In the midst of some clean-up work, I discovered that I failed to mention Charles Moore's outstanding 9/11-one-year-later article, Dueling Civilizations. It is insightful and shows why absolute peace with Muslim terrorists is a fallacy.

Good followup in the letters Charles received, and these include a second set, released today.

So I received my Vindigo email newsletter this morning, and it had some interesting city facts:

- The world's first electric traffic light signal was installed 75 years ago in Cleveland at the intersection of Euclid Avenue and East 105th Street by African-American Garrett A. Morgan.

- Kansas City has more miles of boulevards than Paris and more fountains than any city except Rome. Also, Kansas City has more miles of freeway per capita than any metro area with more than 1 million residents.

- At the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904, Richard Blechyden, served tea with ice and invented iced tea. Also, at the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904, the ice cream cone was invented. An ice cream vendor ran out of cups and asked a waffle vendor to help by rolling up waffles to hold ice cream.

- Young aviator Tony Jannus made history on January 1, 1914 when he flew the world's first scheduled passenger service airline flight from St. Petersburg's downtown yacht basin to Tampa.

- Omaha inventions include center-pivot irrigation, cake mix, the TV dinner, Reuben Sandwich, the bobby pin and Raisin Bran.

- Oak Ridge, the secret city created in the 1940s outside of Knoxville, was instrumental in the development of the atomic bomb. Today, because of constant energy research,it is known as the "Energy Capital of the World." It is the home of the American Museum of Science and Energy.

Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed that the left-wing, socialist Democrats whining over the President wanting to take preemptive action against Iraq are the same left-wing, socialist Democrats who, after assuming, quite wrongly, that the adminstration had precise prior knowledge of the attacks, lambasted the President for not taking preemptive action to stop the September 11th attacks? I guess it will take a Iraqi-supplied terrorist gassing the NYC subway system with Hussein-made Sarin to make them realize how much of a threat that regime is.

Up to this week, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle couldn't stop saying that President Bush has yet to convince him of the need for military action: "What has changed in recent months or years [to attack Iraq now]?" In 1998, however, Mr. Daschle co-sponsored a war resolution urging Mr. Clinton "to take all necessary and appropriate actions to respond to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs." That resolution was co-sponsored by other Democrats who now compose Mr. Bush's most vocal critics, including Sens. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, John Kerry of Massachusetts and Robert Byrd of West Virginia.

"I agree with using military force," Sen. Dodd confidently voiced on Feb. 3, 1998. Now, however, Mr. Bush's plan for military action "raises some red flags," said Dodd. On Feb. 23, 1998, Sen. Kerry warned that Iraq's weapons buildup was "a threat to the stability of the Middle East. It is a threat with respect to the potential activities on a global basis." In his Sept. 6, 2002 op-ed in the New York Times, however, Kerry decides that "regime change by itself is not a justification for going to war." On Nov. 14, 1998, the venerable Sen. Robert C. Byrd, whose martial experience predates the American Civil War, said, "The U.S. should strike, strike hard and strike decisively. In this instance, the administration needs to act sooner rather than later." Last week, Sen. Byrd sagaciously opined, "We stand today in the swirl of unanswered questions about this administration's intent with regard to an unprovoked, preemptive attack against the sovereign nation of Iraq." As the ravages of age take their toll, Sen. Byrd seems to have forgotten the answer that presented itself with such lucidity in 1998. —The Federalist, 02-38/39 Digest

Let's see. . .
THEN: Democratic President looking down the barrel of impeachment and seeking to build a legacy.
NOW: Republican President looking down the sites at taking out a ruthless dictator who provided assistance to the terrorists responsible for the September 11 attacks.

NOTE: For all those seeking a Clinton legacy, please visit Ground Zero in New York City, the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and certain farmland in Pennsylvania.

"Regarding Saddam's sincerity, in the 48 hours following their agreement to readmit weapons inspectors, Iraq fired on coalition aircraft patrolling the northern and southern no-fly zones 6 times — on top of 2,300 other such incidents over the past two-and-a-half years." —The Federalist, 02-38/39 Digest

"To be prepared for war, is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace." —George Washington

"The elite culture's radical revision of our national story and our sense of ourselves as Americans was part of a larger cultural transformation that also completely remade the schools' teaching of that other large element of civic education — the 'Citizenship' we used to get marked on.

"Four decades ago, the grandees of our culture came to view the virtues that our Founding Fathers had considered essential to the self-governing citizens of a republic as outworn and oppressive. In the 'if-it-feels-good-do-it' era, the self-controlled, civic-minded, temperate, and courteous self lost its force as a personal ideal that was so critical to the well-being of others.

"Henceforth, the true moral persona became the expressive, 'authentic' self that was in touch with its inner energies and acted upon them in the most selfish of ways — that let it all hang out regardless of the foolishness and damage that accompanied such an absence of carefully learned cultural restraint." —Victor Davis Hanson

"But the first year of the Terror War has not been a Phony War, exactly. In an operation of stunning speed and elegance, the United States destroyed al-Qa'ida's Taliban puppet state in Afghanistan. If Osama bin Laden has not been frog-marched through Kabul, or down Broadway, he has at least been displaced and may well be dead.

"...President Bush has shown that he sometimes lacks eloquence, but he has directness and, when he needs it, force, which are just as good.

"...Not that there haven't been failures. One of them arises from a deep-seated weakness Bush shares with the elite culture: Not even a mass murder by foreign-born plotters has caused him or our elites to relax their multiculturalism. Hence an incompetent like Norman Mineta stays as Transportation Secretary, trying to undo the internment of the Japanese six decades ago by imposing unreasonable burdens on everyone today, while refusing to subject obvious suspects to strict scrutiny.

"Another failure has been our fixation on Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy, in the endless effort to 'fix' a problem that is both intractable and not ours. Israel can and should take care of itself. When the Palestinians tire of murder as a policy, perhaps they can begin to improve their own lot.

"...The great questions, not yet answered, are: Will we stay the course? Can we bear the evils and setbacks that our enemies are planning, and that they may well inflict? After the first grim day of the Battle of Shiloh, General Sherman sought out his commander, Ulysses Grant, on the rain-soaked field to plan the inevitable retreat. 'We've had the devil's own day,' Sherman commented. 'Yes,' said Grant, biting a cigar. 'Lick 'em tomorrow.' Grant did lick the Confederates the next day, but the cost was high, and Shiloh occurred only in April 1862. There would be three years of tomorrows before that war was done. We should expect no less." —National Review

"Contemplate the mangled bodies of your countrymen, and then say, 'What should be the reward of such sacrifices?' Bid us and our posterity bow the knee, supplicate the friendship, and plough, and sow, and reap, to glut the avarice of the men who have let loose on us the dogs of war to riot in our blood and hunt us from the face of the earth? If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animating contest of freedom, go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen!" —Samuel Adams

"Members of Congress have the only job in the country whose occupants can set their own salary without regard to performance, profit or economic climate."
--Council for Citizens Against Government Waste President Tom Schatz

"This week's United Nations confab in Johannesburg is in danger of being hijacked by Third World leaders, and thank heavens for that. Some of them are giving all of those First World sandalista visitors a lesson in economic growth and free trade. The UN calls its $51 million get-together for more than 10,000 delegates the Conference on Sustainable Development. But some of the early speakers have ignored this high-flown talk and turned it into a forum to express genuine Third World grievances about the rich world's failure to live up to its own rhetoric. ... The system of subsidies, tariffs and quotas the U.S. and Europe have erected is pernicious in every way imaginable. The poor in the Third World get poorer and working-class taxpayers in the West get the bills for the subsidies, along with the privilege of paying higher prices for cotton, beans, bananas or whatever else is 'protected.'

"'We sit here talking about sustainable agriculture and families are dying,' added the environment minister of Lesotho, Lebohang Ntsinya. He knows that the whole 'sustainable' concept is an invention of the affluent, whose prosperity allows them a margin for mistakes or for acts of nature. In Africa there is no such margin, and so they can't afford to put nice-sounding adjectives in front of their own 'development.' The Johannesburg summit will not totally surrender to such common sense. There will be the usual wringing of hands over carbon dioxide emissions, the melting ice cap and the failure of electric utilities to give up fossil fuels in favor of windmill power. But clearly there are at least a few serious people around." --Wall Street Journal