Pajamas Media military affairs expert Austin Bay previews tonight’s speech by President Bush on Iraq. The speech calls for an additional 21,500 troops for the war. Bay just participated in a blogger conference call with White House press secretary Tony Snow on the troop “surge”and the new strategy.

By Catherine Seipp

I was happy to learn that Blue Cross, California’s largest private health insurer, has to pay a $200,000 fine for improperly voiding sick subscribers’ policies - in many cases years after the subscribers had applied for coverage. But my pleasure in this was mitigated by the knowledge that to Blue Cross and its parent company WellPoint, $200,000 is basically just chump change.

How the United States has covertly aided Ethiopia’s fight against the Islamic Courts Union.
by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross for Pajamas Media

The al-Qaeda affiliated Islamic Courts Union’s (ICU) rapid retreat in the face of Ethiopia’s military campaign in Somalia has puzzled many observers. How could the Ethiopians roll up the jihadists so quickly? Pajamas Media has learned that one significant factor is that U.S. air and ground forces covertly aided the Ethiopian military since its intervention began on Christmas day.

The keys to a surprising military campaign.
by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross for Pajamas Media
Edited by Richard Miniter

The startlingly rapid retreat of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), a Taliban-like group linked to Osama bin Laden, surprised military intelligence officers who less than a week ago were predicting a total route of Somalia’s secular transitional federal government.

Sandy Berger (Right)

PJM is making public on this website for the first time the report by the Inspector General’s office regarding Sandy Berger and his theft and destruction of classified national security documents — named in the report as, “The ‘W’ Intelligence Files.” This document was obtained for review by Pajamas Media.

by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross
A Pajamas Media Exclusive

Al Qaeda’s allies in Somalia are on the verge of seizing the secular government’s last stronghold - opening the possibility of a “new Afghanistan” to shelter America’s enemies.

Somewhere in Syria...

Iraqi Insurgents Launch 24-Hour Television Station — A PJM Exclusive — Al-Qaeda leader Abu Ayyub al-Masri has “big plans” for new propaganda vehicle.

by Daveed Gartenstein Ross & Nick Grace

Broadcasting from a secret location in Syria, Al-Qaeda and its allies now have their own 24-hour television station, Pajamas Media has learned.

Somewhere in Syria...

Broadcasting from a secret location in Syria, Al-Qaeda and its allies now have their own 24-hour television station, Pajamas Media has learned. Known as Al-Zawraa, Arabic for “first channel,” the station broadcasts enemy propaganda and rebroadcasts of Western anti-war material, including Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. It is not connected with Al-Jazeera.

Sheikh Sherif Sheikh Ahmed, Chairman, Islamic Courts Union

New UN report reveals uranium prospecting by Iran, al-Qaeda presence, and a savvy foe.

By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross A PJM Exclusive.

Iran is secretly searching for uranium in war-torn Somalia, according to a confidential United Nations report obtained by Pajamas Media. The report, which has yet to be made public, is available here at Pajamas. Download file / PDF 2 Megabytes

Paul Belien, editor of The Brussels Journal, sharply criticized a column by Ralph Peters published in the New York Post last week. Mr. Peters responded to Belien’s article with an extended comment here on Pajamas Media. Here Mr. Belien replies to Mr. Peters’ objections.

When we read Ralph Peters’ NY Post column last Sunday - The ‘Eurabia’ Myth: Muslims Take Over Europe? Sorry, There’s No Chance - we at Pajamas Media thought Peters’ ideas were a good subject for debate. And we could think of no one better to do it than Paul Belien of The Brussels Journal. Belien accepted our invitation and he did such a good job we decided his riposte would be the start of a series of such responses on PJM. EN GARDE, Mr. Peters!

Kamalfar and children

Pajamas Media Special Correspondent and noted Iran expert Michael Ledeen gives us some background on Iranian dissident Zahra Kamalfar and why she has been trapped in Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport for 73 days.

Maimonides

“Jewish-Muslim reconciliation is an imperative in and of itself…. It is an imperative as well for global peace, for an end to Muslim terrorism and the war against Muslim terrorism, and for ending a history over-burdened with recriminations, each side denying the other’s capacity to be fully human, with neither recognizing the other as oneself.”

by Salim Mansur

“Facts pop up once in a while like fish bubbles on a quiet lake—hundreds of cars burned on a relatively calm night, at least a hundred every night all year long, 2500 policemen injured since January 2006—and disappear without consequences.”

Last summer, Lebanon, wearing Hezbollah as a bomb belt, became the world’s first suicide state.

by PJM’s Paris Editor Nidra Poller. Paris 26 October 2006.

He who laughs last… yeah, sure, right… but to be she who laughs first isn’t bad either.

EXCLUSIVE TO PJM By Paul Belien from Brussels Journal

As America prepares for Halloween, France is girding for a wave of attacks from Muslim youths—a reprise of the deadly French riots of last year.

“60,000 killed instantly. The blast and subsequent fires might completely destroy the entire infrastructure and all ships in the Port of Long Beach and the adjoining Port of Los Angeles. Six million people might try to evacuate the Los Angeles region. Two to three million people might need relocation because fallout will have contaminated a 500 square kilometer area….

By Josh Manchester
In the wake of North Korea’s unconfirmed nuclear test, one tends to focus the mind once again on the awesome destructiveness of nuclear weapons and the terrible logic that prevented their use for so many decades in the Cold War.

“Even in the hands of untrained children who have no idea how to maintain or aim the crude weapon, the AK keeps banging away, and when a bullet hits flesh, there’s a good chance someone will not get up.” Author and war correspondent Michael Yon evaluates a new book on an old rifle that still finds favor over all others in combat.

How Lawyers Hobble the CIA and Damage the War Effort
By Richard Miniter, Pajamas Media Washington Editor

Launching Tuesday, October 16, a new book will reveal fresh details alleging that the Bush Administration knowingly allowed the torture and abduction of terrorist suspects.

“Let the provocateur tremble, Le Monde is serene and the editorial ends with a smooth-talking copout: Freedom of speech? Yes of course. But…only within the limits of respect for other.”

Pajamas Media Middle East Editor Omar Fadil of Iraq the Model responds to the Lancet published study alleging that 655,000 Iraqi deaths are attributable to the war: “This fake research is an insult to every man, woman and child who lost their lives. Behind every drop of blood is a noble story of sacrifice for a just cause that is struggling for living safe in freedom and prosperity.”

X-ray of bomb in suitcase

As a jittery world fumbles to respond to the North Korean “atomic” test, Pajamas Media’s Washington Editor and terrorism expert Richard Miniter examines a subject not far from everybody’s mind - the suitcase nuclear bomb.

Armed demonstrators west of Tehran

News filtered out of Iran this Sunday of demonstrations protesting the arrest of supporters of Ayatollah Mohammad Kazemeini Boroujerdi, an Iranian cleric fighting against the “Political Religion” that has dominated his country since Khomeini. Rumors also spread that these demonstrations have become violent with fatalities reported. This is when Pajamas Media turns to the American who is more associated with the Iranian freedom movement than any we can think of … Michael Ledeen… for an inside report:

Khaled Al-Masri

John Rosenthal of Transatlantic Intelligencer reports on the curious adventure of Khaled Al-Masri. Suspected of terrorism by the US Government, arrested and held prisoner by the CIA, and ultimately returned to Germany as a free man. Learn the real story behind the public face of false-imprisonment in America’s “extraordinary renditions” program.

In Paris, just getting to the airport is the adventure. “Two policemen in glass cages, and two lines: one for Muslims, one for infidels. You think I’m kidding? Two lines. One, slow line for miscellaneous others. One fast track for a party of about twenty escorted by a high ranking border police officer and a female underling, both speaking Arabic, who usher them through the checkpoint with VIP attention.”

— Or — How political expediency has replaced political correctness in the Netherlands

Pieter Dorsman reports on the issue of Sharia law replacing the constitution in the Netherlands: “If a situation could arise where a majority could agree to shred a constitution in favor of religious law – and one from the Middle Ages at that - than doesn’t a democracy have an obligation to devise mechanism whereby such choices could be neutralized?”

When Ayaan Hirsi Ali published her autobiography, entitled “My Freedom”, last week she commented that immigration and integration issues in The Netherlands were far from being solved; that more confrontations by opposing sides in the debate were likely. It is therefore remarkable that the key players in the Dutch election campaign so far have stayed away from this particular hot button and focused on more mundane issues such as universal childcare and retirement benefits.

HPV: Pretty and pretty lethal.

Catherine Seipp’s daughter is starting college. After some motherly advice, Seipp observes that when it comes to life-saving medicine and vaccines, the far Right boasts as big a nut bowl as the far Left.

Maia Lazar

As millions of students enter college for the first time, some find that higher education has a few low points already built into the curriculum.

"Take this cup."

The Anchoress meditates on the Pope’s speech and proposes that, when it comes to the Church, there is always more there than meets the eye:“While governments ‘think as human beings,’ Benedict, the Bishop of Rome, the man who sits on the Throne of Peter (whom Jesus advised to ‘think as God does,’) is perhaps uniquely qualified to deliver to these supernaturally-focused people something they cannot fail to understand, a supernatural challenge.”

by The Anchoress

Catholics who attended mass on Sunday, September 17 heard a reading from the Gospel in which Jesus admonishes St. Peter, “you are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”

It was an interesting admonishment in light of Pope Benedict’s Regensburg speech and the swift conflagration it ignited within an Islamic world that seems increasingly more tinderbox than spiritual refuge.

Oriana Fallaci at the Brooklyn Bridge

[Michael Ledeen remembers his friend Oriana Fallaci.]

Yeah, we knew she was sick, we’d known it for a long time, but we somehow figured she’d overwhelm it, that the combination of cigarettes and her own abundant bile would drive out the “alien,” just as she overwhelmed Khomeini, Kissinger, Qadaffi and Carillo. So it was a shock to hear she’d left.

Nidra Poller

BY Nidra Poller, PJM Paris Editor
Paris 12 September 2006

[first of a weekly column - ed..]

You’ve got complaints against the mainstream media? Even Fox News is somewhat of a disappointment sometimes? Maybe you live in the shadow of the BBC? You’re traveling and there’s nothing but CNN International to get on your nerves? Hold on, and take a look at the French media. You won’t believe my eyes and ears. When I tell you what the French media are telling the citoyennes and citoyens, you’ll wonder why no one ever thought to use it to put the French to shame. It’s so easy!

Over the coming months, I’ll give you insights, résumés, excerpts, transcripts…and for now, here’s a hot item.

Berlusconi

[When Mario Sechi, Deputy Managing Edtior of Italy’s Il Giornale thinks of Italy today, he thinks “of a farmer milking a cow. What does the farmer do when the cow has no more milk? In Italy’s case, the State is the cow and the farmer are the Italians. And the cow is dry.”—- Editor ]

After five years of Berlusconism, Italy switched channels last April. Italian politics is no longer the visionary adventure of the media mogul Silvio Berlusconi: now the bobble-headed Romano Prodi plays a major part too.

1 of 2,996

by Michael Ledeen

It seems at least a decade ago, and I am still angry, maybe even angrier. 9/11/01 was the day they killed Barbara Olson, one of Barbara Ledeen’s closest friends, and we have yet to take proper vengeance. The terrible details of her doom still seem quite incredible. She delayed her departure for California by a day so that she could wish her husband happy birthday before racing for the airport. This act of love delivered her to the hands of the killers, perhaps the ultimate example of “no good deed goes unpunished.”

Every day is the Friday 'Casual'

[ Wherein our Special Pajamas Correspondent … that scion of the superfabulous, that crosschecker of chic … The Manolo (He of “The Manolo Loves The Shoes”) deigns to glance at the wardrobe Iran’s Man of the Moment… and finds it is not to die for.—- Editor ]
 
Manolo says, one of the Manolo’s many internet friends has asked the Manolo to comment upon the clothing of the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the koo-koo-nutty president of Iran.

“History will show that nation-building is a fool’s errand unless you annihilate the enemy and are not trying to build a nation at the same time. We assumed that we could put 800 years of Anglo-American culture on a CDRom and give it to Chalabi and Karzai and tell them, ‘Ok, boys, you’ve got 6 months.’” — Michael Scheuer

“Our enemies have learned to fight above our level of conventional confidence. We are fighting in an area which is Muslim, which is culturally different, which has different values and expectations, which does not see us as liberators … [to them] we are crusaders, we are occupiers, we are imperialists … above all we are not Muslims.” — Dr. Anthony Cordesman

The Defense Forum continues in Washington, DC today … Josh Manchester of The Adventures of Chester reporting.

“The nation’s most menacing future challenges are in the littorals. For most of the audience here today, your fight will be in the littorals.” — Bri