Show Me How

It's everywhere you turn this evening on the mainstream new sites. Fox. CBS. CNN:

Tens of thousands of anti-war protesters marched Saturday through Manhattan to demand an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq just hours after an American soldier died in a roadside explosion in Baghdad -- the 70th U.S. fighter killed in that country this month.

"End this war, bring the troops home," read one of the many signs lifted by marchers on a sunny afternoon three years after the war in Iraq began. The mother of a Marine killed two years ago in Iraq held a picture of her son, born in 1984 and killed 20 years later.

Cindy Sheehan, a vociferous critic of the war whose 24-year-old soldier son also died in Iraq, joined in the march, as did actress Susan Sarandon and the Rev. Jesse Jackson. One group marched under the banner "Veterans for Peace," while other marchers came from as far off as Maryland and Vermont.

You know what? I want this war over, too.

I want all the fighting to stop, for our troops to come home. I want to never again fear the sound of jet engines carried upon the wind under bright blue skies. I want to never again turn on the news to see that a suicide bomber in an Tel Aviv or Bali or London or Poughkeepsie made widows and widowers and orphans for his bloodthirsty god. I want to be able to do without these concerns.

Show me how.

Show me how to stop bin Laden's planes and Zarqawi's swords with Peace and Love and warm squishy visions of Equality and Justice. Show me how a hug can stop an IED. Explain how constantly apologizing for simply being who I am will stop their lust for killing me for simply wanting to exist.

Please do that. Find a solution. Go beyond your recycled rhetoric and show me how to co-exist with those who will murder the whole world for their thuggish god.

But that would be too hard, and it isn't really your goal, is it? You exist to complain, not resolve. Resolving is so... messy.

You can't bring your cute three year-old daughter to solve the real problems of the world. You can't even acknowledge the world is not a Benneton ad. There are people who want to murder that cute little girl simply because she is an American. Simply because she is a Christian, or a Jew, or a Wiccan. Simply because she wants to go to school, or chose her own fate, or grow up to think for herself, and not bend to their god's rigid dictums of what he says she must do and be and say.

So please, show me how wandering down well-guarded streets on a nice spring day wearing cake make-up, chanting and waving a fan, will keep planes from shattering glass and steel and bodies. Show me how your leisurely stroll stops Next Time from happening. Do that, and I'll be found waving the largest "Bush=Hitler" sign at the very next rally.

But that isn't how the world works is it?

Predator and prey relationships, the most basic of interactions in nature, are something that the followers of the Church of Darwin refuse to acknowledge could apply to themselves.

Show me how to reason with a zealot. In the split-second as his thumb drops on the plunger to detonate the bomb on his belt packed with hundreds of ball bearings, negotiate with him, infidel.

I'm waiting.

Show me how to stop Darwin. Show me how to stop their bloodlust.

Show me that your "peace and justice" aren't empty words muttered by empty heads. Show me how capitulation to their plans for world domination will stop the killing instead of intensify it.

Please.

I'm waiting.

Not Just a River in Egypt

Wow, does he sound flustered:

Ayman al-Zawahiri, al Qaeda's No. 2 leader, began the 15-minute speech, titled "A Message to the People of Pakistan," with a reference to last month's three-year anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

He says al Qaeda operatives in Iraq have perpetrated "800 martyrdom operations in three years, besides the sacrifices of the other mujahedeen, and this is what has broken the back of America in Iraq."

He adds, "We praise Allah that three years after the Crusader invasion of Iraq, America, Britain and their allies have achieved nothing but losses, disaster and misfortunes."

Al-Zawahiri appears to be encouraging the Pakistani people to follow the lead of the insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan, telling them to stand up against "the Zionist-Crusader assault" on Muslims and overthrow Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.

Al-Zawahiri calls Musharraf a "traitor" who placed the country's nuclear program under the supervision of the U.S. government.

"I call on them to strive in earnest to topple this bribe-taking, treacherous criminal, and to back their brothers in the mujahedeen in Afghanistan with everything they've got," al-Zawahiri said.

This is every bit as pathetic as Musab al-Zarqawi's ACME rocket demonstration earlier in the week. al-Zawahiri's cries amount to little more than a confession that al Qaeda has thrown everything it has against America, giving its best and well, err... well it wasn't enough was it?

al Qaeda can keep fighting dying and killing for some time to come, but the corner has been turned, and they now recognize that without a major change in the game, they cannot hope to survive, much less win.

Quite frankly, al-Zawahiri is starting to sound like someone else's dissembling spokesman from not to long ago. I guess that cold, dank cave air is finally getting to him...

Advertising Grey

Chris Bowers of MyDD is angry that the marketers of United 93 have chosen an across-the-board buy on the conservative advertising network at BlogAds while ignoring the much large circulation at liberals blogs (4.37 million page views/week and 17.78 million page views/week, respectively).

He writes:

Why did the marketers of United Flight 93 decide to only advertise on conservative political blogs? The Liberal Blog Advertising Network is four times as large, and is even a 20-30% better deal per page view (or CPM, to use the relevant industry term). Do they think that attack is only relevant to red America? Do they think that only Republicans were attacked on 9/11? Do they think that only conservatives remember that day? Do they think that the only people who took action on United Flight 93 had voted for George Bush one year earlier?

The Americans aboard Flight 93 were red and blue, male and female, white and not, gay and straight. They were all heroes, and all Americans recognize them as such. All of America was attacked on that day, and all of America worked to save lives that day. There have clearly been, and continue to be, disagreements about the appropriate course of action for us to pursue as a nation in response to that day. However, on September 11th itself, we were all united, including on United Flight 93.

For some reason, in memory of that day, the marketers of Untied Flight 93 have taken it upon themselves to continue the conservative slander against liberals and progressives in this country that we don't remember that day, that we didn't care about the lives that were lost, and that we somehow hate our country. If any single day in American history should have shown just how utterly slanderous statement like that are, it was September 11th, when right in the heart of blue America we all stood together. And yet, even in the marketing of their own film about a day when we were not divided, Universals studios and the marketers of their latest film have chosen to divide us. That is sad and offensive. As not only the manager of the Liberal Blog Advertising Network, but also as a proud patriot who works every day to try and help the country that I love, the country in which I was raised, the country where nearly everyone who I ever loved lived, the country that has produced my favorite works of art, music and literature, that country that I still believe is the greatest beacon of hope the world has ever known, I am saddened and offended by this. And I promise that I will not be attending this movie, which I had been intended to see and review on Sunday, until I receive some sort of explanation on this matter.

In some respects, Chris is right: on 9/11 we were not thinking about "red and blue, male and female, white and not, gay and straight."

But we were pink and grey even then. The difference?

The Pink Tribe is all about feeling good: feeling good about yourself! Sexually, emotionally, artistically – nothing is off limits, nothing is forbidden, convention is fossilized insanity and everybody gets to do their own thing without regard to consequences, reality, or natural law. We all have our own reality – one small personal reality is called “science,” say – and we Make Our Own Luck and we Visualize Good Things and There Are No Coincidences and Everything Happens for a Reason and You Can Be Whatever You Want to Be and we all have Special Psychic Powers and if something Bad should happen it's because Someone Bad Made It Happen. A Spell, perhaps.

The Pink Tribe motto, in fact, is the ultimate Zen Koan, the sound of one hand clapping: EVERYBODY IS SPECIAL.

Then, in the other corner, there is the Grey Tribe – the grey of reinforced concrete. This is a Tribe where emotion is repressed because Emotion Clouds Judgment. This is the world of Quadratic Equations and Stress Risers and Loads Torsional, Compressive and Tensile, a place where Reality Can Ruin Your Best Day, the place where Murphy mercilessly picks off the Weak and the Incompetent, where the Speed Limit is 186,282.36 miles per second, where every bridge has a Failure Load and levees come in 50 year, 100 year and 1000 Year Flood Flavors.

The Grey Tribe motto is, near as I can tell, THINGS BREAK SOMETIMES AND PLEASE DON'T LET IT BE MY BRIDGE.

You have to read Whittle's entire essay to catch the full effect, but the fact is that after 9/11 we did divide. It wasn't about "red and blue, male and female, white and not, gay and straight," but about taking a threat head on, or trying to stay in our comfort zones and pretending if we just found a way to be nice, it couldn't happen again.

Greys, for rather obvious reasons, have an abiding affinity for sheepdogs and many followed them to the center right, whereas Pink gravitated towards the "reality-based" community of the center left instead. Former Democrats and social liberals have surprisingly found themselves identified as Grey, and some erstwhile conservatives have been found to be Pink to the core. Lines are crossed and re-crossed and mostly blurred, but is isn't about being a conservative or a liberal.

It is about which way made you feel safe, Pink or Grey.

The passengers who acted of Flight 93 were stone-cold Greys when it counted.

The marketers of this film simply spent their cash where they though they could find an emotional hook, an accord that would work the best for them. Greys attract Greys, and anyone who reads blogs know that most of the Greys have pitched their tents to the right of center, even if in a temporary state. Good marketers market where the bulk of their target demographic lies.

It really is an simple as that.

Murtha, Sheehan Meet with Generals

Or at least that is what I expected when I saw this headline.

Safe Haven?

This is interesting, and will almost certainly be seized upon by some (perhaps many) as evidence that the United States is losing the fight against terrorism.

Via CNN:

The State Department's annual terrorism report finds that Iraq is becoming a safe haven for terrorists and has attracted a "foreign fighter pipeline" linked to terrorist plots, cells and attacks throughout the world, a senior State Department official involved in the preparation of the report told CNN.

The report, to be released Friday, also says terrorist groups loosely associated with al Qaeda present the greatest threat to the United States and the world, even greater than al Qaeda itself.

The official told CNN that, with al Qaeda's senior leadership scattered and on the run, autonomous cells inspired by al Qaeda's extremist ideology present a greater challenge because they are smaller, harder to detect and more difficult to counter.

"These micro-actors are launching more attacks, and they are more local and more lethal," the senior official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the report had not been released, told CNN Thursday in an interview. This official cited last July's bombings in London by British Muslims with ties to Pakistan as an example of an increase in attacks by local terrorists with foreign ties.

While the official described al Qaeda as "crippled and constrained without the strategic network" it once had, he said there are still indications al Qaeda is planning a spectacular terrorist attack on U.S. soil.

"We have not been able to deliver the knockout punch to al Qaeda, and there is no doubt they are in the planning stages for something big," the official said.

Upon reading this article, my first question was simply this: how does the State Department define a "safe haven?" Afghanistan under the Taliban was a safe haven when it provided more or less official cover for al Qaeda, and the same could presumably be said for present day Sudan, Syria, and Iran.

But Iraq, where terrorists are actively hunted by domestic and foreign militaries, local police, and civilian tribesmen alike? Al Qaeda's "emir" of Samarra Hamid Al-Takhi might beg to differ with the description of Iraq as a safe haven, as would two of his men gunned down by Iraqi military forces today. I don't have numbers in front of me at this time, but I think it probably safe to assume that Iraq is probably among the least safe areas for terrorists right now.

That groups affiliated with al Qaeda are more of a threat than al Qaeda itself should be self evident at this point, as most of al Qaeda's most experienced leaders and operatives are dead or in deep hiding.

This was never more apparent than when top al Qaeda explosives expert Marwan Hadid al-Suri was killed last week acting as a low-level bagman distributing funds to the families of al Qaeda in Pakistan. A healthy terrorist organization would never put a top operative like al-Suri at risk is such an exposed position unless their trusted mid-level manpower was severely depleted. Thus, the "real" al Qaeda may not be dead, but after five years of being hunted down around the globe, they seem to be more a franchise name than an effective operational force.

The key to destroying terrorism, in my opinion, is to reduce or eliminate entirely state sponsorship and several crimp international support, making it increasingly difficult to transfer men, material or knowledge across regions. If you are successful in do that, you isolate terrorists to a local and regional level. Once you've hampered their mobility, they are forced to carry out attacks more or less locally, in the same areas they draw their support from. As you well know, defecating where you eat is toxic, and for terrorists, increases their risk of being captured or killed significantly. Eventually, public support erodes and such organizations end up gutted and minimalized.

Thus, while these micro-actors are indeed initially more deadly, forcing terror to retreat from a global to a micro-level is a significant improvement in the overall war against terrorism, as it reduces the overall lifecycle of terror organizations. We simply need to make sure we are making state sponsorship of terrorism a too expensive proposition in terms of capital (both political and monetary) at the same time, at which point the war against the tactic of large-scale terrorism may very well be won. The White House has taken steps in the past few days to do just that, clamping down on monetary support with the application of Executive orders against Sudan and Syria in the past days alone, placing significant pressures upon their unstable regimes.

Soon, would-be nuclear state Iran may be among the last of the state sponsors of terrorism, and if they continue down their ill-advised and badly miscalculated gambit for nuclear weapons, they may find themselves in a conflict from which their terror sponsoring regime would not be allowed to emerge intact.

The war on terror is far from over, but it seems from my perspective that the major players are choosing their ground for what may well be the final war against state sponsored terrorism of this modern age in this decade. Modern theofascism and the state support of terrorism arguably began in Iran. It seems fitting that the stage may be set so that it may die there as well.

David Broder, Stand and Deliver

In another WaPo editorial attempt to defend the indefensible, columnist David Broder makes a startling charge:

The firing of McCarthy, a veteran intelligence officer who had held sensitive administrative posts, came after CIA Director Porter Goss and his White House superiors had ordered an intensive crackdown on leaks to the press.

McCarthy had already initiated steps toward retirement and was apparently only days away from ending her career when she and others were asked to take lie detector tests -- and then she was dismissed.

For the first few days after the action was announced, the agency and the White House let stand the impression that McCarthy had been a source for the stories about secret U.S. detention centers in Europe that won a Pulitzer Prize for The Post's Dana Priest on April 17. But when McCarthy's lawyer said she had no part in that transaction, CIA officials confirmed that was the case -- leaving it unclear exactly what she had done to bring down the punishment.

David Broder is being disingenuous here, and dishonest. He seeks to craft a sentence so that a less-than-thorough reader might infer that the CIA had no evidence that Mary McCarthy leaked information to the press at all (as opposed to the specific Priest story), therefore, "leaving it unclear exactly what she had done to bring down the punishment."

That is a demonstrably false assertion by Broder, and I'm calling him out on it.

Via the NY Times:

The Central Intelligence Agency on Tuesday defended the firing of Mary O. McCarthy, the veteran officer who was dismissed last week, and challenged her lawyer's statements that Ms. McCarthy never provided classified information to the news media…

A C.I.A. spokeswoman, Jennifer Millerwise Dyck, said: "The officer was terminated for precisely the reasons we have given: unauthorized contacts with reporters and sharing classified information with reporters. There is no question whatsoever that the officer did both. The officer personally admitted doing both."

And from the very top of the CIA this comes from Director Porter Goss, via ABC News:

In a statement to CIA employees, [CIA Director Porter] Goss said that "a CIA officer has acknowledged having unauthorized discussions with the media, in which the officer knowingly and willfully shared classified intelligence, including operational information."

The bold used in both quotes is mine.

Two named CIA officials have stated specifically and vehemently that the CIA officer fired last week (and later identified as Mary McCarthy) was fired for the specific offenses of having improper media contacts and leaking classified information. Furthermore, they change that she admitted to both offenses, and they contend that evidence of such offenses is apparently beyond dispute.

For David Broder to now try to rewrite history by attributing McCarthy's firing as anything other than what it was is dishonest. Broder either needs to apologize to his Washington Post readers for his intentional misdirection, or he must explain how he himself could so easily be fooled. In either event, his credibility is now almost as suspect as that of the disgraced McCarthy.

"Questionable polices" are afoot indeed, and it is time for the spin and misdirection at the Washington Post to stop.

The Chamber Pot Spills

I ripped the Washington Post yesterday for a dishonest editorial attacking Porter Goss and the CIA. The Post actually attempted to say it was wrong to fire suspected leaker Mary McCarthy, who may be involved with Dana Priest's Pulitzer Prize-winning article of the CIA prisons, that no one can seem to prove existed.

Well, things just keep getting more interesting with the old "secret prisons" story, and if Dan Riehl is correct, it is a really old secret prisons story, dating back as far as December 26, 2002.

A sample of the potential bombshell from a Riehl World View:

Contrast these two excerpts below published three years apart. The second won a Pulitzer. The first isn't even archived on line.

2002: In other cases, usually involving lower-level captives, the CIA hands them to foreign intelligence services — notably those of Jordan, Egypt and Morocco — with a list of questions the agency wants answered. These "extraordinary renditions" are done without resort to legal process and usually involve countries with security services known for using brutal means.

2005: A second tier -- which these sources believe includes more than 70 detainees -- is a group considered less important, with less direct involvement in terrorism and having limited intelligence value. These prisoners, some of whom were originally taken to black sites, are delivered to intelligence services in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Afghanistan and other countries, a process sometimes known as "rendition." While the first-tier black sites are run by CIA officers, the jails in these countries are operated by the host nations, with CIA financial assistance and, sometimes, direction.

Notice the quotation marks around rendition above in 2005? A new and extraordinary term? Hardly.

Read it all and draw your own conclusions.

If Dan is correct—and upon reading the case he makes, I have a feeling that he may be—then Dana Priest's Pulitzer Prize was awarded for recycling the content of an article she wrote with Barton Gellman years before.

Perhaps more troubling, it brings up the possibility that Mary McCarthy could have been leaking to the press as far back as 2002.

The plot has indeed thickened.

Misplaced Words

Quick, see if you can find out what word is missing from the lede of this Associated Press article in the NY Times:

Sen. Debbie Stabenow's campaign has corrected her campaign finance reports to show that some donations from 2002 and 2003 came from an Indian tribe then represented by now-disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, not an individual as she reported at the time.

Stabenow's campaign originally reported that $4,000 in donations came from Christopher Petras, who was the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe's legislative director at the time. The donations came during a period in which Stabenow and other Michigan lawmakers sought funding for the tribe and wrote letters to federal regulators on the tribe's behalf.

The campaign wrote the Federal Election Commission on April 14 to correct the report to show the donations came from the tribe. Records originally listed Petras as giving Stabenow's campaign $2,000 on March 6, 2002, and an equal amount on June 30, 2003. Copies of the checks showed the first was dated Feb. 20, 2002, and the second June 2, 2003.

Give up? The word is Democrat.

Don't bother looking for it in these paragraphs, or for that matter, in the entire article, even though Sen. Debbie Stabenow is in fact a Democrat. Apparently, the Associated Press does not want the words "Democrat" and "Abramoff" appearing in the same sentence, much less the same article.

Miraculously, the AP does find a way to run this story with the Republican Party mentioned three times, twice directly relating it to Jack Abramoff.

Just so we're clear, the Associated Press would like to remind us that whole Jack Abramoff affair is a Republican scandal.

Please ignore that all but five Democratic Senators took contributions from Abramoff's clients. Ignore that Democrat Debbie Stabenow is re-writing her campaign report, and please, ignore the recent ethics complaint filed against Democratic Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid for taking up to $66,000 from Abramoff's clients.

You wouldn't want these inconvenient facts to get in the way of a good narrative, would you?

Kicking Assad

President Bush has dropped the economic hammer on Syria for the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri early last year.

Via al-Reuters:

President George W. Bush on Wednesday issued an order blocking the assets of anyone connected with the February 14, 2005, assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri.

Bush in a statement said the new order blocks the property and interests of anyone determined to have been involved in Hariri's assassination and that additional steps were being taken "concerning certain actions of the government of Syria."

A U.N. report last year implicated senior Syrian security officials in Hariri's killing and said Syria was impeding the inquiry. Syria has denied involvement.

Bush's order does not designate anyone specifically, but establishes the criteria for who would fall under the order.

In addition to blocking the assets of anyone found to be involved in Hariri's assassination, the order targets anyone involved in an assassination or bombing in Lebanon since October 1, 2004, related to Hariri's killing or implicating the Syrian government, an administration official said.

Iran has garnered most of the media's attention lately due to its nuclear ambitions, but the President has not forgotten Bashir Assad's murderous regime. These sanctions should bring pressure to bear on the Syria-Iran alliance, and it will be very interesting to watch to see if this pressure destabilizes Bashir Assad's already tenuous grip on power.

The full text of the Executive Order is available here.

Chamber Pot Pulitzer

Today's Washington Post editorial Bad Targeting was probably left unsigned with the primary goal of protecting the reputation of the wretch assigned to excrete it. You can hardly blame them. If a name were ever assigned to this dunghill of journalistic excuses, the author would forever lose what credibility he or she retains.

The Post sticks with septic certainty to its allegation that the United States has (or had) secret prisons in Europe, even after investigation have found no proof of illegal renditions, and no proof that such prisons ever existed. None.

The Post then has the audacity accuse CIA Director Porter Goss of a "questionable use" his authority, for firing an employee who concealed multiple instances of certainly unethical and possibly illegal acts. "Questionable use?" Brassy words coming from the newspaper that used its bully pulpit to release approximately three hundred articles and editorials on "Plamegate" with many of those calling for Karl Rove's head, with no actual evidence of wrong-doing.

But the most pathetic defense of all that the Post tries to mount is to suggest that Mary McCarthy had multiple illicit contacts with the press out of some sense of patriotism. They would spin this to suggest that Mary McCarthy, who worked in the Inspector General's Office of the Central Intelligence Agency, was unaware of the very real and legal options she would have had under federal whistleblower statutes, specifically the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act of 1998. Knowing the intricacies of such laws and the minutia of internal CIA policies regarding the same are among the responsibilities of her office.

If Mary McCarthy thought a real crime was being committed, she had the right—no, the duty—to report it directly to her superiors and/or Congress, and she knew that well. These is no evidence, not one Congressman, not one Senator, who has stepped forward and said that McCarthy attempted to contact them in this matter. Not One.

Instead, Mary McCarthy illicitly and perhaps illegally had contacts with multiple members of the press, including the Post. The Post seeks to uphold the honor of someone who disgraced her position and betrayed her oath as a CIA officer in what turned to be an empty and apparently partisan attack, in hopes of salvaging the reputation of their chamber pot of a Pulitzer.

The Post and McCarthy have failed to shift the blame their indefensible actions, and long may they wallow in their shame.

Note: Grammar mistakes corrected.

Musab's Happy Video Fun Time

In a rare Internet-posted video, terrorist mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi appeared for 34 minutes, blasting the United States for a "crusader-Zionist war" against Islam. Rusty has a nice roundup going at the Jawa Report, and once you've seen that along with the analysis of Bill Roggio and Walid Phares of the Counterterrorism Blog you've pretty much got your bases covered.

That said, I did watch the entire 34 minutes, and think I have a few observations that may be of use.

Throughout the bulk of the video, Zarqawi's eyes seem "heavy," blinking slowly and not appearing to open fully. At first I thought this was possibly the result of the lighting in the room in which the video was shot, but people responding to too-bright lights tend to blink more quickly, not more lethargically. In addition, through some sections of the video, Zarqawi seems short of breath. Some of the film transitions seem abrupt, as if trying to cover this.

In addition, Zarqawi's face seems somewhat bloated when compared to admittedly outdated photos. This may simply be a function of age, fatigue, and what is likely a substandard diet, but it could also be the result of some kinds of medications. This is all blind speculation, of course, but worth considering.

The rest of the video is well covered in transcripts (Rusty's post has a rough one), and so I'd prefer to look at elements of the film not heavily covered.

First things first, I'd like to gently correct Athena at Terrorism Unveilled. Zarqawi is not wearing a suicide vest in this video, just a standard AK-style chest rig, similar to this Chinese model or this upgraded commercial version. For comparative purposes, several versions of suicide vests modeled by would-be suicide bombers can be seen here.

By the way, he does fire a M249 that was likely captured from U.S forces. It is a "hero" shot filmed for propoganda purposes, but it simply serves to remind me that a 15 lb machine gun firing 5.56mm rounds best suited for killing woodchucks is a relatively light-recoiling weapon.

Near the end of the video are several minutes of outdoor footage, including the "hero" shooting video, footage of Zarqawi walking, and a few seconds of video of the flatbed truck above, with what appears to be a machine gun on a fixed mount in the bed.

Up until this point, I'd make the argument that this video could have been shot just about anywhere, but the gun-truck footage throws that in doubt. If this is indeed a fixed-mount, it seems very unlikely that this vehicle has been anywhere near where coalition forces could have seen it. That would seem to indicate that this is either a recently-modified truck, or video was filmed in a very remote region where Zarqawi felt safe enough for an open display of weapons that are not easily hidden.

Perhaps this was not even filmed in Iraq.

And then we have this.. well, err, rocket. It appears to be homemade, and suspiciously close to the size of a paper towel roll. It was fired by a hand-lit fuse, just like every ACME rocket delivered to Wile E. Coyote. It did actually go off, but to what effect we may never know. The warhead on a rocket this small can't be much larger or much more lethal than a Cadbury egg.

The "shell fragments" would presumably melt in your mouth, not on your hands...

This larger rocket is also "ACME-fused," and is most likely unguided, but it would potentially present a downrange threat somewhere, though the rudimentary fins indicate that cold be just about anywhere on a 90-degree arc.

CNN tells us that Zarqawi is mocking the United States military in this propaganda film.

My response?

Beep, Beep.

Two Birds

White House Advisor Karl Rove's shrewd move back into matters purely political may have already stuck gold for the GOP, as President Bush announced a new Administration campaign designed to ease pressure on the nation's oil supply while preserving its supply of illegal alien labor.

President Bush estimates the amount of oil required for a short term visa.

Under the new "Oil for Amnesty" plan, otherwise illegal aliens from Mexico and other oil-rich Central and South American countries would be granted temporary visas, the length of which would be directly tied to the amount of oil they are able to bring with them from their home countries.

Following the official announcement, Mexican President Vincente Fox was among the first to take advantage of the program.

Oil prices fell immediately after Bush's speech.

Note: For real gas news see that Pain in the Gas Jason Smith at Texas Rainmaker.

Radical Thoughts

Editor & Publisher is apparently trying some of its own advice, attempting to gin up controversy with the headline, Bush Says He Tried to Avoid War 'To The Max,' Explains How God Shapes His Foreign Policy.

A provocative headline, but a half-truth at best, not that this apparently matters to E&P editor Greg Mitchell, who seems intent on dragging Editor & Publisher into shrieking irrelevance with an overly partisan message.

President Bush did unquestioningly use the phrase "to the max" to describe that he tried his utmost to use diplomacy to solve the crisis with Iraq instead of military means. This is true, as even up until the last minute the United States was willing to consider exile and even immunity for Saddam Hussein and his top officials, only to have just such a deal was rejected by other Arab leaders. While "too the max" is an unfortunately conversational and informal turn of phrase, it is hardly incorrect.

But that is not at the heart of E&P's editorial against the president, his professed Christian faith apparently is:

Bush also explained, in unusually stark terms, how his belief in God influences his foreign policy. "I base a lot of my foreign policy decisions on some things that I think are true," he said. "One, I believe there's an Almighty. And, secondly, I believe one of the great gifts of the Almighty is the desire in everybody's soul, regardless of what you look like or where you live, to be free.

"I believe liberty is universal. I believe people want to be free. And I know that democracies do not war with each other."

"Unusually stark terms," you say? By who's estimation?

There is a document that Greg Mitchell could bear reading, written by another group of men who believed in God and liberty, that by E&P standards must be completely unacceptable. It uses such unforgivable language as this:

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

God, the "Creator" granting an unalienable right to liberty? What an unforgivable document, this Declaration of Independence that President Bush dares to echo.

I'm certain Editor and Publisher will bravely "explore the ways to confront it," as well.

(h/t: Outside the Beltway)

As Credibility Exits

I was flipping through the cable channels last night and momentarily came across Keith Olbermann's show, in which he was doing his very best to paint fired CIA leaker Mary O. McCarthy as some sort of a scapegoat fired just before her impending retirement as a warning to others who might dare have the audacity to challenge the Administration. Olbermann, like so many others in the media, seemed willing, even eager to take McCarthy's excuse at face value, even as the media refuses to do anything other than insinuate the very worst about those in the government accused by the media (but not law enforcement) in the Plame and NSA scandals.

Is the media so driven by a partisan desire to be kingmakers these days that it is unable to report events without an inordinate amount of partisan spin?

Apparently.

It be nice for a change to see the media become irate that leaks are so prevalent at the CIA during a war, and that McCarthy got within ten days of escaping the through retirement. Instead, they try to make her a martyr.

Is it any wonder that people increasingly distrust the media?

The Bright, Smoldering City on the Hill

Via the NY Times:

Iran has told the International Atomic Energy Agency that it will refuse to answer questions about a second, secret uranium-enrichment program, according to European and American diplomats. The existence of the program was disclosed by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad earlier this month.

The diplomats said Iran had also refused to answer questions about other elements of its nuclear program that international inspectors had focused on because they could indicate a program to produce nuclear weapons.

Iran continues down a comically transparent path towards nuclear weapons, while threatening with extinction a country estimated to have well in excess of 100 nuclear weapons of its own, along with multiple delivery systems that it can deliver at will.

Do you ever get the feeling that the mullah's cries for Armageddon are all too sincere?

Illinois Dem Shrieks for Impeachment

Oh, this is too rich:

State Rep. Karen Yarbrough (D-Maywood) has sponsored a resolution calling on the General Assembly to submit charges to the U.S. House so its lawmakers could begin impeachment proceedings.

It would be the first state legislature to pass such a resolution, though the measure faces a dim future in a Republican-controlled Congress.
...

"This president has acted like an emperor," Yarbrough said.

Emperor Bush immediately had Rep. Yarbrough drawn and quartered, with her head placed on a pike at the palace gates as a warning to others.

Get all the gory details at The New Editor.

Connections

Ever wonder what happens when you set loose a military officer on a recently disgraced intelligence officer? You end up with a lot of interesting connections, courtesy of Mind in the Qatar.

A Perfect Stranger

Ever wondered why only one faith could be right? Where loves comes from? Whether it is possible to "earn" your way into Heaven?

I read Dinner with a Perfect Stranger tonight, and my head is reeling. At just 100 pages and written in a conversational style, you hardly feel you are reading it as much as overhearing it, and what you get out of it is profound. I'm not much into book reviews as a rule (I've done one before, I think), but I feel compelled to suggest it. It really is that good, and that impactful.

I see via Amazon that A Day with a Perfect Stranger, a follow-up novella, is going to be released July 18. I will be getting a copy.

Juan Cole's Uninformed Comment

I generally ignore University of Michigan History Professor Juan Cole, who often seems little more than Oliver Willis with a PhD. This morning, however I noticed via Memeorandum a shoddily constructed piece he entitled All Right, Not All Right, and I felt compelled to respond.

Professor Cole's post was one of many that I have seen trying to push the meme that the administration shouldn't penalize those who illegally leak classified information, if they are going to “leak” classified information themselves.

This of course is a valid criticism if true, but what Cole and his center left compatriots consistently and willfully ignore in propping up their strawman argument is the simple, unassailable fact that the President and Vice President (via an update to a Clinton-era Executive order) have the authority to classify and declassify information for both broadcast (widespread media) and narrowcast (targeted, selective media) distribution. Only releases made by those without legal declassification are illegal leaks. Those news releases made with Administration approval, whether broadcast or narrowcast, are 100% legal.

Democrats in general and liberals in particular may not like the fact that the Administration has this legal authority to narrowcast information, but the remedy is simple: win elections. Instead of going this route, however Cole and his merry cohorts try to obfuscate the truth and twist facts.

Need proof? Read on.

Cole's article tries to make comparisons between various "leeks," while keeping the strawman alive that legal narrowcasts of declassified information are the same as illegal leaking of classified information.

He starts by making a claim against White House Advisor Karl Rove:

It IS all right for Bush campaign strategist Karl Rove to leak classified intelligence about the identity of Valerie Plame as an undercover CIA operative.

A damning charge to be sure, but what does Cole have as proof of his allegations? Nothing it turns out. The MSNBC article he links to says specifically that:

...Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, confirmed that Rove had been interviewed by Cooper for the article. It is unclear, however, what passed between Cooper and Rove.

The second link is a self-referential link back to Cole's own site, hardly evidence of any wrongdoing. Cole makes an assertion that he can provide no factual evidence to support. I think this failure to support his charge shows far more about Cole's inability to formulate a valid thesis than it does anything about Karl Rove.

Professor Cole, after failing to make the case against Rove, seems to be making the attempt to exonerate newly-disgraced CIA officer Mary McCarthy:

It is NOT all right for CIA employee Mary McCarthy to leak classified information and blow the whistle on secret torture prisons maintained by the US government in Eastern Europe. (There is disagreement on who the criminals are here, however.)

Here, Cole tries to misdirect his readers. Cole tries to make the outlandish charge that McCarthy had to illegally leak classified information to the Washington Post's Dana Priest on multiple occasions to "expose" what she felt was an illegal act.

But Mary McCarthy worked in the Inspector General's office of the CIA, placing her in the best possible position to legally blow the whistle on any activities by the CIA she may have thought illegal. McCarthy, perhaps more than almost any other officer in the CIA, know what was the legal way to expose information, and what was illegal. She willfully chose to commit a crime when other options were open to her, and for that there is no excuse.

Cole continues:

It is NOT all right for Larry Franklin, former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz's "go-to" man for Iran at the Pentagon's Near East and South Asia Iran desk to pass classified documents to the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which then passed them on to a spy, Naor Gilon, in the Israeli embassy.

Again, Cole seems to have a problem understanding that Franklin cannot legally declassify and pass along information on his own. He then tries to tie Franklins' case to this allegation:

It IS all right for Secretary of State Condi Rice to discuss with AIPAC Middle East operative Steve Rosen some of the same things that were in the documents passed to him and Keith Weissman by Larry Franklin, who is in jail for it.

Once again, as he did above, Cole tries to pass off an unsupported allegation as a fact. Franklin plead guilty. He knows what he did was wrong, and admitted it.

Rosen, trying to keep from facing jail time for his own illegal acts, is trying to do anything at all possible to muddy the waters, and that includes dragging in Secretary of State Rice, former Middle East envoy Anthony Zinni, and two others if at all possible. Once again, these are allegations, and unsupported by any evidence. Cole once again proves that the closest he can get to a valid thesis is wishful thinking.

As I stated above, the President and Vice President have the authority to classify and declassify information for both broadcast (widespread media) and narrowcast (targeted, selective media) distribution, and releases made without legal declassification are criminal acts.

I can only hope for his student's sake that Juan Cole is a better history professor than he is a political commentator.

"Bush Shuffle" Continues

In a week that saw White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan resign and Presidential advisor Karl Rove move away from a policy role, it appears that the biggest, and most surprising shakeup is Vice President Dick Cheney's bid to become a candidate for the next opening on the Supreme Court.

Cheney's none-too-subtle bid * mirrors that of sitting Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginburg.

Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice * is also thought to be angling for a SCOTUS nomination should a fourth Justice retire during the Bush Presidency.

Update: Dan says, "Hu's On First?"

CIA Officer Didn't CYA

A CIA agent has been fired for leaking classified information to the media:

CIA officials will not reveal the officer's name, assignment, or the information that was leaked. The firing is a highly unusual move, although there has been an ongoing investigation into leaks in the CIA.

One official called this a "damaging leak" that deals with operational information and said the fired officer "knowingly and willfully" leaked the information to the media and "was caught."

The CIA officer was not in the public affairs office, nor was he someone authorized to talk to the media. The investigation was launched in January by the CIA's security center. It was directed to look at employees who had been exposed to certain intelligence programs. In the course of the investigation, the fired officer admitted discussing classified information including information about classified operations.

The investigation is ongoing.

A Justice Department spokesman said "no comment" on the firing. The spokesman also would not say whether the agency was looking into any criminal action against the officer.

Gee... I wonder who it was?

In all seriousness, this is damaging for certain political factions within the CIA, and was almost certainly a shot across the proverbial bow by Porter Goss, the former agent hired by the President to clean up the Agency. It will be very interesting in the days to come to see if this was an isolated incident, or if this is simply the first in a series of house-cleaning moves long overdue.

Note: A.J. Strata concludes that the CIA was fired for leaks that led to the N.Y. Times publishing the original NSA wire-tapping story. The CIA does appear in the NY Times article, but this AP story ties the firing to the Washington Post's secret prison story from late last year.

Update: Rick Moran brings up the very interesting possibility that since no evidence that the secret prisons ever existed, that the operation that brought down CIA officer Mary McCarthy may have been a sophisticated "sting" to target leakers (h/t Captain Ed).

Friday Nukes

I'll be in meetings most of the day today, but to tide you over, check out what Ray Robison has uncovered regarding documentation that seems to support the theory that Saddam Hussein was looking into nuclear weapons, here, here, here and here.

Robison, a current military operations research analyst and a former member of the Iraq Survey Group for the Defense Intelligence Agency, has been able to dig up newspaper articles, original Iraqi documentation, and satellite photos of the base where nuclear testing is rumored to have occurred.

Interesting stuff.

Advantage: Patterico

When Red America/Washington Post blogger Ben Domenech was caught plagiarizing multiple articles, the Washington Post allowed him to resign within the week.

Now that Golden State/L.A. Times blogger Michael Hiltzik has been caught plagiarizing multiple personalities, will the L.A. Times have the integrity to "allow" Hiltzik to resign as well?

Pre-publication Update: The answer appears to be yes.

Notice from the Editors

The Times has suspended Michael Hiltzik's Golden State blog on latimes.com. Hiltzik admitted Thursday that he posted items on the paper's website, and on other websites, under names other than his own. That is a violation of The Times ethics policy, which requires editors and reporters to identify themselves when dealing with the public. The policy applies to both the print and online editions of the newspaper. The Times is investigating the postings.

Interestingly enough, when Domenech was caught plagiarizing, quite a few conservative bloggers let him have it. Why aren't any liberal bloggers condemning the dishonesty of Hiltzik?

Further Update: Hiltzik's Golden State Blog has suddenly ceased to exist.

Is this a temporary condition, or how the L.A. Times decided to solve the problem?

Yet Another Further Update: The blog is back, but Michael Hiltzik is still suspended.

Oy...

Click. Print. Bang.

Greg Mitchell, editor of Editor & Publisher, asks the media do what it can to overthrow the Bush Administration. Within legal bounds, of course:

No matter which party they generally favor or political stripes they wear, newspapers and other media outlets need to confront the fact that America faces a crisis almost without equal in recent decades.

Our president, in a time of war, terrorism and nuclear intrigue, will likely remain in office for another 33 months, with crushingly low approval ratings that are still inching lower. Facing a similar problem, voters had a chance to quickly toss Jimmy Carter out of office, and did so. With a similar lengthy period left on his White House lease, Richard Nixon quit, facing impeachment. Neither outcome is at hand this time.

Lacking an impending election, or a real impeachable scandal, what does Mitchell plead?

The alarm should be bi-partisan. Many Republicans fear their president's image as a bumbler will hurt their party for years. The rest may fret about the almost certain paralysis within the administration, or a reversal of certain favorite policies. A Gallup poll this week revealed that 44% of Republicans want some or all troops brought home from Iraq. Do they really believe that their president will do that any time soon, if ever?

Democrats, meanwhile, cross their fingers that Bush doesn't do something really stupid -- i.e. nuke Iran -- while they try to win control of at least one house in Congress by doing nothing yet somehow earning (they hope) the anti-Bush vote.

Meanwhile, a severely weakened president retains, and has shown he is willing to use, all of his commander-in-chief authority, and then some.

What are you asking for, Mr. Mitchell? Are you asking you friends in the professional media to gin up outrage and hysteria, in hopes that in a nation of 300 million... no, you couldn't be.

It seems possible:

I don't have a solution myself now, although all pleas for serious probes, journalistic or official, of the many alleged White House misdeeds should be heeded. But my point here is simply to start the discussion, and urge that the media, first, recognize that the crisis—or, if you want to say, impending crisis -- exists, and begin to explore the ways to confront it.

Start the discussion. Urge the media. Confront Bush. And then…

Right?

I Question the Timing

Like others, I noticed with a quite a bit of cynicism the report of immigration raids conducted yesterday with what appears to political timing. Michelle Malkin not only notes this occurrence, she provides a GAO document showing just how shoddy immigration enforcement has been during the Bush Administration, which makes the timing of the raid even more suspect.

It could been far worse, however.

Some politically-timed government raids have ended with a tragic loss of life, like the April 19, 1993 raid on the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, TX (timeline via PBS), just as the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms was coming up for a funding review in Congress. 80 people died in an inferno after an 80-day standoff that started with a botched raid that left 4 federal agents and six Davidians killed.

Interestingly enough, on the same day the immigrations raids were announced, CNN also carried a story noting that six of the seven Davidians imprisoned after the standoff will be freed from prison in the next two months.

I guess we can at least be thankful that these latest politically-timed raids didn't end in a loss of life.

This Ain't Avon Calling

I wrote once before about a group of UC Santa Cruz students calling themselves Students Against War (SAW), who apparently committed felonies by blocking military recruiters from the U.S. Army and National Guard attempting to participate in a job fair on campus.

Three of SAW's leaders, Sam Aranke, Janine Carmona, and David Zlutnick, placed their phone numbers and email addresses on press release disseminated widely across the internet, in apparent hopes of using this contact information to help organize even larger felonious acts.

Blogger Michelle Malkin posted these publicly available and still easily found contact numbers, which apparently led to some ill-advised and indefensible threats being made against these student criminals.

In retaliation against Malkin, some radical left wing web sites and blogs have taken the extraordinary step of posting not only Malkin's phone number and already publicly accessible email address, but satellite pictures of her house, her physical home address, and descriptions of her family. Malkin is unbowed. Goldstein is calling for a "very public condemnation and ostracizing" of those responsible for targeting Malkin's family.

I'm a little more direct.

This is the link to the FBI Tips and Public Leads form, which I have used to report several of these sites for possible hate crimes investigations based upon specific language used in some of those pages. Those of you who are guilty of these hate crimes undoubtedly know who you are.

I'd advise sleeping light.

That knock at the door ain't Avon calling, and answering it promptly might save you repair work after the warrant is served.

Bush Blamed for Landslides

Well, perhaps not yet, but you know it's coming:

New Orleans is at the top end of what looks like a gigantic, slow-moving landslide, according to geologists who have been carefully studying the ground movements in the area...

"Not only is southern Louisiana sinking, it's sliding," said geologist Roy Dokka of Louisiana State University.

Like a smaller landslide on the side of a hill, the huge Southern Louisiana landslide has a "headwall" where the slide is breaking away and a "toe" out in the Gulf where the debris from the slide is piling up, Dokka explained. The only difference from a traditional landslide is that this one is far, far larger and it's buried under lots of wet sediments, so it requires very accurate survey measurements to detect it.

The city and an adjoining section of Mississippi are collapsing into the Gulf of Mexico at an ever-increasing rate of speed.

Gulf Coast resident and Hurricane Katrina survivor Seawitch reveals this and other research showing a geologic disaster occurring along the Michoud Fault that runs under New Orleans, including the specific points where the levees were breached during Hurricane Katrina.

Carl Bernstein: Kicking and Screaming

Carl Bernstein longs to be relevant again.

His recent piece in Vanity Fair will not provide that relevance, painting him instead as a man whose drive for past glory has reduced him to parroting almost shriek-for-shriek tenants of the far left long proven false or misleading. He has grown intellectually lazy and lethargic, producing a column unworthy of a front page diary at the Daily Kos—or perhaps worse, provides a column that is specifically what one would expect at Kos or the rabid message boards of the Democratic Underground.

It begins:

Worse than Watergate? High crimes and misdemeanors justifying the impeachment of George W. Bush, as increasing numbers of Democrats in Washington hope, and, sotto voce, increasing numbers of Republicans—including some of the president's top lieutenants—now fear? Leaders of both parties are acutely aware of the vehemence of anti-Bush sentiment in the country, expressed especially in the increasing number of Americans—nearing 50 percent in some polls—who say they would favor impeachment if the president were proved to have deliberately lied to justify going to war in Iraq.

John Dean, the Watergate conspirator who ultimately shattered the Watergate conspiracy, rendered his precipitous (or perhaps prescient) impeachment verdict on Bush two years ago in the affirmative, without so much as a question mark in choosing the title of his book Worse than Watergate. On March 31, some three decades after he testified at the seminal hearings of the Senate Watergate Committee, Dean reiterated his dark view of Bush's presidency in a congressional hearing that shed more noise than light, and more partisan rancor than genuine inquiry. The ostensible subject: whether Bush should be censured for unconstitutional conduct in ordering electronic surveillance of Americans without a warrant.

Raising the worse-than-Watergate question and demanding unequivocally that Congress seek to answer it is, in fact, overdue and more than justified by ample evidence stacked up from Baghdad back to New Orleans and, of increasing relevance, inside a special prosecutor's office in downtown Washington.

In terms of imminent, meaningful action by the Congress, however, the question of whether the president should be impeached (or, less severely, censured) remains premature. More important, it is essential that the Senate vote—hopefully before the November elections, and with overwhelming support from both parties—to undertake a full investigation of the conduct of the presidency of George W. Bush, along the lines of the Senate Watergate Committee's investigation during the presidency of Richard M. Nixon.

Ignoring the incoherent first sentence that never should have made it past an editor's desk, Bernstein calls for a Bush Administration investigation based upon polling data and the words of a convicted felon shilling a book, and his call for an vague, wide-ranging inquisition "of the conduct of the presidency" is a hopeful wail from a partisan hoping for a witch hunt, based upon... well what, exactly?

How much evidence is there to justify such action?

Certainly enough to form a consensus around a national imperative: to learn what this president and his vice president knew and when they knew it; to determine what the Bush administration has done under the guise of national security; and to find out who did what, whether legal or illegal, unconstitutional or merely under the wire, in ignorance or incompetence or with good reason, while the administration barricaded itself behind the most Draconian secrecy and disingenuous information policies of the modern presidential era.

"We ought to get to the bottom of it so it can be evaluated, again, by the American people," said Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, on April 9. "The President of the United States owes a specific explanation to the American people … about exactly what he did." Specter was speaking specifically about a special prosecutor's assertion that Bush selectively declassified information (of dubious accuracy) and instructed the vice president to leak it to reporters to undermine criticism of the decision to go to war in Iraq. But the senator's comments would be even more appropriately directed at far more pervasive and darker questions that must be answered if the American political system is to acquit itself in the Bush era, as it did in Nixon's.

Oh, the tiredness of it all! Dredging up the one-hit wonder of "what they knew and when they knew it," Bernstein in no way attempts to apply that broad charge to a specific, credible allegation that the law requires. Instead, he hangs it out there, as untended gill net, furtively hoping to ensnare anything and everything that drifts past.

Bernstein, unable or unwilling to bring into focus charges of his own, attempts to make Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter his whipping boy, selectively quoting and rearranging the order Specter's to make it appear that Bush did something illegal and not within his power. But what did Specter say, and how did he say it?

Via the transcript of Fox News Sunday, the actual conversation between host Brit Hume and Senator Specter:

HUME: ...Is it your view that what the president and the vice president, as well, did in that matter constituted a leak?

SPECTER: I don't know, because all of the facts aren't out, and I think that it is necessary for the president and the vice president to tell the American people exactly what happened.

Brit, I think too often we jump to conclusions before we know what all of the facts are, and I'm not about to condemn or criticize anybody, but I do say that there's been enough of a showing here with what's been filed of record in court that the president of the United States owes a specific explanation to the American people.

HUME: About the release of this information or what?

SPECTER: Well, about exactly what he did. The president has the authority to declassify information. So in a technical sense, if he looked at it, he could say this is declassified, and make a disclosure of it.

There have been a number of reports, most recently — I heard just this morning — that the president didn't tell the vice president specifically what to do but just said get it out. And we don't know precisely what the vice president did.

And as usual, Brit, the devil is in the details. And I think that there has to be a detailed explanation precisely as to what Vice President Cheney did, what the president said to him, and an explanation from the president as to what he said so that it can be evaluated.

The president may be entirely in the clear, and it may turn out that he had the authority to make the disclosures which were made, but that it was not the right way to go about it, because we ought not to have leaks in government. We ought not to have them.

And the president has justifiably criticized the Congress for leaking and, of course, the White House has leaked. But we ought to get to the bottom of it so it can be evaluated, again, by the American people.

[bold mine - ed]

Bernstein reorders and selectively quotes Specter's statements, conveniently leaving out that while Specter would like to know the details of the inner workings of the White House (wouldn't we all?), Specter acknowledges that Bush does have the specific authority to declassify information. Furthermore, on March 25, 2003 Bush amended President Bill Clinton's Executive Order 12958 to extend that power to the office of the vice president when acting "in the performance of executive duties." How forgetful of Mr. Bernstein to omit these inconvenient details.

Long on generalities and short on facts, Bernstein attempts to press an already weak attack:

Perhaps there are facts or mitigating circumstances, given the extraordinary nature of conceiving and fighting a war on terror, that justify some of the more questionable policies and conduct of this presidency, even those that turned a natural disaster in New Orleans into a catastrophe of incompetence and neglect. But the truth is we have no trustworthy official record of what has occurred in almost any aspect of this administration, how decisions were reached, and even what the actual policies promulgated and approved by the president are. Nor will we, until the subpoena powers of the Congress are used (as in Watergate) to find out the facts—not just about the war in Iraq, almost every aspect of it, beginning with the road to war, but other essential elements of Bush's presidency, particularly the routine disregard for truthfulness in the dissemination of information to the American people and Congress.

The first fundamental question that needs to be answered by and about the president, the vice president, and their political and national-security aides, from Donald Rumsfeld to Condoleezza Rice, to Karl Rove, to Michael Chertoff, to Colin Powell, to George Tenet, to Paul Wolfowitz, to Andrew Card (and a dozen others), is whether lying, disinformation, misinformation, and manipulation of information have been a basic matter of policy—used to overwhelm dissent; to hide troublesome truths and inconvenient data from the press, public, and Congress; and to defend the president and his actions when he and they have gone awry or utterly failed.

Once again, the formerly great writer calls for a congressional inquisition into every aspect of the Bush Presidency, but cannot provide a single, specific reason why it should occur. Citing everything from warfighting to domestic disaster response, Bernstein asks for the unprecedented: an apparent play-by-play stenographic record of every decision ever made in an attempt to second-guess and undermine a sitting President, ostensibly expanding congressional and media powers with an impossibly broad investigative self-mandate to usurp those powers afforded to the Executive Branch by the Constitution. It is a coward's call for insurrection that no American President in this nation's history has ever had to endure.

From this fevered cry, Bernstein plunges headlong into a litany of charges made up of theories long debunked and ideas half-baked, made by the anonymous and the vengeful:

Most of what we have learned about the reality of this administration—and the disconcerting mind-set and decision-making process of President Bush himself—has come not from the White House or the Pentagon or the Department of Homeland Security or the Treasury Department, but from insider accounts by disaffected members of the administration after their departure, and from distinguished journalists, and, in the case of a skeletal but hugely significant body of information, from a special prosecutor. And also, of late, from an aide-de-camp to the British prime minister. Almost invariably, their accounts have revealed what the president and those serving him have deliberately concealed—torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo, and its apparent authorization by presidential fiat; wholesale N.S.A. domestic wiretapping in contravention of specific prohibitive law; brutal interrogations of prisoners shipped secretly by the C.I.A. and U.S. military to Third World gulags; the nonexistence of W.M.D. in Iraq; the role of Karl Rove and Dick Cheney's chief of staff in divulging the name of an undercover C.I.A. employee; the non-role of Saddam Hussein and Iraq in the events of 9/11; the death by friendly fire of Pat Tillman (whose mother, Mary Tillman, told journalist Robert Scheer, "The administration tried to attach themselves to his virtue and then they wiped their feet with him"); the lack of a coherent post-invasion strategy for Iraq, with all its consequent tragedy and loss and destabilizing global implications; the failure to coordinate economic policies for America's long-term financial health (including the misguided tax cuts) with funding a war that will drive the national debt above a trillion dollars; the assurance of Wolfowitz (since rewarded by Bush with the presidency of the World Bank) that Iraq's oil reserves would pay for the war within two to three years after the invasion; and Bush's like-minded confidence, expressed to Blair, that serious internecine strife in Iraq would be unlikely after the invasion.

Insider accounts from which disaffected members of the administration, and which distinguished journalists? Bernstein can't be troubled to provide those essential details, and instead dives into a sea of conspiracies unprovable or disproven.

Bernstein will not say that the "aide-de-camp to the British prime minister" he ostensibly cites in reference to the so-called "Downing Street Memos" were composed almost exclusively of high-level summaries composed by British diplomats of conversations had by British intelligence officers and diplomats who were relating what they remembered of conversations they had with their American counterparts about what the Americans thought about what they thought the President said. Why didn't Bernstein go the final step, and connect them all to Kevin Bacon?

Not a single credible witness has come forward to tie the Administration to abuse at Abu Graib, and those who did commit the abuses there were tried and convicted in a court of law. Charges leveled against Marines performing their duties at Guantanamo Bay have turned out to be baseless, and in many cases were made by those who had never set foot on the island.

Bernstein goes as far as to blatantly lie to his readers, stating that the Administration engaged in "wholesale N.S.A. domestic wiretapping in contravention of specific prohibitive law," when not a single credible person connected to the program in any way has ever provided the first shred of evidence that this program was anything other than the specific, targeted intercepts of international communications affiliated with suspected terrorists. I charge Bernstein to provide any evidence of this charge. He cannot, relying instead upon insinuation, hyperbole, and unsubstantiated claims, which not coincidentally, make up the overwhelming majority of his spurious, politically motivated charges.

Carl Bernstein, once a journalist credited with taking down a clearly corrupt President for specific criminal charges, has pissed away his credibility and goodwill American citizens may retain for him in an article that could have been scripted by Hugo Chavez and Michael Moore. It is sad to see a once great man futility tilting at windmills, trying to regain glories and respect long past, but it is even more repulsive when Carl Bernstein would undermine our very system of government with an open-ended inquisition of one branch by another in his pursuit of past glories.

Railroaded

Glenn Reynolds has a Porkbuster's post up hammering Mississippi Senator Trent Lott for wanting to spend $700 million to relocate a rail line already rebuilt after Hurricane Katrina at a cost of $250 million dollars.

Lawhawk has a post up defending the relocation of the rail line (Reynolds has related thoughts here).

Read both entries and draw your own conclusions.

My church sent mission teams originally to Gretna, Louisiana, and has sent repeated mission teams to Waveland, Mississippi to help Gulf Coast residents recover from the storm. As they drove in and out of the area affected by Hurricane Katrina, they shot hundreds of photos showing immense devastation on a scale few can fathom.

This photo is probably that of the rail line in question. It was shot in coastal Mississippi or Louisiana (it was hard for outsiders to tell which, with all landmarks and road signs destroyed) directly after Hurricane Katrina. The massive damage to the rail bed is obvious.

I don't think that I have a problem with eventually rerouting the railroad to a safer inland path, but I have to ask: why couldn't they have done this before spending the first $250 million dollars?

No matter how you slice it, hundreds of millions of dollars were wasted.

Purdue BDS

Vikram Buddhi, you've got some 'splaining to do (h/t Drudge):

Buddhi told investigators he posted the message, along with other derogatory messages aimed at the president, but Martin said Buddhi's actions should be covered by the First Amendment since Buddhi would have never actually carried out his threats.

In the various messages posted, Buddhi urged the Web site's readers to bomb the United States and for them to rape American and British women and mutilate them, according to court documents. Other messages called for the killing of all Republicans.

"What was allegedly said certainly is derogatory and may be inflammatory," Martin said. "But there's no real serious threat more than it was chat on the Web."

Martin, of course is citing the First Amendment clause which grants an exception to those who advocate Killing George Bush, Laura Bush, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, and the rape and mutilation of western women.

In the wake of these charges, Buddhi was immediately offered teaching assistant positions by Karachi State University and Yale, which offered Buddhi a John Hinkley Jr. Fellowship…

Salting Slugs

Slimy and spineless, subsisting on a steady diet of debris and feces and preferring to hide in dark, dank places, it seems that the University of California at Santa Cruz chose their mascot of a banana slug wisely.

One week ago, today a group of UC Santa Cruz students calling themselves Students Against War (SAW) committed felonies by blocking military recruiters from the U.S. Army and National Guard attempting to participate in a job fair on campus. According to the exact letter of the law as it is written in Title 18, Part I, chapter 115 Section 2388 (a):

Whoever, when the United States is at war, willfully makes or conveys false reports or false statements with intent to interfere with the operation or success of the military or naval forces of the United States or to promote the success of its enemies; or Whoever, when the United States is at war, willfully causes or attempts to cause insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty, in the military or naval forces of the United States, or willfully obstructs the recruiting or enlistment service of the United States, to the injury of the service or the United States, or attempts to do so -

Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.

[emphasis mine - ed.]

Clearly, by willfully obstructing the recruiting efforts, these students committed felonies covered by federal treason and sedition laws, but that has not inflamed public sensitivities. No, what has inflamed the Left is the simple act of conservative Michelle Malkin, who posted the contact information of the organizers from the SAW press release (names since removed) on her blog.

As a result of posting this contact information, the three student activists who led this illegal act - Sam Aranke, Janine Carmona, and David Zlutnick - have been inundated with irate phone calls and emails. Some, perhaps many of them were threatening. The students have since asked Malkin to remove their contact information even though it has been used (and is still being used) by other fringe group web sites to help in their recruiting efforts.

Not surprisingly, the left wants to have it both ways. They want to be able to recruit on their own without objection or impassioned criticism, while they at the same time object to military recruiting by committing felonious acts of treason and sedition, and hope to get away with it without any response.

Blogger Ezra Klein, not surprisingly a Slug himself, wants to generate sympathy for these criminals, calling them:

...young, idealistic kids determined to save the world, feeling their way through uncertain thickets of ideology and unfamiliar collections of ideas, and naive about the dangers of direct political action outside a university's protected confines.

Klein would excuse a felonious act with a good intention, and would make college a place where laws do not apply. In his fantasy world that may be the case, but as Duke university lacrosse team members found out at 5:00 AM this morning, college enrollment is no excuse for committing one or more felonies.

Sam Aranke, Janine Carmona, and David Zlutnick proudly conspired to commit a felonious act against the United States. A few empty emailed death threats are a mild penalty compared to the jail time that they and their treasonous compatriots so richly deserve.

The Sheepdog's War

I've been thinking a lot about sheepdogs lately, if only in the back of my mind. Not the physical kind, of course, but the metaphorical, philosophical beast described by LTC Dave Grossman (Retired), that I was first exposed to in Bill Whittle's excellent "Tribes" some month's ago. Because of Whittle's essay, I've also been doing a lot of soul-searching about what it means to be Grey, and how it all relates to the budding war with Iran.

LTC Grossman's essay "On sheep, Wolves, and Sheepdogs" was forwarded to me this morning in an email by another retired sheepdog and I present it to you in its entirety:

ON SHEEP, WOLVES, AND SHEEPDOGS

By LTC(RET) Dave Grossman, RANGER,
Ph.D., author of "On Killing."

Honor never grows old, and honor rejoices the heart of age. It does so because honor is, finally, about defending those noble and worthy things that deserve defending, even if it comes at a high cost. In our time, that may mean social disapproval, public scorn, hardship, persecution, or as always, even death itself. The question remains: What is worth defending? What is worth dying for? What is worth living for? - William J. Bennett - in a lecture to the United States Naval Academy November 24, 1997

One Vietnam veteran, an old retired colonel, once said this to me: "Most of the people in our society are sheep. They are kind, gentle, productive creatures who can only hurt one another by accident." This is true. Remember, the murder rate is six per 100,000 per year, and the aggravated assault rate is four per 1,000 per year. What this means is that the vast majority of Americans are not inclined to hurt one another.

Some estimates say that two million Americans are victims of violent crimes every year, a tragic, staggering number, perhaps an all-time record rate of violent crime. But there are almost 300 million Americans, which means that the odds of being a victim of violent crime is considerably less than one in a hundred on any given year. Furthermore, since many violent crimes are committed by repeat offenders, the actual number of violent citizens is considerably less than two million.

Thus there is a paradox, and we must grasp both ends of the situation: We may well be in the most violent times in history, but violence is still remarkably rare. This is because most citizens are kind, decent people who are not capable of hurting each other, except by accident or under extreme provocation. They are sheep.

I mean nothing negative by calling them sheep. To me, it is like the pretty, blue robin's egg. Inside it is soft and gooey but someday it will grow into something wonderful. But the egg cannot survive without its hard blue shell.

Police officers, soldiers, and other warriors are like that shell, And someday the civilization they protect will grow into something wonderful. For now, though, they need warriors to protect them from the predators.

"Then there are the wolves," the old war veteran said, "and the wolves feed on the sheep without mercy." Do you believe there are wolves out there who will feed on the flock without mercy? You better believe it. There are evil men in this world and they are capable of evil deeds. The moment you forget that or pretend it is not so, you become a sheep. There is no safety in denial.

"Then there are sheepdogs," he went on, "and I'm a sheepdog. I live to protect the flock and confront the wolf."

If you have no capacity for violence then you are a healthy productive citizen, a sheep. If you have a capacity for violence and no empathy for your fellow citizens, then you have defined an aggressive sociopath, a wolf.

But what if you have a capacity for violence, and a deep love for your fellow citizens? What do you have then? A sheepdog, a warrior, someone who is walking the hero's path. Someone who can walk into the heart of darkness, into the universal human phobia, and walk out unscathed

Let me expand on this old soldier's excellent model of the sheep, wolves, and sheepdogs. We know that the sheep live in denial, that is what makes them sheep. They do not want to believe that there is evil in the world. They can accept the fact that fires can happen, which is why they want fire extinguishers, fire sprinklers, fire alarms and fire exits throughout their kids' schools.

But many of them are outraged at the idea of putting an armed police officer in their kid's school. Our children are thousands of times more likely to be killed or seriously injured by school violence than fire, but the sheep's only response to the possibility of violence is denial. The idea of someone coming to kill or harm their child is just too hard, and so they chose the path of denial. The sheep generally do not like the sheepdog. He looks a lot like the wolf. He has fangs and the capacity for violence. The difference, though, is that the sheepdog must not, cannot and will not ever harm the sheep. Any sheep dog who intentionally harms the lowliest little lamb will be punished and removed. The world cannot work any other way, at least not in a representative democracy or a republic such as ours.

Still, the sheepdog disturbs the sheep. He is a constant reminder that there are wolves in the land. They would prefer that he didn't tell them where to go, or give them traffic tickets, or stand at the ready in our airports, in camouflage fatigues, holding an M-16. The sheep would much rather have the sheepdog cash in his fangs, spray paint himself white, and go, "Baa." Until the wolf shows up. Then the entire flock tries desperately to hide behind one lonely sheepdog.

The students, the victims, at Columbine High School were big, tough high school students, and under ordinary circumstances they would not have had the time of day for a police officer. They were not bad kids; they just had nothing to say to a cop. When the school was under attack, however, and SWAT teams were clearing the rooms and hallways, the officers had to physically peel those clinging, sobbing kids off of them. This is how the little lambs feel about their sheepdog when the wolf is at the door.

Look at what happened after September 11, 2001 when the wolf pounded hard on the door. Remember how America, more than ever before, felt differently about their law enforcement officers and military personnel? Remember how many times you heard the word hero?

Understand that there is nothing morally superior about being a sheepdog; it is just what you choose to be. Also understand that a sheepdog is a funny critter: He is always sniffing around out on the perimeter, checking the breeze, barking at things that go bump in the night, and yearning for a righteous battle. That is, the young sheepdogs yearn for a righteous battle. The old sheepdogs are a little older and wiser, but they move to the sound of the guns when needed,
right along with the young ones.

Here is how the sheep and the sheepdog think differently. The sheep pretend the wolf will never come, but the sheepdog lives for that day. After the attacks on September 11, 2001, most of the sheep, that is, most citizens in America said, "Thank God I wasn't on one of those planes." The sheepdogs, the warriors, said, "Dear God, I wish I could have been on one of those planes. Maybe I could have made a difference." When you are truly transformed into a warrior and have truly invested yourself into warrior hood, you want to be there. You want to be able to make a
difference.

There is nothing morally superior about the sheepdog, the warrior, but he does have one real advantage. Only one. And that is that he is able to survive and thrive in an environment that destroys 98 percent of the population.

There was research conducted a few years ago with individuals convicted of violent crimes. These cons were in prison for serious, predatory crimes of violence: assaults, murders and killing law enforcement officers. The vast majority said that they specifically targeted victims by body language: Slumped walk, passive behavior and lack of awareness. They chose their victims like big cats do in Africa, when they select one out of the herd that is least able to protect itself.

Some people may be destined to be sheep and others might be genetically primed to be wolves or sheepdogs. But I believe that most people can choose which one they want to be, and I'm proud to say that more and more Americans are choosing to become sheepdogs.

Seven months after the attack on September 11, 2001, Todd Beamer was honored in his hometown of Cranbury, New Jersey. Todd, as you recall, was the man on Flight 93 over Pennsylvania who called on his cell phone to alert an operator from United Airlines about the hijacking. When he learned of the other three passenger planes that had been used as weapons, Todd dropped his phone and uttered the words, "Let's roll," which authorities believe was a signal to the other passengers to confront the terrorist hijackers. In one hour, a transformation occurred among the passengers - athletes, business people and parents. -- from sheep to sheepdogs and together they fought the wolves, ultimately saving an unknown number of lives on the ground.

There is no safety for honest men except by believing all possible evil of evil men. - Edmund Burke

Here is the point I like to emphasize, especially to the thousands of police officers and soldiers I speak to each year. In nature the sheep, real sheep, are born as sheep. Sheepdogs are born that way, and so are wolves. They didn't have a choice. But you are not a critter. As a human being, you can be whatever you want to be. It is a conscious, moral decision.

If you want to be a sheep, then you can be a sheep and that is okay, but you must understand the price you pay. When the wolf comes, you and your loved ones are going to die if there is not a sheepdog there to protect you. If you want to be a wolf, you can be one, but the sheepdogs are going to hunt you down and you will never have rest, safety, trust or love. But if you want to be a sheepdog and walk the warrior's path, then you must make a conscious and moral decision every day to dedicate, equip and prepare yourself to thrive in that toxic, corrosive moment when the wolf comes knocking at the door.

For example, many officers carry their weapons in church. They are well concealed in ankle holsters, shoulder holsters or inside-the-belt holsters tucked into the small of their backs. Anytime you go to some form of religious service, there is a very good chance that a police officer in your congregation is carrying. You will never know if there is such an individual in your place of worship, until the wolf appears to massacre you and your loved ones.

I was training a group of police officers in Texas, and during the break, one officer asked his friend if he carried his weapon in church. The other cop replied, "I will never be caught without my gun in church." I asked why he felt so strongly about this, and he told me about a cop he knew who was at a church massacre in Ft. Worth, Texas in 1999. In that incident, a mentally deranged individual came into the church and opened fire, gunning down fourteen people. He said that officer believed he could have saved every life that day if he had been carrying his gun. His own son was shot, and all he could do was throw himself on the boy's body and wait to die. That cop looked me in the eye and said, "Do you have any idea how hard it would be to live with yourself after that?"

Some individuals would be horrified if they knew this police officer was carrying a weapon in church. They might call him paranoid and would probably scorn him. Yet these same individuals would be enraged and would call for "heads to roll" if they found out that the airbags in their cars were defective, or that the fire extinguisher and fire sprinklers in their kids' school did not work. They can accept the fact that fires and traffic accidents can happen and that there must be safeguards against them.

Their only response to the wolf, though, is denial, and all too often their response to the sheepdog is scorn and disdain. But the sheepdog quietly asks himself, "Do you have any idea how hard it would be to live with yourself if your loved ones were attacked and killed, and you had to stand there helplessly because you were unprepared for that day?"

It is denial that turns people into sheep. Sheep are psychologically destroyed by combat because their only defense is denial, which is counterproductive and destructive, resulting in fear, helplessness and horror when the wolf shows up. Denial kills you twice. It kills you once, at your moment of truth when you are not physically prepared: you didn't bring your gun, you didn't train. Your only defense was wishful thinking. Hope is not a strategy. Denial kills you a second time because even if you do physically survive, you are psychologically shattered by your fear, helplessness and horror at your moment of truth.

Gavin de Becker puts it like this in Fear Less, his superb post-9/11 book, which should be required reading for anyone trying to come to terms with our current world situation: "...denial can be seductive, but it has an insidious side effect. For all the peace of mind deniers think they get by saying it isn't so, the fall they take when faced with new violence is all the more unsettling." Denial is a save-now-pay-later scheme, a contract written entirely in small print, for in the long run, the denying person knows the truth on some level. And so the warrior must strive to confront denial in all aspects of his life, and prepare himself for the day when evil comes.

If you are warrior who is legally authorized to carry a weapon and you step outside without that weapon, then you become a sheep, pretending that the bad man will not come today. No one can be "on" 24/7, for a lifetime. Everyone needs down time. But if you are authorized to carry a weapon, and you walk outside without it, just take a deep breath, and say this to yourself..."Baa."

This business of being a sheep or a sheep dog is not a yes-no dichotomy. It is not an all-or-nothing, either-or choice. It is a matter of degrees, a continuum. On one end is an abject, head-in-the-sand-sheep and on the other end is the ultimate warrior. Few people exist completely on one end or the other.

Most of us live somewhere in between. Since 9-11 almost everyone in America took a step up that continuum, away from denial. The sheep took a few steps toward accepting and appreciating their warriors, and the warriors started taking their job more seriously. The degree to which you move up that continuum, away from sheephood and denial, is the degree to which you and your loved ones will survive, physically and psychologically at your moment of truth.

Most of us can define where we fall in Grossman's essay if we are honest with ourselves. Most won't be honest of course, including many of you reading this. Dishonesty to one's self is, after all, the defining characteristic of Sheep, even perfectly nice Sheep.

Bill Whittle makes a slightly different observation. While Grossman speaks of sheep, sheepdogs and wolves, Whittle's essay seeks to define us as self-selecting tribes:

...let's get past Republican and Democrat, Red and Blue, too. Let's talk about these two Tribes: Pink, the color of bunny ears, and Grey, the color of a mechanical pencil lead.

I live in both worlds. In entertainment, everything is Pink, the color of Angelyne's Stingray – it's exciting and dynamic and glamorous. I'm also a pilot, and I know honest-to-God rocket scientists, and combat flight crews and Special Ops guys -- stone-cold Grey, all of them -- and am proud and deeply honored to call them my friends.

The Pink Tribe is all about feeling good: feeling good about yourself! Sexually, emotionally, artistically – nothing is off limits, nothing is forbidden, convention is fossilized insanity and everybody gets to do their own thing without regard to consequences, reality, or natural law. We all have our own reality – one small personal reality is called “science,” say – and we Make Our Own Luck and we Visualize Good Things and There Are No Coincidences and Everything Happens for a Reason and You Can Be Whatever You Want to Be and we all have Special Psychic Powers and if something Bad should happen it's because Someone Bad Made It Happen. A Spell, perhaps.

The Pink Tribe motto, in fact, is the ultimate Zen Koan, the sound of one hand clapping: EVERYBODY IS SPECIAL.

Then, in the other corner, there is the Grey Tribe – the grey of reinforced concrete. This is a Tribe where emotion is repressed because Emotion Clouds Judgment. This is the world of Quadratic Equations and Stress Risers and Loads Torsional, Compressive and Tensile, a place where Reality Can Ruin Your Best Day, the place where Murphy mercilessly picks off the Weak and the Incompetent, where the Speed Limit is 186,282.36 miles per second, where every bridge has a Failure Load and levees come in 50 year, 100 year and 1000 Year Flood Flavors.

The Grey Tribe motto is, near as I can tell, THINGS BREAK SOMETIMES AND PLEASE DON'T LET IT BE MY BRIDGE.

In America right now, we are engaging in a philosophical battle where the Sheep are busily denying the teeth of the Wolves, even to the point of attacking the sheepdogs because they, too, have teeth. Even when the Sheep become confused between wolf and sheepdog, it is still very easy for sheepdogs to tell wolf from sheep; and Pink from Grey.

Conflict with Iran should be avoided if possible, but not at all costs, and it appears the point of no return is approaching with breathtaking speed.

Iran is dominated by a radical sect of Shi'a Islam that seeks to bring about the end of this world as an immediate shortcut to their eternal salvation. Mutually-Assured Destruction that has been so repellant to secular nations for the past 60 years does not apply to Iran. This is not the desire of the bulk of Iran's people. The Mullahs believe that a blinding flash and momentary pain is all that separates them from an eternity in Paradise.

Iran is building up both their technology and their rhetoric at a time that their current President thinks he speaks directly with their Messiah. There need be no clearer message, one simply has to listen, and the sheep will adamantly refuse.

It is a suicidal path the Sheep have taken, but to acknowledge any other possibility is to acknowledge the failure of their own ideology, an ideology they adhere to with no less fervor than that of Mullahs that would set alight the world.

Sheep and Wolf, predator and prey, they are both blinded to facts by their fanaticism. As Whittle defined the Pinks before:

...nothing is forbidden, convention is fossilized insanity and everybody gets to do their own thing without regard to consequences, reality, or natural law.

The consequences of the Mullah's eschatology and the denial of the Sheep are a recipe for the End of Days, an orgasm of Pink philosophies conspiring to obliterate millions in a blinding flash. Only the Sheepdogs stand in the way.

This is the Sheepdog's war to fight, and fight they must. That is the reality that has presented itself to us. As Sheepdogs and as Greys this is not a war we would choose, but one that has been thrust upon us by the overly tolerant of the West and overly intolerant of the Middle East. Iran's Mullah's would have nuclear weapons, and they have promised over and over again to use them, potentially triggering the deaths of millions.

This must not stand. Iran must not have nuclear weapons, nor nuclear facilities that can enrich nuclear materials to create these weapons. Any and all reasonable options should be on the table to prevent this eventuality, conventional and unconventional alike.

Let the Sheep bleat if the bombs must fall. At the very least, their noise shows that their throats have not been ripped out by the Wolves.

And You Should See The Peeps

Your Choice

Pretend that you are a political "undecided" or a moderate, and you read the Washington Post. You don't follow politics much (you life is too busy for that) and you've run across the following stories.

Who would you rather associate with, the blogger profiled in this Q&A several months ago, or this one revealed today?

The Last Pitch

A touching tribute to character at Phin's Blog.

Google's Good Friday Miracle

A few months ago, I sought a picture of the baby Jesus for a simple post I wanted to put up on Christmas Eve, which eventually came to be this post.

However, an innocuous search for “baby jesus “on Google turned up a disgusting, shocking result.

My post on the subject was mocked by some, and it even earned the coveted Worst Post of the Year: 2005 from Crooks & Liars. Considering the source, I took it all in stride, and held my ground. After all, I was a SEO consultant back in 1997, working search engine results for companies before most of those folks put up their first web pages.

I then forgot about that post and the derisive uproar on the left as other things came into view, until I ran across these posts on The Corner this morning, and it reminded me of the search that I made Christmas Eve. On a lark, I Googled "baby jesus" again:

What's missing from this picture? You guessed it: a certain offensive web site result. In my original post I spent a lot of time arguing:

Google's algorithms are man-made, coded by human programmers, as are any exclusionary protocols. These people ultimately decide if search results are relevant.

Of course, I was wrong... wasn't I?

Therefore this new search result, which has dropped the offensive site from at least the top 50 search results for the words baby jesus, couldn't have been the result of an algorithm change or an exclusionary protocol.

It must be a Good Friday Miracle on Google.

Right?

Spin. Cut. Run.

To hear Editor & Publisher tell it, you would think that Washington Post reporter Joby Warrick was standing firmly behind his page A1 story from yesterday, where his opening paragraphs strongly asserted that the Bush Administration ignored the "unanimous findings" of a team of weapons experts to purposefully present the American people with false information.

The Post's agenda-driven journalism was destroyed before the first copy of the print edition hit the street.

Warrick's article was a perfect example of modern yellow journalism. He following an increasingly common technique of making a strong assertion in the lede (opening paragraphs)of a story, only providing any balancing coverage much further down in the story, while typically being dismissive of it or giving it little rhetorical weight (Jeff Goldstein provides and excellent look at the phenomena as applied to this story at Protein Wisdom).

Is Warrick really standing firm behind his article? Hardly.

Warricks's new article, hiding on page A18, has backed away from the "unanimous findings" claim that was proven factually inaccurate in his scurrilous lede. A June 7, 2003 NY Times article found by Seixon found that far from presenting "unanimous findings," this third team of experts was "divided sharply" in their opinion of what the trailer represented. Warrick's sources—all anonymous—seem to be contradicting each other, bringing into doubt their credibility.

In addition to the credibility of Warrick's anonymous sources and the discrepanies about the report they issued, all mention of the two teams of military experts that thought that the trailers were mobile bio-weapon labs have been removed from the follow-up story. Unable to address the fact that their existence proves he was presenting a minority view (even one that turned out to be accurate), Warrick seems intent on deleting all references to these contradictory teams mentioned in earlier article. The "smoking gun" has turned out to be what Seixan noted as a "minority report about a minority report."

Is Joby Warrick standing by his story, or is he guilty of spinning, cutting, and running?

I report. You deride.

Update: Blue Crab Boulevard says, "What's 'unclear' here is if Mr. Warrick was aware that he was writing a hit piece or just that bad a writer."

Productivity

Via ABC News:

A senior Egyptian al Qaeda member was killed along with other militants during a Pakistani military raid of a hideout in the northern part of Pakistan, sources have told ABC News. Multiple intelligence sources in Pakistan confirmed to ABC News that they believed Abu Mohsin Musa, also known as Abdul Rahman, had died in the overnight raid. Rahman was one of the FBI's most wanted men with a $5 million bounty on his head. He was indicted in absentia in a New York court for his alleged involvement in the bombings of the United States embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; and Nairobi, Kenya, on Aug. 7, 1998.

Some folks still like to suggest that we're losing the War on Terror, but they tend to miss the simple logistics of the equation. It takes nine months to gestate a potential terrorist, a minimum of 10–15 years before they're ready to carry out even a suicide bombing (that seems to be the Palestinian age floor, at least), and even moderately capable operatives take at least 15-20 years of life to develop. The rare mastermind-quality terrorists don't seem to hit their stride for another five to ten years after that, and they have been constantly decreasing in number since the start of the War on Terror.

While there are critics quick to point out that our actions in various theaters can sometimes prod people to turn to terrorism, I think it safe to say that the majority who choose to engage in terrorist acts were already predisposed to do so because of prior conditioning. If we did not trigger them now, something would likely trigger them at another point.

It take just seconds to make bullet, hours or days to build a bomb or missile, but lifetimes for terrorists to reach level of proficiency. If we see this as a war of production, like World War II, it is obvious that on this level, we are assured of victory. Effective terrorists simply cannot be made and trained faster than we manufacture weapons to destroy them, and ineffective terrorists are simply targets.

Abu Mohsin Musa became just another statistic, his years of experience lost to a weapon that took hours or days to manufacture. The Islamofascists are slowly, painfully learning the same thing the Germans did in World War II. You cannot defeat the United States in a war of production.

Hasselhoff Has Germany...

...and apparently, I'm doing okay in Fargo.

I'll be doing my first talk radio segment (ever) on "Hot Talk with Scott Hennen" on WDAY at 11:30 AM (Eastern). We'll be talking about the WaPo "trailers of mass destraction" story I debunked yesterday.

You should be able to listen through the Listen to Hot Talk link.

The Hot Talk blog is here.

Update: I just got off the air. For a first-timer I don't think I did that bad, talking with the host for a few minutes and taking a call from a liberal. I'll update with a link to the MP3 as soon as I have the audio.

Update 2: We have audio (6802K MP3). Rush Limbaugh won't feel threatened.

Cut and Run Republicans

We've been "Fristed" again in the illegal immigration debate, and this time House leader Dennis Hastert has joined the chorus of cowardice:

House Republicans rushed through legislation just before Christmas that would build hundreds of miles of fence along the U.S.-Mexico border, require that businesses verify the legality of all employees' status through a national database, fortify border patrols, and declare illegal immigrants and those who help them to be felons. After more lenient legislation failed in the Senate last week, the House-passed version burst into the public consciousness this week, as hundreds of thousands of protesters across the country turned out to denounce the bill.

Yesterday, House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) issued a joint statement seeking to deflect blame for the harshest provisions of the House bill toward the Democrats, who they said showed a lack of compassion. "It remains our intent to produce a strong border security bill that will not make unlawful presence in the United States a felony," Hastert and Frist said.

Once again Republican leaders show they are not worthy of leading even their own parties, much less America. Bill Frist, who would like to become President, proves once again why he does not have the spine for the office he seeks. He will not garner my vote under any circumstance.

Increasingly, a third party vote for a truly conservative candidate coming out of either party seems palatable. As Dan Riehl notes:

I hope there's a leader somewhere in that crumbling party, which today appears to be a shadow of itself, full of political whores intent on abandoning principle so as to pimp themselves for votes. If Republicans remain on this co-dependent Democrat path they are on, look for significant third party challenges from the Right. From what I am seeing today, I would strongly consider voting for one now.

The Democrats still can't win elections, but the GOP seem intent on losing them. as they run the party into the ground.

Well, the Smell is Certainly Biological...

The Washington Post, which within the past week blasted President Bush for declassifying a story to defend false allegations by Joe Wilson, collected classified information of its own through anonymous sources and leaked it on page one Wednesday, declaring:

On May 29, 2003, 50 days after the fall of Baghdad, President Bush proclaimed a fresh victory for his administration in Iraq: Two small trailers captured by U.S. and Kurdish troops had turned out to be long-sought mobile "biological laboratories." He declared, "We have found the weapons of mass destruction."

The claim, repeated by top administration officials for months afterward, was hailed at the time as a vindication of the decision to go to war. But even as Bush spoke, U.S. intelligence officials possessed powerful evidence that it was not true.

A secret fact-finding mission to Iraq -- not made public until now -- had already concluded that the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons. Leaders of the Pentagon-sponsored mission transmitted their unanimous findings to Washington in a field report on May 27, 2003, two days before the president's statement.

Framed the way Joby Warrick presents it in these opening paragraphs, it seems like a slam-dunk case of the Bush Administration lying... but the Post is being less than forthright with it's readers, attempting to bias and shape their perceptions before giving them all the facts.

What facts would those be?

That the one team of inspectors Warrick cites in his opening paragraphs were not the only team to examine these trailers, and that two other teams that initially inspected the trailers did not agree with the team highlighted in the Post article's opening paragraphs. As a matter of fact, one has to navigate a carefully parsed and misleading claim of the "unanimous findings" that were far from unanimous before finding out in the twelfth paragraph that two other teams reached the exact opposite conclusion:

Intelligence analysts involved in high-level discussions about the trailers noted that the technical team was among several groups that analyzed the suspected mobile labs throughout the spring and summer of 2003. Two teams of military experts who viewed the trailers soon after their discovery concluded that the facilities were weapons labs, a finding that strongly influenced views of intelligence officials in Washington, the analysts said. "It was hotly debated, and there were experts making arguments on both sides," said one former senior official who spoke on the condition that he not be identified.

The actual facts are that a single team of nine civilian experts wrote a "unanimous" report that was only unanimous within their one group, while two military teams of experts reached the conclusion that these were bioweapons labs. By careful and I believe willful deceit, the Post would seem to purposefully imply that all experts examining the suspected bio-weapons trailers unanimously came to the conclusion that these trailers were not used to manufacture bio-weapons, and that the Administration blatantly lied in the face of the evidence. The actual facts are that this was not only a not a unanimous report, but that the "unanimous" report of the one team was actually a minority view overall.

This is willful misrepresentation of the facts by Joby Warrick and the editors of the Washington Post in a page one story. There were indeed varied interpretations of the suitability of these trailers to manufacture bio-weapons, yet the Post article purposefully decived its readers to lend weight and column inches to the minority viewpoint that was not unanimous as they suggested.

This appears to be a specific, calculated deception of a national newspaper's readership. The Washington Post must be held accountable.

Update: Seixon finds news reports on these trailers, and determines that the "sharply divided" views of this third team of experts then (2003), is not synonymous with the "unanimous" view attributed to the same team pushed by the Washington Post day.

Joby Warrick's article keeps geting more suspect by the hour...

Killing Allah

Jefferson Morley's Washington Post blog entry today, Talk of Iran Strikes Gets Cool Response, in which Morley summarized world media opinion on threats of a possible attack on Iran's nuclear program, triggered an interesting response from a reader who called himself Farhad Saidieh:

This is a good article, but when have the USA backed down, especially if it would require them to acknowledge the legitimacy of the Iranian regime; the withdraw of the "axis of evil" statement; and then removal of accusations of Iran's links to terrorism/freedom fighters. Even if the USA felt that this may some how be in its interest the Israelis wouldn't allow it and would drag the USA back. There is another way. It would require the USA to acknowledge that it does not have the right, or moral standing to be the Judge, Jury and Executioner. Only then will the end of the war on Terrorism start.

As you may imagine, I had my own response to Farhad:

Farhad,

Why does it seem you are more interested in ending the War on Terrorism, than on ending terrorism itself? I think you have overplayed your hand and stated your intentions a little too clearly.

Iran is a terrorist state that openly seeks the ultimate weapon, while maintaining long-standing calls for the eradication of Israel. It is no great stretch to see that a nuclear Iran would try to destroy Israel as soon as it thought it was possible. Before dying, the Israeli counterstrike is certain to exact a horrible toll of its own. All told, tens of millions will die in this ever-more-likely scenario, and the Middle East will become inhabitable for thousands of years because of nuclear radiation.

The projected and all-but-promised Islamic first strike will clearly mark Islam as an aberration; a threat to all humanity. I doubt any of the "civilized" nations will think twice about unleashing their own arsenals, conventional or otherwise, in smashing other Islamic states that can be seen as a threat to those not already killed by the Iranian-triggered war.

Islam will be smashed, consigned to the ash-heap of history with other failed religions of past centuries. Is this the future you want for Islam? That is the path you are choosing.

If western powers back down now, Iran will end your world, and your religion, and the only solace you will find is that you outlasted the Israelis by a breath.

This is the future Iran would choose for you. I suggest you find another way.

Too many people in this country are allowing their views on developments in Iran's nuclear proliferation gamble to be colored by their like or dislike of President Bush. This is a mistake.

As Mark Steyn noted in an excellent commentary today:

Anyone who spends half an hour looking at Iranian foreign policy over the last 27 years sees five things:

1. contempt for the most basic international conventions;
2. long-reach extraterritoriality;
3. effective promotion of radical Pan-Islamism;
4. a willingness to go the extra mile for Jew-killing (unlike, say, Osama);
5. an all-but-total synchronization between rhetoric and action.

Later:

…the extremist [Iranian President] Ahmadinejad has called for Israel to be "wiped off the map," while the moderate [former Iranian President] Rafsanjani has declared that Israel is "the most hideous occurrence in history," which the Muslim world "will vomit out from its midst" in one blast, because "a single atomic bomb has the power to completely destroy Israel, while an Israeli counter-strike can only cause partial damage to the Islamic world." Evidently wiping Israel off the map seems to be one of those rare points of bipartisan consensus in Tehran, the Iranian equivalent of a prescription drug plan for seniors: we're just arguing over the details.

So the question is: Will they do it?

And the minute you have to ask, you know the answer.

When Seymour Hersh wrote in the New Yorker that the Administration is planning contingencies for possible military strikes against Iran's nuclear sites, and that even our own nuclear options were being considered as a possible response in some scenarios, my initial response was one of "isn't it their job to consider all options?" I did not however, actually think using nuclear weapons was a workable solution, anymore than did the generals in Hersh's anonymously-sourced article who threatened to resign if the nuclear option wasn't removed from the table.

Like the President, I do not desire military conflict—or in light of Iranian intrusion into Iraq, more military conflict—with Iran, and would much prefer a diplomatic settlement where no more lives need be lost. I agree with the apparent assessment of Steyn and others that the Iranian mullahcracy will not stop until they are stopped, and that stoppage, like so many things in the Islamic world, will only occur at the point of the sword.

The American nuclear option of using B61-11 tactical thermonuclear bombs or similar munitions is unsettling and unpleasant, and only to be thought of seriously if all diplomatic efforts fail, and no other military response seems capable. But it is an option, and one that must be considered. They stakes—tens of millions of lives across the Middle East and southwest Asia—are simply too high. Yes, some generals will not want to even consider this option, but generals tend fight the last war, and the civilian leadership most be more nimble in considering what may occur if we fail to stop the Iranians here.

To fail here is tantamount to the total destruction of Israel and the Palestinians, the poisoning of Jordan, Lebanon, and surrounding nations by fallout from Iranian nuclear weapons, and the destruction of much of Iran in retaliation by an Israeli response, even as the Jewish state ceases to exist. It is a price Iran says it is willing to pay, but what of neighboring Iraq, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan? What of other nations that will reap what Iran has sown? They have no say is determining this nuclear winter that ends their lives, and yet they all stand to lose because of an Iranian mullahcracy that has never deviated from its plan to rule the world for Islam, or die.

Iran cannot win this war, but it can destroy much, including Islam itself.

An Iran-triggered nuclear war would wipe out a significant portion of the cradle of civilization, and draw withering fire from suddenly isolationist populations worldwide that would prudently declare Islam a threat to the security of their states. The religion would be banned in many nations, it adherents driven out or underground in others, and the remaining Islamic nations not dying of radiation poisoning and internal wars brought about by this strife will be targeted at the slightest hint of provocation.

How long will the first Islamic nuclear state, Pakistan, last in this environment of well-earned distrust for the Islamic Bomb? What will happen to Pakistan's nuclear weapons when Pervez Musharraf is no longer firmly in charge? If Pakistan falters and control of its weapons is in doubt for even a second, the response will be swift, punitive, and decisive.

If Iran succeeds in its unholy task, Islam itself may die because the remainder of the world will deem it too dangerous to exist. Iran will kill Allah. It may take generations, but Allah will be a god as dead and forgotten as Huitzlopochtli and Heimdall. One billion Muslims armed mainly with small arms cannot compete against the modern world's militaries should the battle ever fully be joined. They will achieve their Islamic Armageddon, but they will go "into the light" alone, as forgotten as the followers of Odin and Ra.

President Bush said in his 2002 State of the Union Address:

We'll be deliberate, yet time is not on our side. I will not wait on events, while dangers gather. I will not stand by, as peril draws closer and closer. The United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons.

Iran is the most dangerous of those remaining regimes, and it is seeking the world's most destructive weapons. Diplomacy is our first option as it should always be. If all else fails, however, we owe it to the world to resolve the problem of Iran's nuclear ambitions with any and all of the technologies at our disposal.

Too many lives hang in the balance not to take that difficult step.

Update: And time draws short.

Bush Annexes Mexico In Surprise Oval Office Ceremony

In a move anticipated by Instapundit blogger Glenn Reynolds last night, (now former) Mexican President Vicente Fox signed over sovereignty of Mexico to American President George W. Bush this morning in Washington, D.C.

Citing rampant corruption within his own government, poor economic planning and internal development under his regime that has left Mexico bereft of a middle class, Fox said, "it is the only right thing to do for the Mexican people. Generations of Mexican government has proven we have no business running a country."

"At this time, 12 million Mexicans are already taking advantage of the American economy and have developed a taste for American services. It seems only fair to extend the rights of America to the rest of my former country."

While a beaming Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was present for the impromptu and hastily prepared signing, the Administration firmly rebuked charges made by anonymous sources that Rumsfeld had threatened an "undocumented redeployment" of America military forces to secure Fox's signature.

Upon hearing of the historic agreement, Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo hastily called for the construction of a border wall separating the new American States of Chaipas, Campeche, and Quintanta Roo from illegal aliens infiltrating from Belize and Guatemala.

President Bush reassured Tancredo that existing immigration laws between the former Mexican States and it's two southern neighbors would "remain the same" as they were under Mexico's immigration laws. This means future illegal aliens would not have rights to public political discourse, certain basic property rights, equal employment rights, and that illegal immigrants may be expelled for any reason. Tancredo was said to be satisfied.

Halliburton could not be reached for comment.

Yes, Saddam Recruited Terrorists

For those you who read Captain's Quarters this is old news, but Ed Morrisey hired two translators to review a section of a captured Iraqi document dated March 17, 2001 that originally translated as:

The top secret letter 2205 of the Military Branch of Al Qadisya on 4/3/2001 announced by the top secret letter 246 from the Command of the military sector of Zi Kar on 8/3/2001 announced to us by the top secret letter 154 from the Command of Ali Military Division on 10/3/2001 we ask to provide that Division with the names of those who desire to volunteer for Suicide Mission to liberate Palestine and to strike American Interests and according what is shown below to please review and inform us.

According to this translation, it seems that Saddam's military was actively recruiting suicide bombers to attack American targets in the months preceding 9/11. Did the two additional translators that Ed Morrissey hired reach a similar translation?

Yes.

Blame Jumpers

As allegations of gang rape swirled against Duke University lacrosse players, ESPN and MSNBC were among many news outlets that tried to suggest that alcohol-related misdemeanors were a dark precursor to rape. NPR was one of many media members more than willing to play up the racial angle, exacerbating tension in Durham and elsewhere. Salon was just one news outlet with the apparent intent of stirring up a class struggle. It seems quite a substantial portion of the media had tried and convicted the Duke lacrosse team before the first charge was even filed.

Now that DNA evidence seems to have cleared the lacrosse team of the charges for a forensic perspective, will Ellen Goodman be the spokesperson to apologize on behalf of the media? Goodman wrote four days ago that many bloggers "have only one exercise routine: jumping to conclusions." As she is somehow qualified to judge conclusion jumping in the blogosphere, she is at least equally as qualified to judge her friends in the media when they are obviously guilty of making the exact same mistake for a longer period of time.

Does anyone think she'll have the integrity to do so?

Durham Bull?

I've refrained from making any comment on the Duke University lacrosse team rape allegations, for the simple reason I tend to blog about politics and the media, not criminal proceedings. That does not mean I've been ignoring the case, however, and I've been quite interested in seeing what the DNA tests of the lacrosse team would reveal.

It revealed nothing.

Wade Smith, an attorney for members of the Duke University lacrosse team, announced late Monday afternoon that no DNA samples taken from the 46 athletes matched any DNA on the alleged victim and that he hopes Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong will consider dropping the case.

Nothing on the victim's skin. Nothing on the victim's clothes. Nothing on internal swabs of the victim's mouth, anus, or vagina. Nothing on her fake fingernails found in the bathroom. Nothing, anywhere. Nothing.

The local and national media have been on something of a witch hunt against the lacrosse team from the very beginning, painting a picture of spoiled rich kids abusing a girl working her way through college any way she could. That narrative presented by the media seems all but shattered now.

Once again, a witch hunt provides no witches, and the prosecution's case seems reduced to so much Durham bull. And yet, I doubt we'll hear anything in the way of media apologies...

It Washes Off in the Rio Grande

Some are estimating that as many as one million people—roughly one for every twelve illegals—will be protesting today in what are calling a national day of action for "immigrants' dignity."

Thousands of demonstrators wearing white T-shirts and waving signs and American flags filled the streets of an immigrant neighborhood Monday for the first of dozens of marches planned in a national day of action billed as a "campaign for immigrants' dignity."

The two-mile Atlanta march was in support of immigrant rights nationally as well as in protest of state legislation awaiting Gov. Sonny Perdue's signature. If signed, it would require that adults seeking many state-administered benefits prove they are in the country legally.

Carlos Carrera, a construction worker from Mexico, held a large banner that read: "We are not criminals. Give us a chance for a better life."

Dignity?

To borrow from Inigo Montoya in The Princes Bride, "I do not think that word means what they thinks it means."

Dignity, according to the relevant part of the entry in the Free Online Dictionary, is:

1. The quality or state of being worthy of esteem or respect. 2. Inherent nobility and worth: the dignity of honest labor. 3. a. Poise and self-respect. b. Stateliness and formality in manner and appearance.

Dignity, it seems fair to say, is something that you either have, or something you have not. You cannot impart an inherent quality; it is present, or it isn't. Dignity can be lost and regained, but it is not something anyone else can bestow upon you.

Illegal immigrants have no dignity because they know that no matter how much they deny it, they are criminals, each and every one, without exception. You may not like that label, Carlos Carrera, but is still the truth. You run from problems in your own country instead of finding a way to make your own nation better, and leach off American citizens that which is not rightfully yours to take.

Illegals don't take tax dollars from America's rich, they steal it from America's poor, robbing the weakest in our society of what we have set aside for them. They are criminals for crossing our borders against our laws. They are criminals for stealing services allocated to our poor. I have heard of honor among thieves, but never dignity. Illegals have no dignity, and deserve no respect.

Do you really want dignity, illegals? Go back to your home countries. Make yourselves worthy of respect by reforming your corrupt governments, instead of trying to undermine ours. If you do come here, do so legally. Follow our laws. Respect our traditions and our cultures, and you will find that respect reciprocated. Disrespect us, demanding by the hundreds of thousands what is not your to demand, only hardens our hearts to your transgressions.

All twelve million illegals can protest for dignity, but dignity is not something that can be given to criminals.

Hersh, Bush, Nukes and Iran

I seem to be among the last of the political bloggers commenting on Seymour Hersh's article in the New Yorker, where he writes that the Administration has not ruled out the option of using small tactical nukes (including B61-11s) to eliminate the Iranian nuclear weapons program.

I can't say that I'm surprised the nuclear option was on the table; I did write about this exact same bomb not once, but twice in a more hypothetical sense more than a week ago, precisely because I think Bush once said something to the effect that "all options were on the table," and to me, "all" does in fact mean all. Predictably, the left thinks that the Hersh article is this week's concrete proof that Bush is the anti-Christ (as if that is a new opinion for them), some on the far right are ready to nuke first and ask questions later, and most center-right blogger's realize that a the use of a B61-11 is a worst-case scenario option to be used only if all other attempts fail.

What does amaze me is rhetoric from some here in the United States willing to label Bush as insane or unhinged for what has been to date a measured, reasonable response, while Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who claims to have felt a holy light while addressing the United Nations in September, has time and again spoken of an "end times" scenario that his regime is rumored to have pledged to try to bring about. A Holocaust-denier with Messianic delusions runs a End-times-focused regime that has openly stated it would like to see Israel "wiped off the map." They are apparently hoping to trigger a massive nuclear war which they think will bring forth the Hidden Imam, and Bush is the one who is insane for being willing to stop them from acquiring nuclear weapons that could end tens of millions of lives?

The guys at South Park are correct. We are a nation of people with their heads buried firmly in the sand.

EXCLUSIVE: NSA Used Technology, not Mind Control, to Intercept Calls

This proves what, exactly?

AT&T provided National Security Agency eavesdroppers with full access to its customers' phone calls, and shunted its customers' internet traffic to data-mining equipment installed in a secret room in its San Francisco switching center, according to a former AT&T worker cooperating in the Electronic Frontier Foundation's lawsuit against the company.

Mark Klein, a retired AT&T communications technician, submitted an affidavit in support of the EFF's lawsuit this week. That class action lawsuit, filed in federal court in San Francisco last January, alleges that AT&T violated federal and state laws by surreptitiously allowing the government to monitor phone and internet communications of AT&T customers without warrants.

This sounds serious, but what exactly does Klein say he actually saw?

AT&T was providing "full access to its customers' phone calls, and shunted its customers' internet traffic to data-mining equipment" according to Klein. A "secret room," that apparently all AT&T technicians knew about, was openly built beside the room housing AT&T's switching equipment for international and long distance calls.

Regular AT&T technicians, including Klein, connected circuits to a splitting cabinet leading to the secret room, which was so secret, it seems many AT&T employees knew they were being built not just there in San Francisco, but in Seattle, San Jose, Los Angeles and San Diego. Obviously, this was something they were taking great efforts in trying to hide.

Then Klein adds:

Klein said he came forward because he does not believe that the Bush administration is being truthful about the extent of its extrajudicial monitoring of Americans' communications.

"Despite what we are hearing, and considering the public track record of this administration, I simply do not believe their claims that the NSA's spying program is really limited to foreign communications or is otherwise consistent with the NSA's charter or with FISA," Klein's wrote. "And unlike the controversy over targeted wiretaps of individuals' phone calls, this potential spying appears to be applied wholesale to all sorts of internet communications of countless citizens."

So what Klein actually saw was that voice and data communications were shunted into a room that he was not allowed access to, and that he did not see any external filtering equipment that blocked voice or data communications before they entered that room.

I ask a simple question: Why would the NSA put any of their top secret, state-of-the-art equipment, including the technologies they use to target and filter calls, anywhere but in a secret room?

As a taxpayer, I wouldn't want the equipment laying around where just anyone, be it a Mark Klein or an AT&T employee working for China on the side, could access it, reveal details about it, or possibly corrupt it.

Klein's statements are based at least partially on politics, as he shows a dislike for the Administration in his statements. In the end, he only confirms the existence of the location of one specific NSA intercept site, and nothing about the program itself. He adds very little to the national debate.

Once again, the evidence (or lack thereof) is irrelevant; it's the seriousness of the charge that seems to matter.

And Speaking of Credibility...

Joe Wilson reveals more about himself than he probably should. No wonder his wife wanted a secret identity.

Hey, Ellen!

Please, tell us more about how the mainstream media has more professionalism and credibility than bloggers, will you?

Ellen Goodman Owes Us an Apology

Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman writes:

I AM SURE that Jill Carroll and her family are too busy inhaling the sweet spring air of freedom to spend time sniffing out the pollution in the blogosphere. Anyone who spent three months imagining the grimmest fate for this young journalist in the hands of terrorists can't get too upset when a little Internet posse goes after her scalp.

Nevertheless, this is not a good moment for the bustling, energetic Wild West of the new Internet media. Remember when a former CBS executive described bloggers as guys in pajamas writing in their living rooms? Well, it seems that many have only one exercise routine: jumping to conclusions.

It seems Goodman is breaking quite a sweat herself.

Goodman smears large swathes of the blogosphere based upon cherry-picked comments from just two specific bloggers out of more than 33.5 million (as tracked by Technorati), along with commentary from Debbie Schlussel, who while having a blog, also belongs to Goodman's print media as a "frequent New York Post and Jerusalem Post columnist" according to her bio.

Goodman misrepresents the blogosphere, as the vast majority of blogs on both the political left and right did not write about Jill Carroll to "go after her scalp" as Goodman contends. The overwhelimng majority on the left and right defended Carroll, myself included, many urging a wait-and-see approach, strongly suspecting her comments were made under duress. A relative handful did attack Carroll, but these bloggers were hardly representative of the greater whole.

Implying that the blogosphere in general want to attack Carroll is every bit as disingenuous on Goodman's part as is someone else saying that most Boston Globe columnists are dishonest because of the plagiarism of Mike Barnicle and Patricia Smith.

Then again, maybe misrepresenting the work of others is the exercise of choice among columnists at the Boston Globe.

A real neat thing about bloggers that Ellen Goodman should know about is that we are notoriously self-correcting when we're wrong.

Let's see if she can meet our standards.

Fristed

On the day the Gospel of Judas was revealed, Senate Republicans declared their betrayal of Republican voters.

Senate Republicans have put forth a proposal that awards more benefits to illegals the longer they've broken immigration laws. The immigration "compromise" that John O'Sullivan properly recognizes as a surrender leaves many angry conservatives feeling violated and abused by Senate Republicans led by Bill Frist that refused to listen to their constituents.

We were violated by our own party, who proved one again securing the nation's borders really doesn't matter to them. I hope these Senators enjoy ever second of their surrender of values, as conservative bloggers will not let the 65% supermajority of Republicans voters forget this betrayal in elections to come.

McKinney: Symptom of the Disease

Via CNN:

No more he-grabbed-she-slapped -- whether U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney should be charged over a confrontation with Capitol Police last week will be decided by a grand jury, perhaps as soon as next week, said federal law enforcement sources familiar with the case.

Prosecutors have decided to present the case, and the grand jury will begin hearing testimony Thursday, the two sources said.

Senior congressional sources said that two House staff members -- Troy Phillips, an aide to Rep. Sam Farr, D-California, and Lisa Subrize, executive assistant to Rep. Thaddeus McCotter, R-Michigan -- have been subpoenaed to testify.

The Justice Department and the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, which is handling the case, refused to comment.

Law enforcement officials refuse to comment, while McKinney refuses to shut up, or even apologize, instead insisting that this isn't a matter of security, but one of race.

But it is about security, as it was July 24, 1998, when Capitol Police officers John Gibson and Jacob Chestnut were gunned down trying to protect members of Congress just like McKinney at the same kind of checkpoint she bypassed and ignored.

Slain Capitol Police officers John M. Gibson, left, and Jacob J. Chestnut, right.
Via the Washington Post.

Officer Chestnut was in a very similar situation to the one Cynthia McKinney placed the Capitol Police in last week, when she bypassed a metal detector like the one Officer Chestnut was manning and refused to stop.

The difference between the instances was that a bullet from Russell Weston's .38-caliber revolver killed Officer Chestnut almost instantly as he pushed through the checkpoint in 1998, and the Capitol Police were fortunate that Representative McKinney was armed only with a cell phone.

Cynthia McKinney has no respect for the men and women of the Capitol Police force who have placed their lives on the line for her day in and day out, and the dead silence of her fellow Democrats speaks volumes about how they feel about crimes against the police as well.

Democrats refuse to engage in the issue, preferring to ignore it, hoping it will go away. I think we've seen that plan before.

Update: DeLay speaks about these officers past and present as well (h/t reader Tom TB).

Time to Leave

Senate Republicans released a new immigration proposal Wednesday night that amounts to little more than a graduated amnesty program, rewarding the most those who have broken federal immigration laws the longest. According to MSNBC:

Republican officials said the GOP plan would divide illegal immigrants into three categories:

• Those who had been in the country the longest, more than five years, would not be required to return to their home country before gaining legal status. They would be subject to several tests, including the payment of fines and back taxes, and be required to submit to a background check, according to these officials.
• Illegal immigrants in the United States less than five years but more than two would be required to go to a border point of entry, briefly leave and then be readmitted to the United States. As with the longer-term illegal immigrants, other steps would be required for re-entry, after which they could begin seeking citizenship, these officials said.
• Illegal immigrants in the United States less than two years would be required to leave the country and join any other foreign residents seeking legal entry.

The officials who described the proposal did so on condition of anonymity, saying the had not been authorized to pre-empt senators.

These weak-willed Senate Republicans are sending the message that the longer an illegal alien has broken the law, the more that crime is acceptable. That is not the message we should be sending to those so openly contemptuous of our nation's laws. The message we should be sending?

It's time to leave.

Kill the market for illegal jobs by building a controlled legal market though a strong guest worker program. Make it too risky for companies to hire illegals by imposing stiff fines on employers using illegal immigrant labor. It will not result in mass government-run deportations, but a gradual, economics-run repatriation of illegals when they can no longer find work in this country.

It's time to leave.

Now.

Insurgent Helicopter Hoax?

Drudge is running a link to this AP story, which claims the pilots of an American AH-64 Longbow attack helicopter were shot down, and their burning bodies pulled from the wreckage.

My PC's video isn't working right now, but the video is downloadable at the SITE Institute, where they have two still photos captured from the video that make me immediately suspicious. The timestamp on the video states that the date of the film is March 19, 2000. In addition, the still photo on the right seems to show an airborne helicopter with what appears to be (in the one grainy still photo can I see) skids on the undercarriage.

Current-issue UH-60 Blackhawks that are the predominate utility and MEDEVAC helicopter of the U.S. Army have wheels.

I'll update this after I have had a chance to look at the video later today, but I suspect this may not be authentic footage.

Update: The SITE video is not the same film of the crash as reported in the AP story.
Bareknucklepolitics.com has the correct video. It is of very low quality, but despite that, it is not being disputed by the U.S. military. Without anything else to go on, I'll assume that the downing of the helicopter is real.

Second Update: It now appears that the U.S. military is doubting the authenticity of the video footage, even while a stateside defense contractor says the tape looks authentic. The most reasonable conclusion to draw from this discrepancy is that the Army is aware of forensic evidence from the recent crash that does not match up with the footage shown in the video. The contractor would not necessarily have access to this information.

Variables such as the condition of the downed helicopter, the terrain of the crash site, and even the condition of the human remains collected may very well provide the military with evidence suggesting that the footage was either staged, or was footage from a previous crash.

Down and Out in Chapel Hill

It seems like some folks, such as UNC-Chapel Hill law professor Eric Muller, have too much time on their hands:

Some have maintained for a while now that a person other than Michelle Malkin is writing and posting some of the material that gets posted with her byline on her blog. She has denied it.

To my eyes, the jury has always been out on that question.

But let's look closely at the last 36 hours at michellemalkin.com.

At 7:16 a.m., she posted that she was "back from vacation."

Sizeable posts followed at 8:00 a.m., 8:46 a.m., 9:31 a.m., 10:16 a.m., 10:52 a.m. (a short one), 11:25 a.m., 11:37 a.m., 12:37 p.m., 2:09 p.m. (subsequently updated), 4:06 p.m., 7:45 p.m., 8:01 p.m., 8:19 p.m., 10:36 p.m. (subsequently updated), 5:49 a.m., 6:05 a.m., 8:00 a.m., 8:25 a.m. (subsequently updated), and then 12:31 p.m.

In that last message, Malkin explains that she is in Minneapolis, where she'll be giving a speech at 12:00 noon. Controlling for the one-hour time difference between the East Coast and Minnesota, I infer that she posted this update a startling 29 minutes before her noontime speech.

One wonders: when did she drive (or get driven) to the airport, fly at least three hours (if non-stop) to Minnesota, and then drive (or get driven) to her Minneapolis destination? And is there a red-eye from the DC area to Minneapolis?

The jury may not be in, but they're knocking on the door.

The knocking at the door, Professor Muller, may be the men in white coats asking for you.

Muller is just one liberal with the apparent obsession of "getting" conservative blogger/journalist Michelle Malkin, who they claim must have a ghostwriter because of her prodigious output as a journalist and blogger.

What evidence does the law professor bring to bear?

His "evidence" is not that there are tell-tale differences in grammar, syntax, or tone in some of her posts (traditional, recognized "tells"), but simple fact that Malkin was able to put up 20 blog entries in 36 hours. That is impressive output if you are looking at the raw number of posts, but the raw number itself means nothing without considering the style and length of the blog posts in question.

If long-form bloggers such as Richard Fernandez or Ed Morrissey were posting 20 entries in 36 hours, people would have a right to be suspicious. Long form blog entries from these and similar writers are intricate, and they take substantial time to compose, because they require substantial independent research, analysis, synthesis, and of course, composition.

But Michelle Malkin is not in general, and definitely not in the examples provided, a long-form blogger.

Malkin writes in other forums for her primary income, and as a blogger, she typically aggregates news stories and blog entries that are often sent to her electronically either via email, RSS feeds, news media web sites, and presumably other sources.

The telling question in the equation is this: how much original written composition occurs in these 20 posts cited, and how much is aggregation?

If you strip out the images and quoted text in the 20 posts selected by Eric Muller, Michelle Malkin wrote a grand total of 938 words over 3 days, or just shy of 47 words a post (46.9, Eric, since you seem to obsess so much about the fine details). As the vast majority of those 47 words are straightforward descriptive writing that comes as easily as speech for journalists, this level of output is well within her capabilities, even while traveling.

20 brief short-form blog posts over three days is hardly difficult for a full-time professional writer. For that matter, it is not even all that difficult for part-time bloggers.

Liberal Duncan Black released a total of 57 short (often very short) posts over the past three days while holding down a Senior Fellowship with Media Matters. Glenn Reynolds (a law professor without too much time on his hands) managed to teach class, pay his final respects to a much beloved grandmother, and release 60 mostly short posts and 18 updates in the same amount of time. Perhaps he should investigate both of them as well?

For someone teaching law, Eric Muller presents a laughably weak case. Perhaps his obsession has cut too much into his sleep.

For his student's sake, I hope he gets the help he needs.

The "Deadliest Day"

DEAR NEW YORK TIMES: When the largest single fatality-causing event for your (well, our) soldiers in recent months is a single vehicle wreck, isn't it officially time to retire the theme that we're losing the war?

Note: spelling error corrected. (h/t danking70)

Legacies

Richard Cohen of the Washington Post has a dyspeptic editorial up this morning, A Hole in Which Hopes Are Buried, in which he expresses general outrage at everything George W. Bush.

Cohen starts his rant at Ground Zero:

President Bush is starting to look beyond his presidency. His focus is on his legacy, which he is sure will vindicate his decision to go to war in Iraq. But his most fitting memorial is likely to be where I was Sunday: the immense gash in Lower Manhattan known as Ground Zero. More than 4 1/2 years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the hole has yet to be filled.

Tourists come and look. The selling of souvenirs is prohibited at the site itself, but around the corner, on Vesey Street, peddlers hug the shadows. The proper souvenir to take away from this place, though, is the memory of its immense emptiness. It's a hole filled with broken promises and silly rhetoric, an inverted monument to the Bush administration's unfathomable failure even to capture Osama bin Laden.

Cohen attempts to affix the failure to rebuild the WTC site as Bush's legacy, as if urban commercial architect were among the many mythical powers he has assumed in his imagined “imperial presidency.” But Bush is not to blame for the failure to rebuild at Ground Zero. Rounds of ensuing site designs have been brought forth, shot down, and slowed down because of politics, lawsuits wrangling over insurance monies, and safety concerns, all local issues.

He then chastises the President for not yet getting Osama bin Laden. I once thought more of Richard Cohen, but he seems unable to grasp the simple fact that Osama is a figurehead, a symbolic leader whose operational capabilities have steadily declined in every nation as al Qaeda cells are picked off one-by-one around the world. But then, Cohen isn't really interested in bin Laden. Were Bush to call a joint session of Congress and have bin Laden's head literally brought out on a silver platter, Cohen would assuredly be among the first to quote the Dali Llama saying that the death of bin Laden would just create ten more.

What Richard Cohen will not do, is face the brutal fact that the man he so openly admires, William Jefferson Clinton, through inaction in the Sudan and repeated hesitancy in Afghanistan, allowed bin Laden to live to see the horrors his disciples would create.

The two felled Towers and the 2,792 souls taken in their collapse are a legacy to Clinton's inaction, not Bush's bravado. Ground Zero is the hole that Bill built.

Cohen rails about President bush's supposed incompetence in waging war, yet fails to account for President Clinton's abject failure in waging peace that led us to where we are today. If Bush's legacy is a void, Bill Clinton's legacy is a blackened September sky.

Big Easy Babylon

Outside the oceanographic certainty that the French Quarter is destined to be part of the Gulf of Mexico sea floor sooner rather than later, the polarized racial politics of the mayoral race in a post-Katrina New Orleans betrays a bigoted Big Easy that might be too repulsive to rebuild:

Instead, with the city's majority-black status in doubt for the first time in decades, one dominant motif has emerged from the campaign: race, which for nearly 30 years has been merely a muted subtheme in politics here. Since 1978, New Orleans has elected black mayors, and there has been little doubt about the racial identity of the eventual winner.

This year, each of the three major candidates or their supporters have aligned themselves along racial lines, with each camp hoping it has singled out the correct, and as yet unknown, demographic.

In part, this is a measure of how far the office of mayor has been reduced in the seven months after the storm.

If this election has been reduced to nothing more than a census in a hole in a swamp, are the cultural remains of New Orleans really worth rebuilding?

Without Further DeLay

The Washington Post reports that former House majority leader Tom DeLay has announced his retirement:

Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), a primary architect of the House Republican majority who became one of the most powerful and feared leaders in Washington, told House allies Monday night he will step down from the House rather than face a reelection fight that appears increasingly unwinnable.

The decision came just three days after his former deputy chief of staff, Tony C. Rudy, pleaded guilty to conspiracy and corruption charges, telling federal prosecutors of a criminal enterprise being run out of DeLay's leadership offices. Rudy's plea agreement did not implicate DeLay in any illegal activities, but by placing the influence-buying efforts of disgraced Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff directly in DeLay's operation, the former aide may have made an already difficult reelection bid all but out of reach.

DeLay, who turns 60 this Saturday, did not say precisely when he would step down, but under Texas law, he must take himself out of reelection consideration by August if his name is to be removed from the November ballot.

In recent memory DeLay has been dogged with allegations of corruption with the guilty pleas of Jack Abramoff and his former press secretary, Michael Scanlon, preceding the even more recent Rudy plea. I think this is a pretty strong indication that DeLay feels charges against himself are imminent, and that his future prospects will now depend on the work of prosecutors instead of pollsters.

Update: Mike Allen of Time has the exclusive interview with DeLay.

Dixie Check

Natalie Maines, this one's for you (Via Instapundit).

Mainstream Media Math

This morning, a U.S. Air Force C-5 Galaxy reported problems after takeoff and crashed while trying to make an emergency landing at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. The plane broke into three large sections, with the nose and tail assembly separating from the fuselage. There are survivors, and perhaps miraculously, there are no confirmed fatalities at this time.

CNN's coverage of the crash provides us with this gem of information about the C-5:

The C-5 can carry 270,000 tons of cargo almost 2,500 miles on one load of fuel. The C-5's wingspan is 28 feet wider than a 747 and the military jet is 16 feet longer than the civilian airliner.

270,000 tons? Wow. That's impressive, especially when considering that the massive Iowa class battleships, at 887 feet, weigh less than 60,000 tons when fully loaded. Is CNN trying to say that a single C-5 can carry four battleships with room left over, or are the much-vaunted multiple layers of editorial oversight in the professional media not all it is cracked up to be?

Here's a hint, CNN: try 270,000 pounds, not 270,000 tons.

I report, you deride.

Correction: Dover is in Delaware, not Maryland. I blame daylight savings time for the error...

Nuts in Texas

Tom Elia at the New Editor makes me wonder:

Who is more insane, the college professor who gave a speech calling for the destruction of humanity with the ebloa virus, or those in attendence who gave him a standing ovation?

And What Was It Before?

The NY Times released an anonymous editorial Sunday titled, "The Endgame in Iraq." To read it is to understand why the Times is failing both financially and intellectually.

Iraq is becoming a country that America should be ashamed to support, let alone occupy.

And what was it before? A brutal dictatorship that ran rape rooms and torture centers, a thugocracy that twice invaded its neighbors and used chemical weapons against civilian and soldier alike.

The nation as a whole is sliding closer to open civil war. In its capital, thugs kidnap and torture innocent civilians with impunity, then murder them for their religious beliefs.

And what was it before? A country where the government itself kidnapped and murdered not dozens, but hundreds or thousands at a time. Does the Times simply prefer state-sanctioned mass murders to ad hoc slaughter?

The rights of women are evaporating.

And what were they before? Rape rooms, RAPE ROOMS were run by the government itself.

The head of the government is the ally of a radical anti-American cleric who leads a powerful private militia that is behind much of the sectarian terror.

And what was it before? The head of government ran what was once the fourth largest army in the world, not 10,000 ragtag thugs, and Saddam's "state security" murdered more civilians in "peacetime" that Iraq lost during the war and occupation combined.

The Bush administration will not acknowledge the desperate situation. But it is, at least, pushing in the right direction, trying to mobilize all possible leverage in a frantic effort to persuade the leading Shiite parties to embrace more inclusive policies and support a broad-based national government.

One vital goal is to persuade the Shiites to abort their disastrous nomination of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari. Mr. Jaafari is unable to form a broadly inclusive government and has made no serious effort to rein in police death squads. Even some Shiite leaders are now calling on him to step aside. If his nomination stands and is confirmed by Parliament, civil war will become much harder to head off. And from the American perspective, the Iraqi government will have become something that no parent should be asked to risk a soldier son or daughter to protect.

And what was it before? When at any time, was this war not a "desperate situation" for those reporting for the New York Times? Since before this war began, the Times has consistently prescribed clouds of doom for every lining of silver. The very fact that even Shiites are calling for al-Jaafari to step down is a measure many did not expect. Iraqis want peace, having seen enough death and destruction in the hands of the dictator the Times presumably would prefer to remain in power. It is hardly surprising that the Times would feel that no soldier should risk his life to fight in Iraq or Afghanistan. They didn't support this from the beginning and helped create this situation by giving the insurgency hope, so why should they change their approach now?

Unfortunately, after three years of policy blunders in Iraq, Washington may no longer have the political or military capital to prevail. That may be hard for Americans to understand, since it was the United States invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein and helped the Shiite majority to power. Some 140,000 American troops remain in Iraq, more than 2,000 American servicemen and servicewomen have died there so far and hundreds of billions of American dollars have been spent.

Yet Shiite leaders have responded to Washington's pleas for inclusiveness with bristling hostility, personally vilifying Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and criticizing American military operations in the kind of harsh language previously heard only from Sunni leaders. Meanwhile, Moktada al-Sadr, the radically anti-American cleric and militia leader, has maneuvered himself into the position of kingmaker by providing decisive support for Mr. Jaafari's candidacy to remain prime minister.

A faction, one faction of Shiites lashed out after an elite Sunni-Shiite anti-terrorist unit took on the Madhi Army militia and destroyed one of its bases, and freed a kidnapped hostage without sustaining a single casualty. The Iraqi Army has quietly relegated al Qaeda in Iraq and the Sunni insurgency to near irrelevance.

Do you doubt this?

When is the last time you heard the name Zarqawi? When was the last major success of the insurgency against the Iraqi Army, much less the U.S. or British militaries?

al Qaeda and the remaining Sunni insurgency can still take lives and they may be able to do so far years, but they cannot win. With this threats behind them the Iraqi Army now turns to clearing out a just one corrupt Shiite faction and its Madhi Army milita allied with Iran. al-Sadr is no kingmaker. He has no great constituency outside of his slums, only poor political skills, and an alliance with Iran that has made him a legitimate military target. No one can play kingmaker from beyond the grave.

It was chilling to read Edward Wong's interview with the Iraqi prime minister in The Times last week, during which Mr. Jaafari sat in the palace where he now makes his home, complained about the Americans and predicted that the sectarian militias that are currently terrorizing Iraqi civilians could be incorporated into the army and police. The stories about innocent homeowners and storekeepers who are dragged from their screaming families and killed by those same militias are heartbreaking, as is the thought that the United States, in its hubris, helped bring all this to pass.

And what was it before? Under Saddam, Iraqis knew who it was who was dragging innocent people away in the middle of the night. Today, they at least stand a fighting chance.

As it now stands, the Army is increasingly able to handle its own areas of responsibility; predominately Shiite Army units successfully defended Sunni sections of Baghdad during "sectarian" fighting. This fact is something the Times prefers not to cover as it undermines their three-years-and-counting "all it lost" narrative, but this truth that is establishing trust all the same. With the Iraqi Army on legs that grow steadier day by day, the U.S and Iraqi Army forces like the ones that cleaned out the Madhi Army militia nest last week can now focus on weeding out militiamen. Things are bloody and fluid in Iraq, but perhaps not as dire as the Times predicts over and over again.

It is conceivable that the situation can still be turned around. Mr. Khalilzad should not back off. The kind of broadly inclusive government he is trying to bring about offers the only hope that Iraq can make a successful transition from the terrible mess it is in now to the democracy that we all hoped would emerge after Saddam Hussein's downfall. It is also the only way to redeem the blood that has been shed by Americans and Iraqis alike.

Conceivable? Most certainly. al Qaeda can take lives, but it is far past the point that it can win. The Sunni insurgency is quietly melting away as Iraqis take the lead in "clear, hold and build" operations, and Sunnis see that the government is operating in their best interests.

The biggest threat to Iraq's future at the moment is a lightly armed Madhi Army militia that is held together by a cult of personality surrounding Moktada al-Sadr and Iranian special forces soldiers.

The situation in Iraq is far from ideal, but individuals now have a say in their own future, which is something they have not had in decades. Iraq isn't what we want it to be now, but it is better than it was before, under Saddam. The Times, of course, decided their approach to this war before it began, and no Coalition success was too large to overlook, and no Coalition setback was too small to ignore. Don't expect their coverage to change. The Times coverage in Iraq is brutal, one-sided, and superficial.

But then, that's what it was before.