Iran on the map

NY Times mixes up Iran and Azerbaijan on a map. I helpfully provide one here. It is the big country. Powerline.

More so-called intelligence experts are surprised when Sunni and Shia collaborate to kill us. Iran again. Powerline again.

UPDATE: More so-called experts setting us up for another horrific unwelcome surprise. James Taranto, WSJ makes an excellent point on the NY Times burying the JFK terror plot in its metro section like it was no big deal---the terrorists are a bunch of inept losers:

John Edwards has endorsed the view, which the Times expressed with those scare quotes above, that the war on terror isn't real. Barack Obama, in a CNN forum the other night, declared, "I believe Guantanamo, the decision to detain people without charges, is unjust"--never mind that under international law, even legitimate prisoners of war may be held without charge for the duration of hostilities.

If the Democrats hold their congressional majorities and one of them becomes president, then, it is quite possible that the Times's view will prevail.

What the Times is proposing is that all terrorists in U.S. custody be freed unless prosecutors can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they have committed a specific crime--and in making their case, prosecutors would be bound by all the restrictions on admissibility of evidence that protect ordinary criminal defendants in the civilian courts.

What if the U.S. adopts such an approach and it turns out to be inimical to national security? What if, that is, President Clinton or President Obama or President Edwards signs the Harmon-Feinstein legislation, Guantanamo is emptied, and a few years later we see another 9/11 or worse?

Would the American people accept the idea that serial mass murder on our own soil is just the price we have to pay to preserve some abstract concept of liberty--that is, that the Constitution is a suicide pact after all? We doubt it.

It is much more likely that the political system would find it impossible to resist public demands for much harsher antiterror measures, probably involving genuine curtailments of civil liberties.