The Ostrich Position -- Both Sides Now

"Scott Johnson recently wrote about one such case in the Weekly Standard. It’s the story of a very big lie, the lie according to which Yasser Arafat was not involved in the ghastly murders of two American diplomats and a Belgian colleague in Sudan in the early seventies. It was a blatant lie, and it’s been repeated by American spokesmen for more than thirty years. Indeed, it was repeated very recently to Scott Johnson by a State Department official—whom he names in the Weekly Standard article—with great conviction and more than a tinge of contempt at Scott’s nerve for continuing to ask about it.

Unlucky! State Department historians published the proof that we had known, right from the beginning, that Arafat had personally authorized the murders. Everyone from Kissinger to the present has either been lied to or has wittingly repeated the old lie.

Why? For two reasons. First, because CIA had made a deal with the PLO, or rather CIA had appeased the PLO. CIA agreed to provide the Palestinian terrorists with intelligence, in exchange for a PLO promise not to kill American diplomats. Second, because Kissinger and the other master strategists of the Nixon Administration wanted to advance a “peace process,” and they had to have PLO compliance for that to have any hope of success, and the American public would never support it if they knew Arafat had ordered the assassination of our diplomats.

Bob Baer, a longtime CIA case officer in the Middle East, had a similar experience. He had lost close friends in the bombing of the American Embassy in Beirut in the early eighties, and every time he tried to find out who had killed them, he ran into a stone wall. He was constantly told that we just did not know. But he persisted, just as Scott Johnson did, and he too arrived at the truth: the bombing of the Embassy had been an act of war by the Iranian regime, using Palestinian terrorists to carry out the actual suicide mission. He too found that “we” had known about it all along, but the truth had been suppressed for two decades.

Why? Because those who controlled the information didn’t want the top policy maker—Ronald Reagan—to know it, since they “knew” he would not let it pass, and they didn’t want trouble with Iran.

I, too, had a similar experience. I helped organize meetings in Rome in December, 2001, with Pentagon Iran experts and knowledgeable Iranians. They provided information about Iranian killers in Afghanistan, whose mission was to kill American soldiers. The information was accurate, and the would-be killers did not accomplish their mission (I hope they were killed, but I am not privy to that information). Shortly thereafter, Secretary of State Powell and his deputy, Richard Armitage, with the agreement of Director of Central Intelligence Tenet, demanded that all such contacts be terminated. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld gave orders that no Pentagon employee speak to “Iranians” (which prompted one Iranian-American official to ask if conversations with parents were included in the order).

Why? Because they did not want trouble with Iran, and they “knew” that if President Bush had that information, he would not let it pass.

We have now had further examples of this sort of lie. We now know that top American officials have known all along that Iran has been waging war on us in Iraq, but this information has been suppressed.

Why? Because they, too did not want trouble with Iran. Military leaders did not want a two-front war (even though it should have been obvious, even before the onset of Operation Iraqi Freedom, that we were engaged in a regional war, whatever our wishes were), and the spooks and diplomats convinced themselves that we could cut a deal with the mullahs.

Lots of lying, as you see, but the biggest lie of all is the lie the liars told themselves: the monstrous lie that we can arrive at peace with our enemies without first defeating them.

I am told that we have discovered truly explosive information about the Iranian role in Iraq in the recent raids in Baghdad and Irbil, the raids that led to the arrest of high officers in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps. I believe we are all entitled to that information. To be sure, some of it may be “actionable intelligence,” which must be kept secret—even from the New York Times—until we have acted on it. But the American people are entitled to know the big picture, which is the one some of us have been painting for many years: Iran is waging war on us, killing our soldiers, slaughtering Iraqis, enabling Hizbollah in Lebanon, empowering Hamas and Islamic Jihad in their war against Israel.

The American people cannot properly judge our performance in this war unless they know its true dimensions. The president must provide us with that basic truth."

Now You See It...

Via Baron: What I'm suspecting the Islamists will soon find a way to remove from YouTube... And oh how you need to see it...

Britain: 18% And Soon Over?

"I have always thought that if the general population knew what I knew, then the political scene would change. I was sadly mistaken, and not just about the population at large. What should have triggered outrage was ignored by all, including the so-called highbrow newspapers. The Guardian refused to even mention it, whilst the rest of the British media were interested in one thing and one thing only, Big Brother.

“Undercover Mosques” is perhaps the most important programme to have been made in the UK since the invention of the television. It is not the time to detail the transcript here, but it was chilling, terrifying stuff. That the British, in their entirety, ignored it in favour of the appalling and degrading Big Brother, possibly the worst programme ever made is cause for concern, yet could the pathologically suicidal British fall any lower? Well yes, they could.

***

Vladimr Bukovsky is on record as stating that Communism never died and is now being inflicted incrementally on the West via the European Union. Do the British know anyting of Bukovsky, or indeed of Communism? No, they do not, the BBC et al refuse to talk to him, after all, as an imprisoned and tortured dissident what does he REALLY know about Communism in comparison to the utopian, idealistic British liberal elites who run our government, media, civil service, police and educational institutions.

Do the British in fact know anything, absolutely anything of any significance at all anymore or is the limit of their thought process set at the bar of Big Brother? We also learned this week that a pass mark of 18% is all that is necessary to gain a C grade exam pass. 50% of our schoolchildren leave school without attaining this in English and Maths, yet 100% of them know everything about TV “celebrities” who can barely speak their native language.

And so we ignore the ideology of one movement who state they wish to eradicate us and another which killed close to 100 million people, whilst we embrace the ideology of celebrity, ignorance and pathology."

Moderate Muslims = Good Germans?

"Much of "Undercover Mosque" was filmed with a hidden camera. The sound is clear, but the footage is often shaky and tentative. Ironically, this is now the predominant style for hip documentary filmmaking, which affects a nervous, frantic style. Here you have the real thing — it's nervous and frantic because it has to be. The preachers shown, including an African-American convert, are jaw-droppingly explicit in their revolutionary plans for Britain and the world.

One, Dr. Ijaz Mian, at the Regents Park Mosque in London, official seat of "moderate" Islam in Britain, talks openly about his desire to see Saudi-style religious police operating in the United Kingdom. He urges Muslims to wait until they are sufficiently numerous to make Britons surrender: "Hands Up!" Another predicts jihad will be waged against all nonbelievers and a British Islamic state established, with the flogging of drunkards, chopping off of thieves' hands, and jihad against non-Muslims all on the menu. "You have to live like a state within a state until you take over," he says. Women are "deficient," and should be marriageable before puberty because Muhammad himself married a nine-year-old. The animus against homosexuals and Jews is particularly virulent, meaning not merely condemnation, but explicit calls for their (eventual) murder. One imam even mimics a throat-cutting." [ I can't find the link right now but this puts me in mind of a bracing line from David Warren to the effect (apologies to David if I have it wrong) that "Hitler rowed his oars through a sea of good Germans". The moderate Muslims there are -- however many that is -- are quite simply too much in fear for their lives and their families to speak up. You don't need very many examples like Rushdie and Ayaan Hirsi Ali before you "get it". As Lee Harris points out (shorter article here), they are in the thrall and intimidation of "ruthless men" with an apocalyptic "fantasy ideology". -ed. ]

Comment Of The Day 070122

"I do not think that financing will be required for what we need, especially. No more so than did the great luminaries of the past, ancient and modern, required a business model to alter the world with their divine ideas. I think it will be, in all likelihood, done by people such as yourself, who are not in this for the money, and to whom money would rightly seem a paltry reason to engage against the darkness.

There's something fundamental going on in the Information War, as far as I can tell, and it has a great deal to do with a pent up desire for honest dealings among men. This yearning is of the Spirit, and no amount of money can command it into existence or rally it. It must come by the natural will of those who are strong, knowledgeable and wise enough to speak the truth, and inspire our sense of mutual respect, love and duty to one another, and our posterity. When this happens then money will not be at issue, nor will a business model be required.

So it seems to me.

And furthermore, Carthage must be destroyed."

The Same As It Ever Was...

"The meeting in London was doomed from the outset. The Arab strongman's envoy held all the cards - three craft had already been hijacked, their passengers and crew held hostage in an inhospitable and almost unreachable land. The American ambassador knew the ransom demand would be high, but even he could not have imagined just how exorbitant it would be. To meet it would require one-tenth of America's annual budget.

Lest the adventurous Yanks dare to contemplate a military attack to rescue their captured comrades, Abd al-Rahman al-Ajar provided a most unpleasant revelation: the Koran declares that any nation that does not bow to the authority of the Muslims is sinful, and it is the right and duty of Muslims to make war upon it and take prisoner any of its people they may find. Further, any Muslim slain in battle against such an enemy would be promised a place in Paradise.

"We ought not to fight them at all unless we determine to fight them forever," the furious but helpless ambassador relayed to his government. Congress would authorize no such fight, however, and voted instead to pay the ransom."

Pakistan Shocka #89326

"One former Taliban commander said in an interview that he had been jailed by Pakistani intelligence officials because he would not go to Afghanistan to fight. He said that, for Western and local consumption, his arrest had been billed as part of Pakistan's crackdown on the Taliban in Pakistan. " [ Did I forget to mention that they have nukes? -ed. ]

QOTD: "Dwell on the past and you'll lose an eye; forget the past and you'll lose both eyes. --Old Russian Proverb"

You won't find this on the Nightly News either. Doesn't fit the meme now does it?

A Societal Thing

"Beck might be a conservative, but he is no lockstep, water-carrying Republican. Like most Americans, he is center-right. And, like most Americans, he too was fed up this past November with the vacuum of ideas coming out of Washington.

"I think the Republicans and the Democrats are both taking us to the same destination -- hell in a handbasket," Beck explained. "One of them is flying on the Concorde, and the other one's taking a very slow steam train, but the destination is the same place."

To Beck, that trip to hell does not stop with our politicians. It is societal.

"Too many people are concerned about their party, too many people are concerned about their labor union, and too many people are concerned about their own business," he says. "You see it with your own children in school, where you see a child that has been misbehaving and they're called on the carpet, and the parent immediately says, 'Not my child!' It is because it's no longer about the collective; it's about 'me.' "

Sweetly Touching Hillary

"This isn't a question about whether you think the plan will work, but whether you want it to work. And nearly 40 percent of respondents either don't know or are actively rooting for failure. Which is to say: more dead American troops and more dead Iraqi civilians. Asked whether they want the surge to succeed, 34 percent of Democrats answered ''No,'' and so did 19 percent of independents and 11 percent of Republicans. What were the numbers like for D-Day?

The problem isn't that our politics is ''bitter'' and ''partisan,'' so much as that it's post-modern. In Congress, Democrats have decided to chip away at the war with various symbolic postures but not to oppose it outright: That way, if things go well, they can muscle in on the credit, but if things go badly, they'll be able to say they told you so without getting stuck with the blame. Over on the other side, the usual Republican squishes (Olympia Snowe et al.) have decided that ''the facts on the ground'' have mysteriously changed and their position on the war is now ''evolving.'' By ''the facts on the ground,'' they mean the ground around the polling booths back home rather than any ground in Baghdad or the Sunni Triangle. Somewhere far away there is a real country called Iraq where real people live and die. But Iraq in domestic terms is now mostly a political calculation and, when it comes to calibrating the precise degree of Defeat Lite that works best for one, most Democrats and more and more Republicans are pushing the rest of the planet to the farthest fringes of the map.

Whether the rest of the planet will be content with a non-speaking part remains to be seen. But increasing numbers of the American people reject the post-9/11 paradigm, and there will be a lot of votes for the quiet-life option in 2008. A doctrinaire liberal disciplined enough to pass himself off as a blank slate with sappy soft-focus multiculti bona fides would seem to offer the most symbolically appealing repudiation of the war years. And all we have to do is whistle: We don't have to say anything and we don't have to do anything, which suits us just fine.

And if Hillary thinks everyone's going to pursue stories about some long-ago madrassah, she has a sweetly touching faith in the American media."

Did I Forget To Mention It Was Greeley Where Things Went South?

Dean's not a big fan of Dinesh D'Souza's new book for at least one reason that I agree wholeheartedly with and have the inside scoop on for you:

"In D’Souza’s view, beleaguered, socially conservative Islamacists feel besieged by the American culture. Especially offensive to the Islamic world is our “blue state” culture that has brought things like homosexuality, abortion, cruddy reality shows and insipid pop artists to the doorstep of a Muslim world that treasures nothing more than traditional values. D’Souza further theorizes that if right thinking Americans can somehow control the pathologies of the American left or at the very least let the Muslim world know that the rest of us consider them pathologies also, the Muslim world will no longer hate America.

This view of things is dangerously misguided, and dangerously ignorant. The Radical Islamic world doesn’t hate us because our TV shows are too racy or our women too provocative. The Radical Islamic world hates us not for what we are but for what we aren’t. Specifically, the haters at issue loathe us because we’re not Muslims. [ Unfortunately true. -ed. ]

Here’s how the Ayatollah Khomeini put it:

“Those who know nothing of Islam pretend that Islam counsels against war. Those who say this are witless. Islam says: Kill all the unbelievers just as they
would kill you all! Kill them, put them to the sword and scatter their armies.” [ Yes. Westerners are all just like Khomeini's minion's. I know the very first thing I do upon waking up is think of how I can go kill me some Muslims. Sigh. -ed. ]

One of the things that makes “The Enemy at Home” so strange is that D’Souza never grapples with this side of Islam. Especially odd is the fact that even though D’Souza quotes Khomeini at several points, he never cites this particular speech. This is almost inexplicable; the above quote comes from a 1942 Khomeini work that is more or less the equivalent of the madman’s Gettysburg Address. It’s his signature piece. It defies belief that D’Souza delved even superficially into the Khomeini collection and these comments didn’t catch his eye. [ Definitely a huge blooper. -ed. ]

I have other complaints with the book. There are many instances that suggest either sloppiness or intellectual dishonesty on D’Souza’s part. To give us insight into the Jihadist loathing for American culture, D’Souza relies on the writings of the father of modern Radical Islam, Sayyid Qutb. Qutb spent two years in America and then returned to the Middle East thoroughly disgusted by American culture. He spent the rest of his life chronicling his hatred for America’s decadent society in assorted writings.

Here’s where D’Souza is dishonest or careless: He informs the reader that Qutb died in 1966. He fails to inform the reader that the time Qutb spent in America was between 1948 and 1950. [ Yes! This is the "The Local Root Cause" I wrote of quite a while back. If you want a real eye-opener overview of Al-Qaeda, Qtub and Greeley, you should check out 5280 Magazine's "Al Qaeda's Greeley Roots". It's a little longish but well worth the investment. The point toward the end about enforced virtue not being a virtue at all deserves special attention. I couldn't agree with it more. -ed. ]

Since D’Souza blames our culture for much of the Islamic world’s animus towards America, this is no small matter. The culture of the 1940’s wasn’t what it is today. Perhaps Qutb was scandalized by pop culture products of the time like the overt raciness of “The Best Years of Our Lives” or the raw sexuality contained on the typical Bing Crosby record; the man was after all a lunatic. But the culture of the late 1940’s contained none of the things that D’Souza so obviously deplores and that he postulates are inflaming the Muslim world. The 1940’s had no filthy hippies, no gangsta rap, no gay weddings." [ In other words, they also hate us for what we were before we became what we are. That is, even before we became something that D'Souza fantasizes we could retract. How I wish it weren't so... -ed. ]

I Feel Anxious To Provide Them With Better Conditions

On those few occasions when I'm not killing them like bugs or standing around looking stupid... (Also see here.)

AP All Propaganda Update

"It seems rather obvious by now that the AP relied on a source for over 60 stories over a seven-month period that manipulated the wire service in order to get insurgent propaganda broadcast around the world. Instead of following its own rules regarding the identification of sources and acquiring confirmation -- rules expressly intended to avoid getting manipulated in this manner -- the editors at the AP rushed these stories to print, cognizant of their inflammatory nature.

Those are the facts. That's what the AP is supposed to report. They blew it, and they erode their credibility every day they continue to deny it."

Today's (Second) Holocaust Update

"Still, the second holocaust will be different in the sense that Ahmadinejad will not actually see and touch those he so wishes dead (and, one may speculate, this might cause him disappointment as, in his years of service in Iranian death squads in Europe, he may have acquired a taste for actual blood). And, indeed, there will be no scenes like the following, quoted in Daniel Mendelsohn’s recent The Lost, A Search for Six of Six Million, in which is described the second Nazi action in Bolechow, Poland, in September 1942:

A terrible episode happened with Mrs. Grynberg. The Ukrainians and Germans, who had broken into her house, found her giving birth. The weeping and entreaties of bystanders didn’t help and she was taken from her home in a nightshirt and dragged into the square in front of the town hall.

There… she was dragged onto a dumpster in the yard of the town hall with a crowd of Ukrainians present, who cracked jokes and jeered and watched the pain of childbirth and she gave birth to a child. The child was immediately torn from her arms along with its umbilical cord and thrown - It was trampled by the crowd and she was stood on her feet as blood poured out of her with bleeding bits hanging and she stood that way for a few hours by the wall of the town hall, afterwards she went with all the others to the train station where they loaded her into a carriage in a train to Belzec.

In the next holocaust there will be no such heart-rending scenes, of perpetrators and victims mired in blood (though, to judge from pictures of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the physical effects of nuclear explosions can be fairly unpleasant).

But it will be a holocaust nonetheless.

[The writer is a professor of Middle Eastern history at Ben-Gurion University.]"

What our brilliant MSM can't be bothered to tell you about the "surge". Or is that doesn't want you to know?

Sixty Billion Here, Tens of Millions There

"Has North Korean leader Kim Jong Il subverted the United Nations Development Program, the $4 billion agency that is the U.N.’s main development arm, and possibly stolen tens of millions of dollars of hard currency in the process? According to a top official of the U.S. State Department — using findings made by the U.N.’s own auditors — the answer appears to be a disturbing yes, so far as UNDP programs in North Korea itself are concerned. And just as disturbingly, the U.N. aid agency bureaucracy has kept the scamming a secret since at least 1999 — while the North Korean dictator and his regime were ramping up their illegal nuclear weapons program and making highly publicized tests of intermediate range ballistic missiles."

Read. Ledeen. Now.

"Is it not shameful to see Secretary Rice knocking herself out to defend the terrorist state in would-be Palestine, and doing virtually nothing to defend the fledgling democracy in Lebanon?

A fine mess you’ve got us into, I think Laurel once said to Hardy. And the hell of it is that we could win this thing simply by sticking to our own announced principles, and support democratic revolution. I sometimes think that compassionate conservatives are the last true Marxists, because they seem to have a touching faith in vast, impersonal forces that will change the world. The truth is that men and women create change, if they will only fight for it. Which, alas, it seems we are not.

Where does all this lead? If the Democrats have their announced way, we will be humiliated in Iraq and leave in disgrace, thereby enhancing the global charisma of the jihad, enormously strengthening the terror masters, and ensuring the success of the Iranian nuclear project. How could any self-respecting fanatic not then believe that the moment of reconquista was at hand? We would then face terror on an epic scale, here and everywhere.

Alternatively, it leads to military war against Iran and Syria. This president may have decided he will not leave scenario #1 to his successor, nor to his biographers. If so, he will go after the nuclear project, and perhaps against Iran’s armies and navy as well. It would be the proof of an utterly failed strategy, and earn him, and us, the condemnation of most of the world.

That’s what happens when you don’t do what you should have done for years on end."

STEYN: Hmm.

Hanging Themselves

"The mystery deepens. Turning the newspaper page, we find that, under demented Kyoto arrangements, Germany’s Dresdner Bank is now brokering an arrangement by which European companies will pay 15 billion euros to the corrupt and autocratic Russian state monopoly, Gazprom, in return for “carbon credits” to continue selling oil and gas to European customers on the open market. This money in turn will help Russia’s dark, authoritarian regime to invest further in its ability to hold Europeans who depend on Russian heating oil through the winter to ransom when it has political demands.

They start by opposing capital punishment. They end by insisting on hanging themselves. "

So There Ya Go -- I'm Hitler!

"So there ya’ go. Stalin was less Marxist than others, mind readers have determined that he had a crush on Hitler, and he kinda looked like a conservative. Ergo, Stalin was a conservative. Impeccable logic.

Let’s review the ideological assumptions that underlie the study’s sample selection: left wing societies are best represented by contemporary Sweden, while right-wing societies are exemplified by Nazi Germany. Joseph Stalin – the same Stalin who murdered tens of thousands under the banner of Karl Marx – is a conservative, while Milton Friedman – who earned the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work on consumption analysis – is a right-wing fringe activist. Meanwhile, authoritarianism does not exist on the left, or at least it can’t be located because there are no records of such things. Mao? Castro? Lenin? Guevara? Chávaz? Pol Pot? Never heard of ‘em.

Now that’s creative use of statistical outliers! The authors have built a wonderful foundation and are set to prove their point. All that’s needed to complete the job is a healthy does of confirmation bias. "

Aborting Civilization

"Yet it is war, the real regional war we have not been willing to acknowledge. Surge or no surge, it is not possible to win this war by playing defense in Iraq alone, unless we find a way to either hermetically seal Iraq from Iranian and Syrian depredations, or convince the mullahs and the Assads to stop trying to drive us out. The hermetic seal is not in the cards, and why should our self-proclaimed enemies stop waging war on us when we pointedly leave them free to train terrorists and ship money, guidance and weapons into the battle zone? That is why some of us have advocated support for the tens of millions of Syrians and Iranians who wish to change the regimes in Tehran and Damascus, but democratic revolution has precious little support in Washington these days.

Common sense seems to dictate that we are obliged to do everything possible to protect our troops and advance the security of Iraq, but the "little bit pregnant" policy isn’t enough, as our leaders surely know. Iran has been waging war on us since 1979; will the mullahs call it off because some of their agents are arrested or killed outside Iranian borders?

No doubt the Bush administration worries about political fallout if the terrorist training camps or the IED assembly facilities are attacked. We all heard Senators Biden and Lugar, Speaker Pelosi and Congressman Murtha demand assurances that we would not cross Iraq’s borders, even in hot pursuit of Iranian and Syrian killers. In other words, it’s quite all right for Iranians, Syrians, and jihadis to invade Iraq and kill Americans, but Americans are not permitted to respond in like manner. The administration should say that, but hasn’t.

The president would do well to remember Machiavelli’s advice to the prince: If you must inflict pain, it is best to do it all at once, and not try to mitigate it or do it bit by bit. The latter method always makes things worse, and ultimately requires greater violence, and more pain. Or, worse still, your defeat."

"It should also be noted that Iran is currently battling a drug problem." [ Yes, one as "big as a ball". -ed. ]

“At the very least,” said Mr. Bush, “Redeploying our troops to Iran should help Iranian weapons manufacturers save some money on shipping.”

Warning: Bad Language

"During the war in Kosovo, I shared a flagon of slivovitz with an especially triumphalist Kosovar Albanian who exulted at what he was seeing. Decades of being pushed around and ground down by the Serbian supremacists and then, suddenly, "Guess what? We get to f--- the Serbs and to do it with Clinton's dick!" (That twice-repulsive image took up a horrible tenancy in the trashy attic of my mind, where it is still lodged.) Matters in Kosovo had been allowed to decay to the point where one either had to watch the cleansing of the whole province by Slobodan Milosevic or, yes, allow NATO and the U.S. Air Force to become, in effect, the air force of the Kosovo Liberation Army. On balance, the latter option was better, while the geographical and demographic scale of the problem was more manageable. Matters in Iraq have degenerated much faster and much more radically than that; now the Shiite majority wants to screw the Sunnis with Bush's (more monogamous, for what that's worth) member. The picture is hardly a prettier one."

Corruption and Ruthlessness: The Golden Hour Ticks On...

"The Iranian problem is directly linked to another fundamental one in Iraq; corruption. Many of Irans new allies in Iraq were bought, and theft of government money and assets is still seen, by too many officials, as more of a right, than an offense. The stealing, inefficiency, reluctance to make difficult decisions and general lack of personal responsibility, is nothing new. Actually, these bad habits can be considered traditions, having existed in the region for centuries. Just having a democracy does not automatically eliminate all existing problems. Saddam Hussein was the norm for this part of the world, not an aberration. Saddam was a crook, but he was a strong and efficient crook. Iraqis want a strong and efficient leader, but finding one who doesn't want to rule as a dictator, is proving very difficult. Meanwhile, Iran (run by a religious dictatorship) and Syria (run by a secular dictatorship, whose services have been purchased by Iran) are trying to buy, or bully their way to, as much influence as they can in Iraq. The other neighbors are Sunni Arab states that don't want an Iran controlled Iraq, but don't see a good way to stop it from happening. The United States is going to try and remove the Shia militias, and see what happens. No one really knows. This is all new territory, what with democracy and honest government being so rare in this part of the world."

Creeping Sanity Spotted Down South

"In October Argentine prosecutors formally charged the Iranian government and Hezbollah in the murderous attack, and called for the arrest of former Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani and seven others. The Iranian government, of course, has refused to extradite Rafsanjani or anyone else.

So it's reassuring that Kirchner is standing on principle by refusing to join other leaders in greeting President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on his current Latin American tour."

The Real Language Barrier

"INDC: What do you mean by "the same face," because Saddam was secular, he was not religious and al Qaeda is ...

Mohammed: "Because the language they use is killing. And the same people who used to be with Saddam, now they participate with the insurgency."

INDC: So their motivation for killing is what?

Mohammed: "Money and to be famous. And I think the first reason is to fight the American troops. They say, 'we can start from here and cross all the way to America to fight them.'""

Who's "No Win Situation"?

"The apparent evacuation of Baghdad by al Qaeda forces comes from direct orders issued by al-Masri, the former soldier who took control of the Iraqi wing of al Qaeda following the June 2006 bombing death of Zarqawi.

Initially, the intelligence officer informed Pajamas, the Baghdad-based AQ fighters did not want to leave. Al-Masri had to send unequivocal orders for their retreat, adding that one of the lessons from the Fallujah campaign was that Americans have learned how to prevail in house-to-house fighting. Masri said that remaining in Baghdad was a ‘no-win situation’ for the terrorists."

Red Cell Re-examined

"No way, you say? here is what al Qaeda spokesman Suleiman Abu Gheith said in 2002:

"We have the right to kill 4 million Americans - 2 million of them children
- and to exile twice as many and wound and cripple hundreds of thousands.
Furthermore, it is our right to fight them with chemical and biological weapons,
so as to afflict them with the fatal maladies that have afflicted the Muslims
because of the [Americans'] chemical and biological weapons." "America knows
only the language of force. ... America is kept at bay by blood alone."

Last November The SF Examiner wondered whether Americans are sleepwalking into a gathering storm, much as the British did in the 1930s. If so, a lot of the blame rests squarely in the Oval Office, whose occupant is permitting it happen. Yet the stakes could not be graver. I wrote last November why I was a single-issue voter, kicking off with David High's observation, "If we don't get the war right, the Medicare prescription plan won't matter, Social Security won't matter, nothing else will matter." The threat is real, people, so watch "24" to see what our enemies want to do. It and like media will tell you; the administration won't."

Just In Case You Missed That 800lb Gorilla In The Room

"One document contained a Quds assessment of the Iraqi conflict that throws fresh light on the growing battle between Iran and Saudi Arabia for influence in the region. It said that because Iraq's Sunni neighbours - including Saudi Arabia - were likely to intensify their support for Sunni insurgents in Iraq, Iran should also step up its aid to those groups.

Iran has set up a network of fake import-export companies in Iraq's Anbar province to channel funds to Sunni fighters, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt.

At secret meetings, tribal sheikhs with close ties to the insurgents revealed details of the money-laundering to Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon official and political adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority.

"Truckloads of Iranian appliances like televisions are shipped into Iraq, apparently legitimately, and then sold for cash that can be channelled to Sunni insurgents," said Mr Rubin, now at the American Enterprise Institute think-tank. "The Iranians are very pragmatic about who they will deal with.

"The underlying assumption of those like Tony Blair and the Iraq Study Group, who back talks with Teheran, is that a stable Iraq is somehow in Iran's interests. But that's not so. Iran does not want a new Somalia on its borders, but nor does it want to live next to Switzerland. They are happy with managed chaos."

Iran has worked with individuals linked to al-Qa'eda-related groups responsible for some of the worst atrocities against Iraqi Shias, including the attack on the Golden Mosque in Samarra last February.

Alireza Jafarzadeh, the Iranian exile leader who first revealed Teheran's secret nuclear programme to the world, has compiled a dossier detailing the vast network run by Quds in Iraq. Its operations are centred on Basra and Najaf, and use a series of supposed religious and cultural organisations as well as diplomatic consulates across the country to develop, fund and arm militia and rebel groups.

Thousands of Shia militiamen have reportedly travelled to Iran for training and indoctrination, while Quds sends millions of dollars cash in the other direction each month, through diplomatic pouches and border crossings it controls.

British and American officials have also identified Iran as the source of the materials and manufacture of a new, more lethal variety of roadside bomb that has claimed coalition lives.

"New information from sources in Iran further confirms that the Revolutionary Guards Corps and its notorious Quds Force are the biggest threat inside Iraq," said Mr Jafarzadeh. "Unless Iran's influence is curbed, its agents arrested and brought to justice and its proxies exposed, a genuine national unity government cannot take shape in Iraq."" [ Iran would never help blow up the Golden Mosque you say? Well, not unless it's in their interest anyway... -ed. ]

Today's All Propaganda Kyoto Update

"Read the whole thing, and note: The United States was never bound by Kyoto, and it was not "rejected" by the Bush Administration. Once again, a webpage by unpaid amateurs is more accurate and nuanced than an effort by the Associated Press. Anyone can make a mistake, but the AP's seem to lean heavily in an anti-Bush direction." [ And did I forget to mention that from 00-05 the US increased greenhouse emissions by approximately 2% while the EU did so by approximately 4%. But admitting inconvenient facts like these would ruin the BDS lover's paranoid fantasy world now wouldn't it? -ed. ]

The Dreamer

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

Revolutionary Swede

"What has Sabuni done to ruffle so many feathers? Oh, just a couple of little things: called for a ban on wearing the veil for girls under fifteen, proposed that schoolgirls be checked for evidence of genital mutilation, criticized "honor culture" mentalities, and asked that arranged marriages and the state financing of religious schools be banned. ***

Sabuni, who calls herself "Afro-Swedish, maybe," answers her critics thusly:We have a society that has failed to adapt to new times. We don’t offer people their rights, but we are also unclear about their obligations. So people end up in a kind of no man’s land, where they are neither Swedes, nor Turks nor Congolese.Hmmm--with rights come obligations. And immigrants to Sweden should end up becoming--Swedes! How revolutionary is that?"

The Great And Dear Leaders Crock Of Shit

"Samizdata's hope is probably misplaced. In many progressive circles North Korea is probably still regarded as a harbinger of the future; an intimation of the worker's paradise; a shining example of Communist triumph in the Third World. The fact that all these descriptions are a crock of s**t is a minor detail."

Nonsense: An Update

"There has been an inordinate amount of nonsense written about US decline, complete with Russian and Chinese designs to benefit from America's embarrassment in Iraq. The reality could not be more different. Neither Moscow nor Beijing has the remotest desire to see the US withdraw from the region or lose power, for two reasons. The first is that America's presence in the region ensures that little wars will remain little. The second is economic. America's economy and particularly the appetite of American consumers for imports remains the locomotive of the world economy, most emphatically of China's. China's trading relationship with the United States is an irreplaceable pillar of national prosperity, and the means to generate the national savings China requires to establish what President Hu Jintao calls "the harmonious society". ***

Contrary to what almost everyone has maintained for years - that the solution to the problems of the Middle East lies in the resolution of the Israel-Palestinian problem - the present civil war in Palestine proves that no one cares about the Israel-Palestinian problem. The so-called Palestinian issue has been subsumed into the broader problem of containing Persian imperialism, and the Palestinians have been left to fend for themselves, rather like the Kurds - but without the Kurds' language, 3,000-year history, and success in creating institutions of self-rule."

Jimmah: No Peanut Farmer After All

"But it is one of Dershowitz's sources, Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld, who provides the most food for thought: "seems that AIPAC's (American-Israel Political Action Committee) real fault was its failure to outdo the Saudi's purchases of the former president's loyalty". The sinking feeling is the realization that this is what political viewpoints might come down to."

What Torture?

"Then he told me a story about a courageous and respected Iraqi commander who’d accompanied his patrols all over Iraq for nearly a year. When the dead body of this same Iraqi commander was brought into the morgue, doctors found gruesome signs of torture. His legs were beaten by planks of wood. A drill had been used to bore holes into all of his ribs, his elbows, his knees, and into his head. Doctors estimated the man endured this torture for days. Apparently when the fun was over, or they’d extracted what they needed, or the terrorists were worried about being discovered, or they had another victim waiting for their attentions, they shot him. CSM Mellinger, with just a momentary flash of anger in his eyes, said the Iraqi forces know who did this, and it’s only a matter of time."

What (Counter)Intelligence?

"If journalists are protected from being investigated by our Counter Intelligence agents does that mean that our enemies merely have to sign up all of their agents with the New York Times? That has been done before by our last great enemy, the Soviets. Whittaker Chambers an editor of Time magazine and self confessed Soviet Agent used the tactic of hiding inside of our press corps. So given that fact shouldn’t our counter intelligence agents be all the way around possible releases of our secrets to the Press?

This story by the NY Sun is extremely disturbing not because it causes me to lose faith in our Press corps. No instead I am terrifically worried about the competency of our Counter Intelligence agencies. How exactly are we supposed to be confident of their safeguarding our secrets if they cannot prevent secrets from being released to our own citizens who likely have not the training of a foreign intelligence service. And exactly how confident are we that agents of our destruction, foreign spies, have not already embedded themselves into our Press Corp? It has happened before…"

Evolving Ugly

"All I care to know is that a man is a human being -- that is enough for me; he can't be any worse. --Mark Twain ***

Anyway, one of the more controversial aspects of the book is my belief that humans have actually continued evolving over the centuries, and that most people and cultures were impossibly cruel, barbaric, and frankly crazy by today's standards. This is an unpopular notion because it doesn't appeal to either traditionalists on the right or contemporary liberals on the left. Traditionalists don't like it because it seems contrary to the idea that human beings were created by God with an unchanging nature: a man is a man is a man, whether 2500 years ago or today. And liberals don't like it for reasons of multiculturalism and moral relativism. As I wrote in the book, the humanities have become "highly politicized, vulnerable as they are to crass politicization and to the noxious practice of 'deconstruction' by various interest groups interested in normalizing abnormality." Ya think?

In other words, for the same reason feminists are silent about the horrors of female treatment in the Islamic world (and hypocritically despise the world's greatest liberator of Muslim women, George Bush), liberals in general do not judge people of the past. They pass over in silence the systematic homosexual abuse of boys in Ancient Greece, or the horrific adolescent initiation rituals of primitive cultures, or the ceaseless and sadistic warfare of so many native American tribes. Of course, the only exception they make is for barbarism perpetrated by Christians, such as the witch trials. That they judge, even though it was a relatively time-limited and proscribed aberration. Or they judge the West's involvement in the slave trade, ignoring the much wider involvement of Arabs and Africans themselves, who had no regard for human life and no opposition to slavery at all. Frankly, it wouldn't have occurred to Africans that it was problematic. That requires Christianity or Judaism. ***

A beautiful world is the occasion for constant remembrance of the Divine, whereas an ugly environs can cause us to forget our divinity and regress to barbarism (is this perhaps why leftism is primarily a phenomenon of big cities?). Perhaps contemporary art is simply the Evil One's strategy for undoing and canceling out the progress made in other human domains. It keeps his hand in the game. The other strategy would be the secular detachment of the mind from the divine intellect, so that our IQs increase even as we become metaphysically more and more blind and stupid."

Sowell On Random Play

"What is especially disturbing about the political left is that they seem to have no sense of the tragedy of the human condition. Instead, they tend to see the problems of the world as due to other people not being as wise or as noble as themselves.

The next time somebody says that the government is forced to intervene in the economy to protect the poor, ask why the government is forcing taxpayers to subsidize municipal golf courses, the ballet, opera and -- the biggest subsidy of all -- surrounding affluent communities with vast amounts of expensive "open space." ***

One of the scariest aspects of our times is how easy it is for glib loudmouths to turn us against each other, weakening the whole framework of society, on which we all depend. ***

It is hard to think of any word that has confused more issues than the word "rights." Nowadays, almost anything that anybody wants is called a "right" -- a magic word that does away with the need for evidence, logic or even common sense.

Many of the same people who are urging us to get out of Iraq are also urging us to go into Darfur. They say we should "do something" about the murderous horrors in Darfur. But you cannot simply "do something." You have to do something specific. Those who are urging intervention won't take the responsibility for specifying what we are to do -- and at what cost in American lives."

Did I Miss Anything?

Cox and Forkum strike again. Of course, with the Army releasing stats recently on how many soldiers have been killed (nearly 200) and wounded by Iranian IEDs as well as the recent raids netting Iranian Qods forces, maybe he's finally starting to get it...

"This last fact is highly suggestive; one could infer, at a minimum, that the lesson the AP took away from that incident was that "Jamil Hussein," whoever he is, is unreliable. Which leaves us wondering about the other 61 stories for which he has been a source.

These are all significant questions of which Mr. O'Brien appears to be entirely ignorant. One wonders: does the company that Mr. O'Brien works for consider ignorance and inaccuracy to be drawbacks, or virtues?"

"President Bush is at his most Lincolnesque at the moment. Abraham Lincoln made most of the key decisions that ultimately won the American Civil War, over the opposition of Congress, public opinion, and most particularly, his generals. He was depicted in the press of his day much as Mr Bush is depicted in the media of our day: as a simpleton, in over his depth. Which doesn’t mean Bush is another Lincoln. But doesn’t preclude it, either."

VDH Without Blinking

"When such thinking is confronted by the primordial world of the 7th century, then a sort of dangerous naiveté follows, perhaps best epitomized by our confusion over Iran.

A jihadist of the first order swears that he hears religious voices and through his mesmerizing speech prevents his audiences from blinking. He promises a world without the United States and swears he will wipe Israel off the map. As relish he brags about shutting down the Straits of Hormuz and choking off global petroleum commerce. And these are not impossible threats, since Ahmadinejad has at his disposal billions in petrol-dollars, soulless commercial partners in Russia, North Korea, and China who will sell him anything, and a certain apocalyptic vision that, Jim-Jones like, convinces him that he can achieve eternal fame in this world—the downtrodden Shiite Persians at last trump the Sunni Arabs as the true warriors of Islam—and Paradise in the next.

And all this is reified by an ongoing nuclear program. Set against all that, our own wise men and women demonize those who will not “talk” with the Iranian theocracy, so convinced are they either of their own moral superiority and beguiling rhetoric, or of the rational sense of the Iranians. In other words, suggest modestly that Iran is creepy enough to keep distant from—and suddenly that wariness is slurred as a neocon plot to wage war with Teheran.

So, yes, I have no apologies for labeling radical Islam as a danger comparable to Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo, Stalin, or Mao.That admission does not make any of us who share these worries fond of war, far from it. Rather we fear that radical Islam has much in store for us ahead, and the more America prepares for it, the less our citizens and others less strong will suffer."

"Does Iran present a threat to the United States?

If the United States has indisputable evidence that the Iranians are manufacturing and shipping bombs into Iraq that are killing Americans, should we strike across the border to destroy those facilities?

Should Iran be allowed to obtain nuclear weapons? (This will require some follow-ups as anti-Bush Democrats don't want to answer the question, even though it is the most crucial question of all.)"

The Battle Of The Potomac

"But to carry the analogy further, it was not passive defenses but the destruction of the U-Boat lairs and its transit routes which finally ended the Nazi threat. The U-Boats were "intercepted" in transit, such as in the Bay of Biscay. And finally the U-Boat pens themselves were taken and the Nazi naval threat was ended forever. This is what must happen to IED threats like the explosively formed projectiles and their associated targeting systems. You can't keep bailing the water. You have to turn off the faucet.

If Iran insists upon sending U-Boats -- pardon, explosively formed projectiles -- to attack Americans, it is effectively opening hostilities on the US. That politicians in Washington choose not to regard it as such is not really Teheran's fault. One can accuse the Ayatollahs of many things, but creating American indecision cannot be blamed on them. That is the result of politics along the Potomac."

UPDATE: "We should also note that being able to intercept and decrypt their communications was critical to countering the U-boat threat."

Hangin With Hez

"He told me that 18 days after the start of the war a large group of civilians decided it was time to leave Ain Ebel and flee to the north. They were no longer willing to stay while Israel fired back at Hezbollah’s rocket launchers. It was too dangerous, and Hezbollah insisted on staying and endangering those who lived there.

So they fled the area in a convoy of civilian vehicles. It was safer, they figured, to travel in a group than alone.

On their way out of the village, Hezbollah fighters stood on the side of the road and opened fire with machine guns on the fleeing civilians.

I was shocked, and I asked Alan to confirm this. Was it really true? Hezbollah opened fire on Lebanese civilians with machine guns? Alan confirmed this was true.

"Why?" I had an idea, but I wanted a local person to say it.

Because, Alan said, Hezbollah wanted to use the civilians of Ain Ebel as “human shields.” I did not use the phrase “human shields.” These were Alan’s own words.

Fortunately, Hezbollah didn’t kill anybody when they opened fire. One person was shot in the hand, and another was shot in the shoulder. This was enough, though, to do the job. The civilians turned around and went back to the village under Israeli bombardment."

Minimal Homework Failed

"Reading through the conventional, warmed-over "wisdom" of the Beltway's media elite, the pack mentality shines through. They are, as a whole, fundamentally uninterested in whether President Bush's strategic understanding of the centrality of the battle for Iraq within the war with Islamic extremism is correct. Rather, they are intent on figuring out if the Democrats can muster enough votes to cut off funding for the war in a replay of the end of Vietnam. Thus they have converted the crucial debate of our time into a sequel about domestic politics. It is a template with which they are familiar and which their limited experience equips them to discuss. I am reminded of my question to Dennis Kucinich that stumped him: Was he aware of the Quds forces? It isn't just Congressman Kucinich who has failed to do minimal homework. It is also most of the media elite."

What Conjectures?

"The alternative, sadly, is Duncan Black's version of deterrence. And I don't really want to play that game; genocide makes me kind of queasy. He appears to have a stronger stomach." [ These conjectures. -ed. ]

"The irony here is that a decadent lesbo-feminist ideology is being used to force “reforms” that create the conditions for the societal arrangements in the remoter parts of Somalia and Afghanistan. That will, given the rest of human nature, soon reduce women to chattels, while obviating the power in women to restrain the excesses of men."

"West argues that the US fights American criminals more severely than the head-choppers of Baghdad. "American troops mockingly refer to arrests of insurgents as 'catch and release.' ... Meticulous review procedures introduced after Abu Ghraib have proved favorable to the insurgents. Any Iraqi detained is brought to an American lawyer at the battalion level; two American soldiers have to fill out sworn arrest affidavits; physical evidence is bagged, and pictures of the 'crime' scene are taken." It goes on and on."

Cat's Got His Tongue?

"So would you say you have contempt for a terrorist group like
Hamas?

I wouldn’t put those words in my mouth. I wouldn’t say anything on
that issue. I’m here to talk about peace. I’m a man who does want peace for this
world, and I don’t think you will achieve that by putting people into corners
and asking them very, very difficult questions about very contentious
issues.

Anyone into pattern recognition may note that Mr. Islam sounds remarkably like Nihad Awad, Awad's colleagues at CAIR and Islamists elsewhere."

"Being hanged is a tough thing. Being told to "go to hell" is hardly the factor that makes the experience a negative one. I think the fact that the "taunting" of Saddam has been considered a major news story is one of the most remarkable manifestations of the whole upside-down world of modern media in which we live."

Did I Forget To Mention Yasir Approved It? Directly?

"THE CABLE released by the State Department's historian states, "The Khartoum operation was planned and carried out with the full knowledge and personal approval of Yasir Arafat, Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, (PLO), and the head of Fatah. Fatah representatives based in Khartoum participated in the attack, using a Fatah vehicle to transport the terrorists to the Saudi Arabian Embassy."

Although clearly skilled in the art of deception, Arafat could never have succeeded in creating and prolonging his fictions and with them, his crimes, without the cooperation of the US government and the media.

In this vein, the release of the State Department cable raises two daunting questions. First, how is it possible that the belated admission of a massive 33 year cover-up of the murder of senior American diplomats spanning the course of seven consecutive presidential administrations has been ignored by the US media? A Google news search for Cleo Noel brought up but a handful of stories - none of which were reported by the major news networks or national newspapers.

On the face of it, the released cable, which calls into question the very foundation of US Middle East policy for the past generation is simply stunning. The cable concludes, "The Khartoum operation again demonstrated the ability of the BSO to strike where least expected. The open participation of Fatah representatives in Khartoum in the attack provides further evidence of the Fatah/BSO relationship. The emergence of the United States as a primary fedayeen target indicates a serious threat of further incidents similar to that which occurred in Khartoum."

The media's silence on the issue does not merely raise red flags abut their objectivity. By not availing the American public to the knowledge that Fatah and the PLO have been specifically targeting Americans for 33 years, the media has denied the American people basic knowledge of the world in which they live."

"First and foremost - one must consider the source of this story. The Sunday Times journalist in question Uzi Mahnaimi, is a controversial figure, who co-authored a book with Bassam Abu Sharif, former senior adviser to Yasser Arafat and PLO press officer.

While some may believe he has actual military sources in Israel who use him to leak stories that won’t make it past censors, others think he is used by foreign agents to push stories that embarrass Israel. Still others go farther, calling him unprintable names and charging that that despite the fact he works for a mainstream British newspaper, his sources makes Jamil Hussein look like the White House press secretary.

One thing is clear: Mahnaimi makes a regular habit of reporting that Israel is about to attack Iran. If his reporting was accurate, Iranian nuclear facilities would already be a smoking ruin – not once, but multiple times."

The New Democratic Era ... Same As The Old Democratic Era

"During four decades of Democratic rule ending in 1994, committee chairmen amassed almost unchallenged authority, often becoming more feared and influential than the elected leadership. They were nearly impossible to budge from their perches, and the concept of term limits was unimaginable. In a move that caught some new Democratic chairmen by surprise, House rules pushed through by the Democrats this week retained the six-year limit on chairmen imposed by Republicans, but the leadership reassured lawmakers they would revisit the restrictions when there was less attention focused on the dawn of the Democratic era.

So, ya know, when no one's payin' attention, we'll change the term-limit rule back to the way it was when we last ran da House...

As they say in Chicago, Punch 10." [ How could I be any more shocked, shocked I tell you? -ed. ]

"There have been numerous self-immolations by Buddhist monks and nuns in Vietnam since 1975, protesting religious repression. They've been almost all unreported and all but ignored. (Wonder why?!) I went to a very knowledgeable old-Vietnam hand (a once famous journalist, dating back to the '50's in Vietnam) and a former SVN official and scholar, to count and document them. In close to a year of work, they've only been able to account for about half, with even one-liners. I think the number stands at somewhere like dozens."

"Iran’s chief nuclear envoy Ali Larijani said on Friday that Iran is committed to the peaceful use of nuclear technology but warned the situation could change if his country is threatened.

“We oppose obtaining nuclear weapons and we will peacefully use nuclear technology under the framework of the Nonproliferation Treaty, but if we are threatened, the situation may change,” he told a news conference after two days of talks in Beijing." [ Once more I'm shocked! Just shocked! -ed. ]

"If there is a flickering pulse that holds any of this together, it is kept going by two sources. The first is the astonishing actual and potential wealth of the country. The budget negotiations, which were occupying all parties during my visit, were to discuss the allocation of more than $41 billion. This is not a paper figure: New oil fields are being prospected in parts of the country that haven't been explored yet, and there is no reason in principle why Iraq could not be one of the most prosperous countries on earth. For the moment, feuding sects use their control over ministries to enrich their own supporters, but even the most blinkered tribalist can glimpse the idea that a shared country would be more beneficial to each than a shattered one. The second source of life is the presence of the coalition, where yet again even the most hard-line factionalist will admit that as bad as things are, they would be instantly worse (and instantly worse for his own group) in the case of a withdrawal. These facts are stubborn: The idea that we could even consider abandoning such a keystone state, and so many decent people, to the forces of the faith-based is as inhumane as it is unrealistic."

"Midway through the hour I joined for a 10-minute segment, occasioned by Caroline Glick's Jerusalem Post column, devoted to Yasser Arafat's responsibility for the 1973 assassination of United States Ambassador Cleo Noel and charge d'affaires George Curtis Moore in Khartoum.

I didn't have time to make two points that I would like to add. First, the murders of Noel and Moore (and the Belgian diplomat who was murdered in the incident) were performed in the most brutal possible manner. The victims were raked with machine gun fire starting from the feet and going up to the head in order to inflict the maximum amount of suffering. Second, the Fatah paymaster who cut the checks for all such operations (including the Black September operation at the Munich Olympics in 1972) was Mahmoud Abbas, Yasser Arafat's right-hand man, the current Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority."

"The installation ceremony takes place on Sunday. The Church will have to ask itself if it wants to risk its well-earned credibility in Poland as a force against Communist tyranny by possibly putting the Church in the hands of a collaborator who informed on its own priests. The Vatican should postpone the transition until the new evidence can be thoroughly analyzed."

How To Create Hell On Earth

"From a psychological perspective then, the freedom and empowerment of women in society are absolutely critical because they are responsible for the earliest environmental influences on children--influences that will impact the child throughout his or her life. If the society has little respect for women and regularly demonizes, debases or humiliates them, it will have a profound generational impact. This is why encouraging women's rights around the world should be a high priority in US Foreign Policy.

Women subjected to institutionalized, societal abuse (such as what we saw under the Taliban; and what we see to a greater or lesser extent in almost all Islamic countries--where physical abuse is sanctioned; where women are sexually demonized; where they are deprived of education, as well as physical, social, economic and political freedom) are hardly in a psychological position to be able to provide effective "nurturing" to children."

Death To America ... Where Everyone Is Rich And Free

"“Americans don’t want war in Lebanon," I said. "It would not serve our interests or yours. Do you think Americans want chaos in Lebanon just for the heck of it?”

“We don’t hate the American people, only the government.”

“Okay,” I said. “So why then does Hassan Nasrallah repeatedly say Death to America?” I asked these questions in the most friendly and casual tone of voice I could muster.

“He only means death to the American government.”

“Why doesn’t he make that clear then?” I said.

“He does!”

“No, he doesn’t,” I said. “He says Death to America. What would you think of George W. Bush if he gave speeches where he screamed Death to Lebanon? Come on, guys. Be honest with me. I want to know what you really think.”

“I want to go to America,” the leader kid said. “I love America and I want to live in America. America is rich and free. I want to be rich and free, too.”

I think the kid was sincere. His politics are a product of Hezbollah’s schools, his community, and his peer group. But politics in the Middle East isn’t as personal as it often is in the West, in part because Middle Easterners are accustomed to having their politics dictated to them by the powerful. Politicians are usually above accountability and beyond control of the people. They assume that’s how it is in the Western countries as well."

"George McGovern, the liberal 1972 Democratic presidential nominee, dropped a little bombshell to Larry King the other night: He voted Republican in 1976, for Gerald Ford.

McGovern said he finally told his wife, Eleanor, that Thanksgiving. Her reply: "So did I.""

Heh.

"I’m sure they’ll relax as soon as they have their own state."

"Heck no. It's just getting good..."

D'oh -- Part 79365

"An American intelligence official said the new material, which has been authenticated within the intelligence community, confirms "that Iran is working closely with both the Shiite militias and Sunni Jihadist groups." The source was careful to stress that the Iranian plans do not extend to cooperation with Baathist groups fighting the government in Baghdad, and said the documents rather show how the Quds Force — the arm of Iran's revolutionary guard that supports Shiite Hezbollah, Sunni Hamas, and Shiite death squads — is working with individuals affiliated with Al Qaeda in Iraq and Ansar al-Sunna.

Another American official who has seen the summaries of the reporting affiliated with the arrests said it comprised a "smoking gun." "We found plans for attacks, phone numbers affiliated with Sunni bad guys, a lot of things that filled in the blanks on what these guys are up to," the official said.

One of the documents captured in the raids, according to two American officials and one Iraqi official, is an assessment of the Iraq civil war and new strategy from the Quds Force. According to the Iraqi source, that assessment is the equivalent of " Iran's Iraq Study Group," a reference to the bipartisan American commission that released war strategy recommendations after the November 7 elections. The document concludes, according to these sources, that Iraq's Sunni neighbors will step up their efforts to aid insurgent groups and that it is imperative for Iran to redouble efforts to retain influence with them, as well as with Shiite militias."

"Anyone who feels sorry for Saddam will find the antidote by re-reading The Republic of Fear, by Kanan Makiya. Everyone should have read that book by now: it is the best single account of the hell-on-earth that the Americans and allies broke open. Bad as things are in Iraq right now, they were considerably worse under Saddam.

Historians could make themselves useful by explaining, to a public still taking its news mostly from the idiot box, how the mess now reported from Iraq descends directly from what happened over generations previous. That it is the fallout of a 35-year totalitarian experiment, just as Russia today, in its dysfunctional way, enjoys the fallout from its own 70-year totalitarian experiment. The problems do not end, when the waters recede from a terrible flood: only the drownings stop, and death from contagion is about to begin.

Saddam ran Iraq the way Stalin ran Russia -- more murderously, in proportion, but less efficiently. Had he been no more efficient, but had a better grasp of the world political order, he’d still be in power today -- and the problems for the West would be that much greater. As it stands we are staring down Iran and Syria. And now Iraq, instead of completing the trifecta, is a base against our mortal enemies on either side of it."

The One Minute Trial

"The Iraqi government has hit back at Italy for its criticism of Hussein's execution, accusing it of hypocrisy, especially after World War Two dictator Benito Mussolini was killed by partisans and hanged upside down in a Milan square in 1945.

"They have no right interfering in the affairs of another country," government official, Yaseen Majeed, was quoted as saying in La Repubblica daily. "Mussolini's trial only lasted one minute.""

Gotta luv the hypocritical Euros...

"If an Iraqi police captain by the name of Jamil Hussein exists, there is no convincing evidence of it - and that means the Associated Press has a journalistic scandal on its hands that will fester until the AP deals with it properly."

Gentlemen, Start Your Plug-Ins

"Just when you thought the Iranian leadership could stoop no further: A top advisor to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claimed in an interview with Iranian website Baztab that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler's parents were both Jewish and that Hitler himself was one of the founders of the State of Israel." [ Whew. Luckily there's nothing yet to indicate that the Iranians are actually crazy or anything worrisome like that. For a minute there I thought they'd say something that was truly incomprehensible. You know. Like that Hitler was a founder of Israel or something like that. -ed. ]

"All he is saying is give peace a chance..."

MSMemory Hole 2007.01.01

"The release of the cable causes Glick to ask several questions. First, why has our MSM which prides itself on exposing government cover-ups ignored almost totally the cable? Second, what would have happened, and how many lives would have been saved, if rather than advancing a policy that made Arafat our "peace partner" (and the most frequent foreign visitor to the White House during the Clinton administration), the U.S. had demanded his extradition and tried him for murder?

I'll leave the second question to others. The answer to the first, I think, is that Arafat's role in killing American diplomats runs counter to the MSM's narrative about our world and is, therefore, information that it would prefer the public not know."

Stoned With Hate

"In contrast, on the left we heard after September 11 some anguished voices asking, "Why do they hate us?" But many on the left immediately recognized that what they hated us for was our toleration and freedoms–the very things those on the left like most about our society. Shall we order women to wear veils and order the death by stoning of homosexuals in order to appease the perpetrators of September 11? Obviously not."

"A story in the New York Sun Wednesday also does not inspire confidence in the bureau. According to an FBI court filing, the files in 22 of 94 investigations into leaks of classified information are missing.

"Knowing what I know, I can confidently say that until the investigative responsibilities for terrorism are removed from the FBI, I won't feel safe," said former FBI agent Robert Wright in June 2001. Reading Mr. Lance's book won't make him feel any safer."

Welcome to the New (Crooked) Year, So Much Better Than the Old (Venal) Year...

"Conyers will remain chairman of the Judiciary Committee in Nancy Pelosi's "most honest, most open, and most ethical Congress in history.”"

Mockery's End

"Arab despotism is a fearsome phenomenon, renewing itself from within each and every time yet another glorified hit man sets out on his bloody career. In the spirit of pure self-aggrandizement, Saddam invaded Iran and Kuwait, fired missiles at Israel and Saudi Arabia, decimated his own population and in the process resorted to poison gas, manipulated the great powers, and made a special mockery of the United Nations. And perhaps none of that matched in vileness the way that he deceived the husbands of two daughters of his into returning from exile under safe conduct, only to send a squad of gunmen under his son Uday to kill these fathers of his own grandchildren.

With such brutes, entreaty, diplomacy, conferences are exercises in self-deception. Regime change imposed by superior force was the only realistic way to ensure Saddam’s fall. This is what occurred in March 2003, and it is a historic marker. The collapse of his dictatorship has created a social and political void, and a variety of hit men, as usual, are trying to make careers out of it. The only way to prevent their doing so is to introduce the rule of law and impose enough security that it has a chance to take. Saddam’s trial, for all its flaws, was an exercise in the rule of law. Justice is never perfect, especially when carrying an element of retribution. Much more important, though, this case is exemplary. Saddam’s trial and execution could yet be the building block of a future with hope in it for an Iraqi society and state at last free from his tyranny."

"And to have convicted, sentenced and executed the dictator is a signal accomplishment for the new Iraq. When I was in Ramadi, west of Baghdad, shortly after the war, a young boy showed me his schoolbook. It was like my textbooks at his age - full of doodles and squiggles and amusing additions to the illustrations. With one exception: the many pages bearing pictures of Saddam were in pristine condition. Even a bored schoolboy doesn't get so careless that he forgets where not to draw the line. When the cowardly thug emerged from his hole, it was a rare moment: in the fetid stability of the Middle East, how often do you get to see a big-time dictator looking like some boxcar hobo and meekly submitting to a lice inspection by an American soldier?...

The reality is that, as long as he was alive, there was always the possibility that he would return. When a dictator has exercised the total control over his subjects that Saddam did, his hold on them can only end with his death."

"That I could feel pity for him struck the Iraqis with whom I talked as evidence of a profound moral corruption. I came to understand how a Westerner used to the civilities of democracy and due process — even a reporter who thought he grasped the depths of Saddam’s depravity — fell short of the Iraqis’ sense, forged by years of brutality, of the power of his unmitigated evil."

"When in 2005 we watched the early stages of what later became known as "Cartoon Rage" in Denmark, we could see we were dealing with a Shariah state of mind. It wasn't exactly going out on a limb to predict things would only get worse.

And, of course, in 2006, they did. Just ask Abdul Rahman if you can find him. The "apostate" fled Afghanistan for his life last spring. Or Robert Redeker, if you can find him. The teacher who published a critique of Islam in September still lives in hiding in France."

The Mossad Again...

"Ah, Somalia. Immediately the three adults in the car perked up. We acknowledged we knew there was big trouble in that country, the attack from Ethiopia on the ICU, etc. To our surprise, our driver immediately launched into a vitriolic attack on Al Qaeda. They were evil violent men, hijacking Islam across the globe. He had details of their infiltration of Somalia from a phone call he had made the previous night, how they were using Saudi money, etc. Thousands of people were being murdered by these Wahhabis for no reason. He was obviously following the situation closely. Al Qaeda was a danger to all mankind, he said.

It was a refreshing to hear this view from a Moslem taxi driver in Seattle. He was obviously pleased that we recognized the travails of his people too. So he continued with his explication of what was behind this terrible situation - how the Moslem religion could have been taken over by these violent forces. Someone was behind the rise of this Saudi Wahhabism . The answer, he said, was Israel. It was all an Israeli plot. They were behind the Wahhabis.

Suddenly our hearts sank. How could a man who seemed so reasonable, so knowledgeable, say something so obviously crazy?

Just then we were at our hotel. Sheryl and I left the cab, stunned. I phoned Gerard from the airport. What had the man said on the way to his place? Gerard - wisely - had let him continue. There was no point in fighting with a man like that. Better to learn how his mind worked. Gerard simply inquired why the Israelis would want to back Al Qaeda when Al Qaeda was sworn to destroy Israel. The man replied by talking about his childhood, his Islamic education. He had learned about the Jews from the Koran. That was the truth, of course."

Rule No. 19

"All of these inter-related phenomena serve as windows of understanding for us, through which we become able to grasp the demented and psychopathic psychology that creates the need for a rule such as the Taliban’s No. 19. It is a rule that exposes a fanatic mindset that holds the sight and reality of an unveiled woman to be a horrific nightmare and the greatest sin, yet simultaneously considers the forced rape of a young prepubescent boy to be in the normal swing of things.

It is on this eerie and putrid plateau that we come to see the factors that spawn the yearning for death and suicide inside militant Islam. Circumscribed in the most vicious and sadistic of ways, the men imprisoned in these cages long to regain a masculinity and humanity that was violently robbed from them as children. In a setting where healing through contact with feminine affection is denied and considered evil, self-extinction through hurting the “enemy” -- and the tempter -- becomes the only way out."

UPDATE:

"Here are rules No. 31-35, as proposed by Laity:

Rule 31: Suicide bombings will be a standard tactic and indiscriminate killing of civilians is regarded as irrelevant. However Taliban should not talk about this publicly because it is offensive to Afghan culture and morality.

Rule 32: In order to protect ourselves from international forces, Taliban should hide amongst civilians and as a standard tactic use women and children as shields against attacks.

Rule 33: Taliban should have no hesitation about abusing Afghan hospitality by using intimidation to force their way into citizens' homes.

Rule 34: Taliban should further exploit Afghan hospitality by using their homes as bases to launch attacks on international and Afghan forces.

Rule 35: Taliban should lie to the public to both exaggerate their successes and minimize their failures."

"As the decent world rejoices let us remember why his rape rooms and acid baths, his plastic shredders and mass graves are now shut down; why his plans to build nuclear and chemical and biological weapons and use them on his enemies are aborted; why his reign is over. For Saddam would be a force for evil in the world today if brave and courageous men women had not been determined to take him down and had not stayed the course until it was done."

"“We are worried,” Antonios said, “that [Saad] Hariri wants to use the tribunal to go after people whose faces in Lebanon he doesn’t like.”

I think I must have audibly sighed when I heard that. But these guys live in a part of the world where politics has always been a ruthless and murderous business. Political enemies really do disappear into dungeons. Voicing the “wrong” opinion in a newspaper column can get you car-bombed on the way to work in the morning. Foreign powers really do manipulate local governments for their own craven gain. Paranoia naturally thrives in environments like Lebanon’s, and I’m honestly surprised it isn’t an even bigger problem than it already is."

Founding Hunches

"We hold these preliminary findings to be more or less accurate, at least for now, that all cultures have equal validity, and that each culture has its own ideas about rights and duties and so forth and so on and blah blah blah. In our case, we have hit upon this idea -- no offense, but we have this tentative idea -- subject to further studies, of course -- that we would like the government -- that would be your government -- to cut us some slack so that we can do what we want to do -- basically acquire property and be happy, but not limiting ourselves to that. Anyhoo, it is our culturally conditioned idea that Governments -- not all of them, of course, but ours -- should actually derive their power from the people, although we have respect and tolerance for the contrary view that you folks hold. Nevertheless, some of our more headstrong citizens think that we should be able to form a government based upon these vague hunches of ours, which, after all, are as good as your hunches. No, that was rude -- let's just say that our hunches are different than yours, and leave it at that.... No one can presume to be a judge of whose hunches are best.... At any rate, since, as the saying goes, "different strokes for different folks".... "

Abnormal Psychology Isn't Our Field

"We rarely engage with the moonbats, mostly because we are busy and have neither the time nor the inclination. But, apart from its entertainment value, this episode illustrates, I think, some features of the moonbattery that is so common on liberal web sites: First, the tendency to fixate on, and go completely nuts over, a point that is of little or no importance. The whole "issue" of Kerry being more or less shunned by the troops was of less than earth-shaking consequence. Beyond that, when I tried to explain this controversy to my wife last night, she reacted with puzzlement: "What difference does it make if the picture was taken in January or December? It shows the troops avoiding Kerry either way." True; so, as often happens, the moonbats' rage was mounted over something that was minor at best.

Second, the immediate resort to abuse and invective. There is no middle ground with the moonbats; no reasoned critiques; no thoughtful questions; no logical observations. Instead, there is unreasoning rage. These are people who, if you were around them in person, would cause you to start edging toward a doorway while surveying the room for a blunt object, just in case.

Third, the obliviousness to obvious and innocent explanations. Our military correspondent hit the nail on the head when he referred to Occam's Razor. The moonbats don't rebut simple, benign explanations; they just ignore them in favor of gothic, fevered conspiracy theories. Their logic system favors, not the simplest explanation, but the darkest one.

It was kind of fun kicking around the moonbats over the last day or two, but I think it will be a while before we pay attention to them again. Abnormal psychology isn't our field."

"In Iran, President Ahmadinejad said, "I have signed legislation outlawing Israel, Britain and the United States. The bombing begins in 18 minutes!" Commentators observed that he was obviously channeling a Reagan joke made when the mike was off and noted the difficulties Gorbachev faced in his bid to bring about world peace. The bombing actually did begin 18 minutes later, leading to renewed calls for stiff U.N. sanctions on toner cartridges, a move that would severely crimp Iran's ability to make copies of its instructions to its regional operatives."

"The question stands."

"How has it come to this? In this devastating indictment, the cri de coeur of an Englishman who loves France but is exasperated by the French, the background to this breakdown of civil society gradually emerges. David Pryce-Jones has discovered the explanation in the archives of the French foreign ministry, known after its imposing headquarters, the Quai d’Orsay. The corps diplomatique who have run this institution like a private club - known to initiates simply as ‘la carrière’ - are responsible not only for the decline of French prestige abroad, but also for creating the conditions for the unfolding catastrophe at home.

Like so many misfortunes, this one has its origins in the megalomania of the Bonaparte clan. For more than two centuries, since Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt, French diplomacy has been gripped by a delusion of grandeur: the idea of France as une puissance musulmane, ‘a Muslim power’ - a phrase that has a new and sinister echo now."

"This is a true story....Check out this photo from our mess hall at the US Embassy yesterday morning. Sen. Kerry found himself all alone while he was over here. He cancelled his press conference because no one came, he worked out alone in the gym w/o any soldiers even going up to say hi or ask for an autograph (I was one of those who was in the gym at the same time), and he found himself eating breakfast with only a couple of folks who are obviously not troops.

What is amazing is Bill O'Reilly came to visit with us and the troops at the CSH the same day and the line for autographs extended through the palace and people waited for two hours to shake his hand. You decide who is more respected and loved by us servicemen and women!"

Today's Multi-Culti Satire

""I am going to tell the truth. We Africans really enjoy living in shantytowns where there isn't enough food, health care, or education for our children. Furthermore, our corrupt chieftaincy political systems are really marvelous.... It would be boring if free, democratic elections were organized all over Africa. Were that to happen, we would no longer be real Africans, and by losing our identity -- and our authoritarianism, our bloody civil wars, our illiteracy, our forty-five year life expectancy -- we should be letting down not only ourselves but those Western anthropologists who study us so sympathetically and understand that we can't be expected to behave like human beings who seek dignity.... So let us fight with the full support of those Western scholars who have the wisdom and courage to acknowledge that Africans belong to different world.”"

Merry Christmas! And don't forget the slack! All the batteries are installed so now I can get back to it...