Spotty application of airport security policies will confuse the enemy

Yes, the inconsistency noted in the follow-up to the jockeybomber incident has prompted at least one security expert (?) to surmise that applying certain rules according to discretion would assist security efforts by confusing would-be agents of man-made disasters.  Those were the disasters formerly known as terrorism.

The Transportation Security Administration did little to explain the rules. And that inconsistency might well have been deliberate: What's confusing to passengers is also confusing to potential terrorists.

"It keeps them guessing," transportation expert Joseph Schwieterman said.

I don't quite buy it. 

It seems to me that WBAMMDs (formerly known as terrorists) would simply look at what is and what isn't screened and act accordingly.  So long as discretion fails to include the most obvious tip-offs of likely terrorist activity (Arabic background and Islamic religious affiliation), discretion will primarily amount to planned carelessness.

Checking shoes on occasion tells WBAMMBs that shoe bombs have a chance of making it through security.  Likewise other potential security checks.

This discretion thing sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen.

"Miscreants" keep up terror strikes in Pakistan

Pakistan's conflict with radical Islamist factions keeps heating up.

How long before the US Congress calls for Pakistan to withdraw its troops?

clipped from www.thenews.com.pk BANU: Bannu City came under rocket attacks by unidentified miscreants; the total casualties so far are being said to be 50.

This, that, and Iraq

After the tragic incident in which over 100 Iraqis were killed by an IED, the initial results of the new surge strategy seem to be going well. Moqtada al-Sadr has fled to Iran, and news reports today indicate that the al-Qaeda top dog in Iraq,Abu Ayyub al-Masri, has been captured. An aide to al-Masri was killed in the same action, which was conducted by Iraqi troops.
Let's hope for more of the same.

Captain's Quarters has pointed out a story revealing an interesting flip-flop by Hillary Clinton. She announced that President Bush would have to go through Congress in order to attack Iran. Apart from being factually incorrect, Clinton's stance reverses her defense of President Clinton's Bosnian bombing in 2002.

Twenty-six members of Congress later sued the Clinton administration on the grounds that the bombing campaign constituted a violation of the War Powers Act. Mr. Clinton's Justice Department argued at the time that the War Powers Act not only gave the president the authority to drop the bombs on Belgrade — over two congressional votes rejecting a declaration of war on Yugoslavia — but that he was not required to seek congressional approval because Congress had appropriated the funding to launch the air offensive.

Mrs. Clinton defended the Kosovo campaign in a speech on October 10, 2002, before casting her vote to authorize the use of force in Iraq. "We and our NATO allies did not depose Mr. Milosevic, who was responsible for more than a quarter of a million people being killed in the 1990s. Instead, by stopping his aggression in Bosnia and Kosovo, and keeping on the tough sanctions, we created the conditions in which his own people threw him out and led to his being in the dock being tried for war crimes as we speak," she said in the 2002 speech. Milosevic died in prison in the Hague in 2006.
(New York Sun)

I'm picking Clinton to take the Democratic Party's presidential nomination over Barack Obama, by the way. Obama is the better candidate in some ways, but some polls are indicating that a majority of blacks are disinclined to vote for him.
That strikes me as a little bit strange, but if that trend holds up then Clinton's savvy at campaigning will probably outweigh her shrill exterior and lack of experience.
Not that Obama is flowing with experience, either.

Update: NBC has backed off of its report that al-Masri was killed. In making this update I took the liberty of fixing an earlier mistake attributable to me, that being the fate of al-Masri's aide. The aide was killed, not captured.