France to send more troops to Afghanistan

Umm....what's that you say about us going it alone? If any presidential candidate says that we have a "bunker mentality" and have lost the support of the world for our war on terror, it's safe to say that they don't know what's going on in the world and aren't prepared to lead:

Said Nicolas Sarkozy: “There is a war going on here, a war against terrorism, against fanaticism that we cannot and will not lose.”

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By the way, both the Dutch and the Canadians (who finally elected a conservative as prime minister) have re-upped for tours of Afghanistan through 2010.

Oh and one more thing about timelines. Sarkozy said: “What is certain is that we have not wanted to give the signal of departure, that would have been a despicable signal at a time when one sees the ravages inflicted by terrorism in the world.”

Australia is also committed to sending more troops.

The jihad's been called off, guys

I guess the Great Satan has won:

One of Al Qaeda's senior theologians is calling on his followers to end their military jihad and saying the attacks of September 11, 2001, were a "catastrophe for all Muslims."

In a serialized manifesto written from prison in Egypt, Sayyed Imam al-Sharif is blasting Osama bin Laden for deceiving the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, and for insulting the Prophet Muhammad by comparing the September 11 attacks to the early raids of the Ansar warriors. The lapsed jihadist even calls for the formation of a special Islamic court to try Osama bin Laden and his old comrade Ayman al-Zawahri.

The disclosures from Mr. Sharif, also known as Dr. Fadl and Abd al-Qadir ibn Abd al-Aziz, have already opened a rift at the highest levels of Al Qaeda. The group's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, a former associate of the defecting theologian in Egypt, personally mocked him last month in a video, remarking that he was unaware Egyptian prisons had fax machines. Meanwhile, leading Western analysts are saying the defection of Mr. Sharif indicates the beginning of the end for Al Qaeda.

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The director of the Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University, Frank Cilluffo, said, "Here you have someone with the stature and credibility, who more or less wrote the book on jihadism and is oft cited by other jihadists, making the case against it. This is someone with the heft on legal and religious grounds to make the counter argument that we can't."

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His latest texts are a renunciation of his earlier work, saying the military jihad or war against apostate states and America is futile. But the ex-jihadist also calls into question the virtue of Mr. bin Laden and Mr. Zawahri. In some ways the manifesto reads in parts like a spicy Washington memoir by an embittered former official.

Of his old associates he writes, "Bin Laden, al-Zawahri, and others fled at the beginning of the American bombing [in Afghanistan], to the point of abandoning their wives and families to be killed along with other innocent people," according to a translation provided by the Middle East Media Research Institute. It goes on, "I think that a sharia court should be established, composed of reliable scholars, to hold these people accountable for their crimes — even if in absentia — so that those who are ignorant in their religion do not repeat this futility."

(via)

Oil Price Rise Causes Global Shift in Wealth

I wonder if a Republican presidential candidate ran on drilling for oil in Alaska and the Gulf, would he win? I think one of the candidates should come out for drilling and see what happens. I bet if he links it the war on terror, it would resonate ("Why are we funding our the war against us?").

High oil prices are fueling one of the biggest transfers of wealth in history. Oil consumers are paying $4 billion to $5 billion more for crude oil every day than they did just five years ago, pumping more than $2 trillion into the coffers of oil companies and oil-producing nations this year alone.

The consequences are evident in minds and mortar: anger at Chinese motor-fuel pumps and inflated confidence in the Kremlin; new weapons in Chad and new petrochemical plants in Saudi Arabia; no-driving campaigns in South Korea and bigger sales for Toyota hybrid cars; a fiscal burden in Senegal and a bonanza in Brazil. In Burma, recent demonstrations were triggered by a government decision to raise fuel prices.

High oil prices are fueling one of the biggest transfers of wealth in history. Oil consumers are paying $4 billion to $5 billion more for crude oil every day than they did just five years ago, pumping more than $2 trillion into the coffers of oil companies and oil-producing nations this year alone.

The consequences are evident in minds and mortar: anger at Chinese motor-fuel pumps and inflated confidence in the Kremlin; new weapons in Chad and new petrochemical plants in Saudi Arabia; no-driving campaigns in South Korea and bigger sales for Toyota hybrid cars; a fiscal burden in Senegal and a bonanza in Brazil. In Burma, recent demonstrations were triggered by a government decision to raise fuel prices.

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Two of those nations -- Iran and Venezuela -- may be better able to defy the Bush administration because of swelling oil revenue. Venezuela has used its oil wealth to dispense patronage around South America, vying for influence even with longtime U.S. allies. And Iran could be less vulnerable to sanctions designed to pressure it into giving up its nuclear program or opening it to inspection.

Read the rest here.

Clinton's solution to our dependence on foreign oil? Let's throw more money at the problem. Yes, the government is well-equipped to handle our country's energy needs. Here's her New Hampshire ad:

CLINTON: We've got to get serious about ending our dependence on foreign oil. We could create millions of new jobs through new energy.
CLINTON: Let's start investing in what I've called a strategic energy fund that will put 50 billion dollars to work with wind and solar and biofuels.
CLINTON: And where would I get the money? I would take away the tax subsidies from the oil companies. They don't need your tax dollars anymore.

A candidate from the Republican side should seize this opportunity to shape the debate in a way that will actually end our dependence on foreign oil by drilling for it ourselves. I think that's a winning message (yes, I do because deep down we say we car about the environment and yet that doesn't stop us from using private jets and driving SUVs).

Al-Zawahri Threatens Libya

This is an interesting turn of events. It seems that al-Qaeda wants to make sure that Muslim nations don't become America's allies. Maybe since they're losing the war in Iraq, they're going to hit on other fronts:

Al-Qaida's No. 2 figure harshly criticized Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi in a new audio tape Saturday, accusing him of being an enemy of Islam and threatening a wave of attacks against the North African country because it improved relations with the U.S.

In the 28-minute audio tape called "Unity of the Ranks," Ayman al-Zawahri also announced that the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group was joining ranks with al-Qaida.

"The Islamic nation is witnessing a blessed step ... The brothers are escalating the confrontation against the enemies of Islam: Gadhafi and his masters, the Washington crusaders," al-Zawahri said in the audio tape. The recording could not be independently verified, but it appeared on a Web site commonly used by insurgents and carried the logo of al-Qaida's media production house, as-Sahab.

The recording also carried a message from Abu Laith al-Libi, a Libyan al-Qaida commander in Afghanistan who accused Gadhafi of decades of tyranny.

"He is the tyranny of Libya and is dragging the country to the swamp," al-Libi said in the recording that also featured old video footage of him walking with other masked gunmen.

Saudis arrest 172 militants

Some really good news out of Saudi Arabia, it's great to see that we aren't the only nation fighting the Islamofascists:

Police arrested 172 Islamic militants, some of whom had trained abroad as pilots so they could fly aircraft in attacks on Saudi Arabia's oil fields, the Interior Ministry said Friday. A spokesman said all that remained in the plot "was to set the zero hour."

The ministry issued a statement saying the detainees were planning to carry out suicide atttacks against "public figures, oil facilities, refineries ... and military zones" — some of which were outside the kingdom

"They had reached an advance stage of readiness and what remained only was to set the zero hour for their attacks," Interior Ministry spokesman Brig. Mansour al-Turki told the Associated Press in a phone call. "They had the personnel, the money, the arms. Almost all the elements for terror attacks were complete except for setting the zero hour for the attacks."

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The Saudi state TV channel Al-Ekhbariah broadcast footage of large weapons cache discovered buried in the desert. The arms included bricks of plastic explosives, ammunition cartridges, handguns and rifles wrapped in plastic sheeting.

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Al-Ekhbariah showed investigators breaking tiled floors with hammers to uncover pipes that contained weapons. In one scene, an official upends a plastic pipe and bullets and little packets of plastic explosives spill out.