9/11 Commission reports no cooperation between Iraq and al Qaeda on attacks

But do we believe them? The 9/11 Commission has severely damaged its own credibility already, so when they make a statement like this, we wonder:

Bin Laden also explored possible cooperation with Iraq during his time in Sudan, despite his opposition to Hussein's secular regime. Bin Laden had in fact at one time sponsored anti-Saddam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan. The Sudanese, to protect their own ties with Iraq, reportedly persuaded Bin Laden to cease this support and arranged for contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda. A senior Iraqi intelligence officer reportedly made three visits to Sudan, finally meeting Bin Laden in 1994. Bin Laden is said to have requested space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but Iraq apparently never responded. There have been reports that contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda also occurred after Bin Laden returned to Afghanistan, but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship. Two senior Bin Laden associates have adamantly denied that any ties existed between al Qaeda and Iraq. We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States.

First, note that the commission doesn't deny links, just that these links included actual co-planning of attacks (something that no one's ever made a strong claim for, although there are tantalizing bits of evidence). Andrew McCarthy puts this in perspective:

That doesn't appear to be what it is saying at all. This is clear — if anything in this regard can be said to be "clear" — from the staff's murky but carefully phrased summation sentence, which is worth parsing since it is already being gleefully misreported: "We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States." (Italics mine. [McCarthy's]) That is, the staff is not saying al Qaeda and Iraq did cooperate — far from it. The staff seems to be saying: "they appear to have cooperated but we do not have sufficient evidence to conclude that they worked in tandem on a specific terrorist attack, such as 9/11, the U.S.S. Cole bombing, or the embassy bombings."

The same might, of course, be said about the deposed Taliban government in Afghanistan. Before anyone gets unhinged, I am not suggesting that bin Laden's ties to Iraq were as extensive as his connections to Afghanistan. But as is the case with Iraq, no one has yet tied the Taliban to a direct attack on the United States, although no one doubts for a moment that deposing the Taliban post-9/11 was absolutely the right thing to do.

I would point out, moreover, that al Qaeda is a full-time terrorist organization — it does not have the same pretensions as, say, Sinn Fein or Hamas, to be a part-time political party. Al Qaeda's time is fully devoted to conducting terrorist attacks and planning terrorist attacks. Thus, if a country cooperates with al Qaeda, it is cooperating in (or facilitating, abetting, promoting — you choose the euphemism) terrorism. What difference should it make that no one can find an actual bomb that was once in Saddam's closet and ended up at the Cole's hull? If al Qaeda and Iraq were cooperating, they had to be cooperating on terrorism, and as al Qaeda made no secret that it existed for the narrow purpose of inflicting terrorism on the United States, exactly what should we suppose Saddam was hoping to achieve by cooperating with bin Laden?

Frankly, the commission report hasn't added anything new, merely restated the evidence for cooperation (while leaving out some significant, and what McCarthy would call inconvenient, evidence) and rehashed the conventional wisdom. I'm not impressed, but then, I'm not too surprised. Read all of McCarthy's article.

Torg rules

This is the best Sluggy Freelance in a long time. Not only is Torg cool when he runs to rescue the girl, he takes along a sentient magic sword--which no one knew was magic until now (although I have speculated about that being the case). All right, enough of me crowing about Sluggy Freelance. This is one webcomic which you really need to read from the beginning.

Christian Carnival XXIII

The Christian Carnival is up at Belief Seeking Understanding. Douglas Bass has divided the carnival into two parts, the first one here and second here.

Amazon Associate

As you may have noticed, there's a new button on my sidebar that takes you to Amazon. I've recently become an Amazon Associate, which basically means that if I link to a book on their website, I'll get a commission if someone follows the link and buys it. I also get a commission if someone follows the general link in my sidebar and buys something. I figured it wasn't a bad idea, as I tend to link to their website anyway whenever I'm discussing a book. I've been in the program for almost two weeks now, and I've only made the link once, so it's pretty clear that I'm not abusing it. But, if you intend to visit Amazon anyway, you may want to follow the link in my sidebar. (That's the one at the bottom: there's another button to Amazon's Honor System, but that's only for direct donations, and it doesn't say Amazon on it.)

Of tigers and hamsters

This sort of thing would usually slip beneath my radar, although Tim Blair is having a lot of fun with it. From the New York Times, of all places:

Like a caged hamster, Senator John Kerry is restless on the road. He pokes at the perimeter of the campaign bubble that envelops him, constantly trying to break out for a walk around the block, a restaurant dinner, the latest movie.

Congrats to the VRWC operative who managed to slip that one into the paper of record. I don't even want to know who he bribed to make it happen.

Seriously, you'd think any newspaper editor who wants to make a good faith effort not to belittle a candidate (something I think they should do regardless of political bias) could come up with a better choice of words. For a counterexample, I have a tendency to pace when I'm thinking. When I'm in my own home, this doesn't bother anyone but me. If I do this while at work, however, it can annoy my co-workers. If they ask me to stop, I do, embarrassed that I'd fallen into the habit again. Just a month or so ago one co-worker said I was distracting her by pacing around like a caged tiger. So I stopped, embarrassed again, but being called a caged tiger did a lot to assuage my pride. If my co-worker, who is not a native English speaker, has enough tact to boost my ego while asking me to stop being so annoying, you'd think that the New York Times ought to be able to manage it for the man they want to be president. I realize Democrats, with their victim cult belief system, may have difficulty understanding why most men would rather be considered tigers than hamsters, but surely they realize that the dumb masses out there would rather have a tiger than a hamster as president during a time of war.

Why I blog

La Shawn Barber wants to know why we blog and why we read blogs. For me, the second part is easier to answer than the first part. I started reading blogs during the Iraq War in 2003. I tried to follow the war in the usual news outlets--CNN, MSNBC, ABC. It became clear very fast that I wasn't getting the whole story. The doom and gloom that they were preaching just didn't match up with what any idiot with a map could see. I found a bit of insight on MSNBC in the form of glennreynolds.com, where I could find links to other places with more accurate information on the war. This in turn brought me to Glenn's "other" blog, Instapundit. From Instapundit, of course, I discovered all sorts of other blogs, and soon I was reading them daily.

As for why I started to blog myself: the first reason was just one of productivity. I felt that with all the blogs I was reading, I just wasn't producing a whole lot, and I wanted to be writing something. And part of it was that I'd occasionally feel I had something to contribute to the debate, and commenting on the blogs of other people just wasn't a very good way to make my contribution.

Have a Christian blog post you want to share?

If you want to submit a post to the Christian Carnival, send an e-mail to Douglass Bass of Belief Seeking Understanding. The post should be of a Christian nature, although it can also cover other issues from a Christian point of view. Please include the following information:

Title of your Blog
URL of your Blog
Title of your post
URL linking to that post
Description of the post

The deadline is 11:59:59 PM Tuesday.

Free Will and Eternal Security

Old Post: My last post on this was here.

Joshua Davey at Letters from Babylon argues that free will and eternal security are inconsistent:

If this is true, then I believe the Arminian who holds to eternal security puts himself in a very difficult position indeed. For if he believes that humans exercise genuine free will in the choice whether or not to accept the salvation that Christ offers, but at the same time believes that the believer cannot lose his salvation, he is essentially saying that the believer, in accepting Christ, forfeits at least an element of his free will—he cannot “un-choose” salvation. Thus, the Arminian who holds to eternal security seems to be saying that (1) part of what it means to be made in the image of God is to have genuine free will, (2) humans exercise this genuine free will in their choice whether or not to accept the salvation offered by Christ (3) once humans have accepted Christ, they cannot exercise their free will to un-choose salvation. To me, what seems to follow from this is that the Arminian who holds to eternal security must also believe that in making the choice to accept salvation, humans surrender their free will as to that most important decision, which in essence means they surrender part of the imago dei. And because I do not believe that humans can surrender part of the imago dei, I believe that holding to both Arminian free will and Calvinist eternal security is incoherent.

I'll admit that I do not find this argument very compelling. As surrender to God is in fact a large part of what it means to accept His grace, giving up a portion of your free will does not seem incompatible with the view that it is initially your will to give. He likens making the choice to accept God to crossing a street--sure you can cross it, but you can also walk back. I tend to think of our relationship with God in more binding terms, such as a contract or, more fittingly, a marriage. A marriage cannot be easily undone, at least not as Jesus saw it (Matthew 5:31-32), where, sure, you can have a divorce, but that's just a legal fiction, not really an end to the marriage. Admittedly, even from Jesus's view, a marriage could be undone (by adultery), but it still wasn't as easily unmade as made.

Of course, I have some peculiar views on God's relationship to time and thus his relationship with us linear creatures, so I tend to view these things in a different light entirely.

Week in Review

Once again, I'm a bit late, so the timestamp is changed to put it in its proper place. It was a pretty slow week anyway, so there's not a whole lot to discuss.

What I remember about Ronald Reagan -- My own reminiscences of our 40th president.

Saved once, saved always -- How a view of God outside of time affects my view of eternal security

Wait, you mean scientists aren't altruistic guardians of the truth? -- A few thoughts on the motivations of scientists

Weekly Webcomic Update

Sluggy Freelance -- Alt-Kiki has come over to the dark side--which she was never very far from. Torg comes up with a daring plan, but then decides he isn't quite daring enough when he discovers that he's suddenly become the most hunted man on the planet. And it turns out that Alt-Riff built the retreat-bot just a bit too well when he and Alt-Zoe run into the resistaunce--which is run by people who were kitty food in our universe.

Day by Day -- Sam accidentally sends a virus to the team, causing much consternation. Reagan's funeral is a major topic of discussion among the group.

It's Walky! -- Jason kicks butt! I sure hope he survives the upcoming sure-to-be tragic ending to It's Walky!

College Roomies from Hell!!! -- Dave sneaks back into the facility using his wits and his eye-lasers, while Marsha lets slip Roger's secret to Diana.

General Protection Fault -- Maddie and Sharon take on the henchwomen, while Fooker is pinned down by Dr. Not.

Schlock Mercenary -- After much contemplation, and nudging from Breya, Tagon comes up with a plan for the little ones. Meanwhile, Kevyn hasn't gotten the fabber quite up and running yet.

Wait, you mean scientists aren't altruistic guardians of the truth?

Joe Carter points out something that seems obvious to us professional science types: scientists have a tendency to hype their own areas of research, glossing over difficulties. There are various reasons for this.

First, as Joe mentions, there's the money angle. For some fields, the potential for entrepreneurial success teaches scientists salesmanship. For most scientists, however, it's a matter of writing grant proposals in order to convince government and industry funders that you can do the research that they want. That money doesn't usually go directly into your paycheck, but it does allow you to hire more graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, to buy more equipment, and overall to do better research. That, in turn, brings you the more important coin of academic research: prestige. The better the funding, the easier it is to do better research, publishing more papers. Now, when discussing your research among your peers, overhyping your work can have a detrimental effect on prestige, so you need to be a little less enthusiastic in your peer-reviewed papers, but not too unenthusiastic. When you're talking to sponsors, however, you're a salesman, and that means putting a positive spin on things.

Second, when all you have is a hammer, all you see is nails. Most scientists went into their respective fields because they saw potential in it. They don't give up their initial optimism easily. So they are always looking at problems and wondering whether their particular field can help. It may be true that some other field is more likely to solve the problem first, but no scientist understands--or trusts--other fields as well as he does his own. His natural inclination is to think that his research holds the most potential to help, and it takes a bit to convince him otherwise. My particular specialty is superconductivity, and for a long time now, it's been a solution in search of a problem. I'm just hoping that quantum computation is finally it.

Reagan's Funeral Procession

Intolerant Elle reports on Reagan's funeral procession here.

E-mail woes

I use Netscape's free e-mail service as my non-work e-mail account. When I started this morning, I couldn't send e-mail through Netscape's server. So I spent the morning modifying and deleting and restoring files, making things even worse, until I reached the conclusion that the problem was probably on Netscape's end. Then I spent the first part of the afternoon fixing the stuff I had broken. Now, having spent all that time, I still can't send e-mail through netscape's server. But at least it's in no worse shape than it was this morning.

Sigh... On the whole, not time well spent.

So where's our cheap gas?

Parablemania directed me to this wonderful post at Evangelical Outpost (which I had overlooked previously). I guess I wasn't the only one who noticed that the VRWC* dropped the ball on this one. The problem was that we forgot to tell that gullible Bush that we didn't really mean all that stuff about liberating Iraq and finding Saddam's WMDs. You know he's not all that smart, and sometimes he forgets that he's not really in charge.

*Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, the ones who really are in charge. The Neocon Cabal is just our scapegoat.

Christian Carnival is up

The Christian Carnival is now posted at Christ Web. Check out what other Christian bloggers are saying.

God and Time

Old Post: I considered the question of how eternal security from the perspective of God being outside of time below.

John Zimmer at Letters from Babylon has further thoughts on what it means if God is outside of time and we are not.

Sluggy Freelance and the UN

Pete Abrams mocks the UN again this week. (For a bit of background, start here. For a lot of background, try here.) While Pete usually tries to avoid politics, and has in fact blasted Guatanamo Bay in the past, strips like this one and this give the impression that Pete has a low opinion of the UN.

Saved once, saved always?

Jeremy Frank at Letters from Babylon briefly touches on the question of whether the concept of free will is compatible with the concept of eternal security. He argues that it is, even though he's a Calvinist and thus doesn't feel much need to make that argument.

I've always been an advocate for free will rather than predestination myself, although in recent years I've begun to wonder whether this is one of those doctrinal disputes where both sides are equally right, in that they aren't at all. I won't go into that right now (you may consider C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity, Book 3, Chapter 4, "Morality and Psychoanalysis," for one of the ideas that is shaping my thinking in this), but I will make this tricky question even trickier.

I've always thought that it makes more sense to consider God outside of time, unconfined by its constraints, and that His view of us is not a linear one. We humans tend to think of our lives linearly: we go from point A to point B, and that leads us to the conclusion that when it comes to your relationship with God, it doesn't matter where you've been for most of your life, what matters is where you are when you die. That's what really counts. And so the criminal who stole and raped and murdered, if he repents on the way to the electric chair, is saved. What of the minister, who preached and cared for the sick and loved his neighbor, who at the end of his life finds himself in poverty, loneliness, and despair, and in his twilight years loses his faith and dies in bitterness? Do we give him up? Does God?

If God looks on our lives as a whole, does He view our salvation as a turning point, as we do, or as a high point? Is faithlessness and disbelief worse for being on one side of that point than the other? Here's where I'll run counter to my own argument and say that it is, since from our point of view, our linear point of view, it is worse. If a child takes a toy from a store without understanding he is stealing, we don't see it as a crime. If a teenager does the same thing, we do, not because the teenager is older, but because he knows better. Rejection of God after salvation is worse than rejection before not because it's on the other side, but because before you didn't know God to reject Him, and now you do. But if God sees our lives as a whole, is that much worse crime of rejection by one who knows Him enough to negate earlier faithfulness? We might consider it so, but then, we live linear lives, and to us the rejection is more recent than the faithfulness. If it is no more recent to God than the faithfulness, then would He see it the same way?

Okay, that's enough making hard questions harder for today.

What I remember about Ronald Reagan

Ronald Reagan died this past Saturday at the age of 93. He had been suffering from Alzheimer's for a decade, and while we mourn his passing, we are thankful that he is finally at peace.

Reagan was the first president I was aware of, and at the time, it was hard for me to imagine that there was ever any other. I was six when Ronald Reagan took office, and as I don't remember anything about the Carter administration, I think it's fair to say that I grew up with him as president. My parents were moderate Southern Baptists (which would mean fairly conservative to anyone else). While my father liked Reagan, my mother didn't think he was all that smart. We lived in some fairly liberal parts of the country for most of that time, and the outright scorn many of my peers felt for Reagan made it difficult for me to hold him in high esteem. I remember in the 1984 election, where all the kids in my class were talking about how their parents would vote for Mondale. I was astounded when my father told me he was voting for Reagan and explained to me what a good job he was doing. I had never thought about it before, and only now can I see how true that was.

I remember hearing about how during the Clinton campaign, during a townhall meeting, one of the audience stood up and said the World War 2 generation just couldn't understand how horrible it had been to grow up under the threat of nuclear war. Frankly, I wondered what he was talking about. I grew up under that threat, and while I was vaguely aware of it, I didn't spend much time worrying about it. Part of that was religious belief--"Of course the world is going to end someday, but God is in control" summed up my attitude then and now--but I think part of it was Reagan as well. I grew up knowing that the US was strong, so that the Soviet Union wouldn't dare attack us with nuclear weapons, and that it was good, so that we would never launch a nuclear first strike. Considering how many people in the previous decades had believed exactly the opposite on both counts, I have to credit that attitude to Reagan, his optimism and his faith.

When the cold war ended, I was as astounded as anyone. Who knew that the Soviet Union was so weak? Well, it turns out that Reagan knew, and even though I had appreciated his optimism, I had become too cynical to believe that he had been right. But he was, and the pressure he placed on the USSR is what brought it down. I believe that communism is an inherently flawed political and economic model, and I suppose the Soviet Union would have eventually failed anyway, but without Reagan and the will to bring the might of the US to bear on the USSR's weak infrastructure, it might have taken decades, and who knows how many more millions communism would have oppressed and killed in the meantime?

I owe Reagan a debt of gratitude, both for the hopefulness with which I grew up, and for bringing the greatest threat to the US and the world in that age to an end. Rest in peace, Mr. President.

Week(s) in Review

I missed a week for this, so here's my two-week review.

Papers published -- I give full references for a couple of my published papers... I had mentioned them earlier, but they were still in the publication process

Peace in the Sudan? -- Another Bush foreign policy success.

Americans Killed by Middle-Eastern Terrorism -- I look at some statistics and try, without much success to find trends.

Partisan prayer -- Some thoughts on praying about politics, along with an exception.

Bible Translations -- My comments on the Biblical translation discussion in the blogosphere.

Second Revision Done -- The second revision of A Phoenix in Darkness has been done for a week now. You'll hopefully get a chance to read it soon.

Hey, I won! -- My entry to the Captain's caption contest wins. Cool!

Good books nobody's read -- My thoughts on unknown but talented writers, in response to Dean's thoughts.

Publishing A Phoenix in Darkness -- I show off my mad drawing skillz.

Scientists speaking out -- Scientists annoy me. Not people who do science--I'm one of those--but those who claim to speak for all of science.

Americans Killed by Middle Eastern Terrorists, Part II -- I take another look at the data, this time counting attacks rather than deaths, and a trend becomes clearer.