by JAMES TARANTO
Wednesday, June 5, 2002 1:52 P.M. EDT

False Charges
Warren Richey, a Christian Science Monitor reporter, did some reporting from the Middle East after Sept. 11. Then, he writes, he became the victim of credit-card fraud:

At some point, some one obtained my credit card number and its expiration date.

Transaction records reveal that the first attempted fraudulent purchase was made on the same day that I returned to the US. The $3,100 transaction for two Russian-made night-vision rifle scopes and a more high-tech miniature night-vision scope was refused because it exceeded the single-purchase limit on my card.

Roughly a month later, however, someone submitted a scaled-down version of the same order and it was accepted. According to my credit card company's fraud investigators, the order included one Russian night-vision rifle scope (a similar level of technology as night scopes used with deadly precision by US Marine Corps snipers during the Vietnam War), and a US-built range finder, an instrument that calculates the distance to a potential target.

Night-vision scopes are useful to soldiers because they illuminate and magnify a target in the dark without revealing the position of the potential shooter. The same technology has obvious utility for terrorists and assassins.

The merchandise went to a post office box in Riyadh, the Saudi capital. Later Richey learned that a colleague, Jerusalem correspondent Nicole Gaouette, was hit by a similar scam: "Someone used her account information to send a $1,800 US-made night-vision scope with infrared capability to an address in the United Arab Emirates." Both Richey and Gaouette had eaten at the same restaurant in Amman, Jordan.

Richey says he reported the crime to the FBI back in December, but "the FBI has not yet responded to that call." But wait--doesn't the Secret Service have jurisdiction over credit-card fraud?

The Kuwaiti Connection
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a native of Kuwait, is a suspect in the 1993 World Trade Center attack and a relative of Ramzi Yousef, who was convicted in that attack. Now "Mohammed has emerged . . . as the key operational planner of the Sept. 11 strikes," USA Today reports, citing "a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity."

Kuwait is eager to wash its hands of Mohammed. "That person is not Kuwaiti," Kuwait's Information Minister Sheikh Ahmad al-Fahd al-Sabah tells Reuters. "There are many nationalities in Kuwait and birth in Kuwait does not mean you have Kuwaiti citizenship. He lived here for a period of his life and left several years ago."

Mohammed is already on the FBI's list of 22 "most wanted" terrorists. The FBI Web site stipulates:

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed is wanted for his alleged involvement in a conspiracy plot, based in Manila, The Philippines, to bomb commercial United States airliners flying routes to the United States from Southeast Asia in January of 1995. He was indicted in the Southern District of New York in January of 1996.

There's nothing about the World Trade Center attacks. Gordon Crovitz notes that under last week's new guidelines, FBI agents are now free to surf the Web for the first time since the Ford administration. Maybe they can check out USA Today's Web site--or ours--and get the information they need to get their own site up to date.

The Iraqi Connection
Czech officials are still standing by their story that honcho hijacker Mohamed Atta met with Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, a second consul at the Iraqi Embassy in Prague, in April 2001. "The meeting took place," Hynek Kmonicek, the Czech Republic's U.N. ambassador, tells the Prague Post.

Kmonicek, a former deputy foreign minister who specializes in the Middle East, "is the most senior government official to openly confirm the encounter since unnamed U.S. intelligence officials began challenging it in anonymous comments reported last month by Newsweek magazine, The Washington Post and The New York Times." He says he ordered al-Ani's expulsions after Iraq's top diplomat in Prague failed to answer questions about what al-Ani was doing in Prague.

The Post adds that "Kmonicek was unhappy at recent characterizations of the Czech Republic as a terrorist hub" and quotes him as saying: "If I wanted to set up an Arab spy network, I would go to Queens."

Mike Kinsley's 'Legitimate Cause'
At least 16 people are dead in the latest suicide attack, against a crowded bus in northern Israel. Islamic Jihad has confessed to the crime, "saying it was timed to mark the 35th anniversary of the Six-Day War," the Jerusalem Post reports. (It's also the 34th anniversary of Robert F. Kennedy's assassination by a Palestinian Arab.) The bomb was in a car that pulled up next to the bus.

"The bus flipped over twice and some passengers were hurled onto the asphalt, while others, including a man and woman embracing in their final moments, died trapped in the burning vehicle," the Associated Press reports. CNN notes that the driver, Miki Harel, survived--and that he had lived through three previous terrorist attacks. CNN also writes of Islamic Jihad that "the group has carried out military operations against Israeli soldiers and Israeli civilians." Military operations is an odd way to describe an attack on a civilian bus.

Last month Michael Kinsley offered a halfhearted rationalization for suicide attacks: Massacres of Jews, he wrote, are "an illegitimate tactic used in a legitimate cause, as part of a conflict with legitimate and illegitimate tactics and aspirations on both sides," and that's "different from an illegitimate tactic used for purposes that are utterly crazed and malevolent." This is so convoluted it could mean anything, but Laurence Grafstein, in The New Republic (a magazine Kinsley once edited), cuts to the heart of the matter:

There are simply no circumstances in which the premeditated targeting of innocent civilians is justified. And the widespread, institutionalized use of this illegitimate tactic . . ., even in a supposedly legitimate cause, not only undermines that cause, but also calls into question the very legitimacy of that cause.

To see why this is so, suppose the Israelis were to agree with the 75 percent of Palestinians who back the age-appropriate suicide bombers. Why not employ the (admittedly illegitimate) tactic of targeting innocent Palestinian civilians in the (admittedly legitimate) service of Israeli self-defense? Why not use superior force to kill as many Palestinians as possible before some of those people kill Israelis? It would indeed be self-defense. It would also be a disaster.

The tactic of deliberately attacking civilians . . . depends for its success only on the moral superiority of the adversary--on the willingness of the Israelis to refrain from the abhorrent behavior the Palestinians broadly support. Similarly, Osama bin Laden's widely held belief that he promotes Islam by destroying the World Trade Center is dependent on America's willingness to refrain from destroying the sacred sites of Islam, which it could surely do. By relying on the superior morality of their enemies, the advocates of terrorism concede their own immorality and forfeit their own legitimacy.

It may be that the Bush administration has finally figured this out too. Agence France-Presse reports that "CIA chief George Tenet told Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat hours before the deadly suicide blast he would face the wrath of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on his own in case of any more such attacks."

The Odd Couple
The Jerusalem Post reports that "Afghanistan's interim leader Hamid Karzai told [Israeli] Housing Minister Natan Sharansky yesterday he sees eye-to-eye with Israel in its battle against terrorism, a spokeswoman for Sharansky said yesterday." The two leaders had an informal encounter in Kazakstan, at the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia. Karzai refused to hold a formal meeting with Sharansky--like all but a handful of Muslim countries, Afghanistan has no diplomatic relations with Israel--but "Sharansky did meet formally with Karzai's advisor Yaya Marufi."

Petition Scoreboard
Israel haters at the University of California, Berkeley, are circulating a petition calling for the UC system to divest from Israel and U.S. companies that do business with Israel. The Daily Californian reports that the petition has an underwhelming 134 signatures--67 from Berkeley and a like number from other UC campuses. In Massachusetts, meanwhile, an identical Harvard-MIT petition has 533 signatures, vs. 5,832 for an antidivestment petition. The pro-Israel side, in other words, is winning by nearly 11 to 1.

United Press International, meanwhile, reports that eight professors have been fired from Jordanian universities for refusing to condemn suicide attacks. "A statement from the Muslim Brotherhood, one of the country's most powerful Islamist groups, criticized the move, saying it was made to please the United States 'in its fight against terrorism.' " Maybe the pink-slipped profs can find positions at UC Berkeley.

The Naked and the Dead
Modesty can kill. The Seattle Times reports that "in the event of many biological or chemical attacks, removal of victims' clothing is one of the most important and effective means of decontamination." But Henry Siegelson, a professor of medicine at Emory University, tells the paper that people's reluctance to disrobe in front of strangers "has been one of the issues that has prevented us from moving forward and developing a scheme to manage mass casualties."

Correction of the Day
The New York Times discovers that Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz isn't a cowboy after all:

A picture caption misidentified the object under Mr. Wolfowitz's shoulder. It was a life preserver, for use if his helicopter landed in water, not a holster.

Stupidity Watch
Joshua Stearns of Arlington, Va., sent this letter to Ron Shaffer, who writes "Dr. Gridlock," a Washington Post advice column on traffic (really):

Why is it I must look down the barrel of a machine gun every time I drive past the Pentagon on Route 110?

I find the presence of these heavily armed Marines by the side of the road offensive and fail to see what additional safety is being provided by these soldiers.

Perhaps Stearns was unaware that the Pentagon was the target of a recent terrorist attack that killed more people than the Oklahoma City bombing. In any case, Shaffer handled the idiotic question with aplomb, replying: "Speaking only for Dr. Gridlock, I'd like to thank the soldiers and troopers from Virginia and North Carolina who have come here to help protect our Defense Department workers."

You Don't Say
"A nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan would obliterate major urban centers in both countries and cause the deaths of millions," Japan's Kyodo news agency reports, crediting an article in the weekly newsmagazine India Today with this startling revelation.

No More Sensitivity
The New York state Regents exam will no longer censor literary works to conform to "sensitivity review guidelines," the New York Times reports. We noted the story Monday.

Lusitania Sinks
"America woke up Wednesday to one of its greatest soccer wins," the Associated Press reports from Suwon, South Korea. "The U.S. soccer team shocked heavily favored Portugal at the World Cup, earning a 3-2 victory and breaking a five-match Cup losing streak dating back to 1994."

This just goes to show what a lame sport soccer is. A victory over Portugal is a big deal? Portugal--a country that hasn't been a major power since the 16th century?

On the other hand, reader Kyle Cavanaugh has persuaded us that it's worth cheering for the team even though we don't care for the sport. Among its members, he notes, are:

• Defender Carlos Llamosa, Colombian by birth, American by choice, who was working as a janitor at the World Trade Center during the first attack in 1993.

• Earnie Stewart, the proud son of an American serviceman.

• Claudio Reyna, the captain, a proud American with an Argentinian father and a Portuguese mother.

ESPN reports on a visit by 10 team members to the Korean demilitarized zone, where the U.S. military protects South Korea from the evil North. DaMarcus Beasley, at 19 the team's youngest member, observes: "I was so clueless until today. People take for granted what goes on in the world. You forget how much people do for our country."

Cavanaugh adds: "These guys work their asses off in virtual anonymity in their nation, just for the chance to put on the red, white and blue and represent their country." A fair point. Let's beat the rest of the world at its own game.

Outside, Inside
A year ago the Martha's Vineyard town of Oak Bluffs, Mass., banned smoking in bars. Now, the Associated Press reports, the town's Board of Health has reversed the ban--because barflies going outside to smoke were a public nuisance. "The [cigarette] butts are a major problem, and so is the language you hear. They've taken the bar atmosphere and put it in the street," Health Board chairman Joe Alosso, tells the AP.

Meanwhile, Reuters reports there's a move afoot in California to raise the legal smoking age to 21 from 18. That'll stop those 14-year-olds from getting their hands on cigarettes.

Gee Thanks, Dad
"I don't see the difference between a chimpanzee and my 4 1/2-year-old son."--Steven Wise, law professor and "animal rights" advocate, quoted in the Washington Post

Attack of the What?
Is this guy for real? Roger Kaufman, "a psychotherapist intern in a Los Angeles private practice," argues that the dialogue in the new "Star Wars" movie "is intentionally campy, a subversive mode of performance that gay people have used for centuries to express their outsider perspective on the dominant culture":

Just as Oscar Wilde skewered the hypocrisies of the Victorian bourgeoisie while providing them with irresistible entertainment, so [George] Lucas has used his formidable imagination to show us that the supposed pillars of American culture have fallen into shambles, while a growing, unconscious group-mindedness, systematic wastefulness and destructive militarism are rising toward a terrible, inevitable crescendo. It is no accident that Lucas and his most obvious gay character, Jar Jar Binks, have been so pummeled in the press, in ways that could be seen to parallel Wilde's public humiliation upon the discovery of his homosexuality.

Nah, this has to be a joke. Everyone knows C3PO is way gayer than Jar Jar Binks.

(Elizabeth Crowley helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to S.E. Brenner, Mara Gold, Dave Hauck, Raghu Desikan, Natalie Cohen, Carl Sherer, Howard Weiser, Marie Bourgeois, Bob Krumm, Michael Segal, Nick Eckert, Damian Bennett, Gershon Dubin, David Simon, Darren Gold, Yehuda Hilewitz, Jerome Marcus, Bob Jacobsen, Joel Engel, Daniel Wiener, C.E. Dobkin, Kevin Pryor, Elliot Ganz, Jospeh Grandy, Aviva Ross and Allistair Latour. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)

Today on OpinionJournal:

• Gordon Crovitz: The FBI can't connect the dots if it can't collect the dots.
• Pete du Pont visits a place more remote than Siberia.
• John Fund: It's time for President Bush to stand up to California's senators.