August 18, 2005

Those who believe in the adage "when it rains, it pours" might take the tale of the plaintiffs in Kelo v. New London as a cue to buy two of every animal and a load of wood from Home Depot. The U.S. Supreme Court recently found that the city's original seizure of private property was constitutional under the principal of eminent domain, and now New London is claiming that the affected homeowners were living on city land for the duration of the lawsuit and owe back rent. It's a new definition of chutzpah: Confiscate land and charge back rent for the years the owners fought confiscation.

In some cases, their debt could amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Moreover, the homeowners are being offered buyouts based on the market rate as it was in 2000.

Yes, you read that right. Not only have these people wrongfully had their homes taken by one of the stupidest Supreme Court decisions in our nation's history, but they are then told that they have to pay rent on their own property for the duration of the lawsuit. I'm certain that some (if not all) will sue, and if they lose this one, someone needs to be impeached.

H/T Patterico

According to Confederate Yankee, Cindy Sheehen has left Bush's ranch because her mother had a stroke. I wanted to see an end to this, but certainly not like this. I pray everything goes well for her and her mother.

My frickin' satellite TV is out, so I'm relying an a backup that has only CNN. Today, on the Wolfe Blitzer Show (or whatever it's called) Chuck Hagel was allowed, or encouraged, to pontificate in an especially headstrong manner. I'm going to have to paraphrase his remarks, because I just don't have access to the transcript yet, but essentially he responded to a question about crafting an "informed opinion" on Iraq with something like:

"Well, all I can do is rely on the same information available to the public, all of which seems to suggest that we're losing, rather than winning, in Iraq." [There were some references suggesting that electricity production is down, etc..]

Well, I beg to differ "Chuck" but you're a Senator who, presumabaly, has access to a great deal more information than we have as a private citizens. Plus you're pulling down the big bucks for your level of authority and responsibility. So just where do you get off making a statement claiming that you're just one of the crowd who sees Cindy Sheehan as credible?

Admittedly the statement is a paraphrase, but the gist of it is accurate. Daily Kos quotes Chuck as saying "Iraq could be worse than Vietnam." And Time Magazine quotes him as saying: "Things aren't getting better; they're getting worse. The White House is completely disconnected from reality," Hagel tells U.S. News. "It's like they're just making it up as they go along. The reality is that we're losing in Iraq."

Really? Well, what I'd like to know is whether you've determined that nearly all of the milbloggers posting on the internet, as well as other on-the-ground "citizen journalists" like Michael Yon, are misinformed? Because, almost to a man, they're pretty clear that not only are we winning, but that as a factual matter we can't lose, unless we defeat ourselves. And if that's the case, then how can one characterize what you're saying as anything other than spectacularly stupid, or a tantalizing peek at schadenfreude?

Hagel is a conservative Republican, so it's not clear what interest he has in schadenfreude, unless he's in that paleo hot tub with Pat Buchanan. Now, I guess I can understand the idea that "sunny" depictions of the war are unrealistic and irritating, but I just don't see anyone who falls into the category of providing only sunny predictions. Granted, Cheney was off the reservation when he said that the insurgency is "in its last throes," but that could be the case for all we know. However, most people who know something seem to be saying, as one might expect, that Terror is a formidable enemy and that things are likely to get worse before they get better. Yes, they might well get worse. But that simply isn't the same as saying that we're "losing." The Battle of the Bulge in Europe, and Okinawa in the Pacific were both worse than anything that came before. Yet no one with the benefit of hindsight would say we were losing at that point, nor did anyone with sense say that at the time. The only doubts any of us ought to have about the ultimate outcome in Iraq are those resting uncomfortably on the assessments of folks like Chuck Hagel, who, in spite of having better access to information than the rest of us, seems to reap less actual understanding.

For what it's worth I think we're paying a higher price for winning than we ought to be, and part of that responsibility rests with the Bush administration, but I'm certainly not going to support someone whose first impulse is to whine that we're losing.

By the way, this might be a good time to check out Al Qaeda's Easy Seven Stage Master Plan; as long as you recognize that the further they wander from the present the greater the real uncertainty. "Chuck" apparently advocates just handing them Phase II without a fight. (h/t: Protein Wisdom)

(Cross-posted by Demosophist to Demosophia)

When Rusty wrote this:

The Right has no identity phrase to delegitimize left-wing bloggers' anti-war stance equivelant to chickenhawk.

I couldn't believe that he had forgotten THIS.

Surveys are cool, I like surveys, but sometimes, in the schoolyard of socio-political blogging, it's necessary to throw it right back in their face. A little technique known as "demonstrating absurdity by being absurd."

"Chickenhawk" is clever, but pales next to "Airmchair Jihadi," don't ya think?

Have an interesting post? Want us to issua a fatwa against you? Simply link one of your posts to this post and send us a trackback. We will automatically issue a fatwa against you.

I will be in meetings all day tomorrow, so no blogging for me.

The Taliban are alive, well, and in the business of taking hostages. They freed the Lebanese hostage when his company agreed to leave Afghanistan, thus pulling needed capital from an already impoverished nation.

Al Jazeera:

A Lebanese engineer kidnapped by the Taliban last week has been released after his company agreed to stop operations in Afghanistan.

Safieddine Mohammad Rida, a mechanical engineer working for a Lebanese company that sells diesel engines, had been abducted on Sunday in the southeastern province of Zabul.

"The Lebanese engineer has been released. He's in good health," said Gulab Shah Alikhil, spokesman for the Zabul governor, on Thursday.

The Taliban earlier said they had freed the Lebanese. The group's spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi said Mohammad Rida was released on Thursday morning at 10am.

"His company has agreed to leave Afghanistan from today (Thursday)," Hakimi told Reuters. He said Rida had been released near a US base in Shajoy, Zabul province.

It's so surreal that it's almost funny. The reason many in the world hate us--and the reason many terrorists believe they are engaged in a noble cause-- is because they read stories like this and believe them.

People's Daily:

US troops held five children as hostages to demand handover of insurgents near a northern Iraqi town on Tuesday, police said.

"The US forces surrounded the village of Mazraa near Baiji and detained five children under 10 years old, calling on the residents by loudspeakers to hand over several other children showed on TV channels celebrating the killing of US soldiers after roadside blast last week," a police source from Baiji told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

The US troops threatened to sweep the village by Wednesday morning to detain the other children and suspected insurgents, he said.

The US military, however, said they had no information about the incident.

Wait a second, you mean Goldstein is a J-O-O? Wow, that one came way out of left field......

UPDATE: This post is in the spirit of our e-mail a terrorist conceptual series. Follow the link and e-mail an antisemetic asshole.

It's funny, when you realize that they actually make the claim with a straight face and then see the picture of the 'American spy plane'.

You will recall they had made the same claim here.

Remember, Bangladesh used to be known as East Pakistan. Whenever the ROP complains about the ultimate blame resting on Israel proclaiming itself a state, remind them that Pakistan and Bangladesh are nations today because--in spite of Gandhi's pleas--millions of Muslims insisted that they could not live within a multi-religious Indian state.

Gateway Pundit has the al Qaeda angle covered here.

For some reason, whenever some one finds a piece of Star Wars related porn they send it to me. Am I complaining? Hell no! Thanks to Rob Porter of Say Anything and Wizbang for sending me this. He found a gallery of Star Wars geeks who are also babes at Flickr here and here. I know it sounds like an oxymoron, but check out this babe below. Good catch Rob, live long and prosper. Oh, wait, wrong sci-fi geek lingo........

Good uber star wars geek Leia wannabe.

Bad uber star wars geek Leia wannabe.

More good uber star wars geek Leia wannabes.

Terri Hatcher reveals that she uses sex toys and has contemplated hiring a giglo. Let me introduce myself:Rusty Shackleford, male prostitute.

Via Interested Participant who says what we're all thinking, this from Daily Record:

The star, who has just turned 40, confessed she is often too busy to date and has to rely on sex toys.

And in a frank interview, she said she has given serious thought to paying a gigolo.

Teri said: "You know, I once thought of what it would be like to hire a male hooker."

All images clickable. Er, and by clickable, I mean if you click them you'll get a bigger pop-up.

Ok, when I heard sex toy I had something else in mind. This goes a long way in explaining my wife's insistence on a new dryer.

Ms. Hatcher, please refrain from calling me that. We've already settled what I am now we're just negotiating how much.

I insist, this one is on the house.

No thank you. Fifteen is my limit on schnitzengruben, baby.

Stay in? But you're all dressed up to go out? I'm not a piece of meat. I have feelings you know.

Look, $500 is the absolute lowest I'll go. I know you're a regular customer, but I need the money for college tuition.

So how do those real and fabulous ones keep so perky with no apparent support?

Ahhh, that explains a lot.

I know you can't get that thang tapped enough, but how much did Jay charge? Cause I'm wiling to give you the repeat customer discount and match his price!

I know you're upset, baby, but let me explain. There will come a day, when youth will pass away. What will they say about me? When the end comes you'll know I was just a gigilo, life goes on without me.

I quit. Now I can pursue my life long dream of creating a math to unify physics!

UPDATE: Gigilo linked with Joyner's Traffic Jam.

Followers of this will not be surprised, but evidence continues to mount that Bosnia is becoming the focus point for global jihadis in training. But, wait, I thought Bosnia........??

AINA:

Terrorists who previously targeted the U.S. are now in Bosnia, where they have access to a "one-stop shop" of jihad training camps, weapons and illegal Islamic 'charities' -- all at the doorstep of Europe, terrorism experts said.

"[Convicted terrorist] Karim Said Atmani recently returned to Bosnia after being released early from French prison for 'good behavior,'" terrorism expert and author Evan Kohlmann said.

Atmani, a Moroccan, was linked to the "millennium bomb plot" and convicted by a French court of colluding with Osama bin Laden. He has been linked to the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), an organization responsible for airplane hijackings and subway bombings in France...

Also finding haven in Bosnia is Abu el Maali, who like Atmani, was a foreign national who fought in the Bosnia war. El Maali was later accused by French authorities of attempting to smuggle explosives in 1998 to an Egyptian terrorist group plotting to destroy U.S. military installations in Germany. He was also accused of leading terrorist cells in Bosnia, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

"This activity is very significant," said Kohlmann. "Senior members of the former Muslim Brigade and their top commanders are still there, and they're still active."....

Cybercast News Service has also obtained a video that terrorism analysts say depicts an active jihad training camp in Bosnia-Herzegovina, a region previously described by analysts as an ideal gateway for terror missions into Europe.

The video, which is over four minutes in length, shows outdoor maneuvers, explosives training and training inside what appears to be a school gym. Exercises in hostage-taking are also shown....

The presence of active jihadist camps in Bosnia-Herzegovina was also confirmed by attorney and counter-terrorism expert Darko Trifunovic, who previously served as a diplomat in the foreign service of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Kohlmann said that the main camps used during the war have been closed, and a different tactic for jihad training has emerged: disguising them as youth camps. "These days, usually the kind of jihad camp you'll see in Bosnia and other countries are so-called 'youth camps.'" They are usually led by a former member of the mujahadeen, someone with military experience, and perhaps a fundamentalist cleric, said Kohlmann....

Al Qaeda cells were set up in Bosnia in the early 1990s by Ayman al Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's right-hand man, and bin Laden was said to visit the area twice in the mid-1990s," Brown added. "Iran was very involved in supporting the Islamist separatist movement in Bosnia, and Hezbollah was doing training there in the 1990s."

Training also takes place inside youth centers and school gyms, according to Trifunovic....

Is it just me, or is Sitemeter not working for any one? UPDATE: I blame Bushitlerchimpeymchaliburton. And Bill Gates.

UPDATE II: Perhaps I spoke too soon. I blame the ghost of Rachel Corrie.

Jane, from Armies of Liberation, brings news that an international smuggling ring with possible ties to al Qaeda has been thwarted along the Saudi-Yemeni border. What were they smuggling? Oh, the usual al Qaeda stuff: guns, ammo, dynamite, PORN, and DRUGS. ML:

According to Gulf News, the material seized included thousands of dynamite sticks and booby-trapped wires, live ammunition, as well as drugs, large amounts of cash in Yemenite currency and CDs of pornographic films.

UPDATE: Just to clarify, I mean bad gay porno. You know, the kind with guys.

A regular commenter on The Jawa Report, Oyster, observes in response to an ersatz post on Cindy Sheehan:

What I find very irritating about this too is how the press keeps calling his stay at the ranch a "vacation" (or a "monthlong" vacation to make it sound like he's just fishing and taking naps for a whole month). They're trying to equate it with how we take vacations. How we go to some destination and are free of work and responsibility for a period of time. He is simply working from the ranch rather than the White House.

Most people know about Ike's golfing "vacations" and JFK's trips to Hyannisport to play touch football, but not many know that the concept and details of the Cold War strategy of "containment" were worked out by the Truman Administration during a long "vacation" in Key West. Truman and his advisors spend 175 days there during the course of his Presidency. Eisenhower established the Department of Defense while "vacationing" there, and Kennedy visited during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The location has been so seminal to the history of that half-century-long conflict with Empirialist Marxism that it has come to be known as the Little White House. But that was a different era.

(Cross-posted by Demosophist to Demosophia)

Phase II of the three-way war has begun in earnest. As Wretchard observes, the media are currently engaged in a discussion about how to dramatically portray the Iraq War with a sense of realism without signalling their hidden agenda. But, of course, they call that deliberation something else:

"It seems to me that if we make an overt political statement in 'Over There' about the war ... then immediately the debate becomes not only about policy, but it becomes about our politics, Chris' and mine, as opposed to a discussion or a provocation about the human consequences of war," Bochco said. "The moment we become overtly political, half the audience dismisses us and doesn't pay attention to us because they disagree with our politics. And the other half discuss us ... in the context of our political leanings. And that's just not what my goal is with this show."

So, they make a covert political statement instead, and couch it as artistic professionalism. This is a game that the "news" branch of media have been playing since the first APC rolled across the Kuwait border, couching the news as objective and balanced while determining the conclusion as surely as any Pravda article. And the heavy hand of propaganda has now made its way into the overtly "fictional" branch of media, who have apparently decided that the reportrayal of Iraq as a dessicated Vietnam will just have to do.

But, of course, the problem is that now, when they strike this bell, what emerges is much less like a ringing peal than a shallow tinkle, and the reverberations barely violate the boundaries of their echo chamber. For the first time the strategically opaque dramaturge of the entertainment industry is met by the naively transparent counterbalance of authoritative witnesses from the field, posting their contemporaneous experiences of the war in real time. The discourse is losing its constraints, and the memes no longer live forever.

(Cross-posted by Demosophist to Demosophia and Anticipatory Retaliation)

I will be attacking my behemouth of a blogroll in the next few days. A lot of dead links need to be removed and overlooked links to be added. If I have somehow overlooked linking you in the past, now would be the time to remind me in this post's comment section.

Here's some good news.

From Reuters:

Saudi security forces killed the leader of the kingdom's al Qaeda group in a clash in the holy city of Medina on Thursday, a security source said.

He said security forces had killed Saleh al-Awfi, who was believed to have taken over leadership of al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia last year.

I'm going to have a celebratory donut.

August 17, 2005

An oft heard accusation is that of chickenhawk being leveled at supporters of the Iraq War who have no prior military service. Bloggers with no prior military service are called members of the 101st Fighting Keyboardists on almost a daily basis by Markos Mulitsas' Daily Kos, himself a veteran of the U.S. Army. The phrase is used to shorten discussion about the war by making a personal attack and delegitimizing the person's credibility. It is easy for you to be for the war when you are not fighting it, is the crux of the chickenhawk argument.

The Right has no identity phrase to delegitimize left-wing bloggers' anti-war stance equivelant to chickenhawk. But we on the right often resort to other personal attack tactics. Although we have no phrase to wrap the idea in, there is a glaring suspicion to many on the Right that many on the Left never served in the military because they hate it and our soldiers. They are against the Iraq War, we think, because they are against all war and the military men that fight them.

Using the TTLB Traffic Rankings as a guide, I sent e-mails to the top bloggers of both the Left and Right and asked them whether or not they had served in the military and, if they had, in which branch?. Group blogs which had not clear main blogger were not sent e-mails. This tended to weed out more Left leaning blogs than Right leaning blogs. Blogs that seemed to focus on pop-culture or other non-political issues were also excluded. Further, while the response rate was nearly 100% from conservative and libertarian bloggers, it was much lower from those who were more liberal. This can probably be explained by my personal relationship with many on the right. If any of you can get responses out of other top bloggers on the Left, I would appreciate your help.

I had hoped, for methodological reasons, to include the same number of Left and Right leaning bloggers. I will continue to update this list as more data becomes available. It should be noted that not all of the Left-leaning bloggers took a clear early stand against the war in Iraq. Further, a few bloggers responded but asked that I keep the information confidential.

The number on the left is the TTLB Ecosystem Traffic Ranking between August 16-17. If there are mistakes in the list they were unintentional so please let me know by dropping me an e-mail.

Top Left Bloggers
(1) Markos Zunigas (Daily Kos)--Yes, US Army
(11) Tony (Crooks and Liars)--no military service
(13) Ana Marie Cox (Wonkette)--no military service
(16) Kevin Drum (Washington Monthly)--no military service
(32) Norm Jenson (One Good Move)--Yes, National Guard
(24) Jerome Armstrong (My DD)--no military service
(39) Taegan Goddard (Political Wire)--no
(46) Tom (Tbogg)--no military service
(43) Amanda Marcotte (Pandagon)--no military service
(55) Adrew The Poorman (The Poorman's Cafe) -- no military service
(73) Steve Soto (The Left Coaster) -- no military service

Top Right Bloggers
(6) Glenn REynolds (Instapundit)--no military service
(7) Charles Johnson (Little Green Footballs)-no military service
(9) Michelle Malkin (Michelle Malkin)--no military service
(14) Tom of Scared Monkeys (Scared Monkeys)--no military service
(14) Red of Scared Monkeys (Scared Monkeys)--no military service
(20) Ed Morrissey (Captain's Quarters)--no military service
(21) Dan Riehl (Riehl World View)--Yes, Air Force
(31) Eugene Volokh (Volokh Conspiracy)--no military service
(36) Kevin Aylward (Wizbang)--no military service
(43) Wretchard (The Belmont Club) - no military service
(47) Roger L. Simon (Roger L. Simon)--no military service
(51) John Hawkins (Right Wing News)--no military service
(57) James Joyner (Outside the Beltway) - Yes, US Army
(58) Kim du Toit (Daily Rant)--Yes, South African Army
(59) Rusty Shackleford (The Jawa Report) -- no military service
(63) Matt at Blackfive (Blackfive) -- Yes, U.S. Army
(69) John Cole (Balloon Juice)--Yes, U.S. Army
(71) Greyhawk (Mudville Gazette) --Yes, still active duty
***Top 100 (Name Withheld)--no military service
***Top 100 (Name Withheld)--no military service
***Top 100 (Name Withheld)--no military service

While the N of the survey is too small to produce a statistically significant regression model, there are a few noteworthy observations from the initial round.

Of the 11 bloggers who responded from the Left, 2 of them--or 18.2%--had been in the military.

If you just look at the top 12 bloggers from the Right, none of them had served in the U.S. military.

However, of the top 21 bloggers who responded from the Right, 6 of them--or 28.6%--had been in the military.

The further down the TTLB Ecosystem rankings you go among bloggers on the Right, the more likely they will have been to have served in the military. The further up the TTLB Ecosystem Traffic Rankings you go among bloggers on the Left, the more likely they will have been to have served in the military.

So, among the top bloggers on both the Left and Right, only a minority have ever served in the military. Are bloggers on the Left draft-dodging haters of the military? There's no evidence to suggest that. Are bloggers on the Right warmongering chickenhawks eager to send others to war but not face that risk themselves? There is certainly no evidence to suggest that either.

Moreover, among top bloggers at least, it would seem that bloggers on the Right have a slight advantage in terms of numbers who have seen active military duty. There is no basis in reality, then, to the widespread accusation that the Right bloggers are members of the 101st Fighting Keyboardists.

I will update this post later as more information becomes available.

UPDATE: John Donovan of the Castle Argghhh posits this interesting hypothesis: I suspect, Rusty, the deeper you go into the smaller blogs, the greater the difference becomes

A number of others suggest doubling or tripling the sampling size for the same reason.

Judging from the response in the comments and my e-mail, my hunch is John is right. This is a testable hypothesis. Any one who would like to help me gather these data please drop me a line.

Reflective Me Asks: Why am I writing another blog post about Cindy Sheehan?

Practical Me Responds: Uhh, good point.

Dan Riehl sent a long this link to me and I think it's worth sharing. It's the story of Marine Captain Brian Chontosh, how he earned the Navy Cross in Iraq, and how the media has ignored his story.

That the Clinton White House was so obsessed with expanding rules restricting the sharing of intelligence with law enforcement can never be forgiven. The 'wall' was patently stupid when it was first articulated during the Carter Administration and any one who supported the doctrine is an idiot. That a patently absurd doctrine was expanded to make it even harder for law enforcement and intelligence agencies to work together in rules set up by Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick in the mid 1990s is the triumph of the morons educated in law schools over common sense.

NY Post:

PRESIDENT Bill Clinton's team ignored dire warnings that its approach to terrorism was "very dangerous" and could have "deadly results," according to a blistering memo just obtained by The Post.
Then-Manhattan U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White wrote the memo as she pleaded in vain with Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick to tear down the wall between intelligence and prosecutors, a wall that went beyond legal requirements.

Looking back after 9/11, the memo makes for eerie reading — because White's team foresaw, years in advance, that the Clinton-era wall would make it tougher to stop mass murder.

"This is not an area where it is safe or prudent to build unnecessary walls or to compartmentalize our knowledge of any possible players, plans or activities," wrote White, herself a Clinton appointee.

"The single biggest mistake we can make in attempting to combat terrorism is to insulate the criminal side of the house from the intelligence side of the house, unless such insulation is absolutely necessary. Excessive conservatism . . . can have deadly results."

She added: "We must face the reality that the way we are proceeding now is inherently and in actuality very dangerous."...

Justice honchos overruled White's plea — even though her team knew better than anyone else in law enforcement what the real risks were. White's team won a host of convictions — including Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, and blind Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, who plotted to bomb landmarks like the Statue of Liberty....

White wrote the memo after her earlier pleas against the "wall" were rejected. She enlisted the help of her "Bomb II Team" — prosecutors working on terror bombings like the 1993 Twin Towers attack.

They gave six pages of detailed reasons why it was a mistake to create too much of a wall between intelligence and prosecutions. White forwarded that analysis to Gorelick and added her own notes on the Clinton-era decision "to keep prosecutors in the dark about intelligence investigations."

"What troubles me even more than the known problems we have encountered are the undoubtedly countless instances of unshared and unacted-upon information that reside in some file or other or in some head or other or in some unreviewed or not fully understood tape or other," White wrote. "These can be disasters waiting to happen."

I have asked before who was the idiot who chose to follow the rules and not pass on intelligence about Mohammed Atta to the FBI? An even bigger idiot is the fool defending the very rules which might have prevented 9/11.

I'm not as down on the 9/11 Commission Report as many of my fellow bloggers are. No, I don't think there is a massive cover-up--not to say there isn't a tiny cover up. The real culprits here are the people in the Clinton Administration who both followed the wall doctrine and expanded it. Too often we assume that covering up the crime is worse than the crime itself. That is certainly not the case in this instance.

The 9/11 Report may be flawed and not the entire story, but that pales in comparison with the poor judgement of the Clinton Administration.

UPDATE: Are all lawyers evil or just stupid?

Others: Powerline raises some interesting questions as to the timing of the memo.

Austin Bay is correct in calling for further investigation and correctly identifies the culprit: the lawyers.

Ace has been covering this for awhile.

Betsy Newmark celebrates the demise of the wall doctrine.

Mark in Mexico has a great roundup, as always as does The Anchoress. Stratosphere has the latest Able Danger news here.

Captain Ed asks the right questions and focuses us on the Clinton White House.

T. Longren, Right Wing Nuthouse, Peace Like a River, John Cole, Larry Kudlow, and the rest......

Madonna's failed attempt at becoming the Christopher Reeves of Kabbalah.

A 32-year-old Iraqi-Canadian citizen, Zaid Meerwali, kidnapped earlier this month and held for ransom has been murdured. MJ Pechar has the story here. Prime Minister Paul Martin has advised that all Canadian citizens should leave Iraq immediately. There is no Canadian embassy in Iraq.

Carrie and Susan Hallums, the daughter and ex-wife of American hostage Roy Hallums, will be on CNN's Inside Edition today. Susan asks that we please remember Roy Hallums and the other American hostages in Iraq in your prayers.

Three men who attended the same mosque in the L.A. area have been arrested in connection with a terrorist plot to blow up the Israeli consulate and National Guard facilities. Jeff Quinton is covering the story here.

The suspect are Hammad Riaz Samana, 21 from Pakistan; and Levar Haney Washington, 25, and Gregory Vernon Patterson, 21. The latter two had been arrested earlier this month for a string of gas station robberies and, were converts to Islam, and had been found with jihadi material in their home. One of them had served time in Folsom State Prison, and there is a possibility that the plot was hatched by a radical Islamic extremists in the prison known as Jamiyyat Ul Islam Is Saheeh, or The Assembly of Authentic Islam .

The three attended a Jamat-E-Masjidul Islam mosque in Inglewood, a heavily African-American suburb of Los Angeles. The mosque appears to be part of a network of mosques funded by the Saudi Royal family.

It is always interesting to note that every time a Muslim is arrested on terrorism related charges that fellow Muslims first act shocked and then claim a government conspiracy. Stage one complete, prepare for stage two.

KPLC:

LOS ANGELES The president of his mosque says a Pakistani national arrested in a terrorism probe was "a nice kid" and very respectful.

The mosque leader says the arrest of the man (Hammad Riaz Samana) comes as a shock.

Authorities say the suspect, in custody since August second, may be linked to a possible plot to attack the Israeli Consulate, National Guard facilities and synagogues in Los Angeles.

A law enforcement source says his arrest came after investigators found a potential target list at the home of Levar Washington, who's been charged in a series of gas station robberies with another man, Gregory Patterson.

The mosque leader says Washington and Patterson had also attended the mosque but he did not recall all three men associating with one another.

Yesterday, we linked a story that Jason from Generation Why had picked up on in which Bill Clinton claimed he was more interested in bin Laden than the Bush Administration and that had he had six more months in office he would have personally taken al Qaeda out, solved the Social Security crisis, read to every single child in America, and unified physics with a new 8th dimensional string theory.

Today, Paul at Wizbang wonders whether the real reason Clinton failed to act against al Qaeda in any significant way was that he was too busy trying to cover up his affair with Monica Lewinsky. Personally, I'm not so convinced by the timing argument presented by Paul. That is to say, the State Department warned Clinton about the al Qaeda threat during the same months that Clinton was busy obstructing justice, but this is not evidence that one effort contradicted the other. Presidents, it should be remembered, are capable of doing more than one thing at a time--even if they aren't the superheroes that Bill Clinton wishes to be remembered as.

In hindsight, Clinton's failure to act against al Qaeda seemed like a cosmic dereliction of duty. Warnings about what al Qaeda might potentially do, though, only seem so important now because we know what al Qaeda eventually did do. As we try to reconstruct history, let us remember that for every warning that turns out to be true, there are dozens of warnings that turn out to be false alarms. Many documents now show that there were warnings that Japan would attack Pearl Harbor. What is often overlooked by those wishing to play the blame game--or worse, the conspiracy game--are the dozens of other reports which claimed the Phillipines would be Japan's likely target. It is only in hindsight that we realize which threat was greater.

So, I don't blame Bill Clinton or George Bush for 9/11 any more than I blame FDR for Pearl Harbor. All of them were forced to make decisions and set priorities without the clear guidance of hindsight.

Who is to blame for 9/11, then? The first answer, of course, is al Qaeda and radical Islam. But the second answer may be more troubling. We are responsible for 9/11, all of us, the American public. Bill Clinton was not the only one asleep at the wheel, unaware of the growing danger of the global violent jihad, we all were. America was a sleeping giant, awakened from the pleasant dreams of the 1990s only when our enemies reminded us that they had been at war with us for a decade by striking our home soil.

While we were busy fretting over how to spend the tax surpluses of the 1990s, or an economy that had 1% more unemployment in the '00s, al Qaeda was busy planning our demise. We were all asleep at the wheel, only to be awakened much too late.

Let us never never be caught sleeping again.

UPDATE: Another Rovian Conspiracy agrees.

UPDATE II: Yes, Clinton is lying about his superhuman abilities every bit as much as the lie that started the rumor about his package size. But just because he serially inflates his central role in history does not make him responsible for 9/11.

Howie's nominees this week are… Larry Northern 59 of Waco or should I say wacko Texas. Really what is it about Waco? First Vernon now this guy. And also Cindy herself.

Court papers identified him as Larry Northern, 59, from nearby Waco. He has been charged with a felony criminal mischief count. Damage to the memorial was estimated at more than $1,500. He was released after posting $3,000 bail, according to court records.

Really I disagree with Cindy on almost every level but come on. When I see our flag even a 59 cent wally world flag on the ground. Well you get the idea. If you support Bush maybe you should actually listen to what he says..

I'm referring to any grieving mother or father, no matter what their political views may be. Part of my duty as the President is to meet with those who've lost a loved one. And so, you know, listen, I sympathize with Mrs. Sheehan. She feels strongly about her -- about her position. And I am -- she has every right in the world to say what she believes. This is America. She has a right to her position. And I've thought long and hard about her position. I've heard her position from others, which is, get out of Iraq now. And it would be -- it would be a mistake for the security of this country and the ability to lay the foundations for peace in the long-run, if we were to do so.

Well put Mr. Bush.

Cindy you have to ask yourself this. Is it really worth it? I know you are grieving but you are also being used. Your husband has filed for divorce. Is that what your son would have wanted? How lucky that you and the old high school sweet heart were married and had a fine son and a long life together. How valuable, I’m not sure you know how lucky you have been.

Hat tip: You'll all have to guess

Yesterday, I stumbled across the blog Obsidian Wings. They claim to be a "balanced" forum with three conservatives, two liberals and one fence-sitter writing for them. However, from my observations, either the liberals are doing 99% of the writing or the conservatives aren't terribly conservative. I haven't read far enough through their archives yet to find out which. However, one of their authors (hilzoy) is most definately far left. He seems to enjoy the favorite lefist passtime of blaming Bush for everything. In this post, he rails against the Bush energy policy as not doing anything right. Most of his wrath seems to be directed at changing CAFE regulations.

I'll be the first one to admit that I don't know much about CAFE, but I think this post and its subsequent comments point out two immediate and consistant leftie positions. First, if something seems to be going wrong, the government must regulate it. Secondly, the way to regulate it is to tax it. Of course as a matter of principle, I'd prefer to see the government stay out of the whole thing. If Detroit wants to make cars that get 3 MPG and people want to buy and drive them, why shouldn't they be allowed to? If they want to spend $50 per fillup because they've got a 35 gallon tank, who are you to say that they can't? The people who want to buy the hybrids are buying them.

But even putting away the esthetic argument of government intervention, I simply don't think that their idea of more tax on bigger cars is going to work. As I pointed out to them, my job requires me to drive a van. I deliver computers and there's no way that I could do that in a hybrid. The same goes for a plumber who has to carry around his parts, or an electrician, or the many types of service industries that depend on making deliveries to their customers. And that's not to even mention the trucking industry. How long would it take to tax them completly out of business? Or to make their tax burden so heavy that it breaks everyone else's back in increased cost for goods? I did propose this question to them, but so far the only answer is "we'll just have to change our whole transportation infrastructure." Somehow, I don't think that's going to be the answer. So, I propose a question to all the lefties. Can you seriously look at the economy and the nation as it stands and think that taxing the hell out of the transportation industry will do anything but drive us to ruin?

(Lahore, Pakistan) The son of Muhammad and Nazo Afzal, Asif, saw his sister, Sumera, in an intimate circumstance with cousin Zeeshan and became enraged. Asif suspected for a while that his sister was having an affair with cousin Zeeshan and, seeing them together, he decided to do something about it. Asif grabbed a gun and shot Sumera in the head.

Sumera was rushed to the hospital, but couldn't be saved. Nazo and Zeeshan went to the police to register a case against Asif. It's not clear whether anything will happen to Asif for the murder. I haven't heard of many perpetrators of honor killings being punished in Pakistan.

Nevertheless, it appears that it's more honorable to have a murderer in the family than an lovemaker.

According to a Playgirl magazine survey of 2,000 readers and reported in the NY Daily News, women are unimpressed with "waxed chests and rock-hard abs" and much prefer scruffy, chubby men who are "rough around the edges."

"This survey shows that the guy who's most attractive to our readers is not your average Hollywood hunk," said Playgirl editrix Jill Sieracki. "It's the average Joe who came up on top. Women are practical about their choices, and they're smart."

As a consequence of the survey results, Playgirl is now looking for that newly-defined studmuffin, presumably for a feature photo spread. So, guys, put down the beer and send in your best beefcake snapshot to models@playgirlmag.com.

Companion post at rough around the edges studmuffin Interested-Participant.

Good advice from I forget exactly who. Friends, at my college we were serious about our drinking; even if we didn't drink to get drunk, we knew there were rules about what to drink and when and why. If your woman done left you, I once advised a roommate, you needed to sit in a dark room with some Patsy Cline CD's and a bottle of Jack Daniels, and the glass was optional. If you were at a party where champagne was being served, you could have a glass for the toast, but come on, more than one glass of that and we're going to start insulting your manhood. If you drink whiskey worth drinking, drink it straight; if it's not worth drinking, add ice.

And there are some drinks that just aren't manly drinks, as the title of this post suggests. No mimosas, no cosmopolitans, damn sure no appletinis. But there are some neutral territories, some open questions, and in the interest of educating My Pet Jawa's younger readers who may be embarking on collegiate adventures of their own, we might need to lay down the rules about drinking.

Gentle readers, what are the rules? Please discuss in the comments.

To start, I'll add in the extended entry a list of libations of which both men and women may partake without shame, though the behavior they induce may be shameful, as well as some that are gender-appropriate:

Ambidextrous (many of these are also drinks it's okay to order before cocktail hour):

Gin and Tonic
Vodka Gimlet
Bloody Mary
Mojito
Red Wine
Beer (duh)
Martini
Rum and coke, I guess
Frozen Margaritas, at a Mexican restaurant. Though the manlier choice is definitely the rocks margarita.
Manhattan--though this one is pushing it for men.

For the ladies; guys, you risk strident mockery here:
Pink Lady
Sidecar
Most liqueurs
Whiskey sour
Scotch and soda (I'm not sure why, but I don't make the rules)
Mimosa
white wine (though I do this anyway. I'm happily married and willing to fight.)
champagne (exception noted above)
White port

Manly drinks--girls, you'll get a reputation if you order these too often, and the boys will all try to out-drink you which could turn ugly:

Bourbon
Scotch
Irish
Rye
Tequila
Cognac--notice you must be either an Ivy League scion, or a moderately succesful pimp, to pull this off.
Sazerac--very nice New Orleans specialty
Port--again, depends on context. If you're hanging out after dinner at an eating club in Princeton, go for it. But do NOT order Port at Billy Bob's in Fort Worth. If you do, I cannot be held responsible for the damages.

These I don't know where to place: Long Island Iced Tea, Hurricane.

And as always, the proper number of drinks to have in an evening is one less than that last one you had. Oh, you're gonna feel that one in the morning. Drink a big glass of water and take two aspirins before you turn in.

(PS I'll be off the blog for a week or so; but Rusty's around and plenty of other guest bloggers so y'all won't even miss me.--See Dub)

August 16, 2005

Iraq The Model tells you why.

Sorry for no blogging today. Here are some good links to follow sent to me by varioius self-promoters, blog pimps, and link whores.

Lodi terror suspect with ties to al Qaeda being deported. Unfortunately he's being deported to Pakistan. While we need one less radical imam, I'm not sure Pakistan needs one more.

Kurdish uprising against Syria. Go Kurds.

Jeff Goldstein is just a better blogger than me. Seriously. Just read this and especially this and you'll see what I mean.

Hirsi Ali, a hero to us all. (Thanks Ron)

Images from Japanese propaganda from WWII made to demoralize U.S. troops. NY Times editors reveal where they learned the craft.......

Washington Post drops sponsorship of 9/11 memorial walk for fear of the event being too political.

Q&A about new Marine Corps Special Ops Force. Kewl. (Thanks Carolyn)

The 9/11 Commission, Part 2 - Electric Boogaloo. In the future all sequels will be subtitled either Electric Bugaloo or Hunting Season, this time it's personal.

Keys to a liberal victory unveiled. Heh.

Camp Sheehan, sooooo boring.

Cindy Sheehan finally wins an award she's worthy of.

Cindy Sheehan divorce? Yup.

Carnival of Liberty VII is up.

Is the Executive Director of the ACLU the most dangerous liberal in America? I doubt it, but check it out anyway.

Bill Clinton: superhero with amazing superpowers!

A friend of mine who works at a prestigious film school recently sent me a WWII cartoon produced by Warner Bros. and starring the voice of Mel Blanc. It reminded me that there was a time when Hollwyood put winning a war at the forefront of its agenda. There was a time when people like Michael Moore would not only have been booed off the Oscar stage and blacklisted--rigthfully so--but they would have also found themselves in a federal prison for incitement to treason.

Today Hollywood is either patently against our troops winning, full of moral equvication between our cause and the cause of our Islamofascist enemies, or full of bad news and defeatist messages.

The name of the film my friend sent to me is Rumors and stars the WWII anti-hero Snafu. The film may be downloaded by right-clicking this link and choosing 'save as' option, thanks to Drew at Conservative Friends. A brief synopsis of the film along with some screenshots and lessons that the Hollywood elite might learn from their glory days are posted below. I have the film in quicktime format, thanks to Bill Dauterieve, if any one would be willing to burn the bandwidth and has the server space (it's not large).

The film opens with Snafu and another soldier having a quality on-the-toilet discussion of the weather. A casual mention that it was 'good bombing weather' gets Snafu's wheels turning. Snafu embeleshes the comment and quickly a rumor begins about an enemy bombing campaign. A casual remark has become a demoralizing rumor. Loose lips sinks ships is generally thought of as a warning to keep information such as troop and supply movements a secret, but there is another message hear: idle talk may demoralize troops and lead to defeatism.

The rumor, which is mostly hot air is spread. With each new telling of the rumor it becomes worse and worse. Each new telling of it makes each new soldier that much more afraid of impending defeat. And like the films of Michael Moore and the rhetoric of Cindy Sheehan, most of the defeatist information is spin and hot air.

The defeatist stories continue and are depicted as bologne flying all over the place. An apt metaphor for the time and for the al Jazeeras and Michael Moores of today's world.

The rumor returns to Snafu in the form of a bologne sancwich, the soldier that began the rumormongering, striking fear into him and the rest of his base. Snafu runs and hides but the defeatist rumors continue and grow. Does the liberal media establishment actually believe the bologne that passes for unbiased war coverage? Yes, it does. It is cosmically ironic that the same institutions that decide to portray all of America's military efforts in the most pessimistic light are also the same institutions that believe the very biased messages which they helped create.

By now the rumors become something that today's MSM, fueled by the defeatism of the Left, would clearly recognize. The rumors now say that military machinery is insufficient to the job of winning. Does this remind you of MSM accounts of armour for our vehicles?

Our shells are all duds. Wait until you see their new secret weapon. You're doomed.

The defeatist rumors now claim our allies are abandoning us. We cannot possibly win this war alone.

The Russians have surrendered. The British are quitting. The Chinese gave up.

And in the end, what seemed like just a little white lie comes to this final defeatist message:

It's all over. We lost the war.

Snafu has become so terrified that he is driven to the point of being unable to fight and is put in a straight-jacket and a padded cell. Of course, once an army believes that it cannot win a war it has already lost. It is the same reason why our enemies continue to fight us in Iraq: fueled by the propaganda of the Left and their allies in the Arab media, they actually believe they can win.

In order to stop the spread of defeatist rumors the entire base is put under quarantine. Defeatism, like a viral infection or the plague, must be isolated and wiped out.

The final shot of the film reminds us that a good soldier sees, hears and knows nothing. He does not participate in spreading rumors that could lead to defeatism. Defeatism is the first step towards actual defeat.

Hollywood could learn a lot from Snafu. The role of the media is to bolster support for winning the war, not undermining it. Spreading defeatist messages does the job of the enemy for them. One phrase used to describe some one who unintentionally helps the cause of the enemy is useful idiot. But there is also another word used to describe those helping the enemy--for even the noblest reasons: traitor.

It should be recalled by students of history that the vast majority of traitors had a noble reason for betraying their fellow-countrymen. The common thread among them was that they believed they knew better than elected policy makers what was good for their country. Giving nuclear secrets to the Soviets, for instance, was for the nation's good because it would prevent the use of those weapons in the future. Traitors, in an act of dellusional self-rationalization, almost always believe that their betrayal was actually an act of patriotism.

Hollywood has betrayed the American people and U.S. soldiers actively engaged in a war-zone by spreading messages of doom, failure, and defeat. So positive of their own moral superiority, they rationalize the way in which they actively undermine our military efforts by claiming their defeatist propaganda is actually a form of patriotism. There was a time when the American media cared if we won our wars. Unfortunately, that time is long past.

Patriotic Hollywood, Rest In Peace.

Working. I blame the man. And by the man I mean the state legislature which requires us to return to the University 1.5 weeks before the students for faculty development. Lawd knows I hate stupid politicians........

According to CNN, residents around Bush's ranch are becoming fed up with the protesters, saying that they are blocking roadways and becoming a hazard. They have become so fed up, in fact, that 60 of them have signed a petition and turned it in to their county commission hoping to curb the number of protesters at the ranch.

Of course any attempt at controlling these nuisances has been met with cries of "what about my civil rights?" It would be nice if they would think of the civil rights of all the neighbors that they are trampling on. But as one protester told the county commission, "I would encourage the commission to weigh heavily the First Amendment rights that we have, because that's really the fundamental thing: free speech, the ability to protest, legitimate dissent in a democracy." Translated into human-speak, that means "we don't give a damn about anyone but ourselves. As long as we're getting all the attention we want, we're not going to move."

And the city council's response?

The commission will publicize the petition and advertise a public hearing, to be held in about four weeks. Then, county commissioners will vote on the ordinance.

Oddly enough, That is right after Bush plans on leaving the ranch and Sheehen has said that she will leave when Bush does.

James Joyner points to a critical article about the Sheehan phenomenon by Christopher Hitchens. In the article he coins an astonishingly powerful concept describing what Sheehan and others on the Left (and some on the Right) are attempting to do: "ventrilquizing the dead." I slightly disagree with The Hitch's point that Cindy has no more moral authority than anyone else, however. I don't think it outrageous to claim that Cindy Sheehan does have some moral authority that I, for instance, lack. But it seems to me that if there's such a thing as "moral standing" to comment on a war, it resides a great deal more with those who are actually serving, and especially those soldiers who have also lost friends and comrades in the fight. And it does make sense that those who pay the costs have greater moral authority that those of us who are shielded from sacrifice (by an administration that for some inexplicable reason refuses to ask very much of its citizenry). Let's be realistic.

But Cindy's moral authority hardly cancels that of everyone else, especially those with similar or greater authority, who disagree with her. Nor does it constitute "expertise," as many on the Left insist. Her expertise is singularly, even spectacularly, unimpressive. In that sense The Hitch has vastly greater authority than Cindy. And someone like Michael Yon has both moral and expert authority, as well as that special form of "expert" authority that comes directly from being on the scene: experiencial. Neither of which means that you can't disagree, but you do have a steeper hill to climb, let's face it.

Finally, there is a sense in which we probably should eschew the opinions of mothers, especially those who would almost certainly feel compelled to prevent their children from maturing into adulthood if they could manage to arrest their development. Ancient societies recognized, in ritual and institution, this wise limitation on motherhood when they separated boys from mothers as they entered puberty, and compelled them to undergo an intense initiation into manhood. Young men who failed to make this transition were simply not trusted around children.

It is extremely misguided, especially for a society at war, to institutionalize the extension of childhood beyond puberty, and even to seek to instill childish sentiments in its responsible and authoritative adults. This is the primary problem I have with Cindy Sheehan, and those who exploit her.

(Cross-posted by Demosophist to Demosophia)

Chad Evans and I have intercepted a DNC memo.

The memo is titled Democracy at Risk: Strategy for 2006 and 2008, Letter of Direction by DNC Chairman Howard Dean.

[...]

To keep our sources safe I shredded the originals after making electronic copies. I also attempted to flushing the shredded memo down the toilet but quickly realized that there was no evidence of my flushing the shredded memo so obviously I didn't flush the memo even though I might have.

It's quite interesting and a must read. Head on over to Conservative Thinking and see for yourself.

Nothing about this story is pleasant. Israeli security forces entered the main settlement of Neve Dekalim, using a bulldozer and bolt cutters to break down the gates.

From The Courier-Mail:

Around 1000 police and soldiers stormed into the settlement as hundreds of orange-clad protestors tried to block the path of several removal lorries.

Many protestors were thrown to the floor in the violent pushing and shoving as settlers, most of them youngsters, threw themselves at the wall of police barring their way.

At least a dozen youngsters were arrested, most of them dragged off screaming and kicking as the crowd howled in rage: "Jews don't evict Jews," the settlers shouted.

From ABC News Online:

The clash between the police and up to 1,000 pro-settlement protesters took place near the Kissufm entry point between Israel and Gush Katif.

Police say an Israeli army officer was injured in violent clashes which resulted in more than 500 arrests.

Local Israeli police chief Yuri Bar-Lev said another 250 protesters were forced back by his officers.

He described their behaviour as irresponsible and said it could lead to a catastrophe.

"In their secret hiding places, while celebrating newly won fortunes with their fellow brass, these men must surely congratulate themselves with orgies of carnal pleasure as they mock the multitudes who are yet so blind as to mistake them for God's devoted servants." (Mother Sheehan)

W: Good job there, Rummy. Really pulled the wool over their eyes.
Rummy: Thanks, Boss. The fools, they think we're from Jesus.
W: Ha! You too, Cheney. Nice work.
Cheney: Gee, thanks! Can we have sex now?
Condi: Yay!

That's just pathetically weird all around. And the wording is such that it was obviously written in advance--it wasn't just a little grief-bubble slipping through. "And I am sure the President and his cabinet have orgies, too! I just know it, for lo, I am grieving, and using polysyllabic words."

Can you guys imagine the derision that would follow if some righty-type person denounced the left, and as a crowning rhetorical flourish added "and...and...I'll bet they probably have sex, too." I could at least see some sense in that, as lame as it would be, since you would then be attacking the libertine left instead of preaching to them.

The funny thing is that I found this at World Magazine's (an evangelical Christian magazine) blog, where even they are astonished by it.

It's usually redundant for me to link and comment on a Mark Steyn piece; as if people out there are saying "Oh, really? You think I should read this? Mark who? Is it good or something?" Most of you probably know already that if it says Mark Steyn at the top, it's worth reading, and have probably read it already.

Well, don't miss this one on Oil-for-Food. If you're like me there's often a temptation to see a piece about OFF and think, yeah, this UN guy was this other dude's accountant's pool boy who was partners in a shell company with that guy who was supposed to inspect Qusay's pipeline...zzz...um, KOFI LIED IRAQIS DIED, right? Okay, moving on...

Don't do that this time. Steyn wraps it up nicely and here 's some of the good part all in one paragraph:

By happy coincidence, Under-Secretary-General Strong and Kojo Annan were both appointed, on the same day, to the board of a company called Air Harbour Technologies, a business registered in the Isle of Man and whose directors also included Michael Wilson, the guy under investigation for the UN office renovation contract in Geneva. It's a small world, at least at the UN. AHT was wholly owned by the son of Sheikh Yamani, the former Saudi oil minister. Yamani Jnr was putting together a $60 million oil deal with Saddam, and seemed to think the presence of UN officials and offspring on his board might help him.

Oh, and that one guy (benon Sevan) who claimed he got all that money as a gift from his elderly aunt? I didn't realize this, but his aunt isn't around to contradict him because she fell down an elevator shaft and died.

Who goes out like that? I've never actually heard of that happening, outside of Raymond Chandler nvels and as a throwaway line in The Usual Suspects. What, would it have been too subtle to have her shoot herself in the head six times with a double-barrelled shotgun?

August 15, 2005

Al Qaeda has claimed to have downed an Apache helicopter in Iraq and has posted a video online to bolster that claim. The video can be found here (see August 15th). Images from the video posted below.

SITE:

Today, August 13, 2005, al-Qaeda in Iraq released two claims of responsibility to a jihadist message board. In the first statement, the group announces an attack which “disabled” an Apache helicopter “in the area of al-Radwaneya in West Baghdad,” where the mujahideen claimed to have set up “an ambush.”

The video begins with the terrorists following what seems to be a fully functioning Apache helicopter in their car.

The scene then cuts to the downed helicopter. However, there is no evedence of how the helicopter was downed. Further, for some reason, the terrorists are filming from far away and seem to be hiding.

It soon becomes apparent why they are hiding. Another Apache helicopter lands, followed by an armoured vehicle and troops.

Run and hide glorious mujahidin. Run and hide.

Click for larger image.

Counterterrorism Blog contributor Evan Kohlmann has a collection of new al Qaeda posters aimed at undermining the new Iraqi constitution. Al Qaeda reminds Iraqis that they believe election centers are legitimate targets and any one voting in the constitutional referendum is abetting the apostate government. Al Qaeda also reminds people that it believes democracy is against the will of Allah. Expect an upsurge of violence targetting any one associated with the Iraqi government.

CNN is reporting that the Iraqi constituiton has been accepted leaving two issues to be resolved by parliament. Those issues as of this AM were to what extent various regions would have local power in a federalist system. The other was to what extent Islam would be part of the new government.

Updated : CNN has full story now.

Nasar al-Rubaie, a member of the committee drafting the document, said the document would be handed over to the 275-member National Assembly late Monday for a decision on the two unresolved issues -- women's rights and self-determination. Jalaldin al-Saghir, a Shiite member of parliament, said the same thing but refused to identify the two remaining issues.

Updated again: It seems the national assembly has asked for 7 to 10 days to review this draft. If the issues are not worked out the assembly will dissolve itself and the whole thing starts all over.

The committee drafting the document had asked for an extension after it failed to reach a compromise by Monday's deadline after months of talks. The new deadline is August 22. Without the extension, the government would have dissolved, requiring new elections in December and starting the process again. Two Shiite officials told The Associated Press earlier Monday that Iraqi politicians had agreed on a draft constitution but delayed a decision on two key issues. The president's office told CNN no such deal had been reached.

Also here on ABCNEWS.

Yep fast is not always good. So now we get seven to ten more days. I've noted that in this part of the world no one agree's until the last minute. Well they've found some more minutes. I expect this will go on right up until the 22nd possibly until the early hours of the 23rd.

Donald Sensing, on Winds of Change points to the implications of some counterintuitive (for idiotarians at least) statistics documented by Strategy Page. Turns out the annual death rate in Iraq, so far in 2005, is less than half what it was under Saddam Hussein. It has dropped from over 100 deaths per 100K (not counting those who died in the Iran/Iraq war) to about 45. This is also lower than the death rate in South Africa, the only African country that keeps good statistics on the figure, and probably far less than some place like Darfur, which doesn't even figure on the idiotarian radar.

So next time someone brings up "the terrible cost of the war for Iraqis" you can say that the coalition not only brought democracy to the country, but cut the death rate in half!

(Cross-posted by Demosophist to Demosophia)

Terrorists from the Mahdi Army loyal to radical Shia leader Moqtada al-Sadr have freed four hostages in Iraq from Sunni terrorists loyal to al Qaeda. One of the freed hostages was an AP photographer. BBC:

Followers of radical Iraqi Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr say they have rescued four hostages from their kidnappers hours before they were to be killed.

Members of Mr Sadr's Mehdi Army freed the four Arab hostages from "terrorist groups" holding them in Baghdad, an aide to the cleric said....

"Members of the Mehdi Army have freed some Arab and Iraqi hostages, kidnapped by terrorist groups who were planning to kill them in the coming hours," he was quoted as saying.

The freed men identified themselves to an Associated Press photographer as Syrian Hisham Salem, Lebanese Mustafa Abdul-Rassoul Hussein, dual Syrian-Lebanese citizen Atta Ibrahim and Iraqi Kurd Haji Alawi.

A spokesman for Mr Sadr, Amer Husseini, was quoted by AP as saying the men were freed on Thursday night during a raid on an apartment in the northern district of Shaab.

He did not say what happened to the kidnappers or why the men had been seized in the first place.

Cox and Forkum on Sheehan's antisemetic moonbattery.

Glenn is back which means no more Instapundit linkage for the Jawa. Well, it was fun while it lasted. While enjoying your Puppy Blended Protien Smoothie, why not enjoy the Religion of Peace Roundup?

News of the ROP, Tatooine, The Rebel Alliance, and Tusken Raiders:

Potential terror arrest at Canadian border. Two Muslims arrested trying with guns and ammo.

Iraq Constitution deadline approaching. Pray.

Zarqawi aide killed in Mosul, head still remains attached to body.

MILF plot against US and British interests. I said MILF.

Want to read the good news from Iraq? Then do not read this. Nothing to see here folks, move along. (via Glenn)

Terror website posts map of D.C. metro, advocates using chemical weapons there. I will be in D.C. in a couple of weeks. Scary.

Spanish authorities overlooked terror tips and intelligence that could have prevented Madrid train bombing.

Large chemical facility probably used by insurgents to make bombs.

Yes, we won the Vietnam War before lost it. Kissinger and how the Democrats snatched defeat from the mouth of victory in Vietnam. Learn this lesson well oh ye who call for immediate withdrawal. (via Steve Green).

Pakistan gives author life sentence for blasphemy.

Inspiring poetry.

How the the American Bar Association screwed up the war on terror.

Vigilantes. The good kind. Sunnis kick al Qaeda out of Ramadi.

Iran supporting new terror groups in Iraq. Not surprising.

2/3 of countries with extreme gender imbalances belong to the ROP.

Another progressive leaves the ranks of his fellow-travellers over the Left's truce with al Qaeda.

Dommestic Dhimmis
Howard Dean: Poster child of dommestic dhimmis.

David Duke endorses Cindy Sheehan.

An ode to Cindy Sheehan.

Billy Carter. Roger Clinton. Neal Bush. Cindy Sheehan. Howard Dean.

Crawford protest comics. Because INDcent Bill stopped doing it........shhhhh, we're hunting moonbats.

Cindy Sheehan. Cindy Sheehan. Cindy Sheehan!

My favorite Bill Clinton songs all on one CD? Yes!

Cindy Sheehan is Christopher Walken. That would explain why you never see both of them at the same protest.

Cindy Sheehan video. Scary.

Blog Propaganda
John Cole has this week's RINO sightings.

The Jawa Report is a Mortal Human! Jawa Report uber alles!!

Danny Carleton (aka, Jack Lewis) writes a script for the cheapest blog ad deals. The vacationing Commissar--and adopted blogfather of the Jawa-- of The Politburo Diktat takes near top honors in best deal for month to month advertising rates. Be very careful about traffic flow statistics, though. One way to fool people about traffic is to close public viewing of sitemeter statistics shortly after a spike in traffic. This fools the ecosystem into freezing site stats at an artificially high number.

Paul is boycotting Drudge until pop-up ads are removed. Heh.

Secure Liberty is one year old. Congrats.

Decision '08 has new digs. Kewl.

Basil is no nerd, but he is a geek. Star Trek convention? Dude.....

Help me Allah-ben-Kenobe...come.. back......please......

Don't the American people understand the danger of letting the Supreme Court become, in essence, a partisan of one side in a closely divided nation?

William Raspberry in today's Washington Post arguing the dangers of allowing Roberts to be nominated to the Supreme Court. I think what he meant to say was:

Don't the American people understand the danger of letting the Supreme Court become, in essence, a partisan of the right?

I've decided to not only touch the third rail, but to just take a stroll down it for a while. I'm sure my evolutionary detractors will be back to call me an idiot and continue to offer no proof of their lofty ideas. All I can say to them is "have at it."

Fetal Stem Cells - The New McCarthyism?

That may sound like an extraordinarily odd comparison until you stop and think about it a bit. Just as McCarthyism, fetal stem cell research started with a laudable goal. These fetal stem cells, being as-yet unformed, should be able to be coerced into any tissue in the human body. After all, that’s exactly what they do when the fetus develops. And if this is true, then we should be able to create cures for nearly anything from them.

Unfortunately, that is where the good comparisons end. As McCarthyism became a cause celebré, so has fetal stem cell research. People have jumped on the fetal stem cell research bandwagon without a hint of what’s going on behind the scenes. They’ve been told that the fetal stem cell research will be a cure-all, and they refuse to believe anything else. And again, just like with McCarthyism, detractors of this research are being labeled as fools and heretics and ostracized. If you attempt to tell the truth about this research, then you are made out as an uncaring ogre who wants to see people continue to suffer with paralysis and Parkinson’s and all manner of other ailments.

But the truth of the matter is quite simple. To date, scientists have not come up with one single cure for anything from fetal stem cells. What’s more, some of their attempts have had disastrous results. The list of solutions created by adult stem cells continues to grow, from healing damage caused by heart disease to treating cancer victims, people who are paralyzed, arthritis sufferers and many others. And yet, the research is treated as second place by fetal stem cell proponents who insist that only by harvesting fetal stem cells can we cure anything.

The final comparison between fetal stem cell proponents and McCarthyists lies in the conclusion to the battle. During his infamous career, Joe McCarthy was not afraid to lie, slander and simply make up rumors about his opponents and detractors. There is no telling how many lives and careers he ruined by these actions. What’s more, there’s no telling what sort of possibly permanent damage he could have done to our great nation had he been allowed to continue. Fetal stem cell proponents face the same choices today. If they continue on the same course they have, throwing money away on useless research and dismissing working solutions, they stand to bring problems every bit as bad as McCarthy to this nation and the world. It’s time that these stem cell researchers got serious about adult stem cell research so that we can really begin to cure some diseases.

In the Clinton days, the CIA was tasked to get Bin Laden, but they always had to plan to capture him alive. As a result of lawyerly meddling, little was done:

Between 1998 and 2000, the CIA and President Bill Clinton's national security team were caught up in paralyzing policy disputes as they secretly debated the legal permissions for covert operations against Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.

And in the first few days of the War in Afghanistan, Tommy Franks had Mullah Omar in his crosshairs, but then consulted his lawyer.

"My JAG"—Judge Advocate General, a legal officer—"doesn't like this, so we're not going to fire."

And now, according to the hot column everyone will be talking about in the North Bergen (NJ) News by Mike Kelly (who talked with part of the Able Danger team), lawyers stepped in once again:

Another target are Pentagon lawyers. The sleuth says he and other Able Danger team members became so concerned during the summer of 2000 that they asked their superiors in the Pentagon's special operations command for permission to approach the FBI. Their superiors approached Pentagon legal experts. Those experts turned down the request.

...

Perhaps just as alarming, even the Able Danger team understood its limits. When lawyers blocked Able Danger's request to approach the FBI, the team simply went back to its work and kept quiet - even after the 9/11 attacks occurred.

I'm beginning to see a pattern here.

August 14, 2005

Armstrong Williams got in a spot of trouble a while back for taking money from the Education Department. He was rightly raked over the coals for his conflict of interest but has managed to hang on to his syndicated column.

His latest is an about-face on the Iraq question. He thinks we should leave now, because there are suicide bombers there and our mission plan in 2003 was flawed. The evidence of WMD's was not strong enough. Oh, and it will strain our relationship with our allies. Yeah, woohoo, breaking news, must credit Armstrong Williams.

The column would be unremarkable were it written by a sophomore IR major for a college daily. But Williams is a conservative insider, a professional pundit, and a past supporter of the war. This could have been a devastating column. He ought to be familiar with the arguments for the war and be able to refute them convincingly. Instead he merely regurgitates liberal platitudes and fails to throw anything new out there or offer any new insight. Just became aware that there's a problem, eh? This is all it takes? Why did you support the war in the first place? Why change now?

The problem with his past transgression is that it renders his future decisions suspect as well. I wonder whether this is a ploy by Mr. Williams to rehabilitate his reputation and confirm his independence from the Bush Administration. If so, it is an extremely ill-considered gambit. He may get a brief rush of controversy, plus a few speaking engagements from the Angry Left, who'll put him on a rostrum between Cindy Sheehan and Joe Wilson, but in the long run he will alienate his remaining readers.

Not, mind you, because he dares to criticize the war effort, but rather because of his mercurial and poorly-reasoned switch in such a fundamental belief. You won't regain your conservative readership, Mr. Williams, by suddenly realizing that the Iraq War was wrong because France is mad at us now.

Michael Fumento has been "over there" and in a review of the series in Tech Central Station doesn't think much of Over There. Excerpt:

If "Over There" has a true military advisor, he deserves the firing squad. In the first episode a squad is pinned down while besieging a terrorist-filled mosque. The unit remains for about 36 hours with no air support, because "Air is dedicated to another area." Never mind that air cover from jets or helicopters is always available within minutes. They also request artillery, again to no avail. There's no armor. Until near the end of the siege the only guys with a mortar are the enemy.

In order to include women, two females from a transportation unit just happen to join the siege. In fact, they just happen to tag along for the rest of the series! Reality is sacrificed to the God of Diversity.

Towards the end of the show a troop transport pulls off to the side of the road, an idiot thing to do since that's where improvised explosive devices (IED) are almost always buried. Naturally they roll over a powerful IED, even though the bad guys have conveniently marked it with little white flags! A horribly wounded soldier is then evacuated in a type of chopper not used in Iraq.

Clearly this is a military that can't even tie its bootlaces and in the immortal words of Pogo: We have met the enemy and he is us.

I wondered about the little white flag thing. Damn nice of the insurgents to put a little "Don't tread on this!" sign up for us, but of course our military were just too dumb to read it. Another thing that bugged me (one of many) concerned the lengthy roadblock sequence in the second episode. The insurgents supposedly sent several suicide vehicles and decoys before getting around to smuggling out their high value target, who was apparently the only guy who knew where the Stinger Missiles were hidden. So why didn't the smugglers just go around the checkpoint? It's pretty much rural unfenced desert so why would they be limitted to the road? Granted, you probably have to use roads or tracks to move material, or to get somewhere really fast... but if there's an obvious checkpoint that you are aware of enough to diddle around for hours sending decoys and stuff you presumably aren't pressed for time.

The whole series is like that. It's not so much that it's biased (although it is that, in spades), as that it's not remotely realistic even as a fantasy war. Harry Potter is more authentic.

(Cross-posted by Demosophist to Demosophia)

(Gaza City) A French television sound engineer was kidnapped by three gunmen outside his hotel in Gaza City and bundled into a waiting car just hours before Israel commenced its withdrawal of Israeli settlers from the Gaza Strip. The technician works for French 3 Public Television.

In another report, TurkishWeekly.net:

Palestinian security forces have said they are investigating reports that a member of a French television crew was kidnapped by gunmen outside his Gaza City hotel.

Companion post at Interested-Participant.

So I head over to the American Spectator's site, like I do every weeknight, and I see the graphic for this weekend is a shot of the Bush Admin bigwigs at Crawford, which I shall reproduce here before it changes again Sunday night:

And I'm thinking, what does that photo remind me of? It looks oddly familiar...

Oh, yeah:

"We're gonna stick together, just like it used to be. When you side with a man, you stay with him. And if you can't do that, you're like some animal, you're finished. "

UPDATE: via Michelle Malkin, I see this wonderful photo over at a blog called Dr. Sanity. Just for a little perspective:

Oh yeah, it seems more Iraqi’s are getting fed up with the terrorists and their insurgency. When they posted warnings on Mosques that all Shia should leave Ramadi or else be forced out their Sunni neighbors took a stand for them. So while they may not like the US being there they really don’t like Zaqueery and his followers. I like how these brave men who in a group of 4 or five can handle a bound man well enough to saw his head off were forced to run by local militia.

Rising up against insurgent leader Abu Musab Zarqawi, Iraqi Sunni Muslims in Ramadi fought with grenade launchers and automatic weapons Saturday to defend their Shiite neighbors against a bid to drive them from the western city, Sunni leaders and Shiite residents said. The fighting came as the U.S. military announced the deaths of six American soldiers. Dozens of Sunni members of the Dulaimi tribe established cordons around Shiite homes, and Sunni men battled followers of Zarqawi, a Jordanian, for an hour Saturday morning. The clashes killed five of Zarqawi's guerrillas and two tribal fighters, residents and hospital workers said. Zarqawi loyalists pulled out of two contested neighborhoods in pickup trucks stripped of license plates, witnesses said. The leaders of four of Iraq's Sunni tribes had rallied their fighters in response to warnings posted in mosques by followers of Zarqawi. The postings ordered Ramadi's roughly 3,000 Shiites to leave the city of more than 200,000 in the area called the Sunni Triangle. The order to leave within 48 hours came in retaliation for alleged expulsions by Shiite militias of Sunnis living in predominantly Shiite southern Iraq

US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald’s term in office is just about up. He will need to be reappointed by President Bush if he is to continue his work. What does he do? Well let’s see. The CIA leak case, he is after the Chicago city government, he is holding my former governor GEORGE Ryan’s feet to the fire. You bet we should keep him. It’s refreshing to see a man go after both parties and hold them up against the laws they make for everyone else. I mean like they do us. Too often people in power think that the laws are just for you know people like me. Well Patrick Fitzgerald goes after them. America is far better off when politicians know there are people like him who don’t give a rat’s ass about the D or R next to your name. Is he overzealous? Yep, but he is not going after poor little people with no ability to defend themselves he goes after the top. Mr. Bush, give Mr. Fitzgerald to another four year term. I know it’s kind of like letting the fox guard the hen house. But Mr. Bush has iron balls, We’ll see.

DEAN POLALES: I don't think Democratic or Republican Party politics has anything to do with the way he does his job. And I think his track record in Chicago demonstrates that -- when dealing with political corruption cases, he's an equal opportunity prosecutor.

I’ve been following John McCain for a bit. Today he was on FNS. Pretty good interview. It might seem if you asked Bill Kristol that the good Senator from Arizona is a better spokesman for the president on Iraq that is old Rumsy.

Or will we? The president seems determined to complete the job. Is his defense secretary? In addition to trying to abandon the term "war on terror," Rumsfeld and some of his subordinates have spent an awful lot of time in recent weeks talking about withdrawing troops from Iraq--and before the job is complete.

That was Kristol.

Now for McCain.

I don't know, because the president, I think, very appropriately made it very clear in the strongest terms that we are there until Iraqis are capable of carrying out their own security responsibilities. He could not have been more forceful or more clear, in my view. And I totally agree with him, and I think his statement was unequivocal. And now you're seeing these statements, both before and after, which are in contradiction to what he had to say.

It never ceases to amaze me the fun I get to have watching stuff scroll by. Rust’s post from last week on privateers. Well the fact that so many terrorist web sites always have to move around or hide makes it kind of difficult for them to find each other. So when they feel the need to watch ol’ Zaqueery saw some poor bastards head off. They come here. Then they read all the nice little comments everyone leaves and well they just can’t resist now can they. So check out Fridays comments on this thread. They guy is too nasty for me to put up here. Let’s just say he’s all invited us to entertain him sexually. I think we should oblige him don’t’ you. But not quite in the same manner as he suggests. First of all old believer whines about us ruining his and other fine Muslims reputation. Sorry Seray it not us it’s you and the people who Sawed off poor Mr. Berg’s head. I’ve watched a total of 2.000001 of these and I can tell you now that’s freaking evil, the executions, the Beheadings. So if you have a problem with it and you think it’s our fault. You don’t have a leg to stand on bother.

So while we are here It’s worthwhile to note that a big fat security update has been released by Microsoft. It delayed me a bit this AM but let’s all take the time and add it. Mac users have a good time relishing the fact that you don’t need 5 spy tools, two virus scanners and on and on and on. Linux users too.

August 13, 2005

You folks might be interested to know from whence hails My Pet Jawa's cuddly, loveable troll who calls itself "Downing Street Memo". Well, if you read the title of this post, I gave the game away.

His IP address tracks back to Seoul. Seoul, South Korea, a free and prosperous democracy, thanks to... whom?

He's free to type his anti-American BS rants right now because of a little "police action" in Korea back in the early 50's that killed a hell of a lot of great Americans. The American soldier went halfway around the world and saved his country from Communist tyranny and even now our men are staring down gibbering nutbar Kim Jong Il, held hostage to Kim's vast arsenal of artillery that could reduce Seoul to rubble in a matter of hours.

Freedom and American liberation are good enough for Korea, of course, but not for Iraq. Pull up the ladder, says DSM.

Of course, Seoul is also riddled with North Korean agents. Maybe DSM is one of these, spewing out dear psychopathic leader Kim Jong Il's vile propaganda with all his trademark subtlety and charm? Guess what, Downy, whether you're Kim's spy or just his stooge, we can't tell the difference in your insane blather. It's counterproductive anyway.

If you have any sense of shame you'll just slink away.

--See Dubya

PS Bolton says hi.

Caption this photo. Winners announced Monday with much fanfare and linky love.

Did the 9/11 Commission Report leave out mention of Iraqi agents arrested in Germany that could link Mohammed Atta's Hamburg cell of al Qaeda and the Saddam Hussein's regime?

Captain Ed had made this speculation earlier here, not claiming that such a link existed but only that this needs further investigation.

I replied in this earlier post that maybe this should be looked into, but that the speculation that such ties could exist were unwarrented by the facts.

He in turn put up another post on the subject, this time wondering whether or not the evidence for Mohammed Atta meeting with an Iraqi agent in Prague ought to be looked at again.

Captain Ed and I have been going back and forth on this both in the comments section here and through e-mail. The gist of what Ed was saying was that in light of the Able Danger revelations, it is possible that the 9/11 Commission was predisposed to leave out certain bits of evidence that would run contrary to their findings. It is a good observation, one that I would agree with, but on the grounds that that is just par for the course in any type of research that has to sift through tons of data points.

Another valid point he makes is that his earlier post simply calls for an investigation into what the Iraqi agents were doing in Germany--with a bit of speculation thrown in their to boot. Fine by me. The 9/11 Commission Report is a flawed document just like all other government reports. It is not the final word on 9/11 and those that treat it as such fail to grasp the enormity of the task the Commission had under time constraints. I suspect the next twenty years will produce countless dissertations on the subject by Ph.D. candidates, each one contributing a new piece of information to the overall story of the attrocities that took place on that day.

One of the points that I made to Ed in an e-mail was regarding the validity of his source and his interpretation of the story. My objection was simply that an English synopsis of an Arabic newspaper in Germany may not be the most reliable source. Especially when that source claims the CIA was brought to Germany--something that I am sure they could not have known. My experience with Arabic papers is that any person wearing a business suit and working for the U.S. in any peripheral capacity can be accused of being a 'CIA Agent'.

Ed took up the challenge, and lo and behold, one of his army of readers was able to produce a corraborating account. So, according to MSM reports at the time, we have two Iraqi spies caught in Germany. The non-Arabic sources also mention nothing about the CIA or FBI getting involved and also nothing about a plot for Iraq to involve itself with fundamentalist Islamic terror groups to strike at US interests.

Ed is right that it would be nice to know what those Iraqi spies were doing in Germany. I second the motion. I'm not sure that such knowlege would have improved the 9/11 Report in any fundamental way, but it might have.

To imagine, though, that the fact that there were Iraqi agents in Germany somehow may be the missing link connecting Saddam Hussein to 9/11 is grasping at straws, in my opinion. Many of us on the right would like to believe that such a connection existed because we believe that that would somehow bolster support for the war. But the justness or unjustness of the Iraq invasion ultimately does not rest on whether or not the Baathist regime had anything to do with 9/11.

Further, the war we are fighting in Iraq now is a different war than the one we fought to overthrow the Hussein regime. It is not simply another phase of the same conflict, it is a different war. We are fighting different people and we now have different goals. In the invasion of Iraq we had the goal of toppling a hostile government that we had been at war with for a decade. Now, we are fighting Islamist jihadis engaged in a struggle to build a Taliban-like state in the vacuum created by the fall of the Baathists.

The second conflict is directly connected to 9/11. We do not need to look to a German Iraq-al Qaeda connection to see this, we simply need to look at the facts as they exist on the ground right now.

What is the name the jihadis have taken on themselves in Iraq? Al Qaeda. Who have they pledged their allegiance to? Osama bin Laden. The three main insurgent groups in Iraq (al Qaeda, The Army of Ansar al-Sunnah, and The Islamic Army in Iraq) all share the same general political philosophy as the Taliban and Osama bin Laden. All are part of the network of global jihad. They are our enemies and it they who we are fighting in Iraq today.

We are fighting al Qaeda in Iraq, today. Unfortunately, many in the MSM do not understand the nature of the enemy in Iraq. To concede Iraq to these terrorist forces would be to create a nation state parrhia just like Afghanistan. Iraq would become the next place where large-scale jihadi training camps would operate openly.

We do not need to rewrite history to create a link between Iraq and 9/11. But if we wish to prevent another 9/11 attack from happening again, we must begin by making sure Iraq does not fall to the hands of al Qaeda terrorists who would love nothing more than to create another safe haven from which they could operate.

CONTEST WINNERS ANNOUNCED

Bumper Stickerist: Reaping the whirlwind: Women and minorities suffer most during the inevitable aftermath of EuroAmerican patriarchal hegemony.

Cassandra: Why didn't the U.S. military PROTECT US????? [sound of hideous shrieking]

Flea: Militant activists attack occupied Aztlan! Free Aztlan from American imperialism!

More fun stuff below and in comments section.

Is some sort of nuclear attack in the U.S. inevetable? American Digest seems to think so. What will the extreme Left say when San Diego is no more? Flea, as always, has the answer:

- this is come-uppance for Hiroshima and Nagasaki (the name Okinawa will remain unspoken) and the United States military is to blame
- this is about Iraq, no matter what al-Qaeda cites as its purposes, and consequently the United States military is to blame
- this attack could not have been carried out by al-Qaeda, therefore Israel must be to blame
-if al-Qaeda could be proven to have carried out the attack then the accused should be tried as criminals in an "international court of law" because the accused could not be given a fair trial in the United States. anything else will be described as a "war crime" [READ THE REST]

-We unconditionally condemn this act of terrorism, but the terrorism committed by the U.S. government over the years......
-East Timor! What about East Timor?!?
-CAIR: "All acts of terrorism are bad, but we must distinguish acts of terror from legitimate resistance."

Uh Oh, another Entrenched Media whining topic down the tubes.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Most points of disagreement on the country's new constitution have been overcome and will be ready before the deadline, President Jalal Talabani said Saturday.

Talabani said the meetings are concentrating on federalism in Shiite areas of central and southern Iraq, as well as the role of Islam in the state.

Appears that someone else isn't happy......Al Qaeda threatens to kill pro-charter Iraq imams: website.

DUBAI - The group of Al Qaeda frontman in Iraq Abu Musab Al Zarqawi has threatened to kill any Muslim imam who speaks out in favour of Iraq’s constitution, according to an Internet statement published on Saturday

Companion OpiniPundit

August 12, 2005

One of the tiny minority of extremists sends the following message to Jawa readers. Abbas is from Seattle, Washington, and writes [warning: nasty language follows]:

u want america to kill the muslims.

just remeber if that ever does happen it will be the end UUUUUU! AND I SWEAR IT THOU U MAY NOT KNOW IT BECAUSE OF YOUR IGGORANCE BUT !!! U WILL SEE.

if u want u really want that to happen go out and do it YOUR TUFF... YOUR STONG.. YOU GOT THE BIG BALLS.. SIKE.SIKE TRUTH BE TOLD YOUR A TOTAL PUSSY LITERTLLY ..

I DONT KNOW WHETHER U BELIVE IN GOD OR NOT BUT EITHER WAY YOU WILL COME TO KNOW UU.. ONE DAY.. NOT TODAY.. BUT SOME DAY.. U WILL COME TO KNOW OF ALLAH.. .

I PRAY TO ALLAH THAT ALL SCUMM.WHITE REDNECK.. PORKEATING.. DISGUSTING ... HORNY ASHOLES .. SUFFER IN THIS WORLD AND IF NOT SURELY U WILL IN THE HERE AFTER

U MAY LAUGH AND SAY THERE IS NO HEREAFTER DAMIT THERE IS NO GOD AND THE ONLY THING THAT CAN ME DESTROY ME IS DEATH!!!!

NAY U ARE SO WRONG BUT I DONT WORRY BECAUSE I KNOW WHAT LIES NEXT AFTER YOUR DEATH!! IM HAPPY AND I LAUGH ..FOR YOUR DESTINY IS HELL AND THERE YOU WILL ABDIDE IN FOREVVR!!

BUT NOOOOOO!!!! DONT LISTEN TO ME BY ALL MEANS CONTINUE TO DO WHAT YOUVE ALWAYS DONE. PARTY... DRINK AND GET DRUNK... FUCK LIKE ANIMALS... AND KEEP FUCKINGG TILL YOUR DOOM!! BUT DO NOT SAY I TOLD YOU !! INSHALLAH YOU WILL ALL GO TO HELL

Scroll to end of post for update.

Is the 9/11 Report flawed? Yes. But that does not mean there was a conspiracy to keep information out of the report. It is the inherent nature of government reports, all government reports, to be flawed. If you don't want a flawed government report then you should not ask the government to report on anything.

Do the Able Danger revelations impeach the entire 9/11 Report so that nothing in the report should be believed? No. Of course not. It would be silly to have ever imagined that the report represented reality unbiased and unfiltered.

The 9/11 Report represents a consensus view on intelligence failures that led to the 9/11 attrocities. Consensus views, by their very nature, are never complete and are never 100% accurate. They can't be. But the alternative to producing a consensus view is producing competing reports, each with their own set of biases, each with a different set of assumptions, and each with a different focus and emphasis.

So, when Captain Ed began speculating that there may actually have been operational ties between al Qaeda and Iraq, I was a bit taken aback. If I read him correctly, his reasoning is:

a) the CIA once believed there was an operational tie between Iraq and al Qaeda

b) the 9/11 Report disavows the notion that Iraq helped plan 9/11

c) because the 9/11 Report did not include the Able Danger information, allegedly because the information did not fit in with the Commission's pre-conceived notions, the 9/11 Report cannot be trusted

d) the Iraq-9/11 connection also did not fit in with that pre-conceived notion

e) therefore Iraq may have actually helped plan, in some way, 9/11, and the Commission may have intentionally left out evidence to the contrary in their final report

Here is what Ed basis his speculation--and to his credit, it is only speculation at this point--from a newspaper report that pre-dates 9/11 by six months:

Al-Watan al-Arabi (Paris) reports that two Iraqis were arrested in Germany, charged with spying for Baghdad. The arrests came in the wake of reports that Iraq was reorganizing the external branches of its intelligence service and that it had drawn up a plan to strike at US interests around the world through a network of alliances with extremist fundamentalist parties.

They discovered the two Iraqi agents by chance and uncovered what they considered to be serious indications of cooperation between Iraq and bin Ladin. The matter was considered so important that a special team of CIA and FBI agents was sent to Germany to interrogate the two Iraqi spies.

But the fact that the CIA once thought that Iraq was helping al Qaeda does not mean that Iraq, in fact, was actually helping al Qaeda. And the fact that Iraqi agents were somewhere in Germany at the same time as the Hamburg cell was there does little to help that claim--speculation, even though it is.

The 9/11 Report also explicitly states that there were links between al Qaeda and Iraq. It doesn't try to cover them up. It just doesn't claim that Iraq actually helped al Qaeda plan 9/11. Those early ties can be found on pg. 61 of the Report (see also footnotes 53-55). The ties between the two began as early as 1994. Those contacts continued off and on throughout the 1990s. The report then goes on to state, on pg. 66, that although there were meetings between al Qaeda leaders and Iraqi officials, there is no evidence to suggest that Iraq cooperated in planning the 9/11 attacks. (see also footnote 75).

Indeed, the Report does note on pg. 128 that both Sandy Berger and Richard Clarke--both the center of speculation as to who it may have been who refused to pass the Able Danger information on to the FBI--both once believed that Iraq and al Qaeda were working together in developing WMD and facilitating Sudanese production of chemical weapons. Of course, we now know that the CIA, Berger, and Clarke were wrong about the Shifa plant. We ended up bombing a factory wrongly identified as being a chemical weapons plant based on faulty intelligence.

Intelligence, as it turns out, is a messy business and is often way off the mark.

What's really interesting about the conversation Berger had with Clarke on pg. 128, is the fact that Berger believed there was an Iraq - al Qaeda WMD connection. I guess the Haliburton-Zionist-Neocon conspiracy goes all the way back to the Clinton administration, eh?

In fact, on pg. 134 we have an account of Berger urging President Clinton to bomb al Qaeda positions in Afghanistan but Clarke opposed this because he believed bin Laden might escape, take refuge, and be at the bidding of Saddam Hussein. Leftists moonbats are invited to read the account and then ponder the depths of the conspiracy ;-)

These facts really ought to be brought up next time your Chomsky reading friend tries to bring up Bush's order to Ramsey Clarke to find out if Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11 on Sept. 12th (pg. 334) as evidence that Bush has always been out to invade Iraq, and just used 9/11 as justification.

The fact that it was believed at the highest levels of theh Clinton administration that Iraq was operationally involved with al Qaeda goes a long way in explaining why the CIA was so concerned about Iraqi intelligence officers found in Germany. They were right to suspect that Iraq was up to no good. Iraq was up to no good wherever they went.

More plausible speculative explanation as to why the Iraqis were in Germany might begin to be built on the Oil for Food Scandal, Iraqi efforts to undermine the sanctions regime (especially in a country such as Germany where Left-wing anti-sanctions activism was high), or in any other number of scenarios that we could imagine. Iraqis spies in Germany!?!? That's not exactly what I would call a shocking revelation.

In any event, why would the Commission discuss the alleged Atta meeting with Iraqi agents in Prague (pg. 228)--even going so far as to state the obvious that we cannot disprove that Atta was in Prague (pg. 229--and yet leave out intelligence information linking the Hamburg cell with Iraqi agents? Atta had returned to Germany in January of 2001 so it is possible that the Iraqi agents had been in country for that long and met with Atta, but anything is possible. It is possible that hundreds of Iraqi agents were in Germany that we just don't know about. The real question really should be is it probable that Iraq would somehow involve itself in planning an act as huge as 9/11 against the US? Not so much in my estimation.

The fact that the CIA, other foreign intelligence agencies, and high-ranking members of the Clinton and Bush Administration once believed that there were serious operational ties between Iraq and bin Laden's al Qaeda network does not mean that those beliefs were true. It is understandable, given the tidbits of information and the state of war that existed between the U.S. and Iraq (and al Qaeda, even though we were not generally aware we were at war with the Islamofascist group), that many would believed at one time that Iraq must have had something to with 9/11. To not investigate if such an operational link existed would have been dereliction of duty with the understanding that we had then.

But the limited understanding of the links between al Qaeda and Iraq that we had a few years ago have been somewhat clarified by time. It appears that al Qaeda was willing to make a truce with Iraq, and vice-versa. Such truces would be generally in character for other al Qaeda offers to come to a truce with Western countries that would pull their troops out of Islamic lands. These truces have been offered since long before 9/11 to Western powers to evacuate so that the Mujahidin could begin the important task of ridding Islamic countries of 'apostate regimes' and building the foundations of the future Calipahte.

But coming to a truce with Iraq is quite different than collaborating with Iraq.

Call it a preconceived notion, but I will need to see much more than what Captain Ed offers to change my mind to even begin speculating such and that the 9/11 Commission left such evidence out of the final report. A lot more.

UPDATE on Blog reactions:

I would remind Papadoc, at Pink Flamingo Bar and Grill, that Able Danger reports do not mean that somebody knew that 9/11 was coming down the pipe and that there is no reason to believe that the Bush Administration knew about Able Danger. Yes, governments are that big and, yes, governments are that compartmentalized.

I would also caution A Strata--and this caution is for the entire right side of the blogosphere-- that there did not need to be any one on the Commission who deliberately tried to silence the Able Danger information. Again, that's just the way govenment commissions are. They are messy affairs with tons of information. Some one screwed the pooch, yes.

The big story, in my mind, is not who in the 9/11 Commission chose not to include the Able Danger information. That is a little story.

The big story is who in the Clinton Administration decided to follow policy rather than doing the right thing and passing Atta's name from the DOD to the FBI? That is the story about how a bureaucrat could have inadvertently prevented 9/11, but chose instead to follow procedure.

Rick Moran, of Right Wing Nuthouse, is right that if Captain Ed's speculations turned out to be anything more than idle speculation based on almost no evidence--something I have done myself a time or three in the past, so I'm not saying blogs aren't an appropriate forum for spuculation of this sort (I'm always reminding my colleagues that this isn't a peer reviewed journal)---it would be quite the rejoinder to criticisms of the Iraq war. I highly, highly, highly doubt that though. Then again, I have been wrong in the past and expect to be wrong at some time in the fuutre.

Ace is, well, Ace is Ace.

And here's a free ping that has nothing to do with the above post to Basil, since I know he and Phin are both away in Vegas with far too few singles....

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UPDATE 8/13/05: Captain Ed and I have been going back and forth on this both in the comments section here and through e-mail. The jist of what Ed was saying was that in light of the Able Danger revelations, it is possible that the 9/11 Commission was predisposed to leave out certain bits of evidence that would run contrary to their findings. It is a good observation, one that I would agree with, but on the grounds that that is just par for the course in any type of research that has to sift through tons of data points.

Another valid point he makes is that his earlier post simply calls for an investigation into what the Iraqi agents were doing in Germany--with a bit of speculation thrown in their to boot. Fine by me. The 9/11 Commission Report is a flawed document just like all other government reports. It is not the final word on 9/11 and those that treat it as such fail to grasp the enormity of the task the Commission had under time constraints. I suspect the next twenty years will produce countless dissertations on the subject by Ph.D. candidates, each one contributing a new piece of information to the overall story of the attrocities that took place on that day.

One of the points that I made to Ed in an e-mail was regarding the validity of his source and his interpretation of the story. My objection was simply that an English synopsis of an Arabic newspaper in Germany may not be the most reliable source. Especially when that source claims the CIA was brought to Germany--something that I am sure they could not have known. My experience with Arabic papers is that any person wearing a business suit and working for the U.S. in any peripheral capacity can be accused of being a 'CIA Agent'.

Ed took up the challenge, and lo and behold, one of his army of readers was able to produce a corraborating account. So, according to MSM reports at the time, we have two Iraqi spies caught in Germany. The non-Arabic sources also mention nothing about the CIA or FBI getting involved and also nothing about a plot for Iraq to involve itself with fundamentalist Islamic terror groups to strike at US interests.

Ed is right that it would be nice to know what those Iraqi spies were doing in Germany. I second the motion. I'm not sure that such knowlege would have improved the 9/11 Report in any fundamental way, but it might have.

To imagine, though, that the fact that there were Iraqi agents in Germany somehow may be the missing link connecting Saddam Hussein to 9/11 is grasping at straws, in my opinion. Many of us on the right would like to believe that such a connection existed because we believe that that would somehow bolster support for the war. But the justness or unjustness of the Iraq invasion ultimately does not rest on whether or not the Baathist regime had anything to do with 9/11.

Further, the war we are fighting in Iraq now is a different war than the one we fought to overthrow the Hussein regime. It is not simply another phase of the same conflict, it is a different war. We are fighting different people and we now have different goals. In the invasion of Iraq we had the goal of toppling a hostile government that we had been at war with for a decade. Now, we are fighting Islamist jihadis engaged in a struggle to build a Taliban-like state in the vacuum created by the fall of the Baathists.

The second conflict is directly connected to 9/11. We do not need to look to a German Iraq-al Qaeda connection to see this, we simply need to look at the facts as they exist on the ground right now.

What is the name the jihadis have taken on themselves in Iraq? Al Qaeda. Who have they pledged their allegiance to? Osama bin Laden. The three main insurgent groups in Iraq (al Qaeda, Jaish Ansar al-Sunnah, and The Islamic Army in Iraq) all share the same general political philosophy as the Taliban and Osama bin Laden. All are part of the network of global jihad. They are our enemies and it they who we are fighting in Iraq today.

Thismakes me furious.

How can they officially let their guard down so soon after the London bombings?

Not that what they were doing before was helping anyway. I was in NYC 3 weeks after the first set of bombings, and one of my friends had her bag searched. I'd like to state for the record now that I watched the policemen search bags for 15 minutes.

They searched the bags about 8 women for every man.

UPDATE: Can you or your church group do something about the ACLU? Yes.

Celebrate with us for a moment. You can help us celebrate our ginormous flow of traffic by linking to this post and sending a trackback, thus increasing our traffic even more! In return, we'll issue a fatwa against your infidel butt, you'll get a link in return, and maybe you'll get a hit or two of your own. But make sure it's a good post. Okay, who are we kidding, there are no good posts out there......

Not bad for a Star Wars/South Park themed blog written by a fictional character from a popular syndicated cartoon that started out with a goal of getting 100 hits a day 18 months ago and who's content was deemed so offensively pro-American that Google News kicked us off. The day Google banned us was the day I thought our run with good luck was over. This site, I thought, would go the way of hundreds of thousands of others and be forgotten. I was wrong.

Click for bigger view.

The site was originally intented to simply be a place to poke fun at our enemies and their apologists on the Left. It still is. It turns out, though, that I'm not as funny as I thought. Besides, even I need to take the occasional break from internet porn and stock quotes, so I kept on blogging. The posts that resonate the most with readers tend to be my independent reporting of jihadi activities on the internet and screeds against the hardcore Leftist media. We've also become an outpost of hope for families of American hostages in Iraq. I can live with that.

Thank you, one and all. Thank you regular readers. Thank you regular commenters. Thank you guest posters and co-conspirators. Thank you to linkers, big and small. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

We may not be the best written blog. We may not be the hardest working bloggers. We may not even be that good. We're not even sure why anybody pays us any attention. Whatever it is that keeps you coming back to My Pet Jawa--aka, The Jawa Report--we'll try to keep doing it. We'll do it bigger, longer, and uncut. Now if we could only figure out what it is.

This is the money quote from the New York Times Thursday article about the 9/11 Commission/"Able Danger" scandal [emphasis added]:

Mr. Felzenberg said the commission's staff remained convinced that the information provided by the military officer in the July 2004 briefing was inaccurate in a significant way.

"He wasn't brushed off," Mr. Felzenberg said of the officer. "I'm not aware of anybody being brushed off. The information that he provided us did not mesh with other conclusions that we were drawing" from the commission's investigation.

The "Able Danger" revelations open up several cans of worms that partisan Democrats and their allies in the mainstream media do not want examined.

"Able Danger" puts Mohammed Atta in Prague, meeting with Saddam Hussein's security agents. This contradicts the liberal article of faith that the Bush administration had no reason to fear Saddam's regime. "Able Danger" also brings up questions about the Clinton administration's handling of terrorism and lack of wisdom in compartmentalizing national security information in the name of libertarianism. Most immediately, "Able Danger" could lead to an independent investigation of the actions of some of the more highly partisan members of the 9/11 Commission. The name Jamie Gorelick comes quickly to mind.

That's why it's likely that an effort will be made to convince the public that the "Able Danger" documents are fakes, created by a conspiracy probably masterminded by Karl Rove (who else?). The mainstream media trumpeted the 9/11 Commission's findings as if they were delivered from Mount Olympus, propelling the report into best-seller status. Remember the stampede to implement each and every one of the Commission's recommendations without bothering to debate them? If the MSM can't bury this one they'll try to play it as a conspiracy. Weldon had better have his ducks in a row.

Cross-posted at The Dread Pundit Bluto.

Via Interested Participant. Muslim comic Shazia Mirza:

I'm terrified I'll die a virgin. Not because I'm obsessed with sex. I'm not, I don't think it's that big a deal. But I don't want to get to Paradise and have to sleep with one of the suicide bombers.

Rob on Say Anything makes some valid points about the AP poll that the anti-war movement always cites when they want to make the case that they're now the majority. (h/t: Wizbang) The party affiliation numbers suggest it's not very representative of either the total or the voting population. He might be going a little too far, however, when he states:

The bottom line is, I’m not sure I’m going to be trusting any more of these polls touted by the media. It just doesn’t seem like any of them are really all that representative of the true opinions and feelings of the people.

By the way, to point out a problem that Rob didn't discuss: one thing that I rarely see mentioned in MSM coverage concerning polls that identify approval or disapproval of Bush's handling of the war is any attempt to distinguish between those who feel we're not sufficiently invested and those who feel we're too invested. Believe it or not there are quite a few folks who think Bush is "too liberal," and that we ought to be not only pressing the war against Syria and Iran, but that we also ought to engage against perfidious Arab media. MSM and the anti-war Left always assume that disapproval signifies "too conservative" (warmongering), which is simply not the case.

(Cross-posted by Demosophist to Demosophia, Anticipatory Retaliation and The Jawa Report)

Omar Bakri Muhammed is out of a Lebanese jail. Free, once again, to spout his message of jihad against the West and tolerance for Islamic terrorists. But at least he won't be going back to London to abuse the British socialist-state any time soon.

NYT:

Britain said today that it would bar the London-based Syrian cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed from ever returning to Britain, which granted him political asylum and which has been his home for the last 20 or so years, because his presence "is not conducive to the public good."

Mr. Bakri, known for his incendiary anti-western sermons, left Britain last Saturday, a day after Prime Minister Tony Blair announced new legislative measures against religious leaders preaching violence. He is currently in Beirut, on what he said was to be a vacation.

Mr. Bakri was detained by the Lebanese authorities on Thursday and held for questioning, but released this afternoon after they "didn't find anything against him," according to an official from the Lebanese Ministry of the Interior, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The government's move came a day after it announced that it had seized and planned to deport Abu Qatada, another British-based cleric accused of fomenting violence against the west, along with nine other foreigners accused of posing threats to national security.

Tinfoil alert. I guess since Sheehan's son died in the War that we're not allowed to institutionalize her? The Astute Blogger sends us word about Sheehan's latest moonbat statements:

Cindy says that the protesters will be killed if they stay the night.

“We’re not letting them intimidate us. If we get killed out here, know that
the Secret Service killed us.” [MORE HERE]

Greg Hays is photoblogging the Cindy Sheehan protest from Crawford.

NoDNC and T. Longren have the propaganda angle covered.

Very Small Doses presents a Cindy Sheehan media timeline here.

Point Five, Confederate Yankee, and Bespoke Memetics have the parody angle covered.

PS-Due to an Instalanche, LGF, and Michelle Malkin link all within 48 hours I've been overwhelmed with e-mails. Sorry if I haven't got back to you. I now understand why Glenn Reynolds never returns my phone calls.

This story has apparently inspired at least a few second thoughts about same-sex marriage from libertarian-minded Megan McArdle, posting for Glenn on Instapundit:

Seriously, I find it difficult to phrase an objection to this that does not basically hew to the anti-gay-marriage line: i.e. marriage in the west has traditionally been between two people who want to have sex with each other. The objection to this argument is the same one that pro-gay-marriage forces employed against those who claimed that marriage was for child-rearing: we allow all sorts of people who cannot have sex with each other (certain classes of parapalegics, for example) to wed, so how can you exclude these people on this grounds? I think it's funny, but if this sort of practice becomes more than a stunt, it seems very likely to me to weaken an already ailing institution.

Well that's the point. Now consider the unspoken consequences of that ailing institution: more family disruption leading to greater social upheaval, crime, and perhaps most importantly an IQ deficit created by poor early childhood parenting. Yes same-sex marriage isn't the whole problem, but it can't help. And it could hurt, quite a bit. (See Institute for Marriage and Public Policy)

(Cross-posted by Demosophist to Demosophia, Anticipatory Retaliation and The Jawa Report)

Life News:

Pro-abrotion Sen. Barbara Boxer of California says she will filibuster the nomination of John Roberts to the Supreme Court if he does not say he is in favor of upholding the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized unlimited abortions.

Oddly enough, when I did a Google news search, the only two direct hits I got were Life News and Outside The Beltway. Seems that the rest of the MSM are going to give Boxer a pass on this. Go figure.

(Istanbul, Turkey) I suspect this probably happens much more regularly than is reported.

From the Turkish Daily News:

Turkish police said on Tuesday that two men killed in a blast in an Istanbul flat were Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) members in the process of making a bomb.

From a fundamental Islamist perspective, would a man be given martyr status and 72 virgins if he never completed the suicide mission because he blew himself up while making a bomb? Islamic scholars must surely be searching for an answer.

A commenter (Chris Hanson) on Confederate Yankee asks of the supporters of Cindy Sheehan:

"...what happened to your moral compass?"

This is becoming depressing for me. It was fine, for awhile, just to be on the "right side of history," but as these events have progressed and the original issues about the war have receded-- the stakes in Iraq becoming clearer and more obvious with each passing day--the manner in which the Left has chosen to destroy itself for what a friend of mine appropriately calls a "lust for peace" has surpassed any conception of foolishness that I might have thought possible. The spectacle of this mother placing her grief at the feet of such a self-destructive and destructively inclined movement isn't really resolved by any sort of anger I can manage to whip up against her. It's just plain sad, and sad in a way that transcends the sadness anyone must feel about the death of any individual (including a loved one). It's the sadness of discovering that good intentions not only don't equate to good judgment, but can easily transform into very very bad, even vicious, intentions. Why are we pulling apart, instead of together?

I read the other day about James Wolcott complaining that people like Roger L. Simon have "betrayed the Left" in their support for the war, but to me it seems precisely the opposite. For whatever moral legitimacy I had once ceded to the Left for the sake of its intention to support the misfortunate, or to serve as a brake on unfairness and selfishness, has been replaced by moral and political skepticism. And I don't imagine I'm alone. How could any movement that claims to take such ideals seriously, so seriously and wilfully betray them? How could any movement willing not just to argue for, but to insist on, the moral equivalence between Camp X-Ray and Auschwitz, or who reserves any esteem for our own generation's "Lord Haw Haw", or any one of a dozen or so similar travesties I could recall were I so inclined, ever again be entrusted with the public good? As Marc "Armed Liberal" Danziger asked recently: Why do you so hate the poor? This is a cataclysm. If you don't see that, you're not paying attention.

And just to put the final touch on what has to be yet another disillusioned flower child's naked lunch, it seems to me that George Bush's response to this crowd surging to press Mrs. Sheehan's grief in his face like a cream pie (while her own family recoils in shame) has simply and unambiguously canceled a wave of hatred... with generosity, tolerance and understanding. Which, frankly, makes me feel a little more optimistic about the long term.

STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND

As a youth I left home and family behind
And joined up with a warrior clan
A rite of passage to becoming a man
The bridge between youth and adult I sought to span
Tempting fate through the rigors of a war's deadly grind

Sojurned across the sea with a band of hardy fellows
Strangers we were in a strange and deadly land
Delivered there by fate's uncompromising hand
Customs and tongues of the country an alien brand
Firey coals of deception fanned by a war's great bellows

A cultural clash putting us in a bind
Who was the foe
Was ever hard to know
Mistrust in our hearts did grow
No clear cut lines left us flying blind

Strangers we were in a strange land
Amidst a culture where life had little value
Where e'en the children were sacrificed on cue
Hatred within the mind was stirred like simmering stew
A culture so alien I couldn't understand

But I did my duty, served my tour
Then hung around for a little more
Not seeing the changes taking place at the core
Tripped on the threshold falling flat on my face upon the floor
Thence came the day I was ushered out the door

Returning home I found the land had changed
'Twas not the simple land of my father's but one of chaos
Strident voices and harsh words honed a keen sense of loss
Nerves now raw, trust was a coin toss
With former friends I was now estranged

Yea though I was home, the homeland was gone
All around I heard the littany of criticism and reprimand
The chanting crowds, their phrases canned
A firey wrath in my soul was fanned
Still a stranger in a strange and unfamiliar land
In my mind, for the homeland, I travel ever on

Roger D. (Hoagie) Hogan
4-28-2000

(Cross-posted by Demosophist to Demosophia, Anticipatory Retaliation and The Jawa Report)

August 11, 2005

Considering this ad was pretty much a full-fledged lie it only makes sense that the venomous NARAL is withdrawing it.

Abortion Rights Group Withdraws Roberts Ad (AP):

WASHINGTON - After a week of protests by conservatives, an abortion rights group said Thursday night it is withdrawing a television advertisement linking Supreme Court nominee John Roberts to violent anti-abortion activists.

"We regret that many people have misconstrued our recent advertisement about Mr. Roberts' record," said Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America.

"Unfortunately, the debate over that advertisement has become a distraction from the serious discussion we hoped to have with the American public," she said in a letter Thursday to Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., who had urged the group to withdraw the ad.

Serious discussion? The ad said that Judge Roberts was pro-violence. NARAL was serious about that?

Specter, himself an abortion-rights supporter as well as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee that will question Roberts next month, earlier Thursday had called the ad "blatantly untrue and unfair."

[...]

The original ad has been airing on broadcast television in Maine and Rhode Island and on CNN.

[...]

Conservatives and Roberts supporters have been calling all week for NARAL to pull the ad.

NARAL had planned a $500,000 campaign to show the ad for two weeks.

"This ad grossly distorts the record of John Roberts from start to finish," said former Judiciary Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. "It has only one goal: to associate John Roberts with violent extremists."

Senate Democrats have not taken a position on the ad.

When was the last time Democrats stood up for decency?

Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the Judiciary Committee's top Democrat, told The Associated Press that ads for and against Roberts won't sway senators weighing the confirmation.

[...]

Basically, NARAL was probably on the verge of a lawsuit and decided to pull it. Also, I'm sure a few liberals chimed in and told NARAL that the ad wasn't going to do any good.

Originally Posted at Conservative Thinking

Should we be following the example of the Brits and deporting foreign nationals that support jihad? Steve Chapman says no. Stephen Green the Vodkapundit says yes. Dale Franks of the QandO blog agrees, and takes Chapman to task. And Goldstein agrees. All four are important essays. Read them all.

Which side is right, though?

We are at war. What is lawful action in a time of peace is defferent in a time of war. Hobbes made the interesting and important observaton that war consisteth not in battle only, or the act of fighting, but in a tract of time, wherein the will to contend by battle is sufficiently known and nature of war consisteth not in actual fighting, but in the known disposition thereto during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary.

What Hobbes meant by that was that while we usually think of war as taking place in a physical location, it is much more accurate to think of war as taking place in a time frame. World War II happened between 1939 - 1945. It was a period of time, not a single location.

It may seem like an unimportant and abstract distinction. What does it matter whether or not a 'state of war' exists everywhere or only in Iraq? But distinctions, even when they are only made by assumption, are absolutely critical to the way we think. The distinction between war and peace is very crucial, because moral actions depend on context. If the context is peace, then moral beings are compelled by conscience to behave in one way. If the context is war, then the same moral being must act in another way.

The war that we are in sets the context by which our actions should be judged acceptable or unacceptable.

Normally, in times of peace, we allow a great deal of dissent. In fact, our tolerance for dissent is one of the hallmarks of Western liberalism. However much we value dissent, though, we never allow absolute dissent. Violent revolution, after all, is a form of political dissent and protest. Even in times of peace we do not tolerate that kind of dissent. In times of war, however, that tolerance must of necessity be much more limited.

Although I love the right to speak and cherish the liberty of the press, such liberty is meaningless without life. All of my rights and liberties are secondary to the need to protect my life. Governments are not founded to protect speech, rather, governments are instituted to protect life.

Free speech is an instrumental value--or it is a means to an end. We want freedom of speech and press because these things are necessary to a functioning democracy. However, a functioning democracy is secondary to some amount of order so that neighbors do not settle disputes on their own--a state of War according to Hobbes and an inconvenient state of Nature according to Locke.

When the secondary value of free speech conflicts with the primary value of protecting life, the secondary must be discarded. We ought not discard such things lightly, but sometimes they must be sacrificed. We do not let the body die to save the limb.

In a state of war, people die. In a state of peace, it is tacitly understood that you can say anything so long as your words are not a "clear and present danger" (See Schenck v. United States, 1919). Holmes' maxim seems to me a simple attempt at putting to words what we all kind of know deep down: only sticks and stones may break your bones, but words sometimes do hurt you.

You cannot say something that will incite someone to kill me. In a state of peace, people aren't normally incited to murder. In fact, yelling fire in a crowded theater rarely yields a riot. However, change the context and the result changes. In a state of war since some amount of anarchy is already present and there is an understanding that it is o.k. to kill, then the likelihood for words to lead to death is greatly multiplied.

Chapman's position is the kind of dangerous pre-9/11 absolutism that does not distinguish between war and peace. It sees all speech as an absolute. It relies on a maxim without context, an ideal without any basis in reality.

The context of war also affects the way that we treat non-citizen guests in our country. In times of peace, we are very tolerant of the kinds of political views that immigrants bring with them. This is why Germany had an active fifth column in the United States known as the German-American Bund. This group worked right up until the start of hostilities between the U.S. and Germany. After the start of the war, though, the group was outlawed. It's leaders, all American citizens, were rounded up and put into internment camps.

What was legal and acceptable behavior changed in a single day. On one day crying heil Hitler was Constitutionally protected speach, on the next it was an act of treason. War does that.

I am not advocating here that we round up American citizens and put them into internment camps. Just as war, in general, sets the overall context of moral action, a specific war sets the specific context of specific moral actions. That is just another way of saying, it was probably the right thing to do in that war, but it does not seem like the right thing to do in this war.

But just because we do not need to go to the lengths that the World War II generation went to, does not mean that we can act as if the war is over there and not here. We are in a state of war. War is not a place, it is a state of being.

The state of war is the medium in which all of our lives are lived. We are the fish, it is the water. All of our actions must be constructed with this in mind. We cannot escape the state of war by somehow denying we are in it. Can the fish suddenly sprout lungs and breathe simply because it does not recognize that his environment is water?

So, what should we be doing differently now that we are in a state of war?

Let's begin by adopting Blair's deportation policies here. If you are a foreign national, who believes in the adoption of sharia law, you are invited to leave. Thanks for the visit, now go home.

Goldstein makes this cogent proposal:

The Bush Administration should take note and begin drawing up aggressive plans of its own to clamp down on Wahhabi mosques and Islamic Centers preaching jihad and inciting violence against the West. There is simply no reason—including our near-religious commitment to the First Amendment, which allows for restrictions against incitement—to allow avowed enemies, who have formally declared war on the US, to abuse our freedoms as a way to operate without scrutiny in our midst.

Presently, U.S. law forbids citizenship being granted to any one who has membership in the Communist Party or any other totalitarian organization. Certainly, most Islamist political movements count as totalitarian, since they seek to replace democratic governance with absolutist Sharia law. Why do we allow foreigners with ties to these Islamists movements in our countries, if the law already excludes them from becoming citizens?

The war we are engaged in is a war of ideas. Why should we tolerate those who espouse the ideas of our enemies?

Such tolerance might be acceptable in a time of peace, when abstract ideas are not presumed to lead to acts of aggression, but in a time of war things change.

We are fighting a war here. Will somebody please remind civil-libertarians about that?

Cindy Sheehan gives us a shout-out:

Cindy Sheehan, the woman whose soldier son was killed in Iraq and who is now camping by a road in Crawford, Texas demanding a meeting with President Bush, on Wednesday thanked a group of antiwar bloggers for supporting her, saying that without the Internet, America would be a "fascist state."

"This is something that can't be ignored," Sheehan said during a conference call with bloggers representing sites like democrats.com, codepink4peace.org, and crooksandliars.com. "They can't ignore us, and they can't put us down. Thank God for the Internet, or we wouldn't know anything, and we would already be a fascist state."

"Our government is run by one party, every level," Sheehan continued, "and the mainstream media is a propaganda tool for the government." Sheehan also called the 2004 presidential election "the election, quote-unquote, that happened in November."

They just *sob* grow up so fast.

Omar Bakri, the radical British imam who fled that country on news that he was top on the list of pro-terror clerics to face treason charges, has been arrested in Lebanon. The Independent:

The Islamic extremist cleric who fled Britain at the weekend, Omar Bakri Mohammed, was arrested by security forces in Beirut today.

Lebanese security officials refused to say when and where Bakri was arrested.

Prosecutors and police in Britain are considering whether to bring terror-related charges against the so-called "Tottenham Ayatollah".

It was unclear whether the arrest was linked with his activities in the UK.

What do all of these people have in common? Drudge:

The Sheehan Family lost our beloved Casey in the Iraq War and we have been silently, respectfully grieving. We do not agree with the political motivations and publicity tactics of Cindy Sheehan. She now appears to be promoting her own personal agenda and notoriety at the the expense of her son's good name and reputation. The rest of the Sheehan Family supports the troops, our country, and our President, silently, with prayer and respect.

The letter came from Cheri Quarterolo, a regular listener of KSFO Radio. Cheri is Casey Sheehan's Aunt and godmother. I have confirmed that the letter represents the entire Sheehan side of Casey's family.

Many of the relatives do not want their names made public, and will not be making further statements. But Mrs. Quarterolo confirms that Cindy's actions have been extremely hurtful. "We're coming unglued. We can't walk down the street without people stopping us and telling us that they agree with Cindy. We do not."

John Hawkins, of Right Wing News, ranks right-wing bloggers' favorite, er, right-wingers here. Since I was one of the bloggers polled by John Hawkins, I thought I'd share with you my personal unranked list of favorite people on the right. I chose my favs late at night, with little caffeine in me, and on an empty stomach--that explains why that guy is on the list.

Dennis Prager
Victor Davis Hanson
Charles Johnson
Larry Elder
Ronald Bailey
Julian Sanchez
William F. Buckley
Dennis Miller
Charles Krauthammer
Matt Stone
Trey Parker
Ace (of Ace o spades headquarters)

By now, most of the readers of The Jawa Report have heard of Able Danger. According to The New York Times, the secret military intelligence team known as Able Danger, compiled a dossier on four of the nineteen 9/11 suspects in 2000--including the mastermind, Mohammed Atta. The team recommended that the information be shared with the FBI and that the suspected terrorists be deported. Unfortunately, that information was not shared. In fact, a doctrine first developed in the Carter administration and later extended by a clarification made by Clinton Administration official, and later 9/11 Commissioner, Jamie Gorelick, that put a 'wall' between intelligence operations and police activities.

I do not blame the Clinton Administration for 9/11, nor do I think it was preventable in any meaningful way, but the so-called Able Danger revelations do raise some interesting issues.

The first is the most obvious, and that is the silliness of ever erecting a barrier between law-enforcement and intelligence agencies. In hindsight this was stupid. Some things are so stupid, though, that to need hindsight to see their stupidity one must first find a group of morons, take out the brightest of the bunch, and then find the dullest bulb in the pack. That it was enacted by Democratic Congress intent on reeling in the perceived excesses of the CIA is no excuse for this piece of legislation. Just. Plain. Dumb.

But it also raises another important question: Who was it that refused to turn over the Able Danger documents to the FBI?

I do not personally blame the individual who refused to turn over Atta and his al Qaeda co-conspirators to the FBI. That is, it's not their fault for being a brainless bureaucrat. They were just following policy. But policy or no, there was an individual who had to look at the documents and make a decision not to share this intelligence with those that could do something about it. Who was this person who made the decision to follow policy?

What exactly happened here? From The AP:

because of concerns about pursuing information on "U.S. persons" — a legal term that includes U.S. citizens as well as foreigners admitted to the country for permanent residence — Special Operations Command did not provide the Army information to the FBI. It is unclear whether the Army provided the information to anyone else.

Yesterday, Congressman Weldon, the man behind the revelations about Able Danger, said this to Wolf Blitzer on CNN--(any one have a direct link to the transcript?):

What we now know is that lawyers within the administration, we don't know whether they were DOD lawyers or White House lawyers, lawyers within the administration told the Special Forces folks three times, you cannot share this information with the FBI. They even put stickies over top of the faces of Mohammed Atta saying they're here legally, they have green cards, you can't give anything to the FBI. The second reason they gave them was, were concerned about the political fallout that occurred after Waco so we didn't want Special Forces command giving information of this type to the FBI. That stopped it dead in its tracks.

I want the world to see what a true automaton looks like. A robot in flesh. Hell, if there was a policy in place why have human discretion at all? Why not just send these types of reports through some sort of computer firewall if no human discretion is needed? Probably save us a lot of money, eh?

So, who was the idiot?

One name comes immediately to mind because he was the point man for the military--and a trained lawyer.

Sandy Berger.

Ok, maybe it wasn't Berger, but wouldn't it be one of his staff lawyers that would funnel communications between the DOD and Justice Department? The truth is, it's probably very unlikely that any top administration officials ever heard about this. The modern White House is a caggle of lawyers, aides, and other hangers-on who's soul job it is to decide what information, among the reems of pages produced daily, get passed on to their various bosses. Little of this type of material ever gets seen. It's no ones fault, it's just the way it is.
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Update inserted into post: Juliette Ochieng, a.ka. Baldilocks, e-mailed me with her post. In it, she notes a third NYT story that places the individual who decided to follow the 'wall' policy squarely in the DOD:

[W]eldon said Pentagon lawyers rejected the recommendation because they said Atta and the others were in the country legally, so information on them could not be shared with law enforcement.

Back to original post
--------------------
Earlier today, NEIN released an editorial wherein they speculate, clumsily, that the documents Sandy Berger has admitted to stealing were somehow related to the Able Danger documents.

Bill at From the Swamp makes the same connection: What was in those documents Sandy Berger was stuffing down his pants?

Perhaps the best speculative case made against Berger was done by AJStrata yesterday (hat tip to Jim Lynch for the e-mail). In it, he develops a timeline which places Burger at the center of anti-al Qaeda efforts around the same time as the Able Danger memo would have appeared.

I would add this, that the documents that Berger has admitted to stealing and destroying were said by him to have been in regards to preparing remarks for the 9/11 Commission on the 1999 al Qaeda Millennium bombing attempts. This is what he said to the 9/11 Commission:

In late 1999, as we approached the Millennium celebrations, the CIA warned of five to fifteen plots against American targets. This was the most serious threat spike of our time in office. My judgment was that it required ongoing attention at the highest levels of government. Accordingly, I convened national security principals, including the Director of Central Intelligence, the Attorney General, and top FBI, State and Defense officials at the White House virtually every single day for a month. I am convinced that our sustained attention and the rigorous actions that resulted prevented significant losses of life.

And so now we come back to the National Archives -- and October 2003. One of Sandy Berger's last visits to the Archives where he took highly classified material out the door with him was in October 2003, around the time that the Commission first heard about Able Danger. Does this start to sound just a little too convenient and coincidental?

But in any event, Berger's office, at least in late 1999 and probably until he left office in early 2001, seems to be the go-between place for various agencies intent on foiling al Qaeda plots in the U.S. If we are looking for a face to put on the idiot who decided that it would be better to follow 'policy' rather than break it--just months after a plot to blow up LAX by al Qaeda was accidentally disrupted--I would suggest beginning an investigation there.

Just remember, this is a blog and all of this is highly speculative. I welcome further information that would clarify or disprove this speculation.

----
UPDATE: Judy e-mails me with this GSN report, which seems like it might be important for adding credibility to the story, if not the Berger angle:

http://www.gsnmagazine.com/aug_05/dod_lawyers.html

-----

Big shout out to all of you who e-mailed me about this and helped me find source material. Thanks.

Others:

Dr. Sanity sets up a timeline of events starting with the 9/11 Commission running to the Able Danger revelations here.

Lawhawk poses a series of unanswered and interesting questions here. One of which seems important, and one that I haven't seen other bloggers on the right asking is this, how Weldon came to know this information. I haven't had time to check the Leftosphere about this, but I am sure it is a question that they are asking--and a legitimate one at that. [Update] Baldilocks tracks down some additional sources answer the question. It looks like it was the soldiers involved in Able Danger who gave the information to Weldon.

The Dread Pundit Bluto notes that the idiots over at the ACLU still support the 'wall' doctrine. Inconcievable!

Captain Ed notes this:

American MI only gets mentioned in their recommendations and not in the analysis of how the US failed to detect the 9/11 plot before its successful conclusion. In retrospect, that gaping hole in analysis seems highly odd, almost as if the 9/11 Commission never bothered to ask the Pentagon about its intelligence missions -- or simply disregarded evidence relating to it.

Another update: Strata-sphere also thinks the investigation should include Richard Clarke.

Jawa Report contributor and Paduan Learner, Trader Rob of Exposing the Left, digs up this usenet post from Cindy Sheehan:

Am I emotional? Yes, my first born was murdered. Am I angry? Yes, he was killed for lies and for a PNAC Neo-Con agenda to benefit Israel. My son joined the Army to protect America, not Israel. Am I stupid? No, I know full-well that my son, my family, this nation, and this world were betrayed by a George Bush who was influenced by the neo-con PNAC agenda after 9/11. [READ THE REST]

UPDATE: Via Rob at Say Anything, I learn that Phil Hendrie weighs in on Sheehan.

UPDATE II, 8/11: A reader sends this transcript from a recording of a Sheehan speech he attended:

"It was the unstated threat. Iraq wasn't going to attack America or nuke America. But Iraq was a threat -- to Israel. That was the real threat and had been for fifteen years. But for the US government this was the threat that couldn't speak its name. Europe doesn't care much about that threat. And the US government didn't think they should lean too much on it, because going to war to protect Israel wouldn't be popular.

I suspect we may update this post later. Call it a hunch.

UPDATE 8/12: From my latest post:

Cindy says that the protesters will be killed if they stay the night.

“We’re not letting them intimidate us. If we get killed out here, know that
the Secret Service killed us.”

For those of you who may be wondering, I’ve been pointedly ignoring the comments that Bush made the other day about intelligent design and evolution. However, over the past few days, I’ve seen a LOT of conservatives writing about it. I’m sure there are a lot of liberals writing about it as well, but I don’t read them.

It seems that nearly everyone who is talking about this issue falls into one of two camps. There is a group that thinks that there is a conflict between intelligent design and evolution and another group who thinks that they could co-exist and be taught side-by-side. However, I propose with this post to start a third group. As far as I know, this group consists solely of me, so I’m probably so far off base with this that it’s not even funny. However, this is my proposal.

Neither.

That’s right. Neither of these two methods should be taught as fact in any school system. Here’s why:

No matter how you slice it, the theory of intelligent design, at its core, is based on God as the creator of the universe. Granted, some ID’ers may not call Him the God of Christian and Jewish faith, but God, in whatever guise you wish to place him HAS to be at the core of any ID argument. That’s kind of the whole point of ID. And with that in mind, it has no place in our school system. I am NOT a separationist. I do not believe that the Constitution has any phrase or clause that requires the “separation of church and state.” I believe that that is a completely misrepresented and misused statement from a private letter that has been twisted out of all proportion. However, separation notwithstanding, religion is a big deal to me, and as such, I am VERY particular with whom I place my children’s teaching. Just as you wouldn’t want a home economics teacher teaching your son’s Calculus class, I don’t want a biology teacher (and possible Hindu, Muslim, insert-the-name-of-your-alternate-faith-here) teaching my child about religion. And if they were teaching ID, then that is exactly what they would be teaching.

However, evolution being taught as fact within the school system is a complete and total farce. Before all the scientists out there have an apoplexy, let me explain.

The theory of micro-evolution describes minor changes that can happen to a species in order for it to adapt to survive within a current climate. This includes body hair getting thicker and males of the species getting stronger so they can protect their families. Yes, this happens. We see it in different breeds of dogs and cats. We see it in various changes in humans and other species.

What we do not see are these amazing “leaps” of evolution. Or at least any evidence of them. There are large gaps between similar species, but no indication that there was ever anything alive to fill in those gaps. What’s more is that the theory of evolution itself, when applied over too broad an area simply falls apart. After all, according to this theory, the complex machine that is a human being (or an ape, or a dog, or cat, etc) developed in full, by complete random chance from a single celled organism. Now, if nothing else about this theory presents any problems for you, consider the fact of sexual reproduction. Single celled organisms reproduce asexually by splitting. Even if you accept the fact that a large number of these asexually reproducing cells could randomly cluster together and produce some sort of higher life form, you would have to accept the fact that two different clusters of cells did this at the exact same time and one of them produced male organs and one produced female organs. If they didn’t happen at the exact same time, and produce two perfectly working sets of reproductive organs, which they would instinctively know how to use, then that new species would immediately die out. How is this possibly any less of a leap of faith than asking you to believe in God?

Then, of course, there’s the ever-popular question “If man descended from apes, why are there still apes?” Evolution still just has too many unanswered questions to be taken as hard scientific fact and taught to our children as the definitive way that the world was created.

So what should they be taught? They should be taught that we don’t know. They should be taught that there are two schools of thought, but we, as humans do not currently possess the capability to know exactly what happened at the beginning of the world. We can make intelligent guesses, but they should be labeled as such. But as long as lies are taught as scientific fact, I feel that we are doing a grave disservice to our children.

Bet that headline got your attention. All right, my last long, long word on this for a while and we can go back to posting on GWOT stuff. Rusty, thanks for your indulgence.

You can't be a libertarian and support tyranny, nor can you support slavery. If all men are created equal before God, then slavery is an abomination and no man is naturally the subject of any other. A slave, or a subject, may have his own will, but he is not free to exercise it except insofar as it comports with his master's.

Likewise an addict may have a reason most of the time, and a complex inner life, but he is in the end a slave to those who will provide him with the means to satisfy his addiction. The worst cases--and you can spare me the accounts of the white collar friends of yours who appear to sail through life without a care snorting and shooting up everything in the Harrison Act--I said the worst cases, and there are far too many of them--will kill and rob and mortgage their house and blow the baby's college fund and sell their bodies to satisfy their masters. An addict, or for that matter someone tripping or stoned, is not a free man. In many cases, you can't even commit murder when you're high--under the law your "mental defect" can prevent you from reaching the mental state required to form the mens rea for intentional homicide.

(As an aside, some people in the trackbacks or comments to this discussion have argued that we should nationalize the distribution of narcotics, so addicts would no longer be enslaved to criminals. But then they are still enslaved to and utterly dependent on the government, and that, my friends, is still tyranny.)

That's not just me talking. That idea was the impetus for the anti-opium movement back in the 19th century, before the progressive-era doctrines of government improving human nature controlled the discourse. When you free someone from a monkey on his back, you liberate him just as surely as if you'd shattered his chains with a chisel.

Liberty is the province of reasonable men. Someone who is insane or severely mentally handicapped is not afforded the same degree of liberty as everyone else. Their reason isn't sufficiently unencumbered. Children, likewise, can't buy guns and drive cars. They're not up to it. The self control, the planning and maturity, just aren't there. We do this not just out of compassion for the children who might wreck their cars or shoot someone accidentally. We do it because a world where all the children are armed and the mental defectives run the government just isn't livable for anyone. And likewise for drug addicts. Our government is designed to be run by reasonable men, not by a cadre of stoners and tweakers and junkies. Everyone's liberty is at risk in such a regime.

Now I expect you'll begin to pick apart what I said by pointing to alcohol. You'll say alcohol is worse than pot, therefore we should legalize the weed. I don't concede that point at all, but let's say for a second you're right. Let's say legalized alcohol creates much more of a societal problem than does legalized cheeba. In fact we'll quantify it: Legalized alcohol costs us X units of societal headache, and legalized hoochie weed costs us only X-1. If we're rational and our preferences are transitive, shouldn't we free the herb if we're willing to accept the consequences of legal booze?

Let me answer that distinction by telling you a story about my car, below.

When we bought our car we had a choice to make. We could get a sun roof or a CD player. The sun roof was more expensive than the CD player. I wanted the CD player, my wife wanted the sun roof. So we, um, compromised, and got the sun roof.

You could argue that, geez, See-Dubya, if y'all were willing to spring for the more expensive sun roof (X), you should also have been willing to pay the lesser amount for the CD player (X-1).

But no; then we would have needed to pay 2X-1 instead of just X. And that's almost twice as much! We could maybe have swung that, but it would have been tight. In other words, we made a prudential calculation, based on our finite resources. It's not just a matter of transitive preferences, it's a matter of compounding costs.

Back to the dope. It's not a good argument to say "booze is worse than dope, therefore we should legalize dope." That way we bear the costs of both. Unless you're saying that we should prohibit booze and legalize dope, trading x for x-1, (assuming it's just that simple) and I don't think anyone is really saying that again.

Oh, but I'm not done yet. I'm being logically inconsistent here. If I were consistent I really ought to prefer incurring a cost of X-1 to X. Therefore our drug priorities, just like my wife wanting that sunroof, are logically inconsistent.

To which I say, so the f--- what?

We live in a Republic, homey. We do not live in a tyranny of logic, where egghead sophisters, calculators, and oeconomists decide how we will allocate every resource. The whole French Revolution--and other totalitarian ideologies since then-- centered around subverting life to reason in every aspect, ironing out any inconsistencies and making everything intellectually elegant. (Substitute "The Quran" for "Reason" and you have Islamofascism as well.)Instead, questions of policy are put up to a vote and we work out a messy, often illogical, always imperfect, series of compromises and prudential agreements. Our laws and standards are organic and grow out of traditions, suspicions, instincts, religions, aesthetics, and all kinds of weird things, and the good ones stick around. That's popular government. We're free to take the X instead of X-1.

You can't ban it all, of coursse, nor do we really want to. We can pick and choose among addictive substances--coffee and tobacco and liquor we'll allow, ritalin and percodan we'll allow for medical use but regulate pretty tightly, pot and heroin and meth, nope. Wouldn't-be-prudent. Not worth it. We'll tolerate a little drunkenness and alcoholism, a little edginess from caffeine, lung cancer and stained teeth from tobacco, but not the burned-out stoner or the psychotic meth nut. Just like the sun roof, that's the package of costs we're willing to incur and enforce. But just because we're willing to tolerate that much addiction, hallucination, and drug-induced unreasonableness , doesn't mean that we ought to tolerate more.

UPDATE: Don't forget to read the earlier discussion which inspired this post.

See-Dub's Legalize Crank, says NYT columnist

And Rusty's post which argues the libertarian position against for the legalization of drugs Why Everybody is Wrong About The Drug War.

August 10, 2005

Q: Who would win in a gunfight? An Iraq War supporter or an Iraq War opponent.

A: An Iraq war supporter, of course. What kind of an idiot would pull a gun on an Iraq war supporter? Oh, this guy.

A quarrel between two firearms vendors at a Floyd County flea market on Thursday allegedly led both men -- described as "good friends" -- to draw guns. Douglas Moore, 65, of Martin, who supports the war, shot and killed Harold Wayne Smith, 56, of Manchester, who opposed it, investigators said.

Whoa. Check this out from KGO:

The FBI is now drawing a link between their terror investigation in Lodi and Osama bin Laden. The government believes al Qaeda was trying to set up a school in Lodi to recruit terrorists.

The accusations from the FBI came Tuesday morning during an immigration hearing for Shabbir Ahmed. He's the 39-year-old religious leader of the Lodi mosque -- one of five men connected to the mosque that have been arrested on immigration charges. Today the government drew links to all five and then to Osama bin Laden.

The FBI says it has information that two of the religious leaders at this Lodi mosque were acting as intermediaries for Osama bin Laden....

Lawyers for the government would not be interviewed, neither would the FBI. But in court today the lead agent said they have secretly taped conversations between several of the five men arrested in Lodi....

The government believes they wanted to set up a branch of a religious school that has in the past been associated with terrorists including 9/11 leader Muhammed Atta.

UPDATE: California Mafia has been following the case closely. Their post on the bail hearing is here, including the name of the connection between the Lodi ring and al Qaeda.

Background on the Lodi case here, here, here, here, here, and here.

You might also want to read: A Modest Proposal to Congress:
End assylum for Islamsit exiles and make "religious worker" visas predicated on reciprocity of host nations

I'm trying to figure out the whole Able Danger/we-knew- about- Atta- being- an- al- Qaeda- member- a- year- before- 9/11 thing. If you have a post about it, or know of a good summary, I'd appreciate it if you e-mailed it to me. A lot of discussion about this, but I'm not sure where to begin. Thanks.

...are in order to Dave Gullyborg on reaching his 100,000 visits mark. If you're going to celebrate, this is the way to do it.

Rock out to the Muslim Rock at this website (Be sure to turn up your volume):

Put a bomb in your shoe, lets put a bomb in your shoe, why don't you be a real cool Muslim fighter, and put a bomb in your shoe and blow awayaaa. Yeah, you'll get seventeen new virgins,at Muhammed's bordello in the sky, and you'll get wine women and song. So be a real cool Muslim fighter, but don't forget your lighter, and blow yourself awayaaa ... to Muhammed's bordello in the sky.

I hope fellow bloggers and their readers will help to pass this around and add some perspective to this 'Muslim thing' that's become a dark plague on our planet. I'm fed up hearing about 'Islam' -I say enough already about this Islam sensitivity garbage!

Cross posted by Hyscience

Every one that I admire is wrong about the drug war. And I mean every one.

The Libertarians I hang around with try to pretend that drugs aren't all that bad. The usual drug that is called not bad is Marijuana. Marijuana is not bad, it--and by inference other drugs--ought to be legalized.

The Rightists I know and admire tend to over-exaggerate the consequences of drug use. Drugs are not only not bad, they are really really bad.

The Leftists I know seem to be a mixed bag on this. Some of them mimmicking the Libertarian position, others of them mimmicking the Rightist position. Only, instead of spending my money on jail cells for stupid drug users they want to spend my money on rehab for stupid drug users. And on needles. And on publicly funded medical marijuana. And on rehab, again.....

The worst arguments I hear are the back and forth medical statistics. This drug is less risky than tobacco. Users of that drug may experience sudden heart failure. Blah blah blah.

Let me tell you where I stand. Drugs are bad, mmmkay. The biggest problem with drugs are not their long-term effects, but their near term effects. That is, people do things under the influence of drugs that they normally wouldn't do. I have a problem with that.

But, just because drugs are bad does not mean that they should be illegal. Stupid things that harm others ought to be illegal, not stupid things that harm yourself. And if the worst bads associated with drugs are when you do stupid things to others, then, well, we already have laws to cover those.

DUI, child abuse, etc.--all presently illegal, and rightly so.

The most common bads associated with drug use are not illegal nor should they be. Work absenteeism, poor relationship skills, and the most common one--stupid judgement in sexual relations--are all rightfully legal.

Oh, man, I was so wasted that I totally don't remember what happened with that chick from the rave last night.....

If you knock some strange chick up in a moment of ecstasy inspired passion, it's your problem. I don't want to send you to jail, I don't want to send you to rehab, I'm not going to say that what you are doing is okay- it's not okay. It's just not my problem.

If you get AIDS because you're a geek and playing catcher is the only way you can afford your next hit, I'm sorry, really really sorry, but how is that my or the government's problem.

Yeah, call me heartless. Life is a bitch. And so is personal responsibility.

Drug use is bad. The only thing worse than letting people take drugs, that I can think of, is forcing people to do the right thing and not take drugs.

A slave is not good or bad because his actions are not his choice. People can only be moral when they choose to do the right thing, and a system of government that forces people to be good ceases to be the serveant of the people and instead becomes their master.

I am for the legalization of drugs not because I am for drug use, but because I am for moral government.

-------------

Bsure to read fellow Jawa author See-Dub's rejoinder to Rusty Shackleford in his post The Libertarian Case for Drug Control

--------------

Originally, I was going to let this post by See Dub who is a welcome addition here at My Pet Jawa, pass. As Ace says in his post, "But as Kurt Vonnegut said, arguing against anti-drug laws is like arguing against glaciers. Pointless. There will always be glaciers." So, why argue?

We had argued this one before, if you don't recall. I understand his sentiment and admire where he is coming from. We'll just have to disagree on this one.

See Dub links to this rant by Jeff at The Shape of Days. A+ rant. I agree that drugs are bad. Really bad. I would use most of those same 'sailor words' if I was talking to a loved one who was on, say, Meth. And if it were my kids, I might just 'drag them out into the streets and beat some sense into them'. That's a figure of speach, by the way. I just don't believe it is the moral responsibility of the taxpayer to intervene in my family's affairs.

But the real reason I chose to sit down with this one is that Ace, Bill from INDC and Jeff Goldstein link See Dubs post. I admire Ace, Bill and Jeff, and understand that we share much of the same audience so I just wanted to clarify to readers that Rusty's opinion of the drug war is different than See Dubs.
-------
UPDATE: Check the links below for further debate. Thanks to The Unabrewer, who I do admire, for this:

Libertarian attitude = Glenn Reynolds
Libertine attitude = Andrew Sullivan

The truth is, though, that if you ever get together with a bunch of Libertarians--I mean, the kind that actually belong to the party or are part of the larger libertarian think tank network--these guys invariably give the libertine argument for legalization rather than the libertarian one. I actually almost ran for Congress as a Libertarian. When I called the state chair he was so excited to know that there was some one else in the state interested in 'the Libertarian lifestyle'.

Libertarian lifestyle? I'm afraid that many who don't take political philosophy seriously, decide therr political ideology based on something like the following:

I like drugs, but not guns: I'm a Democrat.
I like drugs and guns: I'm a Libertarian.
I don't like drugs, but I like guns: I'm a Republican.

I know that's sad, but my experience has been that it is largely true.

Another Update: Welcome Instapundit reader. Thanks to Michael Totten sitting in at the Puppy Blender for the link. [super-secret-insider note to Totten: We're even steven man. But, and I mean this from the bottom of my heart, MORE HOT PROTEST BABES PLEASE! ]

It would be nice if Bush had half the powers that the morons at the Democratic Underground credited him with. Heck, he could have the Iraq war over with, balance the budget, end world hunger and create equal rights for everyone. Or, he could just jam your cell phone so you can't conduct an interview with a liberal freak Air America talk show host.

H/T Confederate Yankee

Checking out Ace of Spades HQ the other day, I came across a link to the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Model Search, Saudi Arabia Edition. As much naysaying that Ace does about this obvious pandering to the prurient interests of the umma, I must say that something about these photos really did it for me. Below is my brief review of SI Model Search, Saudi Arabia.

This first picture, I found interesting.

Interesting.

Very interesting.

And then suddenly I lost interest.

Confusion. Guilt. Shame.....

If it wasn't so tragic, it would be funny. Let's remember that it is the Palestinian Authority that controls Gaza. I use control loosely in this context, since armed gangs of thugs and terrorists seem to roam freely and without fear of reprisal--except by other armed gangs of thugs and terrorists who have deep ideological differences over whether the future Palestinian state should be a Syria-like secular dictatorship, an Iran-like theocratic police state, or a Taliban-like populist theocracy ruled by local shura councils.

Pr0n. Stock Quotes. Conspiracy theories. Now good causes? Is there anything the internet can't do?

Please click the banner below. If you are a blogger please link it. Doing so will raise the profile of the American Cancer Ablation Center. Chris Muir, the cartoonist behind Day by Day and friend of the blogosphere has asked that we pitch in. His sister is being treated at the Center. Thanks to Beth for bringing this to our attention.

More good being done? Yes. John and Beth Donovan are attempting to raise money for The Soldier's Angels Project Valour IT. The Project provides voice-controlled software and laptop computers to wounded veterans who have lost hand control. Donate by going here.

In the name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate, I issue the following fatwa:

Fellow bloggers or with other web pages who would like to join the effort should contact Beth of Fuzzilicious.

Just as we surmised....

WASHINGTON - US intelligence believes that a cache of manufactured bombs seized in Iraq about two weeks ago was smuggled into the country from Iran by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, an intelligence official said Tuesday.

"I think we believe there is more of them out there, that this is just the first cache we've actually obtained," the official said. He said intelligence analysts had "fairly high confidence" that the bombs came from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

Building a case for retaliation? Keep your eyes open.

Companion OpiniPundit

I’ve got to say that this story is cool. It seems Residents of the one and two hundred block of Missouri street in Evansville have had to change a lot of tires lately. This is kind of a poorer working class mixed neighborhood. You know working stiffs. Amongst the working stiffs there lives one Scott Morgan 18. Yep he is my nominee for the week.

But along with pointing out what a moron Slashing Scott Morgan is I want to tell the story of how Slashing Scott was taken down. It seems that tires had been going flat at an ever increasing clip lately and several of the neighbors got together and lay in wait for old slashing Scot to show up. Calls to police up to that point had not helped and Scott’s boldness was growing costing everyone in the neighborhood more and more time and money.

"My neighbors are pretty close, they're always watching out for everyone else so when something happens if something happens to one person it happens to all of us."

Well old Scott showed up on his biggest tire slashing binge yet knocking off 15 tires before angry residents witnessed Scott’s project and gave chase all the way to his home. He made it in but residents had him this time. They called the fuzz.

"We all stuck together, nobody went in we wanted to catch this dude...".

"We're tired; we're ready to take a stand, if the cops don't want to do it we're going to do it."

OK here’s the cool part. The law turns up and goes into Scott’s house to get him. They bring him out. Then they take old Scott out on his front porch and just hold him there. It was great the cops gave the residents several minutes to go off on him. Then they put him in the car to cheers and applause the likes of which I’ve not heard since Ted played Mesker Amphitheater.

"What we wanted to do, we really wanted to go up and give him an old fashioned western style kickin'."

Somebody bailed out old Slashing Scott so look out for him. Judging from the following quotes he will be moving out of the area pretty soon.

"He said well I'm sorry for what I did, well sorry didn't do it, he did that's not going to get everybody's tires out here fixed.

Everybody's tires down here still ain’t got fixed and he's walking the street, I feel sorry for him, I don't want to be in the dude's shoes I really don't.

Hit Tip: Randy.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- A 28-year-old South Korean man died of exhaustion in an Internet cafe after playing computer games non-stop for 49 hours, South Korean police said Wednesday.

Lee, a resident in the southern city of Taegu who was identified only by his last name, collapsed Friday after having eaten minimally and not sleeping, refusing to leave his keyboard while he played the battle simulation game Starcraft.

You can tell this guy's single. My wife gets crazy if I spend over an hour a day playing computer games. Seriously, though, even overlooking the fact that he went for 49 hours without food or drink, how did he manage to sit that long without going to the bathroom? And what about the employees of this internet cafe? After about 24 hours, didn't it cross someone's mind that maybe something was wrong?

The Democrats, once again, are attempting to talk morals. Since this is a subject with which they are not familiar, they should probably give up trying to convince people they have them. Unfortunately, for them, they just can't seem to give this particular bone up. And as long as they continue talking, we'll continue getting gems like the following from California Democrat Senator Jack Scott:

"I don't think God is either a Democrat or a Republican," said California state Sen. Jack Scott (search), a Democrat. "The moral values that I really care deeply about is justice for the poor and peacemaking and so that's the reason that I wouldn't call the Republican Party the party of religion."

Huh? Could someone translate this gibberish for me? I honestly don't remember being called the "party of religion" and even if we were, what would it have to do with peacemaking and justice for the poor? And is he saying that morals are equalivent to religion? Because if they are, then he's started one heck of a conflict for the "separation" crowd.

Last month, Democratic spiritual leaders gathered in Berkeley, Calif., to focus on resurrecting the American spiritual left. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid is bringing God back into the Democratic fold by adding a page on the party's Senate Web site aimed at religious voters.

And again, Mr. Reid, I ask what happend to your "separation" mantra? Out of curiosity, and since Fox didn't provide a link to the specified page, I went to the DNC page and tried to find what they were talking about. The only mention of religion that I could find is a speech that Dean made to a Methodist church claiming how close they are in values. Of course he spends most of the speech demonizing Republicans and completly ignoring history. I was especially amused at this exerpt:

"The Republican leadership likes to talk about their connection with African Americans and their heritage as the party of Lincoln. This new stump is chock full of apology but light on true repentance...

"Like America, the Democratic Party has grown and evolved and our relationship with the African American community is a progressive movement...

The DNC has grown and evolved in their realationship with blacks? So does that mean that you've stopped lynching them and given up your battle against civil rights? Because historically, that's what the DNC has stood for. Heck, you're even being sued for reparations by people in the black community. But I suppose as long as you can pretend your past isn't there, then you can convince anyone you're on thier side.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. If the Democrats want to convince people they have morals, then they need to take a very hard look at their policies. Stop murdering innocent babies and releasing hardend killers. That only proves you've got it backward. And my definition of morals doesn't include allowing anyone to do anything that they like no matter how depraved. Even if you aren't Christian, there are some things that civilized people should be able to agree are simply wrong.

(Colorado Springs, CO) The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) whose chief is U.S. Adm. Timothy J. Keating has decided that the military jargon is insensitive to American Indians. Although there have been no complaints, Adm. Keating has banned the use of certain words, including warrior, brave, and chief, from the military lexicon.

According to a NORAD spokesperson, Master Sgt. John Tomassi, the military is following the lead of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in prohibiting the use of Indian names.

Just think. With one stroke of a pen, Adm. Keating changed my perception of the North American aerospace defense network from a high-tech and reliable weapons and intelligence command into a bunch of whimpering pussies. After learning of this latest politically correct infestation at the commanding officer level, I immediately felt less safe.

It's also disturbing that Keating's irresponsible edict folds all too nicely into Osama bin Laden's propaganda to al-Qaeda terrorists and recruits that the American military is weak and cannot win. The U.S. military can't be expected to intimidate an enemy when it's viewed as sensitive and cowardly, bending over for every whiny complaint in society.

Rumsfeld should send out a war party to bring back Keating's scalp.

SEE-DUBYA with the UPDATE: Mike, I apologize for stepping on your excellent post here, but I've just received Keating's memo about NORAD's updated nomenclature, which I am posting in the extended entry below.

NORAD's new, more sensitive nomenclature:

From: US Adm. Timothy J. Keating
To: All NORAD Personnel
Re: Racially Sensitive and Inclusive Terminology

1. From this point forward, the 82nd Airborne Division will no longer be allowed to shout "Geronimo!" as they bail out of airplanes, as this is insensitive to the memory of the famous Apache chief. Henceforth all personnel must shout "Oopsie-Doodle!" upon airborne deployment.

2. America's Ambassadors in Blue, the USAF Thunderbirds, appear to mock the great thunder spirit of certain Plains tribes. Accordingly, they are now renamed the "Flying Cuddle Blossoms."

3. The OH-58D "Kiowa Warrior" helicopter is doubleplusungood. Currently it is being redesignated the OH-58D "Fairy Princess Moon Flower".

4. The AH64 A/D Attack Helicopter, formerly known as the "Apache", has been renamed in accordance with NORAD's sensitivity guidelines. It is now designated the "AH-64 A/D Gossamer Butterfly of Inclusiveness".

5. Likewise the Tomahawk Land Attack Missile implies that Native American Indigenous Peoples once scalped each other with small hatchets. This name is inappropriate in a modern, sensitive army and the ordnance is henceforth designated the "Rainbow Love Happy Fun Bomb".

CORRECTION: THIS MEMORANDUM SUGGESTS THE USE OF THE WORD RAINBOW IS ALSO INSENSITIVE TO INDIGENOUS AMERICANS.

The Tomahawk is therefore renamed the "Prismatic Love Happy Fun Bomb".

That is all. I expect these new terms to become standard usage immediately, or I will be going on the warpath!

TJK

Good to know we're serious about winning the war.

August 09, 2005

My head just exploded.

I was joking about this here a while back. But John Tierney at the New York Times is serious.

Jeff Harrell is pretty hacked off, too. Don't go here if you mind the sailor-talk.

UPDATE: Mark Kleiman, who actually studies this stuff, has more fact-filled (though less rhetorically satisfying) thrashing of Tierney's folly.

UPDATE II: Rusty responds in Why Everybody is Wrong About The Drug War

UPDATE 8/11: Jihadis from Western China released several propaganda videos. The videos proclaim jihad against Beijing, accusing the Communist government of ties to Christian forces. We will post a link to the video as soon as we find a host. Images from the video will be available shortly.

Scroll down for more updates.

Bloggers from China are reporting that a suicide bomber has blown up a bus in Fuzhou City, Fujian Province, at around 2:30pm, August 8th. According to Peacehall.com, police have confiscated the cameras of those who took pictures. I first learned of this from Aaron at Hagganah Internet.

Bloggers in China have uploaded many pictures from the incident, though. Aaron, from Internet Hagganah, has archived many of the photos here. More pictures archived here and here and here. We have reproduced some of the photos below, some of which are graphic.

The official story is that only one person was killed, but from the 'unofficial' pictures, it is clear that at least three were killed--probably a lot more.

I have not seen much MSM coverage of this, although it seems like a big deal. Here is how China Daily reports the story:

FUZHOU: A suicide bomber blew himself up on a bus in central Fuzhou yesterday, killing himself and injuring 31 others, local police said.

The blast in the capital of East China's Fujian Province went off at 2:32 pm as the No 5 bus pulled in at the Dongjiekou Stop in Dongda Road, one of the city's busiest streets....

There was a deafening "big bang," said Lin Lina, a female employee working in an office building on the roadside.

"Thick smoke rose into the sky, and we couldn't see or tell what was happening," Lin said...

The shockwave from the home-made explosives was so huge that the windows of a nearby store shattered, according to the sohu.com website....

Police later said the explosion came from a second-row seat on the right-hand side of the bus.

The suspected bomber, Huang Maojin, died on the spot.

Huang, 42, was a farmer from Fujian's Gutian County.

According to a suicide note found by police, he had been suffering from lung cancer for about two years.

In the letter, Huang said he had a dispute with one of his neighbours in 2002. He claimed he had been unfairly treated by the local public security department and was sentenced to jail until the end of 2003.

The imprisonment delayed treatment of his illness, he claimed.

Huang's family was heavily in debt and his children were unable to go to school because of lack of money, the letter said.

Police are still investigating the case.

What many people in the West are unaware of, is that China is fighting a low-level Islamist insurgency in its Western provinces. Fujian Province, however is not in Western China but in Southeastern China. Not generally a hot bed for Islamist sentiments.

UPDATE: Ed, at Talking Hoarsely, has done some background research here. I would just add that nowhere can I verify the number of Muslims in Fujian left by a commenter. As far as I can tell, the Islamist seperatist are generally in the Xinjiang and Qinghai provinces.

Like I said, socialist-medicine induced terrorism is generally not as sexy as Islam inspired terrorism.

But he does find this very interesting background story on the broader point--which is that, to paraphrase Huntington, "The borders of Islam are bloody." :

'The conflicting movements of Uighur separatism, abetted by Islamist organizations abroad, and Chinese internal and economic interests, suggest that further and serious conflict may be expected.

The dearth of research into radical Islam in Asia is in itself a cause for concern. One reason for this may be that states affected by separatism such as the Philippines, Thailand, and China prefer not to admit to a problem. This may be cultural. The Asian concept of saving face may be an element of the difficulty. It may, however, be a fear of losing overseas investment if there is an emphasis on factors that suggest future instability.'

Mathew Stinson hopes this is 'an isolated incident', but this tidbit from The BBC via The Stalwart might indicate otherwise:

There were more than a thousand reported bombings last year.

Most go unreported by the country's tightly-controlled state media.

Joe T. of In Hell There Are No Nightlites sums up my feelings on the subject pretty well. Check it out.

Others: The Horse's Mouth, The Shanghaist, The Daily Missive, ZoneEuropa has extensive coverage of this (thanks Simon).

Images from 'unofficial' Chinese sources archived below. Warning: Some are graphic, but I have not included the most graphic photos which can be found in links above.

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Click for larger image.

The key to winning a war, any war, is to convince the other side that there is no hope for success. Killing the enemy or controlling territory are not enough to win, but are only important inasmuch as they send the signal to the enemy that there is no use in fighting--you cannot possibly win.

As long as there is hope, there is will to fight.

[Below: an image from a recent al Qaeda in Afghanistan video distributed on the internet. The man pictured has a British accent and calls on Muslims everywhere to come to Afghanistan and fight the 'lies' of Blair & Bush.]

Are we winning the war against Islamic jihad? No. Let us step back for a moment and assess the situation for a moment.

We have conquered two countries which fomented jihad. We have killed or captured tens of thousands of violent jihadies. We have recruited the vast majority of world governments in fighting against the global jihadi network. Nowhere on earth, today, can the jihadis openly train for war against the United States. Nowhere.

Every battle we have waged we have won. In fact, on paper, the war is over. We have won. Time to go home.

Yet, in spite of the facts on the ground, the jihad is still waged. We have not lost, but we we are not winning either.

The jihad movement is not shrinking. It is growing. It is as if nobody told the jihadis that they were losing. That they do not know that they have been defeated at every turn. That they are unaware that there is no hope for victory in Iraq. That the global caliphate is a pipe dream.

This is exactly what is happening. The jihadis believe they are winning, or, at least, that they can win.

[Below: An image from a recent jihadi propaganda video distributed on the internet. The video claims that it was made in Sweden. The message in the video is clear: we can build bombs in the West with impunity and we will use them against you]

We have won every battle we have waged, yet we are losing the war.

There is one battle which we have lost. It is the most important battle, yet the one least understood. It is the battle which will ultimately decide the war. It is the battle that we have not yet decided to fight. It is the propaganda battle.

Westerners have a particular distaste for that word, propaganda. It brings up the bad taste of Joseph Goebbels, or Pravda, or a scene from 1984. Propaganda, in our minds, smacks of the untrue. A lie spun for public consumption. Instead, we prefer to call the propaganda war winning the hearts and minds of the people.

In our minds, propaganda and truth are at opposite ends of the moral spectrum. Truth is objective. Truth is fact. Truth is good. Propaganda is subjective. Propaganda is a lie. Propaganda is bad.

The truth, we believe, will open the eyes of the enemy. The truth will set them free.

Unfortunately for us, our faith in objective truth, working on its own, is misplaced. Truth will not open the eyes of the enemy. It can't.

[Below: an image from a recent Army of Ansar al-Sunnah video distributed on the internet showing the dog tags of Marine sniper Cpl. Jeffrey A. Boskovich. The body of Cpl. Boskovich was also shown in the video. The propaganda message is that the jihadis are winning the war]

Before I continue, let me say that I am not a post-modernist. I am not arguing that, from a metaphysical standpoint, there is no such thing as objective truth. I do believe that there is such a thing as objective truth.

What I am arguing is that the truth, on its own, has never had the ability to win over the hearts and minds of people.

If I may misquote Paul for a moment here,

How, then, can they recognize truth which they have a propensity to disbelieve? And how can they believe in a truth which they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?

That propaganda has been used in the past to try and convince an audience of a falsehood is not the fault of propaganda. Propaganda is a medium. It is neutral. It can be used for good or ill.

On all fronts we fight the terrorists, except for the most crucial front: the propaganda front.

[Below: an image from a recent jihadi propaganda video distributed on the internet showing two children preparing to becom terrorist-martyrs in retalliation for the killing of Muslim children around the world by Christians-Zionists]

If we wish to win the hearts and minds of the jihadi-terrorists that we are fighting then we must win the propaganda battle. We must set a purpose to our media. They are an essential asset to winning the war. Without them, we will lose.

But the most important way in which we are losing the propaganda war has nothing to do with the MSM. The jihadi holed up in a Tikrit safe house does not read the NY Times. They don't care about Geraldo. They've never heard of Bryan Williams.

Americans may be demoralized by negative media messages on CNN, but the jihadis won't.

The reason they have hope is because of an informal media network. The reason they have hope is the internet.

Imagine you are a 'fence-sitter', as many like to call your potential jihadi. You believe America is an occupying force, they are raping your women, they have humiliated yet another Muslim country with their swift defeat of Iraq, they have murdered thousands of civilians in Fallujah--you believe all of this to be true because this is what you see on TV and how the facts on the ground are spun in the Islamic and the extreme-leftist media, if you were subjected to messages from al Jazeera and al Aribiya on a daily basis you would likely have this perception, too. You believe it is just to fight the Americans.

You would like to fight. But is it worth it?

At the local cafe you watch a video of the latest 'operation' by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's al Qaeda in Iraq. The video is of poor visual quality, because it has been copied from the internet, but it inspires you. Here is the evidence you need. Fighting the Zionist-Crusader forces has purpose. You can win.

Don't downplay this scenario. It happens much more than most of us would like to admit. There is something reassuring in assuming that terrorists are madmen with no rationality. So, we set aside the disturbing thought that maybe the terrorists we fight are rational people who have goals larger than killing the infidel. That maybe they fight for a purpose other than anarchy. That maybe they fight because they believe they can win.

[Below: an image from a recent al Qaeda in Afghanistan video distributed on the internet of Osama bin Laden's #2 man, Ayman al Zawahiri warning the West of new attacks and offering a truce to those that would pull out of Muslim countries]

Our enemy understands the propaganda war, and they are winning it. As friend of The Jawa Report, Evan Kohlmann, of Global Terror Alert and the Counterterrorism blog, recently remarked to the Washington Post:

Zarqawi is a new generation. The people around him are in their twenties. They view the media differently. The original al Qaeda are hiding in the mountains, not a technologically very well-equipped place. Iraq is an urban combat zone. Technology is a big part of that. I don't know how to distinguish the Internet now from the military campaign in general in Iraq.

It was...the 9/11 of jihad on the Internet -- momentous for them and momentous for us.

[Below: an image from a recent jihadi propaganda video distributed on the internet. The video glorified the 7/7 London terrorist bombings, juxtaposing the images of the dead and mourning in London with terrorist-martyrs and images of dead Muslims around the world]

More important than the messenger, who will change from time to time as this or that pop-star terrorist is killed or driven to the point of seclusion, are the messages being sent by the jihadi propagandists through the medium of the internet. The most recent edition of al Qaeda's online magazine confirmed the fact that the jihadis understand there is a propaganda battle going on:

In an essay aimed broadly at the Muslim world, the magazine claimed the 7th-century Koran as a useful blueprint for today's wired warriors in Iraq, calling its story of the prophet Muhammad's pitch to the people of Mecca "a very good example of how to conduct an information battle with the infidels."

Battles can be won in Iraq but then ultimately lost if they are not on the Internet. "The aim is not to execute an operation, which is followed by complete silence, but telling the reason why it was executed," the magazine advised. "It is a must that we give this field what it deserves. . . . How many battles has this nation lost because of the lack of information?"

The reason this story is being told is because we have allowed it to be told. We, the Western world, are so committed to the idea that objective truth will win out in the end that we cannot fathom any one believing the story. Further, our commitment to the notion of free-speech has become so absolute that many of our fellow Westerners believe that our enemies have a right to tell their story.

[Below: an image from an al Qaeda in Iraq video released on the internet showing the identification of the murdered Egyptian ambassador to Iraq Ihab el-Sherif.]

This is an odd conception of a right. For some reason many of us are more attached to the right of our enemies to speak than we are to the right of our enemies to live. Killing the jihadis is ok, but censoring them? That is barbaric.

If we wish to win the war on jihadi terrorism then we must not only offer a different story for public consumption, but we must also kill the competing story. Let us try to win the hearts and minds of the Islamic world, but let us not do so with blind faith in our own rightness and in the power of truth.

A certain portion of the Islamic world would be genuinely moved by stories out of Iraq that reflect the compassion of our soldiers, their heroism in protecting innocent life, and the lengths to which we have gone to rebuild that country. This is an important part of the propaganda effort we must wage. If the MSM does not wish to help us win this war then they should be forced to. Yes, as I have proposed from day one on this site, I am proposing some amount of censorship--and more--the spreading of a message of despair for our enemies and of hope to our allies.

The American owned media is American. If their commitment to some made-up sense of ethics is greater than their commitment to the cause of America, well then, we know where there priorities lay. If they do not wish to help us win this war, then let them practice their journalistic ethics somewhere else.

However, no matter what we do or say, the 'fence-sitter' will always be inclined to believe that we are the enemy. If we cannot win their love, let us settle for second-best and at least earn their fear.

The Japanese and German armies did not surrender because they loved us, they surrendered because they feared us and they realized that there was no hope of winning.

[Below: an image from a jihadi website showing President Bush as Nick Berg, shortly before his gruesome murder]

People are generally not inclined to fight for losing causes. I would suggest that many of our friends on the Left that do not wish us to continue the fight in Iraq do so not because they think we are wrong and not because they want us to lose, but because they think we cannot win. The truth is, they are right in their sentiments.

War is not like a football game where you play an opposing team even if you know you are going to lose. Wars are not fought for the sport of it. In war, you either play to win or you don't play at all. Hence, wars that cannot be won are wars that are not worth fighting.

The jihadi understands this in his own way. He fights because he thinks there is a chance of winning. If it was a lost cause you might get the odd-man-out depressive-psychotic terrorist, but the vast majority of them would stay home. Some terrorism and jihadi activity, yes. But certainly there would be little organized resistance.

So, can we win the propaganda battle if we decide to fight it. ABSOLUTELY.

The propaganda war is not only winnable, but at least when it comes to killing the messages of hope our enemies send to their base, the war is easily winnable, will kill no one, and can be won with limited damage to our normal peace-time commitment to freedom of expression.

[Below: an image released by The Army of Ansar al-Islam on the internet of murdered security consultant in Iraq, Bilprasad "Binkumar" Gurung, a Nepalese national]

Note that I said limited damage to freedom of expression. The community of nations will have to agree that the expression of jihadi sentiment must be quashed, but there is no need to exceed those boundaries. We should allow legitimate dissent, but dissent's legitimacy has always been circumscribed by the conditions of the times.

It was one thing to advocate a pro-Germany and anti-Soviet foreign policy on Dec. 6th, 1941. It was quite another to advocate that same position a week later.

We have the tools presently available to shut down every single jihadi message board, website, and distribution network out there. The information networks of the global jihad are well known to hundreds of civilian terrorism experts who follow such things. The servers used by the jihadis are often located right here in North America, and if not in North America, they are invariably located in Europe. It would not be a hard thing to simply shut each and every one of them down. Not hard at all.

In fact, should the U.S. government wish to actually win the war on terror I would find it an interesting and rewarding career change if I was given the tools and legal go ahead to begin hacking said servers. I know of at least a dozen other people, starting with Aaron over at Internet Hagganah, who would probably jump at the opportunity to make a few bucks shutting down the propaganda arm of the global jiahadi network.

[Below: a screenshot of al Qaeda's website shortly after it was hacked]

The CIA, FBI, State Department, or Department of Defense could do all of this---easily. But if they wished to keep their hands clean of the dirty work of censoring the jihadis, why not set up a system of privateering.

As many of you may know, privateers were the legal equivalent of pirates in ages past. The privateers were businessmen armed with ships and legal grants of recognition from their home country to plunder the booty of the enemy on the open seas. The line between privateer and pirate was often a thin one, and many of the most famous privateers of the 17th and 18th century were later hanged as pirates for their excesses.

The pirate and the privateer could only be distinguished by the ends of their endeavors and the legal grants given to them. Both plundered ships for financial gain, but the privateer did so with the backing of their country and was seen as part of an overall war strategy. Pirates were hanged. Privateers were given titles of nobility.

[Below: TeamZ USA strikes again, taking down another al Qaeda website]

If hackers are our modern pirates, why not turn their mischief to the common good? A hacker is bad when they shut down my site. A hacker is good when they shut down the site of the enemies of the United States. Given the proper reward structure and immunity from prosecution, hackers could turn their skills toward winning this war.

Another option would be to do this covertly. Hire a large team of hackers on government salary, get them to shut down the jihadi sites, but don't tell any one. That is a fine option, too.

Either way, I disagree that the internet is too decentralized to crack down on jihadi propaganda distribution. The vast majority of jihadi messages are given at a few dozen websites. Further, when new websites are opened the jihadis must have a way of finding them. They do so through e-mail lists and other well-known forums that spread the message as to where to go to find the latest propaganda. Yes, if you shut them down more will spring up, but that is more of a question of how committed are we to winning the propaganda war rather than a question of the feasibility of the exercise.

Further, we do not need to shut down every site with a jihadi message. The goal is to slow the spread of the message to a minimum, not necessarily to end it altogether. The fewer fence-sitters who have hope in winning, the better.

In the end, we will not know if we can win the propaganda war until we begin to fight it. To this point, we have been unwilling to fight the jihadis with all of our available resources. We have been willing to kill them at every turn, but not in censoring them.

If we wish to win this war, and we can win it, then we must use the vast technological advantages at our country's disposal. This includes the advantage we have in producing media messages and the advantage we have in producing creative minds with the technological ability to wreak electronic havoc on our enemies.

It is said that war in the modern age is total war. Total war is war waged with all available resources a nation has to offer. Because we have been so succesful on the physical battlefield, we have been lulled in to believing that the war on terror will not need to be total war. That something less than the full commitment of our nations resources will suffice to win it.

It is true that our enemies cannot hope to win on the open battlefield. Thus, we do not need to engage in total war in the way our grandfathers did in WWII. In that war, the physical capacity of our entire nation was needed to win. This war will not need that level of commitment. We may need some small adjustments to troop levels---up or down, I'll let the experts decide that--but we will not need anything like a WWII level of national war production.

But we will need more of a commitment to winning the battle of ideas. A much greater commitment. The battle of ideas will not be won on its own. The truth of Western liberalism over Islamic fascism is not a self-evident truth. It needs a messenger and a purposive commitment on the part of our government. That commitment must be total, and include a commitment to defeating propaganda messages sent by our enemies.

We are presently losing this war. We can win. But only if we are willing to fight it.

UPDATE 8/10: John Hawkins has an interesting post on how the terrorists cannot win in Iraq and how all war is hell. Very good and important points about sticking with Iraq. Read it. However, it begs the point of the larger war on terror-islamic jihad: can that be won. It can, but it is still in the air if it will. We may not lose, but not losing is not the same as winning.

Ping, John.

Peter Jennings' death from lung cancer at age 67 is being used in a rather opportunistic fashion by some anti-smoking organizations bent on banning the use of tobacco. Examples can be found here, here, and Jennings' network, ABC News asks viewers to email them with the answer to this question: Are You Quitting Smoking to Honor Peter Jennings?

There's a problem, though. Jennings said that he had quit smoking twenty years before picking the habit back up following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Is it really possible to develop lung cancer in less than three years? Many doctors cite lung cancer as a consequence of long term smoking, thirty years or more.

Then there's the issue of New York City air. In the seventies, environmental groups (admittedly not the most reliable source of information) declared that living and working in the NYC metro area exposed residents to air pollution that was the equivalent of smoking 1 to 2 packs of cigarettes a day. Could 40+ years of exposure to this environment have caused Jennings' illness?

When I was in junior high school we were treated one day to an "educational" film about the dangers of popping pimples. The "Triangle of Death" was shown, running from a point on the chin to the top of the forehead. We were solemnly warned that popping a zit in this area could cause the pus to travel directly to the brain, causing immediate death.

There are legitimate and compelling reasons to quit smoking. But, as Dr. Dean Edell recently commented on his radio show (mentioning that 8-9 out of 10 smokers will never suffer from lung cancer), scaring people with bogus information damages the credibility of health organizations.

Cross-posted at The Dread Pundit Bluto.

The Counterterrorism Blog notes that experts are concerned about mall attacks in the US, and suggest we study the Israeli model of profiling and interdiction:

Security guards need more training on that model, and mall customers need to recognize potential terrorists in their midst. Steve especially noted that one of the 7/7 London suicide bombers bought and wore perfume, apparently in preparation to meet his "72 virgins" as promised by jihadist propaganda.

Keep your noses peeled. It's your civic duty.

(Cross-posted by Demosophist to Demosophia, Anticipatory Retaliation and The Jawa Report)

I have been holding back comment on this Cindy Sheehan business just to see how it played out and to get a better feel for exactly what was going on. Well, it's time for some opinion and analysis.

From all indications this is a grief stricken women who's emotions are definately getting the better of her judgement. Combine this with the fact that the far left loonies ie. Code Pink, Crawford Peace House, etc. etc. have "befriended" her undoubtedly to exploit this mentally vulnerable women to promote their agenda.

Don't get me wrong, Sheehan is culpable in this 3 ring circus too, but I do understand how grief confusion and frustration can often lead to poor choices. The peaceniks and the Entrenched Media is milking this thing for everything it's worth and if Ms. Sheehan believes these people care one lick about her, she's sorely mistaken. They'll be supportive as long as she is willing to do their bidding. She backs off and they'll disappear in a blink of an eye.

VACAVILLE - Last summer Cindy Sheehan got a face-to-face meeting with President Bush, complete with kisses and condolences.
Today the Vacaville resident is camped outside the president's Texas ranch - in the glare of the national media spotlight - demanding another face-to-face meeting, and ultimately his impeachment.

Posters on highly visited liberal Web log Daily Kos said Drudge's report was misleading, while right-wing bloggers, including the popular Michelle Malkin, echoed Drudge's sentiments that Sheehan was contradicting herself, perhaps for political reasons. (Don't you love the blatant bias....Kos is a highly visited liberal website where Michelle Malkin is a right wing blogger)

Look for the continued hyper coverage of this from the EM. Sheehan has become the poster child of the far left peace crowd and as long as there is the possibility that her and her buds can make the President look bad, it will be covered 24/7.

One question begs to be asked of Ms. Sheehan .........Would your late son be proud of what your doing?

Companion OpiniPundit

Want a fatwa issued against you? If you have an interesting post, just link this post and send us a trackback. We will issue a fatwa on your infidel ass!

UPDATE: Houston, we have a problem. Where are the fatwas? Ah, the joys of updating your site design. Sorry. Will try to fix.

Here's some interesting stuff sent to me this morning.

New intelligence indicates that Osama bin Laden may be headed to Iraq for Ramadan. I'm not buying it, but if it was true think of all the great caption-contest opportunities.

Brazil wanted da bomb? Duh! Of course they did. And by da bomb, I'm not talking about that chick from Ipanema.

The Carnival of Liberty is up. Check it out. The Carnival of The Liverated, too.

Is Saudi Arabia solidly on the way to reform? Maybe. John at Cross Roads of Arabia seems to think developments there warrant our attention.

Democrats new strategery: If you can't win, at least enjoy losing.

Germany's top magazine says the U.S. is doomed...DOOMED....DOOMED to playing second-fiddle to China. I seem to recall similar sentiments in the 1980s about Japan. Whatever happened to that inevetable Japanese juggernaut, anyway?

Go to hell, Cindy Sheehan. Indeed.

OK, so he's not beautiful. In fact, Hugo Chavez is most likely one of the ugliest humans I've ever seen. But he most certainly is having dreams of grandeur. Or smoking one heck of a lot of crack. In a speech to thousands of students (does anyone ever speek to anyone besides students?), Chavez says that if the US decides to invade Venezula, they will be defeated. He then goes on to admit that he doesn't have any evidence that the US is going to invade, but that we have never given up on the dream of invading Venezula or Cuba.

Now, Hugo, I hate to burst your bubble and pull you so rudely out of your happy place, but I feel that it is my civic duty to inform you of a few facts.

1. If the US wanted to invade Cuba, it would now be the 52d state (we'd have to do something to keep Puerto Rico from getting jealous). And nothing that you, Castro or Russia could do could stop us. It's always been this way and will always continue to be this way. Oh, and the Bay of Pigs wasn't an invasion. It was a clusterf*ck.

2. In case you haven't noticed, the United States has the most powerful standing army in the world today. Remember the fact that nobody had ever successfully invaded Afghanastan? We did. Remember Iraq? The Republican Guard never stood a chance. So I don't know what makes you think you'd fare any better. What are you going to do, throw coffee beans at us?

Chavez then goes on with his inane blatherings.

Chavez called the United States the "most savage, cruel and murderous empire that has existed in the history of the world."

The Venezuelan leader said "socialism is the only path," and told the students the collective goal is to "save a world threatened by the voracity of U.S. imperialism."

Yes, yes. We're the Evil Empire. That's why our poorest people are richer than most countries richest. Sure. Capitalism doesn't work. My dream is shattered. I'm going to leave my high-paying job now and drive my nice car home and park it in my two-car garage. I'll go in and turn off our 54" screen TV and tell my kids to get off their two computers so that I can tell them how bad capitalism is. And as we have steak and potatoes for dinner, we'll mourn the fact that our system doesn't work.

(Islamabad, Pakistan) It's illegal to treat women and girls as property but it happens all the time.

From the Indo-Asian News Service:

A candidate in Pakistan's Northwestern Frontier Province gave away his 11-year-old daughter to his opponent in exchange for latter's withdrawal from next week' local elections, a news report said Sunday.

Daily Times quoted an unnamed election official as saying that Ajoon, a resident of Kohistan district, more than 120 km northwest of here, made the offer considering his opponent Vilayat Noor politically stronger.

The two men were the only candidates for the post of nazim, or chief administrator.

This incident exemplifies the ineffectiveness of the national government in establishing and enforcing laws on remote regions of mountainous northern Pakistan. The thousand-year-old religious and societal customs endure despite legislative actions taken in the capitol of Islamabad.

Companion post at Interested-Participant.

Dave has the details, and a link to a cool clip. Apparently there's a new French movie (not yet available in the US of A) about this kid who runs away from a group of thuggish attackers. He performs amazing feats of runnning away from these goons and goes to astounding, dangerous lengths to avoid confronting them. Instead of kung-fu fighting them, or riddling them with hollow-point bullets, this French hero leaps from tall buildings, throws himself down stairs and through windows, and hopes his enemies hurt themselves trying to catch him.

It's called "Banlieue 13", which is French for "National Allegory".

NAGASAKI, Japan (AP) - A siren wailed and a bronze bell rang out Tuesday as Nagasaki marked the moment 60 years ago when an American plane dropped a plutonium bomb, killing tens of thousands and sealing Japan's defeat in World War II...

...When the
silence ended, Nagasaki Mayor Iccho Itoh had some angry words for the
leaders of the nuclear powers, and especially the United States.

"To the
citizens of the United States of America: We understand your anger and
anxiety over the memories of the horror of the 9/11 terrorist attacks,"
he said. "Yet, is your security enhanced by your government's policies
of maintaining 10,000 nuclear weapons."

Why, yes it is, Mayor Icky.  Just look over there at those peaceful, freedom loving nations to your west.  See 'em?  Ya gotta know who I'm referring to.  I would dare say that if it weren't for our nuclear weapons, you'd be giving your speech in Chinese, with a Korean translation.  It isn't as though they don't have a score to settle.  Much as I despise the Communists, they do have a legitimate greivance against you and your country, bub.

After all, do bells toll and sirens wail on the anniversary of the rape of Nanking? 

Your nation's desire to rule the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere caused far more death and destruction in the world than any weapon we've yet designed.  The nation of Japan raped, pillaged, plundered and slaughtered its way through Asia in a way even the most insane jihadist can only dream about.  And let's not delude ourselves here.  Dropping those bombs spared Japan from an invasion by hundreds of thousands of battle hardened U.S. soldiers and marines.  How many cities would have been obliterated then?  How many civilians would have died?  Hell, Mayor Icky, you might not have even been born.

How naive of you, Mayor Icky.  Do you think that if your nation had beaten us to a nuclear weapon, they would have hesitated to use it against us to turn the tide of their ever-increasing failures?  I think not.

I should get my big coffee table book, "The Chronological History of World War II" back from my younger brother.  It isn't just a history book, it's literally a day by day recounting of WWII from September 3, 1939 to August 15th, 1945.  I could give a comprehensive list of anniversary dates chronicling Japan's atrocities.  And the body count would far exceed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  And no bells would toll nor sirens wail on those dates, either.

So spare us the guilt trip, Mayor Icky.  You'll find no sympathy here.  Japan wouldn't be what it is today without us.  And any time you feel up to snuff, kick our 50,000 military members out and feel free to defend yourselves from the ChiComs and the DPRK.

CP@VAM

August 08, 2005

The commercials. I'm glad they get advertising, but the cattle-auction rapid fire delivery of stupid pitches for dubious products just turns me off. In fact it turns me off so much, I rarely listen to talk radio, even shows I otherwise like. They're not even memorably bad, just annoying. It's like all your e-mail spam about refinancing being screamed at you.

Talk show hosts and producers, listen to your shows, including the commercial breaks, and see what I mean. Insist on some production values, some modulation in the script reading, because if an ad (or series of ads) drives away listeners it's a loser for you in the long run.

I guess I could listen to Air America, where they don't have any advertisers, but apparently they suck.

Oh, and THERE HAS NEVER BEEN A BETTER TIME TO BUY GOLD!

Yeah, just like you've been saying since 1992. Schmucks.

UPDATE: Kathryn Jean Lopez just had a similar thought. Cialis? Geez, it really is like somebody shouting your junk mail box at you.

The Army of Ansar al-Sunnah has released a video in which they claim they are testing explosive devices in Sweden. They also threaten to use the 'high explosive' device. The video may be downloaded here (hat tip: Doubletap). Images from the video posted below.

While the video proports to be from Ansar al-Sunnah, it bears the markings of an Islamic Army in Iraq (IAI) production. The IAI uses a free version of Elecard for its video productions. However, the two groups are both affiliated with al Qaeda and have been known to collaborate in the past.

Sweden has a sizeable Kurdish and Arab immigrant population. While most Kurds are very pro-American, a very small minority supports the establishment of a Taliban-like state. The Army of Ansar al-Sunnah is an offshoot of now defunct Kurdish Army of Ansar al-Islam, and may also include Arab elements.

The Army of Ansar al-Sunnah is notorious for murdering hostages in Iraq. The group recently released a propaganda video showing the remains of Marine sniper Jeffrey A. Boskovich. For more information on the evil deeds of The Army of Ansar al-Sunna, I suggest doing a Jawa search for 'ansar'.

Was this video really produced by violent jihadis living in Sweden as it claims? It remains a distinct possibility. I have a feeling this post will be updated in the coming days.

Click for larger images:

If you have any information from mainstream media sources about this video, please e-mail me.

Australia may follow the Brits example and ban all groups advocating jihad and the establishment of the Caliphate. CNS:

Australia may follow Britain's lead in banning an Islamist organization that claims to repudiate violence while openly campaigning for the re-establishment of a single Muslim state or caliphate.

If the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) finds Hizb ut-Tahrir to be a terrorist threat, the group will be outlawed in the country, Prime Minister John Howard said on Monday....

Hizb ut-Tahrir is already restricted in Germany, Russia and in parts of the Middle East and Central Asia. It is not, however, on the U.S. State Department's list of foreign terrorist organizations....

Australian Hizb ut-Tahrir spokesman Wassim Doureihi told the country's Nine Network television station his party supported the anti-coalition violence in Iraq.

"If we talk about occupied land then we have to expect the people to resist the occupation," he said....

Hat tip: Drew from the Paul Revere Society.

The next time you have a right-wing friend who goes off in a hissy over immigration, please show them these pictures. Yes, there are many ill consequences to the massive influx of illegal immigrants. But there is also something profoundly moving to know that your country has the capacity to draw people from around the world who are willing to risk their lives for a place and a people which are not their own. Welcome to America's finest new citizens. Yahoo News

US soldiers attend a swearing-in ceremony for citizenship, at Camp Victory in Baghdad. One hundred and forty seven foreign-born US military personnel serving in Iraq gathered inside one of Saddam Hussein's former palaces to take the oath of US citizenship.

Caption this photo of a Hiroshima protest gone terribly wrong.*

Winners picked arbitrarily by me, Admiral Rusty Shackleford:

D. Carter: Japan and the U.S. share many interests: a healthy private sector, baseball, and a lethal distate for mimes.

Romeo Delta: Upon hearing that Tom Cruise's "War Of The Worlds" would soon make its Tokyo premiere, thousands of Japanese viewers of "The Last Samurai" commit seppuku.

Graeme: Reluctantly, Andrew Lloyd Webber, after many protests by patrons and theatre critics waving "No more Hiroshima" signs, decided to cancel further performances of his much maligned new musical, The Phantom of Hiroshima.

Special mention to KG for gratuitous Futurama references: No one really worships the atomic bomb anymore, it's mainly a Christmas and Easter thing, really.

*Oh mighty bomb, I reveal my true self to you. Sorry, I couldn't resist.

Good news. A previously unidentified hostage in Iraq has been released. His name is Victor Tawfiq Girgis, and he is a Christian Copt from Egypt. The terrorists behind these acts seem to have found that their audience does not approve of the murder of hostages. Notice in the story, reprinted below, that our allies the Egyptians say he was delivering supplies to the US Army of occupation. Who needs enemies with friends like these?

Egypt Today:

Victor Tawfiq Girgis, 45, the Egyptian truck driver kidnapped on June 2 near the Iraqi flashpoint city of Fallujah along with a Turkish colleague, after 15 days in captivity. Girgis, from the Upper Egyptian village of Abu Shusha, said the kidnappers did not mistreat him. They had threatened to execute both men unless the Egyptian and Turkish governments openly condemned Americas occupation of Iraq.

His wife, Amal Gadel-Rab, said Girgis, a father of four who also supports an extended family, left for Kuwait in October 2003. He borrowed $7,200 from friends to pay for his visa and living expenses.

With only low-paying menial work available in Kuwait, Girgis obtained an international driving license and was offered $1,000 to take a truck of food to the US Army of occupation in Iraq. It was his first and last trip.

Girgis is now safely back in Egypt. His kidnappers offered no explanation for his release, but gave the Copt a Quran and a doll for his daughter.

Mustafa Abdul-Rassul Hussein was kidnapped Friday. Apparently, his kidnappers are after money. This reminded me that several Americans are still being held hostage in Iraq. Keep them in your prayers.

They are:
Roy Hallums Nov 1 2004
Radim Sadiq (aka, Dean Sadik) Nov 2 2004
Jeffrey Ake April 11 2005
Tim Bell April 9 2004

Daily Star, Lebanon:

A Lebanese citizen was abducted in Baghdad, after a period of relative safety for Lebanese expatriates, who suffered a violent year in 2004. Mustafa Abdul-Rassul Hussein, 49, from the South Lebanese village of Gebaa, was kidnapped Friday while on his way to complete a business transaction, his family said.

"Hussein is married to an Iraqi woman and has two sons. He went to Iraq two years ago, and we haven't seen him since," said his brother, Hachem.

According to The Daily Star's sources in Iraq: "Hussein was a provisions' merchant, who was invited to an Iraqi's house on Friday to conduct a business deal. The invitation turned out to be a trap and he was abducted."

Hachem said he was informed by the Lebanese Embassy that the kidnappers have demanded a ransom, though the amount is undisclosed.

The sources confirmed Mustafa is healthy. They added that negotiations with the kidnappers have already begun.

Some 31 Lebanese nationals have been kidnapped in Iraq since April 2004, including Mustafa Hussein, and five others have been brutally murdered.

Harry Belafonte Calls Black Republicans 'Tyrants'

Day-O, Daayyyy-O Daylight come and it's time to blow smoke.....

Atlanta (CNSNews.com) -

Celebrity activist Harry Belafonte referred to prominent African-American officials in the Bush administration as "black tyrants" at a weekend march, and he also compared the administration to Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany.

Belafonte, a featured speaker at Saturday's march in Atlanta commemorating the 40th anniversary of the signing of the Voting Rights Act, previously ignited a political controversy in 2002 when he likened then-Secretary of State Colin Powell to a "house slave."

At Saturday's civil rights march, Belafonte said the Bush administration has been "rather dismal" for the lives of black Americans. The march, which featured prominent civil rights groups and labor union representatives, was intended to drum up support for extending and strengthening the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Belafonte used a Hitler analogy when asked about what impact prominent blacks such as former Secretary of State Powell and current Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had on the Bush administration's relations with minorities."

Hitler had a lot of Jews high up in the hierarchy of the Third Reich. Color does not necessarily denote quality, content or value," Belafonte said in an exclusive interview with Cybercast News Service.

Companion OpiniPundit

UPDATE BY RS: Jews? In the hierarchy of the Third Reich? Talk about retarded.

Be sure to check out the response from other black Republicans Mike King, La Shawn Barber, and Dane Bramage. And check out what the other moonbats at the rally said over at Michelle Malkin's place.

Bird escapes cage to rejoin flock? Tim from Opinion Bug e-mails me this from the BBC:

A controversial Islamic cleric has left the UK for the Middle East amid speculation he would be investigated for treason, said his spokesman.

Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed - former head of radical group Al Muhajiroun - left on Saturday for Lebanon, his colleague Anjem Choudary told the BBC....

Mr Choudary said the cleric believed "Britain had declared war on Muslims".

UPDATE: Good discussion by Megan McArdle on this over at he-who-will-not-be-named's blog and by Gene Volokh. I would only add that speech laws must be context oriented. What one can say in a time of peace must be different than in a time of war. Those that think otherwise must share a different value system than myself. Personally, I think human life is much more valuable than speech. If killing the enemy is legitimate, then stifling his speech must also be.

UPDATE II: From the vast Jawa archives comes this quote from Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed. Traitor? You be the judge:

If an Iraqi Muslim carried out an attack like that in Britain, it would be justified because Britain has carried out acts of terrorism in Iraq.

A new video produced by Iraqi terrorists shows children preparing to join the jihad. The video may be downloaded here or here. (via Doubletap at Vlad's forum). Images from the video are below.

At first I thought the video might be something like jihadi porn. A girl is shown in a burka with slow-motion close-ups of her exposed hands. That'll get your every day camel-humping jihadi terrorist hot and bothered. Show some skin baby!

But then, if you listen to the girls voice, you realize she is just a child. Perhaps in her early teens at best. Ok, so maybe it's just a young sounding shahid on her way to inherit her 72 grapes from the Lord of Moons.

Later in the video, though, another child joins the scene. This one is very young. Definitely a child. Both now carry pistols, praise Allah, and cry for vengance.

Disgusting. I often hear from the Left that the War in Iraq has left thousands of children dead and millions more with no hope. However, what kind of society that would be created if we were to give up and pull out? Just one more reason we must win in Iraq. It's for the children.

A man on the FBI's terror watch list was arrested in Maryland last night. WSTM:

TOWSON, Md. Baltimore County police say they arrested a man whose name appears on the national Terror Watch List late last night on the Baltimore beltway.

Federal Bureau of Investigation Baltimore field office spokeswoman Tia Ford identified the man as 27-year-old Muhammad Asif Haider of New York City. She says the Pakistani man was indicted last week in New York on immigration fraud charges.

Baltimore County Police say an officer made a routine check of the watch list when he pulled Haider over near the Reisterstown Road exit of the Beltway and his name was a match. County police are holding Haider until federal officials can interview him.

As As you may or may not have noticed by the headline, I'm rather perturbed. It seems that the illustrious James Dobson has been called down by Jews for referring to the destruction of embryonic stem cells in comparison to the Jews killed in the Nazi holocaust.

Dr. Dobson is a good man. I'm sure his heart's in the right place. And I agree with him about the fetal stem cells, albeit not necessarily for the same reasons. But I do have a problem here. Everyone is referring to everyone else as a Nazi. Or they're referring to something as being as horrible as the holocaust. And maybe they're right. Certainly killing millions of children every year is a horrendous tragedy. What is currently happening in Dafur is an atrocity. The things that Hussein did are nearly universally accepted to be horrible.

But we have GOT to start laying off the whole Nazi/holocaust comparison. Jewish people are still fairly sensitive to it (with good reason), and the ONLY thing it does in this day and age is cause backlash against whatever cause you're trying to potray as NOT being Nazis. You mention the Nazis, and suddenly EVERYONE'S up in arms against you. Nothing good comes out of it when you refer to someone else as a Nazi.

So, people on the right AND people on the left, please listen to my plea and stop calling each other Nazis. Stop referring to Auschwitz unless you are talking about your history paper. Stop comparing how many of your people were killed to how many of the Jews were killed. And then, maybe we can get over being offended and start moving in the right direction.

Oh, and as a final note, from the way they run their blogs, I suspect the following people of being Nazis:

Glenn Reynolds
Ace
Rusty Shackleford
Bill Indrolino
Hugh Hewitt
The Entire Staff at Wizbang Blog

Today's visual is brought to you by Emperor Misha I. If he gets a fatwa before me there will be hell to pay!

Today's thought: Are you a victim of propaganda? Ask yourself this question: Who did we fight in WWII? If you answered the Nazis, you are a victim of propaganda. Remember, there were no Nazi armies. There were German armies. By distinguishing between good German soldiers and bad Nazis, Americans were able to reconcile themselves with our new found West German allies in the midst of the Cold War imperitive. Discuss amongst yourselves.

Tatooine:
It looks like the Board of Directors of The al-Qaeda Organization in The Land of Two Rivers, Inc., might be looking to replace current CEO and Chief Head Chopper, Abu Musab al Zarqawi. (Hat tip: Flopping Aces)

Wait, you mean there might be a Saudi connection to the London bombings? I find that awfully hard to believe. Probably a Zionist disinformation plot.

*Shocking* news: Al Qaeda magazine published openly in Turkey.

London conspirators indicted and extradited. Do they have bitches in British prisons?

Q: What qualifications do you need to run a ministry in a corrupt Gulf country?
A: See here.

Who needs to nuke Mecca when the Saudis seem intent on destroying it themselves?

Netanyahu quits over Gaza Pullout. I thought pulling out was only a sin in Catholocism, but not Judaism?

Are oppressed Iranian bloggers trying to take out oppressive Iranian judges? Now this is the kind of vigilantiasm I can support.

Dhimmis:
George Galloway, jackass? Yeah, but traitor is a more accurate word.

The Savior Sect issues fatwa saying it's o.k. for terrorists to be welfare recipients.

Treason? Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Bitches! From today's news it seems we may have to remove the UK from our list of dhimmi countires.

The French are not as dhimmifide as they act. The French may have actually found the winning strategy. I'm not kidding. They act like dhimmis in public, but domestically crack down on Islamists in such a way that would make the ACLU cringe. And remember, the French equivelant of the CIA has a domestic arm and police power.

Domestic Dhimmis & Stuff:
Peter Jennings is dead, and Mike King scooped the MSM by more than a day. Too many links to keep track of. Let me just say this on behalf of Jennings: Born Canadian, died American.

Stop the ACLU notes that the Florida Supreme Court has a scheme for taxpayer support of the ACLU.

Mmmmm, fried chicken tastes better at a PETA protest.

Since I'm 1/16th Native-American, I can't be racist. Right? PS-I'm not Cherokee, but I wish I was.

Blog Propaganda:
Althouse & McArdle I can understand, but not you Totten. Say it isn't so? Sellout. (super-secret message to Totten: Babe-pics + Puppy-blender = Mucho-grande linkage)

Blogfather Charles Johnson vs. former University of Colorado President Elizabeth Hoffman. Charles wins in first round.

Hawkins is late to figure out that Hot Chicks (even fictional ones) + Pics + Blogging = Hits. On a related note, Witty Sex Kitten has retired from blogging, but Alexa, the vixen behind A New York City Escort's Confessions is back, er, blogging that is. (hat tip: Rob Port)

This weeks RINO sightings are up at Searchlight Crusade.

Gaijin Biker has a new site and now has trackbacks and other useful thingies. Remember, if you are a blogger you need trackbacks. Trackbacks get you attention and tie you into the community. Unless you are a hot chick that blogs naked they are essential tool for succesful blogging.

Q: What do Bea Arthur, Luke Skywalker, and Phin have in common?
A: Llama Butchers.

August 07, 2005

It's not known by many, and never mentioned by Hiroshima/Nagasaki "peace activists", but Imperial Japan had its own version of the American Manhattan Project. In fact, the History Channel will air a documentary on August 16 making the case that a nuclear device was tested on an island off Korea on August 12, 1945 - six days after "Little Boy" devastated Hiroshima. Professor Robert Wilcox of Bowling Green State University will present evidence of a Japanese atomic test, while his colleague, Dr. Walter Grunden, will argue the opposing view.

BOWLING GREEN, O.—In his 1985 book, “Japan’s Secret War,” Robert Wilcox contends Japan successfully tested a nuclear device on Aug. 12, 1945—six days after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and three days after the attack on Nagasaki.

Cross-posted at The Dread Pundit Bluto.

Suppose Truman had decided to drop Little Boy on Tokyo Bay in an attempt to cow the Imperial Japanese into surrender. Suppose further that the attempt failed, leaving the US with only one atomic device (Fat Man), which was dropped on Hiroshima when the Tokyo Bay demonstration didn't have the desired effect.

Historically, the Japanese did not surrender until after the Nagasaki bombing. One devastating atomic attack was not enough to make them throw in the towel. That means that an unsuccessful Tokyo Bay demonstration followed by the Hiroshima bombing probably would have made an invasion necessary.

In the event that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not induce surrender, the US invasion of Japan was planned for the Fall of 1945, giving the Japanese scientists several more months to build atomic devices. Likewise, the United States could have stockpiled more atomic bombs.

What would the world look like today if an invasion of Japan resulted in multiple atomic explosions directed at the Japanese homeland by us, and against our troops by the Japanese?

August 06, 2005

From the Associated Press

PETROPAVLOVSK-KAMCHATSKY, Russia - All seven people aboard the Russian mini-submarine pulled to the surface Sunday are alive, Russian naval officials said.

Naval spokesman Capt. Igor Dygalo said the crew appeared to be in satisfactory condition and were being examined by ship medics. The sub was raised after becoming stranded in 600 feet of water off the Pacific Coast on Thursday.

Cross-posted at The Dread Pundit Bluto.

I don't care whether you're pro-life or pro-choice, this is unacceptable political discourse. Drowning your ideological opposition in garbage cans, beheading them, and blowing them up are the bread and butter of Islamic terrorism, not of American political debate.

As Dawn notes, your tax dollars are paying for this.

Apparently, the California Constitution guarantees the right of people to not be called names.

From the SacBee:

About 20 gay inmates were forced to remove their clothes in a busy hallway July 19 at the Men's Central Jail while being called names and taunted with vulgar sexual language by some deputies, the ACLU said in a letter to the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, citing inmates' claims.

"Such behavior by staff demonstrates a level of immaturity, lack of professionalism, and sadism, which tarnishes the reputation of the entire department," wrote Ricardo Garcia and Jody Kent, who monitor jailhouse issues for the ACLU of Southern California.

The ACLU wanted anti-discrimination training for all deputies.

Is it just me, or is Eleanor Clift retarded? So let me get this straight: every single candidate that Markos 'Screw Them' Zuniga raises money for, including Paul Hackett, has lost, yet Eleanor Clift thinks that Kos is somehow an effective Democratic strategist?

Ok, maybe she's not retarded, but at a minimum she is the poster child of the partisan Washington media. Note in this Newsweek article, written by Clift, that the Washington Post sent no less than three reporters to swoon over Kos at a left-wing blogger forum (hat tip: Meme Random). That's right, three reporters! And to cover what? The fact that Kos endorsed a candidate that almost won in an off-year low-turnout election? The last time I checked, almost didn't count in politics. Hand grenades and horse-shoes, yes. Politics, no.

Here's how Clift describes serial loser Kos:

Leading the charge was Markos Moulitsas, founder of the progressive Daily Kos, which attracts hundreds of thousands of daily visits and is considered one of the most popular political blogs on the Internet. For Democrats desperate to find their way back to a winning coalition, Moulitsas, 33, has emerged as one of the most creative thinkers and activists in the progressive ranks. The Post team, along with reporters from other national publications and scores of political operatives, had come to get a glimpse of the future.

Moulitsas is opposed to the Iraq war but says that isn’t what drew him to Hackett.

“It’s not about ideology, pro-war, antiwar, it makes no difference,” he insisted. “In the online world, we need Democrats to stand up, not be afraid of Republicans, not be afraid of the right-wing noise machine … We don’t care about ideology. We care that you stand up for the party and don’t run scared.”

I get the feeling it took every ounce of self-restraint Eleanor had to keep herself from throwing her panties on to the stage at Markos.

The boyishly slight Moulitsas responded with an engaging smile, saying that he wished he could claim he was a grand visionary and that his blog was part of a master plan to take over the world. He had no idea it would take off the way it has. It was his way of dealing with the angst he felt as an Army veteran who opposed the Iraq war at a time when any disagreement with President Bush was thought to be almost treasonous. Moulitsas is no stranger to war. He had spent part of his youth in El Salvador, his mother’s native land, during that country’s brutal civil war. Back home in Chicago, he enlisted in the Army at age 17 and spent two and a half years with an artillery unit in Germany. After college and law school, he ended up designing Web pages in San Francisco. He supported the bombing in Afghanistan but was so viscerally opposed to the invasion of Iraq that he was driving his wife and boss and cubicle mate crazy, he recalls. “It was either start a blog and just vent or lose my entire social circle,” he said. Pretty soon he had 100 online visitors, more than he could accommodate in his house, he remembers thinking. When he hit 1,000, he thought to himself, “I’m done,” but he kept going--and now he’s Moses leading Democrats to the promised land.

Hell, Benedict Arnold was a national hero. He was just 'anti-war' not 'anti-American'. He just wanted the war to end so that American soldiers could go back to their farms and not die for the neo-con vision of an American empire. Hell, George Washington didn't even supply his troops with enough shoes to last the winter. And that chickenhawk Thomas Jefferson didn't even volunteer his own sons for the war!

Rick Moran over at Right Wing Nuthouse notes that on the Markos has a reality quotient of 0.4. But who's more out of touch with reality: Kos or the left-wing Washington press corps fawning over him?

Others: Talk Left thinks the article is inspiring. Me too. I'm inspired to go out and buy a Tom Jones album.

MyDD plays down Kos role. Aw shucks, don't give me credit for Hacket losing.

Iowa Voice--right on the money. Bill Quick, too.

Gosh, there are all kinds of new concepts suggesting themselves to me lately, from The First Counterwar to Totalitarianism 3.0. But juxtaposing Jeff Goldstein's observations about the use of the Western Left's rhetoric by the jihadists with the "Perfidious George's" poetic use of jihadist rhetoric (together with his prototypical neo-fascist smirk at the funny way Sharon says "terrorrrrrrize") to incite the "Arab Street," suggests that all three strains of Counter-enlightenment illiberalism (Marxism, Nazism and Islamism) have finally begun to merge. If the rhetoric has become one, will not actions soon follow?

[Note to people who still use the term "liberalism" to refer to the Left, or socialism: Get over it. The US together with the Scots invented liberalism in the 17th and 18th centuries, and it's about time we became its standard-bearers again. It's time we put a stop to the corruption of the term.]

(Cross-posted by Demosophist to Demosophia, Anticipatory Retaliation and The Jawa Report)

Confidential government sources tell the New York Times that the threat of an al Qaeda attack against the U.S. remains substantial and that the mode of attack will likely be a suicide attack. In sum, terrorists continue to target the United States and wish to inflict mass casualties resulting in a psychological victory. All of the targets and methods mentioned in the article have been tried elsewhere by the global jihadi network.

Target: mass transit systems
Method: bombs, derailment, or crashing truck carrying flammable material into trains
Precedent: London, Madrid, Moscow

Target 2: high rise apartments
Method: natural gas explosions from rented apartement
Precedent: Moscow

Report suspicious activity to local authorities. It is far better to be overly cautious and wrong then to be oblivious to the threat and too late.

UPDATE: If you are a Muslim you have an even greater responsibility to report suspicious activities to the authorities. We hope law enforcement will take you more seriously than they did in the U.K.

Sixty years ago today the Enola Gay delivered a message to Imperial Japan that could not be ignored. This is a day I commemorate for the courageous decision made by President Harry S. Truman: to break the will of a militaristic society whose war of aggression had already cost us too much blood and treasure.

On 6 August, 1945, my father stood on Okinawa, a nineteen year-old sergeant of Marines decorated with Bronze Star and Purple Heart, having lost too many friends and seen too many horrible things. He looked forward only to death in the invasion of mainland Japan and the subjugation of its fanatical population. Victory was inevitable; only the cost remained to be determined.

Enter the little haberdasher from Missouri whose bolt from the blue ended the titanic conflict.

Cross-posted at The Dread Pundit Bluto.

From Cliff May, about the Who's Who entry revelation:

You think that might have made them a tad suspicious that she could have some kind of link to the U.S. government? Nah!

Again, what this really suggests is that the agency’s tradecraft had become as sloppy as its analysis.

So once you marry a diplomat, you're pulled from the field? I can see how that might affect whether certain people are willing to talk to you, but if you have a network of sources and connections already set up, you could still be effective. I don't think being married to a diplomat inherently blows your cover.

I do think Joe Wlson's listing the connection in Who's Who contributes to the pattern of indiscretion I've detailed exhaustively below, where I speculate that he's Judith Miller's source.

Perhaps the worst red-herring argument made by the Left against any war (remember, these guys were against Afghanistan every bit as much as Iraq--and the Gulf War, Panama, Grenada, Cold War, Vietnam, etc.), is the ol' "Would you send your kids to this war?" As if any parent would volunteer any child to be sent to any war. Palestinian parents, excepted.

Phil Hendrie reminds us that our all volunteer army is not made up of children. They are men and women, and damn fine ones at that:

To call the great professional men and women who serve in our armed forces "kids" is a semantical tactic employed by my Poseur Leftist friends. They know that by tossing this little hand grenade into the mix any hope one has for a debate on fact, as opposed to hysterical rumor, flies right out the window. Who can not, at a moment like that, bow their head, and ponder ever so deeply, the meaning of children dying in a war.

Ladies and Gentlemen, calling these great people, part of the best trained and best equipped military in the history of the world, "kids" is an obscene insult.

And it's intended as one....

Calling professional and very adult American soldiers "kids" is only one weapon in the emotional ammo dump the Poseur-Left keeps rummaging through. Unsubstantiated but oft-repeated and provocative charges of war crime, torture and over-kill keep the easily confused all the more easily confused. The very people who ask for infinitesimal and undeniable proof of WMD's and terror links offer nothing but ludicrous rumor and gossip to bolster their arguments.

A Tunisian air flight between Sicily, Italy, and Tunisia has crashed in the Mediterranean Sea. Conflicting reports estimate the number of dead between 7 (Xinhua) and 19 (EItB). 39 people were aboard the plane, many have survived.

No indication on what the cause of the crash was. Reports seem to suggest that the plane was suffering some sort of technical malfunction. However, a number of al Qaeda communiques specifically mention Italy as a target for terror operations. Developing...Reuters:

At least seven people were killed and 20 injured when their Tunisair flight from Italy to Tunisia made an emergency landing in the sea off Sicily on Saturday after reporting a technical fault, emergency services said.

The pilot of the plane, which had 39 people on board, made a distress call to Palermo airport at 3:24 p.m. (2:24 p.m. British time), requesting to make an emergency landing, an official at Italy's civil aviation authority told Reuters.

The plane landed about 12 miles (19 km) out at sea at 3:40 p.m. and shortly afterwards survivors were seen on the wings of the floating plane. A Tunisian government official told Reuters by telephone that 24 of 35 passengers, all Italians, survived the crash.

ANSA newswire said the death toll was at least nine.

Survivors brought to shore at Palermo were seen being helped out of rescue launches, many with bloody faces and ripped clothes, some yelling in pain. The port was milling with ambulances while helicopters buzzed overhead.

The twin-turboprop ATR 72 had taken off from Bari in southern Italy, heading for Djerba, Tunisia, police said.

ATRs are made by Avions de Transport Regional, based in France, and can carry up to 72 passengers. Earlier, emergency services had identified the plane as the smaller ATR 42 model.

Down the path to the dark side one has begun, when fear of new site takes hold. Click on "switch to light background version..." link to right, and balance you shall bring to the force.

Gaijin Biker sends word that Osama bin Laden has pulled a Dave Chapelle on us. Perhaps he is in South Africa seeking his spiritual roots, too?

In another sign that the tapes may be on permanent hiatus, Bin Laden's longtime writing partner and reclusive former Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar is "no longer involved" in their production, according to an Al-Qaeda spokesperson.

Bin Laden allegedly met with Omar several years ago, but the pair have not spoken since — although Omar’s once-powerful gang of fundamentalist Islamic thugs has left the door open for Osama’s return, the spokesperson said.

According to Al-Zawahri, Bin Laden denies that the constant pressure of hiding from US and Pakistani forces led him to stop making new tapes, saying he is only living in dank, squalid caves in order to clear his head.

August 05, 2005

And, apparently, mentally retarded as well. Certainly, he is ethically challenged and devoid of even a basic concept of logic.

How else to explain the intellectually bankrupt editorial that appeared on Tuesday with Rall's name attached?

The actual piece is long and tedious (visit the link if you're an insomniac), highlighting Ted's failings as a writer, with a clichéd and sophomoric message telegraphed by the subtitle, Americans Cheer Fictional Insurgents, Real-Life Invaders.

Ted hypothesizes an invasion of the United States by Iceland. Here's an excerpt that tells you everything you need to know:

The humiliation is total. Icelandic forces pass out decks of cards depicting the faces of former senators, governors and generals. They shoot deposed leader George W. Bush's twin daughters and air images of their bloody, mutilated faces on state television. They print photos of Bush, haggard and obviously abused in his secret prison, wearing nothing but underwear.

Ted sees no difference between the Bush twins and Uday and Qusay Hussein. No difference between President Bush and Saddam Hussein. No difference between Tariq Aziz and Scott McClellan. No difference between Chemical Ali and Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NYC).

Well Ted, there is a difference - a profound one. One large part of that difference is that you're allowed to think and write the things that you do without fear of arrest, or imprisonment, or death.

The only thing you really have to fear is that your primary audience won't be stuck at an average mental age of fifteen forever.

Cross-posted at The Dread Pundit Bluto.

I wrote this just the night before last:

Our Marines will feel far more sadness about what they are going to do to you for your cowardly remote-controlled IED.

Go ahead, Abu, piss off the United States Marines.

You'll still lose.