In his “Morning Jolt” today, Jim Geraghty of National Review Online highlighted a post from yesterday by Peter Wehner at Commentary’s website.  In it, Peter muses on how today’s conservatives in America have strayed from the conservatism of Edmund Burke, which had a strong component of concern for community and social partnership.  Peter says this:

The emphasis one hears these days [from conservatives] has to do almost solely with liberty, which of course is vital. But there is also the trap of hyper-individualism. What’s missing, I think, is an appropriate appreciation–or at least a public appreciation–for community, social solidarity, and the common good;

Wars and rumors of wars… OK, let’s sort this out, at least until the next update.  (This is how intelligence works, incidentally.  You work with what you’ve got until the next update.)

The IAF attack on Friday (apparently, early on Friday morning) was targeting an arms shipment.  This was indicated by the profile of the attack, and there has been no reason to revise that assessment.  News and blog sites reference reports that the attack targeted an arms shipment that came from Iran.

New reporting indicates another attack in Damascus, which demonstrates a profile more consistent with an attack on a facility.  The Tower recounts

The latest report that the Israeli Air Force has conducted an attack in Syria comes not from the Syrian rebels but from U.S. officials.  Why our officials might be talking to the media about this is a separate topic.  More on it in a moment.

The attack

The information disclosed to the media is sketchy; it’s not even clear that the target was actually in Syria, as opposed to Lebanon.  I heard on Fox earlier this evening that people in Lebanon had reported seeing IAF aircraft overhead during the period in question (some time Thursday or Friday).  The statement(s) of U.S. officials indicate that we don’t think the IAF aircraft entered Syrian air space to conduct the attack.

The overall description of the Israeli strike package –

Several websites have picked up on a UPI report that the Israeli Air Force attacked a chemical weapons site in the Damascus area on Saturday.  The report is unconfirmed by any official source, but it is credible.  There are caveats, however.

The site in question, if it was struck, was probably the Syrian Scientific Studies and Research Center (SSRC), long known to be a key facility in Assad’s chemical and biological weapons program.  (See here as well.)

“Mossomo” at Flopping Aces put together an excellent timeline back in February on the events leading up to a previous unconfirmed report that the IAF had struck the SSRC.  This strike was reportedly conducted

After U.S. officials agreed last week that the Assad regime has used chemical weapons on its people, politicians and pundits resumed making the case for a U.S. intervention in Syria.  And they speak as if the budget cuts affecting the Air Force and Navy won’t affect our ability to launch operations overseas.  Their heads apparently aren’t around that reality yet.

Senator John McCain (R-AZ) suggested that enforcing a no-fly zone could be required.  He expressed concern that the administration would maneuver to delay action – and he is no doubt right.  Charles Krauthammer pointed out on Fox News’s Special Report that the president’s credibility is on the line, given his clear identification of chemical weapons use as a “red line” for the U.S. on the Syria crisis.  But no one mentioned the core limitation of military readiness.

You may or may not think it’s advisable for the U.S. to intervene in Syria, even with an operation of minimal scope.  But

I’ve written about this before: the Obama administration’s penchant for creating “information” themes that misrepresent what’s going on.  My expertise is in military operations, so my points have addressed Team Obama’s methods for misleading the public on the meaning of U.S. military activities (see here as well).  I’ve also written about the administration’s pattern of propagating its info themes by “disclosing” them as insider commentary to credulous journalists.  Sometimes the briefest web search will reveal that what has been “disclosed” is not even true – but reporters obediently retail it anyway.

Now Andrew McCarthy has posted a must-read piece at NRO in which he lays bare

My Liberty Unyielding colleague Timothy Whiteman highlighted last Thursday the number of Air Force squadrons that will have to cease training later this year because the Air Force doesn’t have funds for the flying hours.  This is real, and it is astounding.  It will mean that, at a certain point in the near future – as early as this fall, if no additional funds become available – the cost of mounting an operation big enough to eliminate Iran’s nuclear weapons-related installations is likely to be too high.

This is because there will be no force depth to either sustain follow-on operations or overcome the geographic constraints U.S. forces are increasingly likely to face.  Assuming all of the Air Force’s stand-downs and readiness losses do occur, the available front-line forces would be maxed out with a moderately scoped strike package.  To meet the task, they would require the most favorable basing options that could be available in the Persian Gulf under today’s conditions – but which may not be.  If we don’t have those favorable basing options, and the Air Force squadron groundings remain on track, the Iran strike goes from all-but-under-resourced to impossible.

There will not, after all, be two aircraft carriers on station near Iran,

 

MIT’s Green Building lit up as the US flag, 15 April 2013 (Twitter)

It’s too much to say we don’t know squat yet about the bombing at the Boston Marathon yesterday, but it’s still pretty close.

It was clarified at the press conference this morning with government officials that there were no additional unexploded devices found near the finish line of the marathon.  The only devices known about so far are the two that exploded, 13 seconds apart, just before 3:00 PM EDT.

The officials were unexpansive about the visit of law enforcement

Reportedly, a pair of U.S. Senators – Republican Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia – have put together a compromise on extending background checks, as a way of keeping some element of President Obama’s gun-restrictions proposal alive in Congress.

Toomey was reassuring about the concern that “universal background checks” would lead to a national gun registry:

Responding to claims by opponents, including the NRA, that more background checks would lead to a national gun registry, Toomey said, “It simply doesn’t happen.”

Not quite clear what that sentence means, but it is being interpreted as indicating that gun owners’ concerns are groundless.

Are they?

 

Photo: Rex Nils Jorgensen

The news this morning is that Margaret Thatcher died of a stroke this morning, 8 April, at her home in Britain.  According to her children, she died of a stroke.  She was 87.

There is no need to follow the journalistic convention of noting her profession.  Everybody knows who she was.  She has been