An Argument For Consistency?

(FAIR WARNING: Be sure not to miss this punch line! Scroll it man!)

Via a friend comes this beaut from the radical right-wing SFgate titled "Flip-flopping charge unsupported by facts, Kerry always pushed global cooperation, war as last resort" that starts this way:

Washington -- No argument is more central to the Republican attack on Sen. John Kerry than the assertion that the Democrat has flip-flopped on Iraq.

President Bush, seated beside Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said Tuesday: "My opponent has taken so many different positions on Iraq that his statements are hardly credible at all.''

The allegation is the basis of a new Bush campaign TV ad that shows the Democratic senator from Massachusetts windsurfing to the strains of a Strauss waltz as a narrator intones: "Kerry voted for the Iraq war, opposed it, supported it and now opposes it again.''

Yet an examination of Kerry's words in more than 200 speeches and statements, comments during candidate forums and answers to reporters' questions does not support the accusation.

But then ends thus:

Kerry's enthusiastic words seem to conflict with his statement Monday at New York University.

"Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator who deserves his own special place in hell. But ... the satisfaction we take in his downfall does not hide this fact: We have traded a dictator for a chaos that has left America less secure,'' Kerry said.

For a candidate who has been in elected office nearly a quarter of a century, Kerry has at times shown a remarkable inability to explain the nuances of his position.

Asked by radio host Don Imus last week to explain how he could be so critical of the war yet stand by his vote to authorize the use of force, Kerry responded with a 324-word answer, including a discussion of no-fly zones and Iraqi tribal separatism.

The response left Imus -- a self-described Kerry supporter -- perplexed.

"I was just back in my office banging my head on the jukebox,'' Imus told listeners when the interview was over. "This is my candidate, and ... I don't know what he's talking about.''

So we have now apparently moved on at warp speed from Rathergate's "fake -- but accurate" to "incoherent -- but consistent"? Bah-dah-dah-rrrrump!

Did I forget to mention that I started out to fisk this article but found myself preempted by its author?

Security Moms Report Back To Duty?

Via Michelle, we are reminded of Sekimori's "Top Ten Signs You Are A Security Mom":

1. Your attack dog has a bin Laden chew toy.
2. You base your SUV purchase on how many places there are to conceal a weapon.
3. Your neighborhood watch complains you don't leave any perps for them.
4. You'll vote for Bush because the other guy is a wussy.
5. You traded in your Gucci for the M-30 Leather Gun Purse.
6. The guys at the range call you 'Sarge'.
7. You send your kids to Judo Camp.
8. Your son quit the Boy Scouts because they were “amateurs”.
9. Monday is “MRE Night”.
10. You DO wear combat boots.

Did I Forget To Mention? (Appendix A)

Dan rips apart more State Department absurdities posturing as biblical truth about AQ and in an out-of-character move can't resist piling on the more well-known Dan and his Kerry sycophants. Did I forget to mention that Regnum Crucis is one of the must-reads if you're actually curious to look under Osama's skirt?

Speaking of skirts, libs claim that it's just so hard to differentiate between "freedom fighters" and terrorists. I don't think so. Did I forget to mention machine-gunning fleeing children in the back and the Beslan terrorist leadership detonating some of the women terrorists on the way in as an example to coerce the rest of the terrorists to obey orders?

Did I forget to use scare quotes around the word terrorist? Can you fault me and claim an IQ above 10?

UPDATE: Did I forget to mention that to avoid dehydration the children in Beslan had to drink their own pee before they were machine gunned in the back?

Did I forget to mention the MSM is going to go down with an enormous crash if it keeps this garbage up?

Did I forget to mention that dark networks are on the way to dusty death? Wretchard has a dynamic range that is not to be missed -- including one of the most damning takes on the MSM imaginable.

I have a better title for this excellent post about blatant MSM bias from Powerline: "Kerrying Water".

There He Goes Again (Updated)

OK, JUST ONE MORE UPDATE 9/28 9pm: Oops, forgot the Senate floor. I think the bottom line is that he holds all positions simultaneously. Remember the tinfoil, uh, CIA hat found on the pecan plantation?
------
UPDATED 9/24 8pm MT: Powerline says to hold off and wait for the tape -- Lexis/Nexis transcript is not an exact match to this! In the few times I have seen Peter King on tube interviews he seemed to be fairly level-headed and credible. Too soon for a retraction yet but skepticism is warranted for now until the video appears. It is September 26 after all so this could yet be a slightly premature "October surprise" from the omnipotent Rove-meister. (Oh yeah, it took CBS how long to do even a "fake retraction"?)

FINAL UPDATE DECLARED AS OF 9/25 pm: Looks like Washington Times has screwed up royally. Looks like no "October Surprise" here. If you can take some brisk language (!), Neognostikos gives the real deal an aggressive fisking that deals out some much needed perspective. And Just One Minute looks to have the best grasp on the big picture including pointing out that the Washington Times has issued a correction. Good for them for getting it right and bad on King.

On the other hand, did I mention that Dan Rather still thinks the forgeries are real? What's that frequency again, Kenneth? It wouldn't be the one that Carnegie-Mellon PhDs operate on for sure.

And pecan plantations remain unchallenged...

---- ORIGINAL POST STARTS HERE ----

Dissing our allies once more. And no, I don't mean Allawi. It just leaves one slack jawed, doesn't it? He's actually so craven as to support my position on occasion among the 40 billion or so others he manages to hold:

Kerry out attack

During a 1997 debate on CNN's "Crossfire," Sen. John Kerry, now the Democratic presidential nominee, made the case for launching a pre-emptive attack against Iraq.

So reveals Rep. Peter King, New York Republican, who appeared with Mr. Kerry on the program.

Mr. King says the U.N. Security Council had just adopted a resolution against Iraq that was watered down at the behest of the French and the Russians. Yet the candidate who now criticizes President Bush for ignoring French and Russian objections to the Iraq war blasted the two countries, claiming that they were compromised by their business dealings with Baghdad.

"We know we can't count on the French. We know we can't count on the Russians," said Mr. Kerry. "We know that Iraq is a danger to the United States, and we reserve the right to take pre-emptive action whenever we feel it's in our national interest."

While no "Crossfire" transcripts from 1997 are available, Mr. King in recent days produced a tape of the show, sharing it with New York radio host Monica Crowley for broadcast, and this Inside the Beltway column for publication. Stay tuned.

So it looks like I have no choice but to vote for John Kerry! Boy, is the evil Karl Rove going to be surprised to find he doesn't control my mind after all! Whee hawwww! I'm free at last!

Well, OK -- maybe I need to settle down. Perhaps there's a better explanation related to pecan plantations... (Hat tip Matt)

A Sinful Soapbox: The Local Root Cause

---- PREFACE ----

From Glenn quoting a reader today: "Blogs are the letter to the editor that the editor does not want to print."

OK, this one finally popped my patience bubble with the Fort Collins' Coloradoan. Here's my current Soapbox submission (a long letter to the editor format) that they don't seem to have space to print. I wonder why? God-awful, incoherent writing?

Or do you suppose it doesn't fit the MSM story line?

A little more context to understand the Soapbox: To be fair, the Coloradoan used to post everything I sent them and this year they have increased their local columnists and decreased their Soapbox space. I did enter a contest they had to select a new set of local columnists at the start of the year and lost out. And I made no bones about having a foreign policy focus to my writing rather than local interest -- so if that's the reason it's certainly fair enough.

UPDATE: I would be negligent if I didn't mention that part of my columnist proposal was for a simultaneous blog. Needless to say, my work at prototyping "We The Free" as part of my columnist submission has become what you're reading now...

Finally, the last Soapbox of mine they did publish cast some rather negative light on the French -- keep that in mind as you read on...

---- SOAPBOX ON ----

The Local Root Cause

As I was slowing for the stoplight, I noticed that the car in front of me had a “Defend Freedom, Defeat Bush” bumper sticker from MoveOn.org sloppily taped to the inside of the back window. Ah yes, it’s almost election time and the swing voters might remember leftists in a negative light this November if “Bush = Hitler” bumper stickers keep proliferating. Time to fake center.

After all, leftists have such appreciation for the mental acuity of the rest of us.

Speaking of mental acuity, I remembered my drive home from dinner the night before with the boys noticing the slightly scruffy van ahead plastered with an impressively large assortment of unusually smallish bumper stickers. I realized it would cause me to take out a skinny tree or three if I was going to try to read them all -- I love the boys dearly so I passed. But in largest type popped “FREE TIBET”. I agree with that one by the way.

Now -– guilty as confessed -- I couldn’t read them all but idled to speculate that I could also probably find an “ISRAELI NAZIS SHOULD TEAR DOWN THEIR ILLEGAL WALL” in there somewhere if I faltered into in an unsafe enough mood to really gander.

Why this errant thought? Because I recalled that the recent travesty of a ruling by the “international tribunal” at the Hague against the Israeli defensive wall was issued by the President of the court, a Mr. Shi Jiuyong. Did I mention yet that it’s the Chinese that have their iron boot on the throat of Tibet?

To be fair there’s at least, oh, a 10% chance that the van’s driver is a supporter of the Israeli wall – by the way one of the few ideas that all ends of the political spectrum in Israel are agreed on. Did I mention that Israel is an actual democracy?

By this point you’re thinking, “What’s happened to Gronlund? Why is he now after the Chinese instead of the French? And why all the local observations?” No worries, you’ll yet be rewarded.

It turns out that local Colorado events are far more important than you thought. In fact, a key “root cause” of “why they hate us” is actually local. Amazingly, it’s located just up the road in Greeley!

Wha-Huh?

That “wha-huh?” would be the six-month visit Egyptian Islamist writer Sayid Qtub – one of Osama’s and Hezbollah’s key spiritual godfathers – made a little over 50 years ago to what’s now UNC Greeley. He suffered the grievous injury during his visit of attending a church dance where upon the playing of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” he famously (well, to radical Islamists anyway) wrote “The room became a confusion of feet and legs: arms twisted around hips; lips met lips; chests pressed together.”

It was just too much for his tiny, misogyny-soaked brain -- he vowed to devote his life to Islamic fundamentalism. Interestingly, W had barely been born at the time.

Luckily, Qtub wasn’t visiting Las Vegas instead of our local 50’s “Church Lady” crowd or the Jihad may have acquired an even more frenetic pace. Did I forget to mention Paris?

Will the left address the Islamo-fascist’s real “root causes” by slamming suffocating black sacks over our wives and little girls? Who’ll then be exposed as the real Hitlers? (No scare quotes required.)

So it’s time for me to order up some bumper stickers. On the left goes “W”. On the right goes “FREE TIBET”. In the middle I’ll place my own: “actually will”.

And another below: “Greeley, Colorado: Sinfully Fun”.

Bob Gronlund
Fort Collins
bob_wtf@comcast.net

---- SOAPBOX OFF ----

Oh, yes. I've just de-anonymized the blog, haven't I?

The Top Ten Reasons to Vote for John Kerry

10. Finally we'll have a first lady with a World Wrestling Federation champion ranking and the mouth to match
9. The liberals will finally get to invade Pakistan and capture Osama due to the failure of Bush's diplomacy with Musharraf
8. SUVs would be considered owned by the Heinz-Kerry "family" therefore consuming no fuel and instantly halving world oil demand and prices
7. All troops in Iraq would be awarded three Purple Hearts forcing an immediate withdrawal -- thus making it much less costly to support our troops since they'd then get to fight Al Qaeda right at home in the U.S.
6. With Dan Rather as the new White House press secretary all statements could be known in advance to be fake -- but accurate
5. Saddam Hussein would quickly die of a brain aneurism from day-to-day confusion whether he would be restored to power or executed
4. No more secret negotiations in Paris with Osama -- he'd get his own embassy on Washington's newly renamed "Freedom Fighter" street
3. After the pullout, no more confusing assertions that fighting Al Qaeda in Iraq is a distraction from the war on Al Qaeda
2. All doctors would just write a check for their net worth directly to John Edwards thus drastically simplifying their tax returns
1. The French will finally stop pursuing only their own corrupt interests -- and immediately send all 600 of their troops to Iraq to restore Saddam's reign

Apocalypse Ammo

Allah remains on the trail while Roger gives me ammunition for an update on the progress of the Tinfoil Apocalpse...

UPDATE: And then came the Pajamaheddin!

You Might Be A Liberal If (Appendix C)

You consider it normal for your news vans to sport anti-Bush stickers.

Your news producers don't even give a second thought to calling in favors from Kerry campaign operatives to incent your wackos sources to provide promised forged evidence.

CBS a 527?

Glenn has the round-up. And Hugh seem to be implying that there'll be no Kerry press conferences -- before the election anyway...

And be sure to check this out:

The CBS story based on the memos the evening of Sept. 8. Are we to believe that the Democratic National Committee put together "Operation Fortunate Son," in which these memos are front and center, entirely in the hours after the CBS report, and yet had their campaign ready so that these memos are referred to in the first words of the AP story Sept. 9?

Are we to believe that the DNC didn't know ahead of time what was in those memos, and how they could be used to attack the president?

Ladies and gentlemen, I am not a lawyer. Would this qualify as circumstantial evidence that CBS and the DNC were collaborating on using the memos before the story ran?

And would this explain why Terry McAuliffe said yesterday that no one at the DNC or Kerry campaign, 'had anything to do with the preparations of the documents,' but said nothing about the distribution or dissemination of the memo?

Oh — and did no one at the DNC look at these documents and say, "Gee, these look like they were written with Microsoft Word"?

Flypaper -- Umm, Honeypot Update

Command Post has an interesting article about the new Iraqi intervention force (Iraqi troops that is) and the apparent pre-announcement of an upcoming December offensive.

Read it -- I'll wait.

One commenter has an interesting take on the apparent "leak":

Classic Sun Tzu and Clausewitz

Precisely the point, as the jihadis are saying to themselves, ” Who are those two guys? We don’t see their names in the Quran or Hadiths.” They are trapped by their own ideology. They only have the tactics described explicitly in their 7th century jihad playbook but the non-Muslim practioners of the art of war are not constrained by such nonsense.

By invading Iraq the United States is seizing Islamic lands in accordance with Sun Tzu’s strategy of grabbing something that is highly valued to the enemy and using it to draw them to you (a.k.a. “honeypot”). And by going for Baghdad, the very heart of the now defunct Islamic empire and seat of the deposed Caliphate, the US is creating a Clausewitzian “center of gravity”.

Allawi’s remarks today are clear testament that the strategy is working:

“Terrorists are coming and pouring in from various countries into Iraq to try and undermine the situation in Iraq. They’re coming from Afghanistan, Pakistan, from Europe, from Morocco, from Syria and so on.
“Iraq is on the front line of fighting these terrorists. And, God forbid, if Iraq is broken or the will of Iraq is broken, then London would be a target, Washington will be a target, Paris will be a target, Cairo will be a target, as we have seen in the past.”

q.e.d.

Oh, and did he forget to mention New York?

Reality Immitates Scrappleface

As usual:

Dan Rather Uncovers Memo Forgery, Demands Resignation
(2004-09-20) -- In an exclusive report tonight, CBS News anchor Dan Rather will break the story of "a web of deception" which allowed 60 Minutes II to use forged documents to impugn the military record of President George Bush.

"As a crack investigative reporter, I've always wanted to break a story this big," said Mr. Rather. "I can't tell you much before the story airs, but the upshot is that someone may have tried to trick me and my producer into using forged documents to discredit the president. We'll actually show you how the fake documents could not have been written in the early 1970s. It's in-depth investigative reporting that you can't get anywhere else. Tune in tonight for this breaking news."

In addition to breaking the fake memo story, Mr. Rather said that during the broadcast he would demand his own resignation, along with that of news producer Mary Mapes.

"You'll never see a cover-up, stonewalling or excuse making at CBS," said Mr. Rather. "We're interested only in truth and integrity. I'm the one who's breaking the story, and I'm the one forcing myself into early retirement. That's proactive."

Mr. Rather said he plans to spend his retirement "sitting around the living room in my pajamas, posting my thoughts to my new blog."

How can I possibly top that? (Hat tip Glenn)

WHOOPS! WHOOPS! WHOOPS! (The Prelude)

Drudge foreshadows tomorrow:

After days of expressing confidence about the documents used in a 60 MINUTES report that raised new questions about President Bush's National Guard service, CBS News officials have grave doubts about the authenticity of the material, network officials said last night, the NEW YORK TIMES is reporting in Monday runs. Developing...

Can you say destructimundohugeous? I thought you could. Now we search for the "disappearing originals"...

UPDATE: NYeT starts the decompression but notes that the clouded eye may still stick by their guns. Oh brother...

Steyn Peppers The Parking Lot -- Again

And the ending points out the obvious:

And, in the end, the reality is this. A few weeks ago, Prof Bernard Lewis, the great historian of the Muslim world, told Die Welt that "Europe will be Islamic by the end of the century". That seems demographically unavoidable.

Given that much of what we now know as the civilised world will be Muslim, it seems prudent to ensure that what is already the Muslim world is civilised. And, for those who say that Islam is incompatible with democracy, we might as well try to buck that in Iraq today than in France, Scandinavia and Britain the day after tomorrow.

But you really, really need to RTWT... (Hat tip Hugh)

Round Em Up -- Sep 19, 04

Belgravia Dispatch takes NATO out for a scorching. A perceptive commenter raises the ante: "Before you throw NATO on the burn pile of history, can you tie the UN to it?".

Belmont Club weighs in on the recent accusations of Sullivan/Kerry as well as peeking behind the scenes into UNscam and it's terror financiers. You won't see this kind of stuff from NYeTWaPoLaLa -- doesn't fit the program...

Mapes stepping up to the plank? Only if she pledges to provide a firebreak for the Kerry campaign...

UPDATE: C'est le Frenchies, Part 8,459

UPDATED AGAIN: Allah provides more chronological magic.

All Hitler, All The Time

Today's BusHitler roundup includes Hitler pitching a strike, proof that the WaPo is actually controlled by the evil Rupert Murdock who takes his every waking order from the evil Dr. Rove (well, the buyout may not be complete yet since they didn't get into the difference between kerning and pseudo-kerning/TrueType ABC dimensions -- but they had so little space and so many problems to document ;), and, of course, absolute proof that Dems have never said a bad word about BusHitler.