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As for the jihadis, who do wish us harm, former CIA analyst Marc Sageman estimates the number of radical Muslims who can and would do significant harm to the US in the hundreds.

That's right. The old "war on terror" was a war of the world's sole superpower on a few hundred people. (I exclude Iraq because it is not and never was part of any 'war on terror,' though the incredible incompetence of the Bush administration has contributed to the ability of terrorists to operate there.)

If you try to "profile" the terrorist using such social markers as class or ethnicity, maybe even religious background, you will go badly astray.

What then do they (terrorists) have in common? They got the software installed in their minds. Why? Because they met the installer, and were susceptible to his worldview. That's all they have in common.

So the young man goes to the Finsbury Mosque in the old days and hangs out with Imam. And he points out that the Israelis had fired a huge missile into a residential apartment building to get at a Hamas leader, and had killed 16 civilians, including a little baby. And nobody said "boo" to the Israelis. The US actually gave them more money after that. Tony Blair deplored it, but did nothing practical. Then, the Imam will tell him, the Americans destroyed Fallujah and killed hundreds of innocents. He might even have the photograph that circulated last December, of the dead baby at Fallujah. And nobody can say "boo" to the Americans, and they go on killing Muslims. In fact, the Imam intimates, pulling the young man close, almost whispering, tears in his eyes, the West is destroying Islam. Almost nothing is left of Islam, he will say. It will be completely devastated in our lifetimes. Nobody is lifting a finger to stop it.

So the young man says, what could anyone do? And the Imam says, there is something. But it isn't for ordinary people. It isn't for mere show-offs. And the young man says, sticking out his chest, I'm not showing off! I really want to help, to do something that would make a difference. The Imam says, a person who was really committed could change everything. He could save the Muslim Ummma from destruction. But, no, you are not ready. You don't have the training, the commitment. You are useless. And the young man protests, until he is put in touch with the trainer and given the mission. His new friends all agree on this view of the world. He hangs out with them, at the mosque, at the gym, even socially. They reinforce each other. They tell each other the stories of the harm done to Muslims. They get angry. They swear. They are determined not to be like the rest, who just let it happen. The young man gains in determination. The mission inflates his ego. Maybe he had low self-esteem, maybe not. But he is about to save the world, he is told.

The software is of course a hugely distorted view of the universe. It lets the young man see Israeli atrocities, but not those of Hamas or the Aqsa Brigades. It lets him see American atrocities but not those of Saddam Hussein, Izzedin al-Duri and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The software is fatally one-sided. It also exaggerates. The Muslim world is not in danger of being destroyed, least of all by the United States, a warm friend of most Muslim countries. But the software configures a dire crisis, almost apocalyptic, which can only be averted by an ethical hero who is willing to sacrifice himself. The software hides from the convert that he is to become a monster and kill innocents. It tells him he is a noble soldier, and his victims are wicked enemy soldiers, that there are no innocent civilians.

So how do you fight this form of terror? You disrupt the installation of the software in more and more minds. You adopt policies that make the story the software tells implausible. And you reach out to make sure people hear the implausibility.

The Muslim world is not in danger of being destroyed, least of all by the United States, a warm friend of most Muslim countries. But the software configures a dire crisis, almost apocalyptic, which can only be averted by an ethical hero who is willing to sacrifice himself.

So I guess what I am getting at, really, is that life is all about learning to take a joke.

And if God is listening right now, “Eh, You ain’t so great. But You’re pretty good.” 

MOSCOW, July 28 (Itar-Tass) - The crew of the US’ shuttle Discovery will be unable to use Russia’s escape capsules Soyuz for returning to the earth, the Federal Space Agency’s spokesman Vyacheslav Davidenko said.

“At present, we have in a high degree of readiness Soyuz-TMA that is to deliver to the International Space Station the 12th resident crew. The launch of the ship is planned for October 1,” he told Itar-Tass on Thursday.

However, “even with availability of free spacecraft, the crew of the shuttle will be unable to use them for returning to the earth even if an emergency arises”, he said.

“So called cradles that mitigate overloads during the re-entry are tailor-made to a figure of each cosmonaut. The very metal chairs in Soyuz are standard, and half-rigid ‘inserts’ are made from a mould of the body of a cosmonaut,” an official at Moscow’s Institute of Biomedical Problems explained.

“For this, an unclothed cosmonaut is embedded in gypsum and then the ‘insert’ and a spacesuit are made from this mould”.

Davidenko said the “matter of possible purchase of Russian spacecraft by the (US space agency) NASA has not been settled so far”.

2238 GMT (6:38 p.m. EDT)

Is the shuttle program done launching for 2005?

Parsons: "I can't say what the impact of this is." Shuttles can't fly with this large size foam coming off, he added. The problem must be dealt with before the next launch can occur.

Plans had called for Atlantis to launch September 9.

"What makes Bush a conservative?" Savage asked when I got him on the phone the other day. "On the economy, Bush has got more governmental workers than anybody before him. He's ballooned the government."

As regards the so-called "war on terror," Savage points out that you can't win a war when you're afraid even to name the enemy.

"He's never mentioned Islamo fascism," said Savage.

No, he hasn't. Even the French have been more willing to defend their borders, language and culture than Bush. He's a multiculturalist and a mushy one at that. Instead of reducing the reach of Islamic fundamentalism, Bush has managed in Iraq to get 1,700 Americans killed in a war that will create yet another Islamic republic. Just Wednesday we learned that the new constitution in Iraq will incorporate sharia, Islamic law.

That's why we right-wing commentators believe the Iraq war has been the biggest blunder in American military history. As for Bimbo and Vanity, if I may employ Savage's labels, they are simply too uneducated to realize that the Iraq war represents a failed liberal exercise in nation-building.

ooh!  ooh!  Two good points! 

Bill's first:

How to bring Islam into the 21st century? Women's rights are the best place to start.

A sound tactic.  Health care workers have repeatedly found that the best place to start educating people about medical topics is to educate the mothers of a community, because that tactic spreads information to the most people per class session (mothers, fathers, and children all at once).

If we decide to focus our efforts on all Islam instead of those who stand against us, educating their women would be the best place to start.

There's just one problem with all that:

Who the hell are we to bring Islam into the 21st century?!

Now, I've always said that antiterrorist struggle was the intelligence services job. That is using all means, stealth assassinations, corruption, edition of compromising photomontages showing fundy islamic preachers with hoars, this is a mercyless and silent fight to lead on.
Being openly tough is counterproductive, that's just inner propaganda bullshit.

Fact is, no action comes without negative consequences.

al Qaeda is weak, very weak, except for our hysterical reactions.

*al-Qaeda may be weak now.  But what about all those other Islamoterrorist groups/cells?  They seem rather active to me, if news headlines are any indication.

Who? What? Where?