Waves of Magic Karma

Hugh has the overview amidst the festering devastation of Vietnam. Karma is an amazing thing. Jesus talks about the importance of the "secret place" -- but I think it's a fair bet he didn't think you should put a magic hat in it... And did I forget to mention Boorda's suicide?

Can You Say Projection?

WHOOPS! I thought you could.

It's Almost Impossible

to believe who says this:

This spring, the U.S. pushed a resolution through the U.N. Security Council threatening sanctions on Sudan for their disgraceful conduct. The already weak resolution was watered down at the request of a number of countries, including the Europeans.

Europeans cannot criticize the United States for waging war in Iraq if they are unwilling to exhibit the moral fiber to stop genocide by acting collectively and with decisiveness. President Bush was wrong to go into Iraq unilaterally when Iraq posed no danger to the United States, but we were right to demand accountability from Saddam. We are also right to demand accountability in Sudan. Every day that goes by without meaningful sanctions and even military intervention in Sudan by African, European and if necessary U.N. forces is a day where hundreds of innocent civilians die and thousands are displaced from their land. Every day that goes by without action to stop the Sudan genocide is a day that the anti-Iraq war position so widely held in the rest of the world appears to be based less on principle and more on politics. And every day that goes by is a day in which George Bush's contempt for the international community, which I have denounced every day for two years, becomes more difficult to criticize.

Now is the time for the world community to act if they are serious about encouraging an enlightened leadership role for the United States. My challenge to the U.N. and Europe is simple: if you don't like American diplomacy under George Bush, then do something to show those of us in opposition here in the U.S. that you can behave in such a way that unilateralism is not necessary.

Yep. When Howard Dean seems positively level-headed and balanced compared to John Kerry and his character assassination goons...

UPDATE: And some pretty damning evidence suggesting the Eurabians ain't riding to his rescue is at the end of this post.

UPDATE #2: And don't miss out on the last paragraph of this little gem. Wouldn't want anyone to know about something like that now would we?

Fire, Ready, Aim

Looks like the rocket scientists at the NYeT are blinded by incompetence as well as ideology...

A Fair Cambodian History Lesson

Podhoretz puts the nail in the Cambodian coffin:

The 250-plus men who make up the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth dislike, despise or hate John Kerry. And they have good reason to do so. What they have done in gathering to destroy John Kerry is throw everything they can come up at him — like the way a prosecutor will seek to indict someone on hundreds of charges and then with a judge's participation whittle them down to a potent few.

Is that fair? Well, one of the charges hurled by the Swift Boat Veterans has thrown Kerry for a loop. They unearthed Kerry's claim to have driven his boat into Cambodia at Christmastime 1968, ferrying a CIA operative on an illegal mission and getting a mysterious hat from that operative as a keepsake in the process.

He wasn't in Cambodia during Christmas 1968, and he almost certainly wasn't there at any other time. How can I be sure? Consider the history. In 1973, Kerry was a leader of the anti-war movement. That same year, the American Left went nuts when the Nixon administration admitted it had secretly invaded Cambodia in 1969 and 1970 to roust out Communist fighters.

It's hard to overstate just how big an issue this was in 1973. Cambodia was officially a neutral country, and it was the contention of the anti-war movement that any movement across Cambodia's borders constituted a violation of international law.

If Kerry is to be believed, then this leader of the anti-war movement remained silent in 1973 when he could have spoken out about how he was ordered to violate Cambodian neutrality as early as 1968. Which is why Kerry is not to be believed on this matter.

Is it worth knowing that Kerry lied about his one-man invasion of Cambodia? I think most people would say it is worth knowing, even if it won't affect their vote. If life were fair, we probably wouldn't know about it.

So maybe it's good life isn't fair.

So Kerry is either monumentally incompetent, lying or stark raving crazy. My guess is all of the above, with the latter as the root cause.

The political brain. But surely day-long bouts of screaming "BusHitler!!!" is no evidence of emotional behavior? Is it?

Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth...

If Patrick Brady Wrote a Book...

would the Dems want to burn that one too?

It's quite amusing to me that Michael Moore steals Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451" -- who's none too happy with the big, fat white man about stealing the title of his book about book burning -- and now the Dems are all excited to have "Unfit For Command" retracted by the publisher. First Amendment, schmirst amendment as they say...

The New Face of Mental Illness

What mental illness looks like. Apparently, Afghanistan had no association with Osama. And I'm certain he would have supported BusHitler if he had invaded Pakistan. Uh-huh.

Did I mention this person is a nationally syndicated cartoonist for his day job? Now you know...

Oh, and did I mention that European unemployment averaged about a point higher than NYC? Never fear though -- they are our betters. Whatever you do, don't confuse your feelings by considering facts.

Is it over, over there?

The Long and Short of Mandatory

Mandatory reading. And if you can't spare the time you must at least read the mandatory review.

Therefore it is necessary, but not enough, to win another victory against oppressors in other countries; it also past the time for the West to triumph against the dark recesses of its own soul.

Mr. Warren

reviews Mr. Garton Ash:

Nor is the anti-Americanism in Europe some natural expression of the continent's war-bloodied historical experience. Some of it can be explained by envy -- the passing over the Atlantic of that sense of importance that Europe once enjoyed, in its Imperial heyday. But power politics are more calculating and cynical than that. The whole project of building a united Europe depends on replacing the old intra-European national antipathies with a new common antipathy. The public demonization of America thus serves the interests of Europe's new bureaucratic order, as George Jonas and others have argued.

Read it all, for it is good...

The real Manchurian Candidate? Michael Moore will have a demented field day with this...

Quote of the Day

From Roger Simon's blog: "I think Kerry believes he was in Cambodia. I wouldn't mind if he were lying. This is something worse."

Yeeeeouch!

UPDATE: Steyn is on the case...

And he can't understand why this might trouble people with actual brains :)

Hunted by the people. What? It wasn't on Rather. Must not have happened then I guess...

You were wondering if we're still asking for it. That answer would be yes.

Way beyond WOW!

WOW.

Fiddling on Sudan

EURSOC has the goods on Sudan:

News from Sudan's Darfur region gets more horrifying every day: The Guardian reports that Arab women who accompany the militias as they rape and slaughter their way around the region "sang for joy" as they watched their brothers torture their victims. Women as young as eight have been targeted by the militia in a campaign of rape designed to drive the black Sudanese from their homelands.
Human Rights Watch claims to have obtained proof that Sudan's government backed the Janjaweed militias responsible for the massacre - Khartoum denies supporting the militia. The United Nations estimates at least 30,000 have died and a million have fled their homes since the attacks began.

Overdue List -- No Loitering Allowed

Move along now.  No link to be found here or here...

"In particular, the official said, the commission found the FBI was not set up to collect intelligence domestically, in part because of civil liberties concerns."  Scat.  Move on!

"And he's so nuanced he's running not only as America's most famous war hero but also as America's most famous anti-war protester."  Hike it!  Now!

And a little test.

Today's Round-up

Good news is no news...

Fair and balanced BEEB?  (With a bonus hat tip to Roger for the following Taheri link.)

Taheri and Ledeen.  Must.  Read.  Now.  A taste from Amir:

"Our struggle is not about land or water," the late Ayatollah Ruhallah Khomeini said in 1980. "It is about bringing, by force if necessary, the whole of mankind onto the right path."

What?  No panties?

Quoting Churchill Again

"You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will have war."
Winston Churchill on Munich

They know what it looks like...

And the good news is the bad news.

In Two Parts

PART ONE: "The future is known, it's the past that keeps changing." -- Unknown Soviet dissident

PART TWO: Airbrushed.

More Terror In The Skies

Michelle saw the Jacobsen's on MSNBC tonight (I missed it) and pronounced them credible.  That matches my listen to Annie's segments on the radio that I streamed from Seattle.  I was expecting Annie to appear on Brokaw after after what she said on the radio so I wasn't ready for the feint to MSNBC.
 
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 ;)

Well, I have been feeling a bit sunburned lately...

Yet It Refused To Act?

Hayes continues the vivisection of the (What? Us liberal?) media over the Senate Intelligence committee report:

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. 

Better to be safer now?

I forgot to point out this Jonah gem on Kerry:

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

"Few discoveries are more irritating than those which expose the pedigree of ideas.", Lord Acton.
 
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

"If Islam desires the secret of the stars it must embrace the kuffar as its brother -- or die."

He talks, after all, like most of us do.

The Day You Find Out Why

Very nice post by Sensing today:

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)?"

Go read Michelle. Here's a sample:

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?

Wretchard on Warren for the take you really need to read:

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.

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...
 
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...

Considering aliteracy.  Yes, aliteracy...
 
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!

Mohammed strikes again!

And McCarthy watches TNR go off the edge of the flat earth they live on...

Analyzing the Senate Ramblings

Ledeen restates the obvious (see masthead above :)

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.

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.

More than enough actually...

QandO Is On A Roll

This will make you ponder how far we've fallen.

This will make you laugh out loud.

Deni-analysis deconstructed.

Baby-killers? Really???

A walking, smooth-talking self-refutation. Nuff said.

Quote of the Day

Courtesy of Wretchard:

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

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.