Sunday Digest

Captain's Quarters has a series of important posts about Syria protecting Iraqi nuclear scientists by sending them to Iran, Iran's new missile, and the latent Iraq nuclear weapons program. This why CQ is one of my daily must-reads.

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Mark Steyn is insightful as ever in his column today for the Chicago Sun-Times. He's not the only one noticing how rude Senator Kerry can be toward our allies that he, the great internationalist, would have to work with should he be elected President. PowerLine has further comments, and also links to William Kristol's piece in The Weekly Standard. Also see OpinionJournal, Wall Street Journal (via OpinionJournal), Chrenkoff, Instapundit, Polipundit (here too), Betsy's Page, PowerLine, Hugh Hewitt, Ann Althouse, BlogsforBush, and me.

Meanwhile, FootballFansforTruth has a few issues with Senator Kerry pretending to be a sports fan.

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Mark Noonan picks up on a story about the upcoming elections in Afghanistan over at Oxblog.

Arthur Chrenkoff checks out what's hot at his favorite blogs.

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John Fund has written a new book "Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy". Matt Margolis at BlogsforBush reviews it, National Review Online and RealClearPolitics have excerpts, and Larry Elder has related commentary.

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There's an old urban legend circulating via email again to the effect that legislation has been introduced into both houses of Congress to reinstitute the Selective Service Draft (true) and that the Bush administration is in favor (false). The legislation, HR 163 and S 89, was introduced by Representative Charles Rangel (D-NY) and Senator Hollings (D-SC), respectively, in January 2003 and has never gotten out of committee. Although the urban legend is at least a year old (see Snopes), the Kerry campaign has picked up on it recently. Coincidence? Betsy Newmark doesn't think so (here and here).

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Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld spoke before the Senate Armed Service Committee in a hearing on Thursday:

It is important to note that rearranging our global posture is only part of our considerably broader set of undertakings. What we are doing is changing mindsets and perspectives.

Essential to this is transforming our military into a more agile, more efficient force that is ready and able to combat the asymmetric challenges of this new and uncertain time.

This is a sizable undertaking. It is said that Abraham Lincoln once equated reorganizing the Army with “bailing out the Potomac River with a teaspoon.” He was expressing the truth that change is not easy.

Hugh Hewitt also interviewed Paul Wolfowitz on his radio show this past Thursday about the major force realignment DoD is proposing. This realignment is a result of the Quadrennial Defense Review in 2001.

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Thomas Lifson has a light look at some of the conspiracy theories circulating these days. Finish drinking your coffee before reading so you don't have to clean a mess off your monitor later.

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President Bush held Air Force One on the ground in Maine so he could greet troops headed for Iraq when their plane stopped to refuel. PowerLine, Captain's Quarters, and BlogsforBush have the story.

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Michael Moore is anti-Bush, to say the least, but this letter he posted on his website shows that he's not a fan of John Kerry either!