Beullogeo's

Best of Notable Quotables
The 18th Annual Awards for the Year's Worst Reporting

Matt Lauer in Baghdad: "Talk to me...about morale here. We’ve heard so much about the insurgent attacks, so much about the uncertainty as to when you folks are going to get to go home. How would you describe morale?"
Chief Warrant Officer Randy Kirgiss: "In my unit morale is pretty good. Every day we go out and do our missions and people are ready to execute their missions. They’re excited to be here."
Lauer: "How much does that uncertainty of [not] knowing how long you’re going to be here impact morale?"|
Specialist Steven Chitterer: "Morale is always high. Soldiers know they have a mission. They like taking on new objectives and taking on the new challenges...."
Lauer: "Don’t get me wrong here, I think you are probably telling me the truth, but a lot of people at home are wondering how that could be possible with the conditions you’re facing and with the attacks you’re facing. What would you say to those people who are doubtful that morale can be that high?"
Captain Sherman Powell: "Sir, if I got my news from the newspapers also, I’d be pretty depressed as well."
— Exchange on NBC’s Today, August 17.

Among the many jawdropping examples of bias this one highlights what I think is the most important. The war. For many of us the gap between what the major US news organizations say and what is really going on is getting clearer, due primarily to the free exchange of information and opinion made possible by the internet. This year beside the war reporting the bias was apparent in the undercoverage of historic events like the elections in the Middle East, Syrian machinations in and eventual withdrawal from Lebanon, the UN oil for food scandal, Iran's march toward nuclear weapons and its leader's bizarre statements, the genocide in Sudan, and the French riots. Just as telling was the ridiculous overexposure of Natalee Holloway, Cindy Sheehan, Wilson/Plame, and the redefinition of "gulag" and "torture". Those who decide what's fit to report might consider rejiggering their priorities. As a consumer of news it's a pain to sift through so much crap to find the intellectually honest reports, but the option is at least available nowadays. The information monopoly is dead.

But back to the point I wanted to make: The bias in the news has killed people this year. People have died in Iraq because the media continues to distort the truth about the nature of our enemy, their attacks, and the success of our efforts against them. The connecting thread of Islam is conveniently overlooked, except where it illustrates the violation of some political correctness taboo. The unknown mother of one dead soldier is elevated above all the rest and provided an unlimited limelight, her more ignorant and bigoted comments and the lack of popular support conveniently muted. In the wake of a new constitution and on the eve of the 3rd election an unknown congressman declares Iraq lost calls for immediate withdrawal and is elevated to hero. About the same time Senator Lieberman's firsthand observations and opposing opinion go unnoticed. The non-outing of a pair of partisan leakers is portrayed as a major blow against (rather than for) national security. It could even be the Next Watergate™. Meanwhile the Washington Post and New York Times print with glee the real secrets of still more partisan leakers and really do hurt national security. The Pulitzers are already in the mail. Last but not least they report anti-terror measures taken by the government after 9/11 with a scandalous tone - until polls reveal it helps Bush. See? Even though it's unintentional there is sometimes a right-wing bias in the news.

I made a bit of fun there toward the end, but it really doesn't fit. The distortion in the reporting from Iraq and relating to the war in general has eroded our morale and lent hope to our enemies. The fighting in Iraq has undoubtedly been more intense and lasted longer because of it. Obviously shit happens in war. How much shit happens is not entirely beyond our control. Maybe the media just doesn't want to come across as cheerleaders. Instead they come across as ahistoric Chicken Little defeatists. It has made things worse. Is that what they wanted?

Here's wishing that in 2006 they report more about what's really going on. Give us some context for the next report on "torture", secret prisons, and spying. Don't suppress the grisly images of attacks against us. Don't gloss over the substance when we get a new message from al Qaeda. Should laymen have to search out jihadi communications themselves? Why are there no 60 Minutes or 20/20 reports on this? Surely it's better fodder for professional investigative journalists than the drivel they've tried to puff up into scandals throughout 2005. What precisely is the difference between moderate Islam and radical Islam? Is the Islamofacist threat over- or underestimated? Considering that the fate of civilization hangs in the balance the mainstream media's failure to even ask such questions is absurd.

EXCLUSIVE: Nuclear Monitoring of Muslims Done Without Search Warrants
Posted 12/22/05
By David E. Kaplan

In search of a terrorist nuclear bomb, the federal government since 9/11 has run a far-reaching, top secret program to monitor radiation levels at over a hundred Muslim sites in the Washington, D.C., area, including mosques, homes, businesses, and warehouses, plus similar sites in at least five other cities, U.S. News has learned. In numerous cases, the monitoring required investigators to go on to the property under surveillance, although no search warrants or court orders were ever obtained, according to those with knowledge of the program. Some participants were threatened with loss of their jobs when they questioned the legality of the operation, according to these accounts.

Isn't it odd how difficult a time the liberal press has mentioning the Islamic factor in any terrorist act, to the point where such mention is found only in the last few paragraphs of their story, or left out entirely, but when it comes to a perceived infringement of privacy perpetrated by the government in their efforts to protect us from aforementioned terrorist acts the liberal press doesn't hesitate to see and state clearly the Islamic angle right up front? Don't matters of life and death deserve more or at least as much scrutiny as matters of mere privacy? Wouldn't it be fair, if you're going to mention "9/11" and "Muslim" in the first paragraph that it be to point out that the 9/11 terrorists were all Muslim and singularly motivated by a desire to advance Islam's cause? Wouldn't that help explain why the government has an interest in investigating Muslims and monitoring their meeting places? And since the press feels compelled, presumably for contextual purposes, to provide the total body count since 2003 every time they report the latest US military casualty in Iraq, you'd think in this story it would make sense to mention Jose Padilla, AKA Abdullah Al Muhajir, AKA the Muslim dirty bomber.

These and other developments suggest that the federal government's domestic spying programs since 9/11 have been far broader than previously thought.

Two individuals, who declined to be named because the program is highly classified, spoke to U.S. News because of their concerns about the legality of the program.

With so many enemy sympathizers working within our government it will take a miracle to prevent the coming attacks from Muslims. Is it OK to say that? If you break the law for sure to tattle on something you think might be illegal but for damn sure is effective, isn't it fair to infer that your sympathies must lie more with the enemy than with your own country? Is it OK to note the fervent ideology of the attackers and monitor those who gather to discuss it? "Far broader" would be Geiger counters everywhere and monitoring what they actually say in the mosques. The attitude that simply checking for radioactivity is an intolerable invasion of privacy would be laughable if the consequences weren't so serious.

Fitzgerald: Monitoring mosques, and its cost
December 23, 2005

Monitoring the mosques all over the non-Muslim world, of course, is a tall order. And a very expensive one, added to all the other huge expenses incurred in the campaign to make Infidel lands safe from the very people who are, paradoxically, still allowed in when should have been clear to all who had bothered to study the doctrines of Islam and the history of Islamic rule over non-Muslims, what was to have been expected.

Unprecedented and unjustified? No.

Clinton Claimed Authority to Order No-Warrant Searches
December 20, 2005, 9:46 a.m.

In a little-remembered debate from 1994, the Clinton administration argued that the president has "inherent authority" to order physical searches — including break-ins at the homes of U.S. citizens — for foreign intelligence purposes without any warrant or permission from any outside body.

Executive Order 12333, signed by Ronald Reagan in 1981, provides for such warrantless searches directed against "a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power."

Those who wage jihad in order to impose sharia are indeed agents of a foreign power. They threaten the survival of civilization itself, not just the US, and some "infidels" are unfortunately having trouble coming to grips with that.

New mini Moonbat fits in your sidebar!

Responding to overwhelming demand, I have designed a new, miniaturized version of the Autorantic Virtual Moonbat. You can put it anywhere you want, really, but it’s designed to fit perfectly in the sidebar area of your blog.

The new “sidebar module” doesn’t have all the options and features of the “live chat module,” because there was no room for all those buttons. But it’s just as funny, and only half the size.

Unlike the live chat module, which lets you talk back to the robot, the sidebar module won’t let anyone else get a word in edgewise. All you can do is click the “RANT” button and get ranted at. (Although if the robot sits idle for a couple of minutes, it gets antsy and rants without you.)

Merry Christmas!

Films show terrorists as people
By Scott Bowles, USA TODAY Wed Dec 21, 6:45 AM ET

Clooney, who produced Syriana, says the trend stems largely from growing American displeasure with the Iraq war.

"I've been called a traitor for questioning the war," he says. "But more people are beginning to look critically at what our government is doing, who we're fighting. And that's the most patriotic thing you can do."

You're not a traitor if you question the war, or look critically at your government. You cross the line of treason when your words or actions damage your country and countrymen. When your worldview is based on the premise that America has been wrong about most things, most of the time, and you see it as a perpetrator of evil rather than a proponent of good, and that this is the root cause of everything that is wrong in the world - then pardon me for pointing it out but you are a traitor. Not being a traitor doesn't automatically make you a patriot. The next time you or your Hollywood jetsetting friends are traveling the world and you're standing in front of a crowd of American-hating foreigners try telling them you love your country and explain why rather than joining in their bashing. That would be patriotic.

Syriana, for example, "simply doesn't want to paint things in black and white, because the world isn't that way," Clooney says. "The world is complicated, and good movies try to show that."

How about a good movie that explores the complicated roots of terror? Not more "religion of peace" apologia. Show them as people. What do they believe? What are their goals? A documentary or two about Islam would be nice. How it started, how it spread; a view backward that doesn't stop at the Crusades, or colonialism. What are the core beliefs of the various Islamic sects? Why are there so many terror groups? It's all so complicated, we need Hollywood to help us understand.

Don't hold your breath.

Via LGF.

My country, always wrong

Pages could be filled with the caustic, contradictory, and almost schizophrenic accusations of the prophets of anti-Americanism. Don't be fooled for a second that such criticisms are fueled by a genuine desire to build a better America. It's pure bile that does not deserve to be taken seriously. So when you hear me calling anti-Americanism by its name, don't assume I mean that every leftie is a traitor. I don't take issue with reasoned dissent, I just have a problem with those on the Left who follow the motto, "my country, always wrong." It just happens that this type of leftist represents about ninety-five percent of the Left.

Nice blog.

Racism is bad - so is self-delusion
By Mark Steyn
(Filed: 20/12/2005

These days, whenever something goofy turns up on the news, chances are it involves a fellow called Mohammed. A plane flies into the World Trade Centre? Mohammed Atta. A gunman shoots up the El Al counter at Los Angeles airport? Hesham Mohamed Hedayet. A sniper starts killing petrol station customers around Washington, DC? John Allen Muhammed. A guy fatally stabs a Dutch movie director? Mohammed Bouyeri. A terrorist slaughters dozens in Bali? Noordin Mohamed. A gang-rapist in Sydney? Mohammed Skaf.

Maybe all these Mohammeds are victims of Australian white racists and American white racists and Dutch white racists and Balinese white racists and Beslan schoolgirl white racists.

Maybe saying something like this is enough to get you killed by a member of the Religion of Peace.

About the photo.

Treason of the Intellectuals, Volume 3

But a new magnet for intellectuals is emerging: radical Islam. It's not that intellectuals are likely to embrace radical Islam themselves anytime soon - for one thing, the requirement of believing in God would deter many of them. But what they can do is obstruct efforts to combat radical Islam and terrorism, undermine support for Israel, stress the "legitimate grievances" of radical Islamists, and lend moral support to the "legitimacy" of radical Islamic movements.

This is a phenomenon at first glance so baffling it cries out for analysis. Both fascism and Marxism censored, harassed, and imprisoned intellectuals, but they also gave lip service to intellectualism. Russia and Germany both had great universities. Both fascism and Marxism appealed to their respective nations' cultural heritage in support of their ideologies. Our mental picture of fascism is now mostly colored by images of Nazi book burnings and bad art, but before World War II fascism was quite successful at passing itself off as a blend of socialism and nationalism.

When we try to discover what fascism, Marxism, and radical Islam have in common, the field shrinks to a single common theme: hatred of democracy. Despite all the calls for "Power to the People" from radical intellectuals, the reality is that no societies have ever empowered so many people to such a degree as Western democracies.

The problem is that people in democratic societies usually end up using that empowerment to make choices that intellectuals hate. How can we reconcile the fact that the masses, whom intellectuals profess to support, keep making wrong choices? I've got it - they've been duped somehow. Those aren't their real values; they've been brainwashed into a "false consciousness" by society. If they were completely free to choose, they'd make the "right" choices. But of course we have to eliminate all the distractions that interfere with the process: no moral or religious indoctrination, no advertising or superficial amusements, no status symbols, no politically incorrect humor. "False consciousness" is a perfect way of professing support for the masses while simultaneously depriving them of any power to choose; a device for being an elitist while pretending not to be.

Via no dhimmitude.

Hollywood's PC perversion stifles storytelling
November 27, 2005
BY MARK STEYN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST

This year's Sean Penn thriller, ''The Interpreter,'' was originally about Muslim terrorists blowing up a bus in New York. So, naturally, Hollywood called rewrite. And instead the bus got blown up by African terrorists from the little-known republic of Matobo. ''We didn't want to encumber the film in politics in any way,'' said Kevin Misher, the producer.

But being so perversely ''non-political'' is itself a political act. If there were a dozen movies in which Tom Cruise kicked al-Qaida butt across the Hindu Kush, it would be reasonable to say, ''Hey, we'd rather deal with Matoban terrorism for a change.'' But, when every movie goes out of its way to avoid being ''encumbered,'' it starts to look like a pathology.

There are at least two good reasons why Western filmmakers are reluctant to address, even obliquely, the Islamic threat to civilization. First, they will immediately be labelled racist bigot Islamophobes. Second, they will be brutally murdered. This is not supposition. They called Theo van Gogh a racist bigot Islamophobe, then they brutally murdered him.

Isn't it strange when these liberal artist types, who ordinarily delight in testing limits and sticking their finger in whoever's eye they like, suddenly turn obsequious when it comes to Islam. Oh no, "we didn't want to encumber the film in politics". Riiiight. That and you've got a touch of Islamophobia. Remember: just because you're afraid of Muslims doesn't mean they're not out to get you.

Excellent sources of opinion and news from a European perspective:

The Brussels Journal

From the desk of Paul Belien on Thu, 2005-06-30 13:08

“I believe in being free, acquiring knowledge, and telling the truth.”

The above quote from the legendary American journalist H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) sums it up pretty much. The Brussels Journal is a project set up by European journalists and writers to restore three values that are so lacking in the so-called “consensus-culture” of contemporary Europe: Freedom, the quest for Knowledge, and the Truth.

We defend freedom and, though we do not pretend to know the ultimate truth, we strive to acquire as much knowledge as possible by presenting facts and views that are hard to find in the “consensus-media” of Europe.

¡No Pasaràn!

Behind the Façades in France: What expats and the mainstream media (French and American alike) fail to notice (or fail to tell you) about French attitudes, principles, values, and official positions…

Davids Medienkritik

Policitically incorrect observations on reporting in the German media.

Fjordman

A blog about Islam, Scandinavian affairs and global politics.

EU Rota

News, Views, and Commentary Regarding the European Union

Transatlantic Intelligencer

The principal aim of Transatlantic Intelligencer is to "overcome the language gap" - or, more exactly, some of the language gaps - preventing Americans and other English-speakers from forming an accurate assessment of European political realities. Trans-Int pays special attention to developments in Germany and France, the leading continental European powers. Since there are also multiple "language gaps" within Europe, we are confident that Transatlantic Intelligencer will also be of interest to European readers.

WatchingAmerica

WatchingAmerica makes available in English articles written about the U.S. by foreigners, often for foreign audiences, and often in other languages. Since WatchingAmerica offers its own translations, regular users of our site will enjoy articles not available in English anywhere else. We are a unique window into world opinion.

Two Marines. Different attitudes.

War in Iraq
The Honorable John P. Murtha
November 17, 2005

The war in Iraq is not going as advertised. It is a flawed policy wrapped in illusion. The American public is way ahead of us. The United States and coalition troops have done all they can in Iraq, but it is time for a change in direction. Our military is suffering. The future of our country is at risk. We can not continue on the present course. It is evident that continued military action in Iraq is not in the best interest of the United States of America, the Iraqi people or the Persian Gulf Region.

"Ohmygod! The sky is falling! The sky is falling!" It sure is. On the enemy.

A Marine reports from Iraq
By An anonymous Marine
November 22, 2005

Bad guy tactics: When the enemy is engaged on an infantry level they get their a**** kicked every time. Brave, but stupid. Suicidal banzai-type charges were very common earlier in the war and still occur. They will literally sacrifice eight-to-10 man teams in suicide squads by sending them screaming and firing AKs and RPGs directly at our bases just to probe the defenses. They get mowed down like grass every time -- see the M2 and M240 above. [Name redacted]'s base was hit like this often. When engaged, the enemy has a tendency to flee to the same building, probably for what they think will be a glorious last stand. Instead, we call in air and that's the end of that, more often than not.

These hole-ups are referred to as "Alpha Whiskey Romeos" ("Allah's Waiting Room"). We have the laser-guided ground-air thing down to a science. The fast movers, mostly Marine F-18s, are taking an ever-increasing toll on the enemy. When caught out in the open, the helicopter gunships and AC-130 Spectre gunships cut them to ribbons with cannon and rocket fire, especially at night. Interestingly, artillery is hardly used at all. Fun fact: The enemy death toll is supposedly between 45,000 and 50,000. That is why we're seeing fewer and fewer infantry attacks and more improvised-explosive devices, suicide bomber s***. The new strategy is simple: attrition.

With all due respect to Mr. Murtha the war is going as advertised. It's just if you listen to the media, who don't seem to appreciate the difference between objectivity and negativity, you'd think Iraq was in complete disarray. More than a few right bastards might even feel a bit uplifted at the notion. So sorry to burst your bubble. There has always been a plan, and it's going fairly well. Two elections and a constitution into it and you'd think people would have noticed by now.

In spite of this and contrary to popular opinion the military has not quite done all they can in Iraq. And I'm not talking about building more schools and hospitals. The fact is after 9/11 we had a tough problem: how to draw our enemy out of the shadows that favored them to fight instead where our military might could be brought to bear. There is no good time or place to wage war, but could we have expected anything better than the giant Alpha Whiskey Romeo Iraq has become? Are we not still busy issuing one way tickets to paradise? The enemy is where we want him and he's losing. Which understandably flummoxes those whose twisted worldview figures the US as supervillain. "The bad guys can't win! They must therefore immediately surrender and withdraw!" Riiiiight. Sounds like we're doing just fine.

During the handful of days each year traditionally set aside for such purpose many of us celebrate, and rightly so. Despite the never ending doom and gloom spewed by our news media there are many more reasons to be thankful for being alive here and now than not. Those of us who recognize the benefits of civilization, and the precarious height it has attained, are rightly concerned about its survival. We realize we enjoy today the fruits of the labors of previous generations. We respect their wisdom and sacrifice, and express this in small part by observing the holidays they've passed on to us.

Most of the year it is possible to overlook the watered down marxists who tirelessly strive to debase society, defame our heroes, cancel our celebrations, ridicule our joy, and profane our love. Frankly these days we usually have bigger fish to fry.

But our holidays are increasingly marred by social vandals who must be addled with loathing. Not content to suffer solitary alienation or even collective disaffection they feel compelled to foist the products of their guilty conscience and false humility on everyone. Their puerile vicimology assumes we have inherited not a gift from the past but a curse. They see nothing to be thankful for - we are all either exploiters or exploitees. These champions of political correctness are disturbed not one wit by the racist/sexist basis for their claims. Blinded with self-importance the worst seek not only to establish new holidays but to supplant what has existed for generations. Others just make shit up.

Phew. Am I relieved to find out it's all in my imagination.

IWCRRSIRMWMDNBHTSTMDRWWNHBVAI

Or, for non-acronym fans, "In Which Congress Rejects a Resolution Substantively Identical to Rep. Murtha’s, which Murtha Disowned as Not Being His, Then Spent 30 Minutes Defending the Resolution Which Was Not His Before Voting Against It." Apparently, WordPress doesn’t allow titles that are that long. Nonetheless, we shall not split hairs over such niceties, and perform a post-mortem on Democrat fund-raising below.

First, a little context behind this highly amusing debacle. To begin with, virtually every single headline in the country (world) over the last few days proclaimed that Murtha was calling for "immediate withdrawal" of the troops. Apparently, this was dead wrong. A Congressional committee will be formed shortly to determine why no one bothered to correct this apparently wrong notion before the GOP forced this vote to the floor.

Debacle yes, amusing no. The Democrats have virtually abandoned the field. There is no loyal opposition, all that remains are tantrums. Bush Lied! Bush Tortures! Withdraw from Iraq now! Where are the principled, logical criticisms? Our borders are wide open and government spending is out of control. Do something useful and hold the Republicans feet to the fire about that!

I’m curious about something, however, that perhaps some of our Democrat friends can clear up. If the problem was that this resolution said something drastically different from Murtha’s, can we expect the Democrat caucus to fight to bring the actual Murtha resolution to the floor? Should we expect them to support the deployment being "hereby terminated," if they’re not willing to support "immediately terminated"?

How long must one wait for assclowns to get serious before becoming an assclown oneself?

The aftermath
Nov 17th 2005 | PARIS
From The Economist print edition

ONE measure of the ambient violence is that the French government this week welcomed the burning of 215 cars in one night as "a near-normal situation". At the peak of the recent riots, over 1,400 vehicles were torched in a single night. A week after the government declared a state of emergency, the Paris suburbs were mostly quiet—although sporadic arson attacks, including on nursery schools, continued elsewhere. The government has rushed through a law prolonging the state of emergency for three months.

What sort of Frenchmen are they?
By Dror Mishani and Aurelia Smotriez

"This problem is the problem of all the countries of Europe. In Holland, they've been confronting it since the murder of Theo van Gogh. The question isn't what is the best model of integration, but just what sort of integration can be achieved with people who hate you."

And what will happen in France?

"I don't know. I'm despairing. Because of the riots and because of their accompaniment by the media. The riots will subside, but what does this mean? There won't be a return to quiet. It will be a return to regular violence. So they'll stop because there is a curfew now, and the foreigners are afraid and the drug dealers also want the usual order restored. But they'll gain support and encouragement for their anti-republican violence from the repulsive discourse of self-criticism over their slavery and colonization. So that's it: There won't be a return to quiet, but a return to routine violence."

France's Toll of Destruction
From the desk of Paul Belien on Fri, 2005-11-18 23:23

Today in the Belgian newspaper De Tijd Nicole le Guennec, a French sociologist, says that car torching has been a common phenomenon in France for the past fifteen years. If this is true and if 100 is the average toll of destruction each night, a staggering 547,500 cars have been destroyed in France during that period. Probably more, because when one car is set alight and the fire destroys surrounding cars as well, the statistics count it as only one car fire. The worst night is traditionally New Year’s eve. Last New Year’s eve 330 cars were destroyed, a low figure compared to previous New Years when around 400 cars were set alight.

In contemporary multicultural France such staggering figures of lawlessness are considered to be a sign of "normality" and are hardly reported in the mainstream media. Neither is the following little piece of information. This week Professor Dominique Reynié of Sorbonne University in Paris, told the Brussels weekly Knack that the French state was obliged to borrow money last week to pay the wages of its civil servants. "The money has run out. One must concede: this is no example of a strong state."

Perhaps what we are witnessing in Europe, but what the politicians and the media dare not say aloud, is the implosion of the (welfare) state. The Soviet Union suddenly collapsed in 1989, when owing to the inability of communism to create wealth, the state went bankrupt, was unable to maintain its army and hold its empire together. In France, the same thing might be happening. The socialist welfare state is no longer able to maintain law and order and is abandoning entire neighbourhoods to anarchy.

Guy Sorman on the "Autism" of the French State
Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Who is going to admit that the French state that gets involved in everything - the economy, culture, military interventions and other noble causes - has become totally ineffective on the ground? Two years ago, it let 30,000 dehydrated senior citizens die in their nursing homes without air conditioning. Now, it proves incapable of resisting a couple of hundred commandos of hooligans. The state? It is everywhere where society no longer needs it and absent where it is most needed. This political autism is the true cause of the conflagration.

Nothing to see here. Move along now.

Ex-CIA boss: Cheney is 'vice president for torture'
Friday, November 18, 2005; Posted: 7:42 p.m. EST (00:42 GMT)

"We military people don't want future military people who are taken prisoner by other countries to be subjected to torture in the name of doing just what the United States does," he said.

Riiiight. Earth to Admiral Turner, the people Cheney wants to extract information from aren't in the service of "other countries". They take innocent civilians prisoner and don't hesitate to torture (in the true sense of the word) them and then saw off their head, in cold blood, in front of a video camera. Oh and, if we need to downsize the CIA again we'll make sure to give you a call.

Emotional Adolescents Hoping for Mayhem - More on the Psychology of Anti-Americanism
November 16, 2005

What causes these unconscious urges? What psychological mechanism could possibly lead someone with a lifelong commitment to peace, justice and the alleviation of suffering to actually hope for misery, chaos - and ultimately death - to be served upon the innocents that she claims to champion?

Rockefeller’s Confession
By William J. Bennett
November 14, 2005, 3:41 p.m.

While Democrats in Washington are berating the White House for having prewar intelligence wrong, a high-profile U.S. senator, member of the Select Committee on Intelligence, who has a name more internationally recognizable than Richard Cheney's, tells two putative allies (Saudi Arabia and Jordan) and an enemy who is allied with Saddam Hussein (Syria) that the United States was going to war with Iraq. This is not a prewar intelligence mistake, it is a prewar intelligence giveaway.

Senators and congressmen don't have to agree with their president's policies, and they should make the president robustly defend his policies — but they should not be acting as if they are the president or secretary of state; they should not be tipping off sometimes friends and definitive enemies about war plans that not even the president has yet made as policy. This is the true mockery of prewar intelligence, and Senator Rockefeller should fully explain his actions.

Even from his position of utmost responsibility and trust Rockefeller puts politics above national security. His thoughtless actions put our soldiers at risk. He should resign. He should be prosecuted. How dare such a hypocrite criticize the administration for having "dubious motives"?

UPDATE: See the video at The Political Teen.

The anti-war people have got their panties all in a twist again. This time they're outraged, outraged, that US troops use live ammunition. The anti-war blog whatREALLYhappened.com takes it a step further and hallucinates a media conspiracy to cover up the blindingly obvious war crime that's been commited:

CHALLENGE TO THE US MEDIA

These last few weeks we have endured the mainstream media's proclamations about how sorry they were they did not report the truth that there were no WMDs in Iraq; how the media was deceived along with everyone else (ignoring the fact that pretty much everyone else knew what was going on), and how you would all try to do a better job.

Well, here is your chance to prove that. Italian TV just aired a documentary that proves the US used chemical weapons against civilians in Fallujah, and how Giuliana Sgregna, the Italian Journalist who was kidnapped, then nearly assassinated by US troops following her release, had been reporting on that very story along with one other journalist who was killed by US troops at the time. The British Press picked up the story this morning. The rest of the world is picking up the story. So, where is the US mainstream media on this?

Chemical weapons. Oh my. Of course the only people who consider white phosphorus a chemical weapon are the psychics (AKA "pretty much everyone") who knew, just knew, all along that Saddam didn't have WMDs. Never. Except the ones Rummy sold him. Oh, and his white phosphorus. Which isn't a WMD if it belongs to Saddam. Can you imagine the reaction if Bush pointed at a captured stockpile of Republican Guard WP and said "here are Saddam's WMD"? Oops, did the peaceniks think of that before they lowered their standards? How long before they figure out gunpowder and TNT are "chemical weapons"?

Media Lies did a good job of deflating this story several days ago. The best part was a quote from Balloon Juice:

I’m a combat veteran of Iraq. Mostly Ramadi. I’m an infantry officer.

I have got to tell you guys that the knuckleheads who are tearing their hair out about WP being an illegal chemical weapon are some of the stupidest, most ill-informed, hysterical people on the planet right now. You guys are making idiots of yourselves.

Yes, I’ve seen the pictures. And I’ve seen similar effects in real life.

Not from WP, but from good old fashioned HE, which can “caramelize skin” and “leatherize skin” and cause severe flash burns.

I saw their effects because I saw what happened to Iraqi civilians after HE IEDs went off. Sometimes it happened to the guys who were setting them up.

Doctrinally, WP is used as a marking round. You pop off one or two WP rounds on the target, and then you call the air to fire up the WP round with whatever ordnance is appropriate.

You can also use WP if you desire lethal effect but a smaller blast radius. For example, if there is a structure nearby you don’t want to damage. It’s conceivable to use WP in order to minimize collateral damage, while still getting steel on the target.

It’s standard to use WP as the initial part of a smoke obscuration, and even as a navigational aid (though that’s unlikely in Iraq thanks to GPS.)

WP can also be used to force the enemy to abandon a ditch, to escape the burning bits of phosphorus. He can then be engaged with direct fires or DPICM.

There is nothing prohibiting a commander from using WP rounds against an armed enemy in the field, nor should there be. This idea that DPICM is somehow more humane than WP is a feel-good illusion propogated by people who lead sheltered lives.

Others are simply reaching for any argument, no matter how outlandish, with which to slander our troops with vile and ill-informed accusations in order to score cheap political points.

The fact is that Sherman was right: War is Hell, and you cannot refine it. The best you can do is put your head down and get the nightmare over with quickly.

Oops again. whatREALLYhappened.com should have waited until their knew what really happened. Days have passed and the Kossacks still busy themselves with "research". They must use search engines that don't extend outside their anti-war bubble.

The mainstream media, in spite of its bias, is at least smart enough not to call white phosphorus a chemical weapon. The US media that is. So far.

UPDATE: Confederate Yankee has more on Fallujah: The Hidden Massacre, the "documentary" that added white phoshorus to the anti-American lexicon. The fradulently edited helicopter footage reminded me of the techniques used in another disinformation masterpiece lauded by indignant leftists.

Reactions in the Arab and Muslim World to the Rioting in France
MEMRI
November 10, 2005

Saudi Columnist: The Problem is Not with the French Government, but With the Arab Immigrants

Columnist Dr. 'Ali Sa'd Al-Moussa wrote in the Saudi government daily Al-Watan: "The fires in Paris also set fire to all [the problems] that had accumulated with regard to Arab immigration. The Arab cannot live in harmony with a culture different from his own, for a simple reason: Today, the Arabs are spinning alone in a circle outside the circle of world culture... However much the immigrant puts down roots in the new country, he cannot aspire to full equality with the native residents of the land. The Arab generations that immigrated [to France] one after the other do not understand this, and cannot live with this fact, even though France is the best country for immigration...

"Whoever blames only the French government for the grave situation in these Parisian suburbs is mistaken. The Arabs clash culturally with the other, forcing each [side] to flee to his own community, so that the suburbs of the cities acquire the character of their mother culture. [The French immigrants of Arab origin] carry with their bags their heritage, their culture, their customs, and their conduct...

"The appearance of the streets, the doors, the schools, and the level of services [in the Paris suburbs] takes you back to the cities of Morocco, which have not changed for centuries. Respect for the [French] government is almost non-existent in daily life. Immigration requires a mental predisposition; why would any of us, who longs to immigrate to a different world, revile it with the most ugly of terms as soon as he reaches it?"

Hello? Did this fellow not get the memo? You know, the one from Chirac titled "It's All Our Fault". If Al-Moussa were a white Westerner he be called an Islamophobic (even though this all has nothing to do with Islam) neocon bigot. Since he's Saudi we can only hope he won't fare far worse.

Events Prove that Western Ideas Will Not Improve the Middle East

In an article in the Kuwaiti daily Al-Siyassa, titled "Freedom, Equality, and Fraternity are Not for All," columnist Dr. Khaled 'Awid Al-Jinfawi wrote: "This obvious failure of some of the immigrant societies in Western countries to integrate culturally and socially again sheds 'historical' light on the degree of success in implementing many Western ideas of progressivism, such as 'liberty, equality, and human fraternity,'... in the Middle East.

"If the ideals of equality, justice, democracy, human rights, and fraternity, which emerged in the West and were adopted by the French Revolution in the late 18th century, have not managed to eradicate poverty and inequality, and have even increased the marginality of the [immigrant] communities, deprived [them of] their rights, and denied them many opportunities in the economy, in education, and in development – then how can these ideas... improve the lot of many in the Middle East?..."

Now that's more like it. "You promised to eradicate poverty and inequality! Where are my mansion and yacht?" Are the French-born descendents of North African immigrants not infinitely better off than the current residents of North Africa? Would there be no riots if everyone were in equal poverty?

The ideals of equality, justice, democracy, human rights, and fraternity work well enough for those who actually buy into the system. How on earth could anyone expect it to also work for freeloading sociopaths whose only talent is for mayhem and destruction?

Bush takes on critics of Iraq war
Friday, November 11, 2005; Posted: 2:40 p.m. EST (19:40 GMT)

President Bush Friday accused critics of the Iraq war of distorting the events that led to the U.S. invasion, saying Democrats viewed the same intelligence and came to similar conclusions.

"While it's perfectly legitimate to criticize my decision or the conduct of the war, it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began," the president said.

"Some Democrats and anti-war critics are now claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to war," Bush said. "They also know that intelligence agencies from around the world agreed with our assessment of Saddam Hussein."

"These baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our troops and to an enemy that is questioning America's will," Bush said.

Many anti-war critics are so blinded by inexhaustible hatred, so enraged by their impotency, so determined to seize power at any cost, that they care not what damage they do. They tolerate the intolerance of Islam and condemn the influence of Christianity. They excuse our attackers and betray our defenders. They see the world through a prism of fear. They are irrational. They cannot be persuaded by logic. Unfortunately these irrational critics are not a fringe minority. Among them are senior leaders of the second most powerful US political party:

Who Is Lying About Iraq?
Norman Podhoretz

Nancy Pelosi, the future leader of the Democrats in the House, and then a member of the House Intelligence Committee, added her voice to the chorus:

Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons-of-mass-destruction technology, which is a threat to countries in the region, and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process.

Senator Carl Levin also reaffirmed for Bush’s benefit what he had told Clinton some years earlier:

Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the mandate of the United Nations, and is building weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them.

Senator Jay Rockefeller, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, agreed as well:

There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years. . . . We also should remember we have always underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction.

Perhaps most startling of all, given the rhetoric that they would later employ against Bush after the invasion of Iraq, are statements made by Senators Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd, also in 2002:

Kennedy: We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction.

Byrd: The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retains some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical- and biological-warfare capabilities. Intelligence reports indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons.

Even now these fevered American quislings stubbornly ignore the facts and busy themselves rewriting history...

The President Should Be Held Accountable
By Senator Ted Kennedy
t r u t h o u t | Statement
Thursday 10 November 2005

150,000 American troops are bogged down in a quagmire in Iraq because the Bush Administration misrepresented and distorted the intelligence to justify a war that America never should have fought.

As we know all too well, Iraq was not an imminent threat. It had no nuclear weapons. It had no persuasive links to al Qaeda, no connection to the terrorist attacks of September 11th, and no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.

But the President wrongly and repeatedly insisted that it was too dangerous to ignore the weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Saddam Hussein, and his ties to al Qaeda.

In his march to war, President Bush exaggerated the threat to the American people. It was not subtle. It was not nuanced. It was pure, unadulterated fear-mongering, based on a devious strategy to convince the American people that Saddam's ability to provide nuclear weapons to al Qaeda justified immediate war.

And they're just about out of cars.

Arabs Blame French Society, Discrimination
By TAREK AL-ISSAWI
The Associated Press
Wednesday, November 9, 2005; 2:07 PM

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- France's riots have set off a round of troubled debate across the Arab world: Most here blame a failure to offer opportunity to immigrants, but others see a more ominous clash of cultures over Islam.

Across the Middle East, the images of burning cars and stone-throwing young people have dominated newspapers and television. Analysts have hotly debated the riots' meaning, their cause and whether they might spread.

Wow. They're actually seeing video from France? I'm wondering if Brian Williams and Anderson Cooper are on vacation. Maybe they're still on assignment in New Orleans.

Great story. It absolves the criminals and blames the victims, and somehow squeezes in some Muslim paranoia and self-pity, even though of course this all has nothing whatsoever to do with Islam.

Here's a good rebuttal:

Troubling "Facts" of the Paris Riots
How our newspapers might turn bias to balance.
by Bruce Thornton
Private Papers
November 6, 2005

In the case of the Paris rioters, there are other explanations for their behavior that are more accurate than liberal clichés about "frustration.” As Dr Jack Wheeler puts it, "The problem is not that these Moslem kids are unemployed, but that they are unemployable. They are illiterate, unskilled except in crime, don't speak French well, refuse to assimilate into French culture and think being Moslem is more important than being French. Worse, they are paid by the French welfare state not to work, living well off the dole (and crime). The problem was epitomized by these words of a young Moslem rioter to a French reporter: 'In the day we sleep, go see our girlfriends, and play video games. And in the evening we have a good time: we go and fight the police.'”

Hard to believe this disturbing analysis was written three years ago, the situation in the cités has only gotten worse:

The Barbarians at the Gates of Paris
Theodore Dalrymple
Autumn 2002

They are certainly not poor, at least by the standards of all previously existing societies: they are not hungry; they have cell phones, cars, and many other appurtenances of modernity; they are dressed fashionably—according to their own fashion—with a uniform disdain of bourgeois propriety and with gold chains round their necks. They believe they have rights, and they know they will receive medical treatment, however they behave. They enjoy a far higher standard of living (or consumption) than they would in the countries of their parents’ or grandparents’ origin, even if they labored there 14 hours a day to the maximum of their capacity.

But this is not a cause of gratitude—on the contrary: they feel it as an insult or a wound, even as they take it for granted as their due. But like all human beings, they want the respect and approval of others, even—or rather especially—of the people who carelessly toss them the crumbs of Western prosperity. Emasculating dependence is never a happy state, and no dependence is more absolute, more total, than that of most of the inhabitants of the cités. They therefore come to believe in the malevolence of those who maintain them in their limbo: and they want to keep alive the belief in this perfect malevolence, for it gives meaning—the only possible meaning—to their stunted lives. It is better to be opposed by an enemy than to be adrift in meaninglessness, for the simulacrum of an enemy lends purpose to actions whose nihilism would otherwise be self-evident.

The Belmont Club makes an excellent observation on the significance of the carbeque brinksmanship of the "youths":

Do You Hear the People Sing?

Using expensive rotary wing assets to chase car arsonists isn't an economical proposition, especially when you can't fire on the arsonists. The ability to torch cars in the Place de la Republique is a good gauge of the limits of police response time. All in all, the tactic of car burning provides definite advantages to the attacker and many disadvantages for the defender. The tactics of the "youths" may have evolved spontaneously, and probably did. Nevertheless, because form follows function, they bear an eerie resemblance to tactics employed by the Chechens against the Russian Army in Grozny, and may have been fertilized by ideas from that source.

What's happening in France is more serious than the LA riot or Katrina looting. It's lasted longer and is more widespread. The LA mayhem wasn't organized, and the government had the good sense to put it down with curfews and the National Guard before it spread to other cities. The Katrina looting, triggered by a natural disaster, is hardly comparable except for the curious lack of similar hyperbolic reportage. Did the media learn a lesson, or are they just casting around for an angle that doesn't discredit their beloved moral relativism and multiculturalism?

Intifada in France
New York Sun Editorial
November 4, 2005

Back in the 1990s, the French sneered at America for the Los Angeles riots. As the Chicago Sun-Times reported in 1992: "the consensus of French pundits is that something on the scale of the Los Angeles riots could not happen here, mainly because France is a more humane, less racist place with a much stronger commitment to social welfare programs." President Mitterrand, the Washington Post reported in 1992, blamed the riots on the "conservative society" that Presidents Reagan and Bush had created and said France is different because it "is the country where the level of social protection is the highest in the world."

It sure smells like an "intifada", it's definitely more than a "riot". Will the French not impose a curfew and mobilize their army simply because that's what the cowboy Americans would do? Or are they afraid they wouldn't win if it came to that? Do they remember what happened when they dithered in 1940?

Wake up, Europe, you've a war on your hands
November 6, 2005
BY MARK STEYN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST

The notion that Texas neocon arrogance was responsible for frosting up trans-Atlantic relations was always preposterous, even for someone as complacent and blinkered as John Kerry. If you had millions of seething unassimilated Muslim youths in lawless suburbs ringing every major city, would you be so eager to send your troops into an Arab country fighting alongside the Americans? For half a decade, French Arabs have been carrying on a low-level intifada against synagogues, kosher butchers, Jewish schools, etc. The concern of the political class has been to prevent the spread of these attacks to targets of more, ah, general interest. They seem to have lost that battle. Unlike America's Europhiles, France's Arab street correctly identified Chirac's opposition to the Iraq war for what it was: a sign of weakness.

You might think this would also help dispell the belief that neocon arrogance caused 9/11, but the people who believe that are too busy dissecting Plame minutiae and lionizing their heroic marxist agitators in Argentina to notice anything that contradicts their worldview.

TV coverage has been thin. After two weeks don't French city streets in flames rate some air time? Compare it for instance to the coverage of the LA riot or Katrina. What happened to "if it bleeds it leads"? We beat ourselves and our government up pretty badly over Katrina. They say Europe is more enlightened, France enjoys more solidarity. Wouldn't it be instructive to examine their problems and compare them to ours? Wouldn't it be fair to critique their government's response to crisis?

Thankfully blogs have been a vibrant source of information, analysis, and opinion.
The better ones on this subject are The Belmont Club, ¡No Pasaràn!, Gates of Vienna, cuanas, and The Brussels Journal. The mainstream media is guilty not only of dragging their feet on the story, the links above reveal they've been neglecting for some time to report honestly on the problems of socialist Europe. They consistenty portray it as utopia compared to the US. From the 25% unemployment rate to the ticking time bomb of ingrateful, unassimilated, and surly Muslims I'm damn glad I don't live in France.

After looking down their noses with disdain and disgust at the US - most recently for going to war against Iraq and for the looting and lawlessness in the wake of Katrina - what the French are now experiencing should cause them to reevaluate both criticisms. First, their general support for Muslim causes around the world and for Saddam and the Palestinians in particular has earned them no sympathy whatsoever from the disaffected 2nd generation North African Muslim "youths" they have adopted. Second, the line between civilization and chaos is thin everywhere, not just here in Cowboyland. If Katrina unmasked ugly class differences and government ineptitude then so have these French riots.

I don't feel smug. I hope this wakes up the French, and the rest of Old Europe, so they finally join in the defense of civilization rather than pretentiously prevaricating while it collapses around them.

Ramadan Rioting in Europe's No-Go Areas

Our mainstream media, in attempts to preserve the Left’s chimera of “universal cultural compatibility,” hardly write about all this. Nevertheless, for some years now West European city folk and police officers have been familiar with the reality that certain areas of major European cities are no-go areas, especially at night and certainly if you are white or wearing a uniform. Three years ago, a French friend who had his car stolen learned that the thieves had parked the car in a particular suburb. When he went to the police he was told that the police did not operate in that neighbourhood and consequently would not be able to retrieve his car. This is Western Europe in the early 21st century.

Nicolas Sarkozy became France’s most popular politician by promising to restore law and order in the whole of France, including in the areas abandoned by previous governments. Since Sarkozy became Interior Minister he has insisted on more police presence in Muslim neighbourhoods. This triggered last week’s riots in the Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois, when policemen went in to investigate a robbery and two teenagers stupidly got themselves electrocuted while hiding from the police in an electricity sub station. Many French politicians now probably regret that the police had the audacity to investigate a robbery in Clichy.

. . .

The riots in France have been going on for a week now. During the second night of street fighting in Clichy, police officers already warned that they are not up to the task Sarkozy has set them. “There’s a civil war underway,” one officer declared. “We can no longer withstand this situation on our own. My colleagues neither have the equipment nor the practical or theoretical training for street fighting.” If there is, indeed, a war going on, Sarkozy cannot win it with troops that are mere policemen and fire fighters. As Irwin Stelzer pointed out last July when discussing the British reaction to the London bombings: In a war, use the army, rather than police. The latter, however, is unlikely to happen. If the politicians bring in the army they are acknowledging what the policemen, the fire fighters and the ambulance drivers know but what the political and media establishment wants to hide from the people: that there is civil war brewing and that Europe is in for a long period of armed conflict. This is the last thing appeasing politicians want to do and so they have begun to criticise Sarkozy.

This story is a few days old. The violence has gone on for 10 nights now. All along Brussels Journal has made insightful posts on the subject, identifying the situation as a civil war days before the US press acknowledged anything was even happening. The spin from the mainstream media right now is that the rioters are primarily "youths" of North African descent enraged by the deplorable living conditions the famously stingy French social welfare system forces them to live in. The rioting continues only because a fascist cowboy (Sarkozy) was insufficiently diplomatic in handling the situation. The fact the rioters are Muslim and a millet system of whitey no-go zones has emerged in Europe would just confuse us. Chirac is lying low, maybe vacationing in Crawford. They've pushed the facist cowboy aside and "negotiations" have begun. It will be interesting to see how they explain the inevitable failure of this new strategy, which is just a desperate return to the old strategy of appeasement that was in place before Sarkozy's attempt to reclaim the millet ghettos.

As I said leftists are all up in arms about the outing of a single CIA desk jockey, but they celebrate when whole CIA projects are outed:
HUGE: Secret CIA prison in Europe!!!!

WaPo goes on, great story, but refused to ID the Eastern European country in this article after a request from Bush administration officials.

What would YOU do? I am a journalist. I would name the country. I am NOT in the business of keeping the dirty secrets of the Bush administration's dirty war.

So I have a beef with WaPo on their call on that one.

Translation from traitorese: "I would have betrayed my country even more quickly and deeply." Their WaPo link appears broken, here's one that works for now:
Report: CIA Has Secret al-Qaida Prison

The hidden global internment network is a central element in the CIA's unconventional war on terrorism, the Post said. It depends on the cooperation of foreign intelligence services, and on keeping even basic information about the system secret from the public, foreign officials and nearly all members of Congress charged with overseeing the CIA's covert actions.

"We prove our patriotism by disclosing our country's covert activities to the world." a WaPo spokesman was quoted as saying.

Compare, contrast, vomit.

Our 27 months of hell
By Joseph C. Wilson IV
October 29, 2005

The attacks on Valerie and me were upsetting, disruptive and vicious. They amounted to character assassination. Senior administration officials used the power of the White House to make our lives hell for the last 27 months.

. . .

It was payback — cheap political payback by the administration for an article I had written contradicting an assertion President Bush made in his 2003 State of the Union address. Payback not just to punish me but to intimidate other critics as well.

Who Exposed Secret Agent Plame?
Clifford D. May
July 15, 2005

The first reference to Plame being a secret agent appears in The Nation, in an article by David Corn published July 16, 2003, just two days after Novak’s column appeared. It carried this lead: “Did Bush officials blow the cover of a U.S. intelligence officer working covertly in a field of vital importance to national security — and break the law — in order to strike at a Bush administration critic and intimidate others?”

Since Novak did not report that Plame was “working covertly” how did Corn know that’s what she had been doing?

Apparently this is more a case of "character suicide" than "character assasination". Valerie Plame's exposure has more to do with Joe Wilson not being able to control his petty partisan urges and love of the limelight than anything else. And if you want to get really cynical, based on how quickly David Corn sprang forth with his premature accusation it's easy to believe Wilson orchestrated or at least desired the exposure, whether to satisfy a martyr complex or in a premeditated attempt to cause problems for the Bush administration. Wilson hasn't been "attacked". His pain has been caused by his own lies and his wife's nepotism coming to light. How is that "payback"? He should be grateful. What's happened to him is nothing at all like the kind of inane ad hominem attacks the left often uses against their opponents.

And for a guy who spent some time in Africa you'd expect Joe to have some perspective on what "hell" is really like. Unless of course he spent all his time over there on a plantation sipping tea on a chaise lounge.

The Left is desperate. They can't get what they want democratically so they resort to "any means necessary". They denounce their opponents as extremists while they themselves stoop to unprecedented lows of decency and decorum. Now that they are out of power all the tools and methods of power are revealed as corrupt. LBJ is cussing up a storm somewhere.

We had a referendum on the Iraq war last November. In spite of the best propaganda efforts of the mainstream media the Global Test candidate and his Quisling Party lost. But the MoveOn'ers just can't seem to move on. The t r u t h o u t crowd only wants their version of the truth out. The same people who got indignant about Clinton being hounded by a Vast Rightwing Conspiracy see nothing wrong with advancing their Iraq War agenda via special prosecutor proxy. "Please oh please I hope THIS will sink Bush".

The party whose very name invokes democracy increasingly relies on their control of the judiciary to override the will of the people. Their foreign policy drumbeat of defeat and retreat, which threatened for a while to become a self-fulfilling prophecy, has become absurdly disconnected from reality. They criticized the first vote in Iraq because the Sunnis sat out, the second because it wasn't unanimous. They celebrate "grim milestones" and convict political opponents in their own private kangaroo court, the press.

They love Joe Wilson regardless of his lies. They hate Bush therefore he lies. The outing of an obscure CIA bureacrat drives them insane with righteous patriotic rage, meanwhile they deliberately damage far more important assets in far more significant ways. The president is a "loser". Gitmo is a "Gulag". Iraq is a "quagmire". In addition to having no sense of decency or fairness they have no sense of perspective or proportion. They see racism, corruption, and religious fanaticism everywhere. Everywhere except where it really exists.

Another compare and contrast exercise.

Dan Simpson: Invade Syria? Insane
U.S. forces have started fighting Syrians at Iraq's border. Can anybody say 'Cambodia'?
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

As I suspected six months ago, U.S. military and Bush administration civilian officials confirmed last week that U.S. forces have invaded Syria and engaged in combat with Syrian forces.

An unknown number of Syrians are acknowledged to have been killed; the number of Americans -- if any -- who have died in Syria so far has not yet been revealed by the U.S. sources, who by the way insist on remaining faceless and nameless.

The parallel with the Vietnam War, where a Nixon administration deeply involved in a losing war expanded the conflict -- fruitlessly in the event -- to neighboring Cambodia, is obvious. The end result was not changed in Vietnam; Cambodia itself was plunged into dangerous chaos, which climaxed in the killing fields, where an estimated 1 million Cambodians died as a result of internal conflict.

The End of the Beginning
Wretchard
The Belmont Club
October 15, 2005

(Speculation alert) I think most rational observers, however anti-American, must have by now come to the grudging conclusion that the insurgency is a lost cause in Iraq. As Athena at Terrorism Unveiled and Dan Darling pointed out in their analysis of the captured letter from Zawahiri to Zarqawi, the insurgency's terror tactics have been a huge mistake from Day One. Athena puts summarizes Zawahiri's message to Zarqawi eloquently. "His cowboy ways aren't winning him any strategic alliances. And on the sectarian strife among Sunni Muslims, Zawahiri is basically saying 'Drop it.' "

. . .

While the situation in Iraq seemed doubtful, the US could not credibly address the Syrian issue because its Iraqi commitments precluded any action against Damascus. Now the Assad regime knows that US forces will not long be occupied in Iraq they are sweating bullets. Ironically the availability of US forces means that they will probably not have to be used in Syria. Newsweek Magazine claims that the US had considered launching cross-border operations against Iraqi insurgent targets Syria on October 1 -- another publicly released telltale that US policy is ready to come out of the closet -- but were dissuaded by Condoleeza Rice who argued that "diplomatic isolation is working against al-Assad, especially on the eve of a U.N. report that may blame Syria for the murder of Lebanese politician Rafik Hariri". Diplomacy would not have been enough while the insurgency tied down America. With the insurgency fading fast, diplomacy may be enough.

Nobody knows what the future holds, but how can two opinions vary so dramatically about what's going on right now? Hint: one opinion comes from a hopelessly biased political partisan.

Russians help Iran with missile threat to Europe
By Con Coughlin
(Filed: 16/10/2005)

Former members of the Russian military have been secretly helping Iran to acquire technology needed to produce missiles capable of striking European capitals.

The Russians are acting as go-betweens with North Korea as part of a multi-million pound deal they negotiated between Teheran and Pyongyang in 2003. It has enabled Teheran to receive regular clandestine shipments of top secret missile technology, believed to be channelled through Russia.

Western intelligence officials believe that the technology will enable Iran to complete development of a missile with a range of 2,200 miles, capable of hitting much of Europe. It is designed to carry a 1.2-ton payload, sufficient for a basic nuclear device.

Iran puts radicals in charge of nuclear programme
By Philip Sherwell in Washington
(Filed: 09/10/2005)

Iran's new hardline president has placed his country's nuclear programme under the control of militant commanders of the Revolutionary Guards, the military's most committed wing.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has launched a purge of moderates in national and provincial government since his election two months ago, has drafted in fellow radical revolutionaries to top administrative posts - a move that will heighten Western fears over Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Many of the new power-brokers are veterans of the Revolutionary Guards' Quds (Jerusalem) Force, in which Mr Ahmadinejad held the rank of brigadier general. The unit is linked to a series of international terrorist attacks and the main backer of Hezbollah in Lebanon.

I suppose the Iranians will be needing those missles to dispose of the radioactive waste from their nuclear breeder power plants. You know, the ones they need because they don't have enough oil, gas, or coal.

Could the Ruskies really be so short sighted? The same missles that can reach Paris or Berlin can also reach Moscow. What part of Beslan and Nalchik did they not understand?

Chomsky named top intellectual: British poll

Chomsky was unimpressed with the honour, telling The Guardian newspaper that polls were something "I don't pay a lot of attention to," adding that "it was probably padded by some friends of mine."

Probably? How else could someone with such a
deeply flawed view of economics who says patently ridiculous things like:

Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the (U.S.) media.

be voted "top intellectual" except by comrades who share his anti-American beliefs?

Here for example is one comrade who shares Chomsky's delusion that we live in tyranny - a tyranny that somehow can't seem to keep them from writing fulsome little turgid screeds:

Having made the assertion that the United States is evolving into an overt tyranny, I will turn to a question many readers have asked me by email. What do we do about it?

I want to start by quoting Noam Chomsky from his latest book, Imperial Ambitions: Conversations on the Post 9/11 World:

“We have every option open to us, and have none of the problems that are faced by intellectuals in Turkey or campesinos in Brazil. We can do anything. But people here are trained to believe that there are easy answers, and it doesn't work that way. If you want to do something, you have to be dedicated and committed to it day after day. Educational programs, organizing, activism. That's the way things change. You want a magic key so you can go back to watching television tomorrow? It doesn't exist.”

This is the same comrade who thinks Jihadi terror is all our fault. Oddly enough Chomsky and his followers, who have every option open to them, freely choose to undermine the system and traditions that have given them every option.

Is it possible to be a "top intellectual" without being intellectually honest? Read Dissecting Chomsky and Anti-Americanism and judge for yourself:

The United States has made mistakes, but those who would judge our behavior and our record should look to real historians and real historical contexts, not the fabricated conspiracies of Noam Chomsky and his ilk.

Ohio Residents Clash With Neo-Nazi Group
News and Wire Reports
Oct. 16, 2005

They got "exactly what they wanted," said Ford, who had urged the community to ignore the Nazis. He said the group goes from community to community spreading hatred and sparking fights.

"Based on the intelligence we received, that's exactly what they do - they come into town and get people riled up," Ford told CNN. "I think that's a very common technique."

Angry counter-protesters appeared to be hurling stones at Nazi members and police. Aerial videotape on CNN showed people setting fire to a business; they also used baseball bats to tear down fences and to break into area stores. The violence took place within a six- to eight-block area in the north Toledo neighborhood, Toledo police spokeswoman Capt. Diana Ruiz-Krause told CNN.

About 150 officers on horseback, bicycles and in riot gear attempted to quell the confusion. Officers showed "considerable restraint" despite having been hit with rocks and bottles for "considerable hours" Ford said.

"We could have made a couple hundred arrests," he said.

Should hate groups be allowed to assemble under protection of law?

What a strange question. Obviously hate groups who throw rocks and riot should not be allowed to assemble under protection of law.

There was no story on WET. There is no White Entertainment Television. But the following was at least less of a whitewash (pun intended):

Emergency Declared After Anti-Nazi Riots
Oct 16 12:27 AM US/Eastern
By JOHN SEEWER
Associated Press Writer
TOLEDO, Ohio

A crowd protesting a white supremacists' march Saturday turned violent, throwing baseball-sized rocks at police, vandalizing vehicles and stores, and setting fire to a neighborhood bar, authorities said.

When Mayor Jack Ford and a local minister tried to calm the rioting, they were cursed for allowing the march, and Ford said a masked gang member threatened to shoot him.

At least 65 people were arrested and several police officers were injured before calm was restored about four hours later.

Ford blamed the rioting on gangs taking advantage of a volatile situation. He declared a state of emergency, set an 8 p.m. curfew through the weekend, and asked the Highway Patrol for help.

"It's exactly what they wanted," Ford said of the group that planned the march, which was canceled because of the rioting.

. . .

When the rioting began, Ford tried to negotiate with those involved, but "they weren't interested in that." He said people in the crowd swore at him and wanted to know why he was protecting the Nazis.

They were mostly "gang members who had real or imagined grievances and took it as an opportunity to speak in their own way," Ford said.

"I was chagrined that there were obvious mothers and children in the crowd with them," he said.

. . .

Keith White, a black resident, criticized city officials for allowing the march in the first place.

"They let them come here and expect this not to happen?" said White, 29.

That last comment - expressing an apparently common sentiment amongst the rioters - is what could be called the Racist's Veto, a variation of the Ignoramus's Veto, which is itself a variation of the Heckler's Veto. The argument goes like this. Someone (in this case "Nazis") says something about race that gets you in such a lather that you riot, therefore the speech you object to should be forbidden. Of course in a democracy the proper response to an argument you don't like is a reasoned counter-argument, not violence. Using intimidation to silence people who have something to say about race is, well, racist.

What does Mayor Ford think the gangs' real grievances are? Is "an opportunity to speak in their own way" anything but a lame euphemism for "burning and looting"? A timeline of events shows the Nazis marched non-violently for less than 80 minutes and left, after which violent protesters began a senseless riot that 3 hours later was still out of control:

Many of the firefighters are wearing bulletproof vests. A black man, Sir Boston, 53, of Central Avenue, runs toward the police officers and pleads with them not to let the fire trucks in for their own safety just yet. He warns that five gangs have control of the Central and Mulberry intersection, and that firefighters are sure to be assaulted if they attempt to put out the blaze. Police move in, anyway, now determined to disperse the crowd with tear gas and a show of force.

Ironically the intolerant and racially motivated crowd made the Nazis' point, ie. that whites aren't safe walking through Toledo. Ford's reaction is classic. Why give any creedence to the stated objective of the Nazi marchers when you can instead imagine an agenda that places the blame on them and absolves the rioters? One wonders if there is some fantasy world where pinko subversives and black supremacists also suffer this kind of reactionary violence whenever they spew their hate. You know, a world where the headlines read Emergency Declared After Anti-Pinko Riots or Ohio Residents Clash With Neo-Panthers Group and the focus is on how the Pinkos and the Allah-Lovin Brothas bring violence on themselves with their negative messages.

Zawahiri Letter Shows Iraq's Importance to al-Qaeda's Jihad
October 07, 2005

First, the letter shows the al-Qaeda leadership's increasing sensitivity to public opinion. Zawahiri writes of the importance of popular support for al-Qaeda, and rebukes Zawahiri for the Iraq insurgency's "brutal tactics -- noting that hostages can just as effectively be killed with bullets rather than by beheading." I've written before (most recently in the Weekly Standard) of al-Qaeda's increased efforts to tailor their message to appeasement-minded Westerners. Apparently, Zawahiri has also given some thought to how he can bolster al-Qaeda's image in the Muslim world.

Second, the letter shows Iraq's current importance to al-Qaeda's jihad.

Letter to Zarqawi

(Speculation alert) Implicit within Zawarhiri's message is an admission that the insurgency is headed for defeat unless it changes it's policies and thereby its fortunes. Al Qaeda must have viewed with mounting alarm the increasing numbers of Iraqi troops that the US can field against them. The campaigns against the Euphrates and Tigris lines and the seize and hold operations now in progress must be hurting them. Therefore, despite their theological antipathy for the Shi'ites it must have occurred to them that their car bombs, beheadings, outrages and gratuitous murders -- all dutifully reported by a media thinking it might chill American resolve -- were working against them; this brutality was driving the Shia and the Kurds into American arms. And now Zawahiri admits this policy may be leading to their defeat.

Seized Letter Outlines Al Qaeda Goals in Iraq
By Susan B. Glasser and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, October 12, 2005; A13

Al Qaeda's top deputy urged the leader of his Iraq branch in July to prepare for the inevitable U.S. withdrawal by carrying out political as well as military actions, and he lectured him that he risked being shunned by an Islamic world angered over his gruesome and not "palatable" killings of fellow Muslims, according to an intercepted letter released yesterday by the U.S. government.

The 6,000-word letter from Osama bin Laden's chief lieutenant, Ayman Zawahiri, to Iraqi insurgent leader Abu Musab Zarqawi amounts to a detailed portrait of al Qaeda's long-term goals in Iraq and the Middle East, and includes a striking critique of how Zarqawi has gone about waging his war against not only U.S. troops but also Iraqi civilians. The letter was posted yesterday on the Web site of Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte -- http://www.dni.gov -- after senior intelligence officials released excerpts of it last week.

Zawahiri's Advice

...we are in a battle, and that more than half of this battle is taking place in the battlefield of the media...

Obviously Iraq is far from the senseless quagmire the Sheehanistas, Codepinkos, and miscellaneous naysayers argue it is. We're fighting al Qaeda there. They know they can use the media to undermine us. They're counting on a repeat of Vietnam. Woe to the pacifists, Crusader withdrawal won't satisfy the Jihadis because the true goal of the Jihad is to restore the Caliphate.

P.S. Methinks the Jihadis doth protest too much.

Two critiques of Bush's recent speech I commented on a few days ago. The first is relatively succinct:

Defining The Enemy
Posted 10/7/2005

Over and over, President Bush called the terrorists "Islamic radicals." It was a stunning departure from his usual rhetoric marginalizing the religious aspect of the long-term threat America faces. In past speeches, Bush has described an otherwise amorphous enemy of "evil-doers" motivated by a rather nebulous thing called "evil ideology."

With Thursday's speech, he also abandoned his mantra that Islam is a "religion of peace." He called it a "noble faith," and left it at that.

The president could have gone even further to explain what motivates the terrorists. He left the impression they are all heretics distorting the idea of jihad and defiling their scripture. He said they were "driven by ambition."

Yet self-immolation is the antithesis of earthly ambition. Suicide bombers are inspired not by earthly gain, but by the Quranic promise of endless carnal delights in paradise — rewards that are reserved for jihadists who "slay and are slain" battling the infidels in the name of Allah. No fewer than 26 chapters of the Quran deal with holy war and the rewards for martyrs, or shaheeds.

The unpleasant truth is, Muslim terrorists are getting all these terrible ideas — from violent jihad to self-immolation to even the beheadings we've seen in Pakistan and Iraq — straight out of the text of their holy book.

The second is a point by point rebuttal of Bush peppered with Iraq War skepticism far more rational than anything I've ever heard from anti-war leftists:

News & Views
by Srdja Trifkovic
Friday, October 07, 2005

These extremists distort the idea of jihad into a call for terrorist murder against Christians and Jews and Hindus—and also against Muslims from other traditions, who they regard as heretics.

Contrary to what Mr. Bush seems to be suggesting, “the idea of jihad” does call for terrorist murder against Christians and Jews and Hindus and it is a distortion of that idea to suggest otherwise. “The idea of jihad” is a highly developed doctrine, theology, and legal system of mandatory violence against non-believers. It made Islam the first political ideology, already in Muhammad’s lifetime, to adopt terrorism as a systemic tool of policy, not as a temporary and unwelcome expedient.

Both via Jihad Watch.

Freeh decries Clinton's 'moral compass'
Clinton spokesman: Book 'a total work of fiction'
Friday, October 7, 2005; Posted: 5:48 a.m. EDT (09:48 GMT)

In his upcoming book, "My FBI," Freeh says Clinton failed to pressure Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah to let the FBI question suspects the kingdom had in custody.

"Bill Clinton raised the subject only to tell the crown prince that he understood the Saudis' reluctance to cooperate and then he hit Abdullah up for a contribution to the Clinton library," Freeh writes.

. . .

Jay Carson, Clinton's spokesman, said Freeh "wasn't even present for the meetings he describes. President Clinton repeatedly pressed the Saudis for cooperation on the Khobar Towers investigation and his pressure led to the eventual indictments."

Clinton aides challenge claim by ex-FBI chief
By Howard Kurtz
The Washington Post

Under strong pressure from former President Clinton's advisers, CBS' "60 Minutes" has agreed to read a statement denying a charge being made on tonight's program by former FBI Director Louis Freeh.

In the statement, Sandy Berger, Clinton's national-security adviser, challenges Freeh's assertion, also made in his new book, that Clinton failed to press Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah to cooperate with an investigation of the 1996 bombing of Khobar Towers in that country, and used the occasion to ask for a contribution to his presidential library.

It's a little strange how every mainstream news story about Freeh's book and upcoming 60 Minutes appearance include, or are even dominated by, a pro-Clinton counter-point. The above articles are among the current top matches. Search Google or Yahoo and see for yourself.

It's as if they wouldn't report the story until they had some opposing points to print with it. Wouldn't it be great if they did this every time? Unlike say how Richard Clarke, Paul O'Neill, and Dan Rather (speaking for Bill Burkett) got to sucker punch Bush on prime time TV during the 2004 presidential campaign.

The following article provides some counter-counter-point in support of Freeh.

How the Left Undermined America's Security Before 9/11
By David Horowitz
FrontPageMagazine.com | September 9, 2005

Underlying the Clinton security failure was the fact that the administration was made up of people who for 25 years had discounted or minimized the totalitarian threat, opposed America’s armed presence abroad, and consistently resisted the deployment of America’s military forces to halt Communist expansion. National Security Advisor Sandy Berger was himself a veteran of the Sixties “antiwar” movement, which abetted the Communist victories in Vietnam and Cambodia, and created the “Vietnam War syndrome” that made it so difficult afterwards for American presidents to deploy the nation’s military forces.

Berger had also been a member of “Peace Now,” the leftist movement seeking to pressure the Israeli government to make concessions to Yasser Arafat’s PLO terrorists. Clinton’s first National Security Advisor, Anthony Lake was a protégé of Berger, who had introduced him to Clinton. All three had met as activists in the 1972 McGovern presidential campaign, whose primary issue was opposition to the Vietnam War based on the view that the “arrogance of American power” was responsible for the conflict, rather than Communist aggression.