"On any given day a coyote is a pesky but minor threat to the other inhabitants of his world. An opportunist by nature, he picks off the scraps and is quick to skulk away from any vigilant creature. Coyote packs can wreak havoc for the unguarded but once alerted even the pack is no match. But even those who manage to admire the wily scavenger will recognize that once it goes rabid, it must be put down. No living creature is safe while a rabid predator roams.

No. Our people who have truly stared into the face of this terrorist demon have seen the ruby glow in its eyes. This is not a myth. This is not a politically contrived caricature, this demon is real. It usually stalks the easy prey — children, women in crowds, families focused on prayer, rescue workers responding to people in need. Some terrorists manage to get our soldiers."

"In a move experts said was expected for months, New York Times executive editor Bill Keller today announced the formation of a shadow government for the US, effective immediately."

SWIFTgate Prelude: Goldstein And Kibitzing

For all dozen or so of the "don't realize they're Scoop Jackson / JFK Dems" that went to the bathroom when their party has left them for the other side, this comment on Protein Wisdom cuts to the heart of why they may be confused about what's going on:

"A common mistake among people is that they think bad guys are smart.

They aren’t for the most part. they don’t think very far ahead, they don’t know much outside of their narrow worlds, and they don’t have a helluva lot of interest in fixing that sort of knowledge gap.

“The terrorists know we’re monitoring banks.”

Well, no, they don’t. They might know, in general, that we do that sort of thing, but there’s a big tendency among assholes like that to assume that their particular choice of action is completely invulnerable to any sort of obvious counter-action.

The Times and the others are like someone standing behind a chess player and kibitzing.

“Oh, you’re going after his rook, then, so you can take out his queen. What are you getting mad for, it’s obvious to everyone.”"

It is true that our enemies have an enormous reservoir of stupidity to draw from. No question about that at all. I really don't think you can be a brutal thug without an Achilles heel of stupidity. But we all know that Richard Reid -- blockhead thug though he was -- just about downed a plane shortly after 9/11, don't we? Accidents like this could possibly even happen if we were not so weakened by lunatic political correctness as we are. But we are. And you probably don't see that either. Time to start paying attention. Please. I'm asking nicely. No kibitzing.

And RTWT. You absolutely need to read the Katherine Graham quote. If that doesn't appeal to your sense of perspective then you're likely not part of the dozen...

Looks like CQ's answer to the NYeT going to be an exercise in table turning on WMD:

"One key point (besides the memo) that undermines the argument for a civil hydrogen production facility is the ease in which the Iraqis could already produce and store hydrogen. Oil refining creates hydrogen in fairly large quantities as a normal byproduct. If the Iraqis wanted hydrogen for weather balloons, they could have simply pumped it into tanks and used normal trucks to transport it where needed. Now we have another argument against the hydrogen production explanation.

A CQ reader with a doctorate in physical chemistry from the University of Minnesota and with over sixteen years of experience in weapons and materiel laboratory work in the military has written a paper on why the hydrogen lab explanation cannot possibly explain the existence and the engineering of these mobile laboratories. Preferring anonymity for professional reasons, "ChemicalConsultant" has allowed me access to a condensed version of an analysis that he has sent to Joby Warrick at the Washington Post, Reps. Curt Weldon and Jane Harman, and former CIA director John Deutsch, now at MIT -- none of whom have responded to ChemicalConsultant or addressed these concerns."

And somehow I forgot Glenn's roundup and pointing out of the banner headline. Silly me.

"Two billion war deaths would have occurred in the 20th century if modern societies suffered the same casualty rate as primitive peoples, according to anthropologist Lawrence H Keeley, who calculates that two-thirds of them were at war continuously, typically losing half of a percent of its population to war each year."

Spengler rocks on American Leftist shibboleths and the precipice they stand on:

"A quarter of the language groups in New Guinea, home to 1,200 of the world's 6,000 languages, were exterminated by warfare during every preceding century, according to one estimate Wade cites. In primitive warfare "casualty rates were enormous, not the least because they did not take prisoners. That policy was compatible with their usual strategic goal: to exterminate the opponent's society. Captured warriors were killed on the spot, except in the case of the Iroquois, who took captives home to torture them before death, and certain tribes in Colombia, who liked to fatten prisoners before eating them."

However badly civilized peoples may have behaved, the 100 million or so killed by communism and the 50 million or so killed by National Socialism seem modest compared with the 2 billion or so who would have died if the casualty rates of primitive peoples had applied to the West. The verdict is not yet in, to be sure. One is reminded of the exchange between Wednesday Addams (played by the young Christina Ricci in the 1993 film Addams Family Values) and a girl at summer camp, who asks, "Why are you dressed like someone died?" to which Wednesday replies, "Wait!"

Guiding the warlike inclinations of primitive peoples is genetic kinship, and the micro-cultures (such as dialect) that attend it. Christianity called out individuals from the nations, and gave them a new birth through baptism in a new people, whose earthly pilgrimage led to the Kingdom of God. Christians began with contempt for the flesh of their own origins; post-Christians envy the "authenticity" of the peoples who never were called out from the nations, for they have left the pilgrimage in mid-passage and do not know where they are or where they should go.

It is difficult to be a Christian, for the faith that points to the Kingdom of God conflicts with the Gentile flesh whence Christians come; but it is oppressive, indeed intolerable to be an ex-Christian, for it is all the harder to trace one's way back. Europeans have less difficulty, for the Italians never quite gave up their pagan gods whom the Church admitted as saints, and the Germans never quite gave up their heathen religion, which lived on as a substratum of myth and magic beneath the veneer of Christianity.

If the United States of America is the Christian nation par excellence - as I have argued on numerous occasions - then the predicament of an American ex-Christian is especially miserable. Americans do not have close at hand the Saints Days of Italian villages incorporating heathen practice predating Rome, or the Elf-ridden forest of the German north celebrated in Romantic poetry. They have suburban housing developments and strip malls, urban forests of steel and glass, Hollywood and Graceland, but nothing "authentic"."

Septenthians -- If We Were Only So Lucky

"John Harwood made the observation that news and editorial staffs were not always of the same mind, and that his own institution (the Wall Street Journal) was split over the issue. Most of the news department was in agreement with the New York Times, while the Wall Street Journal's editorial staff tended to think exposing the SWIFT program was rather irresponsible. Harwood used this as evidence that mainstream media isn't monolithic, but he missed the larger point that the WSJ's editorial attitude, probably stemming from a Socrates-like recognition that the epitome of wisdom is to know the devastating extent of your own ignorance, was simply incapable of staying the Times's destructive thrust.

Dana Priest's rather preposterous line of defense was that the Times "slant" on such questions emerges from its principled opposition to the President's Iraq policy "on a strategic level". I assume that what she meant is that they don't see the need for our intervention in the Middle East. But that's not so much a strategic opposition as a failure to perceive or comprehend strategy in the first place. If they had demonstrated any comprehension of Iraqi Freedom, rather than simply choosing to see it as a "mess" from their vantage behind the Green Zone boundary, she might have had a case. But the "strategy" they favor can be summed up with the simple term: "9-10". [ I prefer "Septenthian. But unfortunately, that's too kind a term for traitors -- witless or not. -ed. ]

There's also an institutional aspect to the problem that many commentators fixated on bias haven't mentioned. Our mainstream press establishment is so captivated with the compulsions of the "gotcha game", the winner of which tends to be awarded the Pullitzer, that they wouldn't recognize a strategy if it bit them "somewhere beyond the sun's jurisdiction". The whole expose' of the SWIFT intelligence operation was about "gotcha", rather than about some fundamental-and-deeply-contemplated disagreement over strategy. No one on the Times's editorial board or its news staff has the slightest inkling of how the SWIFT operation fit into any strategy, because they're essentially "strategy blind"."

Of course, Chris Muir is not to be outdone by Power Line...

File under "I'm shocked, just shocked!":

"Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had the phone numbers of senior Iraqi officials stored in his cell phone, according to an Iraqi legislator.

Waiel Abdul-Latif, a member of former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's party, said Monday that authorities found the numbers after al-Zarqawi, leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, was killed in a U.S. air strike on June 7.

Abdul-Latif did not give names of the officials. But he said they included ministry employees and members of parliament.

He called for an investigation, saying Iraqis "cannot have one hand with the government and another with the terrorists.""

"The concept of a well-educated, well-spoken infantry lieutenant who would rather fight for his country than be a Washington lawyer is apparently too much for some liberals to bear. Two quick observations about this phenomenon.

First, the long-diagnosed Bush Derangement Syndrome has metastasized in some patients into a generalized Derangement Syndrome. Second, the same people who deny the reality of Lt. Tom Cotton will swallow hook, line and sinker every statement attributed by the New York Times or Washington Post to an unknown, unnamed, anonymous leaker with God knows what qualifications or axe to grind, who--assuming he exists--is violating his oath and, in some instances, committing a crime by leaking. An interesting contrast."

The End Of Deterrence

File under: And you thought the conservative base was pissed with W about immigration? Just wait till this comes into their gunsights:

"I have to tell you I am gravely alarmed by the fact that no other analyst has yet made this point as emphatically as I am making it: The only acceptable American response to North Korea's threat is to tell the world once again that any missile launch on U.S. territory will mean an all-out nuclear attack.

We can't wait to find out if the missile carries a nuclear payload. We cannot afford to lose one American city. We cannot afford to see if North Korea's "test" is actually a nuclear electromagnetic pulse attack designed to cripple the country's electronic infrastructure. We can only rely on what has worked in the past – deterrence.

Overnight, and without any public debate, America's defense strategy has dramatically shifted. By not being clear with North Korea, by not stating unequivocally that a missile launch of any kind toward our country means total devastation for the enemy responsible, President Bush has left America vulnerable to all our enemies."

The only good news is that the loss of LALA Land may seem minor compared with the looming war with Iran ... or may be found to be integral with it. Let's see. All out war between Hamas, Hezbollah and Israel looms. Check. Iran about to tell the G8 to stuff it. Check. NorKorCom possible nuke launch. Check. And of course the Axis powers never coordinated anything either...

Did I mention yet how contemptible they are?

"Their own article points out how many in our own government, including the C.I.A. did not know all the details, that many of the facts that they printed no one, especially the terrorists, knew about. If everyone knew about it, why was it a front page scoop? If everything was public knowledge, their lame defense tactic, why was there any delay in publishing? Their own article damns the logic of their defense."

And go read what Kean said again while you're fuming.

You still haven't read Michael's interview with the KIU, have you?

"“The West is not an enemy," he said. "We think about Western Civilization as part of the whole human experience. We would like to help you reform it, but we do not want to destroy it. We are not violent. We support civil mechanisms for change.”

"What do you think about Sayyid Qutb and the Hideous Schizophrenia?" I said. [ My little ditty on Qtub here. -ed. ] Sayyid Qutb is considered the founder of modern Islamism and the intellect behind Al Qaeda theology. He believed - until he was executed by Gamal Abdel Nasser in the dungeons of Egypt - that the liberal post-Christian West threatens Islamic civilization because it promotes, among other things, the separation of religion and the state. Qutb believed this separation triggered an epidemic psychological breakdown in the West that he dubbed the Hideous Schizophrenia, and that this breakdown is spreading to the Middle East.

"Qutb was wrong," he said, parting ways with Osama bin Laden on the most elementary level. “Compare Islam and Christianity. In the Middle Ages, Christians were burning scientists. Then Muslims had a great civilization. The Christians were theocratic then. Muslims were not. We do not believe in a theocratic government that rules the people in the name of Allah. Power should come from the people. Christianity wasn’t weakened because it was separate from the state. Christianity was weakened when it supported oppressive states. The same thing is happening in Iran. [ Lewis talks about this! See p.109 of "What Went Wrong?"! -ed. ] Iranians are turning against the religion itself along with the theocratic oppressive state."

“Are you opposed to theocracy then?” I said. “If you win power in Kurdistan will you not govern according to Islamic law?”

“In Islam we have stable things and changeable things,” he said. “80 percent of Islam is changeable things.” Say what you will about Islamists. Ali Muhammad’s religious-political ideology is a long way from the iron rule of 7th Century Taliban.

“Should alcohol be legal or banned?” I said. When I asked this question of Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood spokesman Essem El-Erian he refused to give me a straight answer.

“In Islam it is prohibited to drink alcohol in public,” Ali Muhammad said. “Drinking at home is fine. If someone wants to buy alcohol and drink it in his house, we should not chase him. We prefer to treat alcohol the same way we treat cigarettes when we create non-smoking sections.”

“Should women be required to wear the hijab over their hair?” I said, referring to the modest Islamic headscarf worn by conservative women in public.

“We don’t force people to wear the hijab,” he said. “There are two types of Islamic rules: personal and general. Individual matters are advised, not required. Advisements by Islam should not be imposed. Islam prohibits only things that harm an entire society.”

Ali Muhammad believes this is the right balance, that Islam is therefore superior to Judaism and Christianity.

“The Koran includes both regulation and advice,” he said. “The Torah included only regulation. The New Testament included only advice.” [ Arguable of course but a credible take on the Law and the Gospels... -ed. ] "

My take is that "moderate Islamism" like this is only possible someplace like Kurdistan. They have striven for 51st statehood for so long that they have actually escaped the grip of the thugs. Amazing...

"BELFAST, Ireland, July 2 (UPI) -- An asteroid with the power to wipe out a small country will miss the Earth tomorrow, the Sunday Telegraph reported. [ Ho hum. Why would we want to invest more money in a space program anyway? What good could it possibly do us? Other than try to avert the fate of the dinosaurs anyway... -ed. ]

Asteroid 2004 XP14 is nearly half a mile wide and was discovered in December 2004. It is in the "Apollo" class of asteroids, which are those that cross orbits with Earth.

Initial speculation by scientists predicted the possibility of impact with Earth later this century, but that conclusion has been ruled out, the newspaper said.

When the asteroid passes Earth, it will be some 268,624 miles away, just slightly further away than the average distance of the Moon from Earth, the report said. A telescope will be required to view the asteroid, which will pass at 5:25 a.m. UK time."

Did I mention that the Islamofascists really do hate us because of the Conservatives? And clearly, Colorado church ladies are the worst of the worst. But where does that leave the head hackers thoughts on liberals?

I wish Beinart well. But he's toast:

"It's certainly possible that mainstream Democrats are more in line with Beinart's views than I give them credit for. But Drum's statement doesn't pass the straight-face test. As Beinart told David Horowitz, he's calling for liberals not to let their national security views be defined like groups like MoveOn and people like Michael Moore. In fact, Beinart's original article on the subject called for a purge of these left-wing elements from the Democratic party. And Beinart cites a Pew poll that in 2004 asked conservatives and liberals to indicate their top foreign policy priority. For conservatives, destroying al-Qaeda was number one. For liberals it was tenth. [ Now there's a huge surprise. ] (To be sure, Beinart contrives to blame President Bush for the Democrats' lack of urgency when it comes to destroying al-Qaeda). [ And as usual, all W's fault that they can't prioritize their way out of a brown paper bag. ] Thus, Drum's twin claims that no gap exists between Beinart and the Kos crowd, and that essentially all liberals are hawks, cannot be taken seriously except perhaps as evidence of how profoundly some liberals (but fortunately not Beinart and hopefully not Schraub) misconstrue what it means to be "hawkish.""

THEY ARE STOOLIES:

"A man or woman of genuine courage would stand up and be identified if what they were leaking were truly in the national interest, no matter what the consequences to them. They would be heroes. Not here. These people are snitches, maneuvering behind the scenes for their own personal or political advantage. Our media manipulate these folks who in turn manipulate our media. It is as far from heroic as one could imagine. These are the very people you wouldn't want with you in a foxhole. In fact, you wouldn't even want to turn your back on them at a cocktail party."

And then there were the devastating comments:

"As much as the press wants to tilt the spin towards the chilling effect, the campaign against the free press they can't hide from the fact that they exposed a working program, in specific detail, that was, according to them, harming no one and had worked to catch terrorists. Thats the reason for the outrage, not some brilliant Rovian PR campaign. Their own article points out how many in our own government, including the C.I.A. did not know all the details, that many of the facts that they printed no one, especially the terrorists, knew about. If everyone knew about it, why was it a front page scoop? If everything was public knowledge, their lame defense tactic, why was there any delay in publishing? Their own article damns the logic of their defense.There was general knowledge of the fact that there was financial tracking but the NYT, LAT gave specific details, specific institutions. If everyone knew why has there been rumblings from Canada and Belgium that since the publication by the NYT that they are considering dropping from the program? Why? Because the press exposed them and now they have to worry about becoming targets. The program worked, it caught terrorists and saved lives, and the press exposed the program and it can never work again. It can't save the lives that it no doubt did before the press wrecked it. And for what. The press itself admits that no harm had been done. They only offer vague worries and doubts. Human life has been traded for vague worries. The Press, someday, will have blood on their hands. I hope their Pulitzer's keep them warm during the funerals."

"Once again the UN draws false moral equivalences to allow the Palestinians to escape the consequences of their own decisions and actions, and they do so with very dishonest rhetorical tricks. Calling the offices of the party that commits terrorist acts on a regular basis "civilian buildings" allows the UN to draw an equivalency between targeting them and Hamas' threat to target schoolchildren and sick civilians in hospitals -- an equivalency that only exists in the minds of the morally warped or terminally obtuse. In this case, considering the UN's recent history, this envoy likely qualifies on both grounds."

"As the Nebraska Guitar Militia put it: Farmin' the Government beats actual, you know, farming: "Reap what you don't sow.""

"On April 27, 1961, President John Kennedy delivered a speech before the American Newspaper Publishers Association at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York. He addressed the issue of the press's role in preserving national security in the Cold War. President Kennedy lamented the fact that secret information about America's covert operations had routinely appeared in American newspapers, to be read by friend and foe alike. He noted that the Communists had openly boasted of gaining information from American newspapers that they would otherwise have had to use spies to attempt to steal. And he called on newspapers not to publish stories based on the single test, Is it news? but rather to add a second test: How does it affect national security?

The speech can be both read and listened to in its entirety here. The speech is around 19 minutes long. Click on the audio player below to hear the brief excerpts that are most relevant to the present controversy."

Here's the best evisceration of the NYeT yet:

"Not to worry, you tell us, terrorists already know we track their funding, and disclosure won't undercut the program. (Contradictory claims, but what the heck.) You at the Times know better. You know better than government officials who said disclosing the program's methods and means would jeopardize a successful enterprise. You know better than the 9/11 Commission chairmen who urged you not to run the story. Better than Republican and Democratic lawmakers who were briefed on the program. Better than the Supreme Court, which has held since 1976 that bank records are not constitutionally protected. Better than Congress, which established the administrative subpoenas used in this program.

Maybe you do. But whether you do or not, there's no accountability. If you're wrong and we fail to stop a terror plot and people die because of your story, who's going to know, much less hold you accountable? No, the government will be blamed -- oh, happy day, maybe Bush's White House! -- for not connecting dots or crippling terror networks. The Times might even run the kind of editorial it ran on Sept. 24, 2001. Remember? The one that said "much more is needed" to track terror loot, including "greater cooperation with foreign banking authorities"?

Keep up the good work -- for al-Qaida."

Bill Keller and his staff, rocket scientists with ADD. No wait -- I apologize to people with ADD for lumping them in with Bill Keller.

Here's what the NYeT printed today below a picture of the driveway in to Rumsfeld's house in Maryland:

"There is a lens in the birdhouse at the driveway of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's home at St. Michaels, Md."

Now I know why the NYeT "blew the whistle" on the SWIFT program. The government was getting too close to finding out about the payments they've been receiving from Al Qaeda. I don't call them the "EneMedia" for nothing.

"Given the nature of Prime Minister Olmert's coalition, and the pressure on Olmert from the EU and even the U.S. State Department to accommodate Palestinians, Hamas may well find that its interests are best served by maintaining its image as a force that won't knuckle under to Israeli pressure of the sort Olmert is able to bring to bear. And even if Israel's actions succeed in bringing about Shalit's release, the long term prospects for its redeployment policy are not bright."

"Finally, Beinart and the left misread, intentionally. I believe, the way the right looks at America. The right does not say we are perfect and because we are perfect we have the moral authority to lead. The right recognizes and attempts to improve upon our failures ( N.B. a higher percentage of Republicans than Democrats voted for Civil Rights in the Senate in the 1960's). What the right does say is that, while we may be imperfect we are better than any other system in history and have done more for more people than any other entity in history. We do not dictate to people, but we have the self confidence (something sorely lacking in the left) to believe in the righteousness of who we are and what we do. We are not paralyzed by our imperfections. We recognize them, strive to fix them and understand that in spite of our imperfections, we are comfortable in seeing and acting upon the difference between good and evil. We do not need world approval. The left needs consensus because it is unwilling to distinguish between good and evil. The left needs 'causes' because they can form great coalitions to address (not solve) these problems. Solving problems requires one to take a position. The right will take a position; the left will not. Causes are far more useful than solutions, and they last far longer! "

"The [Chinese] government will step up research on monitoring technology and issue "admittance standards" for blogs, the report said, without providing any details. "

"Al-Reuters blandly notes that there is as yet no comment from the American military about the arrests of the “Iranian fighters.” Why is that? It reminds me of the eloquent silence from the Intelligence Community about the discovery of hundreds of WMDs in Iraq, which is an ongoing process. In both cases there is a policy explanation for the silence: confirmation of such facts would demand that we change the context of our policy debate. There are indeed WMDs, and there are likely many others. The intelligence services of half the world were NOT wrong in their assessment of Saddam, and you cannot diss the American enterprise by chanting “Bush lied.” And, most importantly — to finish with a flourish from al-Reuters — we are involved in a regional war that cannot be won by playing defense in Iraq alone."

"Our major newspapers were also foot-draggers. The Washington Post ran five paragraphs of dismissive tone on page A-10. The New York Times skipped it for a day, then put it on A-20 with the headline "For Diehards, Search for Iraq's WMD Isn't Over." (The liberal diehards at the Times were saving Page One for their infamous scoop disclosing to the public, including terrorists, our government's financial tracking methods for terrorist groups.) The news magazines weren't interested in the WMD scoop, either. Time and U.S. News & World Report ran nothing, and Newsweek dismissed it with another headline about "trumped-up threats" in Iraq."

"The Banking Report: Let Me Make It Simple For You Morons"

"Mousa Mohammed Abu Marzook is second in command of the political Hamas leadership in Syrian exile. In an interview, he tells SPIEGEL ONLINE that the agreement with Fatah on the foundation of a Palestinian state does not mean that his organization will recognize Israel. Hamas, he say, will remain committed to violence against its occupier."

"Once again, we see that the UN has become corrupted by the anti-semitism and the dictatorships of its membership. This goes down the same corrupt path as the panel it replaced, avoiding consideration of real human-rights abusers such as Iran, Cuba, Myanmar, Saudi Arabia. Instead they attack Western democracies by attempting to paint them as evil oppressors when nothing could be further from the truth.

Let's look at Israel as an example, since they have made that their issue. Israel allows full suffrage for its citizens, even the Israeli Arabs. A handful sit in the Knesset, and they have their own political party. Most of the nations on the HRC don't even allow for multiparty democracy, let alone minority rights and freedom of expression. In terms of Israeli actions in the occupied West Bank, certainly some criticism is legitimate, but the overall context of the struggle they face there overwhelmingly shows them as sinned against much more than sinner. The HRC, in either incarnation, has never made an issue of Palestinian terrorism against explicitly civilian targets, making their approach to the conflict completely dishonest.

More than ever, it appears that real reform at the United Nations is impossible. The United States needs to cut funding for the kleptocrats at Turtle Bay and encourage as many of our allies to follow suit -- especially Japan, whose experience in the North Korea standoff might make them open to such a suggestion. When the money stops flowing into their accounts, the UN will get the message much more quickly than they have up to now. Defunding this mess also gives us the moral standing that refusing to enable corruption brings."

"No doubt we'll be able to read about this on page 1 of the NY TImes tomorrow."

Kurdistan? Kosovo? Totten Vacuums Out The Memory Hole

Click through to Michael's post and RTWT. The quote below should be plenty to make you realize why you must read it. It was turned down by an American newspaper as not being "groundbreaking enough". So of course it's absolutely mesmerizing. And hit the Paypal button and fund him. I just did. Again.

"“We will go to war with Christians against Muslims if the Muslims are on the wrong side," he said. That’s exactly what the Kurds did when they sided with the United States against Saddam Hussein, just as the U.S. sided with Bosnian and Kosovar Muslims against Slobo and his exterminationist regime in Belgrade. This casual comment by Iqbal, a self-identifying Islamist, was perhaps the most poignant refutation of the "clash of civilizations" idea I have yet heard.

Iqbal did turn out to be a bit of a bigot, but not in an anti-Western or anti-American way. “The Arab, he is wild,” he said. “He is not a civilized person.”

I tried to defend Arabs generally. He knew I lived in Beirut at the time, that I had experienced a different side of Arab culture than he had. He smiled patiently while I sat there picking the bones out of my fish and sounding like a self-conscious politically correct American naif. But I wasn't naive. I knew very well what Saddam Hussein and his Baath regime did to the Kurds. Iqbal Ali Muhammad was born in Halabja. He was six years old when the Anfal Campaign reached his home town, when Saddam Hussein doused him and his family with chemical weapons. He still has a hard time breathing when walking up stairs. And he would not let me convince him that most Arabs are more civilized than those who nearly killed him.

Just as I was beginning to think he and his father had no good reason to refer to themselves as Islamists, that the Kurds therefore really - truly! - are different, out came the sadly typical (for the region) paranoid comment: "I think America let Osama bin Laden go free on purpose."

Look, I said. He killed thousands of Americans. We don't let a guy like that get away. Just because we have not killed or captured him yet doesn't mean that's by design.

So many Middle Easterners think the United States is so all-powerful that we can do anything at any time, that nothing is beyond our capabilities, that everything wrong is therefore designed to be wrong on purpose.

I explained to him that the U.S. is a powerful country, but it's still just one country. Americans are flawed and limited humans just like the Kurds. He took me seriously, and he was willing to climb down from his crazy position much faster and more completely than I expected.

“It is good that we are having this conversation,” he said. “We can tell each other when we are wrong.”

If all the world’s Islamists were like these mellow Kurdish Islamists there would be no Terror War and there would be no talk of any clash of civilizations. It’s no accident, nor is it merely a convenience, that the Kurds of Iraq are American allies.

Not all Muslims are terrorists, obviously. Most people in the world know that much at least. It’s also apparently true that not all Islamists are terrorists or even extremists. These guys made me rethink my idea of what an Islamist even is. Call me foolish if you like. But Iqbal repeated the same refrain I heard over and over again in Iraqi Kurdistan, something I almost never hear in Arab countries: “Extremes are bad. The middle is better.”"

"Commenting on an article about an Internet chat room used by the wives of the Canadian terror subject, Cori Dauber @ RantingProfs writes: “I wish everyone who’s convinced that Islamist terrorism is a response to American policies would take a look at this, because some of the ugliest comments are reserved for Canada itself, “that filthy country,” as one of the young women would only call it, the country that gave her family a place to come when they were frustrated by the conservatism and discrimination against immigrants they found in Saudi Arabia, ironically.”"

REPRISE: The Local Root Cause

Speaking of walls, that makes it a good time to reprise one of my all-time classics:

As I was slowing for the stoplight, I noticed that the car in front of me had a “Defend Freedom, Defeat Bush” bumper sticker from MoveOn.org sloppily taped to the inside of the back window. Ah yes, it’s almost election time and the swing voters might remember leftists in a negative light this November if “Bush = Hitler” bumper stickers keep proliferating. Time to fake center.

After all, leftists have such appreciation for the mental acuity of the rest of us.

Speaking of mental acuity, I remembered my drive home from dinner the night before with the boys noticing the slightly scruffy van ahead plastered with an impressively large assortment of unusually smallish bumper stickers. I realized it would cause me to take out a skinny tree or three if I was going to try to read them all -- I love the boys dearly so I passed. But in largest type popped “FREE TIBET”. I agree with that one by the way.

Now -– guilty as confessed -- I couldn’t read them all but idled to speculate that I could also probably find an “ISRAELI NAZIS SHOULD TEAR DOWN THEIR ILLEGAL WALL” in there somewhere if I faltered into in an unsafe enough mood to really gander.

Why this errant thought? Because I recalled that the recent travesty of a ruling by the “international tribunal” at the Hague against the Israeli defensive wall was issued by the President of the court, a Mr. Shi Jiuyong. Did I mention yet that it’s the Chinese that have their iron boot on the throat of Tibet?

To be fair there’s at least, oh, a 10% chance that the van’s driver is a supporter of the Israeli wall – by the way one of the few ideas that all ends of the political spectrum in Israel are agreed on. Did I mention that Israel is an actual democracy?

By this point you’re thinking, “What’s happened to Gronlund? Why is he now after the Chinese instead of the French? And why all the local observations?” No worries, you’ll yet be rewarded.

It turns out that local Colorado events are far more important than you thought. In fact, a key “root cause” of “why they hate us” is actually local. Amazingly, it’s located just up the road in Greeley!

Wha-Huh?

That “wha-huh?” would be the six-month visit Egyptian Islamist writer Sayid Qtub – one of Osama’s and Hezbollah’s key spiritual godfathers – made a little over 50 years ago to what’s now UNC Greeley. He suffered the grievous injury during his visit of attending a church dance where upon the playing of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” he famously (well, to radical Islamists anyway) wrote “The room became a confusion of feet and legs: arms twisted around hips; lips met lips; chests pressed together.”

It was just too much for his tiny, misogyny-soaked brain -- he vowed to devote his life to Islamic fundamentalism. Interestingly, W had barely been born at the time.

Luckily, Qtub wasn’t visiting Las Vegas instead of our local 50’s “Church Lady” crowd or the Jihad may have acquired an even more frenetic pace. Did I forget to mention Paris?

Will the left address the Islamo-fascist’s real “root causes” by slamming suffocating black sacks over our wives and little girls? Who’ll then be exposed as the real Hitlers? (No scare quotes required.)

So it’s time for me to order up some bumper stickers. On the left goes “W”. On the right goes “FREE TIBET”. In the middle I’ll place my own: “actually will”.

And another below: “Greeley, Colorado: Sinfully Fun”.

"The Israelis have now arrested sixty-some Hamas officials and threaten to try them for terrorism. No doubt many of them could be convicted, but the obvious intention here is to put pressure to obtain the release of Gilad Shalit, the kidnapped soldier. The problem with the Israeli strategy is this: Maybe the officials won't want to go home. Where would you prefer to spend the rest of your life - Gaza or an Israeli prison? (I report; you decide.)"

"Interestingly, while waiting on hold, a voice came on, letting me know that my phone call might be monitored by Times management. But of course, that's for a higher purpose. It's been a very effective counter-subscriber program. It will allow them to come up with a new line in the script for when subscribers call in threatening to arrest their editors for treason."

"What!? Egypt has built a big scary wall to protect themselves from their brothers, the noble, oppressed Palestinians? Somebody call Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the United Nations, quick!"

NYeT! THE 911 CO-CHAIRS KNOW NOTHING!: "What I wanted to understand: what would terrorists and those who wish the US harm know now, with the Friday disclosure of the program, that they wouldn't have already known from the first few weeks after 9/11 when President Bush announced that the administration would do everything it could to get all data from every bank around the world.

Kean said that when he was briefed by the Treasury Department on the program, "I was told very few people knew about this facility," which provides transaction processing services for over 7,000 financial organizations located in 194 countries worldwide.

"I was told that very few financial houses in this country knew about it; it was not well known even by people in banking," Kean said. "The terrorists didn't know the financial transactions went through this one group. Treasury told me, this was a method of financial tracking that people didn't understand, that nobody knew this was how things were done. Top-notch people in the US didn't even know."

"The second thing is that it took a long time to get this program set up. SWIFT is not US-controlled; we had to persuade them to cooperate, convince them that this was so important to the war on terrorism. It was a great coup when all these other countries agreed to go along.""

"Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal - operating from his headquarters in Damascus -- ordered the raid in which Gilad Shalit was kidnapped. Meshaal, and pretty much every other terrorist leader other than Usama bin Laden, operate from Syria with impunity because Bashar Assad's Syria - the Syria he inherited from his father, and which has been on the State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism since 1979 - is entirely stable. He has no fear that through American or Israeli action his support for terrorism will be interrupted. From Syria money, weapons and terrorists flowed into Iraq for months before and ever since the American invasion of 2003.

Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon said that Meshaal - even in Syria - was a target for Israeli action. We should encourage Israel to strike into Syria, and not just to capture or kill Meshaal. Destabilizing Syria, and thus destabilizing its support for terrorism in Israel and Iraq is the goal. If anyone chooses to equate "destabilization" with "regime change", we should do nothing to encourage or dissuade them. It's time to put the terrorist genie back in the bottle. If the genie won't comply, we may soon have to smash the bottle all to pieces. "

"Until he kills you, you don’t have a case."

"Today's Supreme Court ruling seems to me a remarkable point in the development of a kind of quasi-sovereignty for non-state organizations.

Were there to develop an Anti-Qaeda force, a private military to pursue Al Qaeda and win the war on its own terms, then their members would also have the Geneva Conventions apply to them, were they ever to be apprehended or detained by the US, yes? In other words, if the Geneva Convention now applies to a non-state that is a non-signatory in the eyes of the US, does it not then apply to ALL non-states that are non-signatories?"

"The economy sprang out of a year-end rut and zipped ahead in the opening quarter of this year at a 5.6 percent pace, the fastest in 2 1/2 years and even stronger than previously thought. The new snapshot of gross domestic product for the January-to-March period exceeded the 5.3 percent growth rate estimated a month ago, the Commerce Department reported Thursday. The upgraded reading — based on more complete information — matched economists' forecasts.The stronger GDP figure mostly reflected an improvement in the country's trade deficit, which was much less of a drag than previously estimated."

Did I forget to mention that you can get away with well paid treason in this country? Oh, yes I did. It's blackmail too...

Mohammad Amin Al-Husseini Comes Home To Roost

"The Israelis may not be alone in marching through Gaza and the West Bank."

Amin would be proud of his lunatic progeny. The have learned everything from him. And nothing from civilization.

UPDATE: And why is this not on NYeT/Reuters/blahblahblah? Why because it might persuade someone that they're not "just like us". And we can't have that of course...

UNFORTUNATELY this is starting to feel like it's reality. A very, very dangerous reality:

"The left continues to undermine national security in the most despicable, cynical way. I'm quite sure the reasonable liberals at the NYT and WaPo know full well that programs like this are absolutely vital, and their secrecy is likewise vital. However, they have made the most anti-American and evil sort of decision: While tools like this are vital for saving American lives, they will not permit any Republican President to use them. Only Democratic Presidents are permitted to employ the full panoply of powers for protecting American lives.

It's blackmail, pure and simple. Either let a Democrat into the White House, or we will continue to sabotage American security and, in effect, kill Americans. We will keep secrets when a Democrat is in office, but not a Republican. So we offer the American people a choice: Let the politicians we favor run the country, or we will help Al Qaeda murder you."

Good Luck ...

with that anti-terrorism thing:



NYeT. On the other side.

(HT Michelle)

DIANA WEST SWINGS FOR THE RAFTERS AND FALLS ONLY INCHES SHORT: "Do such tactics diminish our inviolate sanctimony? You bet. But so what? The alternative is to follow our precious rules and hope the barbarians will leave us alone, or, perhaps, not deal with us too harshly. Fond hope. Consider the 21st-century return of (I still can't quite believe it) beheadings. The first French Republic aside, who on God's modern green earth ever imagined a head being hacked off the human body before we were confronted with Islamic jihad? Civilization itself is forever dimmed — again.

Pfc. Kristian Menchaca and Pfc. Thomas Tucker, RIP. "

TIME TO GO BACK AND DIG A GEM OUT OF THE MEMORY HOLE: "I have heard it confidently stated, for instance, that the American troops had been brought to Europe not to fight the Germans but to crush an English revolution. One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool."

OH WHAT A SURPRISE DEPT: "Kerry was against cutting and running before he was for it!"

"PS--For trolls who will remind me that Schuon was a Sufi, he was unambiguous. There is a reason why his books are banned and Sufis are persecuted in the Muslim world: "In some cases, the end justifies the means; in others, that of terrorism for example, the means compromise the end. In the first case, the means are ennobled by the end, since their nature enables them of being so, and assuming of course that the end be noble; in the second case, the end, even when noble, is debased by the means since, precisely, its nature excludes them.""

TODAY'S WMD HYPOCRISY DEPT: "I think it is noteworthy that Harman sees so little danger in these weapons. Some years ago, there was rampant hysteria over US chemical weapons in storage in Utah, which we seen as so heinously perilous that they had to be done away with immediately. "

"In addition to their work on missiles and nuclear bombs, the two regimes have another thing in common. They are both psychopathic. Their rulers routinely utter the sort of threats, that would get men not in power put under medical sedation. President Ahmadinejad likes to fantasize about the nuclear incineration of six million Jews in Israel. And Chairman Kim Il-jong has fantasies about frying the United States."

Shores of Tripoli? WHOOPS! Uh, yeah. Uhhh, the state of Israel was created illegally by the Americans in 1783. Yeah. That's the ticket! And did I mention that I created the Internet? Yeah. I created the Internet in 1848. Yeah, that's the ticket!

EVERYTHING YOU KNOW IS WRONG DEPT.: "Despite the strong updraft of federal spending, the deficit is on track in the next few years to continue falling until it approaches 2 percent of GDP. This is below the 2.5 percent that has been the national average since 1970, demonstrating that the president’s critics were simply wrong when they claimed that the Bush tax cuts would lead the country into economic ruin."

72 bombings? In 2 days? No W involved though so p.53, thanks very much...

A Father's Day...

QUOTE: "If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when victory will be sure and not so costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no chance of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves." --Sir Winston Churchill

And check out the video on the page where I found it. I've watched it 4 times already -- a couple of them with my sons of course -- and counting...

HAPPY FATHER'S DAY!

BUMPER STICKER OF THE DAY: "If you're not appalled, you haven't been paying attention"

Plus Ca Change

With the latest worldwide Pew research poll showing the U.S. in continuing disrepute, I though I'd post some Euro opinion that seems a rather good summary of the situation: "One is never sure which of two characteristics is more prominent in the American national character and therefore of the greater significance: naivete or a superiority complex."

UPDATE: Did I forget to mention that this quote is actually from Goebbels 1942 essay "God's Country" in Das Reich? It most definitely is Euro opinion. Plus ca change...

F'in Yahoos.

"Terrorism is an information war disguised as a military operation."

Confucius vacations...

"In the end, it's really not Mr. Roosevelt who inspires the vandel Heuvel and her ilk; it's Mr. Rogers."

"Wake up before it gets too late and before all the curses of Earth and heaven fall upon you."

I think Futurismic is right. This could be huge. And possibly the solution for plug-in hybids. And check out CalCars.org while you're at it...

UPDATE: Is the Super Prius coming? (HT Glenn)

"Now we know what everybody has been doing the last six months."

WARREN: "To an enemy who depends utterly on morale, in the absence of significant military abilities -- who has only such weaponry as he can rig or steal, and only such soldiers as he can recruit in secret; who has no secure territory to which he can retreat and regroup -- this constant and reliable support from the media is indispensable. Without it, the “resistance” in Iraq would have collapsed quickly, saving ten-thousands of lives; and the Afghan “resistance” would be in greater disarray (though it has the benefit of secure pasturage in remote tribal mountain fastnesses).

But Zarqawi’s death goes beyond spinning. The very fact touched off huge celebrations across Iraq this week, as did the capture of Saddam Hussein before it. While our Western media are loath to cover these demonstrations -- lest they enhance President Bush’s position in U.S. domestic politics -- their effect on the enemy in Iraq is profound. An enemy whose morale depended on Zarqawi’s reputation for ruthlessness, against the hard fact of popular detestation, is left staring at a wall. He needs another Zarqawi to emerge, quickly."

He's baaack! And always intending charity of course ;)

"He would be hilarious if he weren't such a psychopath."

Lewis the Doyen has his problems -- but it's amusing to see how unsatisfying he is to the "intellectual" class. This one only fails the classics cut off because he barely missed an explicit reference to Amin Al-Husseini. But he didn't fail here.

Michelle has today's example of why I read Strategy Page instead of the totalitarian apologists of the MSM.

About Those Iraqi Tribalists

Strategy Page has a nice update on the role of tribalism in Iraq along with a casualty update and even some historical perspective on the U.S.:

June 2, 2006: American troops are going to Anbar province in support of an
Iraqi operation that is going to try and seal Baghdad off from the Anbar towns
that still harbor terrorists (who send suicide bombers into Iraq.) At the same
time, police have arrested several senior al Qaeda leaders in the last week,
including Hamza Khair al-Aini and Samir al-Batawi. Interrogations of these two
have already led to raids on more terrorist locations.

While attacks in
Iraq are at their highest levels, American casualties continue to fall. Total
American casualties per month are down a third versus last year, even though
attacks are up about ten percent over 2005 (to about 85 a day). Americans have
improved their weapons, tactics and equipment much more rapidly, and
effectively, than has the enemy. People are shooting at U.S. troops more often,
but to less effect. Moreover, the quality of enemy fighters has declined, as the
more capable men, often former security men with long experience working for
Saddam, have either been killed, or, more commonly, fled the country. The big
change in the past year has been the massive movement of American and Iraqi
forces into largely Sunni Arab areas of central Iraq. Many of these towns have
not been under any government control since Saddam was overthrown in 2003. Now
the government is there, in force, and the former Saddam gunmen don't like it.
There has been a lot more shooting, but the Sunni Arabs continue to lose. This
is especially painful because many of the troops are Kurds or Shia Arabs, people
Sunni Arabs, from this part of Iraq, have long despised. It gets pretty ugly at
times, and many Sunni Arabs have come to see American troops as their
protectors, as the U.S. soldiers and marines are more disciplined and less
trigger happy than their Iraqi counterparts.

When an Iraqi says, "I am
an Iraqi," it has a different meaning from an American saying, "I am an
American." Kurds and Shia Arabs, like the Sunni Arabs, also have divided
loyalties. Family, tribe and religion come first, before national loyalty, in
Iraq. This is a problem throughout the developing world, and a major reason why
democracy is so difficult to establish. These divided loyalties shift gradually.
The U.S. became a powerful democracy partly because its citizens were all
immigrants, who had cut competing ties. Thus saying, "I am an American" is a
pledge of loyalty to all other Americans that is easier for a new immigrant,
looking for support in a new land, to make. An Iraqi saying, "I am Iraqi" is
much more likely to have a lot of other competing loyalties. Ask an Iraqi what
tribe or clan he belongs to, and he will tell you, often with a tone of pride.
Ask an American the same question, and most often you will bet a blank stare.

Iraqis know that they have to develop a national loyalty to go with
their national identity, because without it, Iraq will always be torn by
disorder and feuds. Many Iraqis also know that such an identity is not alien to
the region. Iranians and Turks have had such a national identity for centuries.
So also do people like the Egyptians. Tribalism and sectarianism are not eternal
curses. The people in question have to decide which loyalty, in the end, is more
important. This is a struggle that gets hardly any media attention at all, but
is at the heart of the current violence in Iraq. The war won't be over until
most Iraqis agree to become Iraqis.

Power Line has an idiotarian innumeracy update. My baseline post on idiotarian innumeracy is here and I am overdue for an update. Watch this space...

Has our latest Chamberlain redux bought us some Sino-Soviet backing in our Iranian fiasco? Or just hastened the Tinfoil Apocalypse? Somehow I suspect we'll find the goalposts moved again when next we look up. Call me a cynic realist.

The world according to Hitch...

TODAY'S EURABIA REPORT: "We in America should take note of the looming end of this once seemingly endless summer. We've been there, done that with this beloved continent all too many times before."

LEDEEN FISKS THE HOJJATIEH-IN-CHIEF: "The Spiegel journalist doesn’t have the wit to ask Ahmadinejad why jihadis like him base their actions on events that took place centuries ago, and then have the chutzpah to condemn the Germans for feeling guilt about the actions of their parents."

More Bananas

"If leaders of either party believe that the American electorate would stand for such an assertion of privilege, then they have overstayed their term on Capitol Hill and left rationality and common sense behind. They had better start understanding that subpoenas approved by judges apply to all citizens, and that when the respondent refuses to cooperate with a subpoena, law enforcement will apply it nonetheless."

You Say Banana, I Say Bananas

"Meanwhile, Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican, in a quintessentially McCainiac contribution to the debate, angrily denied the Senate legislation was an "amnesty." "Call it a banana if you want to," he told his fellow world's greatest deliberators. "To call the process that we require under this legislation amnesty frankly distorts the debate and it's an unfair interpretation of it."

He has a point. Technically, an "amnesty" only involves pardoning a person for a crime rather than, as this moderate compromise legislation does, pardoning him for a crime and also giving him a cash bonus for committing it. In fact, having skimmed my Webster's, I can't seem to find a word that does cover what the Senate is proposing, it having never previously occurred to any other society in the course of human history. Whether or not, as Mr. McCain says, we should call it a singular banana, it's certainly plural bananas."

Today's Tinfoil Update

"In the telephone survey of 1200 individuals, just 47% agreed that "the 9/11 attacks were thoroughly investigated and that any speculation about US government involvement is nonsense." Almost as many, 45%, indicated they were more likely to agree "that so many unanswered questions about 9/11 remain that Congress or an International Tribunal should re-investigate the attacks, including whether any US government officials consciously allowed or helped facilitate their success."

I can take little comfort that the sane ones are in the plurality. It isn't even a majority. Ugh.

Did I forget to mention that the DemoPublicans seem to think they're above the laws they write?

About Those Long Range Iranian Missiles...

And what they lead to:

He looked his son in the eye and said:

“ A couple of years ago you asked me why it is that we fight, and I told you then that we fight to hold off the bigger war that will surely be if were to stand by and “do nothing”. Back then; we believed that had we done more to stop Hitler in the 1930’s that the world might not have seen 52 million dead, the Jewish holocaust and the use of atomic bombs. We believed that the lesson to be learned from that time was that if we fought tyranny early, at a time and place of our choosing, we could have avoided a bigger more destructive war that came later. In our time, like it or not, the war we tried to avoid was coming - not because we wanted it, but because like Hitler before them, the islamists needed the war in order to survive. Well my son, I’m sorry to say that we were too late. We waited too long to fight back, and now the war we hoped to avoid is here and I’m afraid that before it is over it wont be millions who die, but billions. The world that was is no longer, and we no longer fight to avoid one political situation or another, we fight only to survive. I’m sorry that we failed. I’m sorry that I failed you”.

And the Tranzis would have you believe that those long range Iranian missiles are their right along with "nuclear power". Everyone knows that long range missiles are an excellent investment to deliver conventional warheads. Saddam knew it too which is why he also was feverishly trying to buy them before the war...

The response W should have written to the prince of Hojjatieh...

Well don't count on this ever happening again, but I appear to be in agreement with my race-baitin' buddy ol' Al Sharpton today. Yet more proof about that stopped clock theory...

With or without the yellow star, they're just debating the details of what is indisputably a totalitarian death cult. And given our own insane fecklessness, it's once again become the late 30's. Only the death toll will be much higher this time...

LEWIS REMEMBERS WELL: "The most vividly remembered year of my life was the year 1940. And more recently I have been thinking of 1938 rather than of 1940. We seem to be in the mode of Chamberlain and Munich rather than of Churchill."

Something Hojjatieh comes this way...

Did I Forget To Mention My Favorite Hojjatieh?

Well, Robert Ferrigno has my back covered:

Our present predicament with Iran revolves around the Twelfth Imam, or Hidden Imam, believed by Shiite Muslims to be the last in the line of spiritual/political rulers. The Twelfth Imam, Muhammad al-Mahdi, ascended to his position upon the death of his father, the Eleventh Imam, in 874 AD. Al-Madha at that time was five years old. Shortly after the funeral of his father, al-Mahdi disappeared, believed by Shiites to have been hidden by Allah until his return at some future point. The easiest way for westerners to think of the Hidden Imam is as the Islamic Messiah, Except the Islamic Messiah is to come at the hour of greatest peril for Muslims, come to battle the forces of evil and unite the entire world in an Islamic Caliphate.

Okay, let’s call it a difference of opinion. Armageddon under any other name… However, Ahmadinejad belongs to a small sect of Shiites, called Hojjatieh, who believe that they can hasten the arrival of the Hidden Imam.. Even more threatening for the west, the Hojjatieh believe that it is chaos that will induce the Hidden Imam to reveal himself. They have a spiritual investment in destruction. The worse things get — the worse believers can make things get — the more likely it is for the Hidden Imam to return. None of which would matter much except that Ahmadinejad is adamant about the right of Iran to develop its own nuclear program.

When Khomeini took power after the revolution in 1979, he banned the group, since they opposed the creation of an Islamic state, believing that the peace and tranquility of the new Iran would delay the reappearance of the Twelfth Imam. Hardliners among the Hojjatieh actually consider that Khomeini and the mullahs hijacked the Islamic revolution by limiting it to Iran. The emergence of Ahmadinejad to a position of power under the auspices of these very mullahs suggests to me that they think they can control him, use him as a figurehead to maintain the support of the people. The mullahs too may have underestimated Ahmadinejad.

We have to ask ourselves, how does Ahmadinejad see himself? Shiites believe that there will be no doubt as to the identity of the hidden imam when he returns. it will clearly be him. Some Shiites believe that the Twelfth Imam will rule through a deputy. Or that this deputy will precede his reappearance and actually hasten the arrival. Get the picture?

As to the letter, I think we have to consider it having several functions. Yes, it’s addressed to Bush and was supposed to be “private”, but it was clearly meant for a large audience. The thrust of it is ostensibly a call to Islam and a recitation of the hypocrisies and wounds the west has inflicted on the world. Some have noted that this is in the tradition of Khomeini and bin Laden in following the Koranic teaching of offering ones enemy a final chance to convert before waging war. This may be one of its functions, but I think the main function is to present Ahmadinejad as the deputy of the Hidden Imam.

The unemployment rate myth.

"Ask the dead how funny these men are."

Being There at the infallible BBC...

"Liberal hypocrisy--there is really nothing quite like it!"

Who knew? Chutch the sock puppet wizard!

Outrage Of The Day

"Well, obviously, this is a complete outrage. Next thing you know, the government will require me to tell it: what I do for a living; exactly how much I make; where I live; what stocks I buy and sell, and for how much; what I pay in property taxes; and how much profit I make on my investments. If we just sit still like sheep, we’ll end up having to disclose our birthdates — and, God help us, even our Social Security numbers. If that ever comes to pass, you’ll know that we are truly living in the reincarnation of Nazi Germany.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go do my taxes."

Robert Godwin on envy, paranoia and United 93.

Did I forget to mention that Gramscian Damage?

Gelernter on the lies of Vietnam ... and how to apply them to Iraq.

The Left on Dots: Collectionless Connections Required

LILEKS: "They want us to connect the dots, but they do not want us to collect the dots. The dots should apparently just walk up and volunteer, here I am. I'm a dot. And that's the extent of the War On Terror."

But don't you worry, they're not on the other side of course...

UPDATE and BUMP: Steyn's take on Leahy: "No. But next time he's flying from D.C. to Burlington, Vt., on a Friday afternoon he might look at the security line: Tens of millions of Americans are having to take their coats and shoes off! Are you telling me that tens of millions of ordinary shoe-wearing Americans are involved with al-Qaida?"

STEYN: "I've noticed in the last few years that, if you pull any old minor 19th-century memoir off the shelf, the en passant observations about Islam seem more informed than most of the allegedly expert commentary that appeared in the year after 9/11."

And Ethanol less so?

Hydrogen may be more interesting than I previously thought thanks to Honda...