WHOOPS!

Space may be waxed into waxing... (Hat tip Glenn.)

More liberal hawks.

Racing for help ;)

Move Along, Pay No Attention

"She is not going to be the last (attacker) because the march of resistance will continue until the Islamic flag is raised, not only over the minarets of Jerusalem, but over the whole universe." -- Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar

The libs will have you believe that we should pay no attention -- and they will even match the rhetoric of the loony right and say that they're just a bunch of stupid Arabs who can't be changed. So pay no attention.

Reprise the holocaust survivor's quote about what he learned from his experience: "When a man says he wants to kill you ... you should believe him."

Hat tip Hawkins for the pointer to the Zahar quote.

As a long-time seafood lover, I find this more than a little interesting as an object lesson in public health demagogery.

Shouting fire? Nope. Nada. Not. But don't you worry, it's really John Ashcroft who's going to get us. Yessiree. Not.

Trouble.

On avoiding ugliness.

Plus ca change.

Did Joseph Wilson drink enough tea?

Four Hundred and Fifty Miles

Check out this little gem:

From: Paul Berman
To: Thomas Friedman, Christopher Hitchens, Fred Kaplan, George Packer, Kenneth M. Pollack, Jacob Weisberg, and Fareed Zakaria
Subject: Hitler, Stalin, Hussein
Friday, Jan. 16, 2004, at 1:21 PM PT
A final footnote on the arcane topic of Hitler and Stalin. I do think we have reason to keep these historical figures in mind. Saddam's Baath was founded in 1943 under a Nazi influence. (This ought to give the Germans a reason to ensure Baathism's final defeat in Iraq, even if Bush has treated Germany with arrogance.) Later on, Saddam added an influence of Stalin to the Baathist idea. Fred Halliday has pointed out that Saddam's birthplace in Tikrit is a mere 450 miles from Stalin's birthplace. (This might give the Russians a reason to help out, too.) Saddam has the unusual quality of being able to claim descent from Hitler and Stalin both. He is himself the Hitler-Stalin pact.

This arcane fact goes to the heart of our modern predicament—the reality that large political forces exist that have demonized entire countries and populations and have worked up a cult of mass killing. The war against these political forces has been bungled by the strategists in Washington. But, as George and other journalists have shown, many heroic people are doing everything they can do to undo those blunders on the ground in Iraq. What should liberals and Democrats do at home in the United States? Everything we can to help those people. Their success and our safety are one and the same.

Bush isn't perfect. Duh-oh! Anyone home? But Bush is NOT Hitler -- but Saddam DEFINITELY is the heir to BOTH Hitler and Stalin's throne. Period. Paragraph. End of Story.

Fanatic mistake. Nice, Michael. And those pesky facts need to be ignored as quick as we can...

The masquerade...

Wall Nuts Meet the NutsHell

Totten makes Iraq simpler:

The reason we are fighting this war is not because nineteen hijackers crashed into a burning building and a handful of others cheered, but because the entire Muslim world not only cheered, but then turned around, pointed at "The Jews" and said that it was their fault, denied they ever did it, denied that it ever could be them, screamed that they hated us anyway, danced in the streets, printed up posters about the heroes who did the deed all while denying they ever really did, and then increased their threats to tell us that if they didn't get more capitulations that it would happen yet again.

A RIGHT FOUND IN NO ISLAMIC CONTROLLED NATION ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD

The ordinary is completely out of reach.

On the importance of bike paths. It turns out their relevance may have been underestimated ;)

No progress here. Move along. Nothing to see....

Fool Me Thrice

Read. This. Article.

UPDATE: And. This. Panel. Bubbles.

Friedman:

The real reason for this war—which was never stated—was to burst what I would call the "terrorism bubble," which had built up during the 1990s.

This bubble was a dangerous fantasy, believed by way too many people in the Middle East. This bubble said that it was OK to plow airplanes into the World Trade Center, commit suicide in Israeli pizza parlors, praise people who do these things as "martyrs," and donate money to them through religious charities. This bubble had to be burst, and the only way to do it was to go right into the heart of the Arab world and smash something—to let everyone know that we, too, are ready to fight and die to preserve our open society. Yes, I know, it's not very diplomatic—it's not in the rule book—but everyone in the neighborhood got the message: Henceforth, you will be held accountable. Why Iraq, not Saudi Arabia or Pakistan? Because we could—period. Sorry to be so blunt, but, as I also wrote before the war: Some things are true even if George Bush believes them.

Hitchens:

Pollack may have been led to overstate the immediate danger from WMD, but he did so on persuasive evidence that was supported by a long history of exorbitant behavior by the Baathists, and on a long history of culpable underreaction by Washington. (There was no comparable inquisition, as I recall, when the intelligence "community" failed to predict, and very nearly failed to report, the invasion of Kuwait. And the antiwar forces cling to their taunt on WMD because every other part of their propaganda and prediction has been utterly exploded.) That's if WMD ever were much of an argument in that quarter. I myself had a different experience from Pollack, in the run-up to the war. I had to debate, every week and sometimes every day, with anti-interventionists who said that Saddam's possession of WMD was a reason NOT to attack or attempt to depose him. I said that the threat was latent not blatant, and that the main "immediate" danger was an off-the-shelf purchase by Iraq from North Korea, and by the way I think I was right. But I was not an elected officeholder in a democratic government in a post-9/11 atmosphere. If I had been, I would certainly have decided to make the worst assumption about any report on Saddam's capacity for lethality, and I would have been operating at all times on the presumption of guilt. As a civilian, I would have wanted to criticize any Western government that did not err deliberately on this side.

Another way of phrasing this is to remember the line taken by the late Dr. David Kelly, sad subject of the Hutton inquiry in Britain. In an article written just before his death, this experienced inspector stated that you could have genuine inspections only by way of regime change. This essentially commonsensical view, which has been seconded by other veteran inspectors such as Rolf Ekeus and David Kay, takes account of the notorious Iraqi deception and concealment programs; the failure to comply at any point with U.N. resolutions; the sequestration of Iraqi scientists; and the preservation of secret funds, documents, and resources in Baghdad against the day when sanctions might be lifted and another bid for superpowerdom be made. Taken together with the secret bargaining (now exposed) with North Korea, this entitles us to speak of a Permanent Threat if not precisely an Imminent One. "Imminence" might have come when Saddam gave way to the Odai/Qusai regime: a prospect that need no longer concern us but that did not concern the antiwar forces even when it was a possibility.

Thus, we now can account more or less for Iraq's lunatic mixture of missing and undeclared weapons, and that in itself is an achievement. Moreover, the Iraqi economy and military are no longer at the disposal of a crime family with well-attested links to piracy and gangsterism, and that too is a gain. Dr. Howard Dean now tells that al-Qaida is in Iraq after all, but only because of President Bush. He is entitled as a private citizen to his touching belief that the connection began only a few months ago: One would not want a president to have been so insouciant if he had had to take the actual decision at the time, and once again I applaud the presumption of guilt, which was equally well-merited.

I love Hitchens writing not to speak of his content...

The perfect anti-Bush???

The attack of the retards.