"Here it is in two sentences: The FBI was prevented from freezing terrorists' assets and catching terrorists because somebody leaked what they were about to do to the New York Times, and the NYT proceeded to warn the terrorists themselves! Now the NYT says that because it was just promoting the "public's right to know" and the First Amendment, its phone company should be immune from having to give evidence to permit a grand jury to decide whether any crimes were committed as part of this debacle.

And here it is in a mere ten words: Someone committed treason, and the NYT is okay with that."

"But to focus on these parts of his letter, however silly and objectionable they may be, would be to miss the main point. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is not the Hugo Chavez of the Persian Gulf. He knows that soon he will have his finger on the nuclear trigger.

Citing from the Quran at the close of his letter, he says that if Americans “repent” of their “injustice,” they will be blessed with many gifts. “We should all heed the divine Word of the Holy Qur’an,” he says.

The context of this particular verse (28:67-28, Sura “Al-Qasas,” or The Narration), is very clear. It follows a graphic description of destruction and devastation that will befall those who fail to repent of their injustice.

It also sets out the terms of the tradition Muslim warning to the enemies of Allah. “And never will your Lord destroy the towns until He sends to their mother town a Messenger reciting to them Our Verses.” This is is precisely what Ahmadinejad is doing in his letter.

Dump Bush, allow the Muslims to destroy Israel, and adopt Islam — or else you will be destroyed. This is Ahmadinejad’s message."

"This letter follows the same rambling, barely coherent pattern of his open letter to George Bush earlier this year. In it, he attempts to deflect attention from the intransigence of his own regime in their pursuit of nuclear weapons by continuously blaming the Jews for all the ills of the world."

"Is this more Baker-Scowcroft realpolitik? Or is it just another case of wishful thinking on the capacity for peace from current Palestinian leadership? If we've reduced ourselves to having to choose which flavor of terrorism we'll tolerate, we have dramatically lowered our expectations on the war against terrorists, probably to the point of losing entirely.

Olmert, for once, provides an example of firmness on the issue. He will not allow the Badr Brigade to move into Gaza nor any of his other offers to take effect until the Palestinians return Shalit, unharmed. That might be the start of a more realistic look at the futility of appeasement, a lesson that the West needs to learn all over again, it would seem."

"Among the other predictable casualties of the regional strategy will be the people of Israel. Jim Baker's hostility towards the Jews is a matter of record and has endeared him to Israel's foes in the region.

What could be more appealing to the latter than an international conference that will simultaneously undo the experiment in freedom in Iraq and compel Israel to make further territorial concessions. Of course, these will not mitigate conflicts in Iraq and Lebanon that have nothing to do with Israel. They will, however, allow the Mideast's only bona fide democracy, the Jewish State, to be snuffed in due course.

We are, in short, poised to stand the U.S. Marine's motto "No better friend, no worse enemy" on its head. If the Baker regional strategy is adopted, we will prove to all the world that it is better to be America's enemy than its friend.

If these undesirable outcomes are so predictable, why are we slouching towards the hard place of the "regional solution"?

It comes down to a lack of seriousness on the part of too many elected leaders of both parties -- exhibited in a failure themselves to understand the gravity of a global war in which Iraq is but one front, and a failure to educate their constituents about the stakes associated with such a war. This superciliousness has translated into political circumstances in the United States (including delegating great responsibility to unelected and unaccountable commissions) and strategic conditions elsewhere that make diplomatic options appear more real and appealing than they are."

"... 1. Dramatically expand the training and advisory efforts. Expand their numbers, funding, and facilities. This doesn't differ much from "Go long," but wait there's more...

2. Create a crash program to develop a massive Arabic linguistic capability within the US military. This is the United States. We put men on the moon. Why don't we train 20,000 or more American military personnel proficient in Arabic in the next 12 months? Sure, it's a difficult language. But nobody has to be able to translate the Koran in order to lead an attack, plan a patrol, or otherwise advise an Iraqi force. Have the president sign an executive order temporarily federalizing the Arabic departments of every US university that has them. The professors will keep the same pay, but it'll be on Uncle Sam's tab and all of their students for the next two years will be military personnel. If our captains, lieutenants, sergeants and corporals have 30 days of Arabic for 12 hours a day with native speaking instructors before deploying, it will get us where we need to be. ..."

"does partially disemboweling a man, followed by publicly tearing him apart via 4 motorcycles tied to his hands and feet, count?

His crime was to defy the Taliban and educate girls. Let me know when the massive outcry begins.

sound of crickets chirping"

"Maybe that reflects the difference between political calculation and obsession."

"Americans do not realize how dramatic the situation is in Europe today. The Europeans are running. Instead of fighting they are leaving. They are leaving the cities for the countryside. In my home town of Antwerp 5,000 immigrants move in every year while 4,000 Antwerpians move out. Many Dutch are leaving their highly urbanized country for places such as rural Norway. Some are leaving Europe altogether.

The Netherlands and Germany have more emigrants than immigrants today, and in other countries, such as Belgium, Britain and Sweden the number of emigrants is rising. These people are not driven by hatred, they are driven by despair and the hope for a better future which they realize their Eurabian home countries are no longer able to provide."

"All this bespeaks a Turkish officialdom that is hostile – at best – to non-Muslim forms of religious expression, Turkey’s guarantees of religious freedom be damned. The institutionalized subjugation and second-class status of religious minorities under the Ottoman Empire was bad enough, but Turkish secularism has been, if anything, even worse. Constantinople was 50% Christian as recently as 1914 (its name was changed to Istanbul in 1930); today, it is less than one percent Christian. The Catholic Church has no legal recognition; Catholic churches, like other churches, remain inconspicuous so as not to draw the angry attention of mujahedin. Even the recognized Churches are not allowed to operated seminaries or build new houses of worship – in accord with ancient Islamic Sharia restrictions on non-Muslims in an Islamic state, which restrictions paradoxically enough still have at least some force in secular Turkey.

The righteous fury with which the Pope will likely be greeted in Turkey will shift attention from the shame Turkish authorities should feel over the mistreatment of Christians in their land that nominally allows for religious freedom. The mainstream media will focus on protests against the Pope, and pay scant attention to anything he may say, if he says anything at all, about the oppression of Christians in Turkey. And that, in the final analysis, may lead the Turkish government – for all its security precautions -- to hope that the protestors will turn out in force."

"President Bush did not fare nearly as well, coming in at number 15 with a 43.8 rating. Former President Bill Clinton topped Mr. Bush with a 55.8 rating and a fifth-place finish. However, Mr. Bush did top 2004 rival Sen. John Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat, who finished 20th in the survey, with a 39.6 rating." [ Heh. -ed. ]

"We know now, based on evidence, that a Republican President will err on the side of security and preemptive action if there is a perceived terrorist threat. We also know, based on repeated statements by their leaders that the Democrats favor a post-attack posture. For Democrats, Terror = Law Enforcement Response.

So I ask my fellow Americans.... if you were on this US Airways flight and this suspicious behavior by the Imams began, who would you want as your pilot and flight attendants? George Bush, Condi Rice and Dick Cheney? Or Nancy Pelosi, Charles Rangel and Alcee Hastings?"

Muslim religious leaders removed from a Minneapolis flight last week exhibited behavior associated with a security probe by terrorists and were not merely engaged in prayers, according to witnesses, police reports and aviation security officials.

Witnesses said three of the imams were praying loudly in the concourse and repeatedly shouted “Allah” when passengers were called for boarding US Airways Flight 300 to Phoenix.
“I was suspicious by the way they were praying very loud,” the gate agent told the Minneapolis Police Department.

Passengers and flight attendants told law-enforcement officials the imams switched from their assigned seats to a pattern associated with the September 11 terrorist attacks and also found in probes of U.S. security since the attacks — two in the front row first-class, two in the middle of the plane on the exit aisle and two in the rear of the cabin.

“That would alarm me,” said a federal air marshal who asked to remain anonymous. “They now control all of the entry and exit routes to the plane.”

A pilot from another airline said: “That behavior has been identified as a terrorist probe in the airline industry.” [ D'oh. -ed. ]

751 ZUS And Counting...

"For an insight into how bad things are, the police in Lyons demonstrated on Nov. 9, denouncing "violence against the forces of order." Things have reached a pretty sad state when the police have to demonstrate in the streets against the criminals."

"George Orwell once wrote of the ‘deep, deep sleep of England, from which I sometimes fear that we shall never wake till we are jerked out of it by the roar of bombs. ‘ On 7/7, we heard the roar of bombs in London. I sometimes worry that the deep, deep sleep that Orwell described in the 1930s is still here in relation to Islamism in sections of the Government, parts of the political and media establishment, the House and the country. This is one of the most urgent problems facing us, and if we are in that deep, deep sleep, it is time for all of us to wake up."

"He believes Americans need a more fact-based understanding of Islam, which requires the media to do a better job of reporting what Muslims think and say -- instead of papering over radical rhetoric. Once when a local reporter visited Al Haramain to write a piece on Ramadan, a co-worker refused to shake her hand, launched a defense of sorts of Algerian terrorists and lambasted a French policy that prohibited schoolgirls from wearing the hijab in class. The comments never made the story. Gartenstein-Ross writes, "And so, as I often did, the reporter chose not to acknowledge that a real clash of values existed here."

Islam's approach to homosexuality is another area that the left ignores in deference to multiculturalism. (Think of Bay Area liberals who voice outrage at the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy, but are silent about the Shariah policy on homosexuals -- 100 lashes or death.) Ditto the status of women.

Gartenstein-Ross also takes issue with those rose-colored-glass wearers who deny that there is any theological basis for Islamic extremism. "It's important to note that they do have an argument," he told me, if only to be able to engage them in argument and understand where they get their ideas.

Gartenstein-Ross is a strong storyteller, who enables the reader to feel the ineluctable draw to fanaticism, as well as the anguish and disillusionment that led him to support violent jihad, but ultimately reject it. He has no use for those who, a la Chomsky, pat themselves on the back for having the intellectual fortitude "to enter the minds of the likely perpetrators."

There are forces in this world that would kill these elites for the apostasy, but elites are so blinded with their sense of superiority over their political enemies -- like President Bush -- that they can't even see the dagger pointed at their throats. "

"There is a historical precedent in the spread of Islam itself, in the 7th century ... In fact, the Arabs didn't outright conquer Palestine, Syria, Anatolia, Egypt, North Africa, Iraq, and the Iranian plateau. They struck alliances with the local rebels: the Copts and the Syriacs, the Nestorians and the Donatists, the Jews and the Mardakites, with those who spoke neither Greek nor Persian and shared neither the beliefs of the basileus nor those of the shah. Even the green flag of Islam was borrowed from non-Arabs: It was originally the symbol of rebellion in Byzantium, the equivalent in its day of the red flag in ours. Can history repeat itself, and fundamentalist Islam subdue Europe in the 21st century with the help of European extremists? Will the green flag and the red flag wave side by side? Buses are burning in France and nobody, so far, seems to know how to stop that."

"When a "regional peace process" works Abdullah will be the first to know. The kindest and fairest thing to say about the Middle East is that everybody's got a beef. And the Jew and more latterly the US provides the inestimable service of being the convenient reason for problems which are at least partly rooted in the warring parties themselves. So Abdullah's strange declaration makes sense in, with apologies to Chester, a "magical realism" kind of way. Viewed from that perspective, it really is America's or Jew's fault that folks are fixing to kill each other in Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank. Now some people are inevitably going to ask why, if the Sunnis and Shi'as are dead set on killing each other across the Middle East because of some disturbance caused by the presence of America or Israel (remember this makes sense in some way), the reason this shouldn't be cold-bloodedly regarded as the greatest act of strategic genius since Alexander beat the Persian Empire. A variety of objections come to mind, chiefly to do with morality and the oil security, the preferred order depending on whether you are an idealist or a "realist". I will add a third. The killing's not going to stop and we're not going to stop it. In another era we might not have cared, but the lesson from 9/11 which we have forgotten already is that they will carry their magically realistic hatreds to other shores with unimaginable weapons. And remember, it's always our fault."

"Some news outlets are now going to officially refer to Iraq as a Civil War. Two questions. Does that mean the Sunni insurgency "loses" seeing as they succeeded in rousing the majority of Iraq's population against them in addition to getting beat up by the US military? Or do they, by "magical realism", get to claim victory over America, even after America is called upon to save their a..? Second, to what extent does the news media claim credit for stoking the official Civil War with their fake stories? Sorry. Wrong questions."

"I guess that explains it. He didn't mean to leave the device behind; he meant to take it with him to the West Coast. I'm feeling better already."

"How should the Bush administration respond to the proposal? I think it should reject the proposal, should take the opportunity to explain how its diplomatic initiatives regarding Iran have failed, and should elaborate on what the failure of those initiatives represents. It should explain Iran's depredations against the United States since 1979 to date.

On the other hand, if the Bush administration feels that political considerations compel it to accede to the panel recommendations, it could take up the proposal and offer to meet with the Axis powers in Munich. President Ahmadinejad might appreciate the opportunity to take American negotiators on a field trip to expound on his insights into German history."

"An amendment that ensures a collective right to free speech has been misread in one legislature after another - often in the face of strong public disapproval - as a law guaranteeing an individual's right to speak freely in public."

"Less tension? Let me explain how Warren's buddy, dictator Bashar Assad, manages to keep peace and tranquility. Secret police. Wiretapping. Torture. Political prisoners. Death squads.

Bashar's father, Hafez, was the master at heavy-handed Big Brother tactics. When the citizens of Hama rose up to challenge his authority in February 1982, Assad sent in Syrian troops to massacre between 10,000 and 25,000 civilians. The town was paved over and marked permanently to ensure that others would learn the terrible lesson.

It worked. There's been "peace," as Rick Warren would call it, ever since. There's been a lot less "tension," as he would put it."

"We have a problem with democracy itself, with which few of the defenders of democracy have tried to wrestle. Human psychology -- human nature, if you will -- is such, that people, male and female alike, of all linguistic, racial, and religious dispositions -- have a profound and mysterious need to be lied to. Even under quite trying conditions, they would rather not hear the truth, but instead what is comforting. On the individual scale, they are able to satisfy this deep need, by choosing false friends and companions. On the collective scale, we satisfy it by electing demagogic politicians, and believing what they tell us for as long as some superficial plausibility can be maintained."

"What we have discovered in Iraq is the weakest link in the ability of the United States to sustain military operations overseas. That link is the U.S. media. They are Islamists’ best friends.

Experience shows that the mainstream press of the United States is alienated from the U.S. military. In addition, the American press is extremely vulnerable to anti-U.S. propaganda. Thus, the American public will be fed nearly everything that foreign adversaries—our band of brothers—wish to feed it about the war. Therefore, I write:

Maxim # 1: To defeat America, impose upon the imagination of its media your own storyline. [ D'oh. -ed. ] "

"In other words: talk with Syria while denying its key policy objectives. Hardly realistic. The NYT advocates selling out democracy (in Iraq and elsewhere), while trying to keep its hands clean, presumably hoping to be able to leave the dirty dealing to the State Department. (The suggestion that the Europeans might carry this message is almost as hilarious as the suggestion that Putin will talk tough to Assad. What is that editorial board smoking?) ...

This critique of realism is directed at two distinct addresses, an unholy alliance of anti-democrats. First, there is the foreign policy establishment, looking for a Metternichian resolution of the region. In this arena, democracy is no particular desideratum: it's all about stability. Fair enough, one might comment: there is no interest in democracy, and no democracy will be encouraged. At least there's no hypocrisy. The problem is that a stable outcome is even more unlikely. ... The critique of realism is also directed to the left. If one reads the midterm election as a repudiation of Bush foreign policy that is leading to this new realism, then one can only conclude that the electoral victory of the left in the US means counterrevolution in the Middle East: ending democracy in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq."

"Victor Davis Hanson thinks there is a coordinated attempt to destabilize most of the West at once. I think he's right. And I think we are sleepwalking our way into a global cataclysm in part through media-induced and abetted blindness along with our natural instinct to turn away from barbarous violence and deny it's really happening."

VDH Rocks On Israel

"We are witnessing strange things about Israel. Columnists this year wrote about it being a “mistake.” And for the first time emboldened Islamic leaders talk seriously not about restoring lost land on the West Bank and the Golan Heights, but of “wiping” it off the map entirely.

The Lebanon war saw not just slanted coverage, but outright falsification and lying from the major Western new servers—many of them served by local stringers who provide on the ground propaganda and faked photos. And now the Holocaust has been reinvented, as the old idea of a safe haven for the survivors of the Third Reich has been transmogrified into “a one bomb state.” Mein Kampf is translated as “Jihadi” on the West Bank and sells briskly. We are seeing a venomous anti-Semitic hatred in the Arab-supported state papers that the world has not witnessed since the 1930s and 1940s.

Back home, the Left/Right split on Israel has also been turned upside down. If you wish to read sick hatred about the Jewish state go to the leftist blogs or the campuses, not the Montana badlands. Somehow the Palestinians have reinvented themselves as liberal victims of Western, white male imperialists. Thus, in the manner of Blacks, Chicanos, Gays, and Women they are deserving of the usually accorded sympathy for their oppressed status—never mind the Islamists’ gender apartheid, religious intolerance, homophobia, and fundamentalism that should be so repugnant to the liberal mind.

Now more than ever Israel is nearly all alone—and so serves as a barometer in the West of true liberal courage of conscious. It has no oil, no international terrorists, no large population, no real material advantages and no threats to be made in the most crass sense.

Instead, it is a humane liberal society, an atoll of reason in a surrounding sea of autocracy. So it is the perfect litmus test for the Westerner: on the one hand is principled support for an embattled democracy; on the other, is easy appeasement that wins applause from millions, eases concerns about oil and terrorism, and offers cheap relief of elite guilt by trashing the very Western culture that rewards us all. Tragically, most leftist elites these days fail the test. Somehow, especially in Britain, they put themselves on the side of illiberal groups like Hamas or the Palestinian Authority whose history is antithetical to very notion of tolerance.

Now we have yet again the ubiquitous Jimmy Carter. Not content with a failed Presidency, he is determined to turn his legacy into even a greater failure, lecturing us in his new book about an apartheid Israel.

Unlike blacks in his own Georgia of the 1950s, Israeli Arabs vote and enjoy civil liberties, perhaps a million of them, with another 100,000 plus as illegal aliens. In fact, they enjoy rights not found in other Arab countries, inasmuch as Jews treat Arabs inside their own country not just better than Arabs treat Jews (they ethnically cleansed 500,000 from the major Arab capitals in the 1960s), but in the sense of civil liberties better than Arabs treat Arabs.

Carterism is a new postmodern pathology in which smug piety, dressed up in evangelical new-age Christianity, pronounces from afar moral censure on the more righteous party—on the theory that acting well but not perfect is worse than acting badly. Carter reminds me of the timid parent who spanks hard the good son for the rare misdemeanor because he takes it with silence while giving a pass to the wayward son for the daily felony because he would throw a public fit if corrected."

Clueless? Or Cluelesscide?

"In all this Whodunnit the reader is led around circles. Bodies fall out of closets. Cars blow up. Missiles rain down from the sky. And the trail leads everywhere but where it directly goes. Perhaps readers in the far future will understand how two countries, Syria and Iran could conduct a war against its neighbors without the Mainstream Media noticing. But we have a clue. The most interesting point -- in case you missed it -- about the Lancet study alleging that 650,000 people have died in Iraq, is that it is all America's fault. Well, maybe it is."

"November 19, 2006 -- MUSLIMS are often accused of not speaking out sufficiently against terrorism. Nonie Darwish knows one reason why: Their fellow Muslims won't let them. "

"The Republicans can watch this spectacle from the sidelines. They should also realize that they had plenty of opportunity to do exactly what Pelosi and Reid have planned, but left that particular play in the locker room. The GOP may have a long time for regrets on that decision."

"Nothing is more threadbare than the claim of Islamists to defend Muslim womanhood. Islamist radicals (like the penny-a-marriage mullahs of Iran) are the world's most prolific pimps. The same networks that move female flesh across borders also provide illegal passage for jihadis, and the proceeds of human trafficking often support Islamist terrorists. From Jakarta to Kuala Lumpur to Sarajevo to Tirana, the criminals who trade in women overlap with jihadist networks. Prostitutes serve the terror network in a number of capacities, including suicide bombing. The going rate for a Muslim woman who can pass for a European to carry a suicide bomb currently is more than US$100,000. The Persian prostitute is the camp follower of the jihadi, joined to him in a pact of national suicide. [ Spengler channels Steyn... RTWT. -ed. ] "

Today's Gliberal Innumeracy Update

"As things stand, the conflict with Islamic radicalism involves the lowest average daily military fatality rate of any long run national security era. It may worsen, it may improve. If Congress had been asked on September 12, 2001, to endorse a national defense posture against Islamic radicalism that traded up to 2 military fatalities per day over the subsequent five years in return for no additional homeland attacks, the deposing of terror friendly regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq, the ending of Libya's nuclear program, what would they have done? Would Congress accept that bargain today?"

"Where is the Line in the Sand? If anything, the Horn of Africa is strategically more expendable than Iraq. One of the really pernicious things about the lack of substantive bipartisan debate on the War on Terror is that there is no clear consensus on what will be defended and to what extent. The question of what signal a "responsible redeployment" sends is not entirely an idle one. For the ICU it may have been like ringing the dinner bell. Did they misunderstand? Or did they understand all too well?"

And The Blood Drenched Thugs Know It...

"But the Iranians can hardly contain their glee. They know what last elections meant; and so do Iraq and Syria. There may be no need to wait for the Baker report. It is being overtaken by events."

"What we have to do to influence Iran is explain that if Iran does not begin to cooperate with the international community, we will substantially isolate Iran and destroy its means of supporting terrorism and pursuing nuclear weapons. This can be done incrementally, to give the Iranians an opportunity to reconsider their policy. Our Navy, not hyper-extended in Iraq, can blockade their ports. Our Air Force, also not hyper-extended in Iraq, can begin reducing their terrorist-support infrastructure. Things like oil fields, refineries and roads leading toward Syria and suspected nuclear sites. This can continue ... pretty much as long as the Iranians want it too.

If in fact we find an actual nuclear weapon, or one explodes anywhere in the world, the Iranians -- and the North Koreans as well -- need to know that we will assume it was theirs, and act accordingly. This may encourage them to turn their intelligence agencies and terrorist networks to better use."

"The world is going through a major paradigm shift and while it is fully adrift on the tides of the 21st century, nearly all the politicians on both sides of the Atlantic are stuck firmly in the past. We are entering a dark wood without a compass, and not even the realization of the need for one. Back to Murtha and Alcee Hastings."

"It's amazing what trouble some countries will go through for absolutely nothing. We can all rest easy now that Seymour Hersh has set the record straight, can't we. Or can we?"

"The real answer is that America cannot afford chaos in Iraq because it would represent a victory for Iran and a humiliation for the US. Any conference aimed at effectively handing a victory to the Iranians would be as pointless as putting out a fire in your hair with a hammer in order to feel better. Some gain, at least, must be in view.

Therefore any regional conference must contain elements which can dissuade Damascus and Teheran from their campaign of subversion that do not include mere appeals to their "fear of unrest" in Iraq. If the "fear of unrest" in Iraq holds as much terror to Damascus as "fear of unrest" in Lebanon it will be slim reed indeed upon which to base the conference."

"So apparently this race to be the dumbest leaders in Congress will be longer than I thought. Just when I was ready to declare the Republicans as the winner, we enter turn 2 and see the Dems about to retake the lead.

How will it all end? [ Ummm. Not well? Looks like time to start campaigning for a referendum to get NOTA on my state ballot to me. -ed. ] "

""This type of resolution serves only to exacerbate tensions by serving the interests of elements hostile to Israel's inalienable and recognized right to exist."

"This deepens suspicions about the United Nations that will lead many to conclude that the organization is incapable of playing a helpful role in the region," Bolton continued.

"In a larger sense, the United Nations must confront a more significant question, that of its relevance and utility in confronting the challenges of the 21st century. We believe that the United Nations is ill served when its members seek to transform the organization into a forum that is a little more than a self-serving and a polemical attack against Israel or the United States," he said.

"The Human Rights Council has quickly fallen into the same trap and de-legitimized itself by focusing attention exclusively on Israel. Meanwhile, it has failed to address real human rights abuses in Burma, Darfur, the DPRK, and other countries," Bolton charged.

"The problem of anti-Israel bias is not unique to the Human Rights Council. It is endemic to the culture of the United Nations. It is a decades-old, systematic problem that transcends the whole panoply of the UN organizations and agencies," he continued. [ Well. Speaking truth to insanity. If that doesn't put the nail in the coffin of his UN nomination with the Victicrats I don't know what will. -ed. ] "

"The Sauds hit the roof when their Swiss bankers told them of the investigation, according to the Times of London source. They sent an emissary to 10 Downing Street, making it clear that the entire British-Saudi relationship hinged on getting their gold Rolls Royces supplied by British contractors, and that the entire war on terror depended on whether royals could still sun themselves on exclusive beaches. [ Why how shocking! I never would have guessed anything like this in a million years! Not. -ed. ]

This should be a warning to the West as to the fragility of Saudi support on the efforts to stop radical Islamism ... such as it is. They appear to only support the war as long as their endless supply of luxury items, supplied by fraud and corruption, continues without interruption. Counting on their efforts in the long run is a bad strategy. We need to do what we can to avoid antagonizing them, but we had better start working on alternate strategies to work around their petulant obstructionism. [ We have violated the Prime Directive folks. We can get busy and work on oil shale but it just means that we'll still have energy to fight with when they get though with their Eurabian project. -ed. ] "

"If you missed it on CNN last night, you can watch Glenn Beck’s Exposed: The Extremist Agenda right here. This segment receives my ringing endorsement. Some of it shocked even me, and I think I’m pretty well versed in the mystical and religious teachings of Islam. Beck’s segment delves into the rampant propaganda in the Middle East - the words, images, and mystical superstitions that are rapidly moving millions of “moderate” Muslims into the Salafi and Jihadi camps.

I have already bought and watched Obsession and Islam: What The West Needs To Know, which you also MUST SEE. I thought this might be a copy-cat production. It is not. It has never-before-seen footage and it is very much worth your time to watch."

Who Said This?

"First he incites war, then falsifies the causes, then odiously wraps himself in a cloak of Christian hypocrisy and slowly but surely leads mankind to war, not without calling God to witness the honesty of his attack." --Do you know who said this?

Anyone paying attention to politics circa 2006 would reasonably guess that it's a quote from some famous Democrat about George Bush. But it isn't -- the answer is here at the end of the second paragraph.

Did that shake you up a bit? If you hate George Bush and this didn't phase you at all, then it's a reasonable guess that you're going to hate me too. I think George Bush is a liberal. If you're a conservative and didn't know this either, wake up and smell the coffee. Eric Blair would quite literally have no words to describe the slickly marketed Orwellian Fascifistic, Gramscian cultural nightmare we've become trapped in. Why weren't you drilled on that quote by Junior High? It's only critical perspective on the most devastating war in history (well, yet anyway).

Maybe because fascism is both different, more dangerous and still alive somewhere "your betters" want you to be distracted from looking? You do understand psychological projection?

This post will hold the #2 position on the blog for a long while -- the links here need to be pondered over and over ... until you stand up, turn off the TV and break the bonds of the "it's not cool to be smart" culture they want to keep you enslaved in.

That Pesky Rushdie Again

"Finally, soon after Khomeini’s fatwa, there appeared this letter in The Observer in Britain: “Salman Rushdie speaks for me. Mine is a voice that has not yet found expression in newspaper columns; it is the voice of those who are born Muslims but wish to recant in adulthood, yet are not permitted to, on pain of death. Someone who does not live in an Islamic society cannot imagine the sanctions—both self-imposed and external—that militate against expressing religious disbelief. ‘I don’t believe in God’ is an impossible public utterance, even among family and friends. So we hold our tongues, those of us who doubt.”"

"Finally, soon after Khomeini’s fatwa, there appeared this letter in The Observer in Britain: “Salman Rushdie speaks for me. Mine is a voice that has not yet found expression in newspaper columns; it is the voice of those who are born Muslims but wish to recant in adulthood, yet are not permitted to, on pain of death. Someone who does not live in an Islamic society cannot imagine the sanctions—both self-imposed and external—that militate against expressing religious disbelief. ‘I don’t believe in God’ is an impossible public utterance, even among family and friends. So we hold our tongues, those of us who doubt.”"

"The Democrats have their best political cycle in 12 years, and conclude that the way to start off is electing a Speaker and Majority Leader who don't just hate each other, they won't even return phone calls.

The Republicans have their worst political cycle in 12 years, and conclude that everything's fine, there's no problem, and they should just stay the course. [ One more time just for emphasis ;) As I've said before to be an equal opportunity offender: We have the witless versus the perfidious mediated by the cynical narcissists. And it's 1938 again. If not later. -ed. ] "

And You Should Be Able To Get The Main Post Also...

"I think the thing that really, really pisses me off is the appropriation of the "canary" metaphor for the Lebanese. For years, I've heard the theory that Jews are like canaries in coal mines -- when it starts getting bad for Jews in a country or region, it's going to be bad for everyone else soon. It's an observation that's tended to stand the test of time, and the notion of applying it to a country that's allowed itself to become a base for attacks on Jews time and time again is more than a little repugnant.

But not that unexpected. To simultaneously deny the suffering of the Jews while accusing them of perpetrating the very same acts is one of anti-semitism's oldest tricks. Witness how Iran simultaneously denies the historic fact of the Holocaust, while promising a new one. Or the constant Nazi imagery in anti-Israeli propaganda, where the Jews are seen as the Nazis. Or the... well you get the idea."

Those Pesky Numbers

"I have read estimates of up to 800 BILLION barrels of oil in the Green River Basin in Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado.

The San Juan plateau in the Four Corners region has over 100 TRILLION cubic feet of natural gas. It's also the world's largest uranium field.

There are trillions more cubic feet of gas off our coasts.

Alberta has almost as much oil as Saudi Arabia.

Add in ANWR, the Gulf of Mexico, and the outer shelf, and you see we really have no reason to import energy sources from the Middle East.

We will never be free to deal with the Saudi-funded Jihad until we end our reliance on "their" oil (which we found, which we pump out of the ground, which we refine, which we transport, which...well you get it)."

"Our worst fear is that U.S. withdrawal from Iraq could trigger full civil war between Sunni and Shia forces. But much worse is possible: for such a conflagration is likely to mutate into something larger, with Iran intervening directly to support the Shia, followed by various Arab countries to support the Sunnis. To hope for this would be to repeat the fallacy of the 1930s, when the old fogeys actually hoped for a war in which the Stalin and Hitler regimes would destroy each other. Such fantasies are irresponsible.

But the most immediate prospect of fresh open warfare continues to be around the borders of Israel. The U.N. has, as we expected, turned a blind eye to the rearmament of Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, concentrating its energies on protesting Israeli attempts to monitor this rearmament. Hezbollah’s political power-play within Lebanon has been proceeding in its theatrical way. Meanwhile, Hamas has been building a more powerful rocket inventory in Gaza. Rocket attacks on Israeli schools and other targets in Sderot and the western Negev are stepping up again.

It is the consensus of most intelligent observers that Israel will have no choice but to resume large-scale attacks in Lebanon in the near future, possibly before the end of this year. But it will be a war in which Syria and Iran see better prospects for meddling, knowing that Israel’s security guarantees from the U.S. are in a state of flux, and that Israel is thus now easier to isolate.

Gloom and doom make good sense, under these circumstances. Despair never does. As the late Abba Eban, once Israel’s foreign minister, used to say, “History teaches us that men and women behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.” As he didn’t add, this is invariably after the prospective catastrophe has vastly increased in scale."

Warren on the A.D.D. of Puerile Fascifism

"But look at Iraq. The U.S. and allies invaded to remove Saddam Hussein, and with any luck, install a functioning democracy, as a light to lighten the Arab world. What they found, only a little beneath the surface of the nominal secular Baathism they displaced, was an enemy motivated by religious fanaticism, willing to cooperate with any devil who offers himself against the “Great Satan” -- in this case, the very Sunni “Al Qaeda in Iraq” with the very Shia ayatollahs of Iran, to foment a civil war against their fellow-Iraqi Shia, whom the ayatollahs are also supplying. With whom do we make peace?

“With the ayatollahs!” -- comes the quick response from the old school of diplomacy, whose principle of analysis might be caricatured: “First find your enemy, and then charm him to death.” But Iran is only vying for leadership of the international jihad. The allies knocked down Saddam, and Zarkawi popped up. Neutralize the ayatollahs, and other aspirants will take their place.

In the moments just before the Congressional mid-term election, the New York Times did a big splash excoriating the Bush administration for having published captured Iraqi nuclear documents, that could be useful for Iran’s development of nuclear weapons. This was of course designed to hurt the Republicans in the election, as much as possible. Since the paper had previously given much play to the argument, “Bush lied about Iraq’s development of WMD, as a pretext for invasion,” the breach of logic was exceptionally sharp. Yet understandable, because the irrational begets the irrational. They think, “Get rid of Bush and all our problems are over.”"

"Some argued that the GOP would have been better off dumping the Boehner-Blunt "old guard" in favor of the "reformists" Pence and Shadegg. But hey, who better to lead the GOP minority than the men who helped create it?"

"Because fewer refining processes are necessary with oil shale than with crude oil, the final product is a higher quality fuel at a lower price, Aizenshtat said.

The company estimates it will consume 6 million tons of oil shale and 2 million tons of refinery waste each year, for an annual production of 3 million tons of product.

It would cost about $17 to produce a barrel of synthetic oil at the Hom Tov facility, meaning giant profit margins in a world of $45 to $60 per barrel crude. Yearly earnings are forecasted to be between $159 million and $350 million, Shahal said.

Israel has 15 billion tons of oil shale reserves. Jordan, on the other hand, has about 25 billion tons, and the oil shale in Jordan is of higher quality. Shahal met with Jordanian Energy Minister Azmi Khreisat earlier this year, to discuss setting up a plant there.

The United States also has a giant reserve, mostly in Colorado, and Hom Tov sees potential for its patented process there."

UPDATE: More detail here. Sounds very promising. The real issue may be figuring out how to survive the price war that OPEC will launch to keep it from succeeding. Well, if NYC and large parts of the M.E. aren't sheets of glass long before then...

"Think of it as a chance to confront fascism in 1920, if we had only had the guts to do it," Abizaid said. ... If we don’t have guts enough to confront this ideology today, we’ll go through World War Three tomorrow."

"This is what the argument that the enemy will pursue following a withdrawal from Iraq really means. It will send the signal that even relatively weak powers like Syria and Iran can openly destabilize their neighbors and attack the United States without any real fear that their regimes will be changed. And inevitably they will do so again and again. Perhaps the most cruel aspect of proposals to "withdraw" from Iraq without decisively winning is that the word is really a euphemism for a change of venue. Using the word "withdrawal" falsely implies a choice between war and peace when it is really a choice between war and more war."

"So what exactly is the next war in the Middle East probably going to be about? It will be about Israel going back into Lebanon and into Gaza to temporarily stop being rocketed from places from which they have withdrawn. By all means buy tickets for friendly Iraqis out Baghdad. But to play safe, make it round trip."

"Liberals tend to specialize in giving away other peoples' money."

"So what exactly is the next war in the Middle East probably going to be about? It will be about Israel going back into Lebanon and into Gaza to temporarily stop being rocketed from places from which they have withdrawn. By all means buy tickets for friendly Iraqis out Baghdad. But to play safe, make it round trip."

"None of the various schemes put forward in our public debate to “solve” Iraq can work — although much can be done to improve conditions — because they all inevitably assume that Iraq can be “solved” by itself. That includes the call for more troops on the ground. Even if you believe that those troops will dramatically improve security, it still doesn’t address the central question: can the people of the region believe we are going to win? They won’t believe it until they see us waging war effectively, which means we have to be able to threaten Iran and Syria with defeat.

It requires an Iran/Syria policy. Iran declared war against us 27 years ago and has waged it relentlessly, but we have yet to respond. It is astonishing how many diplomats and spooks actually believe Syria is a friend, when Assad drinks our blood from the same glass as Khamenei. Serious policies must aim at regime change in Tehran and Damascus. This does not require a military invasion of either country, but it does require active support for anti-regime political groups, combined with an explicit declaration that we want an end to the tyrannies. As a starter, it would be nice to have the Justice Department indict the Iranian leaders, following the example of Argentina, which just issued arrest warrants for former president Rafsanjani and his henchmen, who presided over the Hezbollah bombing of the Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires in 1996.

We do not have great intelligence on Iran, but we do know a lot about the sentiments of the overwhelming majority of Iranians, thanks to public-opinion polls conducted by the mullahs themselves. Those polls show upwards of seventy percent of Iranians — that would be 50 million people, mostly younger than 30 — who do not like the regime and want it changed. Those are terrific numbers for us and terrifying numbers for the mullahs, which is why they frantically arrest, torture and kill anyone who openly criticizes them, and why they have destroyed all remnants of free press, and why they are censoring Internet use, satellite-TV access, and cell phones. They, and their Syrian allies, know where their doom lies."

"One thing I've noticed in my frequent contacts with Israel and Israelis (being married to an Israeli) is that the Israeli state managed to severely damage the philanthropic impulse that once dominated Jewish life. A combination of statism taught in public schools, combined with the prevalent (and understandable) idea that one is owed something by the state after years and years of military service, has led many Israelis to conclude, completely contrary to Jewish tradition, that charity and volunteerism is for suckers. You can see how the attitude of folks like Peretz doesn't exactly help."

"“It’s 1938, and Iran is Germany,” Netanyahu said, “and Iran is racing to arm itself with atomic bombs.”

“Believe him and stop him,” Netanyahu added, speaking of Ahmadinejad. “This is what we must do. Everything else pales before this.”

Responding to angry Israel civilians who had lived in bomb shelters for three weeks this summer, Netanyahu told me he thought Israel must “finish the job” against Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

His successor as Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, ignored his advice.

Tehran’s leaders are betting that the United States fears Iran’s long reach, that we fear Iran’s ability to inflict pain on U.S. forces in Iraq, and on U.S. allies elsewhere in the Middle East and Europe through terrorist proxies and missile attacks.

If Iran has succeeded in deterring the United States of America even before it has acquired nuclear weapons, what kind of reach will they have once they can field a nuclear arsenal?

We still have options other than a military strike. As I have advocated many times in this space, I believe our best option is to develop a comprehensive plan to help the Iranian people to get rid of this wretched regime, before it causes more harm to them, to Iran’s neighbors, and to the world at large.

But the one option we do not have is to do nothing.

The nuclear clock is ticking, as Ahmadinejad himself now admits.

It’s your move, Mr. President."

"There are really only two questions:

1. Are they really willing to die to the extent that they indicate?

2. Are we really willing to kill them?

Actually, there's only one question."

"A man was arrested at Detroit Metropolitan Airport after officials say they found him carrying more than $78,000 in cash and a laptop computer containing information about nuclear materials and cyanide."

"Earlier this week, in a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, President Bush threatened Iran with “isolation” if it continues plowing forward in its nuclear program. This must have drawn cackles over at the crow’s nest in Tehran. President Ahmadinejad denies the Holocaust, promises to defeat the United States, and assures the world that Israel will soon disappear. He gleefully horrifies even the most anti-Bush Europeans. He brushes Security Council resolutions aside and insults the United Nations. International investors are pulling out. If Ahmadinejad is at all worried about isolation, he has a rather queer way of showing it. Security Council Resolution 1696 ordered Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment activities. Iran’s decision to ignore the resolution — which it is treaty-bound to obey — essentially abrogated the U.N. Charter, and should have been considered an act of war by those countries it has declared to be its enemies, chiefly Israel and the United States.

But today, nearly two decades after the end of the Cold War, the United States is clueless about where the nation’s new defensive perimeter lies. Neither we nor our enemies have any idea where we will stand and fight."

"The last few days ... the reincarnation of Trent Lott, the rise of Murtha, etc., etc. ... has cemented in my mind that anyone who has the remotest confidence in either of our major political parties has cement for brains. Forget the best and the brightest. The leadership of both parties is dominated by an almost willfully constructed collection of the dull, talentless and (often enough) corrupt. Most would be eminently unqualified for a real job that required serious education and, especially, creativityand original thought. Many aren't even good at public speaking and communicatiing - that baseline second mother's milk of politics. And here we are at one of the most critical passes in human history with a passel of Third World countries ruled by despots and religious fanatics about to obtain nuclear weapons (if they don't have them already)."

"With Iraqi society decomposing - or, at best, reverting to a medieval state with cell phones - the debate in Washington over whether to try to save the day by deploying more troops or withdrawing some is of secondary relevance.

What really matters is what our forces are ordered - and permitted - to do. With political correctness permeating our government and even the upper echelons of the military, we never tried the one technique that has a solid track record of defeating insurgents if applied consistently: the rigorous imposition of public order.

That means killing the bad guys. Not winning their hearts and minds, placating them or bringing them into the government. Killing them."

"BUT I DON’T GRADE ON A CURVE. I find it almost inconceivable that our most highly ranking elected officials are so intellectually incurious that they haven’t bothered getting themselves up to speed on the most pressing issue of our day.

The name Newt Gingrich has come up a lot during these conference calls. Whatever Gingrich’s faults were, he was a creative and active thinker. Most of the congressmen have gone out of their way to praise Newt and his legacy. Somehow I don’t see Newt educating himself on the most important issue of our time by merely consuming the spoon-feedings doled out by the known incompetents who populate our intelligence agencies."

"How would you like to be one of Iraq's handful of relatively honest cops knowing that any terrorist or sectarian butcher you bust is going to be back on the block before your next payday? And yeah, they know where you live.

Our "humanity" is cowardice masquerading as morality. We're protecting self-appointed religious executioners with our emphasis on a "universal code of behavior" that only exists in our fantasies. By letting the thugs run the streets, we've abandoned the millions of Iraqis who really would prefer peaceful lives and a modicum of progress.

We're blind to the fundamental moral travesty in Iraq (and elsewhere): Spare the killers in the name of human rights, and you deprive the overwhelming majority of the population of their human rights. Instead of being proud of ourselves for our "moral superiority," we should be ashamed to the depths of our souls."

"It continued: "Just as in one 33-day war more than 50 percent of Israel was destroyed, and the hope of its supporters for the continued life of this regime was broken, it is likely that in the next battle, the second half will also collapse." [ Yes, certainly. They must be destroyed since they're evil and have nuclear weapons to oppress us with. But of course they won't use them in their death throws (because the Israeli's are actually just an external prop to keep the Iranians under the thumb of the Mullahs). Or is it that they believe they will win a nuclear war? That's what the Iranian leaders like Rafsanjani have said in public of course. But we refuse to believe they're insane. Just like Chamberlain thought Hitler was a fine negotiating partner... -ed. ] "

"What irony. One of the left's main knocks on President Bush over the years is that he's been too blinded by loyalty and that his administration has suffered from cronyism. Yet here you have the new Speaker of the House, whose drapes haven't even been measured or hung yet, pulling out all the stops to install an ethically-challenged pal for Majority Leader out of blind loyalty and passing over another perfectly competent member (Jane Harman) out of pure pique to turn over the Chairmanship of the Intelligence Committee to a man who was impeached for taking bribes. Not the most auspicious of beginnings, I'd say."

"When Saddam was found guilty and condemned to death, the Sunni Arab world was shocked. While Saddam was not well liked in the Sunni Arab world, he was admired for taking on the Iranians and Americans, and surviving. Plus, Saddam had a flair for publicity, and managed to portray himself as an Arab hero. So the thought of executing him brought forth outrage (largely unheard in the West), that also fueled the idea that the United States was a secret ally of Iran, against the Arabs. Now, of course this sounds absurd to Westerners, but it seems real enough in the Arab world (which is over 80 percent Sunni). Iraq has long been a key bulwark in defending the Arab world, and especially the "Arab Oil," from Iranian aggression. Now, because of the United States, it has come to this. The chief defender of Arabs against Iranians, Saddam Hussein, is to be hung like a common criminal. Saddam's Sunni Arab supporters are being driven out of Iraq. And now the Americans, tired of the casualties, are going to pull out of Iraq, leaving it a new province of Iran."

"The principal fascination of watching train wrecks and other predictable disasters is the foreknowledge of the impact before the actual collision actually happens. In the moments leading up to the crash the event almost seems preventable. Occasionally the onlookers will even shout, though they know the shouts are futile.

The amazing thing is how many of the actors who will soon be capering all over the wreckage of the battlefield, looking very solemn and concerned and pointing their fingers with trembling self-righteousness, are at this very moment seemingly indifferent to the gathering storm."

"Criticizing the international community in his GA speech for not acting more forcefully in trying to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power - "No one cared then and no one seems to care now," he said, again drawing on the Nazi parallel - Netanyahu warned that Tehran's nuclear and missile program "goes way beyond the destruction of Israel - it is directed to achieve world-wide range. It's a global program in the service of a mad ideology."

Large sections of the international community, he said, also misunderstood the nature of radical Islam and its role in the Mideast conflict. "What happens in Iran affects what happens in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, not the other way round," he said."

"We are seeing, I think, the systematic rehabilitation of Saddam Hussein's reputation. It is fast becoming the conventional wisdom on the left that Saddam was a benign, progressive dictator--sort of an Arab Fidel Castro. The airbrushing continues, perhaps, with the claim that Iraq never did have WMDs.

Still, it would be quite remarkable if the Danish intelligence service really said that Saddam didn't never had WMDs, since he used them repeatedly, both in the war against Iran and against his own citizens, and U.N. inspectors supervised the destruction of Saddam's "extensive CW [chemical weapons] arsenal" before vacating Iraq in 1998, while leaving large quantities of chemical and biological agents unaccounted for, according to UNMOVIC reports.

I suppose we could take a perverse satisfaction in Denmark's intelligence agencies being even more in the dark than our own, but I suspect the error is Editor and Publisher's, and represents just one more step in the MSM's attempted rehabilitation of Saddam Hussein."

"Reasonably, the world is now assessing the US through the prism of its non-action against Iran and North Korea rather than through the prism of Iraq. And the consequence of the view that Iraq was a deviation from a norm of US passivity is nothing less than the complete breakdown of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty.

Last week the Sunday New York Times reported that Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and the UAE have all announced their intention to build civilian nuclear reactors. Last Tuesday, in an official visit to China, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak reportedly signed an agreement with Chinese leader Hu Jintao for China to build nuclear reactors in Egypt.

It is not hard to see the lesson of these developments. As the Iraq campaign shows clearly, while the price of taking action to prevent rogue regimes from acquiring nuclear weapons is high, the price of not acting is far higher.

Relating this wisdom to Iran earlier this year, Senator John McCain said, "There is only one thing worse than the United States exercising a military option [to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons], and that is a nuclear-armed Iran."

The US and its allies are paying a high price for having successfully prevented Saddam from getting nuclear bombs. The price that Israel or the US, or both, will pay to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear bombs is liable to be even higher. Yet the alternative to paying that price will be suffering, destruction and death on an unimaginable scale."

Steyn: We're All Spaniards Now

"As it is, we're in a very dark place right now. It has been a long time since America unambiguously won a war, and to choose to lose Iraq would be an act of such parochial self-indulgence that the American moment would not endure, and would not deserve to. Europe is becoming semi-Muslim, Third World basket-case states are going nuclear, and, for all that 40 percent of planetary military spending, America can't muster the will to take on pipsqueak enemies. We think we can just call off the game early, and go back home and watch TV.

It doesn't work like that. Whatever it started out as, Iraq is a test of American seriousness. And, if the Great Satan can't win in Vietnam or Iraq, where can it win? That's how China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Venezuela and a whole lot of others look at it. "These Colors Don't Run" is a fine T-shirt slogan, but in reality these colors have spent 40 years running from the jungles of Southeast Asia, the helicopters in the Persian desert, the streets of Mogadishu. ... To add the sands of Mesopotamia to the list will be an act of weakness from which America will never recover."

"I entirely agree that it would be utter, disgusting folly to try to sell the American public on the theory that we could negotiate anything decent with the mullahs. But the whole theory comes from an alternate universe, since we have been trying to do just that for 27 years, more or less non-stop. I have been writing about it for years now. It was the great dream of Richard Haas and Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell in the first Bush Administration, and it failed. The Iranians want us dead or dominated, they don't want to reach some kind of agreement, honorable or dishonorable.

Read Pollack's long discussion in his book The Persian Puzzle. He was involved in efforts to make a deal for years and years, and it was just impossible. He finally concluded that the Iranians don't want a deal. For the deal makers from Texas and Indiana to suggest that there is any reason to scrape their knees in Tehran and Damascus in order to get their lips onto the mullahs' slippers is ridiculous as well as feckless. Finally, no less a "realist" than General Scowcroft himself tried to exchange thoughts with Iranian President Ahmadi-Nezhad a few weeks back, and came out saying there was no hope."

"And that message, surprisingly, is that we must love one another or die. J. Robert Oppenheimer thought, as he beheld the fireball of the first atomic test at Alamogordo, that he heard the Hindu god Shiva whisper "I am become death, the destroyer of worlds". He understood at that moment that mankind's moral capacity would have to expand to match its technical prowess or it would perish. If Islam desires the secret of the stars it must embrace the kuffar [JK: unbeliever] as its brother -- or die.""

"To the point of Wretchard's post, I'd add that going to war, boots on the ground, in the heart of the middle east has disabused hotheaded jihadists -- and others elsewhere in the world -- of the unfounded notion that the American soldier couldn't fight anymore . . .

. . . while it re-confirmed the belief (truism?) that the American political class could be shamelessly manipulated and is fundamentally weak. [ And the Israeli political class is doing none too well either -- never mind Europe... -ed. ] "

"Does this mean Bush is still Hitler? I'm pretty sure Hitler never let his opponents win an election, did he? Unless... this is all part of Rove's plan."

"The other factor going for them was the fact that members of the mainstream media generally were not sympathetic to the U.S. government. In the last year, media outlets revealed several intelligence programs – often spinning them in a manner that put the intelligence community and the military in a bad light. A reporter for Time magazine, who embedded with the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, had his article completely rewritten by editors who felt his portrayal of American troops was too positive. The media did not even admit that documents, recovered during the liberation of Iraq, showing Saddam Hussein was pursuing nuclear weapons, until it could be spun in a manner that made the Department of Defense look bad. The media even started to refuse to publish letters from Department of Defense officials which challenged misreporting on the war. Heroes like Paul Ray Smith, who was awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously, were studiously ignored.

Now, the stage is set for al Qaeda to win a major victory. It was a simple matter of getting the American media to ignore the battlefield victories while accentuating al Qaeda's attacks. What could not be accomplished on the battlefield – an American retreat from Iraq – was instead achieved in American newsrooms."

"Fox News has been showing "Obsession," a documentary about radical Islam and the West's hesitancy to confront it, all this weekend. The last show is tonight at 9pm (Central time). Below are two videos of the program: one an abridged version and one the full version of the documentary (as was posted on YouTube)."

"To be sure, like Kerry in 2004 deciding that the murderers and rapists were now his brave "band of brothers," the left often discover a sudden enthusiasm for the previous war once a new one's come along. Since Iraq, they've been all in favor of Afghanistan, though back in the fall of 2001 they were convinced it was a quagmire, graveyard of empire, unwinnable, another Vietnam, etc. Oh, and they also discovered a belated enthusiasm for the first President Bush's shrewd conduct of the 1991 Gulf War, though at the time Kerry and most other Democrats voted against that one, too. In this tedious shell game, no matter how frantically the left shuffles the cups, you never find the one shriveled pea of The Military Intervention We're Willing To Support When it Matters.

To be sure, the progressives deserve credit for having refined their view of the military: not murderers and rapists, just impoverished suckers too stupid for anything other than soldiering. The left still doesn't understand that it's the soldier who guarantees every other profession -- the defeatist New York Times journalist, the anti-American college professor, the insurgent-video-of-the-day host at CNN, the hollow preening blowhard senator. Kerry's gaffe isn't about one maladroit Marie Antoinette of the Senate but a glimpse into the mind-set of too many Americans."

"There are millions of people – actually, probably billions now – who genuinely believe that the wealth of the US was stolen from third world countries. This is one of the great perks of living a life free of the ability to think critically and do a little research. I have heard this slander repeated so many times I decided to look into some actual numbers to see if there is anything to this charge. This is a perfect example of how critical thinking allows you to see the unseen. That attitude, Google and ten minutes is all you need to shoot lies like this down in flames.

Okay. The US Per capita income is $41,300. That of a poor, third world country –Djibouti, say -- is $2,070.

Now it gets interesting. The US gross domestic product – the value of everything we produce in a year -- was last measured as $12 trillion, 277 billion dollars (hundreds of millions of dollars being too insignificant to count in this economy).

The GDP of Djibouti is 1 billion, 641 million US dollars.

A little basic arithmetic shows me that US has a GDP 7,481 times greater than Djibouti. A 365 day year, composed of 24 hours in a day, yields 8760 hours per year. Hang on to that for a sec.

Now, let’s suppose the U.S. went into Djibouti with the Marines, and stole every single thing that’s produced there in a year…just grant the premise and say we stole every goddam thing they make. If we hauled away all of Djibouti’s wealth, how long would it run the U.S. Economy, which is 7,481 times greater?

Well, 8,760 hours divided by 7,481 gives you an answer of 1.17 hours. In other words, it takes the U.S. 1.17 hours to produce what Djibouti produces in a year.

If the US really did go in and steal everything that the bottom thirty countries in the world produce, it might power the US economy for two or three days.

Conversely, the billions and billions of dollars the US spends annually in aid, rent, etc. – plus uncounted billions more from private American charities – would supply the entire GDP of Djibouti for hundreds of years.

Where’s your Imperialism argument now?"

We can fly. Wow.

"The evidence suggests that massive illegal immigration causes as much upheaval inside Mexico as it supposedly prevents - while aggravating, not solving, problems in the United States.

What we need from this new Congress is not more hysteria about illegal immigration, but more re-examination of what seems true but really is not."

"deMause outlines a four-part process that the fantasy leader undergoes in relation to the group. At first the group will see him as unrealistically strong, magically able to unify the group and keep enemies at bay. Certainly we saw this in the months after 9-11, when President Bush was so popular. Again, his popularity had little to do with the actual merits of his policies, but with the public’s need to feel safe, and the feeling that Bush would protect them. Stage two is the “cracking” stage, when the feelings of magical nurturing begin to deteriorate, so that the public’s mood begins to feel unstable and dangerous. The leader begins to be experienced as weak, unable to control events. Looking back, I believe that this really started with the successful attacks on President Bush’s Thanksgiving trip to Iraq a couple of years ago, but especially after the Terry Schiavo matter.

Stage three, “collapse,” occurs when the public begins to feel that the fantasy leader is helpless to prevent catastrophe -- when the group’s anxiety has become unhinged and uncontained in a completely unrealistic way. This brings on pure rage and free-floating paranoid fantasies of death and destruction. Thus we see the President unrealistically blamed and vilified for all sorts of things outside his control -- homosexual predators, hurricaines, rising (but never falling) gas prices, global warming, deadly flu pandemics, etc. He is seen as weak and vulnerable, which triggers a wave of near homicidal anxiety that aims to purify the group by ritual slaying of the divine king, identical to what took place in the most primitive tribes."

"A member or supporter of Hezbollah who calls himself Al Ghaliboon appeared in my comments and completely dominated the thread. Normally I don't let somebody show up and do that, but it's not every day that a group of Americans gets to argue with someone like him."

"I have since had the chance to read about 500 or 600 messages. Almost all of them politely phrased (I exempt one from "the Riordan family" who evidently have not forgiven the long history of British depredation in Ireland) and almost all of them appending the list of college degrees as well as of medals and citations held, these letters show a very deep and interesting rift in which Mr. Kerry plays only a secondary part. Many of my respondents agreed that his words may not have meant or intended quite what they first seemed to mean, but they also felt that the klutziness was Freudian, so to speak, in that the senator's patrician contempt for grunts and dogfaces was bound to come out sooner or later."

"In 1821, with truly remarkable foresight, Mr. Jefferson wrote in a letter to Macon that 'our Government is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation first [i.e., centralisation] and then corruption, its necessary consequence.'"

"If the country is about to re-embrace Scowcroftian realism, we’re about to realize a hard lesson about that policy’s limitation. And if the military is going to return to worrying about the enemies it chooses instead of the enemies that choose us, we’ll have bigger troubles still."

""The Republicans lost and the Democrats won for the same reason -- they distanced themselves from their base. "

That's the sentence of the year, in my opinion."

"Hamas has now called for Moslems around the world to attack America. In the past, Hamas has not done this, mainly because the U.S. was the major contributor of aid to Palestinians. But most of this aid has been cut off since Hamas won the election to run the Palestinian territories. Hamas refused to back off on its call for the destruction of Israel, so, by law, American aid was stopped. Apparently Hamas does not believe the aid will ever be restored. [ Oh, how can that be? Why we'll pull out of Iraq and everything will be just fine. I'm just SURE of it. LOL -ed. ] "

Warren On Point Again...

"Why did it evaporate? For the same reason then as now. The “alternative America”, ruling from its ivory towers in academia, the media, and the entertainment industry, could not understand why anyone should die for any cause at all; could not distinguish between freedom and tyranny; and instinctively sided with any enemy of what they fancifully imagined to be “American imperialism”.

My 21st birthday happened to coincide with the final evacuation of Saigon. From my modest experience on the ground in that country, I knew what was coming next. The boat people were no surprise to me. I think that was the day I fully realized, in adult terms, that evil often prevails in this world. So this is nothing new.

The fate that will befall all those millions of courageous Iraqis, showing the dye on their fingers after they had voted -- in defiance of all the terror threats -- will not come as a surprise to me, either. They are being sold out, as the Vietnamese were before them. But the consequences of abandoning Iraq will come home to the United States and the West, in a way Vietnam never touched us. [ A new variant of "Those who do not remember history are condemned to repeat it" looms: "Those who remember propaganda but mistake it for history, are condemned to ... some very nasty surprises..." -ed. ] "

""When Republicans worry more about staying in government than about limiting government, they get thrown out of government." [ Of course, they lose the other way too since then they're not giving anything away. Hard medicine is rarely appreciated and never popular... -ed. ] "

"Then, turning to his mentor, the major 20th-century philosopher Eric Voegelin, Prof. Sandoz expounds his account of the underpinnings of reason, religion, and social order -- using Voegelin’s deep grasp of the re-emergence of Gnosticism in postmodern public life. For at the root of apparent “new-age” decadence, are very old heresies about the nature of man and God, which have again captured the imaginations of the fanciful, so many centuries after having been seemingly slain by the triumph of Catholic Christianity.

Finally, returning to the present, Prof. Sandoz begins to suggest that the very challenges to the old Western project -- of founding our liberty in religious truth -- are rekindling it. Under the pressure of events, including the unfolding of Islamic jihadism, men and women are recovering “public consciousness of truth about the transcendent divine Ground of our being”. (Unlike the Romans, we have something to fall back on.)"

"Most people knew this would happen, including some I think, who called most loudly for a ceasefire. Not because they were malevolent but because of a deep-seated human desire to avoid a present unpleasantness even if it means worse in the future. We all know the feeling. Fly now, pay later. Get a new suite of furniture. No interest until 2010. When images of bombs falling and the pictures of people dying were printed in the papers during the recent war in Lebanon what was more natural than to want to make it go away? Even for a while. Even for a very little while.

So now hello darkness our old friend. We've come to talk to you again. As we knew we would."

"The Provost of Erfurt, Elfriede Begrich, told reporters that Weisselberg’s widow had said that he killed himself because he was alarmed at the spread of Islam and the Church’s stance on the issue.

She described Weisselberg as an erudite man who had addressed repeatedly the Church’s position on Islam in meetings over the past three to four years. He had written to her, urging her to take the matter more seriously, she said.

The Protestant Bishop of Saxony, Axel Noack, said the suicide had shocked the community and that he hoped it would not hurt relations between Christians and Muslims."

Reminder: Time To See Obsession

The New Buckit has made it easy. There's even a 12 minute version... GO. WATCH. NOW.

"Quote of the Day - [Iraqi] Judge to Ramsey Clark: "You are ridiculing the Iraqi people. You have come here from America. Get out.""