Steyn was overdue for a strike:

"Israel withdrew from Gaza and, instead of getting on with a prototypical Palestinian state, Hamas turned the territory into an Islamist camp. Israel withdrew from Lebanon entirely in 2000, yet Hezbollah is now lobbing rockets at Haifa.

Why? Because in both cases these territories are now in effect Iran's land borders with the Zionist Entity. They're "occupied territories" but it's not the Jews doing the occupying. So you've got a choice between talking with proxies or going to the source: Tehran. And, as the unending talks with the EU have demonstrated, the ayatollahs use negotiations with the civilized world as comedy relief. They don't get Larry King's salutes to Red Buttons and Don Knotts on Iranian TV, so entering into talks with the French foreign minister is as near to big-time laughs as the mullahs get."

"That does not necessarily mean that Iran has given up on its nuclear quest. [ Uhh -- make that "pigs will fly to Pluto" first -ed. ] It does mean that they cannot hope to push through their program without incurring a lot of political damage, especially with Syria coming under so much pressure to cut off Hezbollah and Hamas. With the war proceeding, the ability of Iran to resupply its one partner in the region has all but disappeared, and along with it Iran's control over the two terrorist organization's operations against Israel. Iran has made a lot of disparaging comments about Israel and their folly in responding to these provocations, but the truth is that Israel could wipe out the Islamists in the immediate region if this conflict gets any wider -- and then Iran will really stand alone against the West, with no proxies left with which to attack.

It's time for them to negotiate and get the best deal they can. It looks like they may have stopped believing their own press releases and recognized it. [ The Captain appears to think we should negotiate. Of course we will but it's no better an idea than negotiating with Hitler. They're his intellectual descendants. -ed. ] "

"It also demonstrates that the IIS remained cognizant of the need to evade UNSCOM inspectors on the purchase of banned materials and the pursuit of banned programs even in 1999, after Saddam Hussein had kicked the inspectors out of the country. The memo proves that the Iraqis remained defiant and out of compliance with UN resolutions and had no intention of seriously complying with them at all."

The Prime Directive, Muir Style

Don't miss it.

"The increasing openness of the Lebanese government about wanting to disarm militias may have sparked Hizbollah's cross-border raid into Israel. Hizbollah leadership may have decided that the best way to avoid being disarmed was to provoke a crisis with Israel. There's a chance that all Lebanese would unite to defend against the Israeli attacks. In the wake of that, Hizbollah would again be national heroes, not a private, Islamic radical militia run by Iranian religious fanatics. While Hizbollah has a lot of support in the Lebanese Shia community (35 percent of the population), there was resentment from Lebanese Shia political parties and militias. Hizbollah, unable to shed its Iranian and Syrian ties, was wearing out its welcome. Lebanese were tired of foreign influences, and Hizbollah was the last one left on Lebanese soil."

An early contender for comment of the day:

"I would go further and say that any hope of a Pali state is pretty much dead. If Jihadis can hit Haifa from 30 miles away, imagine what they can do to Tel Aviv from 10 miles away. The Arabs simply have no credibility with anyone. Mark Steyn is right about Gaza (and the WB to boot): the average age is 16. How are you going to reason with a population of unemployed, uneducated teenage boys who have been raised by a death cult? That just about sums up the problem. There ARE no rational people to talk to. Abbas is a Holocaust denier who was the main financier of the Munich murders in 1972. And HE is the "moderate"?"

"But if that way proves impossible, I know America well enough to know that she will not submit. All decent people should look true war in the face, and consider again if they will not back America in Iraq and elsewhere. We have now only three paths before us, and we shall take one of them whether we like any of them: We shall succeed in Iraq and elsewhere; we shall fight a true war; or we shall see the tyrants of the world, some of whom cannot even feed their people, assume a new place of power in the world.

That last one must not be. America will not let it be -- and she does indeed have the strength to stop it. Her military was made for a war of that type. We can fight and win, if we must.

Far better, though -- far better! -- the first. All people who wish the best for all mankind should join with us in bringing peace and order to Iraq, to Afghanistan, and elsewhere as we must. Let us pursue that road as long as there is any light at all to guide us on it. It is the right road, if only we can find the strength to walk it." (Also at WoC)

For today's D'oh file:

"In an exclusive interview with NEWSWEEK's Richard Wolffe, President George W. Bush said he thinks those suspicions are legitimate: "There's a lot of people who believe that the Iranians are trying to exert more and more influence over the entire region and the use of Hizbullah is to create more chaos to advance their strategy." He called that "a theory that's got some legs to it as far as I'm concerned.""

"A BIG SIGNAL that this will be a long war is CONDI RICE saying at the G8 today that a ceasfire "would not be useful.""

"Israel could beat Syria in a straight-up fight; even Damascus has to know that much. However, the question that Israel (and the US) has to answer is what Iran intends to do if that happens. Mahmoud Ahmandinejad has certainly made clear that he will support Syria if Syria is attacked. However, Iran has a big problem in delivering on that promise: 135,000 American troops between Iran and Syria. If Iran tries to resupply Syria, it has to do so through Iraq, and through the most hostile area of Iraq in the Kurdish regions of the north. For those who understand geography, this is why Iraq was such a strategic key to the region."

That about sums it up:

"It would have required courage to hang out with the Mahdi Army, if there were any likelihood that a member of the Iraqi "insurgency" would regard a representative of the New York Times as an enemy."

Deep, deep, deep lunacy. Um, no. I take that back. That doesn't even begin to describe it. Or the depth of the danger we face from his Hojjatieh loons:

"“Their methods resemble Hitler’s. When Hitler wanted to launch an attack, he came up with a pretext,” Ahmadinejad said during a speech in Tehran. “Zionists say they are Hitler’s victims, but they have the same nature as Hitler,” he said."

"This difference makes the nature of the protracted struggles faced by the West against these two fundamental challenges very different. In many ways, there was a basic premise inherent in the policy of containment taken against the communist world: Wait long enough and the truth of the superiority of liberal societies will become apparent to the world. But a policy of containment against Islamic imperialism cannot hope for such eventual success. Since Islam does not make any ambitious proposal to improve the lot of its followers in the real world, but only in an imaginary afterlife, no amount of waiting can undermine its claim to truth."

The Big Pharoah's Dad -- an ex Egyptian General -- weighs in:

"This idiot Nasrallah. He is so funny. He keeps on issuing threats, he has no idea what he is talking about. What Israel is doing to him now is just gentle padding on the shoulders. Abou Shakha dah didn't see what we saw. Israel fought on 3 fronts in 1967 and it was hell. I was there, I saw it all. He has no tanks, no boats, he has nothing except a few toys he got from Iran and it seems abu shakha dah don't know that Israel confronted 3 of the most powerful armies in the region at the same time. If Israel wanted to brutally crush him it can do so in 1 hour.

[ Big Pharaoh then clarifies: -ed. ] *Abu Shakha dah literally means "this guy with the piss". We use this slang term to refer to a grown up whose capabilities is of a baby who wets himself."

"We were waiting and waiting and waiting and everyone knows that Israel pulled out entirely from Gaza precisely in order to try and establish a new basis of cooperation and understanding with the Palestinians, when there can be no claim for any territory by the Palestinians in the south part of the country. And the response was terror and terror and terror and terror again. So at some point Israel had no choice but to take some measures in order to stop this threat."

"The experience of the past three years has shown that the more the United States has tried the "multilateral" track on Iran and North Korea, the more defiant they have both become.

It is, perhaps, time for America and its "willing" allies - such as Britain, Japan, South Korea and Australia - to understand that what is at issue in the case of North Korea and Iran is a classical case of great-power rivalry motivated by national interests. In such rivalries, there are always two camps with conflicting agendas. The hope that the United States can organize a third camp that would include some "multipolarist" rivals is the offspring of an illusion."

"Forty-eight hours after bombs ripped through Mumbai, the needle pointed to Pakistan. Intelligence agencies on Thursday confirmed that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) was the “mastermind” of the blasts that killed about 200 people."

Spengler rocks on American Leftist shibboleths and the precipice they stand on:

"A quarter of the language groups in New Guinea, home to 1,200 of the world's 6,000 languages, were exterminated by warfare during every preceding century, according to one estimate Wade cites. In primitive warfare "casualty rates were enormous, not the least because they did not take prisoners. That policy was compatible with their usual strategic goal: to exterminate the opponent's society. Captured warriors were killed on the spot, except in the case of the Iroquois, who took captives home to torture them before death, and certain tribes in Colombia, who liked to fatten prisoners before eating them."

However badly civilized peoples may have behaved, the 100 million or so killed by communism and the 50 million or so killed by National Socialism seem modest compared with the 2 billion or so who would have died if the casualty rates of primitive peoples had applied to the West. The verdict is not yet in, to be sure. One is reminded of the exchange between Wednesday Addams (played by the young Christina Ricci in the 1993 film Addams Family Values) and a girl at summer camp, who asks, "Why are you dressed like someone died?" to which Wednesday replies, "Wait!"

Guiding the warlike inclinations of primitive peoples is genetic kinship, and the micro-cultures (such as dialect) that attend it. Christianity called out individuals from the nations, and gave them a new birth through baptism in a new people, whose earthly pilgrimage led to the Kingdom of God. Christians began with contempt for the flesh of their own origins; post-Christians envy the "authenticity" of the peoples who never were called out from the nations, for they have left the pilgrimage in mid-passage and do not know where they are or where they should go.

It is difficult to be a Christian, for the faith that points to the Kingdom of God conflicts with the Gentile flesh whence Christians come; but it is oppressive, indeed intolerable to be an ex-Christian, for it is all the harder to trace one's way back. Europeans have less difficulty, for the Italians never quite gave up their pagan gods whom the Church admitted as saints, and the Germans never quite gave up their heathen religion, which lived on as a substratum of myth and magic beneath the veneer of Christianity.

If the United States of America is the Christian nation par excellence - as I have argued on numerous occasions - then the predicament of an American ex-Christian is especially miserable. Americans do not have close at hand the Saints Days of Italian villages incorporating heathen practice predating Rome, or the Elf-ridden forest of the German north celebrated in Romantic poetry. They have suburban housing developments and strip malls, urban forests of steel and glass, Hollywood and Graceland, but nothing "authentic"."

"The concept of a well-educated, well-spoken infantry lieutenant who would rather fight for his country than be a Washington lawyer is apparently too much for some liberals to bear. Two quick observations about this phenomenon.

First, the long-diagnosed Bush Derangement Syndrome has metastasized in some patients into a generalized Derangement Syndrome. Second, the same people who deny the reality of Lt. Tom Cotton will swallow hook, line and sinker every statement attributed by the New York Times or Washington Post to an unknown, unnamed, anonymous leaker with God knows what qualifications or axe to grind, who--assuming he exists--is violating his oath and, in some instances, committing a crime by leaking. An interesting contrast."

Looks like CQ's answer to the NYeT going to be an exercise in table turning on WMD:

"One key point (besides the memo) that undermines the argument for a civil hydrogen production facility is the ease in which the Iraqis could already produce and store hydrogen. Oil refining creates hydrogen in fairly large quantities as a normal byproduct. If the Iraqis wanted hydrogen for weather balloons, they could have simply pumped it into tanks and used normal trucks to transport it where needed. Now we have another argument against the hydrogen production explanation.

A CQ reader with a doctorate in physical chemistry from the University of Minnesota and with over sixteen years of experience in weapons and materiel laboratory work in the military has written a paper on why the hydrogen lab explanation cannot possibly explain the existence and the engineering of these mobile laboratories. Preferring anonymity for professional reasons, "ChemicalConsultant" has allowed me access to a condensed version of an analysis that he has sent to Joby Warrick at the Washington Post, Reps. Curt Weldon and Jane Harman, and former CIA director John Deutsch, now at MIT -- none of whom have responded to ChemicalConsultant or addressed these concerns."

"The only other explanation was that the missiles really did hit WMD facilities and that our intelligence had selected good targets for the limited missile strikes. The emphasis on the urgency of checking the presidential sites seems to confirm this. Saddam had attempted to exclude a number of facilities on the premise that they were his personal palaces and not subject to UNSCOM inspections. That, in fact, was what caused Saddam to bar inspectors in late 1998, and what prompted the missile attacks.

Someone very high up worried about nuclear and at least chemical contamination at these presidential sites. That anxiety seems to have come from the knowledge of what those sites actually held."

"In my view, this war began because Israel's enemies, and especially Iran, perceive Israel as much weaker than before. They thus saw an opportunity to demonstrate the changing balance of power in the region. Dealing a temporary defeat to Hezbollah may be enough to show that Israel is still strong, but it will not be enough to convince Israel's enemies, and especially Iran, that the tide is turning in their favor and that time is on their side."

"The Israeli warship damaged yesterday in a Hizballah attack was not hit by a UAV, as first reported; it was an Iranian-made missile. [ Ho-hum. And of course there couldn't be any Iranian troops helping Hizballah run them... -ed. ] "

"When the Israelis withdrew, I wrote that they would have no choice but to return to both territories, and clean them out. We are now at that stage."

"The international community cannot expect Iran to take its brinkmanship seriously when, at the same moment it threatens sanctions, it refuses to clearly take Israel's side against Iran's blatant act of proxy aggression. We cannot even say we have reached the end of the beginning before free nations show something of the solidarity and clarity of purpose that the jihadis - in Iran, Syria, Hizbullah, Hamas and al-Qaida - show against us."

"The dictators in the region have always been happy to fight the Israelis to the last Palestinian. Now it looks like they're happy to fight the Israelis to the last Lebanese, too. And why not? Lebanon is a relatively liberal and almost half Christian sort-of democracy. Can't have any of that in the region if you're a totalitarian mullah. It suits Tehran just fine if the Jews slug it out with such people."

"The experience of the past three years has shown that the more the United States has tried the "multilateral" track on Iran and North Korea, the more defiant they have both become.

It is, perhaps, time for America and its "willing" allies - such as Britain, Japan, South Korea and Australia - to understand that what is at issue in the case of North Korea and Iran is a classical case of great-power rivalry motivated by national interests. In such rivalries, there are always two camps with conflicting agendas. The hope that the United States can organize a third camp that would include some "multipolarist" rivals is the offspring of an illusion."

The clock hands approach midnight:

"An attack at this distance, by night on a warship indicates a very high level of targeting skill. A capability beyond Hezbollah's own limited resources. This suggests that Iranian technical assistance to its client has been extensive and thorough."

"This should prove that these documents are authentic. No one could make this up. This comes from document ISGP-2003-00014647, page 48 and 49."

"Iran has revealed its hand, challenging the US and its allies and openly demonstrating its desire to dominate the Middle East through force and terror. While we have been trying to delay the war with Iran, it has brought the war to us, in a manner so obvious that even the mainstream media cannot evade it.

In doing so, they have made their threat to America and its interests more obvious and more urgent--providing a stronger case for war than their nuclear program could provide. There can be no question here about whether Iran really has aggressive designs in the Middle East, whether it really seeks the weapons to attack the US and its allies, and how long it might take for such a threat to materialize. The threat is here and Iran's newest war on the West has already begun."

In case you were wondering how witless Time is, Michelle has a video you won't soon forget:

"Reality-checking Time magazine"

"Why? Because occupation was a mere excuse to persuade gullible and historically ignorant Westerners to support the Arab cause against Israel. The issue is, and has always been, Israel's existence. That is what is at stake.

It was Yasser Arafat's PLO that persuaded the world that the issue was occupation. Yet through all those years of pretense, Arafat's own group celebrated its annual Fatah Day on the anniversary of its first attack on Israel, the bombing of Israel's National Water Carrier -- on Jan. 1, 1965.

Note: 1965. Two years before the 1967 war. Two years before Gaza and the West Bank fell into Israeli hands. Two years before there were any "occupied territories.''"

They are the modern Aztecs:

"The death-worshipping Palestinians--perhaps the most sick and evil culture since the Ancient Aztec--systematically poison the souls of their children with hatred of the light before sending them off to murder innocents on behalf of their sinister god. They use their children as “human” shields, for that is what they are: the little humans that the monsters hide behind, for some part of their twisted mind realizes that we value their children more than they do. And if one of them is accidentally killed, the monsters know how to play on our guilt. Although they cannot empathize with children, they intuit that we have a soft spot for them, and know that they can manipulate our sensibilities with the cooperation of the dupes of the Western media."

"to the person who said that palestinian and lebanese are one people well ur so damn wrong we are not like the palestinien and we do not want to fight their war, we only want out country we want peace and we want to get over with hizbulla, hopefully soon, so don’t link the lebanese to any of the arab world peope caus they are a bunch of f-cked up people"

"The complex systems associated with these phenomena – wars included – exhibit what is called ‘self-organized criticality.’ They organize themselves into such a state that, even when disturbed only slightly, they can tip suddenly from stability to instability creating a major catastrophic event. The movement of a single grain of sand can set off an avalanche. A spark can ignite a major forest fire. An apparently insignificant action can trigger a global conflict. Such a system is said to exist in a critical state between order and chaos, poised at the ‘edge of chaos.’"

"The president and I attended Yale at roughly the same time (he graduated in 1968; I in 1969).

I didn't know him, but a friend of mine played poker with him and concluded, "Never play poker with Bush.""

Did you forget that Pakistan is the unnamed partner in the axis of evil? I thought you did:

"Forty-eight hours after bombs ripped through Mumbai, the needle pointed to Pakistan. Intelligence agencies on Thursday confirmed that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) was the “mastermind” of the blasts that killed about 200 people."

"Oh, and a PS to Iran. If you want to make the dumbest move every recorded in the annals of diplomacy, let Hezbollah move those two Israeli prisoners to Iran. Please. Give Israel an excuse to trade those two soldiers for your nascent nuclear weapons program."

No kidding:

"So here is my observation/theory — Iran has orchestrated much (if not all) of the current unrest and violence in order to: (i) distract attention from its nuclear weapons program, (ii) tie down Israel militarily in order to reduce the chances that Israel could unilaterally (or in combination with the U.S.) launch a preemptive strike on Iran's nuclear facilities, (iii) scare the American public (and politicians) into rejecting any unilateral military option against Iran for fear of further inflaming the Mideast (e.g., "Geez, we've already got huge issues in North Korea, Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan, we can't possibly afford any further foreign entanglements" or "We better not do anything to Iran, we might further inflame the Mideast, threaten our oil supply and the U.S. economy" (Lord knows we don't want to pay $%/gallon for our SUV's)), and (iv) create world furor against Israel (and indirectly the U.S.), to further raise the stakes and international opposition to any unilateral military strikes."

Hell has frozen over:

"But Saudi Arabia broke ranks with the Muslim world, indirectly blaming the crisis on the “irresponsible actions” of Hezbollah."

"We were waiting and waiting and waiting and everyone knows that Israel pulled out entirely from Gaza precisely in order to try and establish a new basis of cooperation and understanding with the Palestinians, when there can be no claim for any territory by the Palestinians in the south part of the country. And the response was terror and terror and terror and terror again. So at some point Israel had no choice but to take some measures in order to stop this threat."

"The whole point of the Geneva Conventions is to encourage legitimate soldiering, even under the pressures of war. It was written intentionally to exclude terrorists and other “informal” fighters, who do not wear uniforms or other clear markings, who arm themselves in exceptionally vicious ways, who target non-combatants as a matter of course, and whose behaviour is in every other way unanswerable to civilized norms."

"Which leads politicians to the third stage of surprise and dismay: "I just made American public policy on stem cell research, telling Harvard and Yale doctors what to do. Am I not Plato? Would you not like to kiss my hand?"

This is the ego generated by people of whom impossible demands are made."

"That isn't an argument that we should not abide by the GC, of course; we signed the document, and we should honor our commitment. However, let's quit pretending that this will gain us anything in the way our enemies treat our men and women, once captured. Perhaps someone can explain that supposed benefit to the families of Kristian Menchaca and Thomas Tucker.

If we want to use courts-martial instead of tribunals, fine; that's a decision that Congress and the White House have to make. Let's not pretend that this will make a bit of difference to any American soldier captured by our enemies."

"Notice, please, that he says Iran “sponsored the meetings of Baathist and radical Islamist militants...” He is talking Sunnis here, the same Sunnis who, according to CIA deep thinkers and scads of academic experts, cannot possibly work closely with Shiites like, ahem, the mullahs of Tehran. Iraq the Model isn’t burdened by this wisdom, and so he just reports what he sees on the ground in his own country."

"That gun ban is working out quite well isn't it?"

What do us Bobs know anyway?:

"Tacitus, the renowned Roman historian who lived in the first century A.D., viewed the Hebrews as contemptible because “they considered it a crime among them to kill any child.” Nothing has changed. To paraphrase Golda Meir, the Arabs will only begin to make psychohistorical progress when they love their own children as much as they hate Jewish children. The two attitudes are simply two sides of the same coin: Palestinians and other Arabs engage in systematic abuse of their own children, who then grow up to externalize their implacable hatred onto Israelis."

"The whole point of the Geneva Conventions is to encourage legitimate soldiering, even under the pressures of war. It was written intentionally to exclude terrorists and other “informal” fighters, who do not wear uniforms or other clear markings, who arm themselves in exceptionally vicious ways, who target non-combatants as a matter of course, and whose behaviour is in every other way unanswerable to civilized norms."

"shashoujian"

Apocalypse continuous:

"What kind of people would blow up a little girl's school or attack a train full of working Indians? And what kind of people would admire them?"

My Post For The 4th: On Spotting Idiots Vs Imprisoning Benedict Lichtblau

"Burning the flag is a stupid and ugly act, but there is something lovely and enlightened about a regime that tolerates it in the name of freedom. And of course it has the added benefit of making it easier to spot the idiots."

You might ask why flag burning is tolerable where the NYeT needs to go to prison for treason? Because flag burners aren't actually endangering the lives of my children.

UPDATE: Here's what our flag (and the neighbor's) looked like after we got home from the baseball game:

"The hudna goes back to Mohammed, who used the device to gather his strength while weakening his enemy. Haniyeh knows full well what a hudna means, even if he thinks his audience does not. It's the final prevarication in a column full of lies and half-truths, hyperbole and hypocrisy. We leave Haniyeh's column more convinced than ever that Hamas has no intention of negotiating for Palestinian statehood along the framework of previous agreements, but intends to wage terrorism against Israel until it concedes."

Today's health update:

"The omega-3 fatty acids found in fish such as salmon are already known to help the heart and brain stay healthy. The new studies, appearing Monday in the Archives of Ophthalmology, add to evidence that fish eaters also protect the eyes."

"The caption in the print edition reads: "Photographer Kate Brooks went from Iran to Oman to capture the diverse fashions of Muslim women."

"The diverse fashions." [ Umm. The pics would be all the variants of head to toe burkas that is. -ed. ]

Brooks' multimedia photo essay at Time.com plays like an apologia for sharia law."

Ho-hum. What's a little Hojjatieh between friends?

"Ahmadinejad sees himself as Allah’s instrument to pave the way for Imam Mahdi, and constantly uses public appearances to urge his countrymen to prepare to back him in this task.

Rumor is, Imam Mahdi could be returning this August (or shortly thereafter), just around the time some military experts believe Iran will be ready to construct its first nuclear weapon. Go figure.

Ahmadinejad has made clear his confidence that he and other true believers can affect this apocalyptic timetable, and will use all means at his disposal to do so.

Also of note is that August 22 of this year corresponds with the Islamic date of Rajab 28, the day Saladin conquered and entered Jerusalem.

Taken in conjunction with Ahmadinejad’s stated desire to see Israel destroyed, it hardly seems a coincidence."

Chinese nutjob sighting #45927:

"Japan was badly rattled by North Korea's missile tests last week, and several government officials openly discussed whether the country ought to take steps to better defend itself, including setting up the legal framework to allow Tokyo to launch a pre-emptive strike against Northern missile sites.

"If we accept that there is no other option to prevent an attack ... there is the view that attacking the launch base of the guided missiles is within the constitutional right of self-defense. We need to deepen discussion," Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe said."

So let me make sure I'm not missing anything here. The man in line to be the next Japanese PM is starting to make W seem like Cindy Sheehan. Check. The only country in the world hit by nukes in war could now be considered to be even within a light parsec of considering their acquisition. Check. Oh, and that supposedly useless Star Wars stuff? The Japanese are starting to buy raft loads of it and have signed a deal to go into production soon and perfect it themselves if necessary. Check. The Chinese are now headed recklessly for a military/ economic contest with the U.S., Japan and probably India too. Check.

They're bloodthirsty, suicidal loons. Check.

Yet more proof that the only things between us and a 9/11 replay are the reinforced cockpit doors and planes full of passengers that know better now than to sit like sheep:

"Whenever anyone answers falsely at a security checkpoint, it should raise a red flag in a security officer's mind. If they see a significant modification of consumer electronics that makes no sense for its operation, that should raise another red flag. In this case, the Arabic surname and the Qu'ran are secondary issues; anyone who presents the first two issues should be held until they can get clearance through the FBI as to whether the passenger poses a threat. Arguing that a slow computer response alleviates them from this responsibility just means that the people involved do not have the appropriate understanding of their mission."

Really, we should just stop screening passengers. It's entirely risible.

NYeT to all, and to all a good Gramscian Neo-Syndicalist NYeT:

"North Korea will not return to the six-party talks unless we release their funds at the Macau bank -- funds that they printed themselves in their own counterfeiting ring -- and agree to allow them to continue the operation. The Times apparently endorses Kim's counterfeiting operation, since they blame George Bush for stopping the money laundering and the profit that Kim received from his efforts. That's why they deliberately skip over informing their readers for the second time of the entire context of the stalemate.

The Times has descended into a fundamentally dishonest media publication. They continually misinform their readers and show no compunction about doing so on multiple occasions just to undermine a President they don't like. This editorial and the one that preceded it are utterly indefensible."

Pants down part 45842:

"Yesterday I wrote about the obvious quid pro quo between Bill Clinton's presidential pardon of Edgar and Vonna Jo Gregory and the loans given to Hillary Clinton's brother, Anthony Rodham, starting two months later. Clinton pardoned the Gregorys in March 2000 for bank fraud convictions going back to 1982. Without that pardon, United Shows (owned by the Gregorys) could not procure state contracts for handling carnivals. In May 2000, United Shows started issuing a series of loans to Rodham that eventually totalled $107,000, loans for which they never demanded payment and which Rodham never paid on his own. It was not until United Shows went into receivership that the loans came to light, and the receiver filed claims against Rodham for repayment of the $107,000, plus another $46,000 in interest."

"The floor debate over the McConnell proposal was revealing. Democratic Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois inexplicably claimed the proposal was a solution without a problem because there was no voter fraud in the country. Coming from a man who represents Chicago, his statement left some colleagues in slack-jawed amazement. Almost as unbelievable were claims by Sen. Ted Kennedy that a photo ID requirement would bring back the equivalent of a poll tax on voters. "How can it be a poll tax, if anyone can get the ID for free?" shot back Mr. McConnell."

"Roughly speaking, Palestinian politics is dominated by terrorists — as represented by Hamas — and corrupt terrorist-enabling incompetents — as represented by Fatah, the late Yasser Arafat’s organization. Pity the Palestinians if Fatah is their best hope for rational government. Former Arafat negotiator and elected Fatah representative Saeb Erekat admits that Fatah needs to reform. “We’re not doing it,” he says, “and have no excuse for not doing it — I don’t feel like lying today.”"

"The whole point of the Geneva Conventions was to confine conflicts to, if not regular state signatories, then to combatant groups who recognized—and upheld—its legitimacy. The purpose was not only to protect armed service members from abuse, but, even more importantly, to place civilians beyond the scope of legitimate conflict. In return for this protection, civilian militias were placed on notice that, in order to receive the protections of the Conventions, they would have to fully apply them, which meant that they would, in essence, have to organize themselves as legitimate armed forces—making a clear distinction between themselves and civilians—in order to qualify for the protection of the Conventions. At the same time, this also put civilians on notice that, if they wished to keep their protections under the conventions intact, a clear bifurcation had to be made between militia forces and the regular civilian population."

"Big MSM has really lost its way, concluding that anything "secret" is in fact wrongfully hidden from public view, and that its function is to act as a conveyer belt to the front page for whatever a party or person doesn't want revealed."

"The West needs to shut down the negotiating process and allow Israel to defend itself. No one in the Palestinian political structure has any interest in peaceful co-existence with Israel. If they did suddenly endorse it, the Palestinians would realize how badly they have been led for decades and would probably rise up and kill them, and still would take another generation to figure out that their misery comes from their own bad decisions. Our interference in that process only delays the eventual epiphany."

Demosophist has the concise best case coverage of the NYeT EneMedia in this little piece:

"So this isn't about carrying a grudge against the NYT, but about the fact that they're apparently so clueless that they don't even know they've made a mistake. And since the expertise required for them to make informed judgments about which disclosures are harmful has gone the way of the Monty Python Parrot, they ought to be enjoined from making such decisions until they wise up. Watching Keller take wild swings at soft underhand lobs by Charlie Rose the other night, nearly all of which he whiffed, I realized that the primary problem wasn't that this fellow was an idiot, but that he has no incentive to get wise. And until some are devised, we'd better just assume that Katy's knocked the doggone door off its hinges again."

Sadly, the best case for the NYeT is quite analogous to the central dilemma of the "Tinfoil Apocalyse": Putting too much technology in the hands of the witless leads almost inevitably to disaster. Put a red button in front of your average primitive tribesman and you need to run away fast because there's about to be a very large explosion. The prime directive will have been violated quite spectacularly. We're just seeing the analogous phenomenon with printing presses.

But I'll still call them the EneMedia until I have absolute proof that they aren't really Joseph Goebbels types disguising themselves as the village idiot. Even though they may be nothing more than useful idiots, it's never a good idea to underestimate your enemy. And this kind of outcome is quite a stupendous confirmation of Antonio Gramsci's legacy if true...

And ultimately, this all revolves around the central dilemma of the war on terror Islamic nihilism. Even if you understand we do have real enemies, it's quite hard not to have sufficient hubris to avoid taking them seriously. After all, they seem just so, well, witlessly thuggish. And how could we possibly lose to something as feeble as that?

If they're not on the other side, the NYeT clearly believes this.

But lots of thoughtful citizens who pretty much get it have trouble clearing this hurdle.

Today's A.D.D. NYeT update:

"Whoa! The cat is out of the bag! Revenues are soaring, but they still lag behind economic growth. So those poor folks who rely on the Times for their news are now in on the secret. And once the Times starts spilling secrets, it's hard to stop. Another fact that may be news to the Times' readers comes tumbling out:

[ Begin NYeT ADD drivel -ed. ] One reason for the increased volatility [in federal tax revenues] may be that a large share of income taxes is now paid by the nation's wealthiest families, and their incomes are based much more on the swings of the stock market than on wages and salaries. About one-third of all income taxes are paid by households in the top 1 percent of income earners, who make more than about $300,000 a year. [ End drivel -ed. ]

I'm puzzled. How does the Times reconcile those facts with the "tax cuts for the rich" mantra that it has repeated hundreds of times in opposing the administration's tax policies? A regular reader of the paper may be feeling a little disoriented by now. "

Yes, it would appear that a big league education doesn't even buy crap for brains anymore -- at least in the journalism schools cesspools.

"July 6, 2006: The large number of charges brought against U.S. troops for crimes against civilians recently is partly coincidence (the rate of such incidents is much less than in past wars, but that is not considered news) and partly right out of the al Qaeda playbook. Making false accusations of atrocities, to attract media attention, is recommended in al Qaeda training documents, as a good way to keep the enemy off balance. After three years of defeats, al Qaeda, and their Iraqi Sunni Arab allies, are in need of some good news. Atrocities can be created, by forcing witnesses to make false claims, and to otherwise fabricate evidence. Anti-American media will not examine the evidence too closely, and will instead run with the story. That most of these claims turn out to be false is, again, not news, and the terrorists know it. Repeat a lie often enough, and it becomes, to some at least, the truth."

"Socialist intellectuals will tell you that Cuba is a model nation: universal free health care, near total literacy, and essentially no gap whatsoever between the rich and the poor. They call it an island paradise where brotherhood and compassion reign in stark contrast to the brutal inequalities of the heartless and racist capitalist monster to the North, ruled by its Imperial Nazi King, who is the devious mastermind of all manner of Conspiratorial Wheels and is also a moron.

Capitalist intellectuals -– and there are not many, since most of these people have jobs -– argue that Cuba is a squalid, corrupt, poverty-ridden basket case, a land of oppression and secret police and torture chambers run by a megalomaniac who practices the most idiotic, inhuman and degrading economic system ever invented.

So here we sit in the chartroom, with our competing maps. What to think?

Well, ask yourself what it would take to give up your home, your country, your family and all your friends. Ask yourself how desperate you would have to be to sneak out in the night, and strap your family – your grandmother and infant son – to a collection of inner tubes lashed together and set out in the dark surf across 90 miles of shark-infested water in the dead of night, hoping against hope to make landfall. We can all agree, I think, that that kind of desperation could only be driven by a fairly passionate first-person opinion of such things. Surely this goes beyond what you or I would do to win a map argument at Starbucks.

So. Go up on deck, get out the telescope, and answer one simple question for me and for yourself:

Which way are the rafts headed? [ Oh dang. I forgot. We've all been brainwashed by Karl Rove into thinking that poor people are fat and spend vacations in Yellowstone. If they were really in touch with reality they'd jump right on one of those south pointed rafts cigarette boats. -ed. ] "

"Moreover, even Israeli reoccupation of Gaza and southern Lebanon is a holding action; for in the longer run Iran is the launching pad of much greater concern.

So what are we going to do? As far as I can see, we wait for Armageddon, while praying that the regimes in Iran and North Korea may suddenly collapse. I would advise my reader to pray hard."

South Korea? What South Korea? Aiiighh! You have a Samsung cell phone in your pocket! Drop it quick! Oh, I forgot. You think that Asians are racially superior to Arabs. But you'll do anything to evade the fact that Asians as a group consistently outscore whites in the US on educational achievement tests. How long before all that acid you took as a youth actually reaches half-life in your brain so you can even consider that fact that rational adults like me exist?

"Above all, do not expect Korea to be brought up at all. Korea, in fact, is Iraq on steroids, a compendium of every complaint that the liberals bring against Bush and his administration: a war of choice that began with an error, that became in effect the mother of quagmires, that cost billions of dollars, killed tens of thousands, and dragged on years longer than anyone looked for, to an inconclusive and troublesome end. It began with a mistake--Acheson's omission of South Korea from a list of countries within the American sphere of protection, which may have led the North to believe it could invade without consequence. It was a war of choice, in that it was an invasion of a country to which the United States was not bound by treaty, but felt obliged to defend as a matter of principle."

And you conveniently spilled coffee on your world map where Kosovo should be also...

"It went on to add that Mahmoud, now living in Israel at an undisclosed location, has given the Mossad a secret file containing all the locations where Baghdad is hiding weapons and equipment of mass destruction. The newspaper explained that the locations include a chemical weapon plant built underground in Baghdad, a plant to assemble SCUD missile near al-Ramadi, an underground reinforced arsenal for biological bombs, in addition to five arsenals for missiles buried in the sands of the Western desert.

[ Ed then comments: -ed. ] Note that none of the above talks about any kind of false information getting propagated by Mahmoud. The memo treats the information published as fact rather than speculation or disinformation. Moreoever, the very urgency implied in the classification and in the language gives the impression that the IIS considered this a big problem."

WHOOPS:

"This shows that Taha continued to pursue application of biological weapons, in this case taking care to exploit UNSCOM parameters to hide the existence of the source material, its weaponization into the proper size (15 microns or less) for dissemination, and the process by which she produced it. This memo is dated in American format and comes from April 2002, prior to the Congressional authorization of force, but well after 9/11 and our renewed focus on the region.

Saddam and his henchmen not only had every intention of reconstituting their WMD programs, they obviously continued them unabated during the entire twelve-year quagmire while the UNSC slept."

Oh, I know. After gassing thousands of Kurds and Iranians, we're to believe that Saddam suddenly "got better". Gotta love that old time magical thinking...

Godwin calls them "mind parasites":

"Harrison approvingly quotes the great scholar of Islam, Bernard Lewis, who wrote that “When people realize that things are going wrong, there are two questions they can ask: One is, ‘What did we do wrong?’ and the other is ‘Who did this to us?’” The latter question leads to paranoia, conspiracy theories and liberal victimology, which is why the Islamists and international left share a common cause--they have the same underlying assumptions about reality and about who is at fault for it.

The book shows how deeply rooted are some of the pathologies of the left. I did not know this, but even in 1948, the American Anthropological Association opposed the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights on the grounds that each culture must decide for itself “what is true, good, beautiful, and efficient,” and no cultures were any better or worse, just “different.” Thus, “liberals” found themselves at odds with a document calling for such things as the right to life, liberty, and security of person, equality before the law, and freedom of thought, conscience, and religion. The more things change....

It never ceases to amaze me that liberals think they are doing these people a favor by supporting their cultural pathologies. As is always the case with leftist thought, it is a monstrous arrogance and condescension masquerading as compassion. Harrison quotes a brilliant African scholar named Daniel Etounga Mangelle, someone I relied upon in my book. At a conference, he responded with sarcasm to such liberal nonsense:

"I am going to tell the truth. We Africans really enjoy living in shantytowns where there isn't enough food, health care, or education for our children. Furthermore, our corrupt chieftaincy political systems are really marvelous.... It would be boring if free, democratic elections were organized all over Africa. Were that to happen, we would no longer be real Africans, and by losing our identity--and our authoritarianism, our bloody civil wars, our illiteracy, our forty-five year life expectancy--we should be letting down not only ourselves but those Western anthropologists who study us so sympathetically and understand that we can't be expected to behave like human beings who seek dignity.... So let us fight with the full support of those Western scholars who have the wisdom and courage to acknowledge that Africans belong to different world.”"

But presents evidence here that that's much too kind...

""In hindsight, the things I wrote were over the line of nastiness." Actually, in hindsight, you wrote a bunch of things that could reasonably be interpreted as physically threatening his child. That's not just "nasty"; that's against the law. The fact you can't figure this out, even with the benefit of hindsight, says a great deal about you. The fact you now wrap yourself in a cocoon of pretended victimhood says a great deal more. [ And people wonder why nobody decent runs for political office anymore when you have to deal with slimy -- in this case female! -- vermin like this just being a (damn good BTW in Jeff's case) blogger! -ed. ] "

"This is magical thinking, mixed with an unhealthy dose of narcissism. World history is full of examples in which unjust societies have triumphed militarily over more just ones. And we did quite well during wars in which we interned thousands of individuals due solely to their national origin, suspended the writ of habeas corpus, and so on."

"What happens matters":

"This, we can't continue to tolerate, for while we get deeper and deeper into this Mexican Stand-off we're fighting an enemy that just doesn't have the same problem. They don't have the problem of paralysis because they're absolutists. Their minds are made up, and their debate, if it ever happened, is finished."

And now Hugh is a "doddering shill" according to Steve Lopez? Oh, what a surprise...

"He’s talking about using a newspaper read by almost a million people to “push back” against . . . bloggers.

Let’s place to one side the rather ominous nature of that statement, and just examine it for its psychology.

Why does the instinctive reaction have to be to “push back”? I understand that, if you think criticism is unfair, you’d like to defend yourself. That makes sense. I get that.

But, speaking for myself, I don’t think my criticism is ever unfair. You might agree sometimes, and disagree others. (More than one L.A. Times staffer has secretly told me that they sometimes agree with me! Their names will be withheld to protect the guilty.) But agree or disagree, my complaints are always documented. And I have obtained more corrections than I can count — and have deserved far, far more.

Rather than rushing to “push back” against critics, why not stop for a second and reflect on whether the criticisms have merit?"

Welcome to the demonic convergence:

"The final element of the Demonic Convergence, the coup de grace for Western Civilization, is provided by our own news media. Absolutely determined to end the administration of a particular American president and a particular political party, there is no limit to what they will do, no tactic to which they will not stoop, no secret they will not divulge, and no principle they will not betray in order to accomplish their purpose. The Saudis are better funded, but the Mainstream Media are more powerful, and together they provide a synergy that is capable of destroying us all.

These are the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle called “The 21st Century”, scattered on the table and the floor around you. How might they appear when they’re finally assembled?"

""We thought that once the reporters and editors understood that one, these were not warrantless searches, and two, that this was a successful program that had netted real bad guys, and three, that it was a program that was helping us with current, ongoing cases, they would agree to hold off or just not do a story," says the U.S. Treasury official. "But it became clear that nothing we said was going sway them. Whomever they were talking to, whoever was leaking the stuff, had them sold on this story.""

Strike 1. And probably already out:

"Third, let's assume the terrorists read not just paragraph 31, but the entire U.N. report. If they did so, they would find no indication that SWIFT's headquarters contained the mother lode of international financial data, to which the U.S. had already gained access. On the contrary, paragraph 90 of the report says that "it has become more difficult to trace and identify [al Qaeda's] assets." If the terrorists actually read the report, which is highly unlikely, they would have gained false comfort from it.

Fourth, we know for sure that U.N. report of December 2002 didn't blow the secrecy of the SWIFT program, because that program achieved its most notable success eight months later with the capture of Hambali. Further, we know that even as of last month the program's cover hadn't been blown, because it was described as instrumental in several investigations that were ongoing when the Times printed the illegally leaked information about the program. So as of last month, the terrorists hadn't yet changed whatever behavior allowed them to be tracked by SWIFT. Now that they know how we've been tracking them, they can investigate the SWIFT system, reverse-engineer the transactions that led to the capture of Hambali and other terrorists, and, in all likelihood, negate the benefits of this highly successful program.

Liberals' reliance on the 2002 U.N. report is typical of how they so often argue: seize on a word here and a phrase there, make wild assumptions, ignore the obvious, and assert the incredible in the face of all evidence to the contrary."

They're in Syria now. And possibly Gaza too:

"This seems pretty definitive. The subject is how to evade the search for "non-conventional weapons and other chemical agents." The evasion includes moving Iraqi Intelligence documents, and substituting Department of Health employees for intelligence agents. Further, the Intelligence Service's "chemical materials and equipment" were relocated. This doesn't sound like they were just moving old munitions left over from the 1980s from place to place.

As much as one document can prove anything, this seems to demonstrate that Iraq was secretly producing and hiding chemical weapons as of September 1999."

Proof that everything's relative dept.:

"There, the foreigners also discovered that they were rather more honest and trustworthy than their hosts. Saddam's "republic of fear" had, over the years turned into a nation of thieves and liars. The more extreme police states tend to do that. So the foreign terrorists were increasingly entrusted with the money being moved into the country to finance terror attacks."

"Sounds like a connection to me."

"It's odd that Yale would have trotted out the diversity argument, considering the regime that Hashemi represented. Let's recall that the Taliban beat women for not covering themselves from head to toe and men for shaving their faces. Ancient Buddhist carvings, considered artistic and historical treasures, exist no more thanks to Taliban tolerance. The Taliban also reintroduced the lovely Islamic tradition of tolerance by crushing homosexuals to death or throwing them off of towers.

The latter point seems especially germane when it comes to Yale. After all, they have taken the position that the American military cannot stage ROTC classes at the campus due to their "don't ask, don't tell" policy regarding homosexuals in the military (which I also oppose, for several reasons). Yale's students and faculty argued that the university would benefit from having Hashemi's diverse viewpoint represented on campus, but they kicked out the military for a much milder viewpoint and action than that of Hashemi and his colleagues.And while they argue that Hashemi would have benefited the Yale community by his inclusion, no one appears to wonder whether Yale students might benefit from having the ROTC on campus and the diversity of political opinion it might create."

"Real treason is what the 17 recently-arrested Islamists are alleged to have attempted in Canada; or what the New York Times and its media camp followers did in the States, by publishing national secrets to expose how their government intercepts terrorist financing. These are the things that need full and enthusiastic prosecution under law, for lives and security are at stake.

It is by prosecuting real treason, effectively, that we can begin to restore the order by which the juvenile antics of those who play-act treason can be seen for what they are: despicable to be sure; but finally, beneath contempt."

"Lesson No. 1: Never trust the Times' headlines.

Lesson No. 2: Never trust what's printed under the Times' headlines.

Lesson No. 3: Never trust what comes out of the mouths of the Times' editors and reporters.

Avoid the newspaper of wreckage, and help keep American safe."

That would be too kind:

"Which, while that certainly takes balls like casaba melons, is nevertheless still self-serving and repugnant rubbish that anyone with a bit of sense would dismiss as such."

"The instruction of turning the other cheek has long been prone to misinterpretation. Nothing in Christianity requires its adherents to blithely sentence themselves or their brethren to abuse or death, nor did Christ teach that in his instruction. Jesus taught us patience, and not to blindly return every provocation with violence. He taught peace as the first resort, but even Jesus did not use that as an exclusive strategy. The Bible shows Jesus violently ejecting the moneychangers from the temple, for instance, hardly a turn-the-other-cheek moment. He also told his apostles, "Let him who has no sword sell his mantle and buy one" (Luke 22:36). The Old Testament, of course, has a number of passages where God directs His people to commit total war on other populations."

It doesn't get much more assinine than this. Yes. Lichtblau is a rocket scientist. And I know nothing. Just like Sargeant Schultz. Or could it be the other way around?

"Fourth, Lichtblau's current reporting is deeply dishonest. His statements to the effect that everyone knew about the SWIFT program are obviously false; neither he, his "experts" nor the GAO apparently were aware of it. Further, if Lichtblau were a reporter with integrity, his most recent story would have begun with an acknowledgement of his own prior, inaccurate reporting. An appropriate headline might have been: "We had it wrong: Bush administration doing great job in tracking terrorist financing." Don't hold your breath."

The KKK seems to favor black over white these days. Click through for the latest fashions...

"RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - Since Palestinian militants [terrorists] captured [kidnapped] an Israeli soldier 10 days ago, Mahmoud Murib has prayed the Jewish state will meet the captors’ [kidnappers’] demands to free prisoners, including his 15-year-old son."

Did I mention Britain is well on its way to Eurabia?

"“What Koran was that?” he countered. “Don’t fool yourself by saying jihad is a struggle within, to get on with life, to motivate myself to get up for prayers and that sort of thing,” he said. “That’s not jihad. Who told you that?”"

"Alternately, the US could have activated anti-missile defense systems and taken all three of them down immediately after their launch. So far, the news reports do not address that possibility. We moved a lot of those assets to the theater when Kim staged the rocket. Could we have had three successful tests of that system? If so, we may have neutered the threat from both North Korea and Iran. That's wishful thinking, and unless the administration starts talking about that soon, we can probably discount that possibility. [ I rather doubt that we did shoot them down, though it's not outside the range of possibility. I did catch an amusing debate between a Republican and Democrat congressman today where the Demo blathered on about how we're bogged down in Iraq but the Repub pointed out that if the Demos had their way we would have NO anti missile system at all! So what exactly would we be "focusing" on the NorKorComs and Iranians WITH? No surprise, the Demo insisted that we would be making alliances to work against them. Which is nigh on lunacy -- we have created alliances until the cows come home in BOTH of these cases... -ed. ]

Whatever happened, one fact is certain: Kim has been caught with his pants down."

"Cap and I wanted to demonstrate just how upside down the MSM’s values have become. So we unearthed and researched the stories of 19 of our most highly decorated soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines fighting the Global War on Terror. What we quickly realized was that there’s a reason the liberal media doen’t want to interview these guys and gals and report and inform us about their stories, and that’s because these warriors understand and support the mission; they get it. They don’t believe in moral equivalency like liberals want them to. And so when you read a book like ours that’s chock full of quotes straight from the mouths of the guns in the fight that stand firmly by their Commander in Chief, the mission, and the use of military power to shape the contours of history, you start to see why liberal media have no interest in these stories of hope and heroism and why they relegate them to footnotes, if that."

"July 3, 2006: While the suicide bomb attacks against Shia Arabs get lots of attention, hardly any notice is paid to the increasing number of smaller attacks against the Sunni Arab community. As a result, there is growing panic among Sunni Arabs. This has reached the point where even Osama bin Laden, in one of his latest taped messages, calls for the Islamic world to come to the rescue of Iraqi Sunni Arabs. [ Good luck with that one Osama -ed. ] "

And what would Eric Blair say?

"Long-time Times readers must be so relieved, if a bit puzzled. If the information wasn't secret, what on earth was poor Mr. Keller so agonized about?

And the reaction of Congress does seem to be a bit of a head-scratcher. If this was common knowledge, whence all the screeching? Was the government being secretive or not? If it wasn't, why maliciously draw unneeded attention to a program that was catching terrorists and those who fund them?

And finally, if this information was in the public domain why didn't the Times source its story from publicly available sources, and thus make itself immune to criticism?

Undoubtedly in the interest of openness and transparency, Mr. Keller will be forthcoming with the answers in no time. After all, the public has a right to know."

I think Orwell would say: "The idea that you can somehow remain aloof from and superior to the struggle, while living on food which British sailors have to risk their lives to bring you, is a bourgeois illusion bred of money and security." Or possibly much worse.

"Terrorism is extortion in the service of politics. Attacks on civilian targets are whole-page advertisements taken out to flog these wares on a reluctant public. The military power of terrorists is negligable. Despite the fantasies of those who imagine Iraq to be Vietnam, with divisions of NVA sending tanks down the road to Saigon; with legions of laborers dragging artillery pieces across the mountains to pound surrounded French garrisons into submission -- it is not that. Rather, it is a development of the techniques pioneered in the Algerian conflict against the French. It is the political and media power of terror which is important, not their military strength. And in a takeoff from Omar's riff on Maliki's email anecdote, I would venture to say that terror would have won against the US and the West already despite the vast power of America were it not for the Internet, which has ironically made it possible for neutralize the propaganda power of terror. The Internet makes it possible to show terror up for the murder that it is. To strip it of supposed justification. To remind people of what is never mentioned in the papers: that Osama like all men goes and takes a shit."

"Eyes glazed with disbelief, Bill Bratton, the world's most famous cop, ended a visit to London last week with: "Shame on you, the public of this country.""

"If America is going to wage a war against terrorism, it must indeed act on all fronts. In 2006, it needs to act on the home front and direct its attention to those whose war on the administration is unconstrained by the espionage laws of the United States."

"Well, yes, come to think of it, there is some symbolism at work here.

Nancy Pelosi = "Over-her-head, out-of-touch-millionaire, with rhetorical skills that make George Bush look like Cicero."

New York Times = "Unelected, arrogant, defeatist, liberal establishment, family-controlled newspaper, the publisher of which is at the helm because of his mother and father."

'Progressive' = "Backward-looking, stuck-for-an-answer-when-greeted, insolent depressive."

I hope that helps clear things up..."

"Lichtbau needs to explain how he knows his sources are not partisans aligned against Bush and not aiming for higher level positions in a Democrat 2008 administration. If there are 20 sources (and none of these are among the people who begged and pleaded with the NY Times to not cripple our national defenses) than there is still a cabal inside the beltway trying to initiate a political outcome in the coming elections. Anyone who risks programs and doesn’t focus on protecting this country (theoretically these sources’ jobs) to run to the press for partisan gain should go to jail for life."