Saturday, July 24, 2004
Quoting Churchill Again
Winston Churchill on Munich
In Two Parts
PART TWO: Airbrushed.
Monday, July 19, 2004
More Terror In The Skies
I had been scratching my head about why Brokaw would go for it -- had to be an angle developing where he could do some Bush-bashing but I was scratching my head about where the angle was here to pull that off. Now I'm thinking the story is too credible (and Annie now has a follow-up including more inputs from airline folks) so the way to bury it is on MSNBC. Interesting though that FOX wouldn't bite after Michelle tipped them off...
Annie's defense of her Ann Coulter quote from the first story may have something to do with the media's continuing verdict of obscurity also ;)
Yet It Refused To Act?
This administration had 12 separate reports that Iraq had provided training in chemical and biological weapons to al Qaeda. Yet it refused to act. This administration knew of numerous high-level meetings between Iraqi Intelligence and Osama bin Laden and his top deputies. Yet it refused to act. This administration had been told by the CIA that Iraqi Intelligence had become increasingly aggressive throughout 2002 in targeting U.S. interests. Yet it refused to act. This administration knew that Saddam Hussein had made Osama bin Laden a standing offer of safe haven. Yet it refused to act.
Just beautiful.
Sunday, July 18, 2004
Better to be safer now?
It's silly to expect us to be safer when there's so much work left to do. And the whole rationale for extending the Bush presidency is that there's work left to be done that John Kerry has no interest in doing. Commanders-in-chief who run on the premise that we shouldn't change horses in midstream don't talk about how we're safer — they talk about the progress we've made and how their opponents will go in the wrong direction. John Kerry says Bush has bad values because of the way he runs the war. He's free to make that argument, though I think it's a silly line of attack. Regardless, I say John Kerry has bad values because he thinks "keeping our alliances strong" is more important than achieving what those alliances were intended for in the first place, which is just a "sophisticated" way of saying he cares more about popularity than principle. Indeed, he says this isn't a war on terror, it's a law-enforcement issue. He says it's more important to be an environment, education, health-care, and jobs president than to be war president. He says it's better to be safer now than for America to be safer for our children. But he thinks it's outrageous that we run up deficits during a war. In other words, he's outraged that our grandkids might be stuck with higher interest rates or fewer entitlements but not that they might have to face a Middle East chock-a-block with nuclear-armed Saddams and Osamas. Those strike me as pretty poor values.
And don't ever forget that our ability to spy on the nihilists just ain't gonna happen. Least of all from the party of Frank Church. So being on the defensive is just a patently absurd position. Being on the offense is the only way to spy. It's called capture and interrogate.
Quote of the Day
And the pedigreed elephant in the room can be found here. But don't worry, the Joooooos are the real Nazis! It accords perfectly with the popularity of "Mein Kampf" among the Palestinians you see...
Refresher On The Stars
The Day You Find Out Why
Someone once said that the two most important days of your life are the day you were born and the day you discover why.
George Bernard Shaw wrote, "This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one: the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap, and being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy."
Contrast that with a sign found on a shop's door in New York one morning: "Gone out of business. Didn't know what our business was."
"More men fail through lack of purpose than lack of talent," said Evangelist Billy Sunday.
Robert Kohler wrote, “There are different kinds of voices calling you to different kinds of work, and the problem is to find out which” voice is the call of God rather than the voice of self interest, cultural values or something else. “The kind of work that God usually calls you to do is the kinds of work that you need most to do and that the world most needs to have done.”
“The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet” (Frederick Buechner). That's why you were born, and when you find it you know you came to it for just such a time as this.
There is a story about Yogi Berra, the famous catcher for the New York Yankees, and Hank Aaron, who at that time was the chief power hitter for the Milwaukee Braves. The teams were playing in the World Series, and as usual Yogi kept up a ceaseless chatter, intended both to encourage his teammates and distract Milwaukee's batters.
As Aaron came to the plate, Yogi tried to distract him by saying, "Hank, you're holding the bat wrong. You're supposed to hold it so you can read the trademark." Aaron didn't say anything, but when the next pitch came he hit it into the left-field bleachers. After rounding the bases and tagging up at home plate, Aaron looked at Yogi Berra and said, "I didn't come here to read."
"Mommy, why did you kill my twin brother(s)?"
When we saw the specialist, we found out that I was carrying identical twins and a stand alone. My doctors thought the stand alone was three days older. There was something psychologically comforting about that, since I wanted to have just one. Before the procedure, I was focused on relaxing. But Peter was staring at the sonogram screen thinking: Oh, my gosh, there are three heartbeats. I can't believe we're about to make two disappear. The doctor came in, and then Peter was asked to leave. I said, ''Can Peter stay?'' The doctor said no. I know Peter was offended by that.I suppose that you're going to tell me with a straight face that this child will never find out? And of course, someone stupid enough to be involved in this is part of the bigger picture...
Tammy Bruce has a phrase for this: "malignant narcisism". I'll be thinking for days to come up with a better example. Sad to say that Stalin and Hitler are the only leads I have right now -- a sad reminder of the projection actually involved by the leftists' incessant cries of BusHitler...
No Such Thing As Al-Qaeda?
On-going de-nihilism as described by Wretchard leads everyone to also forget that WTC I was aimed to topple one tower into the other leading to 100,000+ casualties. But that's too inconvenient to think about of course...One the most most striking things about the Global War on Terror is how closely it's resolution is linked with the longest standing issues of Western society. For that reason the war intrudes directly and insistently on Western domestic politics. The Madrid bombing of March 11, 2004 and the American Presidential elections in November are cases in point. Both are essentially about the War on Terror. The enemy cannot be named because doing so would overturn the 20th century political and economic foundations to its roots. It would tear down the Big Tent of political correctness; put a prosperity heavily dependent on oil supplies at risk; and replace an entire paradigm of international relations. For that reason naming the enemy will avoided for as long as possible; perhaps even after a mushroom or biological cloud darkens an American city.
UPDATE: Oh yes, I forgot. The leftists will point out that they didn't actually pull it off -- implying that they were too stupid to. But don't worry, that's not racism. It's really me that's the racist. UmmmHmmm...
And a fine Steyn flashback for a Sunday afternoon -- precursors about hiding in plain sight regarding the recent Annie Jacobsen piece. What? Well better go read it then!
Monday, July 12, 2004
Analyzing the Senate Ramblings
Penultimate observation: The report tells us several times that we had no human sources "collecting against weapons of mass destruction in Iraq" (there's that awful language again), and we are told that this was the result of "a broken corporate culture and poor management." And why, pray tell, was the "corporate culture" broken? The committee doesn't probe this very deeply, and they are right to avoid it, because the Congress is the main culprit in this sad story.More than enough actually...
No one has seen fit to point out that, thanks to the depredations of President Bill Clinton and Senator Robert Torricelli a few years back, the CIA had been told to avoid working relationships with persons of dubious human-rights records. Well, it would be hard to find a high official in Saddam Hussein's Iraq who didn't have a really rotten human-rights record. So, even if the agency had an olive-skinned case officer, fluent in Iraqi Arabic, capable of penetrating the Baathist state, he would probably have had to deal with some real monsters in order to get real secrets. If you were the CIA, you'd have avoided that one. Remember that Torricelli's scorched-earth campaign was the result of a CIA case officer talking to a Guatemalan paramilitary type who killed people from time to time.
On this one, I hold Congress and Clinton guilty. The CIA didn't have a broken culture — it had a lunatic overseer in the legislature and a cowardly customer in the White House.
Finally, we come to the really big question, and the weird answer of the committee. The big question is this: How could every serious intelligence agency on earth have come to believe there were WMDs in Iraq when (as the current article of faith has it) there were none? Senator Roberts likens it to a global epidemic. The CIA got it wrong and then infected all the others. A worldwide virus, so to speak. The WMD flu, if you will.
I don't buy it. I don't think the French were swayed by the CIA. I don't think the Israelis and the Russians were infected by our views. I think this is like the David Kay theory of WMDs. Remember? He said that Saddam really believed he had some, because all his guys lied to him about it. He didn't actually have WMDs at all, because the Iraqis had failed, and they feared for their lives if Saddam found them out, and so they lied, and he bought the lies.
These are pretty complicated theories, you must admit. What about a simpler approach? Let's say that there were WMDs. Then, in the disgracefully long period between Afghanistan and Iraq, Saddam, knowing he was gonna be overrun, exported some (mostly to Syria and Iran), destroyed some, and hid some.
That's my story, and I'm sticking with it for the time being. I'm sticking with it because I know — as Senator Roberts and the committee staff know, because I told them — that there are very credible reports of WMD sites, but the CIA chooses not to go look at them. Since I told my own story I've learned about others, one of which comes from a very high-ranking former official of the American government. I'm also sticking with it because the Polish government insists that their guys in Iraq found warheads with chemical weapons, even though a CENTCOM press release denies it, and because Zarkawi's killers arrived in Jordan with large quantities of chemical weapons. And because I don't believe the Iraqis would have bought all those funny suits that protect you from chemical and biological weapons unless they had such weapons and expected to use them.
Enough already.
Sunday, July 11, 2004
QandO Is On A Roll
This will make you laugh out loud.
Deni-analysis deconstructed.
Baby-killers? Really???
A walking, smooth-talking self-refutation. Nuff said.
Saturday, July 10, 2004
Quote of the Day
And do not suppose this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigor, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in olden time.
-- Churchill on Munich Oct 5, 1938
Comments on Escaping Hell
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.But somehow is almost unknown to Google...
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.
Tuesday, July 06, 2004
Quote of the Day
-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
Monday, July 05, 2004
Quote of the Day
Sunday, July 04, 2004
Where's the Outrage? (Part the 68735th)
Where’s the Arab Media’s Sense of Outrage?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...
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.
Saturday, July 03, 2004
Friday, July 02, 2004
Read. Now.
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
Thursday, July 01, 2004
They Will Not Forgive
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
The following quote is -- quite simply -- horrifying:It turns out that sterilization primarily affects the neurons -- who'd a thunk it? And then the coup de main:
"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....
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...
Monday, June 28, 2004
Saturday, June 26, 2004
FDR Spotted Puking in Grave by Andrew...
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...
Friday, June 25, 2004
Thursday, June 24, 2004
Wednesday, June 23, 2004
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.
Tuesday, June 22, 2004
No More Parenting or Teaching I'm Afraid...
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, astonishingBut don't worry, it's we and not they that live in a disorienting echo chamber. Yikes...:[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.
Monday, June 21, 2004
The Annotated "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. 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.
Sunday, June 20, 2004
You might be a liberal if:
· 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.
The vEUw from Father's Day...
Saturday, June 19, 2004
Reagan, Multi-Lateralist
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...
Friday, June 18, 2004
On Investigating
And dovetails nicely with my previous post on Reagan revisionism.
European Rocket Scientists
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."
Wednesday, June 16, 2004
Tuesday, June 15, 2004
Reprise
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
"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
Sunday, June 13, 2004
Saturday, June 12, 2004
Thursday, June 10, 2004
Quote of the Day
Sunday, June 06, 2004
Friday, June 04, 2004
Thursday, June 03, 2004
Productive lives of service and charity?
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.)
Wednesday, June 02, 2004
Tuesday, June 01, 2004
Monday, May 31, 2004
Sunday, May 30, 2004
Saturday, May 29, 2004
No Evidence? (part 34867)
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."And you forgot this didn't you?:
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."
NPR reporter Mike Shuster interviewed Vincent Cannistraro, former head of the CIA's counterterrorism center, and offered this report:Somehow an alternative reality existed for the press when Clinton winked at it. Nuff said for now -- go RTWT...
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."
Wednesday, May 26, 2004
Running On Empty?
Thursday, May 20, 2004
Tuesday, May 18, 2004
Saturday, May 15, 2004
Hersh And His Story Are One?
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?
Would Nick Berg Have Selected The Underwear Option?
Thursday, May 13, 2004
Tuesday, May 11, 2004
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.
Friday, May 07, 2004
Japanese tourists are welcome in Asia everywhere today...
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...
Thursday, May 06, 2004
Shamelessly stolen from Donald.
"The Story" Must Go On
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...
Wednesday, May 05, 2004
Tuesday, May 04, 2004
Monday, May 03, 2004
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.