VDH Rocks On Israel

"We are witnessing strange things about Israel. Columnists this year wrote about it being a “mistake.” And for the first time emboldened Islamic leaders talk seriously not about restoring lost land on the West Bank and the Golan Heights, but of “wiping” it off the map entirely.

The Lebanon war saw not just slanted coverage, but outright falsification and lying from the major Western new servers—many of them served by local stringers who provide on the ground propaganda and faked photos. And now the Holocaust has been reinvented, as the old idea of a safe haven for the survivors of the Third Reich has been transmogrified into “a one bomb state.” Mein Kampf is translated as “Jihadi” on the West Bank and sells briskly. We are seeing a venomous anti-Semitic hatred in the Arab-supported state papers that the world has not witnessed since the 1930s and 1940s.

Back home, the Left/Right split on Israel has also been turned upside down. If you wish to read sick hatred about the Jewish state go to the leftist blogs or the campuses, not the Montana badlands. Somehow the Palestinians have reinvented themselves as liberal victims of Western, white male imperialists. Thus, in the manner of Blacks, Chicanos, Gays, and Women they are deserving of the usually accorded sympathy for their oppressed status—never mind the Islamists’ gender apartheid, religious intolerance, homophobia, and fundamentalism that should be so repugnant to the liberal mind.

Now more than ever Israel is nearly all alone—and so serves as a barometer in the West of true liberal courage of conscious. It has no oil, no international terrorists, no large population, no real material advantages and no threats to be made in the most crass sense.

Instead, it is a humane liberal society, an atoll of reason in a surrounding sea of autocracy. So it is the perfect litmus test for the Westerner: on the one hand is principled support for an embattled democracy; on the other, is easy appeasement that wins applause from millions, eases concerns about oil and terrorism, and offers cheap relief of elite guilt by trashing the very Western culture that rewards us all. Tragically, most leftist elites these days fail the test. Somehow, especially in Britain, they put themselves on the side of illiberal groups like Hamas or the Palestinian Authority whose history is antithetical to very notion of tolerance.

Now we have yet again the ubiquitous Jimmy Carter. Not content with a failed Presidency, he is determined to turn his legacy into even a greater failure, lecturing us in his new book about an apartheid Israel.

Unlike blacks in his own Georgia of the 1950s, Israeli Arabs vote and enjoy civil liberties, perhaps a million of them, with another 100,000 plus as illegal aliens. In fact, they enjoy rights not found in other Arab countries, inasmuch as Jews treat Arabs inside their own country not just better than Arabs treat Jews (they ethnically cleansed 500,000 from the major Arab capitals in the 1960s), but in the sense of civil liberties better than Arabs treat Arabs.

Carterism is a new postmodern pathology in which smug piety, dressed up in evangelical new-age Christianity, pronounces from afar moral censure on the more righteous party—on the theory that acting well but not perfect is worse than acting badly. Carter reminds me of the timid parent who spanks hard the good son for the rare misdemeanor because he takes it with silence while giving a pass to the wayward son for the daily felony because he would throw a public fit if corrected."

Clueless? Or Cluelesscide?

"In all this Whodunnit the reader is led around circles. Bodies fall out of closets. Cars blow up. Missiles rain down from the sky. And the trail leads everywhere but where it directly goes. Perhaps readers in the far future will understand how two countries, Syria and Iran could conduct a war against its neighbors without the Mainstream Media noticing. But we have a clue. The most interesting point -- in case you missed it -- about the Lancet study alleging that 650,000 people have died in Iraq, is that it is all America's fault. Well, maybe it is."

"November 19, 2006 -- MUSLIMS are often accused of not speaking out sufficiently against terrorism. Nonie Darwish knows one reason why: Their fellow Muslims won't let them. "

"The Republicans can watch this spectacle from the sidelines. They should also realize that they had plenty of opportunity to do exactly what Pelosi and Reid have planned, but left that particular play in the locker room. The GOP may have a long time for regrets on that decision."

"Nothing is more threadbare than the claim of Islamists to defend Muslim womanhood. Islamist radicals (like the penny-a-marriage mullahs of Iran) are the world's most prolific pimps. The same networks that move female flesh across borders also provide illegal passage for jihadis, and the proceeds of human trafficking often support Islamist terrorists. From Jakarta to Kuala Lumpur to Sarajevo to Tirana, the criminals who trade in women overlap with jihadist networks. Prostitutes serve the terror network in a number of capacities, including suicide bombing. The going rate for a Muslim woman who can pass for a European to carry a suicide bomb currently is more than US$100,000. The Persian prostitute is the camp follower of the jihadi, joined to him in a pact of national suicide. [ Spengler channels Steyn... RTWT. -ed. ] "

Today's Gliberal Innumeracy Update

"As things stand, the conflict with Islamic radicalism involves the lowest average daily military fatality rate of any long run national security era. It may worsen, it may improve. If Congress had been asked on September 12, 2001, to endorse a national defense posture against Islamic radicalism that traded up to 2 military fatalities per day over the subsequent five years in return for no additional homeland attacks, the deposing of terror friendly regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq, the ending of Libya's nuclear program, what would they have done? Would Congress accept that bargain today?"

"Where is the Line in the Sand? If anything, the Horn of Africa is strategically more expendable than Iraq. One of the really pernicious things about the lack of substantive bipartisan debate on the War on Terror is that there is no clear consensus on what will be defended and to what extent. The question of what signal a "responsible redeployment" sends is not entirely an idle one. For the ICU it may have been like ringing the dinner bell. Did they misunderstand? Or did they understand all too well?"

And The Blood Drenched Thugs Know It...

"But the Iranians can hardly contain their glee. They know what last elections meant; and so do Iraq and Syria. There may be no need to wait for the Baker report. It is being overtaken by events."

"What we have to do to influence Iran is explain that if Iran does not begin to cooperate with the international community, we will substantially isolate Iran and destroy its means of supporting terrorism and pursuing nuclear weapons. This can be done incrementally, to give the Iranians an opportunity to reconsider their policy. Our Navy, not hyper-extended in Iraq, can blockade their ports. Our Air Force, also not hyper-extended in Iraq, can begin reducing their terrorist-support infrastructure. Things like oil fields, refineries and roads leading toward Syria and suspected nuclear sites. This can continue ... pretty much as long as the Iranians want it too.

If in fact we find an actual nuclear weapon, or one explodes anywhere in the world, the Iranians -- and the North Koreans as well -- need to know that we will assume it was theirs, and act accordingly. This may encourage them to turn their intelligence agencies and terrorist networks to better use."

"The world is going through a major paradigm shift and while it is fully adrift on the tides of the 21st century, nearly all the politicians on both sides of the Atlantic are stuck firmly in the past. We are entering a dark wood without a compass, and not even the realization of the need for one. Back to Murtha and Alcee Hastings."

"It's amazing what trouble some countries will go through for absolutely nothing. We can all rest easy now that Seymour Hersh has set the record straight, can't we. Or can we?"

"The real answer is that America cannot afford chaos in Iraq because it would represent a victory for Iran and a humiliation for the US. Any conference aimed at effectively handing a victory to the Iranians would be as pointless as putting out a fire in your hair with a hammer in order to feel better. Some gain, at least, must be in view.

Therefore any regional conference must contain elements which can dissuade Damascus and Teheran from their campaign of subversion that do not include mere appeals to their "fear of unrest" in Iraq. If the "fear of unrest" in Iraq holds as much terror to Damascus as "fear of unrest" in Lebanon it will be slim reed indeed upon which to base the conference."

"So apparently this race to be the dumbest leaders in Congress will be longer than I thought. Just when I was ready to declare the Republicans as the winner, we enter turn 2 and see the Dems about to retake the lead.

How will it all end? [ Ummm. Not well? Looks like time to start campaigning for a referendum to get NOTA on my state ballot to me. -ed. ] "

""This type of resolution serves only to exacerbate tensions by serving the interests of elements hostile to Israel's inalienable and recognized right to exist."

"This deepens suspicions about the United Nations that will lead many to conclude that the organization is incapable of playing a helpful role in the region," Bolton continued.

"In a larger sense, the United Nations must confront a more significant question, that of its relevance and utility in confronting the challenges of the 21st century. We believe that the United Nations is ill served when its members seek to transform the organization into a forum that is a little more than a self-serving and a polemical attack against Israel or the United States," he said.

"The Human Rights Council has quickly fallen into the same trap and de-legitimized itself by focusing attention exclusively on Israel. Meanwhile, it has failed to address real human rights abuses in Burma, Darfur, the DPRK, and other countries," Bolton charged.

"The problem of anti-Israel bias is not unique to the Human Rights Council. It is endemic to the culture of the United Nations. It is a decades-old, systematic problem that transcends the whole panoply of the UN organizations and agencies," he continued. [ Well. Speaking truth to insanity. If that doesn't put the nail in the coffin of his UN nomination with the Victicrats I don't know what will. -ed. ] "

"The Sauds hit the roof when their Swiss bankers told them of the investigation, according to the Times of London source. They sent an emissary to 10 Downing Street, making it clear that the entire British-Saudi relationship hinged on getting their gold Rolls Royces supplied by British contractors, and that the entire war on terror depended on whether royals could still sun themselves on exclusive beaches. [ Why how shocking! I never would have guessed anything like this in a million years! Not. -ed. ]

This should be a warning to the West as to the fragility of Saudi support on the efforts to stop radical Islamism ... such as it is. They appear to only support the war as long as their endless supply of luxury items, supplied by fraud and corruption, continues without interruption. Counting on their efforts in the long run is a bad strategy. We need to do what we can to avoid antagonizing them, but we had better start working on alternate strategies to work around their petulant obstructionism. [ We have violated the Prime Directive folks. We can get busy and work on oil shale but it just means that we'll still have energy to fight with when they get though with their Eurabian project. -ed. ] "

"If you missed it on CNN last night, you can watch Glenn Beck’s Exposed: The Extremist Agenda right here. This segment receives my ringing endorsement. Some of it shocked even me, and I think I’m pretty well versed in the mystical and religious teachings of Islam. Beck’s segment delves into the rampant propaganda in the Middle East - the words, images, and mystical superstitions that are rapidly moving millions of “moderate” Muslims into the Salafi and Jihadi camps.

I have already bought and watched Obsession and Islam: What The West Needs To Know, which you also MUST SEE. I thought this might be a copy-cat production. It is not. It has never-before-seen footage and it is very much worth your time to watch."

Who Said This?

"First he incites war, then falsifies the causes, then odiously wraps himself in a cloak of Christian hypocrisy and slowly but surely leads mankind to war, not without calling God to witness the honesty of his attack." --Do you know who said this?

Anyone paying attention to politics circa 2006 would reasonably guess that it's a quote from some famous Democrat about George Bush. But it isn't -- the answer is here at the end of the second paragraph.

Did that shake you up a bit? If you hate George Bush and this didn't phase you at all, then it's a reasonable guess that you're going to hate me too. I think George Bush is a liberal. If you're a conservative and didn't know this either, wake up and smell the coffee. Eric Blair would quite literally have no words to describe the slickly marketed Orwellian Fascifistic, Gramscian cultural nightmare we've become trapped in. Why weren't you drilled on that quote by Junior High? It's only critical perspective on the most devastating war in history (well, yet anyway).

Maybe because fascism is both different, more dangerous and still alive somewhere "your betters" want you to be distracted from looking? You do understand psychological projection?

This post will hold the #2 position on the blog for a long while -- the links here need to be pondered over and over ... until you stand up, turn off the TV and break the bonds of the "it's not cool to be smart" culture they want to keep you enslaved in.

That Pesky Rushdie Again

"Finally, soon after Khomeini’s fatwa, there appeared this letter in The Observer in Britain: “Salman Rushdie speaks for me. Mine is a voice that has not yet found expression in newspaper columns; it is the voice of those who are born Muslims but wish to recant in adulthood, yet are not permitted to, on pain of death. Someone who does not live in an Islamic society cannot imagine the sanctions—both self-imposed and external—that militate against expressing religious disbelief. ‘I don’t believe in God’ is an impossible public utterance, even among family and friends. So we hold our tongues, those of us who doubt.”"

"Finally, soon after Khomeini’s fatwa, there appeared this letter in The Observer in Britain: “Salman Rushdie speaks for me. Mine is a voice that has not yet found expression in newspaper columns; it is the voice of those who are born Muslims but wish to recant in adulthood, yet are not permitted to, on pain of death. Someone who does not live in an Islamic society cannot imagine the sanctions—both self-imposed and external—that militate against expressing religious disbelief. ‘I don’t believe in God’ is an impossible public utterance, even among family and friends. So we hold our tongues, those of us who doubt.”"

"The Democrats have their best political cycle in 12 years, and conclude that the way to start off is electing a Speaker and Majority Leader who don't just hate each other, they won't even return phone calls.

The Republicans have their worst political cycle in 12 years, and conclude that everything's fine, there's no problem, and they should just stay the course. [ One more time just for emphasis ;) As I've said before to be an equal opportunity offender: We have the witless versus the perfidious mediated by the cynical narcissists. And it's 1938 again. If not later. -ed. ] "

And You Should Be Able To Get The Main Post Also...

"I think the thing that really, really pisses me off is the appropriation of the "canary" metaphor for the Lebanese. For years, I've heard the theory that Jews are like canaries in coal mines -- when it starts getting bad for Jews in a country or region, it's going to be bad for everyone else soon. It's an observation that's tended to stand the test of time, and the notion of applying it to a country that's allowed itself to become a base for attacks on Jews time and time again is more than a little repugnant.

But not that unexpected. To simultaneously deny the suffering of the Jews while accusing them of perpetrating the very same acts is one of anti-semitism's oldest tricks. Witness how Iran simultaneously denies the historic fact of the Holocaust, while promising a new one. Or the constant Nazi imagery in anti-Israeli propaganda, where the Jews are seen as the Nazis. Or the... well you get the idea."

Those Pesky Numbers

"I have read estimates of up to 800 BILLION barrels of oil in the Green River Basin in Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado.

The San Juan plateau in the Four Corners region has over 100 TRILLION cubic feet of natural gas. It's also the world's largest uranium field.

There are trillions more cubic feet of gas off our coasts.

Alberta has almost as much oil as Saudi Arabia.

Add in ANWR, the Gulf of Mexico, and the outer shelf, and you see we really have no reason to import energy sources from the Middle East.

We will never be free to deal with the Saudi-funded Jihad until we end our reliance on "their" oil (which we found, which we pump out of the ground, which we refine, which we transport, which...well you get it)."

"Our worst fear is that U.S. withdrawal from Iraq could trigger full civil war between Sunni and Shia forces. But much worse is possible: for such a conflagration is likely to mutate into something larger, with Iran intervening directly to support the Shia, followed by various Arab countries to support the Sunnis. To hope for this would be to repeat the fallacy of the 1930s, when the old fogeys actually hoped for a war in which the Stalin and Hitler regimes would destroy each other. Such fantasies are irresponsible.

But the most immediate prospect of fresh open warfare continues to be around the borders of Israel. The U.N. has, as we expected, turned a blind eye to the rearmament of Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, concentrating its energies on protesting Israeli attempts to monitor this rearmament. Hezbollah’s political power-play within Lebanon has been proceeding in its theatrical way. Meanwhile, Hamas has been building a more powerful rocket inventory in Gaza. Rocket attacks on Israeli schools and other targets in Sderot and the western Negev are stepping up again.

It is the consensus of most intelligent observers that Israel will have no choice but to resume large-scale attacks in Lebanon in the near future, possibly before the end of this year. But it will be a war in which Syria and Iran see better prospects for meddling, knowing that Israel’s security guarantees from the U.S. are in a state of flux, and that Israel is thus now easier to isolate.

Gloom and doom make good sense, under these circumstances. Despair never does. As the late Abba Eban, once Israel’s foreign minister, used to say, “History teaches us that men and women behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.” As he didn’t add, this is invariably after the prospective catastrophe has vastly increased in scale."

Warren on the A.D.D. of Puerile Fascifism

"But look at Iraq. The U.S. and allies invaded to remove Saddam Hussein, and with any luck, install a functioning democracy, as a light to lighten the Arab world. What they found, only a little beneath the surface of the nominal secular Baathism they displaced, was an enemy motivated by religious fanaticism, willing to cooperate with any devil who offers himself against the “Great Satan” -- in this case, the very Sunni “Al Qaeda in Iraq” with the very Shia ayatollahs of Iran, to foment a civil war against their fellow-Iraqi Shia, whom the ayatollahs are also supplying. With whom do we make peace?

“With the ayatollahs!” -- comes the quick response from the old school of diplomacy, whose principle of analysis might be caricatured: “First find your enemy, and then charm him to death.” But Iran is only vying for leadership of the international jihad. The allies knocked down Saddam, and Zarkawi popped up. Neutralize the ayatollahs, and other aspirants will take their place.

In the moments just before the Congressional mid-term election, the New York Times did a big splash excoriating the Bush administration for having published captured Iraqi nuclear documents, that could be useful for Iran’s development of nuclear weapons. This was of course designed to hurt the Republicans in the election, as much as possible. Since the paper had previously given much play to the argument, “Bush lied about Iraq’s development of WMD, as a pretext for invasion,” the breach of logic was exceptionally sharp. Yet understandable, because the irrational begets the irrational. They think, “Get rid of Bush and all our problems are over.”"

"Some argued that the GOP would have been better off dumping the Boehner-Blunt "old guard" in favor of the "reformists" Pence and Shadegg. But hey, who better to lead the GOP minority than the men who helped create it?"

"Because fewer refining processes are necessary with oil shale than with crude oil, the final product is a higher quality fuel at a lower price, Aizenshtat said.

The company estimates it will consume 6 million tons of oil shale and 2 million tons of refinery waste each year, for an annual production of 3 million tons of product.

It would cost about $17 to produce a barrel of synthetic oil at the Hom Tov facility, meaning giant profit margins in a world of $45 to $60 per barrel crude. Yearly earnings are forecasted to be between $159 million and $350 million, Shahal said.

Israel has 15 billion tons of oil shale reserves. Jordan, on the other hand, has about 25 billion tons, and the oil shale in Jordan is of higher quality. Shahal met with Jordanian Energy Minister Azmi Khreisat earlier this year, to discuss setting up a plant there.

The United States also has a giant reserve, mostly in Colorado, and Hom Tov sees potential for its patented process there."

UPDATE: More detail here. Sounds very promising. The real issue may be figuring out how to survive the price war that OPEC will launch to keep it from succeeding. Well, if NYC and large parts of the M.E. aren't sheets of glass long before then...

"Think of it as a chance to confront fascism in 1920, if we had only had the guts to do it," Abizaid said. ... If we don’t have guts enough to confront this ideology today, we’ll go through World War Three tomorrow."

"This is what the argument that the enemy will pursue following a withdrawal from Iraq really means. It will send the signal that even relatively weak powers like Syria and Iran can openly destabilize their neighbors and attack the United States without any real fear that their regimes will be changed. And inevitably they will do so again and again. Perhaps the most cruel aspect of proposals to "withdraw" from Iraq without decisively winning is that the word is really a euphemism for a change of venue. Using the word "withdrawal" falsely implies a choice between war and peace when it is really a choice between war and more war."

"So what exactly is the next war in the Middle East probably going to be about? It will be about Israel going back into Lebanon and into Gaza to temporarily stop being rocketed from places from which they have withdrawn. By all means buy tickets for friendly Iraqis out Baghdad. But to play safe, make it round trip."

"Liberals tend to specialize in giving away other peoples' money."

"So what exactly is the next war in the Middle East probably going to be about? It will be about Israel going back into Lebanon and into Gaza to temporarily stop being rocketed from places from which they have withdrawn. By all means buy tickets for friendly Iraqis out Baghdad. But to play safe, make it round trip."

"None of the various schemes put forward in our public debate to “solve” Iraq can work — although much can be done to improve conditions — because they all inevitably assume that Iraq can be “solved” by itself. That includes the call for more troops on the ground. Even if you believe that those troops will dramatically improve security, it still doesn’t address the central question: can the people of the region believe we are going to win? They won’t believe it until they see us waging war effectively, which means we have to be able to threaten Iran and Syria with defeat.

It requires an Iran/Syria policy. Iran declared war against us 27 years ago and has waged it relentlessly, but we have yet to respond. It is astonishing how many diplomats and spooks actually believe Syria is a friend, when Assad drinks our blood from the same glass as Khamenei. Serious policies must aim at regime change in Tehran and Damascus. This does not require a military invasion of either country, but it does require active support for anti-regime political groups, combined with an explicit declaration that we want an end to the tyrannies. As a starter, it would be nice to have the Justice Department indict the Iranian leaders, following the example of Argentina, which just issued arrest warrants for former president Rafsanjani and his henchmen, who presided over the Hezbollah bombing of the Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires in 1996.

We do not have great intelligence on Iran, but we do know a lot about the sentiments of the overwhelming majority of Iranians, thanks to public-opinion polls conducted by the mullahs themselves. Those polls show upwards of seventy percent of Iranians — that would be 50 million people, mostly younger than 30 — who do not like the regime and want it changed. Those are terrific numbers for us and terrifying numbers for the mullahs, which is why they frantically arrest, torture and kill anyone who openly criticizes them, and why they have destroyed all remnants of free press, and why they are censoring Internet use, satellite-TV access, and cell phones. They, and their Syrian allies, know where their doom lies."

"One thing I've noticed in my frequent contacts with Israel and Israelis (being married to an Israeli) is that the Israeli state managed to severely damage the philanthropic impulse that once dominated Jewish life. A combination of statism taught in public schools, combined with the prevalent (and understandable) idea that one is owed something by the state after years and years of military service, has led many Israelis to conclude, completely contrary to Jewish tradition, that charity and volunteerism is for suckers. You can see how the attitude of folks like Peretz doesn't exactly help."

"“It’s 1938, and Iran is Germany,” Netanyahu said, “and Iran is racing to arm itself with atomic bombs.”

“Believe him and stop him,” Netanyahu added, speaking of Ahmadinejad. “This is what we must do. Everything else pales before this.”

Responding to angry Israel civilians who had lived in bomb shelters for three weeks this summer, Netanyahu told me he thought Israel must “finish the job” against Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

His successor as Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, ignored his advice.

Tehran’s leaders are betting that the United States fears Iran’s long reach, that we fear Iran’s ability to inflict pain on U.S. forces in Iraq, and on U.S. allies elsewhere in the Middle East and Europe through terrorist proxies and missile attacks.

If Iran has succeeded in deterring the United States of America even before it has acquired nuclear weapons, what kind of reach will they have once they can field a nuclear arsenal?

We still have options other than a military strike. As I have advocated many times in this space, I believe our best option is to develop a comprehensive plan to help the Iranian people to get rid of this wretched regime, before it causes more harm to them, to Iran’s neighbors, and to the world at large.

But the one option we do not have is to do nothing.

The nuclear clock is ticking, as Ahmadinejad himself now admits.

It’s your move, Mr. President."

"There are really only two questions:

1. Are they really willing to die to the extent that they indicate?

2. Are we really willing to kill them?

Actually, there's only one question."

"A man was arrested at Detroit Metropolitan Airport after officials say they found him carrying more than $78,000 in cash and a laptop computer containing information about nuclear materials and cyanide."

"Earlier this week, in a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, President Bush threatened Iran with “isolation” if it continues plowing forward in its nuclear program. This must have drawn cackles over at the crow’s nest in Tehran. President Ahmadinejad denies the Holocaust, promises to defeat the United States, and assures the world that Israel will soon disappear. He gleefully horrifies even the most anti-Bush Europeans. He brushes Security Council resolutions aside and insults the United Nations. International investors are pulling out. If Ahmadinejad is at all worried about isolation, he has a rather queer way of showing it. Security Council Resolution 1696 ordered Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment activities. Iran’s decision to ignore the resolution — which it is treaty-bound to obey — essentially abrogated the U.N. Charter, and should have been considered an act of war by those countries it has declared to be its enemies, chiefly Israel and the United States.

But today, nearly two decades after the end of the Cold War, the United States is clueless about where the nation’s new defensive perimeter lies. Neither we nor our enemies have any idea where we will stand and fight."

"The last few days ... the reincarnation of Trent Lott, the rise of Murtha, etc., etc. ... has cemented in my mind that anyone who has the remotest confidence in either of our major political parties has cement for brains. Forget the best and the brightest. The leadership of both parties is dominated by an almost willfully constructed collection of the dull, talentless and (often enough) corrupt. Most would be eminently unqualified for a real job that required serious education and, especially, creativityand original thought. Many aren't even good at public speaking and communicatiing - that baseline second mother's milk of politics. And here we are at one of the most critical passes in human history with a passel of Third World countries ruled by despots and religious fanatics about to obtain nuclear weapons (if they don't have them already)."

"With Iraqi society decomposing - or, at best, reverting to a medieval state with cell phones - the debate in Washington over whether to try to save the day by deploying more troops or withdrawing some is of secondary relevance.

What really matters is what our forces are ordered - and permitted - to do. With political correctness permeating our government and even the upper echelons of the military, we never tried the one technique that has a solid track record of defeating insurgents if applied consistently: the rigorous imposition of public order.

That means killing the bad guys. Not winning their hearts and minds, placating them or bringing them into the government. Killing them."

"BUT I DON’T GRADE ON A CURVE. I find it almost inconceivable that our most highly ranking elected officials are so intellectually incurious that they haven’t bothered getting themselves up to speed on the most pressing issue of our day.

The name Newt Gingrich has come up a lot during these conference calls. Whatever Gingrich’s faults were, he was a creative and active thinker. Most of the congressmen have gone out of their way to praise Newt and his legacy. Somehow I don’t see Newt educating himself on the most important issue of our time by merely consuming the spoon-feedings doled out by the known incompetents who populate our intelligence agencies."

"How would you like to be one of Iraq's handful of relatively honest cops knowing that any terrorist or sectarian butcher you bust is going to be back on the block before your next payday? And yeah, they know where you live.

Our "humanity" is cowardice masquerading as morality. We're protecting self-appointed religious executioners with our emphasis on a "universal code of behavior" that only exists in our fantasies. By letting the thugs run the streets, we've abandoned the millions of Iraqis who really would prefer peaceful lives and a modicum of progress.

We're blind to the fundamental moral travesty in Iraq (and elsewhere): Spare the killers in the name of human rights, and you deprive the overwhelming majority of the population of their human rights. Instead of being proud of ourselves for our "moral superiority," we should be ashamed to the depths of our souls."

"It continued: "Just as in one 33-day war more than 50 percent of Israel was destroyed, and the hope of its supporters for the continued life of this regime was broken, it is likely that in the next battle, the second half will also collapse." [ Yes, certainly. They must be destroyed since they're evil and have nuclear weapons to oppress us with. But of course they won't use them in their death throws (because the Israeli's are actually just an external prop to keep the Iranians under the thumb of the Mullahs). Or is it that they believe they will win a nuclear war? That's what the Iranian leaders like Rafsanjani have said in public of course. But we refuse to believe they're insane. Just like Chamberlain thought Hitler was a fine negotiating partner... -ed. ] "

"What irony. One of the left's main knocks on President Bush over the years is that he's been too blinded by loyalty and that his administration has suffered from cronyism. Yet here you have the new Speaker of the House, whose drapes haven't even been measured or hung yet, pulling out all the stops to install an ethically-challenged pal for Majority Leader out of blind loyalty and passing over another perfectly competent member (Jane Harman) out of pure pique to turn over the Chairmanship of the Intelligence Committee to a man who was impeached for taking bribes. Not the most auspicious of beginnings, I'd say."

"When Saddam was found guilty and condemned to death, the Sunni Arab world was shocked. While Saddam was not well liked in the Sunni Arab world, he was admired for taking on the Iranians and Americans, and surviving. Plus, Saddam had a flair for publicity, and managed to portray himself as an Arab hero. So the thought of executing him brought forth outrage (largely unheard in the West), that also fueled the idea that the United States was a secret ally of Iran, against the Arabs. Now, of course this sounds absurd to Westerners, but it seems real enough in the Arab world (which is over 80 percent Sunni). Iraq has long been a key bulwark in defending the Arab world, and especially the "Arab Oil," from Iranian aggression. Now, because of the United States, it has come to this. The chief defender of Arabs against Iranians, Saddam Hussein, is to be hung like a common criminal. Saddam's Sunni Arab supporters are being driven out of Iraq. And now the Americans, tired of the casualties, are going to pull out of Iraq, leaving it a new province of Iran."

"The principal fascination of watching train wrecks and other predictable disasters is the foreknowledge of the impact before the actual collision actually happens. In the moments leading up to the crash the event almost seems preventable. Occasionally the onlookers will even shout, though they know the shouts are futile.

The amazing thing is how many of the actors who will soon be capering all over the wreckage of the battlefield, looking very solemn and concerned and pointing their fingers with trembling self-righteousness, are at this very moment seemingly indifferent to the gathering storm."

"Criticizing the international community in his GA speech for not acting more forcefully in trying to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power - "No one cared then and no one seems to care now," he said, again drawing on the Nazi parallel - Netanyahu warned that Tehran's nuclear and missile program "goes way beyond the destruction of Israel - it is directed to achieve world-wide range. It's a global program in the service of a mad ideology."

Large sections of the international community, he said, also misunderstood the nature of radical Islam and its role in the Mideast conflict. "What happens in Iran affects what happens in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, not the other way round," he said."

"We are seeing, I think, the systematic rehabilitation of Saddam Hussein's reputation. It is fast becoming the conventional wisdom on the left that Saddam was a benign, progressive dictator--sort of an Arab Fidel Castro. The airbrushing continues, perhaps, with the claim that Iraq never did have WMDs.

Still, it would be quite remarkable if the Danish intelligence service really said that Saddam didn't never had WMDs, since he used them repeatedly, both in the war against Iran and against his own citizens, and U.N. inspectors supervised the destruction of Saddam's "extensive CW [chemical weapons] arsenal" before vacating Iraq in 1998, while leaving large quantities of chemical and biological agents unaccounted for, according to UNMOVIC reports.

I suppose we could take a perverse satisfaction in Denmark's intelligence agencies being even more in the dark than our own, but I suspect the error is Editor and Publisher's, and represents just one more step in the MSM's attempted rehabilitation of Saddam Hussein."

"Reasonably, the world is now assessing the US through the prism of its non-action against Iran and North Korea rather than through the prism of Iraq. And the consequence of the view that Iraq was a deviation from a norm of US passivity is nothing less than the complete breakdown of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty.

Last week the Sunday New York Times reported that Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and the UAE have all announced their intention to build civilian nuclear reactors. Last Tuesday, in an official visit to China, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak reportedly signed an agreement with Chinese leader Hu Jintao for China to build nuclear reactors in Egypt.

It is not hard to see the lesson of these developments. As the Iraq campaign shows clearly, while the price of taking action to prevent rogue regimes from acquiring nuclear weapons is high, the price of not acting is far higher.

Relating this wisdom to Iran earlier this year, Senator John McCain said, "There is only one thing worse than the United States exercising a military option [to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons], and that is a nuclear-armed Iran."

The US and its allies are paying a high price for having successfully prevented Saddam from getting nuclear bombs. The price that Israel or the US, or both, will pay to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear bombs is liable to be even higher. Yet the alternative to paying that price will be suffering, destruction and death on an unimaginable scale."

Steyn: We're All Spaniards Now

"As it is, we're in a very dark place right now. It has been a long time since America unambiguously won a war, and to choose to lose Iraq would be an act of such parochial self-indulgence that the American moment would not endure, and would not deserve to. Europe is becoming semi-Muslim, Third World basket-case states are going nuclear, and, for all that 40 percent of planetary military spending, America can't muster the will to take on pipsqueak enemies. We think we can just call off the game early, and go back home and watch TV.

It doesn't work like that. Whatever it started out as, Iraq is a test of American seriousness. And, if the Great Satan can't win in Vietnam or Iraq, where can it win? That's how China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Venezuela and a whole lot of others look at it. "These Colors Don't Run" is a fine T-shirt slogan, but in reality these colors have spent 40 years running from the jungles of Southeast Asia, the helicopters in the Persian desert, the streets of Mogadishu. ... To add the sands of Mesopotamia to the list will be an act of weakness from which America will never recover."

"I entirely agree that it would be utter, disgusting folly to try to sell the American public on the theory that we could negotiate anything decent with the mullahs. But the whole theory comes from an alternate universe, since we have been trying to do just that for 27 years, more or less non-stop. I have been writing about it for years now. It was the great dream of Richard Haas and Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell in the first Bush Administration, and it failed. The Iranians want us dead or dominated, they don't want to reach some kind of agreement, honorable or dishonorable.

Read Pollack's long discussion in his book The Persian Puzzle. He was involved in efforts to make a deal for years and years, and it was just impossible. He finally concluded that the Iranians don't want a deal. For the deal makers from Texas and Indiana to suggest that there is any reason to scrape their knees in Tehran and Damascus in order to get their lips onto the mullahs' slippers is ridiculous as well as feckless. Finally, no less a "realist" than General Scowcroft himself tried to exchange thoughts with Iranian President Ahmadi-Nezhad a few weeks back, and came out saying there was no hope."

"And that message, surprisingly, is that we must love one another or die. J. Robert Oppenheimer thought, as he beheld the fireball of the first atomic test at Alamogordo, that he heard the Hindu god Shiva whisper "I am become death, the destroyer of worlds". He understood at that moment that mankind's moral capacity would have to expand to match its technical prowess or it would perish. If Islam desires the secret of the stars it must embrace the kuffar [JK: unbeliever] as its brother -- or die.""

"To the point of Wretchard's post, I'd add that going to war, boots on the ground, in the heart of the middle east has disabused hotheaded jihadists -- and others elsewhere in the world -- of the unfounded notion that the American soldier couldn't fight anymore . . .

. . . while it re-confirmed the belief (truism?) that the American political class could be shamelessly manipulated and is fundamentally weak. [ And the Israeli political class is doing none too well either -- never mind Europe... -ed. ] "

"Does this mean Bush is still Hitler? I'm pretty sure Hitler never let his opponents win an election, did he? Unless... this is all part of Rove's plan."

"The other factor going for them was the fact that members of the mainstream media generally were not sympathetic to the U.S. government. In the last year, media outlets revealed several intelligence programs – often spinning them in a manner that put the intelligence community and the military in a bad light. A reporter for Time magazine, who embedded with the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, had his article completely rewritten by editors who felt his portrayal of American troops was too positive. The media did not even admit that documents, recovered during the liberation of Iraq, showing Saddam Hussein was pursuing nuclear weapons, until it could be spun in a manner that made the Department of Defense look bad. The media even started to refuse to publish letters from Department of Defense officials which challenged misreporting on the war. Heroes like Paul Ray Smith, who was awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously, were studiously ignored.

Now, the stage is set for al Qaeda to win a major victory. It was a simple matter of getting the American media to ignore the battlefield victories while accentuating al Qaeda's attacks. What could not be accomplished on the battlefield – an American retreat from Iraq – was instead achieved in American newsrooms."

"Fox News has been showing "Obsession," a documentary about radical Islam and the West's hesitancy to confront it, all this weekend. The last show is tonight at 9pm (Central time). Below are two videos of the program: one an abridged version and one the full version of the documentary (as was posted on YouTube)."

"To be sure, like Kerry in 2004 deciding that the murderers and rapists were now his brave "band of brothers," the left often discover a sudden enthusiasm for the previous war once a new one's come along. Since Iraq, they've been all in favor of Afghanistan, though back in the fall of 2001 they were convinced it was a quagmire, graveyard of empire, unwinnable, another Vietnam, etc. Oh, and they also discovered a belated enthusiasm for the first President Bush's shrewd conduct of the 1991 Gulf War, though at the time Kerry and most other Democrats voted against that one, too. In this tedious shell game, no matter how frantically the left shuffles the cups, you never find the one shriveled pea of The Military Intervention We're Willing To Support When it Matters.

To be sure, the progressives deserve credit for having refined their view of the military: not murderers and rapists, just impoverished suckers too stupid for anything other than soldiering. The left still doesn't understand that it's the soldier who guarantees every other profession -- the defeatist New York Times journalist, the anti-American college professor, the insurgent-video-of-the-day host at CNN, the hollow preening blowhard senator. Kerry's gaffe isn't about one maladroit Marie Antoinette of the Senate but a glimpse into the mind-set of too many Americans."

"There are millions of people – actually, probably billions now – who genuinely believe that the wealth of the US was stolen from third world countries. This is one of the great perks of living a life free of the ability to think critically and do a little research. I have heard this slander repeated so many times I decided to look into some actual numbers to see if there is anything to this charge. This is a perfect example of how critical thinking allows you to see the unseen. That attitude, Google and ten minutes is all you need to shoot lies like this down in flames.

Okay. The US Per capita income is $41,300. That of a poor, third world country –Djibouti, say -- is $2,070.

Now it gets interesting. The US gross domestic product – the value of everything we produce in a year -- was last measured as $12 trillion, 277 billion dollars (hundreds of millions of dollars being too insignificant to count in this economy).

The GDP of Djibouti is 1 billion, 641 million US dollars.

A little basic arithmetic shows me that US has a GDP 7,481 times greater than Djibouti. A 365 day year, composed of 24 hours in a day, yields 8760 hours per year. Hang on to that for a sec.

Now, let’s suppose the U.S. went into Djibouti with the Marines, and stole every single thing that’s produced there in a year…just grant the premise and say we stole every goddam thing they make. If we hauled away all of Djibouti’s wealth, how long would it run the U.S. Economy, which is 7,481 times greater?

Well, 8,760 hours divided by 7,481 gives you an answer of 1.17 hours. In other words, it takes the U.S. 1.17 hours to produce what Djibouti produces in a year.

If the US really did go in and steal everything that the bottom thirty countries in the world produce, it might power the US economy for two or three days.

Conversely, the billions and billions of dollars the US spends annually in aid, rent, etc. – plus uncounted billions more from private American charities – would supply the entire GDP of Djibouti for hundreds of years.

Where’s your Imperialism argument now?"

We can fly. Wow.

"The evidence suggests that massive illegal immigration causes as much upheaval inside Mexico as it supposedly prevents - while aggravating, not solving, problems in the United States.

What we need from this new Congress is not more hysteria about illegal immigration, but more re-examination of what seems true but really is not."

"deMause outlines a four-part process that the fantasy leader undergoes in relation to the group. At first the group will see him as unrealistically strong, magically able to unify the group and keep enemies at bay. Certainly we saw this in the months after 9-11, when President Bush was so popular. Again, his popularity had little to do with the actual merits of his policies, but with the public’s need to feel safe, and the feeling that Bush would protect them. Stage two is the “cracking” stage, when the feelings of magical nurturing begin to deteriorate, so that the public’s mood begins to feel unstable and dangerous. The leader begins to be experienced as weak, unable to control events. Looking back, I believe that this really started with the successful attacks on President Bush’s Thanksgiving trip to Iraq a couple of years ago, but especially after the Terry Schiavo matter.

Stage three, “collapse,” occurs when the public begins to feel that the fantasy leader is helpless to prevent catastrophe -- when the group’s anxiety has become unhinged and uncontained in a completely unrealistic way. This brings on pure rage and free-floating paranoid fantasies of death and destruction. Thus we see the President unrealistically blamed and vilified for all sorts of things outside his control -- homosexual predators, hurricaines, rising (but never falling) gas prices, global warming, deadly flu pandemics, etc. He is seen as weak and vulnerable, which triggers a wave of near homicidal anxiety that aims to purify the group by ritual slaying of the divine king, identical to what took place in the most primitive tribes."

"A member or supporter of Hezbollah who calls himself Al Ghaliboon appeared in my comments and completely dominated the thread. Normally I don't let somebody show up and do that, but it's not every day that a group of Americans gets to argue with someone like him."

"I have since had the chance to read about 500 or 600 messages. Almost all of them politely phrased (I exempt one from "the Riordan family" who evidently have not forgiven the long history of British depredation in Ireland) and almost all of them appending the list of college degrees as well as of medals and citations held, these letters show a very deep and interesting rift in which Mr. Kerry plays only a secondary part. Many of my respondents agreed that his words may not have meant or intended quite what they first seemed to mean, but they also felt that the klutziness was Freudian, so to speak, in that the senator's patrician contempt for grunts and dogfaces was bound to come out sooner or later."

"In 1821, with truly remarkable foresight, Mr. Jefferson wrote in a letter to Macon that 'our Government is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation first [i.e., centralisation] and then corruption, its necessary consequence.'"

"If the country is about to re-embrace Scowcroftian realism, we’re about to realize a hard lesson about that policy’s limitation. And if the military is going to return to worrying about the enemies it chooses instead of the enemies that choose us, we’ll have bigger troubles still."

""The Republicans lost and the Democrats won for the same reason -- they distanced themselves from their base. "

That's the sentence of the year, in my opinion."

"Hamas has now called for Moslems around the world to attack America. In the past, Hamas has not done this, mainly because the U.S. was the major contributor of aid to Palestinians. But most of this aid has been cut off since Hamas won the election to run the Palestinian territories. Hamas refused to back off on its call for the destruction of Israel, so, by law, American aid was stopped. Apparently Hamas does not believe the aid will ever be restored. [ Oh, how can that be? Why we'll pull out of Iraq and everything will be just fine. I'm just SURE of it. LOL -ed. ] "

Warren On Point Again...

"Why did it evaporate? For the same reason then as now. The “alternative America”, ruling from its ivory towers in academia, the media, and the entertainment industry, could not understand why anyone should die for any cause at all; could not distinguish between freedom and tyranny; and instinctively sided with any enemy of what they fancifully imagined to be “American imperialism”.

My 21st birthday happened to coincide with the final evacuation of Saigon. From my modest experience on the ground in that country, I knew what was coming next. The boat people were no surprise to me. I think that was the day I fully realized, in adult terms, that evil often prevails in this world. So this is nothing new.

The fate that will befall all those millions of courageous Iraqis, showing the dye on their fingers after they had voted -- in defiance of all the terror threats -- will not come as a surprise to me, either. They are being sold out, as the Vietnamese were before them. But the consequences of abandoning Iraq will come home to the United States and the West, in a way Vietnam never touched us. [ A new variant of "Those who do not remember history are condemned to repeat it" looms: "Those who remember propaganda but mistake it for history, are condemned to ... some very nasty surprises..." -ed. ] "

""When Republicans worry more about staying in government than about limiting government, they get thrown out of government." [ Of course, they lose the other way too since then they're not giving anything away. Hard medicine is rarely appreciated and never popular... -ed. ] "

"Then, turning to his mentor, the major 20th-century philosopher Eric Voegelin, Prof. Sandoz expounds his account of the underpinnings of reason, religion, and social order -- using Voegelin’s deep grasp of the re-emergence of Gnosticism in postmodern public life. For at the root of apparent “new-age” decadence, are very old heresies about the nature of man and God, which have again captured the imaginations of the fanciful, so many centuries after having been seemingly slain by the triumph of Catholic Christianity.

Finally, returning to the present, Prof. Sandoz begins to suggest that the very challenges to the old Western project -- of founding our liberty in religious truth -- are rekindling it. Under the pressure of events, including the unfolding of Islamic jihadism, men and women are recovering “public consciousness of truth about the transcendent divine Ground of our being”. (Unlike the Romans, we have something to fall back on.)"

"Most people knew this would happen, including some I think, who called most loudly for a ceasefire. Not because they were malevolent but because of a deep-seated human desire to avoid a present unpleasantness even if it means worse in the future. We all know the feeling. Fly now, pay later. Get a new suite of furniture. No interest until 2010. When images of bombs falling and the pictures of people dying were printed in the papers during the recent war in Lebanon what was more natural than to want to make it go away? Even for a while. Even for a very little while.

So now hello darkness our old friend. We've come to talk to you again. As we knew we would."

"The Provost of Erfurt, Elfriede Begrich, told reporters that Weisselberg’s widow had said that he killed himself because he was alarmed at the spread of Islam and the Church’s stance on the issue.

She described Weisselberg as an erudite man who had addressed repeatedly the Church’s position on Islam in meetings over the past three to four years. He had written to her, urging her to take the matter more seriously, she said.

The Protestant Bishop of Saxony, Axel Noack, said the suicide had shocked the community and that he hoped it would not hurt relations between Christians and Muslims."

Reminder: Time To See Obsession

The New Buckit has made it easy. There's even a 12 minute version... GO. WATCH. NOW.

"Quote of the Day - [Iraqi] Judge to Ramsey Clark: "You are ridiculing the Iraqi people. You have come here from America. Get out.""

"Here is something you won't hear reported in the mainstream mix... Here is the body count since the War in Iraq began in 2003 compared to when Saddam was waging his own war on the Iraqi people:"

All You Need To Know About Politics Today

"WASHINGTON — The grainy black-and-white images appear on television, while ominous music plays in the background. It's another in a blizzard of negative political ads and before you consciously know it, the message takes hold of your brain.

You may not want it to, but it works just about instantly.

In fact, the ad's effects on the brain "are actually shocking," says UCLA psychiatry professor Dr. Marco Iacoboni.

Iacoboni's brain imaging research from the 2004 presidential campaign revealed that viewers lost empathy for their own candidate once he was attacked.

Scientists around the country are logging the emotional and physical effects of negative political ads. Iacoboni tracked parts of the middle brain that lit up in brain scans when people watched their favorite candidates get attacked. Other scientists hooked up wires to measure frowns and smiles before the meaning of the ads' words sunk in. Mostly, researchers found that negative ads tend to polarize and make it less likely that supporters of an attacked candidate will vote.

"Everyone says, 'We hate them, they're terrible,'" said psychology professor George Bizer of Union College in Schenectady, N.Y.

However, he added, "They seem to work."

And politicians know it because the latest figures show that by nearly a 10-to-1 ratio, political parties are spending more money on negative ads than positive ones."

"But all this is separate from the political decision to put this on the Kerry website after insisting that he didn't intend on casting aspersions on the intellectual capacity of the troops. If he really didn't mean to call them lazy and uneducated, then why did he go out of his way to host an editorial on his site that does exactly that? [ "Jon Carry" -- the gift that keeps on giving... -ed. ] "

More proof that the military just loves Kerry... And who would have guessed that he's such a uniter after all? Well, of the services that is...

Chinia: To The Last Islamist Proxy

Of course, our democracy needs a bit of work also:

"In my view, Iraqi participation in elections, sometimes at great personal risk, goes a long way towards answering those who say there's something in the Iraqi (or Arab) DNA that is incompatible with the administration's democracy project. Unfortunately, though, more was required of the Iraqi peoople than just voting. The situation called on them to elect leaders who would work in good faith for national reconciliation, rather than tilting substantially in the direction of one sectarian faction. The Iraqis failed to do this when they voted in the Shia-militia-friendly Malacki government, thereby making it difficult, if not impossible, for the U.S. to work with the current government to curb sectarian violence.

The Iraqis, of course, are not the first people to make a very bad decision at the polls. The fact that they did so is not necessarily evidence of some national "genetic" flaw, much less a demonstration that democracy can't work in the Middle East. It just means that the Iraqi people did less than what a difficult situation required, and that we must face up to and deal with the consequences. [ And of course, any discussion of Iraq that ignores the pandemic role of Isamlism and its remaining state sponsors including Iran, Syria (Irania together to my view), Pakistan (having malignant A.D.D., the press seems to hardly notice that Afghanistan is not going well either because of you-know-who in spite of supposedly being the "good war" to Iraq's "bad war") and many other Arab states like the Saudis (15 of the 19 hijackers, how soon we forget) and Egyptians in at least some role. Along that line, Vanity Fair's interviews with the most vilified neocons is interesting. While there's a lot of good insight from them, I notice that the word "Iran" has been carefully edited out of this preview. Most conspicuously from Michael Ledeen who rarely speaks or writes a paragraph without the name "Iran" in it; and I notice that this quote -- while a good insight nonetheless -- probably consists of the only two sentences he uttered without Iran as the subject: -ed. ]

Michael Ledeen, American Enterprise Institute freedom scholar: "Ask yourself who the most powerful people in the White House are. They are women who are in love with the president: Laura [Bush], Condi, Harriet Miers, and Karen Hughes.""

Just as in Korea and Vietnam, if we got serious and really wanted to win we would end up fighting the Chinese and Russians more and more directly, so today the situation is the same but the proxies have changed. Now Chinia (China+Russia) has decided to fight us to the last Islamist -- and the Islamists are mostly happy to do so given our alignment with Israel. If you can't understand this from China's ridiculous stringing us along on the NorKorComs (the WMD and delivery system supply proxy to speed the Islamists along) and Russia's ludicrous statements that they believe that Iran's nuclear program is peaceful, I have many bridges to sell you...

""Of course Americans should vote Democrat," Jihad Jaara, a senior member of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror group..."

Having it both ways, part 7,865,907:

"The defining characteristic of partisan attacks on President Bush has been their unthinking and indiscriminate nature. For example, Bush is to blame for not halting the development of nukes by Iran and North Korea, but he's also to blame for toppling Saddam Hussein due in part to his concern that Saddam was interested in and capable of developing nukes. Critics point to Iran's rise as evidence that Bush misplaced his focus on Iraq but they don't consider how Saddam would have reacted to Iranian nuclear progress.

The New York Times now has carried unthinking Bush-bashing to a point beyond caricature. Today, as Tiger Hawk notes, it quotes with apparent approval "experts" who say that Saddam was as little as a year away from building an atom bomb. [ "beyond caricature" would be an understatement now, wouldn't it? -ed. ] The Times does so in order to show that the Bush administration acted recklessly when it published captured Iraqi documents that describe that country's WMD programs, because those documents might be used by another country in furtherance of building WMD. [ Can you say A - D - D? -ed. ]

Did the Times just say that Saddam's Iraq was a year away from building a nuclear weapon? I guess so. Good thing Saddam's no longer in power."

"It's gratifying to see Ikle's book noticed somewhere else. It was the subject of a Belmont Club post a few days back. And the frightening thing about its thesis, in common with Huntington's thesis about the clash of civilizations, is that the probelem he describes is built into the fabric of our modern world. It is neither Clinton's nor Bush's fault. It's not anyone's fault. The risk of destruction is the price of harnessing the power of technology. I suppose we knew that already. We are our own blessing; and our own curse."

"Mr. President, just the other night, I went out with my family for dinner to a restaurant in Herzliya, the city named after Zionist visionary Theodor Herzl, who foresaw the need to establish a safe haven for the Jewish people. Our waitress was an attractive and cheerful young lady who moved to Israel 16 years ago at the age of four from her native Lithuania, where her family had suffered anti-Semitism and persecution.

But when we asked her if she was happy living here in the Jewish state, the smile on her lips quickly faded. Glumly, she answered us with the following words: "That Ahmadinejad of Iran, he scares me. It is a very scary situation." And indeed it is, Mr. President, because my people are in danger once again. It was just six decades ago that the Europeans tossed us into Hitler's ovens and turned 6 million Jews into ashes. Now, with no shame, they stand by silently as Iran seeks to do the same."

"A better example of gutter politics is focusing on the religion of a candidate's mother, something the Post did with aplomb in the Virginia Senate race."

Dear John,

"And before that were those baseless attacks by those 200-some veterans, paid off by Karl Rove in l970, on the chance that 34 years later he'd be running George W. Bush for president and needed to soften you up. Everyone knows they had no case whatsoever (beyond the fact you were calling them rapists and killers), just as everyone knows how tasteless it is to mock your lifestyle. Everyone knows how hard you work for your money, how much you deserve it, and how hard to must be to find not one, but two women with quite so much dough. (If you were only a woman, people would see your story as the fairy tale it is.)

Even worse, it is mean, false, and mendacious to say that you were trying to call our brave men in Iraq and in uniform mentally challenged, when it was clear as day that you meant this to apply to the president, who ran rings around you when you last met in electoral combat; and whose grades in college were higher than yours."

OTOS (On The Other Side), A Reminder

So after Kerry's little "mis-speak", we get this analysis from Demosophist:

"Yes he misspoke, almost certainly, but does that make a difference?

There are, after all, only two ways one can interpret what was said.

1. Smart, intelligent, hard-working people opposed the war from its inception; while stupid, uneducated, slothful people supported it. We'll ignore for the moment that he initially supported it. By his own admission this statement closely paraphrases what he intended to say.

2. Those who serve in Iraq are stupid, uneducated, slothful people. He claims that he didn't intend to convey that message.

The problem is that most of the men serving in Iraq supported the war from its inception, and still do. So even if he didn't intend to say 2. that message still follows from 1. as long as one is smart enough to make an elementary inference. Even worse, the second statement is a fair characterization of what the Democrats have been saying about the military for a number of years, claiming that the modern service is mainly composed of people too dumb and too vulnerable to avoid the song and dance of the military recruiter."

But of course it gets worse. If Kerry was just talking about Bush being stupid (more shocking Victicratic behavior -- not) then that's the reason why Dems are always calling Elephants stupid while simultaneously denying any validity to grades or intelligence tests.

Because of course Bush got better grades at Yale than Kerry did ...

"And this is the problem with “progressives” in general, whether political or religious. You might think that Christian fundamentalists are “conservative,” but you would be very wrong. Rather, this is a thoroughly modern movement that has detached itself from oral tradition, inspired commentary, and the testimony of various superhuman saints and sages, to produce a largely manmade, exteriorized version of Christianity. It is no different than political progressives who twist a part of the Constitution in order to create a new political religion that finds justification for their own desires. Roe vs. Wade is just one example, but one could cite dozens more, most notably, the belief that the Constitution somehow sanctions racial discrimination or is hostile to religion. These leftist ideas are human inventions that have nothing to do with the message of the founders."

"The liberal press has a story line for this election, and John Kerry's exposing how the left really feels about the military isn't it. This story illustrates, I think, the rift between this country's two media cultures."

"I'll be honest with you. I realize my opponent will get 100% of the pedophile vote. But unlike my opponent, I want the votes of Americans who love freedom and our country. I want the votes of people in my district who work hard and pay taxes, and who remember the $12 million in federal funding I secured last year to put up highways signs directing tourists to our district's famous Ear Wax Museum. That's a really great museum, and now tourists aren't going to get lost trying to find it. Empowering the American people to find their way; that's what this campaign is all about, and everything my opponent stands against."

"The child of whatever age remains close to the paradise not yet fully lost, “and it is for that reason that childhood constitutes a necessary aspect of the integral man: the man who is fully mature always keeps, in equilibrium with wisdom, the qualities of simplicity and freshness, of gratitude and trust, that he possessed in the springtime of his life” (F. Schuon). [ But then check out this comment:

A young couple with a newborn and a three year old daughter do not know what to do. Their three year old is insisting that she have some time alone with the newborn while the baby is in his crib.

The parents are naturally worried about issues of sibling rivalry, displacement and the like. But, they have a intercom monitor in the baby’s room and decide that will listen to the monitor intently while they allow the older sister some time with her new brother.

As the parents listen, they hear their little girl approach the baby’s crib. They hear her breathing for awhile. And finally she says to her infant brother: “Please tell me about God. I’m beginning to forget.” -ed. ] "

""It is ultimately better to march openly against beliefs contrary to their convictions instead of waiting until the last moment to unfurl their banners."

At the very moment they want to unfurl their banners, they will be forced at scimitar-point to make their banners into burquas and put them on. [ Well. That captures it quite nicely don't you think? -ed. ] "

"MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia said on Tuesday it believed Iran's nuclear program was peaceful, and a political dialogue, not sanctions, must be used in talks with Tehran.

"We do not have information that would suggest that Iran is carrying out a non-peaceful (nuclear) program," Russian Security Council Secretary Igor Ivanov told a news conference in Moscow. [ Or could it just be more "Gramscian Damage"? D'oh... -ed. ] "

"If European governments fail to improve the anemic economic performance described by Tyler, and remain unable to assimilate Muslim immigrants effectively, there is a real chance that voter frustration will increase, and the far right or far left will successfully exploit it and eventually come to power in one or more major European nations - with potentially disastrous results. Many of those Europeans who vote for extremist parties are probably just "protest voting" and do not actually endorse their platforms in full. But the same was probably true of many of the Germans who "protest-voted" for the Nazis and Communists during the Weimar Republic (as Richard Evans suggests in this recent book). The results this time around probably will not be as bad as what happened in the 1920s and '30s, but neither will it be pretty.

[ Which brings to mind the following from Tom Wolfe: "For the past hour, I have my eyes fixed on the doors here," he said. "You talk about fascism and police repression. In Germany when I was a student, they come through those doors long ago. Here they must be very slow."

Grass was enjoying himself for the first time all evening. He was not simply saying, "You really don't have so much to worry about." He was indulging his sense of the absurd. He was saying: "You American intellectuals — you want so desperately to feel besieged and persecuted!"

He sounded like Jean-François Revel, a French socialist writer who talks about one of the great unexplained phenomena of modern astronomy: namely, that the dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe. -ed. ] "

"It may be, though, that al Qaeda's religious ideology of armed jihad means that it cannot lay low even if it might be advantageous. It cannot merely engineer the US withdrawal, it must be known to have done so. So it keeps bombing and shooting.

Except now it may have actually developed a strategy to fight America. This strategy is very simple and has excellent potential that is already being realized.

1. Target American news media, not for attack but for propaganda.

2. Through the media, buttress the idea in the minds of American politicians that Iraq is lost and there is no reasonable recourse but to begin withdrawing as soon as possible.

I would submit that al Qaeda is significantly accomplishing this strategy, so obviously so that I need not offer cites. And let it be remembered that now the calls for withdrawal do not come from only one party."

"Or, in another take: " A Democratic congressman told ABC News Tuesday, 'I guess Kerry wasn't content blowing 2004, now he wants to blow 2006, too.'"

Indeed. Or are the Karl Rove mind-control rays just that overpowering?

FINALLY: Here's a big roundup on this story, from Pajamas Media. And Chip Mathis reminds us that Kerry's grades at Yale were worse than Bush's. This explains a lot . . . ."

"But all demands for an evacuation are based on the fantasy that there is a distinction between "over there" and "over here." In a world-scale confrontation with jihadism, this distinction is idle and false. It also involves callously forgetting the people who would be the first victims but who would not by any means be the last ones."

"The cravenness and condescension of John Kerry make me sick."

"The Europeans apparently have begun to discover the futility of UNIFIL, a futility that many pointed out when the UN Security Council passed UNSCR 1701. It would have been better to form a new force, one that had UN-dictated terms of engagement and one that had the authority to enforce 1701. Instead, the Germans have found themselves between three entities which have never accepted the terms of 1701 and have no intention of abiding by it for very long. The Israelis did not get their soldiers back, and because the UNIFIL contingent has no real authority, no one can certify that Hezbollah has not begun to re-arm. Hezbollah wants their weapons for their next effort against the Israelis. The Lebanese government has sent its army to the sub-Litani region for the first time in decades, but it won't stop Hezbollah from re-establishing themselves in opposition to them.

The Germans will have to decide whether to continue its participation in this charade, seeing as how the three principals have long since given it up."

""You say it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom; when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your customs. And then we will follow ours."

Maybe it's time for Europe and others to begin building a few metaphorical gallows in order to protect their culture from those who don't mind taking advantage of their system but refuse to accept their values and culture and assimilate.

As James C Bennett said: "Democracy, immigration, multiculturalism. Pick any two"."

"Poor bomb design, or low quality components, have caused fizzles in the past. In 1998, several of Pakistan's nuclear weapons tests failed in a similar fashion to the current North Korean one. It may be that design that was sold to North Korea by the Pakistani nuclear scientists that, at that time, were running an illegal nuclear weapons sales business on the side."

"CNN broadcasts 30 minutes of meaningless static you say? How can you tell?"