Who Killed Imad Mughniyah?

It doesn't really matter. What does matter is that it got done.

Mughniyah was the worst terrorist that most of us had never heard of by name, but you'd have to be hiding in a cave for the past 25 or so years to not be familar with his resume. To wit:

- The 241 U.S. Marines and 58 French soldiers who died in the 1983 truck bombings in Beirut along with 63 civilians, including 17 Americans, who died in the simultaneous bombing of the U.S. embassy there.
- Robert Stethem, the Navy diver whose beaten body was left on the tarmac during the 1985 hijacking of TWA Flight 847.
- William Buckley, the CIA station chief in Beirut who was kidnapped, tortured and killed in the mid-1980s.
- Twenty-nine people who died in the 1992 bombing of Israel's embassy in Buenos Aires and 85 more killed in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish Center in BA.

According to the American Thinker's Brett McCrea:

"This is equivalent to killing Bin Laden....If Mughniyah is indeed dead and Israel is held responsible, the clock is ticking. Hezb'allah will retaliate for this. Bank on it. If history provides any benchmark, look for a spectacular event in the very near future. As stated in my previous pieces, Hezb'allah has extensive contingency plans for this sort of occurrence and can put "steel on target" in short order."

Kudos to whoever did it.

Free trade (not "fair trade") = Prosperity

The Wall Street Journal released their annual Report on Economic Freedom.

An exerpt from the editorial:

"Here's bad news for those who oppose global free trade: Not only did the world-wide trend toward greater economic liberty hold steady over the past year, but the incomes of poor individuals across the globe are rising as result. The world isn't only growing richer. The gap between the per-capita income of have-not populations and that of the developed world is narrowing."

The rankings are here. Some countries to note are:

1. Hong Kong (naturally)

2. Singapore (no surprise)

3. Australia

4. United States (of course)

6. UK

7. Ireland

10. Canada

11. Chile

12. Estonia (see FDC 1/11/2008 post)

49. Mexico (see FDC 1/12/2008 post)

119. China (a long way to go)

120. Russia (a long way to go, but going in the wrong direction)

142. Syria

144. Venezuela (Hugo, look at the bottom of this list. Getting any clues??)

150. Iran (of course)

156. Cuba (ditto)

DEAD LAST #157: North Korea (or more formally, The Democratic People's Republic of Korea)