Wretchard comments on today's dispatch from Mosul-based freelance war correspondent Michael Yon. Belmont Club is as prescient and eloquent as one would expect, and a worthy read, but the most valuable treasure is Yon himself:

Deuce Four is an overwhelmingly aggressive and effective unit, and they believe the best defense is a dead enemy. They are constantly thinking up innovative, unique, and effective ways to kill or capture the enemy; proactive not reactive. They planned an operation with snipers, making it appear that an ISF vehicle had been attacked, complete with explosives and flash-bang grenades to simulate the IED. The simulated casualty evacuation of sand dummies completed the ruse.

The Deuce Four soldiers left quickly with the "casualties," "abandoning" the burning truck in the traffic circle. The enemy took the bait. Terrorists came out and started with the AK-rifle-monkey-pump, shooting into the truck, their own video crews capturing the moment of glory. That's when the American snipers opened fire and killed everybody with a weapon. Until now, only insiders knew about the AK-monkey-pumpers smack-down.

A soldier once gave voice to the complaint shared by tens of thousands of his brothers in arms, criticizing media agencies for taping four low-lifes toting guns on an Iraqi streetcorner and calling it "in the hands of the 'insurgents.'" In his piece, Yon added that stories like the one above, defining the increasing deadliness of American forces, never make the papers. Well, of course they don't.

Good policy brings good news:

U.S. employers added 207,000 workers in July, more than forecast, suggesting companies are gaining confidence as the economy picks up steam in the second half. The jobless rate held at 5 percent, matching an almost four-year low. The increase in payrolls exceeded the median estimate of a 180,000 rise and reflected more jobs at retailers, auto dealers and financial services firms. Employment rose by 166,000 jobs in June, more than previously reported, the Labor Department said today in Washington.

Count 4 million newly employed since passage of the Jobs & Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003.

Iranian democratist Ahmad Batebi, whose 1999 imprisonment propelled his countenance to the iconic vanguard of his country's liberal revolution, refused to become one of the Disappeared, and recently traded captivity for fugitive status:

In a recent phone interview with National Review Online, Batebi explained (through a translator) why he opted to risk his life in hiding rather than return to prison. Since his escape he has been working to organize the opposition, in part with direction from dissidents still in prison who communicate to him through smuggled letters. He also wants to communicate to the West, and particularly leaders and citizens of the United States, about conditions inside Iran.

His message? Iranians long for freedom and will do what they can to attain it. Because enemies of the Iranian people, fascist mullahs and terrorists, are ours, Western governments — most of them idling while a nascent atomic Tehran negotiates in bad faith — would serve both national interest and moral obligation by turning to Iranian liberals.

I will admit that this photograph of the Ringed Planet is meant to distract you from today's single, brief entry.

Don't fret: over the last two weeks I have concentrated on producing two or three column-length pieces per week. Hopefully the results have satisfied readers — the more focused, controlled and scheduled output has certainly pleased me. I intend to continue.

New commentary will be published by noon tomorrow.

American marketeers, take a bow:

The U.S. economy grew solidly at a 3.4 percent annual rate in the second quarter, the government reported on Friday, just slightly below the first quarter's pace and with room to grow as stocks of unsold goods fell for the first time in two years. ...The first snapshot of second-quarter GDP matched Wall Street economists' expectations. The figure will be revised twice in coming months as more data on the economy's performance arrive.

"Room to grow" is very pertinent, each of the two preceding quarters — fourth and first — having grown in subsequent analysis by a fifth. Should that be determined of Second Quarter 2005, we will have ourselves 4 percent expansion — above average and above expectations.

Ramesh Ponnuru makes largely strong points against John Derbyshire's foreign policy beliefs ("Good through 1975," reads the label) but errs in assuming that a desirable government in Iraq, one that "wasn't a threat to its neighbors," could "theoretically have been achieved with a strongman."

There is no such thing as a strongman who is not interested in subjugating his neighbor. Only considerations of military inferiority or domestic stability have ever prevented an authoritarian state from expanding. Over the last twenty-five years the array of Near East client states — with the exception of Ba'athist Iraq and to an arguably lesser extent, Syria — has served as Exhibit A for the illusory concept of "benevolent dictatorship." Before that, of course, Arab and Persian designs on Israel were far more than pat state propaganda. The Near East's artificial, geopolitical stasis — engendered by the Cold War, aided by those dictatorial societies' slow entropy and managed by the West for ten years after Soviet collapse — remains one of the most compelling motivations for interstate warfare by non-state actors that is modern terrorism.

Cultures based on strength, fear and distrust celebrate conquest and inequity. Thuggish aspirant citizens or ruling class members deprived of conquest once needed to gain control of a state; technology has made that requirement conditional. For decades, stateless authoritarians — Yasser Arafat, Carlos the Jackal, Abu Nidal, Osama bin Laden, select your own terrorist — have been streaming from what were once considered "stable" countries. For any dictatorship that is not heavily influenced by liberalism, malignance of the government or the empowered criminal minority is simply a matter of time and circumstances.

Consider what a given ruler might do if he commanded power equal to or greater than ours. Would Pervez Musharraf still be the roly-poly, deferential war ally? King Abdullah, Amman's dapper Arab front man? How long would Taiwan last from the moment Beijing determined that its People's Liberation Army could fend off the rest of the world? Dictators are to be tolerated only so long as free nations cannot replace them and the culture they perpetuate, militarily or diplomatically, through democratization. They certainly should not be created with our approval.

Stanley Kurtz, rounding up British opinion on Great Britain's predicament and bearing thereto, recommended to Saturday readers a Telegraph editorial prescribing "Ten Urgent Steps to Make Britain Safer." Patriotism, nationalism, assimilation, moral assertion and law enforcement are what the United Kingdom has not got enough of, write the Telegraph's editors, and a complacent democracy — so libertine as to entertain self-destruction — is an open conduit for nihilism and the carnage that follows.

Parliament should listen to the Telegraph and do as it says: reconvene and address measures that require the government. Reclaiming culture, however, beyond legislative repeal, is the responsibility of Britons themselves, beginning with the Telegraph. This editorial should the first of dozens, published regularly and adaptively over the coming years. Tautology as this is: Only while there are still English will there always be an England.

Sitting before Congress this morning, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan reported the strongest free market to be near top form:

[O]ur baseline outlook for the U.S. economy is one of sustained economic growth and contained inflation pressures....despite the challenges that I have highlighted and the many I have not, the U.S. economy has remained on a firm footing, and inflation continues to be well contained. Moreover, the prospects are favorable for a continuation of those trends.

He also delivered a level analysis of inevitable swings in American homemaking, reasoning with which some purported newsmakers should acquaint themselves.

Sung to the tune of American traditional "Row Your Boat."

Roe, Roe, Roe v. Wade
Makes me want to scream
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily
Let's overturn that monstrosity and give the matter, respectively, to the states and the people

My liberties with scansion were both civil and necessary. Unenumerated rights as per the Ninth Amendment, best explained by Justice Antonin Scalia, are the domain of political persuasion, popular initiatives and state legislatures protected by the Tenth Amendment — not a jurist's speculative fancy.

A non sequitur from well-meaning Sheri Annis:

I almost spit out my rather unsatisfying new-mom coffee recipe of decaf and soy milk. Author Annie Lamott wrote on TPM Café, a blog edited — or not in this case — by liberal Joshua Micah Marshall:

I am able to believe, about half the time, that Bush and Rove would be capable of orchestrating a second terrorist attack on America, if and when they deem it necessary to instill martial law, which they will.

At first I figured Lamott must be joking, but then I realized: 1) It isn't funny; 2) The blogosphere had hit a new low, if that's possible.

Well, leftists are retreating from political and intellectual defeat into fantasy, trying to recapture those non-falsifiable propositions about Western civilization they had enjoyed until September 11th — but how much of that is a reflection of weblogs? Read Derrick Z. Jackson, who has made possible for years the commercial syndication of opinions to be found in both the Boston Globe and anachronous looseleaf diaries of the institutionalized. Or tune into a public statement by Senator Edward Kennedy, Washington fixture for God-knows-how-long, God-knows-why. The merciful thud with which Dan Rather's career in broadcasting crashed was thanks to the tenure granted Western elites which, though weaker in this century than the last, tends to insure a personality against what they say or do nowadays on account of what they were back then. Weblogs are young, and may hold the meritocratic promise in citizen journalism. Finally, consider that Anne Lamott is a novelist who established her literature and politics on paper, happened to transmit her particular suspicions to the internet via TPM, and has done no more damage to the blogosphere than she would to telephony by dialing 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue at three in the morning and breathing heavily.