Comments on Escaping Hell

Saint al-Husseini is well known to those who have escaped his clutches:

To this group, if they saw the unprovoked stoning of Palestinians against the minority Jews in Hebron as I did, they will always conclude that the Jews must have done something to deserve this. That it takes two to tango. To these I have but a simple question – what did the Jews do to tango in Nazi Germany? The Jews of Hebron at one time were all exterminated with the men's testicles cut off, women raped, their breasts cut off, and babies slashed to death. This happened way before the so-called occupation when Haj Amin Al-Husseni called to "kill them were ever you find them and rape their women" as he collaborated with Hitler to rid the Muslim world of Jews and even organized an SS Khanzar Muslim division for the service of Adolf Hitler and literally Islamo-Nazism.

No one talks about the Hebron massacre, and everyone talks of Jenin, forgetting that many Israeli soldiers were killed in their attempt to dismantle bomb making houses. When does the world blame the law for a drug bust? These are lead by wolves in sheep's clothing. But even wolves can be transformed into sheep. Nothing is impossible in my view. After all, I myself was once a wolf.

But somehow is almost unknown to Google...

Quote of the Day

From Iraq the Model:

-I say, congratulation for the Iraqis, as America is proving that she is keeping her promises opposite to what some Arabs and fundamentalists claim. She promised to topple Saddam and she did, she promised to hand over the authority and she did and she promised to hand over Saddam and she did. She promised to help us have free elections and this will happen by God’s will. As for some of the arabs who weep upon Saddam, they need urgent psychotherapy. I wish some of these people come to Iraq (not in a car loaded with explosives) and voice their opinion here in public.
Mohammed-Baghdad

Dems get their brains back? Nahhhhh....

Quote of the Day

From Samizdata: "...the perfect archetype for European anti-Americanism: Haughty, conspiratorial, and confidently deranged."

Where's the Outrage? (Part the 68735th)

Here's a taste of an article that somewhat amazingly appeared in the radical right wing Washington Post:

Where’s the Arab Media’s Sense of Outrage?
By Mamoun Fandy

The apparent executions in Iraq last week of U.S. soldier Keith Maupin and U.S. Marine Wassef Ali Hassoun, and the confirmed beheadings a week earlier of South Korean Kim Sun Il in Iraq and of American Paul Johnson in Saudi Arabia, left the media the world over horrified and uncertain about how much should be shown. Except in much of the Arab world, that is. As I scanned Arab satellite channels and Arabic newspapers, I found a lot of reporting on the brutal attacks, but very little condemnation and a widespread willingness to run the stomach-turning video and photos again and again...

In an article entitled "Blood of Martyrs," published last September in Tishreen, a major state-owned Syrian newspaper, she wrote in response to a Palestinian suicide bombing: "The blood of martyrs inscribes a scroll that can be read only by those with faith in their peoples and in the future of the [Arab] nation, who are convinced that however great their [personal] accomplishments, they are but a single link in the life of the homelands and the peoples. Therefore, they are ready for giving, the utmost of all kinds of giving, so that the scattered drops [of blood] join together to form a stream, then a river, then a gushing torrent." Articles like this, which glorify death and urge young people to be suicidal, are part of the steady diet that Arab youths are exposed to every day....

I traveled to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Lebanon and saw for myself the effect on the young of the Arab media’s tendency, particularly on satellite television, to portray terrorists as resistance fighters and to broadcast in their entirety the videotaped messages of al Qaeda. One Egyptian student told me the Americans "deserve [killing] for their support to Israel and their occupation of Iraq." A Kuwaiti who recently graduated from a Pennsylvania university said of Americans, "Don’t believe them when they say it is al Qaeda that is slaying Americans. It is Americans who are killing Americans to justify their presence in the Arab world and to control Arab oil." In each country, I was struck that al Qaeda and its ideas are no longer perceived as extreme. Indeed, al Qaeda has become mainstream and being part of the movement is "cool" in the eyes of young people. Why? Arab culture is being corrupted by the media that glorify violence, but also by schoolbooks that present only one role model for Arab children: the Jihadists and those who excelled at battling non-Muslims.

He later complains that western media are unwitting tools of Arab terrorists without realizing that many in the media are willing tools.

Now go read "The Psychoanalytic Roots of Islamic Terrorism" to answer how they got that way. And finally, you need to understand how we escaped...

Bar all?

Another "all about oil" department victim.

So why the editing?

The Knee Bone's Connected to the ...

You won't hear about this because of -- you guessed it -- this. Duh-oh!

Read. Now.

Tears. Fill. Eyes.

I was born in 1958 and came of age when the Vietnam War and the anti-war movement were both in full swing. It has taken me years to put this into words, but I believe that as bad as that war was, the legacy of the anti-war movement was worse. The anti-war movement gave rise to the moral superiority of non-involvement and non-commitment. While that may have worked to help draft-dodgers sleep at night, it's not much of a strategy of how to go through life. Taken to its logical conclusion the message is: don't commit to your county, don't commit to your spouse, and don't commit to your kids, church, or community. Don't commit to cleaning up your own mess or any cause that demands any more from you than rhetoric. This was the mindset in which our country was firmly stuck. Until 9/11, some woke up. Kids came down and joined the service. To the dismay of some of their teachers, parents, and the media elites, they came down here and raised their hand in front of the flag. And they are still coming to the shock of the non-committers. The Marines have more enlisting than their two boot camps can handle.

And we are all here together for Memorial Day 2004. Old National Guardsmen, grandfathers, and single moms, Texans and Mexicans, Surfers and Rednecks. A few weeks ago an Illinois National Guardsman, mother of three, was hit six times, saved by her body armor, but lost part of her nose. She stayed on her 50 caliber, firing on the bad guys, protecting the convoy. She said she was thinking of her kids and the guys she was with. Commitment is love acted out. It is sad that the non-committers missed that. They and their moral high-ground haven't been near a mass grave. The kids I see and eat with every day still want to help this country, in spite of getting shot at while doing it. That is love acted out. You either get it, or you don't.

During my time in Iraq I won't be able to see any of the Biblical sites that are here. But a few weeks ago in Taji I got to stand on some holy ground, where a father died when he went to war just to be with his son.

Sincerely yours,

Steven P. Unger

LCDR, CHC, USN

Multi National Corps-Iraq

Lights out.

Rescued by the red pen ...

They Will Not Forgive

Ho Hum. No reason to change THE PARTY LINE of course. Can't be confused with facts you know... And no grudges could be held of course:

CNN/NYT/BBC were terribly inconvienced to have to travel to a third world hellhole and not see masses of smug arrogant Americans dying in droves. They will not forgive.

Sterilization Conspiracies

spotted on Pejmanesque:

The following quote is -- quite simply -- horrifying:

"Beheading and hostage-taking are not legitimate in Islamic law," said Riyadh Hussein, the white-turbaned imam of a soaring new mosque in downtown Baghdad. He suggested that the hostage-takings were the result of some unspecified conspiracy. "I have no doubt some of our people gloat over it. But this is being done to destroy the image of the resistance and the image of Muslims in the rest of the world. I feel there are some pockets of extremists in the Islamic world who are motivated and manipulated by Americans or others."

How does WaPo justify printing the ravings of a conspiracy nut??? Oh wait, I forgot...it is WaPo after all...

Along the same lines, I was reading in this weeks's Economist that polio rates in Africa have soared because some idiot Islamic cleric preached that the Polio vaccine was a Western Plot to sterilize Muslims....

It turns out that sterilization primarily affects the neurons -- who'd a thunk it? And then the coup de main:

remarkable isn't it how the conspiracies of the Arab street have been adopted, maybe even topped by the conspiracies of the Democratic Party Underground, MoveON, etc.

Don't call them DUmmies for nothing...

Double dam*ed domesticity...

And then there's the Roe effect -- now who's that that's stupid again?

A good question...

FDR Spotted Puking in Grave by Andrew...

A direct steal since not clicking through is not an option:

QUOTE OF THE DAY: "But there is an added technique for weakening a nation at its very roots ... The method is simple. It is first, a dissemination of discord. A group - not too large - a group that may be sectional or racial or political - is encouraged to exploit its prejudices through false slogans and emotional appeals. The aim of those who deliberately egg on these groups is to create confusion of counsel, public indecision, political paralysis and, eventually, a state of panic. Sound national policies come to be viewed with a new and unreasoning skepticism ... As a result of these techniques, armament programs may be dangerously delayed. Singleness of national purpose may be undermined. . . . The unity of the state can be so sapped that its strength is destroyed. All this is no idle dream. It has happened time after time, in nation after nation, during the last two years." - FDR, May 26, 1940. I wonder what Roosevelt would have made of Michael Moore, don't you?

With vast swaths -- and a fair argument in play that the majority -- of the Democratic party opposed to the democratization of the Middle East, what new name will they come up with for their party since they aren't advocates of democracy any more? I have a suggestion from Orwell: the Fascifist party. That was his term for the people before and during WWII that bleated about peace while enabling Hitler to gain what turned out to be nearly unstoppable momentum.

What would Roosevelt say indeed? And it was Harry Truman -- another Democrat -- who dropped the bomb on Japan. The Democratic party has been co-opted...

Screw-ups contrasted...

Self gored ... and the comments are interesting too... (Hat tip Andrew.)

Centerfeud nails the ... uh ... center on this one...

And speaking of triangulation, Randy Barnett has some thoughts you absolutely must read.

Considering Mars and Venus

In Iraq. You. Must. Read. NOW.

Moore well done for...

And a prime purveyor of the wobbly snappable nutshell.

Which was foreshadowed by preemptive fiction of course...

UPDATE: Lileks notes that Rex Reed has seen Moore's masterpiece.

No More Parenting or Teaching I'm Afraid...

... not while there's a WoT, anyway...

The farce of the Abu Graib "scandal" has now reached truly amazing proportions. Going far beyond the question of how on earth having a man wear women's panties on his head can be considered to be "torture" while at the same time not proving him to be wildly misogynistic, we have the following from Power Line via Glenn:

Rumsfeld, too, authorized only the mildest forms of interrogation of prisoners, even al Qaeda leaders. I found this paragraph, near the end of the AP's account, astonishing

:[Rumsfeld] approved 24 interrogation techniques, to be used in a manner consistent with the Geneva Conventions, but said that any use of four of those methods would have to be approved by him in advance. Those four were use of rewards or removal of privileges from detainees; attacking or insulting the ego of a detainee; alternating the use of friendly and harsh interrogators, and isolation.

I hate to disillusion liberals, but as a trial lawyer, I routinely use two of those four techniques in cross-examining witnesses, and I use at least one of the other two on my children. Frankly, I find it appalling that those in charge of terrorist prisoners may only "reward or remove privileges from detainees" with the permission of the Secretary of Defense. If the Democrats had any sense, they would argue that these documents indict the administration as soft on terrorists.

But don't worry, it's we and not they that live in a disorienting echo chamber. Yikes...

The Annotated "You might be a liberal if:"

The following is an annotated version of my previous "You might be a liberal if:" post. This will be a work-in-progress for a while with numerous updates as I don't have the time right now that it deserves. The first annotations will be directed at giving credit where it's due -- then I'll add background.

· You seem to remember some Clinton-related unpleasantness about someplace called Kosovo but don’t remember what it was all about – least of all that it was not sanctioned by the U.N.
· You believe that everyone reflexively shouts hateful obscenities at people who dare hint that Diana Moon Glampers is not a heroine.
· You believe that the Teheran embassy hostage crisis, the Lebanon Marine barracks bombing, the invasion of Kuwait, the battle of Mogadishu, the WTC I bombing, the Khobar Towers bombing, and the bombing of the African embassies and the USS Cole all happened because "Shrub squandered the world's sympathy after 911".
· You believe that there's "no evidence" that the rising prison population is in any way related to the falling crime rate.
· You believe that relativism is an absolute principle.
· You believe that Arafat's professed admiration for, mentorship by, and claimed lineage from Haj Mohammad Amin al-Husseini -- the former Grand Mufti of Jerusalem who spent much of WWII in Berlin advising Hitler to exterminate the Jews rather than expel them back to the Middle East, and was Hitler's genocidal radio voice to the Arab world during the War -- is proof positive that “Jews are the real Nazis”.
· You’ve never given a second thought to the fact that Michael Moore is your ideal spokesperson to attack your fellow Americans for being loud, fat, obnoxious, stupid, greedy and hateful.
· You believe that Iran is not developing nuclear weapons.
· You screamed “Bush monkeys!” at the editors of National Geographic for printing that Saddam “disappeared” 5-7 million people in his reign.
· You believe that there was no plan for the WTC I bombing to topple one tower into the other aimed at killing over 100,000 people since Arabs are too stupid to figure out how to do such a thing.
· You’re serenely certain that you’re not a racist.
· You believe that the congressional resolution authorizing Operation Iraqi Freedom listed only one reason for the war and not twenty-seven.
· You believe that the fact that graffiti in Europe that read “Jews out of Europe” before WWII and that now read “Jews out of Palestine” is obvious proof of the European’s superior grasp of history and morality.
· You believe that the U.S. is so evil as to deserve to suffer a “million Mogadishus” but you’re so incompetent with math that you don’t realize that that would mean a billion dead Muslims in addition to the 17 million dead Americans.
· You believe that fighting Al Qaeda in Iraq is a distraction from fighting the war on Al Qaeda. FROM CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS ON RICHARD CLARKE.
· You believe that your wife's SUV has nothing to do with your commitment to the environment – and SUV’s are safer anyway so what’s all the fuss about?
· You’ve never had a second thought about the uncanny resemblance between hooded Islamic terrorists and Klansmen.
· You believe that constant attempts to shoot down American "no fly zone" fighter patrols are conclusive proof that Saddam didn't hold a grudge against the US.
· You believe that it's a good thing that Iran will soon have nuclear weapons.
· You believe that Hitler was one of those “hateful Christians” – and that’s why he exterminated seven million Christians and Communists in addition to five million Jews.
· You believe that none of the Muslim violence in Kashmir, Thailand, Sudan, Bali, India, Turkey, Madrid, Nigeria, Kosovo, Bosnia, Chechnya, Algeria and Saudi Arabia would have occurred had it not been instigated by Rumsfeld and the Mossad.
· You believe that just because you constantly scream your hatred of "Bushitler" and "Christian Nazis", there's "no evidence" you're not a Ghandi-like and morally superior individual constantly setting the best example possible for peace.
· You believe that you are the penultimate modern interpreter of Orwell but blink blankly when confronted with the word "fascifist".
· You believe that it's "incomprehensible" why the Sudan should be rejected from membership on the UN Human Rights Commission since they "only kill those Nazi Christians" that you hate too.
· You cheered when the Taliban destroyed the statues of Bamiyan since it meant one less religious symbol that your contributions to the ACLU would need to be spent on eliminating.
· You believe that Shrub is lying that there are Al Qaeda in Iraq now and even if there were we should get out now and not fight them because he lied to us.
· You believe that returning all jobs to the U.S. that American corporations have sent overseas will help us "regain the world's sympathy" and further open foreign markets to US products thus doubly improving our economy as well as raising the standard of living in the affected foreign countries.
· You believe that the anthrax attacks shortly following 911 were obviously carried out by Christian radicals -- who quickly cued off of the Mossad's work on 911.
· You believe that Bush’s centerpiece claim in the 2003 SOTU that “Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late. Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option.” obviously made the case that the threat from Saddam was “imminent”.
· You believe that bin Laden cooperated with the CIA in Afghanistan and that it was the CIA that “made him what he is today” so he’s really an “American creation”.
· You believe the French representative to the EU is right that we should make sure all the Arab countries have nukes.
· You believe the fact that in spite of affirmative action 50% of University of California students are Asian while Asians are only 10% of California’s population is completely unrelated to the fact that Asians consistently score above all other racial groups including Caucasians on IQ tests.
· You believe that Saddam's 1993 assassination attempt on George Bush senior is "no evidence" that he could hold a grudge against the US – and in any case Clinton’s subsequent missile strike at the empty Iraqi intelligence headquarters ”taught him his lesson” and ended any grudge there may have been as Richard Clarke suggests.
· You considered Richard Clarke’s testimony to the 911 commission that there was no Iraq-al-Qaeda link to be “case closed” that Shrub misled us and Clarke to be a flawless witness – but somehow you missed that on page 127 [of his new "Against All Enemies"], Clarke notes that it's possible that al-Qaeda operatives in the Philippines "taught Terry Nichols how to blow up the Oklahoma Federal Building." Intelligence places Nichols there on the same days as Ramzi Yousef, and "we do know that Nichols's bombs did not work before his Philippines stay and were deadly when he returned." SEE HERE.
· You believe that it's "no evidence" of a wildly misogynistic culture that Muslim male prisoners could be considered to be "tortured" by being made to wear women's panties over their heads.
· You have no clue that the real “blood for oil” scandal was actually contained within the U.N.’s corrupt, kickback-ridden Iraqi “Oil for Food” program – and the country of origin of the “bribee’s” had no relation to their countries opposition to the war and demands for the end of sanctions against Saddam.
· You believe that bin Laden could never cooperate with Saddam since there’s “no evidence” that he has ever cooperated with anyone so secular.
· You believe that the hundreds of thousands of Mizrahi Arab Jews currently living in Israel did not move there because they were persecuted, attacked and ejected by Muslims in Arabian countries -- and this is irrelevant to the Arab "right to return" to Israel anyway.
· You’re sure that bin Laden's 1998 Fatwa expressed solidarity with the Palestinians but dismissed aiding Iraq because of “that notorious infidel, Saddam Hussein".
· You believe that Putin’s sharing of Russian intelligence reports that Saddam was attempting terrorist attacks on the U.S. and its interests in the period between 911 and OIF are “no justification” for attacking Iraq.
· You believe that a cultural relativist is not "a hypocrite at 30,000 feet". ORIG QUOTE FROM RICHARD DAWKINS IS “Show me a relativist at 30,000 feet,” Richard Dawkins writes, “and I’ll show you a hypocrite.” The reason that airplanes fly, Dawkins points out, is because a lot of Western mathematicians and engineers “have got their sums right.” VIA DINESH D'SOUZA.
· You believe that the 20 tons of chemical weapons including Sarin and VX nerve gas seized in April 2004 by Jordan from a foiled al-Qaeda bombing plot in Amman obviously could not have come from Iraq.
· You believe that IQ tests are the "devil's spawn" and “not fair” because they can be used to indicate an average measure in the low 80's for the Arab world.
· You believe that North Korean No-Dong Long Range Missiles are clearly the most effective and economical way to deliver conventional explosives.
· You believe that Bush is stupid and you're certain it’s provable with IQ testing.
· You stopped reading this list after the first item.

You might be a liberal if:

· You seem to remember some Clinton-related unpleasantness about someplace called Kosovo but don’t remember what it was all about – least of all that it was not sanctioned by the U.N.
· You believe that everyone reflexively shouts hateful obscenities at people who dare hint that Diana Moon Glampers is not a heroine.
· You believe that the Teheran embassy hostage crisis, the Lebanon Marine barracks bombing, the invasion of Kuwait, the battle of Mogadishu, the WTC I bombing, the Khobar Towers bombing, and the bombing of the African embassies and the USS Cole all happened because "Shrub squandered the world's sympathy after 911".
· You believe that there's "no evidence" that the rising prison population is in any way related to the falling crime rate.
· You believe that relativism is an absolute principle.
· You believe that Arafat's professed admiration for, mentorship by, and claimed lineage from Haj Mohammad Amin al-Husseini -- the former Grand Mufti of Jerusalem who spent much of WWII in Berlin advising Hitler to exterminate the Jews rather than expel them back to the Middle East, and was Hitler's genocidal radio voice to the Arab world during the War -- is proof positive that “Jews are the real Nazis”.
· You’ve never given a second thought to the fact that Michael Moore is your ideal spokesperson to attack your fellow Americans for being loud, fat, obnoxious, stupid, greedy and hateful.
· You believe that Iran is not developing nuclear weapons.
· You screamed “Bush monkeys!” at the editors of National Geographic for printing that Saddam “disappeared” 5-7 million people in his reign.
· You believe that there was no plan for the WTC I bombing to topple one tower into the other aimed at killing over 100,000 people since Arabs are too stupid to figure out how to do such a thing.
· You’re serenely certain that you’re not a racist.
· You believe that the congressional resolution authorizing Operation Iraqi Freedom listed only one reason for the war and not twenty-seven.
· You believe that the fact that graffiti in Europe that read “Jews out of Europe” before WWII and that now read “Jews out of Palestine” is obvious proof of the European’s superior grasp of history and morality.
· You believe that the U.S. is so evil as to deserve to suffer a “million Mogadishus” but you’re so incompetent with math that you don’t realize that that would mean a billion dead Muslims in addition to the 17 million dead Americans.
· You believe that fighting Al Qaeda in Iraq is a distraction from fighting the war on Al Qaeda.
· You believe that your wife's SUV has nothing to do with your commitment to the environment – and SUV’s are safer anyway so what’s all the fuss about?
· You’ve never had a second thought about the uncanny resemblance between hooded Islamic terrorists and Klansmen.
· You believe that constant attempts to shoot down American "no fly zone" fighter patrols are conclusive proof that Saddam didn't hold a grudge against the US.
· You believe that it's a good thing that Iran will soon have nuclear weapons.
· You believe that Hitler was one of those “hateful Christians” – and that’s why he exterminated seven million Christians and Communists in addition to five million Jews.
· You believe that none of the Muslim violence in Kashmir, Thailand, Sudan, Bali, India, Turkey, Madrid, Nigeria, Kosovo, Bosnia, Chechnya, Algeria and Saudi Arabia would have occurred had it not been instigated by Rumsfeld and the Mossad.
· You believe that just because you constantly scream your hatred of "Bushitler" and "Christian Nazis", there's "no evidence" you're not a Ghandi-like and morally superior individual constantly setting the best example possible for peace.
· You believe that you are the penultimate modern interpreter of Orwell but blink blankly when confronted with the word "fascifist".
· You believe that it's "incomprehensible" why the Sudan should be rejected from membership on the UN Human Rights Commission since they "only kill those Nazi Christians" that you hate too.
· You cheered when the Taliban destroyed the statues of Bamiyan since it meant one less religious symbol that your contributions to the ACLU would need to be spent on eliminating.
· You believe that Shrub is lying that there are Al Qaeda in Iraq now and even if there were we should get out now and not fight them because he lied to us.
· You believe that returning all jobs to the U.S. that American corporations have sent overseas will help us "regain the world's sympathy" and further open foreign markets to US products thus doubly improving our economy as well as raising the standard of living in the affected foreign countries.
· You believe that the anthrax attacks shortly following 911 were obviously carried out by Christian radicals -- who quickly cued off of the Mossad's work on 911.
· You believe that Bush’s centerpiece claim in the 2003 SOTU that “Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late. Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option.” obviously made the case that the threat from Saddam was “imminent”.
· You believe that bin Laden cooperated with the CIA in Afghanistan and that it was the CIA that “made him what he is today” so he’s really an “American creation”.
· You believe the French representative to the EU is right that we should make sure all the Arab countries have nukes.
· You believe the fact that in spite of affirmative action 50% of University of California students are Asian while Asians are only 10% of California’s population is completely unrelated to the fact that Asians consistently score above all other racial groups including Caucasians on IQ tests.
· You believe that Saddam's 1993 assassination attempt on George Bush senior is "no evidence" that he could hold a grudge against the US – and in any case Clinton’s subsequent missile strike at the empty Iraqi intelligence headquarters ”taught him his lesson” and ended any grudge there may have been as Richard Clarke suggests.
· You considered Richard Clarke’s testimony to the 911 commission that there was no Iraq-al-Qaeda link to be “case closed” that Shrub misled us and Clarke to be a flawless witness – but somehow you missed that on page 127 [of his new "Against All Enemies"], Clarke notes that it's possible that al-Qaeda operatives in the Philippines "taught Terry Nichols how to blow up the Oklahoma Federal Building." Intelligence places Nichols there on the same days as Ramzi Yousef, and "we do know that Nichols's bombs did not work before his Philippines stay and were deadly when he returned."
· You believe that it's "no evidence" of a wildly misogynistic culture that Muslim male prisoners could be considered to be "tortured" by being made to wear women's panties over their heads.
· You have no clue that the real “blood for oil” scandal was actually contained within the U.N.’s corrupt, kickback-ridden Iraqi “Oil for Food” program – and the country of origin of the “bribee’s” had no relation to their countries opposition to the war and demands for the end of sanctions against Saddam.
· You believe that bin Laden could never cooperate with Saddam since there’s “no evidence” that he has ever cooperated with anyone so secular.
· You believe that the hundreds of thousands of Mizrahi Arab Jews currently living in Israel did not move there because they were persecuted, attacked and ejected by Muslims in Arabian countries -- and this is irrelevant to the Arab "right to return" to Israel anyway.
· You’re sure that bin Laden's 1998 Fatwa expressed solidarity with the Palestinians but dismissed aiding Iraq because of “that notorious infidel, Saddam Hussein".
· You believe that Putin’s sharing of Russian intelligence reports that Saddam was attempting terrorist attacks on the U.S. and its interests in the period between 911 and OIF are “no justification” for attacking Iraq.
· You believe that a cultural relativist is not "a hypocrite at 30,000 feet".
· You believe that the 20 tons of chemical weapons including Sarin and VX nerve gas seized in April 2004 by Jordan from a foiled al-Qaeda bombing plot in Amman obviously could not have come from Iraq.
· You believe that IQ tests are the "devil's spawn" and “not fair” because they can be used to indicate an average measure in the low 80's for the Arab world.
· You believe that North Korean No-Dong Long Range Missiles are clearly the most effective and economical way to deliver conventional explosives.
· You believe that Bush is stupid and you're certain it’s provable with IQ testing.
· You stopped reading this list after the first item.

Parlez Vous ...

Perfidy?

Bemoaning the ruins of Dresden without celebrating the liberation of Berlin.

The vEUw from Father's Day...

The EU elections were all about Iraq? ... er ... NO!

Has-been Europe.

Just click through to see the true face of the enema ... er ... enemy.

A View from the Eye of the Storm

Don't. Miss. It. Courtesy Spock.

Secondary explosions, elections, etc.

Reagan, Multi-Lateralist

"What kind of people do we think we are? Free people, worthy of freedom and determined not only to remain so but to help others gain their freedom as well." -- The formerly stupid, hateful, warmonger Ronald Reagan who is now portrayed as an easy-going, tolerant team-player in order to contrast how stupid and hateful George Bush is now...

Where did the quote come from? From a speech by Joe Lieberman. What? A Democrat quoting Reagan? Yes -- that's right -- an honest Dem so not a prayer in h-e-double hockey sticks that he would be allowed within a light-year of the White House any more...

Don't become a defenestrated flibbertigibbet!

On Investigating

The 911 commission! I'm still completely amazed that Jamie Gorelick -- the implementer of "the wall" -- is on the commission rather than being its chief subject.

Spock applies non-local logic to Reagan's critics -- and it ain't a very pretty showing by the teleologists needless to say...

And dovetails nicely with my previous post on Reagan revisionism.

European Rocket Scientists

Lifted whole from Best of the Web since I still can't even begin to absorb this and it is the only way you can't avoid seeing it for yourself:

Belgian Justice

"A Belgian jury on Thursday convicted a former electrician of kidnapping, raping and killing girls eight years ago, ending an agonizing 16-week trial and closing the book on one of the most disturbing criminal cases in the country's history," the New York Times reports from Paris:

Marc Dutroux, 47, faces a life sentence for the abduction, abuse and deaths of four girls, two of whom were apparently drugged, wrapped in plastic and buried alive. The other two died of starvation in an underground chamber where he left them while serving a three-month sentence for car theft.

Mr. Dutroux was also found guilty of kidnapping and raping two girls who survived. Their testimony and their return with the jury to the dungeon where they had been held provided the most dramatic moments of the trial.

Because he committed these horrific crimes in Europe, Dutroux won't get the death penalty. That would be "barbaric."

Nuance finally understood... Sorry it took me so long.

Reprise

With all the liberal re-writing of history going on about how Reagan was a multi-lateral pacifist compared to the evil GWB -- here's the antidote from Andrew.

To repeat: The future is known, it's the past that's always changing. (An old Soviet "saying of the people" second only perhaps to "they pretend to pay us and we pretend to work.")

Quotes of the Day

Some memorable quotes from Ronald Reagan (1911 - 2004), 40th President of the United States:

"A leader, once convinced a particular course of action is the right one, must have the determination to stick with it and be undaunted when the going gets rough."
-- December 5, 1990

"I've always believed that a lot of the trouble in the world would disappear if we were talking to each other instead of about each other."
-- April 11, 1984

"... there is no limit to what a man can do or where he can go if he doesn't mind who gets the credit."
-- January 21, 1981

The price of blood.

The future is known, it's the past that keeps changing...

Careful what you ask for...

I remember,

and therefore I will resist.

U.N.: The cultural relativism of kickbacks...

Terrorism breeds poverty...

WHOOPS AGAIN. Let's see now. There are no banned weapons or WMDs in Iraq. Because they're being shipped out. Before the inspectors can find them for the last year. Oh, and there's so many of them still there that terrorists are using them by accident. And we can't find them. Because there are so many conventional weapons that we can't sort through them all to find the WMDs. And Saddam shot at our no-fly patrols most days and ran terrorist training camps. But they were just for "secular" terrorists. Ummmhhhmmm...

Quote of the Day

"In a democracy it is real hard to get a majority vote from people you despise." -- on why leftists seem to have trouble winning...

Reagan Dies...

...but here's just one example of why he lives.

OK then, Chirac is certainly right that history never repeats itself. Ummmhhhhmmmmmm....

What there is consists only in the negation of the present...

The haircut with a person attached...

Of oil sands and coal gasification.

And all it must defeat.

Productive lives of service and charity?

There it is:

As we fight the war on terror in Iraq and on other fronts, we must keep in mind the nature of the enemy. No act of America explains terrorist violence, and no concession of America could appease it. The terrorists who attacked our country on September the 11th, 2001 were not protesting our policies. They were protesting our existence. Some say that by fighting the terrorists abroad since September the 11th, we only stir up a hornet's nest. But the terrorists who struck that day were stirred up already. (Applause.) If America were not fighting terrorists in Iraq, and Afghanistan, and elsewhere, what would these thousands of killers do, suddenly begin leading productive lives of service and charity? (Laughter.) Would the terrorists who beheaded an American on camera just be quiet, peaceful citizens if America had not liberated Iraq? We are dealing here with killers who have made the death of Americans the calling of their lives. And America has made a decision about these terrorists: Instead of waiting for them to strike again in our midst, we will take this fight to the enemy. (Applause.)

Time for the Innovator's Solution...

Britain Doomed!

Tell me when your people vote in free elections... Go Irshad!

Memo to Osama, part the first.

UPDATE: And the second.

Obviously, the lead prosecutor of the WTC I bombing knows nothing. Oh, really?

Blood must ink the presses...

More from the "fighting Al Qaeda in Iraq is a distraction from the war on Al Qaeda" department.

No Evidence? (part 34867)

Darling on Hayes on no evidence. This is one of those posts you don't want to miss -- long and information packed...

Here's a favorite:

Five months later, the same Richard Clarke who would one day claim that there was "absolutely no evidence that Iraq was supporting al Qaeda, ever," told the Washington Post that the U.S. government was "sure" that Iraq was behind the production of the chemical weapons precursor at the al Shifa plant. "Clarke said U.S. intelligence does not know how much of the substance was produced at al Shifa or what happened to it," wrote Post reporter Vernon Loeb, in an article published January 23, 1999. "But he said that intelligence exists linking bin Laden to al Shifa's current and past operators, the Iraqi nerve gas experts, and the National Islamic Front in Sudan."

And another:

Later in 1999, the Congressional Research Service published a report on the psychology of terrorism. The report created a stir in May 2002 when critics of President Bush cited it to suggest that his administration should have given more thought to suicide hijackings. On page 7 of the 178-page document was a passage about a possible al Qaeda attack on Washington, D.C., that "could take several forms." In one scenario, "suicide bombers belonging to al Qaeda's Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives (C-4 and semtex) into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency, or the White House."

A network anchor wondered if it was possible that the White House had somehow missed the report. A senator cited it in calling for an investigation into the 9/11 attacks. A journalist read excerpts to the secretary of defense and raised a familiar question: "What did you know and when did you know it?"

But another passage of the same report has gone largely unnoticed. Two paragraphs before, also on page 7, is this: "If Iraq's Saddam Hussein decide[s] to use terrorists to attack the continental United States [he] would likely turn to bin Laden's al Qaeda. Al Qaeda is among the Islamic groups recruiting increasingly skilled professionals," including "Iraqi chemical weapons experts and others capable of helping to develop WMD. Al Qaeda poses the most serious terrorist threat to U.S. security interests, for al Qaeda's well-trained terrorists are engaged in a terrorist jihad against U.S. interests worldwide."

And you forgot this didn't you?:

NPR reporter Mike Shuster interviewed Vincent Cannistraro, former head of the CIA's counterterrorism center, and offered this report:

Iraq's contacts with bin Laden go back some years, to at least 1994, when, according to one U.S. government source, Hijazi met him when bin Laden lived in Sudan. According to Cannistraro, Iraq invited bin Laden to live in Baghdad to be nearer to potential targets of terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. . . . Some experts believe bin Laden might be tempted to live in Iraq because of his reported desire to obtain chemical or biological weapons. CIA Director George Tenet referred to that in recent testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee when he said bin Laden was planning additional attacks on American targets.

By mid-February 1999, journalists did not even feel the need to qualify these claims of an Iraq-al Qaeda relationship. An Associated Press dispatch that ran in the Washington Post ended this way: "The Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has offered asylum to bin Laden, who openly supports Iraq against Western powers."

Somehow an alternative reality existed for the press when Clinton winked at it. Nuff said for now -- go RTWT...

WHOOPS part 349.

Running On Empty?

Not quite out of gas YET. Sorry. Not to say that a growing dependence on Canadians isn't tremendously worrying. Shipping more of those American jobs offshore you know. Well, OK, over the border at least...

The SPIN tries to mask the REALITY.

Did you know that "fascifist prudence" is a Googlewhack? Cool.

Totten summarizes sarin-dipity. And Lileks puts a sharp point on the dips.

WHOOP-WHOOP-WHOOPS!

Hersh And His Story Are One?

This is just fascinating about Hersh and his Abu Ghraib story:

Hersh, of course, would tell you that the world needs to know the information his methods obtain. He may be right. But that is also what U.S. Military Intelligence believed about getting information by hook or crook out of the criminals and terrorists confined at Abu Ghraib that could save American lives.

My take is that we need to figure out how to be ruthless to actually win this thing -- and this story proves we're incapable of it. Let's be honest with ourselves here: if men wearing women's underwear is a war crime then why hasn't San Francisco been tried in an International War Crimes Tribunal?

And if we start making them wear ham suits will FranceArabia finally lose it and attempt to nuke us?

Not in my city. And then why do you hate the Americans you son of a b***h!?

Would Nick Berg Have Selected The Underwear Option?

The corrupt western media has worked day and night to make sure you don't think about this.

CBS takes on the people and their Google. Skip to the end if you must but Glenn is unmatched pulling this kind of stuff together!

Drip.

Drip. DRIP.

Important new information has come from Edward Jay Epstein about Mohammed Atta’s contacts with Iraqi intelligence. The Czechs have long maintained that Atta, leader of the 9/11 hijackers in the United States, met with Ahmed al-Ani, an Iraqi intelligence official, posted to the Iraqi embassy in Prague. As Epstein now reports, Czech authorities have discovered that al-Ani’s appointment calendar shows a scheduled meeting on April 8, 2001 with a "Hamburg student."

That is exactly what the Czechs had been saying since shortly after 9/11: Atta, a long-time student at Germany’s Hamburg-Harburg Technical University, met with al-Ani on April 8, 2001. Indeed, when Atta earlier applied for a visa to visit the Czech Republic, he identified himself as a “Hamburg student.” The discovery of the notation in al-Ani’s appointment calendar about a meeting with a “Hamburg student” provides critical corroboration of the Czech claim.

Epstein also explains how Atta could have traveled to Prague at that time without the Czechs having a record of such a trip. Spanish intelligence has found evidence that two Algerians provided Atta a false passport.

Japanese tourists are welcome in Asia everywhere today...

It starts this way:

It wasn't till I got to the center of Jolo town in the late 1980s, some days after the fight between Mayor Saud Tan and Vice Governor Kimar Tulawie of Sulu that I became aware of the scale of the damage. There was a burned out area measuring about 1,000 x 1,500 meters that had been reduced to a flat stretch of blackened timber, twisted galvanized iron sheeting and pools of water. The hospital where I stood was on a hill, and therefore seized by Tulawie's men first. They had set up a mortar in the courtyard and machineguns in the windows where they could overlook the mayor's house 800 meters downrange. The doctors related, with a finely honed appreciation for the absurd, how the panicked patients had jumped out of the windows some still clutching bottles of dextrose hooked up to their veins, and scampered for their lives, the halt overtaking the lame. Tulawie's men found the range by walking the shells up to the Mayor's house, which in Jolo is another name for a fortification, and in the process set fire to the shantytown whose ruins stretched out before me. Two or three dozen people died, more than half a square mile burned out, and it didn't even rate a newspaper story in the capital of Manila. It didn't matter: the dead were buried and the warlords reached a modus vivendi .

And you clearly have a tin ear for writing if you haven't already CLICKED THROUGH to RTWT...

"History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid." Dwight D. Eisenhower

Shamelessly stolen from Donald.

"The Story" Must Go On

And it looks like it's coming true... Hmmm. The press dodged some real egg on the face on this one. Looks like we now know why Abu Ghraib won't go away any time soon -- it's desperately needed not to ruin "the story"...

I'm starting to wonder if they actually would have tried to literally "bury the news" of tens of thousands dead if the plot had been pulled off...

Maybe in 30 years the left will have a similar epiphany about Iraq.

No callouses -- but dripping with blood my dear Watson!

Clear thinking from Totten: The WoT isn't like WWII -- it's the reheating of WWII. Remember Amin? Coincidence? You'd be delusional to think so...

VDH on the stupid.

Incubating the death cult. MUST. READ. IMMEDIATELY. ... ADDED. TO. CLASSICS.

No ruins? And friends like these...

A word for nothing left to lose...

And finally the tangled (Chinese, Russian, Pakistani, Al Qaeda, etc) web department.

Dog droppings do define Paris after all!

Woodward lied? Or TeddyKerry?

Lee Harris dissects a critic. Surely persuasion is the solution to all ills, no? And it's so easy!

And Lee slam dunks the quote of the day: "I can give you an argument, but I cannot give you an understanding. -- Samuel Johnson"

Well now, this is certainly inconvenient.

Panic as policy?

Home Depot trumps national security. And frequent flyers deserve all the inconvenience we can dish so as to avoid any possible hurt feeeeelings. Or common sense.

The third contender?

And what day would be complete without an update on Amin's trail of carnage? UPDATE: Read. This. Also. What. The. Hell. Is. Wrong. With. The. British. Don't get me wrong -- I love them in so many ways. But the feckless wrong-headed anti-semitism of Herbert Samuel and his staff leading to the elevation of Amin will eventually be recognized by historians as one of the truly great mistakes. This is just absolutely devastating.

Unfortunately, the good old days of de-Nazification are seen through rose colored glasses regarding how systematic we and the allies were. The only ones who got the concept right were the Soviets -- but then gave us the great gift of East Germany due to their own ruinous ideology.

The assymetry increases. Heh.

Nothing!

The NYeT slips dangerously close to the rule-base versus goal-based precipice... Must. Read. Now.

Sure, that sounds reasonable.

Very interesting...

Eastbound.

Noam, we can hardly understand ya...

Unthinkable? Afraid not folks...

Unimpeachable solutions. Brought to you by the congress of esperanto dictators...

Foragainst. SUVs. 87 billion. Etc. Etc. Etc.

UPDATE: My rosy pink &*%...

There's no business like Mullah business.

On Iraq and South Africa. But that's just a warm-up to THIS.

UPDATE: And THIS has reminded me how hopelessly negligent I have been not to post "The Three Conjectures" to the Classics links. Done.

On answering Churchill's question.

UPDATE: You really need to read it. Here's an essential taste:

Shortly after Pearl Harbor, Winston Churchill came over and addressed Congress. He asked, rhetorically, "Who do they think we are?" It was an important question, because we must understand what our enemies think about us. Churchill's implicit answer was "They think we're suckers, and they think we won't be able to beat them."

The fascists believed that we had become soft and effeminate, that we were so hooked on materialism and self-indulgence that they, the representatives of a younger, more virile, and more spiritually robust race (or nation), would easily dominate us and impose their will on us.

The terror masters have the same contemptuous vision of us. And if you look at the way they deal with our governments, you will see a mixture of contempt and bemusement, as they repeatedly get us to go for the same tricks and deceptions.

In the past few days there has been a great to-do about a possible Iranian role in Iraq, mediating between us and Moqtada al Sadr. In the end, it came to nothing. Iran's deputy foreign minister was either unwilling or unable to deliver Moqtada, blamed us for the "failure," and went back to Tehran. But the point of the exercise was not to solve a problem for us — on the contrary, the Iranians intend to create ever greater problems on the ground — but to deliver a message to the restive Iranian people: "The Americans are so weak and impotent that they have to turn to us for help. So just forget about any American help to get rid of us."

If we can't manage Iraq without the mullahs, we certainly can't be strong enough to help the Iranian people get rid of the mullahcracy and achieve freedom.

It would have been embarrassing enough if this were the first time the Iranians had played such a game. But this was a humiliating replay of the "We've got al Qaeda guys for you" joke that they played on us at least twice in the last year. Remember when Deputy Secretary of State Armitage announced that his Iranian buddies were going to deliver al Qaeda terrorists in a matter of weeks? That never happened either, and again, the main point of the game was to demonstrate that the Bush administration was perfectly willing to negotiate with the mullahs. And therefore the United States wasn't going to remove them.

There is an additional stratagem involved in these little games: The mullahs figure that, if they can keep us engaged in the games, we won't crack down on their nuclear program. And the more time they can gain, the greater their chances of building an effective supply of atomic bombs. It's working.

As I have long argued, they may be crazy, but they are anything but stupid.

Well, there may have been some food involved. It seems less and less certain though...

The latest from the congress of dictators...

UPDATE: In case you missed it, Jordainian Buddhists have come unhinged!

Phony War's End.

How inconvenient...

The truth about the truth?