... she was sitting at home watching the tube, and saw herself voting.

We're building a military and police organization bigger than the entire British army.

It was a bit more... (Did I forget to mention this *sshat STILL has a habit of using the n-word? But it's all OK since he's the dhimmi-crats elder stateman.)

al-inois trifecta eviscerated again. (HT Glenn)

Religion of Koran desecration, religion of peace (and torture). [Just in case you missed it.]

THE REAL THING, IRAQ EDITION.

MSMemory Hole Update

When was the last time you read anything from the MSM resembling this?:

June 19, 2005: In western Iraq, for the third time in the last six weeks, a battalion of U.S. Marines swept the area to find terrorists and their weapons. The marines have found over fifty weapons cashes so far this month, and killed or captured several hundred terrorists, both foreign and Iraqi. Two American battalions are currently sweeping the area between Baghdad and the Syrian border. Hundreds of foreign terrorists cross the border each month, and provide an increasing proportion of the manpower attacking government and coalition troops.

The terrorists have resorted to brutal treatment of local Iraqis (largely Sunni Arabs, many of them pro-Saddam or pro-al Qaeda) in order to maintain some control along the border. Local tribal and religious leaders have asked the government to clear out the terrorists, but recruiting local police has been difficult. Without enough local police to keep the terrorists out, when American troops leave, the terrorists just come back.

Bringing in outside police units has been slowed because there are not enough reliable (trained and well led) police to go around. But this time around, emphasis is placed on trapping the terrorists, not just running them out of villages, towns or remote rural compounds. The degree to which these terrorists are hard core can be seen by the fact that few of them have been captured. They don’t surrender, and fight to the death. In one battle yesterday, at Karabilah, an isolated village near the Syrian border, about a hundred terrorists fought to the death when surrounded by marines and Iraqi troops. Four local Iraqis, held captive and tortured, were found and rescued by the marines. Photos and vids of other Iraqis, being tortured and murdered, were also found, along with car bombs and roadside bombs. A car bomb workshop was found as well.

At least half of the terrorists encountered in western Iraq are foreigners. The Iraqi terrorists have been on the run as areas they set up housekeeping in are detected and raided. While the terrorists can scare Iraqis into not resisting with weapons, they cannot prevent them from tipping off police about where the bomb factories and weapons caches are. The terrorists torture and murder locals suspected of being informants, or who are kin to informants. The current American operations are meant to crush the terrorist groups that are too large for the locals to handle. Smaller groups of terrorists would be outnumbered by police, or groups of armed locals.

In Mosul, American troops captured Muhammad Khalaf Shakar, an al Qaeda leader and close associate of Abu Musab al Zarqawi. Shakar was betrayed by an informer, and increasingly common problem terrorists are facing. The informants, and few captured terrorists, indicate that most of the car bombs and roadside bombs are coming out these western Iraqi locations.

Operation Lightning, which began on May 22nd, continues in and around Baghdad. The 40,000 Iraqi police and troops have rounded up over a thousand terrorists suspects, and brought peace to many neighborhoods. It only takes a dozen or so armed men to terrorize a neighborhood, and make it hospitable for anti-government forces. When the local bad guys are rounded up, or chased into the western desert, the police can patrol the neighborhood, and establish relationships with the locals. This makes it more difficult for the terrorists to come back, as the police will immediately find out, and go after the terrorists before they can establish any control.

The government is broadcasting the pictures and videos captured from the terrorists, showing how Iraqis are tortured or killed (often by beheading) for resisting. The fact that many of the terrorists are foreigners, especially Saudis, makes many Iraqis angry. These self-righteous foreigners preach how they are in Iraq to “liberate” Iraq from foreigners. Yet the terrorists are never seen doing any good works, like the Americans, only killing and torturing Iraqis. This is turning Iraq into the most anti-al Qaeda country in the Middle East. That, in turn, is resonating in other Moslem countries, where Islamic terrorism is becoming less popular, as more of it is directed against Iraqis.

I thought not.

Where was Dick Durbin when we needed him?

On The Excreble A.I.

CASE CLOSED. I'm no longer interested in hearing anything these venal people have to say. PERIOD.

The rest of the story...

'Kos the the fascifists have no brains.

But the true measure of the horror did not dawn on me until me and my fellow passengers were left taxiing on the O'Hare tarmack for over twenty minutes in the Auschwitzian Airbus A320 cattlecar, in temperatures approaching 85 degrees, not knowing our fates or whether we would make it to our fundraising dinners.

Much too stupid to be a United States Senator.

We have faces splodey-dopes before -- and of a much higher relative mettle.

Stop It And Wake The Hell Up!

Samuelson gets the unfolding Eurabian disaster. (HT Glenn)

Just what WILL it take to nab teflon Kofi anyway???

Rummy Shamelessly Stolen

from Radio Blogger (mp3):

Don Rumsfeld explaining the progress in Iraq.

In just over four minutes, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld spontaneously orated a column which puts the American media to shame. If you ever wanted to know how Iraq is doing, in proper perspective, read and listen to this from earlier this morning:

On the political portion of it, that's obviously not the business of this department, but I can comment on it. The general feeling is as follows: That the election was held January 30th. It took a number of weeks to put a government together. Not a number of years, but a group of people, with no experience in democracy at all, took a number of weeks...a few months, to put together a government. A lot of tugging and hauling, a lot of negotiating about what it would mean in the assembly, a lot of negotiating about what it might mean with respect to the constitution drafting, a lot of negotiating about what it might mean as to who's in what ministry, and for what reasons, and the presidential council, I believe they call it. And they came to a conclusion. When the conclusion was made and announced, one could look at worst case and say it wouldn't be unreasonable to say the Shi'ia would say, okay, Sunnis, you didn't play in the election. You gave it to us for twenty-thirty years, and we didn't like it, and now it's our turn, and we're going to give it to you. Quite the contrary. The Shi'ia, at the top leadership down, have been saying, look. We want to have one country. Let's reach out to the Sunnis. Let's include them. Let's find a way, even though they made a mistake and didn't participate in the election. Let's see that they're involved in this. Let's get them involved in the drafting of the constitution. It's exactly the right instinct. The Sunnis, instead of saying, okay, we didn't get in the election. Maybe it was a mistake, maybe it wasn't. But now, we're not well represented, and we're not going to play, and go separately, and try to break the country into three pieces. The Sunnis didn't do that. I mean, everyone you talk to said we made a mistake. The Sunnis made a mistake. They should have gotten involved in the election. They didn't get involved in the election. They now know they should have gotten involved in the election, and thank the good Lord the Shi'ia are reaching out to them, and the Kurds are reaching out to them, and trying to include them. Now, what does it mean next? Well, they're going to have a lot of to'ing and fro'ing on the constitution. Fortunately, they made a lot of those decisions in the transitional administrative law, the so-called TAL. And it's there as a guidepost. It's not a mandate. It's not a speed limit or direction, but it is generally agreed to. And so it'll serve, I would think, as at least a touchstone for the very complicated task of trying to find a piece of paper that people, who have had historic hostilities to each other, that have been held together, not through love or respect, but through vicious dictatorship repressing them. That's how they've held together as a country. And now they're going to look for a piece of paper that will do that for them instead. Instead of a vicious dictatorship. Instead of repression. Instead of a police state. Instead of mass graves, filled with people...bodies, tens of thousands of bodies. There's going to be a piece of paper that those people are going to have to put their faith in. That is an enormous thing. And they're going to be debating that, and tugging on it, and to'ing and fro'ing, and they're going to, in my view, come up with one...just a minute...just a minute...And then they're going to take that to the Iraqi people and have them vote on it. And another 26 million people will have a chance, or population, or whoever's eligible to vote, men and women alike. Some large number is going to have a chance to go vote on that. And then, it'll be there, and then they'll vote on whatever that constitution says, for a president, or a prime minister, whatever, representatives, they'll have a chance to vote on that in December. This is amazing. This is historic. This is a gigantic step forward. This ought not to be dismissed or trivialized. This is a big deal. Will it happen? I think it'll happen. Can I guarantee anything in life? No. I can't. No one can. It's their country.

Amen.

Eurabian stupidity in a hypocritically deranged nutshell...

The Eurabian Thought Police

Are beautifully vivisected by Wretchard:

Perhaps the real reason ideological propositions are set up as "obvious" and "irreversible" facts is that they are actually so intellectually fragile they must be exempted from questioning. That's why the very act of discussing these unsupported articles of faith is declared a form of "intolerance" or "hate speech" so as to make the whole ideological edifice self-supporting. But as the recent rejections of the European Charter in France and the Netherlands proved, bankrupt ideas however armored with Newspeak are bankrupt all the same with one additional property. Newspeak coated projects are prone to a suddenly catastrophic -- and to the press -- and inexplicable collapse.

A work of art...

Introduction To A Singular Apocalypse

"The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking...the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker." --Einstein

QotD

"Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character." --Einstein

... it now remains to be seen whether the remainder of its society can provide the rest.

MSMisogyny Chic Update

Remember this?



Well guess where this MSM vision of paradise was taken?



At least there's some more good news...



(PBT Roger)

The World Is Not Perfect

And we need to prioritize.

What can you make of men who are scared of women and dogs?

Christina Aguilera, torture mistress!

Beldar welcomes you to the Supreme Thought Police...

Wake up W and help them!

Plunging the MSM.

I Didn't Need Another Hug.

THE REAL THING.

Urine Saudi Arabia

I can imagine in late 2001 asking a question of myself in 2005:

What’s the main story? The smallpox quarantine? Fallout from the Iranian – Israeli exchange contaminating Indian crops? A series of bombings in heartland malls?

"Well, no – the big story today has to do with soldiers mishandling terrorists' holy texts at a detention center."

Mishandling? How? Like, you mean, they opened it up without first checking to see if it was ticking, and it blew up –

"No, they handled it in a way that disrespected it. Infidels are supposed to use gloves."

Oh. So we lost, then.

Don't get me wrong. I want us to do the right thing. I don't think there should be a policy that permits interrogators to treat the Qur'an like it was, oh, a Bible discovered in the Saudi airport customs line.

Did I mention that James is from my home town? Cool.

(HT Glenn)

Rule 18 and lots more down the latest MSMemory hole. (HT Glenn)

Spanish Flypaper Redux Apocalypse Interlude

Warren is back with the intersection of Iraq and Spain:

As the author of the much-mocked "flypaper theory" -- the phrase I used to describe the implicit strategy behind the U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan -- I am more and more persuaded it has worked. All ground indications are that large numbers of Islamist terrorists who would otherwise remain dangerously under cover, not only across the region but in Europe and elsewhere, are irresistibly drawn towards these theatres of action, where they sooner or later get themselves killed.

As terrorists, they were, almost invariably, in a position to be more effective where they were. They are lured away for emotional reasons, or "spiritual" if that word can be applied to something that is essentially not Godly but demonic. It is the Islamist analogy to the way young socialists, anarchists, and adventurers from across Europe were drawn to Spain during its Civil War in the 1930s.

Not to mention a way too optimistic review of the Apocalypse:

In summary: the Bush administration has done, in the main, the right things to extinguish Islamism. This leaves us with other, and potentially worse problems elsewhere, on which it has done nothing at all, nor yet appears to have anything resembling a plan.

Yes, I said way too optimistic.

More details "soon".

Well, every good leftist knows that the Germans are an excellent source of foreign law to help shape the U.S. Constitution. Here's why they're mental midgets.

Downs with the MSM

Michael points out that the MSM persists in calling folks who do this "insurgents" when in fact they are nothing more than bigots with car bombs.

And no, that's not a typo in my title.

The MSM would never tell you this about the bloody beasts they effectively support with their "if it bleeds it leads" story line corruption. (HT WoC)

The MSM is trying with all their heart to throw open the doors of the sanctuary.

UPDATE: And, oh yes, the MSM really would have you believe they care oh so much about minorities. Right.

Depends On What The Meaning Of Soon Is...

Glenn summarizes this weekend's required reading at the Belmont Club. I would comment more tonight but as you probably noticed, I ran out of words in the last post. RTWT and go back and review the Three Conjectures and their postscript while your at it.

More words on the Tinfoil Apocalypse coming soon... (Well, soon is getting closer anyway...)

Babe Theory Update: But Still Without Driving

Red State is quoted thusly by WILLisms:

:...the "babe theory" is actually a clever way of expressing a profound point. The edifice of Middle Eastern autocracy and its particularly virulent outgrowth--terrorism--rests upon the repression of women. Liberate female energies from political cage of tyranny and the religious prison of Islamic doctrine and the authority of the bearded mullahs and "pious" terrorists and sexually repressed holy men will crumble like the desiccated dust of the mummies they are.
We are releasing a genie into the Middle East--and the world--whose power is incalcuable.

Kinda gets down to the nub of things, doesn't it?

I really, really want to see how our so-called women's rights activists -- who say not a peep about the stunning repression of women in the Muslim world -- would react if when Condi visits the Saudi nut-jobs she asks to drive a car and turns the brouhaha into a spotlight on their misogyny!

Any bets that Condi would somehow be the object of their venomous attacks?

Thought so.

Did I forget to mention that driving by women leads to evil?

I have now officially run out of words...

You Wonder Why Foul-Mouthed Howie

... is so foul-mouthed? So he can distract his minion loons from having to consider points like this:

Forgive me for making a blunt and obvious point, but events in Western Europe are slowly discrediting large swaths of American liberalism.

Most of the policy ideas advocated by American liberals have already been enacted in Europe: generous welfare measures, ample labor protections, highly progressive tax rates, single-payer health care systems, zoning restrictions to limit big retailers, and cradle-to-grave middle-class subsidies supporting everything from child care to pension security. And yet far from thriving, continental Europe has endured a lost decade of relative decline.

Western Europeans seem to be suffering a crisis of confidence. Election results, whether in North Rhine-Westphalia or across France and the Netherlands, reveal electorates who have lost faith in their leaders, who are anxious about declining quality of life, who feel extraordinarily vulnerable to foreign competition - from the Chinese, the Americans, the Turks, even the Polish plumbers.

Mais Oui?

No new ideas from the Dims? The French are their heros after all...

Another fake message about the latest MSM fake story? Or a real message about a fake story? (HT WoC again)

You say Husayni, I say Husseini. Unfortunately the whole thing won't get called off until the death toll looks a lot more like that created by his patron: Hitler. (HT WoC)

Remembering Luther

My uncle Luther was a WWII vet who participated in the North African and Italian campaigns. Here's to you Luther! (I'll post a picture soon -- the technology fails me right now.)

And I just learned that my cousin's son Joe has joined the 82nd Airborne!

Our family salutes you both!

UPDATE: Here's that picture of Luther I promised...

......

A Warren Interlude

Warren is giving an extra grace period to the government that doesn't deserve it, eh?

But he rewards us for our patience with this from Davila's "Annotations on an Implicit Text":

-- Democratic parliaments are not places where debate occurs but where popular absolutism registers its edicts.

-- Love of the people is an aristocratic calling. The democrat only loves the people at election time.

-- The individual shrinks in proportion as the state grows.

-- The one who renounces seems weak to the one incapable of renunciation.

-- Violence is not necessary to destroy a civilization. Each civilization dies from indifference towards the unique values which created it.

-- To have opinions is the best way to escape the obligation of thinking.

-- Nothing multiplies the number of fools so much as the example of celebrities.

-- The importance of an event is inversely proportional to the space which the newspapers devote to it.

-- An individual declares himself a member of some group with the goal of demanding in its name what he is ashamed to claim in his own name.

-- The anger of imbeciles is less frightening than their benevolence.

-- "To be useful to society" is the ambition, or excuse, of a prostitute.

Works for me...

Whoops!

You won't read this on the MSM:

May 27, 2005: What do Arabs really think about the problems that afflict them, and how is this related to the issues Islamic terrorists are fighting and dying (and killing) for? A recent "Opinion Survey of the Arab Street 2005" by Al Arabiya news network provides some interesting answers. The survey sought to see what Arabs thought about the relative lack of economic progress in the Arab world. In answer to the question, “What is stalling development in the Arab world?,” 81 percent chose "Governments are unwilling to implement change and reform.". Eight percent cited "The ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict," while seven percent selected "Civil society is failing to convince governments", and 4 percent chose "Terrorism".

Another question, "What is the fastest way to achieve development in the Arab world?", had 67 percent choosing "Ensuring the rule of law through justice and law enforcement", 23 percent chose "Enhancing freedom of speech", and 10 percent chose "Resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict".

Islamic terrorists represent a small minority of Arab thinking, and interests. But most Arab media and governments, for obvious reasons, avoid the “bad government” issues and instead concentrate on the Arab-Israeli conflict as the cause of all that is bad in the Arab world. While few Arab governments support all Islamic terrorists, many support some (like the Palestinian terrorists, or Hizbollah in Lebanon). An Arab government will support terrorists as long as there is no terrorist attacks against themselves, and the terrorists are working against the government’s enemies. Syria has played this game enthusiastically, perhaps too much so, for decades. By getting behind terrorism and hostility towards Israel, Arab dictatorships believe this will distract their people from problems closer to home. But this ploy is working less well of late. The invasion of Iraq in 2003, the forcible removal of an Arab dictator and enthusiastic participation in democratic elections has terrified Arab despots throughout the Middle East. The Islamic terrorists are generally hostile to Arab dictators, but have made deals with the devil in order to survive. Increasingly, Arab people are fed up with the tyrants and terrorists, and are willing to do something about it.

Well was I right or what?

In Iran

"stoning someone to death is not against the law. Using the wrong stone is."



This is what our "liberals" have come defend. If you don't believe me, take a look at the commenters savagery against Danielle Crittenden's post about how risible the claims are that "women's rights" in the Muslim world are comparable to the West.

Oh, and about those stones:



Moral equivalence my *ss.

Smartland vs Heartland

LGF points out a stunning article by Orson Scott Card that ends thusly:

How long did it take for the people to be utterly disenchanted by government-by-fanatics, who see every opponent as evil and make every political decision an article of faith? Afghanistan longed to be free of the Taliban; the people of Iran hunger for freedom now. And when the Puritans were toppled in England, the people rejoiced.

Just so the fanatics who now rule the Democratic Party, serving the cause of Smartland at the expense of the Heartland, will find that if they ever really get control of government, they will quickly be the most hated rulers our country ever had.

Already large numbers of Americans seethe over the puritanical laws imposed on us by anti-democratic judges, who cannot wait for compromise and the political process to "purify" us. Already we are outraged by the propaganda they foist on our children in the schools, without reference to the values of the community or the roots of the American culture.

The Taliban of Smartland will be just as repugnant to the people of America as the Islamist Taliban was to most of the people of Afghanistan.

So as we watch the Democratic Party flush away democratic processes in order to get correct outcomes, it's worth remembering that we're not so different from "those wacky Muslims."

People who are so sure they're right that they are willing to eliminate democratic processes in order to get and keep power are the enemies of freedom for everyone. We may be slow to recognize the danger, but one thing is certain: Once the Puritans have power, everyone else will finally see the cost of their utopia.

And as the Iranians and North Koreans have learned, it's very very hard to get rid of a dictatorship with a puritan ideology. Sometimes you're lucky and a big country comes along and liberates you. But sometimes there's no country big enough to do it, and you just have to hunker down and pretend to think correct thoughts and live some kind of life below the radar.

You know, the way believing Christians do right now at American universities.

[Emphasis mine.]

WOW.

Needless to say, this one gets the RTWT rating -- AND gets added to the Classics links over right.

Kudos to OSC.

Cuckoo In The Dear Darkness

Did I mention that the (literal) King of surreal butchery wanted you to vote for John Kerry. Not that you would've been nuttier than a pecan plantation if you did. Absolutely not.

Lights out.



All the time.

In case you were wondering who the title of third member of the Axis had passed to...

In Support Of Fallaci Against FGM

Let me join Oriana by repeating number 15:

15) infibulation is “the mutilation that the Muslims force on little girls to prevent them, once they are grown . . . from enjoying the sexual act. It is a female castration that the Muslims practice in twenty-eight countries of Islamic Africa and because of which two million persons die each year from sepsis or loss of blood . . .”

I guess I can't travel to Eurabia now without being thrown in their soon to be burgeoning gulags -- along with W and Rummy of course...

Unfortunately, Oriana is probably too ill to travel to Eurabia now -- how she'd love to go gesture at them in person if she could!

Today's Fascifism Update

Michael has it nailed today by first drawing on Hitch:

For whatever it's worth, I know and admire both John Barry and Michael Isikoff, and I can quite imagine that—based on what they had already learned about the gruesome and illegal goings-on at Guantanamo, Bagram, and Abu Ghraib—they found it more than plausible that the toilet incident, or something like it, had actually occurred. A second allegation, that a whole pile of Qurans had been stepped upon at Guantanamo, is equally credible. But mere objectivity requires us to note that this is partly because every prisoner is given a Quran, and that thus there are a lot of them lying around, and that none of this "scandal" would ever have occurred if the prison authorities were not at least attempting to respect Islamic codes.

And then lowering the boom:

For one thing, if Guantanamo were the new gulag, Irene Khan would be languishing in it herself right about now – and so would her family.

And then there's this little bit of perspective for the close:

Anyway, the gulag of our times is in North Korea.

To which a commenter correctly takes him to task:

The Gulag IS North Korea, not in North Korea. Its the world's largest prison.

That would look like this:



Of course, the Fascifists would argue that I'm all wrong. That NK is merely the vanguard of what implementing the Kyoto treaty would look like. And we are evil bastards for not following their enlightened lead. And the NorKorComs must be right since they were helping to campaign for John Kerry.

What more evidence could possibly be needed that they're right?

Right over on the other side that is.

And doing their best to generate funds for the enemy propaganda machine of course:

I'm sure that the real agenda here is that Amnesty donors really open their wallets for work like this. It's all about what message sparks your donors.

Did I mention that the enemy is just getting warmed up?

Bush, Other Top Officials Should Face Torture Probes, Says Amnesty; Urges Arrests if Warranted
Abid Aslam
OneWorld US
Thu., May. 26, 2005

WASHINGTON, D.C., May 26 (OneWorld) - Rights watchdog Amnesty International urged foreign governments Wednesday to investigate and prosecute President George W. Bush much as they once did former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.

''If the United States permits the architects of torture policy to get off scot-free, then other nations should step into the breach,'' William Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International USA, said in a statement launching Amnesty's annual report.

Bush is among a dozen former or current U.S. officials who should be probed by foreign governments because Washington has failed to conduct ''a genuinely independent and comprehensive investigation'' of torture allegations against U.S. troops, commanders, and their civilian overseers, Schulz said.

Others on the Amnesty list of potential targets for investigation and prosecution include Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) chief George Tenet.

''If the U.S. government continues to shirk its responsibility, Amnesty International calls on foreign governments to uphold their obligations under international law by investigating all senior U.S. officials involved in the torture scandal,'' Schulz said.

''If those investigations support prosecution, the governments should arrest any official who enters their territory and begin legal proceedings against them,'' he added. ''The apparent high-level architects of torture should think twice before planning their next vacation to places like Acapulco or the French Riviera because they may find themselves under arrest as Augusto Pinochet famously did in London in 1998.''

Remember the race between sanity and technology?

If A.I.'s leadership were given the red button, do you think they'd push it?

I do too.

"Because the left is exactly like the Muslims!"

Zimbabwefication, Eh?

"I give him until Saturday." You go David, you go!

A.I. ... should simply be renamed F.I. -- Fascifism International.

CAN. I. MAKE. A. CALL?

... A WHAT?

Eurabian Sharia Watch

"Tom Wolfe once said that Fascism is forever descending on the United States, but that somehow it always lands on Europe. Perhaps the same is true with theocracy?"

I think the countdown clock just burped forward measurably.

Sometimes Slate is worth reading beyond Hitch. But corellated by Michael of course. (HT Glenn)

"This we'll defend."

Yon be there. MSM not.

On Gorgeous George Galloway's lilly white Saddam. Oh bother.

WHOOPS!

Nazi Israeli Watch: "Were we going to deny a victim of terror an ITU bed because that bed already had a terrorist in it?"

It's Not That Newsweek...

Has never written anything I agreed with. (Or Howeiaaarrggghhh! for that matter but I foreshadow too much.) For instance, there's this:

Trippi was planning on retiring to his farm in Maryland after the New Hampshire primary. Still, he wanted to take one last shot, to "bet it all" on Iowa and New Hampshire, knowing that in a protracted fight Dean's candor would kill him. "It's probably a f---ing miracle we're even sitting where we're at," he said, utterly despondent. He fell silent for a while. "The guy," Trippi said suddenly, referring to Dean, "is not ready for prime time. I mean, he's just f---ing not ready for prime time, and he never will be." There were 11 days left before the Iowa caucuses.

Well, actually Joe Trippi said it but Newsweek somehow managed not to edit out a rational assessment of the man who can't quite figure out who his enemies really are...

... unlike the edit job Newsweek's doing on their retraction!

How many different ways can you say Cuckoo?

But James points out that with a little editing it turns out that maybe it's Trippi that's wrong and ol' Howie isn't so crazy after all:

Russert: Republicans will say that the Democrats are speaking a different tune now than they did when they were in control. Robert Byrd, when he was a majority leader in '79, said, "Now, we are at the beginning of Congress. This Congress is not obliged to be bound by the dead hand of the past." And the filibuster used to need 67 votes. They changed it to 60.

Dean: Mm-hmm. . . .

Dean: When the Republicans were in power, they kept a much larger percentage of President Clinton's nominees to the bench. They didn't do it with the filibuster, they did it by bottling them up in committee and not allowing them to move forward.

Russert: The numbers are pretty similar actually.

Dean: OK. They're similar. . . .

Russert: Well, you said there were weapons of mass destruction.

Dean: Some of the things that the president said on our way into Iraq, they just weren't true, and I don't think that's right. So--

Russert: Such as?

Dean: Such as the weapons of mass destruction, which we have all known about, but the--

Russert: Well, you said there were weapons of mass destruction.

Dean: I said I wasn't sure, but I said I thought there probably were. . . .

Russert: When did the president ever suggest that Saddam Hussein was responsible for September 11?

Dean: He didn't. . . .

Russert: Let me stay on your rhetoric. January, I mentioned that [you said] "I hate the Republicans, what they stand for, good and evil, we are the good." In March, you said, "Republicans are brain dead." You mentioned you're a physician--and this is April. "[Dean] did draw howls of laughter by mimicking a drug-snorting Rush Limbaugh. 'I'm not very dignified,' Dean said."

Dean: Well, that's true. A lot of people have accused me of not being dignified.

Yup. Not dignified. And can't tell the difference between Saddam and Obama or Osama or whatever.

But otherwise he seems reasonable to me.

I Remember Beslan

And so does Wretchard.



Do you?

On sleeping with worms. Eh?

Bush Country.

Canada: The coldest banana republic on earth.

"Leftists can remember that they're right about things; some of them just have a hard time remembering why." Actually, it's gotten to be pretty much all of them...

Let's go the other way...

It Could Be True!

Hitch has today's apocalypse update: Time to stop inventing mysteries where none exist... (HT Glenn)

Canuck corruption continues...

I'll take a pass on that Pepsi please...

All You Need To Know About Newsweek ...

Is covered in this post about why Blackfive blogs:

The one part that I left out of this post is that Major Schram's convoy was followed by a car with a Newsweek reporter in it. Once the action began, the reporter and his driver turned and got the hell out of there. If it wasn't for Mat's charge up into the ambushers, they never would have made it out of there alive.

Newsweek never ran a story about my good friend, Mat.

It took a few weeks for me to decide what to do.

I had been reading Stephen Den Beste, Bill Whittle, Frank J.'s IMAO, and Misha for awhile at that point.

I started Blackfive and decided to write about Mat and other Americans like him - people that Newsweek would never tell you about.

It's Mat Schram's blog as much as it is mine.

So, today, on the anniversary of the sacrifice of my friend, please take a moment to pray for the families who have lost their loved ones in our fight against terror. Mat would have liked that.

How the hell can you explain that except to merely note that they're on the other side? (HT Michelle)

“Ya, you betcha!” came the chant of her enraged coreligionist.

I Think We're Past That Point, Actually

"At some point, if I were running the administration, I would re-think whether it makes any sense to continue being polite and cooperative toward reporters."

My Take On Powerline's Take On Hugh's Take On Bennet's Take On ... The Apocalypse

This is just beautiful:

Several readers have pointed out James Bennet's article in today's New York Times on "The Mystery of the Insurgency." We'll turn the floor over to Dafydd ab Hugh for an extended analysis of why Bennet's myopic approach, which is typical of most mainstream commentary on the "insurgency," is so wrong-headed:

Probably harder to figure out than Freud's plaintive cry. At least, the New York Times is completely befuddled in "the Mystery of the Insurgency."

The insurgents in Iraq are showing little interest in winning hearts and minds among the majority of Iraqis, in building international legitimacy, or in articulating a governing program or even a unified ideology or cause beyond expelling the Americans. They have put forward no single charismatic leader, developed no alternative government or political wing, displayed no intention of amassing territory to govern now.

Rather than employing the classic rebel tactic of provoking the foreign forces to use clumsy and excessive force and kill civilians, they are cutting out the middleman and killing civilians indiscriminately themselves, in addition to more predictable targets like officials of the new government. Bombings have escalated in the last two weeks, and on Thursday a bomb went off in heavy traffic in Baghdad, killing 21 people.

This surge in the killing of civilians reflects how mysterious the long-term strategy remains - and how the rebels' seeming indifference to the past patterns of insurgency is not necessarily good news for anyone.

The Times should have given me a call; I know exactly what the "insurgents" want... and the Times's befuddlement is to a large extent because of how they frame the question -- the mystery of the insurgency.

The Times assumes that the killers in Iraq are, in fact, "insurgents." But insurgents have a political plan; no matter how brutal they may be, they see their violence as leading to a political change -- the government will be cast out to be replaced by a new government, typically themselves. Thus, they tend to create shadow directorates that mimic the functions of a government; they have spokespeople who explain their political goals; they try to seize territory to prove they can run it better than the current regime, solving for the people there whatever burning issue is driving the insurgency (land distribution, famine, whatever).

But this is to assume what the Times purportedly wants to discover. If you begin by assuming the killers are "insurgents," then you have limited your conclusions to some Vietnam-style political revolution. Put another way, if you start by assuming that they are insurgents -- then you must wind up concluding that they are insurgents.

But if you look with a more open mind, the closest-fit historical model is not that of the followers of Uncle Ho in Vietnam from the 50s through the mid-70s, or the Algerian insurgency against the French in the 1950s, or the attempts at independence by the Kosovars against the Serbs in the late 90s.

Rather, the best historical precedents are the Aztecs, who turned mere human sacrifice into an art form by killing more and more and more people until they literally may have slaughtered an end to their own empire. Their intent was not to achieve some political goal; they already ruled. Rather, they developed the theological notion that the more people they butchered, the more pleased their bloody gods would be.

With that gloss, the Iraq "insurgency" comes suddenly into crystal-clear focus, like the beginning of the TV show the Outer Limits: the killers in Iraq have no political goal. That is not the point.

The point is to kill. They have invented a whole new kind of murder... they are serial spree killers.

The distinction between a serial killer and a spree killer is that the first kills methodically over time, trying to evade capture so he can continue his murderous pastime; while the second has one violent incident in which he kills a bunch of people, then often kills himself or expects to be slain by the police. What we see today in Iraq is a combination of the two: terror bosses who methodically, over time, set up mass killing events, usually carried out by others who will die in the attempt, but sometimes remotely by themselves (sending a chained driver cruising the streets, then detonating the driver's car when he nears a target of opportunity).

But like serial and spree killers, like those who commit human sacrifice, the motivation is found not in the external world but in his own internal hell, in the voice that only he can hear, from his bloody, eldritch gods, who demand blood and souls, blood and souls in the name of Moloch, or Arioch, or Cthulhu, or Huitzilopochtli, who demand mass sacrifices in the Grand Pyramid (or the Great Mosque -- and it is significant that one of the favorite targets for the killers are mosques full of worshippers, as if they saw their red-dripping thunderclap as an explosive "amen" to the service).

This has significance in strategy. If this were a political insurgency, we would expect it to respond to changes in the political weather, even disbanding when it becomes clear that they have failed to win the hearts and minds of the people. But if the point is a holocaust of human sacrifice -- if instead of winning the people's hearts, they want to cut them out and display them to the cheering crowd, not particularly caring who the victims may be -- then they are like the Terminators of the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie: they cannot be bargained with, or reasoned with; they will show no pity or remorse; and they absolutely will not stop until all in Iraq are dead... or until they are destroyed themselves, every last one of them.

Widen your mind. Let's not try to shoehorn every "mysterious" event into the gloss of twentieth-century liberal ideas about political revolution and leftist insurgency. In Iraq, we are not fighting Ho Chi Minh; we are fighting modern-day Aztec priests who want to kill their victims for no reason other than to cut their hearts out and offer their bleeding, still beating hearts to Huitzilopochtli... so let us set our strategy accordingly.

I think we have, actually.

Serial spree killers? Just a new term for out and out nihilism of course.

So what's my take? Zarqawi and the Islamists are all nuttier than Cuckoo Clocks of course. This is what they see ...



or attempt to create ...



every day. And in the few hours they get to sleep now between the Abrams rumbles and F-18 screetches on their tails, this is what they dream of doing to their "enemies"...



Just like their mentor Hitler. (See the tenth paragraph through the end of the "THEORY VERSUS HISTORY" section.)

And the libs and Eurabians see no problem placing a "red button" in front of these people...



I'm sorry, but this is the ultimate case of projection. The libs accuse right-wing Christians of having wet dreams about Revelations.

But they are doing everything in their power to enable the real nuts of Revelations with the technologies to make it happen. In short, they think it makes perfect sense to put a "red button" in front of complete wackos. (What else if not projection?)

This is not to say that the West is without fault in this hellish mess. In a "nutshell", our thirst for oil caused us to recklessly violate the Prime Directive:

As the right of each sentient species to live in accordance with its normal cultural evolution is considered sacred, no Star Fleet personnel may interfere with the healthy development of alien life and culture. Such interference includes the introduction of superior knowledge, strength, or technology to a world whose society is incapable of handling such advantages wisely. Star Fleet personnel may not violate this Prime Directive, even to save their lives and/or their ship unless they are acting to right an earlier violation or an accidental contamination of said culture. This directive takes precedence over any and all other considerations, and carries with it the highest moral obligation.

We are now in a race to right our earlier violations in the only way open to us. We must try to "kickstart" them into the 21st Century while trying to reimpose some level of quarantine on the worst recalcitrants that -- we pray only temporarily -- remain.

Is this risky? Of course. But wild screetches about the beauty of the alternatives are just that. How I wish it weren't so.

It's a race between sanity and technology. And as is well evidenced above, sanity is in a fight for its life.

I would argue with ease that the hell on earth touched on in this post -- and the hellish future that can be easily extrapolated from it -- make Revelations look like child's play.

No?

But at least there are some budding signs that the kickstart may work ...



We can only pray we are not too late...

"If the Qur'an don't fit, you must acquit!"

A Berg In The MSMemory Hole

In many ways:

Some things are unforgivable. What Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his many accomplices did to my brother Nick is unforgivable. It was not an act of war; it was a cold-blooded, premeditated heinous crime. To call it anything else suggests that it is an acceptable act of war, an acceptable response to America’s military action. It is not.

The world would be a better place if al-Zarqawi was no longer in it. He is pure evil. I don’t think someone like him is capable of any human feeling anymore. The only way to keep people like him from harming thousands of other people is to eliminate them.

Before this happened, I did not comprehend the magnitude of his evil and of people like him. But to experience the heinousness of what he did to someone as good and as innocent as my brother has totally changed my perspective. I don’t know how to respond in a humane way to such inhumane acts. I don’t think a humane response is necessary.

What the media did to my family is also unforgivable. They made the worst week of my life infinitely worse. Decision-makers in the media need to make more humane decisions about what is a story and how they get it. Someone should have thought of a shocked, astounded and grieving family when they made those decisions. They spoke of their sympathy for us, but not once did they think the sympathetic thing to do would be to stop harassing us and allow us to grieve in peace.

Sara Berg
Virginia Beach, Va.

I'll probably come up with more to blog about today but that kind of puts things in perspective for a while doesn't it?

On The MSMemory Hole Math Of Terror

Let's see. Alan Colmes tonight was apoplectic about how the new Iraqi government was going to toast because of the terrible upsurge in violence: "400 [Iraqi] lives claimed since the new government was formed about two weeks ago, and we keep hearing about increasing insurgency."

Well sure enough, one is too many.

But let's just stoop to do the math shall we?

The libs aren't going to like the rational analysis though so let me provide a starting point. Or two.

And even the wildly lib Amnesty International points out that Saddam had "the world’s worst record for numbers of persons who have disappeared or remain unaccounted for."

And another estimate from AI:

Amnesty International, an organization known for its seriousness and attention to fact, states that, "since the 1980s, hundreds of thousands of people have ''disappeared'' in Iraq, and their fate and whereabouts remain unknown."

So let's just throw out the more complete estimates ranging from 1 - 7 million dead including wars featuring the documented use of WMD -- even on the Kurds. (Oh -- I forgot -- he got better. So it was perfectly fine to give him the benefit of the doubt about not having WMD.)

So let's throttle back and go with the grave site excavations of the disappeared.

OOPS. Sorry for that inconvenient link suggesting 182,000 Kurd disappeared in 1988 alone. D*mn that Google. Sorry.

So against all evidence I will make the wildly conservative estimate Saddam only disappeared 10,000 people a year for 30 or so years.

Now let's do some math. If Alan Colmes "sky is falling" current death rate holds for the whole year in Iraq there will be 400 people / 2 weeks x 52 weeks killed in Iraq.

For all you mathematically illiterate, I can only feel with my head libs that would be 10,400 people.

So at this disastrous rate of carnage it would approximately be no different -- or more likely quite a bit lower -- than Saddam's "disappeared" rate alone. In other words it would take 30 years of this to get into Saddam's league!

And if you include the various Saddam-initiated wars and add it up into the millions like anyone who would actually qualify as a rational human being then in a mere 3-700 years W's "disastrous folly" will catch up to Saddam's 30 year reign.

Actually, I'm quite surprised that the MSM rags are only reporting 3-7% per year circulation declines for their fine work publicizing such obvious conclusions.

I love the integrity and rationality of the MSM.

Can't you tell?

UPDATE: Ah, yes. Good old neo-Bob forgot to mention that I was high on that 3-700 years by a year or maybe two. My deepest apologies. (And the mathematically literate among you know how to characterize this update -- and it wouldn't be in the serious column ;)

Uhm, I think we are able to identify the real fraud after reading this Fisk. And they would be Congress-critters of you-know-what denomination. (HT Michelle.)

QotD

"People may forget what you said. People may forget what you did. But people will never forget how they felt when they were with you."

UPDATE: Yes, believe it or not, that's a quote from Maya Angelou. But you really need to consider this book instead.

Don't be a whiner, Dave...

Glenn has an update on the Church of the Left. Of which, Stanley's latest update is here.

Today's Quote -- And An Update From Bernard Lewis

"Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence." -- Einstein

The West vs. the Islamists in a nutshell. Though he was probably referring to Hitler of course.

And now the leftists that haven't yet will be consigning Bernard Lewis to the memory hole as he has broken the code of silence about the relationship between Haj Mohammad Amin Al-Husseini, Rashid Ali al-Gailani, and Hitler.

After you've RTWT you need to go brush up on the "Previous Jaw Dropper" over right...

Bernard Lewis? The fascifists will be calling him a fascist in no time, eh?

UPDATE: I forgot to mention Bernard is now in the Classics over right...

UPDATE: Egregious typo rule invoked!

Projection Reprise

Part 2,735,643,463,797. To the 374^th.

And that would be Blogger (sadly still), not MS Word...

That's a third world country to our north, eh?

UPDATE: And we will need the Queen to save them? Brother!

"I just hope that there is enough of the "Old Europe" left to justify our saving it.

Again."

Signs It Won't Quite Work Out ...

The way these people Cuckoo Clocks expect:



Chalk up another one for the there is justice in the world files...

The NYeT Staffing Pipeline

"Long winded writing and dodgy facts." Yes, just what we need is more Jayson Blairs to go along with 17th.

Oh brother...

Perfectly Puerile Projection

Projection is back big time.

Gelernter strikes hard on the Dhimmi-crats and their Infantile American Principle:

Now some readers will say, hold on, be fair! Democrats only oppose vouchers because the teachers unions ordered them to. Agreed, teachers unions are a big factor in every major decision a good Democrat makes, starting with what cereal to have for breakfast. But Democrats also oppose vouchers out of honest conviction. They are honestly convinced that ordinary Americans don't have the brains to choose a school for their own kids.

The way I normally think of them is as puerile fascifists. But that's just because I tend toward thinking the best of folks rather than taking the avalanche of evidence at face value that they're on the other side.

Control complexes result in puerile projection. My IQ -- not to mention EQ -- is Oh so much lower than theirs.

NOT.

And go read the hat tip from Armed Liberal while you're in the neighborhood...

"In truth, in a free society, income is earned through pleasing and serving one’s fellow man. I mow your lawn, repair your roof or teach your kid economics. In turn you give me dollars. We can think of dollars as certificates of performance."

Hitch Is Back

With an overdue obit for the "Arab street":

Other Muslim streets are even more problematic for those who lazily assume that the jihadists are the voice of the unheard. The populations of Bosnia and Kosovo—populations that actually did have to confront anti-Muslim violence on a large scale—are generally hostile to Bin-Ladenism. Nobody has ever used the term "Iranian street," at least in print or on broadcast news, if only because everyone knows that Iranian opinion, as registered during the mock elections or voiced to visiting hacks, is strongly against the reigning theocracy.

This doesn't entitle those of us in the regime-change camp to claim the "street" either. It simply means that those who once annexed the term have been forced to drop it, and for a good reason. The struggle for public opinion in the region is a continuing one and cannot be determined in advance, least of all by pseudo-populists who grant the violent Islamists their first premise.

The same will hold true, one hopes, for the cheap propagandists who have lately been flourishing the term "Islamophobia." This word, or slogan, has been gaining ground among soft defenders of Islamism in Europe. It is used to put a stop to discussion about the political aims of Islamists in non-Islamic societies, and it has most recently generated great nervousness in Britain—sufficient nervousness to decide the Blair government to introduce legislation to make criticism of Islam into a prohibited hate crime.

Here again, the most persuasive evidence is the evidence that looks us in the face. In Iraq, Muslim militants place bombs in the mosques of those Muslims they regard as heretics. In Afghanistan and Pakistan, too, the Salafi and Wahhabi extremists commit murder against Muslims they deem unclean or unorthodox. And in the West, there are non-Muslims who excuse such atrocities as "resistance." These are often the same as those who hailed what they thought of as the "street." I don't think they should be indicted for hate crimes, but they should be made to understand that what they say is hateful and criminal, as well as sectarian. The battle for clarity of language is a part of this larger contest, and it is time for the opponents of terror and bigotry to become very much less apologetic and defensive on this score.

And so they would if not for being so risibly puerile...

Canuck corruption continues cheekily...

This Is What *NOT* NYeT

Reads like:

May 2, 2005: There are increasing signs that a rift has developed in the Baath Party leadership. It appears that two camps are emerging. The more moderate group – who might be termed “Accomodationists” – seems to have decided that continuing armed resistance to the Interim Government and its American and Coalition supports is likely to get nowhere, and merely alienate Iraq’s Sunni Arabs, who are the backbone of Baath support. In recent weeks representatives of the Accomodationists reportedly have been in contact with the Iraqi government, US officials, moderate Sunni leaders, and UN personnel. The Iraqi Transitional Government has UN support. The Accomodationists are seeking to discuss terms under which an amnesty might be offered and formal legitimacy accorded the Baath as one of the country’s political parties. Presumably some complex negotiations will result from this. How the more radical Baath Party supporters – call them the “Rejectionists” – will react to this is not clear. Even before Saddam, factions in the Baath movement were wont to settle their differences with bloodshed, so a Baath purge or even civil war is not out of the question.

The Syrian pullout from Lebanon may have some interesting effects on the Iraqi violence. The Syrians have indicated that they will be using the troops released by the pull-out to bolster the security of their frontier with Iraq. This will impede the movement of personnel and materiel from Syria into Iraq in support of the anti-government forces, while, not incidentally, improving Syria’s image with the US and other Western Powers.

Perhaps of equal importance, however, is that the withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon, leaves Iraqi-sympathizing groups in Lebanon – such as Hezbollah and other Islamist and pro-Palestinian militias – without the moderating influence that the Syrian presence provided. The Syrians more or less protected these groups from any threats by the Lebanese government to bring them to heel, provided some security against Israeli intervention, and kept the sometimes mutually-hostile groups from attacking each other. With the Syrians gone, these groups, which have been supplying men, money, and equipment to the Iraqi terrorists, are likely to reduce their level of support for the Iraqi terrorism in order to strengthen themselves in Lebanon.

In April, the level of car bomb were the highest in about six months. While it's not always easy to determine what the objectives of car bombs attacks are, it seems that only about a quarter of the attacks actually have been successful, in the sense that they hit the planned target. About a third more were partial successes, in that they did some damage to the intended target but detonated prematurely. About another third seem to have been intercepted by security forces or detonated so prematurely that they caused no damage to their intended targets. Naturally, even the premature detonations have killed or injured people. Most of the casualties have been Iraqi civilians, although most of the attacks seem to have actually been aimed at Iraqi, American, or Coalition forces. On the other hand, the assassination rate in April was about average for the past six months, running about 10-15 a week (though the rate for January was very high due to the terrorists attempt to disrupt the elections). Although a mid-level member of the interim government was killed this past week, most of the victims have been relatively low level political, police, and military officials.

The "De-Baathification" Process is a big issue. Accomodationist Baath leaders have been quietly negotiating with Iraqi Interim Government authorities about integration into the political process. The question of "de-Baathification" seems to be a stumbling block. The Baathists would like a halt to further investigations and persecutions. Many Shias and Kurds in the government, and even a few American politicians, seem to want a total purge of all Baath influence, which would mean the complete exclusion of anyone with Baath connections from any role in a new Iraqi government. While parallel's with the "de-Nazification" of Germany have been drawn, most of those drawing the parallels have missed the point. In fact, the Allied de-Nazification of Germany did not actually go very deep. The focus of de-Nazification was primarily on decapitating the Nazi movement. Of the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of Nazi Party members, only about 6,000 were actually ever charged by Allied officials during the occupation of Germany. And only about 600 were actually sent to jail (this excludes people charged with specific war crimes). Most former Nazi Party members were quickly reintegrated into civil and political life. Even among those sent to jail, almost all were out within a decade.

One major difference between Iraq and Nazi Germany is that in Iraq, Baath diehards continue to fight to regain power. There was no such Nazi terror campaign after World War II. Also, the German Nazis came from every region and religion in the country, while nearly all of the Iraqi Baath and al Qaeda terrorists are Sunni Arabs, which are less than twenty percent of the population. Recently, the Iraqi terrorists have made another major effort to break the morale, and effectiveness, of the government, and particularly the police. In the last four days, terrorist attacks have killed some 120 people, mostly civilians. In the last two months, over 400 Iraqi security troops (police, army, security guards) have been killed, out of a force of over 150,000. An equal number of Coalition troops only lost 87 dead in the same period. This has become a war of Iraqi versus Iraqi. More precisely, it's Sunni Arab terrorists killing Iraqi civilians (including Sunni Arabs.) The Shia and Kurd hard liners are calling for harsh policies against the Sunni population that harbors and supports the terrorists. The government is using this very real threat to get Sunni leaders to negotiate a peace deal. This includes the tribal and religious leaders providing information on where the terrorists are. The terrorists have threatened to kill any Sunni Arabs who do this, and have carried out attacks on Sunni leaders to prove their threat. But more and more Sunni Arabs are ratting out the terrorists, and in the last two months, dozens of raids, often carried out by Iraqi police, have shut down bomb factories and terrorist safe houses. But many of the terrorists are determined to fight to the death. In this respect, they are more like the Japanese soldiers of World War II, not the Nazi German troops. Alas, the Japanese troops, at least most of them, obeyed their emperor's command to surrender in August, 1945. There is no emperor of the Islamic terrorists, and many of the terrorists will fight to the death, the others will become disillusioned and go home. The Iraqi Sunni Arabs have declared Iraq to be the battlefield for a war between Islamic radicals and the rest of the world. The Sunni Arabs have to decide whose side they are on, before the rest of Iraq declares war on them.

Surely you've become a regular Strategy Page reader by now?

And surely you've cancelled your subscription by now to any retarded [That would be pretty much all of them -ed. Can't argue with that.] MSM rags you still retain...

Warren takes on arrant nonsense.

And errant nonsense too. (See the last post.)

Did I Mention That W Is Actually A Septenthian?

Mary Madigan rocks with this post:

Unfortunately, also last week our President exploded another myth. He just killed the belief that America has been fighting a war against terrorism by publicly begging the financier and the source of most Islamist terrorism for a favor.

Appeasing the Saudi government and helping the Royals in any way they can has been a long-standing policy of our Government. It’s doubtful that the Democrats could criticize Bush for his actions when Clinton accepted millions in Saudi donation towards the building of his library, or when Jimmy Carter accepts many millions in Saudi donations for ‘peace’ in Africa.

But like many Democrats, the Bush administration still seems to be living in a 9/10 universe. According to this article, Pump Dreams, published in the New Yorker and in the Energy Bulletin, Dick Cheney stated that the war in Iraq was necessary to protect America’s friends in the region:

.. in August, 2002, seven months before the war started, Cheney warned that Saddam would be able to seize control of the world’s economic lifeline if he acquired weapons of mass destruction: “Armed with an arsenal of these weapons of terror, and seated atop ten per cent of the world’s oil reserves, Saddam Hussein could then be expected to seek domination of the entire Middle East, take control of a great portion of the world’s energy supplies, directly threaten America’s friends throughout the region, and subject the United States or any other nation to nuclear blackmail.”

America's friends as in Saudi Arabia. Saudi oil wealth pays Osama bin Laden’s salary, and the salaries of most Islamist terror organizations around the world. They are responsible for 9/11. As our president held Abdullah’s hand, Abdullah’s employee and friend, chief justice of Saudi Arabia's Supreme Judicial Council Sheik Saleh Al Luhaidan encouraged young Saudis to go to Iraq to kill American soldiers.

"This statement shows the real face of the Saudi government," says Saudi dissident Ali Al-Ahmed of the Saudi Institute, based in Washington.

Al-Ahmed says that while Saudi officials — including Sheik Luhaidan — publicly oppose jihad in Iraq, privately some send a different message.

"He is telling Saudis it's OK to go to Iraq and kill Americans and Iraqis and they won’t be punished for doing that," says Al-Ahmed.

Young Saudis don’t need Al Luhaidan to tell them to kill Americans. They were happy to do that on 9/11, and they’ve been killing, maiming American soldiers and destroying the Iraqi oil fields since the ‘end’ of the Iraq war. As we can see from oil prices, terrorism has been very profitable for the KSA.

These are our friends?

Of course, in WWII FDR had to make common cause with Stalin to defeat Hitler. I sincerely hope that's what W is doing. What's going on with Musharraf in Pakistan comes to mind along that vein.

Or W may still be a Septenthian.

And some of us actually understand that another key player in this battle is either nuttier than a Cuckoo clock or a step from Lucifer himself.

Or BOTH.

Ummmm -- Yes, Mr. Khamenei

That would be correct:

Tehran, 27 April (AKI) - The Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei has said that “human rights, are a weapon in the hands of our enemies to fight Islam.”

Speaking at the Conference for the Unity of Islam which opened in Tehran yesterday, Khamenei said: “The awakening of Muslims, had weakened the plot by America, by international Zionism and by other hidden forces on the planet implicated in a universal strategy which has the objective of fighting Islamic nations, which are a force of one and a half billion believers and with the large natural reserves.”

To a mixed audience of Iranians, Arabs and other foreigners at the conference, Ayatollah Khamenei said that it was “only through the unity of all Muslims, can they confront these diabolical attempts.”

Khamenei also explained how Iran is viewed globally in the role that it plays within the context of Islam. As the supreme leader of the Islamic republic, he said, that the “country has contributed to the awakening of Muslims and our enemies are trying to compensate for their poverty of thought, and so they have raised the banner of terrorism and are armed with human rights in order to defeat Islam and Muslims.”

Yes. That would be all that "poverty of thought" contained in the Magna Carta, the Reformation, the Enlightenment and the U.S. Declaration of Independence and Constitution and modern science. You know, all that stuff that the Islamists are too busy chopping off heads to read up on.

Anyone who can't understand the Iranian Islamists as the brutal paranoid thugs that they are from comments like this -- not to mention their actions -- is quite simply insensate.

Or worse...

BINGO.

First go read "The Last Jaw Dropper" over right. Then read these few paragraphs. Then ponder them together...