More evidence of the upcoming, new and unacceptable unscheduled exams...

I Guess I Need To Lower My Praise ...

of Glenn a bit. The opponent not only doesn't have a pitching staff, they've supplied him with a tee and spotted him loaded bases!

All The News That's Fit To Print ...

... unless it hurts our guy. Does this mean that Cambodia's back on again? Ooooooohhhh -- excellent!

Feeling A Need For Some Offsetting Humor Today...

News Flash: PALO ALTO. Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) today announced that the Office of President, CEO and Chairman will be outsourced as of October 31, the end of the fiscal year. The move is being made to save $45 million in annual salary and benefits. Further savings in air travel are expected to add to HP’s bottom line.

“At the end of the day, the cost savings will be quite significant” says HP board member, Executive Vice President, and CFO Rob Highwayman, who, with the aid of HP’s outsourcing arm, HP Services, has studied outsourcing extensively. “We simply can no longer afford this inefficiency and remain competitive in the world stage,” Highwayman said.

Sanji Gurvinder Singh, 23, of Indus Teleservices, Mumbai, India, will be assuming the Office of President, Chairman and CEO as of October 31. He will receive a salary of $320 USD a month with proportionate benefits. Mr Singh will maintain his office in India and will be working primarily at night, due to the time difference between the US and India.

“I am excited to serve in this position,” Mr. Singh stated in an exclusive interview. “I always knew that my career at the HP call center would lead to great things.” An HP spokesperson noted that Mr. Singh has extensive experience in public speaking and has been given Ms. Fiorina’s script tree to enable him to answer any question without having to understand the issue.

Ms. Fiorina, 49, has announced that she will join the faculty of the Stanford School of Business, specializing in medieval business and the related subject of employee motivation. No one at the Stanford School of Business was available for comment.

The Hewlett-Packard board continues to explore other outsourcing possibilities including HP’s more than 1,200 vice presidents.

In an unrelated news item it was learned that HP was selling five corporate jets complete with passengers thought to be board members and HP executives. While the value of the content was not thought to be significant it is believed that their accumulated air-miles could be used to facilitate additional outsourcing initiatives.

[Found in my email from a little elf...]

C'est le Frenchies?!

MAIS NON!!

Why Glenn Is Major League

Glenn has now hit homers in all of last six at bats! (five, six)

Granted I had already linked to five and six, and five was only a homer because Steyn hit it so hard that it went out of the park just with the ricochet off of Glenn's bat.

Anyway. READ. THEM. ALL.

Is De-Nihilism's facade showing a crack? Most assuredly, you won't find it in the NYeT...

Kerry-Dukakis in 04?

NYeT! Don't Fight Hitler!

... for that will only make him really mad! My disgust at the NYeT simply cannot be put in words. But Putin now understands the situation.

Did I forget to mention that Putin has already said that people who DON'T vote for Bush need their "heads examined". What? You didn't find that in the NYeT? Can't imagine why...

And on the "root cause" behind subhumans who shoot fleeing children in the back:

When your asymmetrical warfare strategy depends on gunning down schoolchildren, you're getting way more asymmetrical than you need to be. The reality is that the IRA and ETA and the ANC and any number of secessionist and nationalist movements all the way back to the American revolutionaries could have seized schoolhouses and shot all the children.

But they didn't. Because, if they had, there would have been widespread revulsion within the perpetrators' own communities. To put it at its most tactful, that doesn't seem to be an issue here.

So the particular character of this "insurgency" does not derive from the requirements of "asymmetrical warfare" but from . . . well, let's see, what was the word missing from those three analyses of the Beslan massacre? Here's a clue: half the dead "Chechen separatists" were not Chechens at all, but Arabs. And yet, tastefully tiptoeing round the subject, The New York Times couldn't bring itself to use the words Muslim or Islamist, for fear presumably of offending multicultural sensibilities.

NYeT, we refuse to name evil.

Lieutenant To ???

That's right, he was Dukakis' Lieutenant Governor after all... After being a Lieutenant J.G. in Nam. Did he mention that he served in Vietnam?

Well, after attempting to get a deferment to study in France and chose the Swift Boats because that seemed like a safe enough assignment to see what was going on -- until Zumwalt changed their mission...

Living By Doctrine

Third name down. A pre-emptive strike as they say...

Three Strikes and You Win...

A tale of strikes and dirt balls.

UPDATE: Make that a slimy dirt ball...

Peters

Rocks!

But, but, but ... you don't understand the real roots of terror you fascist BusHitler thug! Oh? I don't?

UPDATE: And it was planned ahead of time, natch. Sound familiar?

Quote of the Day

From a comment on Roger Simon's vivisection of the media today.

As the fax machine contributed to the fall of the soviet Empire, the Internet will contribute to the fall of media monoliths.

With the AP now whole-heartedly joining the NYeT in a wave of Orwellian corruption, the only question seems to be just how close to 1989 we are? I hope it's a lot closer than it feels like today...

Flip Flap Flubbergasted

Nearly all in the same sentence again. I'm feeling quite confident we'll get there again soon.

More in the "it's all Rove's fault" department. UmmHmmm...

The Bush Doctrine In Plain English

Ahhh. Now you understand why they hate him so?

The Bush Doctrine:
1. We will fight for freedom. We reject moral relativism.

Freedom and fear are at war. The advance of human freedom -- the great achievement of our time, and the great hope of every time -- now depends on us. Our nation -- this generation -- will lift a dark threat of violence from our people and our future. We will rally the world to this cause by our efforts, by our courage. We will not tire, we will not falter, and we will not fail.

2. The friends of our enemies are also our enemies.

Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.

3. We reserve the right to hit our enemies before they strike us.

The war on terror will not be won on the defensive. We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans, and confront the worst threats before they emerge. In the world we have entered, the only path to safety is the path of action. And this nation will act.

4. We will not negotiate with those who continue to support terrorism.

Every leader actually committed to peace will end incitement to violence in official media and publicly denounce homicide bombs. Every nation actually committed to peace will stop the flow of money, equipment, and recruits to terrorist groups seeking the destruction of Israel, including Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah.

FDR would be proud. The libs couldn't identify FDR in a line-up of one. (Hat tip Glenn.)

Ho Hum. Just another day at the scrupulously fact-checked MSM. Expect widespread retractions shortly. (Hat tip Glenn.)

My sentiments EXACTLY.

Could There Be A Reason?

That you can think of for a bit of a conflict here? From the introduction to the Nobel literature prize winning "The Captive Mind":

When someone is 55% right, that's very good and there's no use wrangling. And if someone is 60% right, it's wonderful, it's great luck, and let him thank God. But what's to be said about 75% right? Wise people say this is suspicious. Well, and what about 100% right? Whoever says he's 100% right is a fanatic, a thug, and the worst kind of rascal. --AN OLD JEW OF GALACIA

Versus a Mohammad quote near the start of Bin Laden's "Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders":

I have been sent with the sword between my hands to insure that no one but Allah is worshipped, Allah who put my livelihood under the shadow of my spear and who inflicts humiliation and scorn on those who disobey my orders.

Could it be the result of residue contorted into a cruel Mobius strip?

The Roots of Hate

Captured on video. You ain't gonna believe this one folks... (Hat tip McQ)

UPDATE: With the Russian school hostage crisis and all I wouldn't post this if I wasn't such a fanatic about dead parrots. Just thought you might want a clarification. Oh, and the bandwidth to the site isn't so good so you may see some pauses -- and maybe a lot of them if this gets to be as popular as I think it will...

Roundup

Foreshadowing of debates to come.

And some fire for the belly...

UPDATE: Ann weighs in on some "unsubstantiated charges".

The (insane) position three.

The World Leaders...

in the manufacture of perfume.

Kerry's Problem In A Pecan Shell

American Thinker: "So Kerry is proud of having called Vietnam Veterans and the men still fighting there drug-addled genocidal war criminals? That is how he stood up for Vietnam Veterans?".

But he's a hero (and self-admitted war criminal) and supports the troops? As previously noted, you can't say stuff like this without being nuttier than a pecan plantation...

UPDATE: What Kerry ignores.

Cambodia Back On? Most Excellent!

Check this out:

I love this from an interview in the September issue of GQ:

"[John Kerry]: I can't say. To me Vietnam is an old place, an old memory. It is old history, it's gone, it's past. The less I have to talk about it, frankly, the happier I am." [Yeah right -- ed.]

The interview took place on July 4th. That's before Kerry "reported for duty" at the Dem. convention.

On another issue, this morning I heard Del Sandusky interviewed on a radio program. He specifically said that they "touched ground" in Cambodia. Which means it had to be in February or March '69. I suspect that careful questioning of him would destroy that claim.

Sandusky also said a number of disingenuous things in the interview that make me think he's deliberately lying, not simply mistaken in his memories. He claimed not to even know most of the people who appear in the SBVFT ads, and that for Larry Thurlow to say he served with John Kerry is, "like me saying I served with Wm. Westmoreland".

Yet, John Kerry, in Tour of Duty, has Thurlow and his boats practically side by side. Since Sandusky was at the helm of Kerry's boat, that makes either Kerry or Sandusky a liar.

So fine, I'll go so far as to buy it. I repeat: It doesn't matter -- Kerry is toast even if he was in Cambodia... When I talk to my very, very liberal Mom who lived through WWII I am constantly amazed at how little she remembers of it. I'm also quite amazed how little the libs remember of the history around the Vietnam War. (Yes, follow that link!)

A different drummer?

Crossing the Rubicon?

Rantburg has it nailed (shameless steal follows):

New Chapter for the Vagina Monologues
Ok, somebody finally said it in public:
Russian Planes Exploded From Toilets
Evidence Supports Prior Reports of Al Qaeda Women Smuggling Explosives Internally?

What makes this especially ominous is this report from six months ago, claiming that Al Qaeda was training female bombers to smuggle explosives inside their vaginas. The plan was to extract the explosives and then assemble the bomb in the toilet, of course.

I have no idea how this country will react to this, if this is the new tactic. As I mentioned when I first noted this story (CAUTION: contains very indelicate language), we’re either going to have to subject women to highly, HIGHLY intrusive body-searches or else we’re just going to have to allow Al Qaeda to blow up airplanes whenever they feel like it.

If this is the new tactic, it seems to me that this will be the Rubicon as regards racial profiling. Non-Muslim women are not going to put up with being told that they must subject themselves to unscheduled gynecological exams just to be "fair" to all women. And, as humiliating and intrusive as such searches might be, I don’t see how we can do anything else but subject only Muslim women (or primarily Muslim women) to this admitted indignity.

Perhaps there’s a technological solution. But that too has its problems; I don’t know if many women will gladly accept dangerous X-raying of their wombs just to board an airplane.

...

And remember the "male version" that Annie Jacobsen witnessed? Annie is already on the case...

UPDATE: You really need to read Annie's most recent update. Here's how it ends:

In Part Five of this series, I interviewed fellow flight 327 passenger Billie Jo Rodriguez. Rodriguez gave me the startling news that one of the Syrian men spent about 10 minutes in the lavatory and then came out of the lavatory reeking of toilet chemicals. As I have previously stated, multiple government agencies (including FBI, JTTF, FAMS and LAPD) met the plane in Los Angeles to question the men. But because the men didn't immediately match up against names on the government's no-fly lists, they were let go.

Here is another detail that I have only recently discovered. I now know that the 14 Syrians aboard my flight 327 were questioned by the FBI for between 20 and 30 minutes after landing. (Initially, I was told they were held and questioned for approximately two hours.) How can our agencies possibly gather intelligence on 14 men in only 20 minutes? Even if they had done some of the legwork before the plane landed, they couldn't possibly conduct a thorough investigation in such short time. And again, I'll ask why none of the other passengers were questioned? Had the FBI ascertained Billie Jo Rodriguez' information about one of the Syrian men emerging from a bathroom smelling like toilet chemicals (after nearly knocking another passenger over so as to get inside first) -- those men may not have been out the door and on their way to their musical gig after just 20 minutes.

As of press time, no one from the FBI, the JTTF or the DHL or any other government agency has contacted me, Billie Jo Rodriguez or any of the other passengers on flight 327. Maybe the Russians will. The war on terrorism is a global war. It knows no boundaries. Whether you're on a Russian TU-134 or a Boeing 757, the enemy is the same.

And you were wondering why defense isn't enough?

Sad Spanish Saga Segues

Some more on getting the Spanish out of Spain. (Remember this?)

Time to separate student assessment from teaching?

FRENCH FILE FLUFFING

Hey Sully, remember when I promised to kill you last?

UPDATE: Standing in the way of global Islamic theocracy...

MUST. READ. NOW. BOTH. LINKS.

A chronological debunking of our newest Riefenstahl. And I don't mean the big fat one...

Marxist Cogitation

Let's look some more at that 1971 Senate Committee appearance:

Senator, I will say this. I think that politically, historically, the one thing that people try to do, that society is structured on as a whole, is an attempt to satisfy their felt needs, and you can satisfy those needs with almost any kind of political structure, giving it one name or the other. In this name it is democratic; in other it is communism; in others it is benevolent dictatorship. As long as those needs are satisfied, that structure will exist.

But when you start to neglect those needs, people will start to demand a new structure, and that, to me, is the only threat that this country faces now, because we are not responding to the needs and we are not responding to them because we work on these old cold-war precepts and because we have not woken up to realizing what is happening in the United States of America.

Yes, this gives one great hope -- hope that he loses big time.

Round-up Time

Batman swats down Robin.

What the loyal opposition looks like. And Hitch too, of course.

Deconstructing hubris.

Life isn't fair for the Islamofascist allies. But then Vichy France was no cakewake either...

McCain finally swings the guns around in the right direction and ... fails to condemn the second Swift Boat ad and ... it's not going to be pretty...

He Voted For It Before He Voted Against It (Part 7,457)

This is just beautiful -- two Kerry "nanonuances" in one article. First the expected one:

As the presumptive Democratic nominee, Kerry was ready with the bravado appropriate for a challenger who knows that every answer carries magnified importance in the state that put President Bush into office by just 537 votes.

''I'm pretty tough on Castro, because I think he's running one of the last vestiges of a Stalinist secret police government in the world,'' Kerry told WPLG-ABC 10 reporter Michael Putney in an interview to be aired at 11:30 this morning.

Then, reaching back eight years to one of the more significant efforts to toughen sanctions on the communist island, Kerry volunteered: ``And I voted for the Helms-Burton legislation to be tough on companies that deal with him.''

It seemed the correct answer in a year in which Democratic strategists think they can make a play for at least a portion of the important Cuban-American vote -- as they did in 1996 when more than three in 10 backed President Clinton's reelection after he signed the sanctions measure written by Sen. Jesse Helms and Rep. Dan Burton.

There is only one problem: Kerry voted against it.

Asked Friday to explain the discrepancy, Kerry aides said the senator cast one of the 22 nays that day in 1996 because he disagreed with some of the final technical aspects. But, said spokesman David Wade, Kerry supported the legislation in its purer form -- and voted for it months earlier.

And then the coup-de-grace:

But there are also constant reminders that Kerry struggles with the complexities of Cuba. Asked in the Herald interview last year about sending Elián back to Cuba, Kerry was blunt: ``I didn't agree with that.''

But when he was asked to elaborate, Kerry acknowledged that he agreed the boy should have been with his father.

So what didn't he agree with?

''I didn't like the way they did it. I thought the process was butchered,'' he said.

I would write more on this but only expletives come to mind.

A hearty laugh for Googlers at the expense of tiny-brained Kerry apologists.

The Manchurian Candidate

Filleted nicely in "Fahrenheit 1971". And well done too...

Next Up: The Gates of Hell

The gates of hell are opening. Here's a stunning entry shamelessly stolen from today's "Best of the Web".

Believe it or not, the Dems would still win the election if they pulled a Toricelli and replaced Kerry with Lieberman. That is if they themselves had the good judgment to vote for him themselves -- which they wouldn't of course...

----- Begin Shameless_Steal -----

Viet Commies Still Cite Kerry Testimony

One of the chief complaints of the Vietnam veterans who are opposing John Kerry is that he slandered them as war criminals in his famous 1971 Senate testimony. Kerry's supporters try to portray his claims then as a youthful indiscretion. Yet Kerry has never renounced them, and they still turn up in Vietnamese communist propaganda. In an article for the English-language Viet Nam News dated June 11, 2004, one Diem Quynh cites Kerry to bolster his argument that the communists treated American prisoners of war well:

Candidate in this year's American presidential elections, John Kerry, who fought in the war, went further in his criticism. In a statement to the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in 1971, he said the war crimes committed by US soldiers in Southeast Asia "were not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command."

But despite these abuses, the Vietnamese did not reciprocate in kind; instead, they treated captured US troops humanely.

John McCain might disagree. So might Jim Warner, a former POW who tells the conservative weekly Human Events that he "first learned about Lt. John Kerry in a North Vietnamese prison camp":

When his captors brought him out of solitary confinement in the infamous Skid Row punishment camp for an interrogation, they made him read the typewritten transcript of a statement by Kerry, speaking in the United States. His interrogator kept pointing at Kerry's words, saying, 'See? This officer from your Navy says you deserve to be punished.' "

"All I could think of was that this must be a really contemptible human being," said Warner, although We can't expect the rest of the country to share our disgust at Kerry for turning on us. A lot of people are too young to remember that." . . .

Tom Collins, another Vietnam POW whose plane was shot down in 1965, was made to listen to Kerry's testimony on tape during his captivity. He explained that the North Vietnamese were constantly trying to elicit confessions of war crimes from Americans, promising them better treatment.

"He knew he was putting us at risk," Warner says of Kerry. "And he was demanding unilateral withdrawal, which means our value as bargaining chips would be gone. And what do you think would have happened to us then?"

----- End Shameless Steal -----

Kerry also estimated that there would be oh, maybe 3000 or so Vietnamese that would need to be evacuated to save their lives when the Communists won. That would certainly explain the millions of "boat people" and Pol Pot's genocide. Did I mentioned that a recent poll says that 90% of Vietnamese-Americans will be voting for Bush in this election? But what do they know?

And LA LA Times Also Forgot To Mention

That when John O'Neill was caught on tape with Nixon, he also said that he came from a long line of Democrats and voted for Hubert Humphrey. But a surprisingly level assessment from the hit squad.

Cambodian Case Closed Conclusively

While the libs sit around popping their champagne corks that Kerry only made a "little" Clintonian lie about Christmas in Cambodia and the evil neocons have once again been thwarted -- what are they going to do, impeach Kerry prospectively? -- they're missing the monster reef that's about to break their Cambodian Swift boat in two and send it to the bottom along with Monsier Kerry.

Remember my piece on the John Podhoretz article? Let me expand the argument so it can't be missed by even the most fragile minds.

Option #1: Kerry really did spend Christmas in Cambodia. Or even spent a picosecond there -- who knows, maybe hagiographer Brinkley will yet have a miraculous rehabilitation from his hidden foxhole and bring forth witnesses -- sometime before he high-tailed it back to the States a few months later to become the VVAW front man. In sum, secret briefcase compartment or no, Kerry is the proud owner of a magic hat that is real and that he forgot to throw over the fence.

As Podhoretz points out, the credibility of Kerry's Cambodian claim can't be taken seriously since he didn't use it at a time when it would have broken the incursion story wide open and first to market by a long shot. The positive impact to Kerry and the VVAW would have been absolutely huge and he would have been an incompetent moron to not use it to enhance his position. It's just impossible to emphasize enough the enormity of the Cambodia incursion story to the anti-war crowd in that timeframe.

And there you have it: If Kerry really was in Cambodia then we are being asked to forgive his being an incompetent moron leader for the VVAW and elect him President. Now there's a truly brilliant idea.

(Now the truly discerning among you may suggest that this makes him a Pentagon mole in the VVAW since he blunted them from achieving the full damage they could have -- so at least we conservatives should vote for him on that basis. Uh, never mind...)

Option #2: Kerry wasn't in Cambodia. Not ever during his entire tour. He made it all up after seeing Apocalypse Now and used it to falsely attack Reagan's policies on Nicaragua.

Suboption A: Kerry is a calculating liar who makes up whatever seems expedient to achieve his ends. He made up his visit to Cambodia and he knows full well it's a lie. His 1986 Senate pontifications on Nicaragua were created from the whole cloth to attack Reagan.

Outcome for suboption A: We know he lies on a scale much greater than Clinton -- it isn't just about sex after all -- and we're going to elect him President anyway??? Fool me twice...

Suboption B: He carries around his CIA hat in a secret briefcase compartment in the briefcase that he carries around all the time but somehow never gets photographed by the fawning press.

An argument can be made that he's a harmless Walter Mitty and why is that a handicap in a President? Have you been paying attention? He's carrying around his good luck CIA hat in a secret compartment and showing it to reporters! Oh, and didn't he recently mention that mine that blew up under his boat that didn't much injure himself or his crew but launched his dog "VC" clear over onto the next Swift Boat that didn't operate close enough for its crew to be able to render any judgment whatsoever on his performance?

And there you have the final alternative: He's nuttier than a pecan plantation and should be immediately recalled by his Massachusetts constituents -- not elected POTUS!

Case Closed. Ship sunk in all eventualities.

And stay tuned, we haven't even gotten into the absurdity of loving his "band of brothers" on only his boat alone while calling all the other soldiers baby killers.

UPDATE UPDATED MORE: Need better evidence for the Option #1 branch?

Kerry had about a year before the invasion of Cambodia really happened -- and that included his first run for Congress in Massachusetts -- to expose the secret invasion of Cambodia based on first hand knowledge. AND HE DIDN'T. PERIOD.

Here's Kerry's relevant testimony snippet from his 1971 bile to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. No smugness about being in Cambodia yet, eh?:

Suddenly we are faced with a very sickening situation in this country, because there is no moral indignation and, if there is, it comes from people who are almost exhausted by their past indignations, and I know that many of them are sitting in front of me. The country seems to have lain down and shrugged off something as serious as Laos, just as we calmly shrugged off the loss of 700,000 lives in Pakistan, the so-called greatest disaster of all times.

But we are here as veterans to say we think we are in the midst of the greatest disaster of all times now because they are still dying over there, and not just Americans, Vietnamese, and we are rationalizing leaving that country so that those people can go on killing each other for years to come.

Americans seem to have accepted the idea that the war is winding down, at least for Americans, and they have also allowed the bodies which were once used by a president for statistics to prove that we were winning that war, to be used as evidence against a man who followed orders and who interpreted those orders no differently than hundreds of other men in Vietnam.

We veterans can only look with amazement on the fact that this country has been unable to see there is absolutely no difference between ground troops and a helicopter crew, and yet people have accepted a differentiation fed them by the administration.

No ground troops are in Laos, so it is all right to kill Laotians by remote control. But believe me the helicopter crews fill the same body bags and they wreak the same kind of damage on the Vietnamese and Laotian countryside as anybody else, and the president is talking about allowing that to go on for many years to come. One can only ask if we will really be satisfied only when the troops march into Hanoi.

So let me get this straight. Following the logic of Option #1, Kerry really was in Cambodia dropping off special forces or CIA agents or whatever. Clearly people on the ground as opposed to his comments about Laos. And for years he has a golden opportunity to drop a huge bombshell of eyewitness evidence of troops in Cambodia that would reverbrate around the world and he didn't take it??? This would be incompetence in forwarding his cause on a truly mind-boggling scale. Someone this incompetent could not possibly be trusted with the Presidency -- never mind that he's on the other side!

AND ANOTHER UPDATE: Here's Kerry talking about how he tried to squeal to the press in Saigon about what a disaster the Swift Boat missions were and bemoaning that the press wouldn't bite:

Mr. Kerry: On that I could definitely comment. I think the press has been extremely negligent in reporting. At one point and at the same time they have not been able to report because the Government of this country has not allowed them to. I went to Saigon to try to report. We were running missions in the Mekong Delta. We were running raids through these rivers on an operation call Sealord and we thought it was absurd.

We didn't have helicopter cover often. We seldom had jet aircraft cover. We were out of artillery range. We would go in with two quarter-inch aluminum hull boats and get shot at and never secure territory or anything except to quote Admiral Zumwalt to show the American flag and prove to the Vietcong they don't own the rivers. We found they did own them with 60 percent casualties and we thought this was absurd.

I went to Saigon and told this to a member of the news bureau there and I said, "Look, you have got to tell the American people this story." The response was, "Well, I can't write that kind of thing. I can't criticize that much because if I do I would lose my accreditation, and we have to be very careful about just how much we say and when."

So let me get this straight: He was a participant on secret missions to Cambodia and he was squealing to the press just that the Swift boats were "absurd" and that was his big bait? Not that he was participating in Cambodian incursions before they became public a year later? None of the press would have bitten on this?? The only conclusion that can be drawn from this is that he would have been stunningly incompetent. Or, as Podhoretz notes, it's proof he was never there -- not to mention there is still no eyewitness corroboration...

I repeat: My verdict on Option #1 remains uncontested.

More Karma

Vietnamese-Americans have some strong opinions for some good reasons.

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...