - Security forces killed the leader of al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia in a gun battle in the holy city of Medina just hours before a visit by newly crowned King Abdullah. An Interior Ministry statement said security forces had also killed three other militants and arrested at least 10 in a series of raids in the capital Riyadh and in Medina.

Saleh al-Awfi, believed to have taken over leadership of al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia last year, was one of a few fugitives remaining on a list of most wanted militants in the world's top oil producer. His death would deal a further blow to militants loyal to Saudi-born al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who analysts say have been weakened by a two-year government campaign against the al Qaeda network in Saudi Arabia.

State television said Awfi and another militant had been hiding in a residential area near the venerated Mosque of the Prophet, site of the tomb of Mohammad which King Abdullah visited for prayers. Earlier, security forces killed two wanted gunmen and captured another during a raid on a house in a northern district of Riyadh.

Saudi analyst Fares Houzam said militants in the kingdom had been dealt a big blow. "Awfi was al Qaeda's main leader in the west of the country," he told Reuters. "The speed at which the militants have been captured and killed of late shows how poorly trained they are."

As crown prince, King Abdullah had spearheaded the battle against al Qaeda which since May 2003 has staged suicide bombings and attacks against foreigners with the aim of toppling the pro-U.S. monarchy and expelling Westerners from the birthplace of Islam. Analysts said the accession of Abdullah, a pious figure popular with his conservative Muslim subjects, could increase public support for the battle against al Qaeda which depends on the sympathy of ordinary Saudis as much as weapons.

Militants have so far killed 91 foreign nationals and Saudi civilians. Security forces have in turn killed 112 militants and analysts say they have eroded al Qaeda's network in the kingdom. Saudi authorities believe Awfi took over the leadership of al Qaeda in the kingdom after security forces killed Abdulaziz al-Muqrin in June last year.

Kudos to the Saudi security forces. Let's hope they soon run out of targets.

Journalistic Twister

We have to wonder whether AP reporters Tom Coyne and Ashley Heher actually got paid for this sophomoric piece of guilt by very distant association:

LONG BEACH, Ind. - Like many towns across America, the exclusive lakefront community where Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. grew up during the racially turbulent 1960s and '70s once banned the sale of homes to nonwhites and Jews.

Just three miles from the nearly all-white community of Long Beach, two days of looting and vandalism erupted when Roberts was 15, barely intruding on the Mayberry-like community that was largely insulated from the racial strife of that era.

It was here that the 50-year-old Roberts lived from elementary school until he went away to Harvard in 1973, and that decade - as well as the rest of his life - is receiving intense scrutiny as the Senate gears up for its Sept. 6 confirmation hearings on President Bush's first Supreme Court nominee.

Some of the attention focuses on Roberts' civil rights record as Bush replaces retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the key swing voter on affirmative action issues.

Roberts' criticism of racial "quotas" in some documents from his work as a White House lawyer has alarmed civil rights groups and some Democrats, who say he may be a partisan for conservative causes. Other memos from his time in the Reagan Justice Department portray an attorney who urged his bosses to restrict affirmative action and Title IX sex discrimination lawsuits.

It is hard to know how much Roberts' upbringing in this northern Indiana community on the shores of Lake Michigan influenced his views. Some say the fact that there were riots and restrictions on home ownership is not relevant at all. "I don't think that would have had any bearing on John Roberts' life," said Micky Gallas, a local real estate agent who attended grade school with Roberts, referring to the racial covenants.

Roberts' father, a manager at a Bethlehem Steel mill in nearby Burns Harbor, moved the family to Long Beach in the early 1960s. The family purchased land a few blocks from the beach in 1966 and built an unassuming tri-level house. The Roberts property did not include a racially restrictive covenant, according to LaPorte County deed records, and the restrictions had begun fading away by then.

Other homes built decades earlier in the town had covenants. Deeds on file from the 1940s in Long Beach ban the sale or lease of houses to "any person who is not a Caucasian gentile." The covenants date to the community's early days in the 1920s as a summer getaway for Chicagoans.

"Every time you would go to an area you would find there were restrictions against a certain type," said Phyllis Waters, who moved to Long Beach in 1958 and bought Century 21 Long Beach Real Estate in 1967. "What they didn't like, they'd restrict."

Fern Eddy Schultz, the county historian, said the covenants were common for property near Lake Michigan. "They didn't want particular people to have homes around the lake areas," Schultz said. Covenants have gotten attention in the past. President Bush purchased a house in 1988 in Dallas with a covenant restricting blacks from buying the property. His staff said Bush was unaware of the deed restriction, which was void under Texas law, when he purchased the home.

In Long Beach, nearly all residents were white when Roberts was growing up, a makeup that has changed little in four decades. Today, nearly 98 percent of the town's 1,500 residents are white. The median income in 1970 topped $18,000, nearly twice that of neighboring communities; today it is more than $71,000, nearly double the state median.

That environment may have sheltered residents from the events of July 1970, when the arrests of three black men over a parking violation outside a bar in Michigan City set off two days of looting, vandalism and fires.

The Associated Press reported in a July 13, 1970, story that a police officer addressed one of those arrested as "boy" and that the man vowed to get some of his friends and "take this town apart." The mayor declared a state of emergency, and Indiana National Guard troops were called in to restore order.

The News-Dispatch of Michigan City reported more than a dozen people were arrested for violating a curfew imposed to quell the violence. Those detained included several who worked in a job-training program for Bethlehem Steel's Burns Harbor plant, where the younger Roberts worked summers to help pay for Harvard.

David Myers, a University of Notre Dame sociology professor who studies race riots, said the uprising was typical of an industrial area that had seen an influx of blacks from the South. "There were a lot of labor market tension and lots of unemployment issues that were driving unrest," he said.

Waters said many Long Beach residents were unaware of the disturbances until they picked up the Michigan City newspaper. "We didn't even know it happened," she said.

That insulation extended to the all-boys Catholic boarding school Roberts attended in nearby LaPorte. Bob MacLaverty, a longtime friend and Roberts' roommate at La Lumiere School, said students rarely discussed race and the civil rights movement. The school admitted its first black students in 1970. By Roberts' graduation in 1973, about 7 percent of its roughly 100 students were minorities, he said.

Richard Freer, a professor of law at Emory University in Atlanta who has studied the Senate confirmation process, says Roberts' life experiences are relevant if they speak to his character and ability to be impartial. But he said there should be limits.

"I think it's legitimate to look at the past if it tells you anything about the person. But so what if there were race riots? Did he cause them? No. He was a 15-year-old kid. We don't shape the events that take place in our hometown."

This has to be one of the most stupidly silly pieces of reporting in the national media in the last twenty years. How is anything that Coyne and Heher write here relevant to John Roberts' fitness to serve on the Supreme Court? Why is any of it even newsworthy? The only plausible reason is that the writers are trying to show that John Roberts may have been tangentially exposed to racist influences in his youth, but even if he had been, so what? Who hasn't? What does that have to do with his qualifications to serve on the Supreme Court?

As our two cerebrally-challenged correspondents play a desperate game of journalistic Twister, stretching and contorting to come up with something, anything with which to diminish Mr. Roberts' reputation, the rest of us can only shake our heads in astonishment at how low the AP's standards have sunk.

Why Morale is High

Matt Lauer probably wasn't expecting this:

...Lauer interviewed a group of soldiers at Camp Liberty in Baghdad, and at one point asked about the state of morale. After getting two responses to the effect that morale was good, Lauer had this to say:

"Don't get me wrong, I think you're probably telling the truth, but there might be a lot of people at home wondering how that could be possible with the conditions you're facing and with the insurgent attacks you're facing. What would you say to people who are doubtful that morale could be that high?"

To which Capt. Sherman Powell replied: "Well sir, I'd tell you, if I got my news from the newspapers also I'd be pretty depressed as well!"

Powell went on to say, no doubt to Lauer's discomfiture, that "For those of us who have actually had the chance to get out and meet the Iraqi army and the Iraqi police and go on patrols with them, we are very satisfied with the way things are going here, and we are confident that if we are allowed to finish the job we started we'll be very proud of it and our country will be proud of us for doing it."

I hope Howard Dean, Ted Kennedy and the rest of the lefty anti-war protestors who think our G.I.s must surely be on the verge of mutiny read this soldier's statement. Unfortunately, it'll probably be unable to penetrate the ideological haze that obscures their ability to think clearly.

Stein v. Sheehan

Cindy Sheehan shouts that George Bush is the world's biggest terrorist. Ben Stein says he's the world's greatest asset. Whether Stein is correct or not (I think he is), Sheehan is certainly not. After all, who would you rather meet on a deserted street, a jihadi from Fallujah, if there are any left, or George Bush?

Anyway, Stein's case for claiming Bush to be a great leader is here:

A few humble theses:

There is such a thing as evil in this world and such a thing as good. It is simply not true that all is relative and similar. Beheading Iraqi civilians with a saw on the Internet is absolutely evil. Helping children in Mosul get pure water is absolute good. Sending homicide bombers to blow up elementary schools at a kibbutz is evil. Treating the children of your enemies in the finest hospitals in Israel is good.

In Europe and Asia and South America and in much of North America, this idea is unknown. All is relative and the only point is to get away another day without having the evil ones attack you. Appeasing the terrorists, ignoring them and their instigators, pretending that the good guys are the bad guys -- all of these are now standard practice in the capitals of the world, and in the academies of America and in the Democratic Party at high levels.

There is one great man standing between us and this capitulation to evil: that man is George Bush, and he has two great allies, Tony Blair and John Howard. If we did not have George Bush at the helm, if we had a moral relativist like Kerry or Gore, we would even now be playing the same appeasing games as Chamberlain played with Hitler, and which France and Germany, Spain and Italy, Norway and Belgium, tragically, even Canada, play with the enemies of the human spirit.

By a great providence, we were sent George Bush. In his mind, there is such a thing as evil. Terrorism is evil. Racism is evil. The murder of unborn babies is evil. Torturing a totally innocent Terri Schiavo to death is evil. He sees it, acts on it, actively works not just to get along day by day, but to keep evil at bay and to overcome it where it can be overcome. As time goes by, I come to realize that George Bush, with all of his faults, is the spiritual heir to Abraham Lincoln, to Martin Luther King, Jr., to Winston Churchill, to the late Pope John Paul II. How unbelievably lucky we are to have him, and how grateful we should be.

The terrifying part is that he will be gone from power in less than three years. Then what? The evil will remain in men's souls, and who will be there to fight it? We have to start thinking right now of who sees and recognizes the difference between good and evil and start energizing ourselves to make that man or woman President. George Bush's shoes will be terrifyingly difficult to fill.

Stein has a point. In order to defend Western civilization one has to recognize that evil exists. Any politician who sees evil as purely the subjective revulsion of individual or collective taste is completely unsuited for leadership in these difficult times. Above all else we need men and women at the helm who possess a sense of moral clarity and who have not succumbed to the post-modern relativism which afflicts and paralyzes the judgment of so many of our educated elites. Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush were/are such men. Who will follow in their train? Surely not anyone endorsed by Ms Sheehan.

Egging Cindy On

I remember once seeing a group of children surrounding a mentally retarded boy who was shouting obscenities. The group of children, instead of calming the boy down, coaxed him to continue his behavior because they found it amusing. They laughingly egged him on as he made himself offensive and foolish to anyone passing by who didn't realize what was happening. The whole episode was a sickening insight into the cruelty of which children are capable. I thought of this in thinking about how the media is encouraging Cindy Sheehan and making her protest possible.

Grant that Ms Sheehan is a bereaved mother. Of course, there are many mothers who've lost children in Iraq and Afghanistan. About two thousand of them, but they're not saying the sorts of things Sheehan is. What they are saying is that Sheehan doesn't speak for them, and no wonder.

Cindy Sheehan has, aided and abetted by the MSM, converted her status as a Gold Star mom into a platform from which to make the most absurd allegations about George Bush with total impunity. She had a right to her bitterness for a while, and we should still be loath to question her motives, but her immunity to criticism for the words she's uttering is lapsing and if she wishes to be taken seriously it's time people spoke up and told her that her statements are not only false, they're stupid. They are little more than invective and name-calling. Consider, for example, what she says in this story at The Drudge Report:

"We are not waging a war on terror in this country. We're waging a war of terror. The biggest terrorist in the world is George W. Bush!"

So declared Cindy Sheehan earlier this year during a rally at San Francisco State University.

Sheehan, who is demanding a second meeting with Bush, stated: "We are waging a nuclear war in Iraq right now. That country is contaminated. It will be contaminated for practically eternity now."

Sheehan unleashed a foul-mouth tirade on April 27, 2005:

"They're a bunch of f*****g hypocrites! And we need to, we just need to rise up..." Sheehan said of the Bush administration.

"If George Bush believes his rhetoric and his bulls**t, that this is a war for freedom and democracy, that he is spreading freedom and democracy, does he think every person he kills makes Iraq more free?"

"The whole world is damaged. Our humanity is damaged. If he thinks that it's so important for Iraq to have a U.S.-imposed sense of freedom and democracy, then he needs to sign up his two little party-animal girls. They need to go to this war."

"We want our country back and, if we have to impeach everybody from George Bush down to the person who picks up dog s**t in Washington, we will impeach all those people."

This is such incoherent nonsense that it's not worth the time to construct a reply. Let it suffice to say that the MSM is delighted that someone with some (rapidly fading) moral standing can be found who's willing to trash Bush in such a way that it doesn't look like partisan politics. They give her the megaphone to do it with and coax her to shout louder.

Yet the only reason anyone at all listens to her is that her son was killed in Iraq after having volunteered for the military, re-enlisting, and then volunteering to go on a dangerous rescue mission that his status as a vehicle mechanic did not require of him. He was not drafted, he did not have to fight. He freely chose his path. The young man is a hero, but his mother's screeds and wild allegations do his courage and sacrifice great dishonor.

If the media had any decency they would simply avert their eyes from this woman's unfortunate tantrums rather than egging her on. But they are desperate to discredit Bush, and desperate people resort to whatever means lay at hand, regardless of how contemptible those means may be.

Letter to the Editor

Forgive me if I mentioned this before, but our local paper ran an editorial two weeks ago on the president's opinion on having Intelligent Design in public school classrooms. The editorial can be found here. Here's my response, only part of which was printed by the paper yesterday:

The Dispatch ran an editorial last Wednesday critical of the president's recent comments on teaching Intelligent Design about which I'd like to pose some questions. The editor wrote:

"Yet here's the president of the United States, saying schools should teach both "theories" on the creation and development of life. And global warming has no scientific basis, mercury pollution is not the threat most scientists say it is, drilling for oil in the Alaskan Arctic Wildlife Refuge will have no effect on one of the world's last great wildernesses -- and are there really such things as endangered species?"

If sarcasm were a reason to accept an implied conclusion then the paper would have a strong case against the Bush administration's attitude toward science-related issues, but it's not, and they don't. Each of these issues is framed by the writer in a highly tendentious way. The controversy surrounding global warming, for instance, is not about whether it's happening but about its cause. No one claims that drilling for oil in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge will have no effect. The debate is over whether the effect will be significant and permanent. Part of informing one's readers is accurately presenting the facts, but this the editorial fails to do, preferring the rhetorical appeal of snarkiness to the difficult work of thinking.

The writer then gets to the real point:

"Intelligent design is not a 'theory,' but strictly a religious concept that may have its place in Sunday school and in the home -- not in high school biology class."

Not a theory? Does the editor mean that ID is not a proposed explanation for a set of observations? Does the editor know what a theory is? Has the editor ever actually read anything written on ID by a prominent advocate?

And what about ID makes it a "strictly religious concept"? Is it religious because some wish to use it to promote a religious agenda? If so, is Darwinism fascist because some have employed Darwinian principles like survival of the fittest to justify the extermination of the less fit? Is ID religious simply because it posits a Designer? How, exactly, would that make it religious?

The Dispatch goes on to say that:

"The president's view on intelligent design would, no doubt, warm the heart of William Jennings Bryan, the three-time presidential candidate and anti-evolution champion in the Scopes trial who saw Darwin's theory as heralding the end of western civilization. But for a man who presides over the most powerful and most scientifically advanced nation on earth to be spouting such a fundamentalist mantra in the name of 'improving' education is more than unseemly, it's irresponsible and embarrassing."

Why is it irresponsible for the president to state his personal views on this issue when asked to do so? He didn't say that ID should be legislatively mandated. He merely opined that it would be a good thing to stimulate students to think about a very important question. Why should it be embarrassing to hold a view consonant with the opinion of the majority of people one leads? Is it that the editor is embarrassed that the president lacks the same level of scientific enlightenment possessed by his/her fellow sophisticates in the news media?

Moreover, what does the Dispatch mean by calling the president's words a "fundamentalist mantra"? Does the paper intend to suggest that only creepy fundamentalists believe that it's appropriate to mention the possibility that intelligence is necessary to explain the apparent biocentricity of the cosmos and the complexity of the biosphere in a science class?

What is really "unseemly, irresponsible and embarrassing" is lazy, otiose rhetoric masquerading as informed argument. The editor of the Dispatch knows nothing of what he/she is talking about so, like a middle schooler caught in an argument over matters he does not understand, the writer just sputters insults. It may make the writer feel good, but it's not very persuasive.

Another Top Jihadi Sent to Paradise

The BBC reports that yet another top aide to Abu al Zarqawi has been dispatched to frolic with his 72 virgins:

United States officials say Iraqi forces have killed a senior aide to the militant leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Officials said Abu Zubair was shot dead in the northern city of Mosul, in an ambush set by Iraqi forces.

He had been wanted for his alleged role in several attacks, including a attack on a police station in Mosul last month, which killed five policemen.

No other details of the operation were provided, and there is no independent confirmation of the US statement.

Maybe next time it will be the psychopath-in-chief himself who gets sent off to his reward.

The Seven Phases

Al Qaida has a twenty year plan for establishing a worldwide caliphate and The Fourth Rail has the details and commentary:

Al Qaeda's purported strategy can be broken down into seven "phases" which span from 2000 until 2020, at which time they believe the global Islamist Caliphate will be established and they will acheive "definitive victory." Here are the phases, which are followed by commentary when appropriate.

The First Phase: Known as "the awakening" -- this has already been carried out and was supposed to have lasted from 2000 to 2003, or more precisely from the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 in New York and Washington to the fall of Baghdad in 2003. The aim of the attacks of 9/11 was to provoke the US into declaring war on the Islamic world and thereby "awakening" Muslims. "The first phase was judged by the strategists and masterminds behind al-Qaida as very successful," writes Hussein. "The battle field was opened up and the Americans and their allies became a closer and easier target." The terrorist network is also reported as being satisfied that its message can now be heard "everywhere."

Al Qaeda can claim some success in the First Phase, as the organization is now the preeminent terrorist organization on the planet. The attacks of September 11 were cheered throughout the Islamic world. The global media disseminates Al Qaeda commander's speeches. Each and every terrorist attack is followed by suspicious of al Qaeda involvement. And the US did indeed bring the war to the Islamic world in Afghanistan and Iraq, however not against Islam itself. But this came at a price, as Islamist Afghanistan and friendly Saddam-governed Iraq were lost.

The Second Phase: "Opening Eyes" is, according to Hussein's definition, the period we are now in and should last until 2006. Hussein says the terrorists hope to make the western conspiracy aware of the "Islamic community." Hussein believes this is a phase in which al-Qaida wants an organization to develop into a movement. The network is banking on recruiting young men during this period. Iraq should become the center for all global operations, with an "army" set up there and bases established in other Arabic states.

So far, the Second Phase has been a failure. The Arab and greater Islamic Street has been essentially silent in its support of al Qaeda. The perception that al Qaeda's cause is popular as hundreds of Islamists enter Iraq monthly is overshadowed by the tens of thousands of Islamic fighters who enter Afghanistan during the war with the Soviet Union. al Qaeda has generated new recruits, but not nearly enough to replace the experienced operators and managers that have been lost under the American onslaught in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Winning the Second Phase is important from an ideological standpoint. Defeat in Iraq would seriously harm the credibility of al Qaeda and weaken their mystique. They would possess a losing ideology that could not stand up to the Great Satan. Allah would have abandoned them to the privations of the infidel.

The rest of the plan can be read at the link. Roggio finishes with this:

Phases Five, Six and Seven are merely the dreams of al Qaeda, as the prospects for al Qaeda's success in phases One thru Fourth are looking grim at the moment. Despite media portrayal of defeat in Iraq, the Iraqi people are fighting the insurgency and the Anbar region is set to be reduced as an al Qaeda rear area. The jewel of al Qaeda, Afghanistan, fell almost four years ago, and al Qaeda and its Taliban allies have not come even close to retaining control. There are rumors of a serious rift between al Qaeda and the Taliban, as the Taliban believes its woes were created by closely allying themselves with Osama's cause.

However, in the event of the United State loses its political will and pursues a policy of isolation from the Muslim world, an inevitable showdown with al Qaeda would ensue. Open confrontation with the West, as well as the possibility of a nuclear armed Caliphate, would bring the full military might of the Western World (those who value their freedom). The current operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa, Southeast and Central Asia and within the borders of Western nations would be tame in comparison to what would come. The Japanese, Germans and Italians discovered in World War II the price of wakening the American military psyche.

The West would basically have two options: (1) blitzkrieg 21st Century style - the full mobilization of its military and an accompanying sweep of the Islamic crescent, without regards for Politically Correct warfare; (2) nuclear war. Both campaigns would be designed to fully eliminate the Islamist threat, and the Muslim infrastructure, which allowed for the rise of al Qaeda's ideology.

Whatever happens, the American people have to be prepared for a long, drawn out conflict. One of the Bush administration's real failings in the current war has been, in our opinion, its failure to keep the eye of the American people focussed on the task of defeating terrorism. They've given us the perception that they're disengaged, that the war is just a side-show to our everyday lives rather than an all-out struggle for the survival of Western civilization. As a result, they've pretty much ceded the battle for people's hearts and minds to the Cindy Sheehans and Chris Matthews of the world.

The war has to be fought not only abroad but also here at home. The administration must repeatedly remind us why we are fighting, what our soldiers are dying for, what the stakes are, and what sort of progress is being made. If they expect the American people to be patient they have to show us the goal and continually update us on our progress toward that goal, not just in Iraq and Afghanistan but everywhere the war is being fought. To do less is to risk conveying the impression that what our military is doing is not all that crucial or important and that its time to disengage from a conflict which, for all the White House is telling us, we're not really winning.

Stemming the Tide

Michelle Malkin has a lot of links and other worthwhile stuff on what is probably conservatives' biggest disappointment with the Bush administration, its failure to control our borders.

If the Democrats want a winning issue in '06 and '08 there are a lot of Republicans and conservatives who would vote for anyone who campaigns on stopping the flood of illegal aliens pouring into this country every day. The GOP, which has been absolutely delinquent on this issue, would find any credible candidate who promised to put a stop to it tough to beat.

Bias Against Roberts

Laer has 32 examples of media bias in their reporting on John Roberts' nomination to the Supreme Court at Cheat-Seeking Missiles. It's an imposing list.

The Origin of Life

This is an interesting development in the debate between Darwinism and Intelligent Design:

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Harvard University is joining the long-running debate over the theory of evolution by launching a research project to study how life began. The team of researchers will receive $1 million in funding annually from Harvard over the next few years. The project begins with an admission that some mysteries about life's origins cannot be explained.

"My expectation is that we will be able to reduce this to a very simple series of logical events that could have taken place with no divine intervention," said David R. Liu, a professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Harvard.

Maybe Liu is correct, but one difficulty his team is going to have to overcome, if they're going to show that no intelligent designer was necessary for biogenesis, is designing experiments that show how life could have originated without introducing into those experiments any trace of human intelligence. It'll be a nifty trick if they can pull it off.

The attempt, though, is quite a gamble. If they succeed, their work would be a severe and possibly fatal blow to Intelligent Design theory. If, on the other hand, they fail, their inability to explain how life could have evolved naturalistically will greatly strengthen the argument of those who say that however life came to be, it could not have happened through purely mechanistic processes.