Curses! Foiled Again

It looks like one of them college edumacated fellers over at the Daily Kos musta figgered us out.

With smart folks like that, how are we ever going to keep those negroes out of office?

They's too swift for us.

I wonder what going to happen come the 'lections?

Further Thoughts on Hamdan

From a comment left on this post:

Without law to govern our actions, we are no better than the terrorist who's objective is to destroy our way of life.

And therein lies a key thought of many American liberals. He—and others like him—truly believe that courts protect our liberties and our lives.

He will never understand that the Supreme Court did not have the legal authority to rule on Hamdan (Congress passed DCA '05, legally stripping them of jurisdiction, which SCOTUS then illegally usurped back from Congress). He will never understand that the Constitutionally defined Commander in Chief powers outweigh those powers the Court unilaterally gives itself.

He will not bother to understand the Court trampled on the Constitution in Hamdan with a murky application of international law, nor will he admit that they ignored the plain meaning of the Geneva Convention, which all but specifically exempts terrorists from Geneva protections under Article 4.1.2. To people like him, the Supreme Court, an un-elected body of political appointees, is the ultimate and unquestioned law of the land.

This is not how this nation was set up. The Court is but one of three co-equal branches of government, and it does not rule over the others. But my, oh my, it tries.

The Court in this decision pulls a trifecta. It ignores Congress, overreaches into the President's executive powers as Commander in Chief, and not content to stop there, decided a case based upon international law instead of following the U.S. Constitution.

And yet, people view the court to be infallible with an almost religious fervor, and actually think that the court protects our lives and liberties.

It doesn"t.

Tens of millions of men have protected our lives and liberties by putting on a uniform and picking up a rifle to stop the barbarians crashing the gates, while judges simply sat.

Don't tell me who guards my liberty. Is isn't a sleepy Ginsberg, or a decrepit Stevens, or a gesturing Scalia, or any other Supreme Court judge through the history of a Court that misunderstood for nearly 200 years the simple phrase, "that all men are created equal."

The people protecting my liberties are 20-year-olds with guts and guns.

In the end, the law is just a piece of paper, reflecting the ideas of a culture, and those ideas are not always just or fair or true. Often, despite the veneer of precedent and legalese, court decisions are arbitrary, capricious, dangerous and cruel.

The Hamdan decision is one such poor example, and highly why the Supreme Court is anything but infallible.

Tour De Turtle Bay

Isn't it an almost perfect metaphor?

American power dominates for years over European interests, and is then accused of using underhanded nefarious means to achieve the pinnacle of success. We find out later that it was the Americans won because of our unmatched work ethic, while the Europeans who cried that we were cheating, were actually guilty themselves the entire time.

Sounds a bit like the Oil for Food Scandal, doesn"t it? Guess again:

France — Favorites Jan Ullrich, Ivan Basso and other cyclists were barred Friday from the Tour de France in the biggest doping scandal to hit cycling in years. The decision to prevent Ullrich, Basso and others from racing threw the sport's premier race into upheaval the day before it begins.

Tour director Christian Prudhomme said the organizers' determination to fight doping was "total."

"The enemy is not cycling, the enemy is doping," he said.

Doping of course, is what seven-time American Tour De France Winner Lance Armstrong has repeatedly been accused of, and a charge he has repeatedly denied. Every time he has been vindicated, the latest time just four days ago.

Americans win, and continue to win, through unrelenting work, while soft, decadent western Europeans break the rules and still continue to come up short.

Someone please tell me why American liberals (John Kerry would be a prime example) so aspire to be like these people. Is cheating to lose that much fun?

Defenders of Oppressors

Via U.S. Newswire:

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi released the following statement today following the United States Supreme Court decision that trying Guantanamo detainees before military commissions violates U.S. law and the Geneva Conventions:

"Today's Supreme Court decision reaffirms the American ideal that all are entitled to the basic guarantees of our justice system. This is a triumph for the rule of law.

"The rights of due process are among our most cherished liberties, and today's decision is a rebuke of the Bush Administration's detainee policies and a reminder of our responsibility to protect both the American people and our Constitutional rights. We cannot allow the values on which our country was founded to become a casualty in the war on terrorism."

Translates PunditGuy (via Hot Air):

'If you plan terrorist attacks against America, if you kill Americans in a successful terrorist attack, if you kill our troops in Iraq or on any battlefield, we, the Democratic Party, will defend your right to be defended.'

If terrorists maim and murder innocents by the thousands, anywhere on earth, the Democratic Party will rush to defend their rights under American law.

White flag. Yellow back. Brown pants. Your Democratic Party.

Bush Loses Hamdan, SCOTUS Loses Its Mind

According to the Associated Press:

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that President Bush overstepped his authority in ordering military war crimes trials for Guantanamo Bay detainees.

The ruling, a rebuke to the administration and its aggressive anti-terror policies, was written by Justice John Paul Stevens, who said the proposed trials were illegal under U.S. law and international Geneva conventions.

The case focused on Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni who worked as a bodyguard and driver for Osama bin Laden. Hamdan, 36, has spent four years in the U.S. prison in Cuba. He faces a single count of conspiring against U.S. citizens from 1996 to November 2001.

I'm familiar with a saying that goes, “if you can keep your head, while everyone around you is losing theirs, then clearly, you don't understand the situation.”

When it comes to Hamdan, that is certainly the case for me.

Quite frankly, I've never been sure about the military tribunal route for terrorism suspects captured overseas. To me it either makes sense to try them as criminals in a federal court, hold them until hostilities were over (if we deem the Geneva Conventions apply), or execute them like rabid dogs (if we deem the Geneva Conventions don't apply). The tribunal route just seemed odd to my sensibilities.

Over at Hot Air, Allah seems confused:

So if they try him, they have to take him to federal court — but they don't have to try him? What?

He also notes this from SCOTUSBlog:

As I predicted below, the Court held that Congress had, by statute, required that the commissions comply with the laws of war -- and held further that these commissions do not (for various reasons).

More importantly, the Court held that Common Article 3 of Geneva aplies as a matter of treaty obligation to the conflict against Al Qaeda. That is the HUGE part of today's ruling. The commissions are the least of it. This basically resolves the debate about interrogation techniques, because Common Article 3 provides that detained persons "shall in all circumstances be treated humanely," and that "[t]o this end," certain specified acts "are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever"—including "cruel treatment and torture," and "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment." This standard, not limited to the restrictions of the due process clause, is much more restrictive than even the McCain Amendment. See my further discussion here.

This almost certainly means that the CIA's interrogation regime is unlawful, and indeed, that many techniques the Administation has been using, such as waterboarding and hypothermia (and others) violate the War Crimes Act (because violations of Common Article 3 are deemed war crimes).

If I'm right about this, it's enormously significant.

Quite frankly, if SCOTUSBlog is correct in that SCOTUS is saying the Geneva Conventions apply to non-state terrorist entities, then the court is out of it's ever-lovin' mind.

What is then to keep them from applying the Conventions to other non-state groups? Can drug cartels now claim to be protected under Geneva? How about serial killers?

The message to the soldier in the field seems clear: Take no prisoners, and collect whatever intel you can gather off the bodies.

Great job, Stevens. I think it's time you retire.

Update: Stop the ACLU has a roundup.

WMD fired at Israel...Or Not?

Or so a Palestinian militant group claims (via Drudge):

A spokesman for gunmen in the Gaza Strip said they had fired a rocket tipped with a chemical warhead at Israel early on Thursday. The Israeli army had no immediate comment on the claim by the spokesman from the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed wing of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement. The group had recently claimed to possess about 20 biological warheads for the makeshift rockets commonly fired from Gaza at Israeli towns. This was the first time the group had claimed firing such a rocket. "The al-Aqsa Brigades have fired one rocket with a chemical warhead" at southern Israel, Abu Qusai, a spokesman for the group, said in Gaza. An Israeli military spokeswoman said the army had not detected that any such rocket was fired, nor was there any report of such a weapon hitting Israel.

Silly al-Reuters reporters. They weren't supposed to release that story until tomorrow.

Resurrecting Ghosts

"Mothball Fleet."

Just hearing those words conjures up images of worn down, obsolete rusty freighters, decrepit warships, and sepia-tone pictures of half-sunken Liberty ships whose glory days have long since past.

They are the abandoned hulks and hulls no longer wanted or needed, destined for an ignoble end at the bottom of the sea after being used as a naval target, or at the end of a scrapyard's cutting torch.

But what if some of these grizzled veterans of wars past still had a story left to tell? What if some of these salt-flecked graybeards of the fleet still have a purpose, and can be called forth once more?

Finding that purpose is the calling of Ward Brewer, CEO of a little-known and unheralded non-profit Beauchamp Tower Corporation (BTC). Operation Enduring Service, the program started to press these aging ships back into service, began with a glance at a picture on a wall. As the Operation Enduring Service web site explains:

A 1944 Will Cressy lithograph of the USS Orion, which hung on James Gulley's living room wall since he returned from the war, now hangs on his grandson's office wall. In April of 2002, while working on his company's National Emergency Urban Interface Program, a momentary glance at that picture drew Ward's attention.

Taking a break from working on the company's emergency response program, Ward began searching for the USS Orion on the Internet to find out more about her. Several sites had pictures and brief histories of the USS Orion as well as other Fulton Class Submarine Tenders. There was one site, however, that would dramatically change future events. The USS Torsk Volunteers had been aboard the USS Orion in order to obtain various parts that were needed for the continued restoration of their submarine. While searching the ship, the "Torsk Bandits" as they called themselves, took numerous pictures of the USS Orion. It was these pictures that caught Ward Brewer's eye.

The USS Orion was built like a small city, carrying with her everything she could possibly need to perform her mission. It was all there, Machine Shops, Foundry, Electronics, Utilities, Berthing, Galleys, etc. This incredible concentration of capabilities made the USS Orion and her Fulton Class sister ships efficient, effective, and one of the most versatile assets in the United States Navy. It was the versatility and unique assets of these ships that resulted in Ward Brewer considering a project design so bold and unusual that few would believe it was even possible.

Brewer's general concept was simple; save these aging ships from the scrapyard, and refit them with the most modern technologies this generation can bring to bear to create a small fleet of ultra-capable disaster response and recovery ships.

The Fulton-class of Submarine Tenders was Brewer's first choice for this mission, but as more modern ships began to retire, the Mars-class Combat Stores Ship became the most logical choice to be refitted as the very first purpose-built Fast Attack Disaster Response Ships.

The former USNS San Diego may be the very first of this new breed of ships.

Outfitted with an emergency response center, an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) operations center and a land/sea/air communications center than can coordinate across military, law enforcement and civilian radio frequencies, this ship will be the coordinating hub of disaster response in coming hurricane seasons, working with FEMA, the Coast Guard, Salvation Army and other organizations that response to the worse storms Mother Nature can throw at Gulf and East Coast states.

Able to provide food, water, fuel and emergency supplies to an area measuring of thousands of square miles, these ships will be able to do what no agency in any country has ever been capable of doing.

The problem, of course, is securing these aging vessels and finding a way to finance their refitting and return to duty.

Operation Enduring Service has long been pushing the U.S. Maritime Administration (MARAD) to release a substantial number of ships to Beauchamp Tower Corporation from the James River and Suisun Bay National Defense Reserve Fleets.

National Defense Reserve Fleet, Suisian Bay, California

National Defense Reserve Fleet, James River, Fort Eustis, Virginia.

Ships of historical significance—particularly World War II-era ships—would be brought back to period standards and used as museum ships, providing future generations insights into how the Greatest Generation fought to preserve this nation's freedoms. A handful of vessels such as the USNS San Diego would be refitted for emergency response.

A substantial part of the operation—both museum ships and modernized disaster response vessels—would be financed by selling the salvage and scrapping rights to other vessels too far gone to be of further use except for as recycled raw materials. The total cost of this program to taxpayers?

Not one dime.

The salvage and scrapping of those vessels beyond their useful days will partially finance both the historical and rescue operations, with the rest of the costs being absorbed by the deep pockets of major corporate donors already committed to Beauchamp Tower Corporation.

As fantastic as it sounds, the operation will actually save the American taxpayer tens of millions of dollars that the Maritime Administration has been paying to companies across the Atlantic to tow away and dispose of ships as American shipyards want for work.

* * *

Long-time readers of this site know that I've been trying to do my small part to help make Operation Enduring Service a reality, as I've been writing posts advocating readers to help pressure Congressmen and Senators for support about it off and on since early November of last year.

Back in March I had something of an idea, an alternative to harassing Congressmen, and being in near daily contact with Brewer (who I have since come to regard as a long-distance friend) I passed that idea along. I then more or less stopped my public advocacy for this project, even as that idea went to the right people and things began to get a bit more interesting (to put it mildly) behind the scenes.

It pains me as a blogger to sit on a good idea, but I've done just that thus far. If things go as planned, I should be able to break that silence very, very soon.

A Few Fries Short of a Happy Meal

Poor Glenn Greenwald. It seems that he has once and for all stepped away from the land of the credible, and his latest missive on reaction to the New York Times banking story blowback makes that painfully obvious:

Any doubts about whether the Bush administration intends to imprison unfriendly journalists (defined as "journalists who fail to obey the Bush administration's orders about what to publish") were completely dispelled this weekend. As I have noted many times before, one of the most significant dangers our country faces is the all-out war now being waged on our nation's media -- and thereby on the First Amendment's guarantee of a free press -- by the Bush administration and its supporters, who are furious that the media continues to expose controversial government policies and thereby subject them to democratic debate. After the unlimited outpouring of venomous attacks on the Times this weekend, I believe these attacks on our free press have become the country's most pressing political issue.

Any doubts have been dispelled, eh, Glenn? By this, I would be so bold as to infer that you have concrete proof of your allegation that the President has the intention to thrown journalists in jail. Certainly, you would not be so bold as to make such a wild accusation without so much as a shred of proof. Why, such a strong claim, without any evidentiary support whatsoever, would be absolutely Leopoldian.

Sadly, the condition seems degenerative:

Documenting the violent rhetoric and truly extremist calls for imprisonment against the Times is unnecessary for anyone paying even minimal attention the last few days. On every cable news show, pundits and even journalists talked openly about whether the editors and reporters of the Times were traitors deserving criminal punishment. The Weekly Standard, always a bellwether of Bush administration thinking, is now actively crusading for criminal prosecution against the Times. And dark insinuations that the Times ought to be physically attacked are no longer the exclusive province of best-selling right-wing author Ann Coulter, but -- as Hume's Ghost recently documented -- are now commonly expressed sentiments among all sorts of "mainstream" Bush supporters. Bush supporters are now engaged in all-out, unlimited warfare against journalists who are hostile to the administration and who fail to adhere to the orders of the Commander-in-Chief about what to print.

"All-out, unlimited warfare against journalists..." Well, that would certainly explain why the CNN Building in downtown Atlanta was just leveled by Tomahawk cruise missiles, and why Navy SEAL 13.5 (Documents and Records) are presently engaged in a fierce, close-quarters battle against the Times editorial staff in the brie cooler.

Oh wait... none of that is happening.

Greenwald's article presumably continues after that point, but I can't for the life of me understand why anyone would care.

Biodegradable Journalism

I see the AP's Laurie Kellman has an article up today about the President's use of signing statements.

Compared to the earlier works that unsuccessfully attempted to gin up controversy on this subject, I find Kellman's recycling attempt to be uninspired.

Personally, I found the April 30 story in the Boston Globe to be better written from the liberal hysteria point-of-view, and so I'm a little disappointed that Kellman didn't improve it. Material collected from the April Globe article, Lithwick's timeless hyperventilating on January 30 in Slate, or the snarky January 2 article in the Washington Post, really should have enabled her to come out with a stronger post-consumer recycled product.

Instead, it appears that far from being 100% recyclable, this attempt seems destined for composting. I guess some media stories aren't all that recyclable after all.

Taking Money From Crackers

That seems to be the "sin" that so shocked Washington Post staff writer Mathew Mosk. A black conservative candidate actually accepted campaign contributions from white conservative donors. Oh, Bartleby! Oh, Humanity!

Not one to waste time, Mosk starts race-baiting out of the gate:

The fundraiser thrown for Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele on Thursday night, while ordinary in most ways, struck some African American leaders as notable because of the host.

Unlike the dozens of high-dollar events across the country in his U.S. Senate bid, this event was thrown by the producer of the famous "Willie Horton" ad, the 1988 commercial that came to symbolize the cynical use of skin color as a political wedge.

It seemed a most unusual choice for Steele, the first African American elected to statewide office in Maryland and a Republican whose strategy for winning a Senate seat in a state dominated by Democrats has involved the aggressive courtship of black voters.

I was in high school when the Horton commercial came out and honestly don't remember it, but this is what Wikipedia had to say about Mr. Horton:

William R. Horton Jr. (born August 12, 1951 in Chesterfield, South Carolina) is a convicted felon who was the subject of a Massachusetts weekend furlough program that released him while serving a life sentence for murder, without the possibility of parole, providing him the opportunity to commit a rape and armed robbery. A political advertisement during the 1988 U.S. Presidential race was critical of the Democratic nominee and Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis for his support of the program.

[snip]

Beginning on September 21, 1988, the Americans for Bush arm of the National Security Political Action Committee, began running an attack ad entitled "Weekend Passes," using the Horton case to attack Dukakis. The ad was produced by media consultant Larry McCarthy, who had previously worked for Ailes. After clearing the ad with television stations, McCarthy went back and added a menacing mug shot of Horton, who is African-American. He called the image "every suburban mother's greatest fear." The ad was run as an independent expenditure, separate from the Bush campaign, which claimed, as is legally required, not to have had any role in its production.

On October 5, a day after the "Weekend Passes" ad was taken off the airwaves, and also the date of the infamous Bentsen-Quayle debate, the Bush campaign ran its own ad, "Revolving Door," which also attacked Dukakis over the weekend furlough program. While the advertisement did not mention Horton or feature his photograph, it depicted a variety of intimidating-looking men walking in and out of prison through a revolving door.

The commercial was filmed at an actual state prison in Draper, Utah, but the persons depicted - thirty in all, including three African-Americans and two Hispanics - were all paid actors. Attempting to counter-attack, Dukakis's campaign ran a similar ad about a Hispanic murderer named Angel Medrano who murdered a pregnant mother of two while on furlough from a federal, rather than state, prison, the idea being that this would reflect negatively on Bush, who was the sitting Vice-President. Dukakis's ad stated Medrano's name and showed his photograph.

So while the effectiveness of the Horton commercial made Americans remember it as a symbol of using race as a wedge, both Parties were guilty of using racism in their 1988 campaigns. Republicans just had the more memorable commercial. It is interesting how the Post writer chose not to cover both sides of this low point in American politics, but considering his already obvious agenda, it should hardly be surprising.

Mosk makes his angle even more apparent just a few paragraphs down:

Nor, Steele said, was there anything incongruous about donations he took from others who have offended black audiences in the past, including Republican Sens. Trent Lott (Miss.) and Conrad Burns (Mont.) as well as Alex Castellanos, the man behind the racially charged "White Hands" ad that then-Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) used to attack his black challenger.

It featured a close-up shot of a pair of white hands crumpling a letter as the narrator says, "You needed that job . . . but they had to give it to a minority."

Perhaps the Washington Post could find a more thinly-veiled way to attempt to label Michael Steele as a race traitor, but short of directly calling him "Uncle Tom" (as Maryland Democrats have already done), I'm not sure that they could.

Having gone so far to smear Steele, Mosk apparently felt no compunction to maintain historical accuracy when the opportunity arises to smear others.

Democrats said there are several names on Steele's donor list that won't help him. It includes Lott, who lost his leadership post for seeming to endorse Strom Thurmond's 1948 segregationist presidential candidacy, and Burns, who drew sharp criticism for saying he found it "a hell of a challenge" to live among all the blacks in Washington, D.C.

Steele also has received support from former Reagan administration education secretary William J. Bennett, who was criticized for suggesting that aborting black babies would help reduce crime, and former first lady Barbara Bush, who turned heads when she mused that mostly African American evacuees from Katrina living at a Houston shelter "were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them." Steele accepted $1,000 from Castellanos, the man behind the "White Hands" ad.

"Having that kind of support sends mixed messages and are going to make it very difficult for him to make inroads with African American voters," said Isiah Leggett, a former state Democratic Party chairman. "He should be smart enough to see the inconsistency there."

Mixed messages? Inconsistency? Mr. Mosk, you have no shame.

Trent Lott's comments on Thurmond's 100th birthday rightfully cost him his seat as the Senate Republican Leader, in a Senate that today counts Democratic Senator and former Klansman Robert Byrd as its longest serving member.

Burns was hammered and rightfully so, for the way he responded to an elderly racist rancher's question about how he could live in Washington, D.C.. Perhaps he simply should have ignored him.

The attack on William Bennett, however, was dishonest. Bennett did not suggest aborting black babies would reduce crime, he pointed out how ridiculous it would be to abort black children to reduce crime. For that matter, if you aborted all children, your crime rate would go down to zero because there would be no people to commit crimes. Common sense, ripped completely out of context, trotted out by Mosk to continue a reprehensible line of attack. He may be morally bankrupt, but at least he's consistent.

After a half-hearted feint at objectivity that was quickly revealed as a strawman, and a vague warning to black voters that "People are going to want to know where he stands, and who stands with him [my emphasis]," Mosk concludes:

To this point, Democrats vying to challenge Steele in the Senate race have focused on the money Steele has received from those with ties to President Bush. Their accusation: that Steele is campaigning as someone without partisan ties but is being bankrolled by Bush and his supporters.

Steele has countered that the money does not make the man -- that Bush's name won't be on the ballot in Maryland and Bush won't occupy the Senate seat if Steele wins. The same holds true for such donors as Lott and Burns, Steele said last week.

The important message he has for black voters, he said, "is that it will make a difference for them to have me at the table."

Not to belabor the pot-and-kettle too much, Democrats aren't the only people focusing on contributors to Steel's campaign. That is after all, the very idea that Mosk's article seeks to advance. How much further could he reveal his strong Democratic bias?

Liberal blogger Steve Gilliard is perfectly content to be led to follow Mosk's script. He puts up a picture of Steele with the caption, "I take money from racists."

Gilliard would know. He is, after all something of an expert on racism.

Either you're a black Democrat, o you're a race traitor, says Gilliard.

We learned from Clarence Thomas about how skin color doesn't equal loyalty.

I think Matthew Mosk just found his reader base.

NYT Announces Formation of Shadow Government

Heh:

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

"The power that we have taken is not something to be taken lightly," said Keller. "The responsibility of it weighs most heavily on us and is among the most agonizing decisions I've faced as an editor."

Times' publisher "Pinch" Sulzberger was named shadow President, but was said to be disappointed that he wasn't named shadow Prime Minister.

Punking Rosemary's Brother's Baby

Normally I'd leave gossip sheets such as the New York Post's infamous Page Six alone, but as this particular edition features pro-military filmmaker tearing anti-war pretty war George Clooney it was hard to resist:

June 26, 2006 -- GEORGE Clooney may be Steven Soderbergh's muse, but the director's ex-agent sure doesn't seem to be a fan of the outspoken Oscar winner.

Pat Dollard was Soderbergh's 10- percenter until he ditched his lucrative Tinseltown career to make a pro-war documentary about U.S. Marines fighting insurgents in Iraq. Last year, his Humvee convoy was blown up in Ramadi, killing two Marines and sending Dollard to the hospital with a concussion and shrapnel wounds.

So it's understandable that Dollard might have been annoyed when Clooney chastised Democrats last year for not having the guts to condemn the war. While Dollard was careful not to name names, he told Page Six that he went into "a black rage" while in Iraq after reading a certain movie star's pompous pronouncements online.

"I read something on the Internet in which someone was patting himself on the back for having the courage to oppose the war," Dollard recalled. In an obvious reference to Clooney, who owns a villa in Italy, he said, "They actually equate bravery with speaking out against the president because [losing fans] might cost them one less servant at their Italian villa . . . It put me into a black rage and made me sick to my stomach."

Squeamish viewers of Dollard's "Young Americans" will likewise be reaching for their Tums. "It's the most graphic real-war documentary ever made," Dollard says. "It has the spirit and experience of the grunts, absolutely unfettered. I never had an officer standing over my shoulder supervising what I was doing. But I also have the president of Iraq, the prime minister, the generals - so it's not just a grunt's-eye view."

Dollard says his enthusiasm for the war has left some of his former showbiz colleagues cold. "Being a Republican in Hollywood today is not much different than being a communist in Hollywood in the 1950s," he said. "I'm not trying to overstate the case, but the reality is there is a blacklist in Hollywood. It's very McCarthy-like. It just shows the hypocrisy of the left."

And what does left-leaning Soderbergh think of "Young Americans"? "He loved the footage," Dollard says. "He's seen a lot of it, and he has given me some advice."

Dollard says he's in talks with HBO and Showtime about airing "Young Americans" but may end up releasing it as a DVD. "Given the sort of grass-roots support and cult status that it's been getting, it's going to come out somehow," he said. The trailer can be viewed on patdollard.com.

As many of you know, I found out about Pat Dollard several weeks ago and I've been promoting "Young Americans" as new trailers come online. I think—based upon the trailers I've seen so far—that the project may develop into the definitive documentary about the U.S. Marines in the Iraq War.

As alluded to above, Dollard is a Hollywood rebel for making this documentary. He isn't being backed by any major producers or studios. Everything he filmed was paid for out of his own funds, which are now running short. If you want to support the completion of "Young Americans" and show the rest of America what our Marines are really doing, instead of listing to George Clooney opine from his lakeside Italian villa, simply go to Pat's Web site and drop a couple of bucks (say, a ten-spot?) via the Paypal link. You can help produce a movie, and you don't have to be a millionaire.

Consider it as film-making via an Army of Davids.

Prosecute Them

I just sent the following email to comments@whitehouse.gov,

Dear Mr. President,

I strongly urge you to listen to the request from NY Rep. Peter King, and instruct the Justice Department to investigate and prosecute editor Bill Keller, and reporters Eric Lichtblau,and James Risen of the New York Times under Title 18 > Part I > Chapter 37 > § 793. Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information, and any other applicable crimes.

I also ask that you request that the Justice Department seek out the identities of those who have leaked the existence of this program to the NY Times, and prosecute them as well.

I recognize that this is an extraordinary request, but we all recognize that we live in extraordinary times. A major newspaper has deemed itself the ultimate gatekeeper of national security information, and it then disclosed information about a specific program, hence destroying it's effectiveness.

Investigating and aggressively prosecuting these crimes will hopefully reign in those who seek to profit from disclosing classified information, and it will hopefully spare the lives of Americans such disclosures put in jeopardy.

Thank you respectfully and sincerely,

Bob Owens
Confederate Yankee Blog
http://confederateyankee.mu.nu

If you, too feel that the New York Times went over the line, I'd suggest sending along an email of your own.

Another Blind Keller

New York Times editor Bill Keller has offered up a vapid dodge for his once great newspaper's repeated disclosures of anti-terror programs, blaming the messengers for how poorly his message was received:

I don't always have time to answer my mail as fully as etiquette demands, but our story about the government's surveillance of international banking records has generated some questions and concerns that I take very seriously. As the editor responsible for the difficult decision to publish that story, I'd like to offer a personal response.

Some of the incoming mail quotes the angry words of conservative bloggers and TV or radio pundits who say that drawing attention to the government's anti-terror measures is unpatriotic and dangerous. (I could ask, if that's the case, why they are drawing so much attention to the story themselves by yelling about it on the airwaves and the Internet.) Some comes from readers who have considered the story in question and wonder whether publishing such material is wise. And some comes from readers who are grateful for the information and think it is valuable to have a public debate about the lengths to which our government has gone in combatting [sic] the threat of terror.

You will note there is no link to Keller's excuse. My tiny contribution to their readership (and hence advertising revenue) is infinitesimal, but even that was too much. I will not link the NY Times again.

In any event, the Keller obfuscation satisfied very few people, including President Bush who lambasted the Times just a few moments ago:

"For people to leak that program and for a newspaper to publish it does great harm to the United States of America," Bush said. He said the disclosure of the program "makes it harder to win this war on terror."

[snip]

"Congress was briefed, and what we did was fully authorized under the law," Bush said, talking with reporters in the Roosevelt Room after meeting with groups that support U.S. troops in Iraq.
"We're at war with a bunch of people who want to hurt the United States of America," the president said. "What we were doing was the right thing."

Bill Keller is blind to this fact. "Right" doesn't matter, and it often seems, "right" is the enemy. Getting the President—hurting Bush, bringing down this Administration—seems to be the primary focus of the New York Times under Bill Keller's leadership.

The offending Times article publicized and hence destroyed an effective and legal way of tracking and disrupting those who finance Islamic terrorism, solely so that it could stick a thumb in the eye of George Bush.

Bill Keller has visions of a Bush Administration hobbled, embarrassed, and ineffective. What his newspaper's disclosures do to tip off terrorists and enable their success at the possible cost of American lives doesn't apparent enter into this blind man's view.

Crash

That crashing sound you hear is shatering of the liberal myth that Saddam Hussein's Iraq didn't have ties to the Taliban and al Qaeda. Of course it did, and the documented ties are getting stronger:

Newly declassified documents captured by U.S. forces indicate that Saddam Hussein's inner circle not only actively reached out to the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan and terror-based jihadists in the region, but also hosted discussions with a known Al Qaeda operative about creating jihad training "centers," possibly in Baghdad.

Hussein had been host to Abu Abbas, Abu Nidal, and Abdul Rahman Yasin, and so adding more terrorists to the Baghdad social scene would make perfect sense.

If nothing else, Saddam was consistent in his ties with the "movers and shakers" of Islamic terrorism.

Killing Times

Hi Eric! Hi James!

Once again, I see you've taken it upon yourselves to disclose national security secrets (I refuse to link to the article, thus putting advertising dollars in your pockets), and your good buddy Bill was more than happy to let it fly, even though the program you compromised:

• was legal
  
• had congressional oversight
  
• had built-in protections against abuse
  
• was effective at catching terrorists

Does that just about just about cover it? Maybe. Maybe not.

I tend to agree with quite a few others who think you have gone far too far, once again.

At first, I caught myself nodding my head when Patterico said:

I am biting down on my rage right now. I'll resist the temptation to say Ann Coulter was right about where Timothy McVeigh should have gone with his truck bomb. I'll say only this: it's becoming increasingly clear to me that the people at the New York Times are not just biased media folks whose antics can be laughed off. They are actually dangerous.

And they are dangerous, but I think Patrick is wrong to even imply a truck bomb should be used against the New York Times. Even when paraphrasing someone else as a dark form of humor, that is a horrible thought. Someone radicalized enough could get it into his head to try to build such a bomb, and were he successful in detonating it, many innocent people in nearby buildings could be killed or injured.

Besides, the editorial staff, hidden behind the impenetrable wall of Times Select, would walk away untouched.

Nor do I advocate the much more precise use of small arms, in case some of you were thinking that route. There should be a chilling of the New York Times staff to run stories such as these, but cooling staffers to room temperature isn't the way to do it. Monetary damage is all they seem to understand.

Can you file lawsuits as private citizens on behalf of national security against the Times?Can their sources be indicted for exposing classified information, and how do we bring about pressure to bear on the government to pursue such charges?

I'd like to see the terrorist protectionist NY Times broken as a business, and I'm open to suggestions.

Netroots Meltdown?

The Netroots movement will fail because it's a myth based upon a lie sitting upon a foundation of fragmented political thought.

Gee Dan, tell us what you really think.

Democratic Underground: Miami Terror Raid Keeps the Black Man Down

The Democratic Underground is all over the Miami terror arrests, quickly discerning the real reason for the raid:

This raid sounds like b.s. and voter intimidation to me This is more of J.E.B.'s campaign to keep black people in Florida from voting. Bet on it.

The Democratic Underground: Because sometimes, you feel like a nut.

Sears Tower Targeted For Terror

ABC News has the details:

ABC News has learned that federal agents, including the FBI, are launching a series of raids tonight targeting a suspected terror cell based in Miami.

According to sources familiar with the investigation, the group allegedly planned to bomb the FBI building in Miami and the Sears Tower in Chicago.

The group has been under surveillance for some time and was infilitrated by a government informant who allegedly led them to believe he was an Islamic radical. The suspects are described as African Americans and at least one man of Caribbean descent.

I guess that NSA "domestic spying" program works pretty good, doesn't it? (Yes, I know it sounds like a classic infiltration operation, but still.) At least one was an illegal alien.

This operation is on-going, expect more details to follow.

As always, Allah is on top of it. It's almost like he has something to do with Islamic terrorism...

Update: moved D.U. quote to it's own thread.

Talking Moore

Via InstaPundit, we hear thoughts about a man we don't hear too much of these days, Michael Moore:

With all the uproar over what rating the movie "Facing the Giants" will get, surely Moore would be offering some thoughts?

After all, when "Fahrenheit 9/11" was given an R rating, Moore told teenagers to disregard authority: "I encourage all teenagers to come see my movie, by any means necessary. If you need me to sneak you in, let me know." Moore said, "There is nothing in the film in terms of violence that we didn't see on TV every night at the dinner hour during the Vietnam War."

Speaking of Michael Moore and wars and small screen violence, a frontline Iraqi interpreter named "Hoss" at Pat Dollard's has a few words (Quicktime, NSFW) for Mr. Moore in his latest Young Americans teaser. I didn't catch all of it, but I think he compared him to poison ivy.

At least, I think he called him a "little itch." I might be missing something in translation.

In My Mind, I'm Gone To Carolina

I'm against using the entire state, but we could certainly slip them into Chapel Hill without anyone noticing. *

The Santorum Code

We've now had roughly 15 hours since Senator Rick Santorum and Rep. Pete Hoestra announced in a hastily-called news conference that a newly declassified portion of a report from the National Ground Intelligence Center (NGIC) confirmed that approximately 500 chemical weapons have been recovered in Iraq since 2003.

Since that time, the major media outlets have greeted this story with a virtual news blackout, leaving this story to the blogosphere to analyze.

Predictably, reaction to this story seems to fall along party lines. Many conservative bloggers covering the story see this as an absolute vindication of the Bush Administration, and are ecstatic. Quite a few others are more cautious, hoping to see more in the way of details released from the still-classified NGIC report from which the summary was culled.

On the other side of the political spectrum, many liberal blogs seemed almost rudderless in the hours after the story broke, almost as if they were waiting for guidance from either the silent media or equally quiet top-flight liberal blogs. Since then, they have mostly seemed to fallen in line behind Dafna Linzer of the Washington Post, who is taking the position, "nothing to see here/this doesn't count."

So what do we really have, and what do we really know?

We know for a fact that under Saddam Hussein, Iraqi began cultivating the development of chemical weapons in 1971. An article from the United Nations News Centre tells us further (h/t Flopping Aces:

Iraq first started exploring chemical weapons in 1971, and reviews developments through the establishment of a “large-scale chemical weapons programme” in 1981. The capacity expanded from there to the point that “according to Iraq, the use of chemical weapons achieved its major purpose and made a significant impact on the outcome of the Iran-Iraq war.”

According to declarations made by Iraq, in the period from 1981 to 1991 the chemical weapon programme produced approximately 3,850 tons of the chemical warfare agents mustard, tabun, sarin and VX, the report states.

Of the total of some 3,850 tons of chemical warfare agents produced, approximately 3,300 tons of agents were weaponized in different types of aerial bombs, artillery munitions and missile warheads.

In the period from 1981 to 1991, Iraq weaponized some 130,000 chemical munitions in total. Of these, over 101,000 munitions were used in combat, according to Iraq, in the period from 1981 to 1988.

Iraq declared that some 28,500 chemical munitions remained unused as of January 1991; about 5,500 filled munitions were destroyed by coalition forces during the war in 1991, while another 500 filled munitions were declared destroyed unilaterally by Iraq. “These last two figures were partially verified by United Nations inspectors,” the report states.

The bulk of the destruction of some 22,000 filled munitions occurred under the supervision of the UN inspectors in accordance with Security Council resolution 687 (1991) – the "ceasefire resolution" which ended the war – in the period from 1991 to 1994. During the collection of chemical weapons for destruction after the 1991 war, Iraq stated that it was not able to locate some 500 chemical munitions.

Iraq claimed it had 28,500 chemical weapons in 1991, and about 5,500 were destroyed in the 1991 Gulf War bringing the total to 23,000. Iraq then claims to have destroyed 500 munitions on their own and 22,000 weapons were destroyed under the supervision of U.N. weapons inspectors. This leaves us with roughly 500 chemical weapons that Iraq was unable to locate.

Are these same 500 chemical weapons that Iraq was unable to account for the same 500 chemical weapons that Santorum and Hoekstra revealed that U.S. forces have captured, and the same 500 that Dafna Linzer claims were buried in the desert near the Iran-Iraq border during their 1980-88 war?

If it can be verified that these are the missing 500 munitions from Saddam's declaration to the United Nations, then the accounting of Saddam's known weapons of mass destruction should be very close to complete. There should be no more significant caches of chemical weapons found in Iraq. It took 15 years and a war, but his chemical weapons have apparently all been accounted for and no significant quantities of thes munitions seem to have fallen into the hands of the various terrorist groups that Saddam cultivated in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East.

This news in and of itself would seem to be a significant victory.

But this is not how this story has been presented by Rick Santorum and Pete Hoekstra. They make the presentation that the 500 weapons found by U.S forces since the invasion of Iraq by Coalition forces justify the WMD rationale, one of several reasons and by far the one most publicized used to justify this conflict.

I wish that this did justify that rationale, but it does not.

Our rationale was based on the thought that Saddam was continuing to develop and experiment with weapons of mass destruction, and that he continued to have the capability to build chemical and biological weapons. Saddam, indeed, led the world to believe that he still had this capability, and it wasn't until after the war that we discovered that he may have been bluffing all along. We have found no more modern (post 1991) chemical weapons in Iraq. We have found no smoking gun showing concrete proof of more recent development, and it is quite possible we never may.

It does, however, seem to close the book on the WMDs known to have existed in Iraq as of January 1991, as declared by the government of Saddam Hussein. The 500 munitions Saddam's Army could not locate seem to have been recovered by the U.S military. While small quantities of these weapons may still turn up, no significant caches should remain to be discovered.

That fact alone, that we recovered these approximately 500 "lost" munitions, is reason enough to celebrate, but it neither proves nor disproves the existence of a post-1991 weapons program.

If any significant future caches are found, however, then the game will indeed be afoot, and both the media and doubters in the blogosphere will be out of valid excuses.

WMD Media Blackout

To put it mildly, this bears discussion:

The United States has found 500 chemical weapons in Iraq since 2003, and more weapons of mass destruction are likely to be uncovered, two Republican lawmakers said Wednesday.

"We have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, chemical weapons," Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., said in a quickly called press conference late Wednesday afternoon.

Reading from a declassified portion of a report by the National Ground Intelligence Center, a Defense Department intelligence unit, Santorum said: "Since 2003, coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent. Despite many efforts to locate and destroy Iraq's pre-Gulf War chemical munitions, filled and unfilled pre-Gulf War chemical munitions are assessed to still exist."

Or at least, one might think this would bear discussion, whether Santorum and Hoekstra are right or wrong.

If correct, their claims of found chemical weapons—mustard gas or sarin, filled or unfilled, degraded or in perfect condition—would seemingly vindicate the Bush Administration and bury a key canard of leftist opposition to the war, that soldiers and civilians have "died for a lie."

Likewise, it would be worth it for the media/anti-war/Democratic Party camps to begin questioning the story, on the chance that Santorum and Hoekstra have buried themselves with inaccurate information.

Everyone should be talking about this… so why aren't they?

While Fox News runs a story about the Santorum/Hoestra release, CNN, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, and the Boston Globe have taken the code of omertà as of midnight, though the Washington Post, to its slim credit, squeaked out a page A10 mention essentially claiming that these WMDs didn't count, even though they provide exactly zero support for their claims.

With the exception of Fox News, the WMD story and the underlying newly declassified six paragraph summary (PDF) seems to be the subject of a major news blackout.

Is this silence the sound of fear?

7:00 AM Update: According to a Google News search for WMDs, all the news organizations cited above still refuse to discuss this news.

Shocking.

Jeep Jihadi to Plead Guilty

Via the News & Observer:

The man accused of driving a rented SUV onto the UNC campus in March and striking nine people told a judge he plans to plead guilty to the charges against him. Mohammed Taheri-Azar entered the courtroom this morning to ask that he be allowed to represent himself. A judge had ordered the public defender's office to work with him while it was determined whether he was competent.

But after being told he would have to submit to a psychiatric evaluation in order to do that, the 23-year-old said he would rather keep his court-appointed lawyer.

Taheri-Azar told Superior Court Judge Carl Fox he had met a few times with the psychiatrist and psychologist and "they don't appear to be very good psychologists and psychiatrists in my oinion[sic]."

Taheri-Azar has said in letters and in a 911 call that he wanted to kill people to avenge Muslim deaths around the world when he drove a rented SUV through The Pit, the main gathering spot on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus, March 3.

Do you think UNC-Chapel Hill will finally admit this was a homegrown Islamic terrorist attack?

Me neither.

Update: I've been told that it isn't unusual for Carolina graduates to refuse psychological evaluations, so perhaps we shouldn't read too much into that part of the story.

Higher Ground

When I came across this comment by Markos "Kos" Moulitsas via LGF, I was momentarily speechless:

There's a reason the Geneva Conventions exist. We've lost the moral high ground. What a fucking waste of a war.

Note I said, "momentarily."

You would think that Kos, as an Army veteran and a graduate of the Boston University School of Law, might have the inkling that what he states above is incorrect.

After all, the Geneva Convention was written to protect soldiers, militiamen, and civilians, not terrorists. As a matter of specific fact, groups such as terrorists seem specifically exempted from Geneva's protections [my bold]:

• Articles 1 and 2 cover which parties are bound by GCIII
• Article 2 specifies when the parties are bound by GCIII
  • That any armed conflict between two or more "High Contracting Parties" is covered by GCIII;
  • That it applies to occupations of a "High Contracting Party";
  • That the relationship between the "High Contracting Parties" and a non-signatory, the party will remain bound until the non-signatory no longer acts under the strictures of the convention. "...Although one of the Powers in conflict may not be a party to the present Convention, the Powers who are parties thereto shall remain bound by it in their mutual relations. They shall furthermore be bound by the Convention in relation to the said Power, if the latter accepts and applies the provisions thereof."
• Article 3 covers internal armed conflict (not of an international character) and it provides similar protections for combatants as those described in the rest of this document for a prisoner of war. That Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including POWs; shall in all circumstances be treated humanely. It also lays out some basic rules for the treatment of all people combatants and non-combatants alike. Article 3 also states that parties to the internal conflict should endeavour to bring into force, by means of special agreements, all or part of the other provisions of GCIII.
• Article 4 covers all conflicts not covered by Article 3 which are all conflicts of an international character. It defines prisoners of war to include:
  • 4.1.1 Members of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict and members of militias of such armed forces
  • 4.1.2 Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, provided that they fulfill all of the following conditions:
    • that of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;
    • that of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance (there are limited exceptions to this among countries who observe the 1977 Protocol I);
    • that of carrying arms openly;
    • that of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.
  • 4.1.3 Members of regular armed forces who profess allegiance to a government or an authority not recognized by the Detaining Power.
  • 4.1.4 Civilians who have non-combat support roles with the military and who carry a vaild identity card issued by the military they support.
  • 4.1.5 Merchant marine and the crews of civil aircraft of the Parties to the conflict, who do not benefit by more favourable treatment under any other provisions of international law.
  • 4.1.6 Inhabitants of a non-occupied territory, who on the approach of the enemy spontaneously take up arms to resist the invading forces, without having had time to form themselves into regular armed units, provided they carry arms openly and respect the laws and customs of war.
  • 4.3 makes explicit that Article 33 takes precedence for the treatment of medical personnel of the enemy and chaplains of the enemy.

At no point in the section above are terrorists granted protection by the Geneva Convention. Article 4.1.2 stipulates that groups to be granted Geneva rights as "militias or other volunteer corps" must fulfill "all of the following conditions."

• that of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;
• that of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance (there are limited exceptions to this among countries who observe the 1977 Protocol I);
• that of carrying arms openly;
• that of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.

Islamic terrorists, under the guise of al Qaeda or the insurgent Mujahedeen Shura Council, have never, at any point in the war, fulfilled these required four conditions, and very rarely meet even one. By definition, they are therefore exempted from Geneva's protections, and can be—quite legally—shot on sight.

As Jonah Goldberg notes:

We've all seen countless WWII movies about how soldiers out of uniform can be shot as spies under the Geneva Convention. Well, all of al Qaeda's soldiers are spies. And they most emphatically do not provide their prisoners with ping-pong tables and dormitories. They cut off their heads and put the pictures on the Internet and TV. The same goes for Osama's allies and fellow travelers in Iraq.

The liberal punditocracy seems to think it's an obvious fact that the Geneva Convention should apply to the war on terrorism, even though the plain text of the Geneva Convention applies as much to the war on terror as it does to the battle between the Federation and the Klingon Empire.

By hiding among civilians, torturing and beheading captives, and acting like, well, terrorists, these people have, by their own actions, exempted themselves from Geneva's protections.

Kos states and apparently believes "we have lost the moral high ground" to the kind of barbarians who torture, mutilate, and kill their captives. This is the same Kos that said of American contractors killed, mutilate, burned and then hung from a bridge in Fallujah, "screw them."

It seems to me that Markos Moulitsas is the last person to be lecturing others about ground clearly so far above his reach.

Murtha's Haditha Cover-Up Story Exposed As A Lie

At least one part of Congressman John Murtha's Haditha story has now been conclusively debunked.

Murtha had maintained that the incident that culminated in the deaths of up to 24 Iraqi civilians at the hands of Marines after a fatal convoy ambush had been covered up:

Mr Murtha, himself a former Marine, charged that US military authorities had paid compensation to the families of the victims, indicating they had assumed responsibility for the deaths. "They paid people $1,500 to $2,500. This doesn't happen unless it comes at the highest authority," Mr Murtha told CNN.

Asked if he meant victims' compensation, Mr Murtha said: "Yes. And that doesn't happen ... if it's an explosive device."

Mr Murtha repeated his accusation that the Marines had sought to cover up the killings."This is what worries me. We're fighting a war about America's ideals and democracy's ideas and something like this happens, they try to cover it up," he said. "It is as bad as Abu Ghraib, if not worse."

An independent Army General who investigated the charges of a cover-up has completed his report, and concludes otherwise:

The general charged with investigating whether Marines tried to cover up the killing of 24 civilians in Haditha has completed his report, finding that Marine officers failed to ask the right questions, an official close to the investigation said Friday.

Nothing in the report points to a "knowing cover-up" of the facts by the officers supervising the Marines involved in the November incident, the official said. Rather, he said, officers from the company level through the staff of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force in Baghdad failed to demand "a thorough explanation" of what happened in Haditha.

I imagine many netroots liberals reading this account published in the L.A. Times will immediately dismiss the report as a whitewash, saying that though an Army General investigated a Marine incident, it is still a military cover-up.

But never fear. They still support the troops.

Flags

Some have more meaning than others.

False Equivalation

Will all the liberals out there equivalating how Americans treat captured terrorists with how terrorists treat those unlucky souls they capture, please take the time to remind me when that last time was American soldiers did anything like this:

The bodies of two U.S. soldiers found in Iraq Monday night were mutilated and booby-trapped, military sources said Tuesday.

Pfc. Kristian Menchaca and Pfc. Thomas L. Tucker went missing after a Friday attack on a traffic control checkpoint in Yusufiya, 12 miles (20 km) south of Baghdad.

The sources said the two men had suffered severe trauma.

The bodies also had been desecrated, and a visual identification was impossible -- part of the reason DNA testing was being conducted to verify their identities, the sources said.

A tip from Iraqi civilians led officials to the bodies, military sources told CNN. The discovery was made about 7:30 p.m. Monday.

Not only were the bodies booby-trapped, but homemade bombs also lined the road leading to the victims, an apparent effort to complicate recovery efforts and target recovery teams, the sources said.
It took troops 12 hours to clear the area of roadside bombs. One of the bombs exploded, but there were no injuries.

The terrorists captured two of our men, and what steps did they take?

The did not take them to a tropical island where captives are so well fed that almost all gain weight. Nor were they forced to put womens underwear on their heads, and they did not have fake blood thrown at them, or pull other fraternity/reality TV-grade tricks.

But I don't here liberals complaining about the actions of the terrorists, and how uncomfortable it must be for those captured by terrorists to be mauled with a power drill, or scorched with acetylene torches, or castrated, or beheaded, or hung, dangling from meat hooks while still alive, or raped with found objects.

No, the left can bear to shed no real, heart-felt words of sympathy, and they drop crocodile tears as they quickly use this occasion to bash both the Adminstration and the troops.

If we treat terrorists like anything other than privileged dinner guests it is torture by their sophomoric definition, and it's the President's fault. If terrorists, in turn, perform unspeakable acts of barbarity on our soldiers, it's still the President's fault.

Nothing is ever the fault of the terrorists, and the United States is never, ever in the right.

Do I question their patriotism?

No.

Where they stand is abundantly clear.

Funding "Young Americans"

Pat Dollard, former Hollywood agent turned Iraq War documentary filmmaker needs your help:

I gave it all up, my life and my income, to serve my country in the War in Terror, with the one weapon a 42 year old civilian like me could use: a camera. I'm bleeding my life savings dry, and we all need your help with finishing funds for the project. I may soon have to go back to Ramadi to cover a potential large operation in the city ala Fallujah. It's a risk, as usual, that I'm willing to take. Any donation you can make towards "Young Americans" will be greatly appreciated, and more importantly, will have a huge impact on America by helping to balance out the non-stop BS liberal message we are all drowning in. All contributors, if requested, will be named in the end title sequence with a shared Associate Producer credit. Please rally around the project, the Marines, and America.

At my request Pat set up a Paypal account (via the link above), which will allow you to help contribute to the completion of this project. Please consider doing so. Every dollar helps Pat get one step closer to finishing a real reality series that will show America the war in Iraq as fought by the Marines that the mainstream media would never dare show you.

Bodies of Missing Soldiers Apparently Found

Sadly, I think this is what we expected:

A high-ranking official with the Iraqi Defense Ministry told CNN on Tuesday that the bodies of two missing U.S. soldiers were found Saturday south of Baghdad. No more details were immediately available.

"Two bodies have been found," Maj. William Wilhoite, spokesman for Multi-National Forces-Iraq, told CNN.

"We haven't made any confirmation if they're the two U.S. soldiers we're looking for."
He said he did not know whether the bodies showed signs of torture. "I haven't heard anything through our official channels," he said.

"Obviously, before we made any announcement, if it was our soldiers, we'd have to make notification to the families," Wilhoite said.

Pfc. Kristian Menchaca, 23, of Houston, Texas, and Pfc. Thomas L. Tucker, 25, of Madras, Oregon, went missing Friday after an attack on a traffic checkpoint near the town of Yusufiya, 12 miles (20 km) south of Baghdad.

The Washington Post reports that the two men had been tortured:

Two U.S. soldiers missing since an attack on a checkpoint last week have been found dead near a power plant in Yusifiyah, south of Baghdad, according to an Iraqi defense official.

Maj. Gen. Abdul Aziz Muhammed-Jassim, head of operations at the Iraqi Ministry of Defense, said the soldiers had been "barbarically" killed and that there were traces of torture on their bodies.

As I predicted yesterday, the media quickly found their anti-war, anti-Bush soundbite:

The news is going to be heartbreaking for my family," Menchaca's uncle, Ken MacKenzie, told NBC's "Today" show.

He said the United States should have paid a ransom for the two soldiers from money seized from Saddam Hussein.

"I think the U.S. was too slow to react to this," MacKenzie said. "Because the U.S. did not have a plan in place, my nephew has paid with his life."

MacKenzie is entitled to grieve, but he cannot blame this on anyone other than the terrorists. Today Show host Matt Lauer even called him on it.

Once his nephew surrendered he was a dead man, and there was nothing, no "plan" or bribe that would have changed this outcome.

The terrorists of the Mujahedeen Shura Council probably think they have scored a victory, and indeed, in the short-term, they have. They can claim that after three years of war, they finally captured and killed a grand total of three U.S. soldiers. Accounts of the capture and killing of U.S. soldiers will receive a great amount of press worldwide. Arab media will likely present the deaths as a thinly veiled triumph, and the western media will use it as an opportunity to once again call for disengagement, as will many Democrats.

But these killings will not be received favorably by the U.S. military in Iraq, which will likely step up operations to hunt down and destroy terror and insurgent cells operating in this part of Iraq. Though official orders will not be given, perhaps U.S. forces will not be so inclined to take prisoners after this incident. Insurgents and their al Qaeda allies set the tone of giving U.S. forces no quarter when they took prisoners.

They made a huge mistake.

Dixie Cup

The Raleigh, NC News & Observer:

Congratulations to the Carolina Hurricanes, winners of the 2006 Stanley Cup!

Cole's Shoals

Juan Cole, the "scholarship-lite," questionably Arabic-fluent professor passed over for a position by a school that even accepts the Taliban, bitterly attacked White House spokesman Tony Snow for rather innocuous response to question asked by CNN's Wolf Blitzer Sunday:

BLITZER: "Let's talk a little bit about troop withdrawal potentials for the U.S. military, about 130,000 U.S. forces in Iraq right now.

In our most recent CNN poll that came out this week, should the U.S. set a timetable to eventually withdraw troops from Iraq, 53 percent said yes; 41 percent said no.

Senator Dianne Feinstein wrote a piece in the San Francisco Chronicle today. She's going to be on this show, coming up.

She wrote this: "We have now been in Iraq for more than three years. And we believe that the time has come for that phased redeployment to begin. It is also time for the Bush administration to provide a schedule and timetable for the structured downsizing and redeployment of U.S. forces in Iraq."

"Does that make sense?"

SNOW: "The president understands people's impatience — not impatience but how a war can wear on a nation. He understands that. If somebody had taken a poll in the Battle of the Bulge, I dare say people would have said, wow, my goodness, what are we doing here?

But you cannot conduct a war based on polls. And you can't conduct this kind of activity. What you have to do — and the president's been clear about this — is take a look at the conditions on the ground. Let's think for a moment of the alternative.

Snow makes a self-evident point that no reporter thought to question: a major counteroffensive mounted by an enemy that you thought was on the verge of being beaten is—at the very least—a sobering experience, one that requires recalibration and reevaluation before the offensive continues.

Cole, for some reason infuriated with Snow's response, went off on a odd rant that predictably enough, blamed Bush:

The president of the United States is in some ways the nation's leading public historian. More people hear about American history from him than from virtually any other source, with the possible exception of Hollywood.

It has therefore been dispiriting to witness the falsehoods about American history consistently purveyed by the Bush administration. Bush and his officials have repeatedly made allegations that simply are not true, but they sin most grievously against the muse of Clio with their flat-footed and implausible analogies.

On Sunday, the most prominent among Bush's spokesmen from the ranks of Fox Cable News anchors, Tony Snow, did it again. He compared our current situation in Iraq to the Battle of the Bulge. This battle began in mid-December, 1944, a little over 3 years after the US entered the war. Snow also suggested that the American public was ready to throw in the towel at that point in the war!

Is the only way this tawdry administration can make itself feel good to defame the Greatest Generation? My late uncle used to tell us stories of how he fought at the Battle of the Bulge. Is Tony Snow saying he was a coward? That the Americans back at the homefront were?

Let' examine this outburst for a moment.

While I am certainly limited by having just a normal human circle of friends and acquaintances, I think I can honestly state that not one of them confuses the White House with the Smithsonian, nor do they think of the President as being "Curator in Chief."

Or, perhaps I merely was too young to have heard and appreciated FDR's fireside chats about the Punic Wars, where he boldly proclaimed:

"The only think we have to fear is: HUGE. FREAKING. ELEPHANTS."

"Any jackass can stomp on some greenware, but it takes a good Moche to use a press mold."

At no point would it appear to a rational person that Snow's hypothetical question of "what are we doing here?" could be stretched into a charge of defaming an entire generation. Nor does it seem likely one could reasonably conflate this question into calling for surrender, nor could an intelligent person misunderstand that question to be a statement labeling Cole's uncle (or anyone else) as a coward.

I'm sure Juan Cole has a point.

I'm just not sure that it's worth wading through the barren shoals of his mind to determine just what that point may be.

al Qaeda Kidnapping Plays to the DNC

Via Brietbart:

An umbrella group that includes al-Qaida in Iraq claimed in a Web statement Monday that it had kidnapped two U.S. soldiers reported missing south of Baghdad. There was no immediate confirmation that the statement was credible, although it appeared on a Web site often used by al-Qaida-linked groups.

U.S. officials have said they were trying to confirm whether the missing soldiers were kidnapped.

"Your brothers in the military wing of the Mujahedeen Shura Council kidnapped the two American soldiers near Youssifiya," the group said in a statement posted on an Islamic Web site.
The Web site did not name the soldiers.
The soldiers were reported missing Friday after insurgents attacked a checkpoint. The Defense Department identified the missing men as Pfc. Kristian Menchaca, 23, of Houston, and Pfc. Thomas L. Tucker, 25, of Madras, Ore.
The U.S. military said Monday that seven American troops have been wounded, three insurgents have been killed and 34 detained during an intensive search for the soldiers.
Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Iraq, said fighter jets, unmanned aerial vehicles and dive teams had been deployed to find the two men. They went missing Friday during an attack on their checkpoint in the volatile Sunni area south of Baghdad that left one of their comrades dead.

al-Zarqawi's killing and the wildly successful series of raids that followed were crippling both for al Qaeda in Iraq and for the increasingly panicked voices of anti-war Democrats after Bush's surprise visit to Baghdad. A military or political blow against U.S. forces in Iraq was desperately needed. This kidnapping of two American soliders—and I think it only safe to assume that this was planned as such from the beginning—can only be viewed as a much-needed political success for al Qaeda and its allies.

Frankly, I'm a bit disappointed that American commanders in Iraq didn't anticipate such an attempt and didn't better prepare their men for it. On a micro level, I surprised that the soldiers manning this checkpoint feel for a simple diversionary plan that has been used for thousands of years. It is a classic military tactic to use skirmishers to draw a defensive force away from the location it is guarding so that the now undermanned location can be then assaulted by an enemy force hidden nearby. This may not be the oldest trick in the book, but it certainly comes close.

Now we can anticipate a full-on media campaign by al Qaeda and the Democratic Party to be played out in the mainstream media, hopefully (from their perspective) blunting the impressive gains made against the terrorists in Iraq in the past two weeks.

The media, now having the names of these two soldiers, will begin stalking their families, probing for an image of a tearful wife or mother, hoping for an anti-war or anti-Bush soundbite [note: already there].

If we are unable to locate and free these two soldiers, it is quite likely that these terrorists will feature the soldiers in a propaganda video, perhaps decapitating them, which will then be released to al Jazeera, Reuters, and the Associated Press. It is perhaps the worst possible outcome, and one we must prepare to face based upon past treatment of prisoners by these terrorists.

In any event, be assured that Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Dishonorable John Murtha will use these events as "evidence" of why we must beat a retreat from Iraq.

al Qaeda is no doubt counting on Democrats toutter those very sentiments, and the three leaders of the Defeat Party cited above are almost certain not to disappoint.

Nagin Calls for National Guard

Via Fox News:

Mayor Ray Nagin asked the governor Monday to send National Guard troops to patrol his city after a violent weekend in which five teenagers were shot to death.

City leaders convened a special meeting to voice outrage after the killings Saturday in an area near the central business district.

[snip]

Nagin asked Gov. Kathleen Blanco to send up to 300 National Guard troops and 60 state police officers to patrol the city. The City Council said it also would consider increasing overtime for police to put more officers on the street.

Upon hearing of the request, Pennsylvania Congressman John Murtha immediately called for the Louisiana National Guard to redeploy to Bangor, Maine.

A Matter of Visibility

Eight-term Louisiana Congressman William Jefferson may have been tossed off the influential Ways and Means Committee behind closed doors by his fellow Democrats, but he didn't go quietly. Jefferson and the Congressional Black Caucus, noting that a white Democrat, West Virginia Congressman Alan Mollohan, has been allowed to keep his seat while under investigation, implied that race may be an issue.

I would find the spectacle of a falling out between the Congressional Black Caucus and the Democratic Party an interesting turn of events as we go into the '06 elections, especially in light of the fact that black conservatives have a fair chance of picking up governorships in Pennsylvania and Ohio and a high-profile U.S. Senate Seat in Maryland. That said, I don't think the different treatment of Jefferson and Mollohan is as much an issue of race as it is one of visibility, and hence, politics.

When it comes right down to it, Alan Mollohan's alleged transgressions fly well below the radar of most people, even many of those of us who are very interested in politics. William Jefferson's circumstances, however, are anything but under the radar.

The public easily latched onto the mental image of foil-wrapped frozen stacks of bribe money found in Jefferson's freezer, and the furor over the raid on his Washington, D.C. offices surpassed even that. Fair or not, William Jefferson has quickly become the image in many people's mind when they think of corrupt politicians, and almost single-handedly killed the “culture of corruption” storyline Democrats wanted to use this fall.

Being a public relations liability for the Democratic Party in an election year has far more to do with his ouster than does the color of his skin.

New Docs Link Saddam to Taliban

Despite the shrill cries to the contrary, the Iraqi War is part of the War on Terror, as occasional C.Y. poster Ray Robinson shows with further analysis of newly-translated documents linking Saddam with the Taliban (bold in original):

I am the one who started with this issue, the relation between Taliban and Iraq, and it is our idea. The brothers in Afghanistan are facing the pressure of America, and are struggling against America and aim to have some connections between Afghanistan and Iraq, and it is a good start to establish the relations with Iraq and Libya and our association has taken this responsibility upon her. I already met with Mr. the Vice-President and the previous head of the directorate, may God rest his soul (translator's note: apparently the head of the directorate passed away) and both proposed that Hekmatyar and the Taliban should get to an agreement. I spoke with the Taliban about this issue and they started meeting with delegations from the Islamic Party, and I met Mullah Omar and his reply was positive.

As a party, our stand is that there should be an agreement between the Taliban and the rest of the opposition, Shah Ahmad Massoud and Rabbani. And Mullah Omar said that we are looking towards this and that (not clear) and (not clear) and Ahmad Al Kilani and Jalal Al Din Hakkani do not oppose us. Therefore, Hekmatyar is on the positive way but we are in a war situation and that needs a lot of trust, and there are hurdles to this because he fought us and killed us and he has problems with the opposition in the North and with us. After repeated contacts we will reach an agreement, but in the form of steps. Concerning the relations with Iraq, he said that they are our brothers and Muslims and are facing pressures from America, like us and like Sudan and Libya. And he (Mullah Omar) desires to get closer relations with Iraq and that Iraq may help us in reducing our problems. Now we are facing America and Russia. He requested the possibility of Iraq intervening to build a friendship with Russia since Russia is no more the number one enemy. And we request Iraq's help from a brotherly point of view. They are ready for this matter and they prefer that the relation between Iraq and Taliban be an independent relation from Hekmatyar's relation with the Taliban. We want practical steps concerning this issue and especially the relationship with the Taliban and (not clear, but could be Iraq).

Robinson then supplies analysis of the translation, including this description of the meeting:

So it seems possible the IIS Chief died just prior to this meeting and the Maulana is meeting with the new IIS chief. The new IIS chief would have been Tahir Jalil Habbush al Tikriti, who according to the Multi-National Forces' Iraq Web site as of January, 2006 is still listed as “at large.” Of course, if he has not been captured, it is reasonable to assume he has not been interrogated.

Tahir Jalil Habbush al Tikriti came to public attention in December, 2003 when the Telegraph UK reported Terrorist Behind September 11th Strike was Trained by Saddam.

Details of Atta's visit to the Iraqi capital in the summer of 2001, just weeks before he launched the most devastating terrorist attack in U.S. history, are contained in a top secret memo written to Saddam Hussein, the then Iraqi president, by Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, the former head of the Iraqi Intelligence Service.

The handwritten memo, a copy of which has been obtained exclusively by the Telegraph, is dated July 1, 2001 and provides a short resume of a three-day "work programme" Atta had undertaken at Abu Nidal's base in Baghdad.

In the memo, Habbush reports that Atta "displayed extraordinary effort" and demonstrated his ability to lead the team that would be "responsible for attacking the targets that we have agreed to destroy".

Atta, of course, led the 9/11 attacks.

Saddam to al Tikriti to Atta. A strong link from Iraq to 9/11. Add this to evidence that Saddam gave money and housing to Abdul Rahman Yasin, the 1993 World Trade Center bomb builder, and I'd say that you're looking at evidence that Saddam was linked to attacks on the World Trade Center not once, but twice.

"Illegal war?"

I think not.

John Murtha: Mortal Enemy of Military Justice

Almost a month ago I ripped into ex-Marine John Murtha for unequivocally stating that a unit of Marines had "killed innocent civilians in cold blood" after an IED blast killed a fellow Marine in Haditha, Iraq.

I stated:

First off, it is unconscionable for any legislator to accuse U.S. military personnel of multiple counts of premeditated murder before an investigation into these charges is complete. Prosecutions must proceed at their own logical pace as evidence in the case dictates. Premature accusations by a public figure in such a case imposes an artificial timeline, endangering the accuracy and thoroughness of an investigation.

At the same time, such heated rhetoric as charges of murder of "innocent civilians in cold blood" is prejudicial against the defendants, poisoning public opinion against them. This would be an explosive charge in a civilian court, but to make such charges against members of the U.S. Military when they are engaged in military operations in that country is absolutely fissionable.

An attorney for one of the Haditha Marines apparently agrees, and states that if his client is charged, he will call Murtha as a witness:

A criminal defense attorney for a Marine under investigation in the Haditha killings says he will call a senior Democratic congressman as a trial witness, if his client is charged, to find out who told the lawmaker that U.S. troops are guilty of cold-blooded murder.

Attorney Neal A. Puckett told The Washington Times that Gen. Michael Hagee, the Marine commandant, briefed Rep. John P. Murtha, Pennsylvania Democrat, on the Nov. 19 killings of 24 Iraqis in the town north of Baghdad. Mr. Murtha later told reporters that the Marines were guilty of killing the civilians in "cold blood." Mr. Murtha said he based his statement on Marine commanders, whom he did not identify.
Mr. Puckett said such public comments from a congressman via senior Marines amount to "unlawful command influence." He said potential Marine jurors could be biased by the knowledge that their commandant, the Corps' top officer, thinks the Haditha Marines are guilty.

"Unlawful command influence." Let that sink in. According to United States vs. Gore, No. 03-6003, 60 MJ 178 (and summarized here), unlawful command influence:

• is recognized as the mortal enemy of military justice;
• tends to deprive service members of their constitutional rights;
• if directed against prospective defense witnesses, it transgresses the accused's right to have access to favorable evidence.

John Murtha took the extraordinary step of accusing Marines of a war crime before the investigation was complete, and perhaps has compromised justice in this process entirely. Someone should ask Murtha if his political grandstanding was worth becoming the "mortal enemy of military justice" and jeopardizing the constitutional rights of these Marines. Someone should, but they aren't likely to get an answer. According the author of the Times article, Murtha's spokesman did not return a call seeking comment.

Apparently too late, ex-Marine John Murtha has finally learned to shut up.

Times Versus Times

The June 14, 2006 NY Times editorial Detainees in Despair Op-ed by Mourad Benchellali was lapped up unquestioningly by liberal blogs, who used the editorial to decry the evils of the Guantanamo Bay prison camp.

On June 15, 2006, a NY Times news story states that the Benchellali family was convicted in France of trying to build chemical weapons for attacks on Paris landmarks. Convicted so far are his father, mother, two brothers, and 19 other people.

Does anyone doubt that Mourad would have been in the middle of the French terrorist plot with the rest of his family if he weren't cooling his heels in Gitmo?

I sense a new marketing campaign by the Adminstration:

"Guantanamo Bay: Keeping terrorists out of the prisons they deserve to be in since 2002."

Alberto Pays a Visit

While Glenn Reynolds seems to have sailed through Tropical Storm Alberto without any problems, we're not having it quite as easy here in central North Carolina. The following pictures are pulled from from NCDOT cameras and viewer-submited photos at WRAL-TV.com.

Crabtree Valley Mall in Raleigh is, for understandable reasons, closed...

A closer look of parking near the mall shows that anchoring is more of an issue than parking.

If you want to cross Trinty Road, you'd better be able to part the waters.

A front yard in Cary (the Containment Area for Relocated Yankees, according to Wikipedia), just south of Raleigh finds itself suddenly overwatered.

With a total of 4-8 inches of rain expected to drop before Albero clears the area, the commute home promises to be entertaining, to say the least.

Aren't we lucky this wasn't a "real storm?"

Sometimes You Feel Like A Nut…

...sometimes you don't:

The leaders of the state's Democratic and Republican parties have asked voters not to cast ballots for state Supreme Court candidate Rachel Lea Hunter, whose fiery rhetoric in recent weeks has included comparing the actions of a black congressional candidate to that of a slave.

"She's unstable and unqualified, and the thought of her serving on the highest court in North Carolina is scary," state Republican party chairman Ferrell Blount said Tuesday.

Blount's comments came after Hunter, a former Republican running as a Democrat, used the title "Dur Fuhrer" -- commonly associated with Nazi leader Adolf Hitler -- when referring to state Democratic party chief Jerry Meek.

Hunter's sanity—or lack thereof—might also be indicated by links on her site (to which I refuse to link), to liber-nut-arian Lew Rockwell, presumably some of whose Gary North-oriented readers would stone to death another odd duck /paleocon/libertarian she supports, Justin Raimondo. She also links to a "9/11 was an inside job" conspiracy site, and perhaps not surprisingly, Cindy Sheehan's organization.

I personally have no problem with "Madame Justice" (as she like to call herself) being part of the court system, I just think she belongs on the other side of the bench—perhaps in a competency hearing.

Captain Ed and Allah have commented on the wannabe Justice as well.

Note: She'll still probably win in Chapel Hill (motto: "Left of center, right out of our minds").

BBC Libels Marine Singer/Songwriter

Oh give me a freaking break:

The US marines have launched a probe into a video posted on the Internet that apparently shows a serving marine singing about killing Iraqi civilians.

A spokesman described the video as "clearly inappropriate" and contrary to the standards of the marines.

Posted on the YouTube website, the video shows a man in uniform strumming a guitar while singing about killing Iraqis, as others laugh and cheer.

The marines said they did not know immediately if the film was genuine.

The lyrics caught on video refer to the shooting of Iraqi civilians, especially children.

Let's get a few details straight for this clearly partisan BBC writer Adam Brookes, shall we?

The song in this video (link below) was not about "killing Iraqi civilians." This is a blatant lie.

A civilian, as defined by the American Heritage Dictionary on Answers.com is:

A person following the pursuits of civil life, especially one who is not an active member of the military, the police, or a belligerent group.

There are no civilians killed by Marines in this song. This song is about a female Iraqi insurgent attempting to lure a Marine into an ambush carried out by her father and brother, also insurgents, with AK-47 assault rifles. By this definition and any other, including the Geneva Convention, anyone luring a soldier into an ambush, or conducting an ambush, is a belligerent, not a civilian.

The only person that could even remotely be considered a civilian is the sister of the female insurgent, who is killed by her own father and brother as they try to ambush the Marine.

The BCC clearly seeks to leave out the fact that the Marine did not initiate this conflict, and that this Marine acted in self defense after being led into an ambush.

Nor is their any direct reference to children being killed in this song. The song mentioned a "little sister." My wife has a little sister. She turns 30 this year, and has two children of her own. A "little sister" or "little brother" is a relative term, not an indication of age.

Adam Brookes of the BBC is not just being biased with his coverage; he is intentionally obfuscating relevant facts to mask the true nature of the song. Adam Brookes is, in effect, faking news.

We have all the evidence we need right here.

We have the actual music video courtesy of Little Green Footballs.

We have the Hadji girl lyrics courtesy of Blackfive.

I was out in the sands of Iraq
And we were under attack
And I, well, I didn't know where to go.
And the first think I could see was
Everybody's favorite Burger King
So I threw open the door and I hit the floor.
Then suddenly to my surprise
I looked up and I saw her eyes
And I knew it was love at first sight.
And she said

Durka Durka Mohammed Jihad
Sherpa Sherpa Bak Allah
They should have known they were f***ing with a Marine

Libel is typically defined as:

Published material meeting three conditions: The material is defamatory either on its face or indirectly; The defamatory statement is about someone who is identifiable to one or more persons; and, The material must be distributed to someone other than the offended party; i.e. published; distinguished from slander.

This BBC article by Adam Brookes is clearly defamatory, accusing the Marine about singing a song about killing civilians, when it was actually about killing insurgents that lured him into an ambush. The article is clearly about a specific, identifiable Marine appearing in this video, Cpl. Joshua Belile, and attempts to libel the Marine Corps in its entirety by extension. The article has been published, distributed across the Internet and perhaps in print as well. Almost certainly, Adam Brookes and the BBC met teh conditions for libel with this story.

The BBC owes Cpl. Belile a retraction and an apology.

BBC reporter Adam Brookes is a journalistic fraud. He attempted to obfuscate and mischaracterize key elements of a story to create a fictionalized account of the news far more damaging than the facts of the case support. Like Jayson Blair, Stephen Glass, and other frauds before him, Adam Brookes should be fired. Contact the BBC to let them know what you think.

Not to worry, though.

He can always find a job at CAIR.

Update: The BBC is already revising the opening paragraphs of this story, which now reads:

The US marines have launched a probe into a video posted on the internet that apparently shows a marine singing about the killing of Iraqi civilians.

A spokesman described the video as "clearly inappropriate" and contrary to the standards of the marines.

The marines said they did not know immediately if the film was genuine.

The lyrics caught on video refer to the shooting of Iraqi civilians, especially children, by insurgents and then how a marine responds, opening fire himself.

Funny how a little myth-busting can lead to new editing skills...

FOUND: The Word The Media Lost

A word seems to be missing from this story from CNN:

Former Atlanta Mayor Bill Campbell, who presided over the city's economic renaissance of the 1990s, was sentenced Tuesday to 30 months in prison and fined more than $6,000 for racketeering and tax evasion.

U.S. District Judge Richard Story praised Campbell, 53, for two decades of public service but said he could not ignore his crimes.

Campbell was convicted in March of a single racketeering count and three counts of tax evasion. He was cleared of charges he lined his pockets with payoffs from a contractor but was found guilty of failing to pay taxes on what prosecutors said was illegally obtained money. Campbell said the money was gambling winnings.

"Yes, Bill Campbell, you did good things, and there is a person in this room that recognizes this," Story said, referring to himself. He cited Campbell's work in improving public housing in Atlanta as an example.

But the judge added that during the trial he "was overcome, almost appalled, at the breadth of misconduct in your administration."

The story goes on for another 13 more paragraphs, and yet, I can't find that word.

Couldit be in WXIA's coverage? No.

How about UPI's story? Nope, it's not there, either.

It isn't until the very last word of the very last paragraph of this AP story that we finally found that missing word [my bold]:

Instead, he was convicted on just three counts of federal tax evasion, and acquitted on racketeering and bribery charges _ a verdict he and his attorneys painted as a vindication. Campbell was once considered a rising star for Democrats.

I wonder how that one particular word got so lost?

What Plagiarism Isn't

With al-Zarqawi dead, Bush in Baghdad and a botched Fitzmas bringing nothing but trickling, impotent gloom, the Left needed something to brighten their day.

This isn't it.

Plagiarism or sloppy cut-and-paste? That's what blogger Rude Pundit is asking about two passages in Ann Coulter's white-hot book Godless, which has already had its share of criticism over its content.

Pundit's evidence:

Coulter, Chapter 1 of Godless: The massive Dickey-Lincoln Dam, a $227 million hydroelectric project proposed on upper St. John River in Maine, was halted by the discovery of the Furbish lousewort, a plant previously believed to be extinct.

Portland Press Herald, from "Maine Stories of the Century": The massive Dickey-Lincoln Dam, a $227 million hydroelectric project proposed on upper St. John River, is halted by the discovery of the Furbish lousewort, a plant believed to be extinct.

Coulter: A few years after oil drilling began in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, a saboteur set off an explosion blowing a hole in the pipeline and releasing an estimated 550,000 gallons of oil.

The History Channel: The only major oil spill on land occurred when an unknown saboteur blew a hole in the pipe near Fairbanks, and 550,000 gallons of oil spilled onto the ground.

In the first pair of sentences about the Dickey-Lincoln Dam, Coulter's copy is almost word-for-word the same as the copy from the 2000 Portland Press list, with the only difference being a minor shift in verb tense (present to past, "is" to "was").

But is copying an item from a list plagiarism? Even with the list item being copied nearly word for word, the case for calling this plagiarism is questionable at best. Why?

If you look at the various definitions of plagiarism, the underlying theme is the concept of the theft of creative work or ideas from another person. Some people define it is a willful reproduction of the work of another, while more stringent standards hold it to be any reproduction of another's work, willful or subconscious.

Regardless of details, the key to plagiarism is the theft of a creative work or ideas. Does a list item meet the standard of "a creative work or ideas" needed to support a charge of plagiarism? Despite the almost verbatim copy, I'd argue that it most likely does not.

The claim that the second passage contains evidence of any plagiarism at all is frankly nonsensical.

The line from the History Channel and from Coulter's book are only similar in they discuss the same event, where a saboteur blew up a pipe in Alaska spilling 550,000 of oil.

By Rude Pundit's unsustainably broad standard, no two people could write about the same event and cite the same facts (or even different descriptions of the same place, as Coulter cites the location as "in Prudhoe Bay" and the History Channel says "near Fairbanks") from that event without one plagiarizing the other.

To quote Thomas Jefferson, "He's most likely completely full of crap."

As are his too-broad charges of plagiarism.

(h/t Allah at Hot Air)

Bush in Baghdad

While we were all looking at Karl Rove, President Bush decided to make an unannounced visit to Baghdad, no doubt as a show of support for the newly completed Iraqi government and a tough-talking Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's plans to increase security in Baghdad and throughout Iraq.

From Fox News:

President Bush made a surprise visit to Iraq on Tuesday to meet newly named Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and discuss the next steps in the troubled, three-year-old war.

It was a dramatic move by Bush, traveling to violence-rattled Baghdad less than a week after the death of terror chief Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in a bombing attack. The president was expected to be in Baghdad a little more than five hours.

You can say what you will about his successes and failures as a President, but George W. Bush certainly has courage. Not many Presidents—actually none that I know of, but I hardly claim empiracal knowledge—have made it a practice to visit our soldiers and our allies in an active war zone, and I can't recall a time when the technological capability for the enemy to strike against a President during a visit been greater.

This article (and others, to be sure) tells a reeling al Qaeda where Bush is and when he will be leaving the airport, and the flight paths in and out of the airport are anything but secret. Frankly, I fear the possibility of an attempt to use MANPADS against Air Force One as it leaves Baghdad International. We know that insurgents have Russian-designed SA-16 man-portable surface to air missiles, and if DEBKAfilecan be believed, as many as a thousand Iranian-built SA-7s. I do not know how much of a threat to Air Force One small man-portable missiles would be, but a volley of these missiles fired simultaneously as the President's plane was ascending could be problematic to say the least.

Those worries aside, the reasoning behind Bush's visit is sound. He is there to give a morale boost for an American military accused of murdering innocent civilians, and to show support for the Iraqi government that seems serious about cracking down on both insurgent and sectarian violence. His very presence all but assures success on both of these goals.

More as this story develops...

Truthout.org: Fresh Out Of Truth

I'm not too emotionally invested in the Plamegate story and so I'm probably not enjoying this as much as others, but anytime the Democratic Underground-types have their conspiracy theories crushed and their frog-marching cancelled, I must admit that I find it highly amusing.

From the NY Times:

The prosecutor in the C.I.A. leak case on Monday advised Karl Rove, the senior White House adviser, that he would not be charged with any wrongdoing, effectively ending the nearly three-year criminal investigation that had at times focused intensely on Mr. Rove.

The decision by the prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, announced in a letter to Mr. Rove's lawyer, Robert D. Luskin, lifted a pall that had hung over Mr. Rove who testified on five occasions to a federal grand jury about his involvement in the disclosure of an intelligence officer's identity.

In a statement, Mr. Luskin said, "On June 12, 2006, Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald formally advised us that he does not anticipate seeking charges against Karl Rove."

Liberal conspiracy site Truthout.org and their ace reporter on this story, Jason "24" Leopold have had their credibility heavily if not irreparably damaged with their speculative accusations, and I doubt anyone with any credibility themselves will take either TruthOut or Leopold seriously again.

"Truth to Power?"

Maybe not.

Coming Soon: Bin Laden Never Existed

I've long thought that the mental acuity of the average leftist was highly retarded by a wall of anti-Bush agi-prop (hence the tagline, "liberalism is a persistent vegetative state"), but even still, I was blown away by the blatant paranoia, open delusions, and thinly-veiled hatred of American soldiers manifested on liberal blog Talk Left, regarding the killing of terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Starting on Saturday and continuing again Sunday, Talk Left posters began working themselves into a lather over a claim made by an anonymous Iraqi to the Associated Press that U.S. soldiers beat al-Zarqawi to death after his safehouse was hit by two 500-pound bombs.

The claim:

The Iraqi, identified only as Mohammed, said he lives near the house where al-Zarqawi was killed. He said residents put a bearded man in an ambulance before U.S. forces arrived.

"When the Americans arrived they took him out of the ambulance, they beat him on his stomach and wrapped his head with his dishdasha, then they stomped on his stomach and his chest until he died and blood came out of his nose," Mohammed said, without saying how he knew the man was dead.

A dishdasha is a traditional Arab robe.

A similar account in The Washington Post identified the man as Ahmed Mohammed.
No other witnesses have come forward to corroborate the account. U.S. officials have only said al-Zarqawi mumbled and tried to roll off a stretcher before dying.

Now, by even applying basic reasoning skills to Mohamed's claim, one would have to ask how "Mohammed" could see blood flow out of al-Zarqawi's nose with his robe wrapped around his head, but that was easily bypassed by this top liberal blog, which was quick to label al-Zarqawi's killing an act of terrorism by the American military:

Killing Zarqawi and three women in the house with him was not an act of war. It was an act of retaliatory terrorism. By our government. And I don't want it to be in my name.

So according to Jeralyn Merritt, founder of Talk Left, killing a major terrorist is itself an act of terrorism.

The comment left me speechless over the weekend; I could not find a way to adequately explain the moral vacuousness and depraved indifference to reality needed to make such an incredibly stupid comment, and mean it.

But several of Jeralyn's regulars were ready to go beyond her labeling of American soldiers as terrorists, and seemed to float the theory that al-Zarqawi never even really existed at all:

The whole story is so unbelievable to begin with that the AP story only adds to the confusion.

al-Zarqawi has been a psy/ops character made for the American audience since Powell pointed to him as proof aq[sic] was in Iraq.

Why would the last chapter, his death, be any less fictional. With the US military controlling the narrative, anything is possible.

Some where willing to grant the possibility that he existed, but weren't convinced he was a terrorist :

The whole thing is bull. Whatever killed the man, it was not a 500-pound bomb. We know that's a lie, because the building was vaporized and the guy supposedly inside came out looking like he had been slapped by a high-school freshman. Then he died, with hardly a mark on him. Sure would like to see the autopsy report.

It seems that a lot of people are willing to take the word of people who have been wrong about EVERYTHING SO FAR that he was a terrorist, and that his role was important.

That was Saturday.

Sunday's post was even more discombobulated, with Merritt and her supporters apparently convinced that a delay in releasing the autopsy until DNA confirmation was complete as evidence of some sort of a cover-up, with the "discovery" of a second (predictably) anonymous source all the proof they required that al-Zarqawi's death was the result of a brutal beating of an injured man by American soldiers.

It's just heart-warming isn't it? Jeralyn and her followers find it far easier to believe that American soldiers are mindless thugs that would beat a wounded man on a stretcher to death, that believe he actually died as a result of two 500-lb. precision-guided bombs.

Of course, that depends on the silly assumption of those of us outside the "reality-based community" have that al-Zarqawi actually existed. Talk Lefter's don't seem convinced.

From Jade:

All the national and international media reported for the last two years that Zarqawi had one leg. They even told when and how he lost it. The quote often was "how hard is it to find a one legged man in Iraq".

Then we see a video of a two legged Zarqawi and a corpse of a two legged Zarqawi, how did that miracle of science happen?

From Aaron, the "more than one al-Zarqawi" theory:

While the DNA and the fingerprints may prove that this is indeed the terrorist we've come to know as Zarqawi, there does seem to be a lot of conflicting accounts, there may actually be a number of people using this moniker.

[snip]

The more you look at this nice neat little package which has been provided for us since day one, with the Jordanian government immediately stepping forward, and everyone revealing their intelligence sources, that's the moment you know to open your eyes wide, and listen very carefully. Far from being a coordinated attack it looks more and more like they just got lucky even with the help of Al Qaeda, and were able to call in a couple of planes which were on routine patrol. Beware of nice neat little packages when examining such counterintelligence scenarios.

And last but not least, Furillo:

I don't believe a word of what Gen. Casey Said.

Zarqawi never existed. At least the terrorist one.

It's all propoganda. Since when does a sullen Gen. Casey have to confirm what some already know is to use to press to brainwash and bombard us with dogma and story telling.

You see folks? al-Zarqawi never existed. Nick Berg sawed off his own head. That half-hour propaganda video so beloved by CNN's Jamie McIntyre was likely filmed on the same set as the faked Apollo moon landings. It all fits… at least when you're having fits.

Sadly, Jeralyn Merritt and her posters are not that atypical of the average "netroots progressive" that feel that our present U.S. government is the single greatest source of evil on this planet, and that terrorists such as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Osama bin Laden are just props created by President Bush "to further the neocon agenda."

Can you imagine the looks they would have received in World War II?

I wonder what would have happened to people of this ilk during World War II as they tried to tell other Americans of a conspiracy cooked up by FDR to make his friends in the military-industrial complex filthy rich by creating a pawn called Benito Mussolini. Mussolini of course didn't really exist, since they never did find conclusive enough proof that the body recovered after he was reported killed was really a fascist dictator at all.

Back then, they'd be off to a rubber-padded room for electroshock treatments. Today, they run for office as Democrats.

Merritt and her fellow partisans ask us to believe their current insanity is a self-evident truth. Even the release of the autopsy showing al-Zarqawi was killed by the blast overpressure of the bombs will not be enough to convince them.

Based upon their easy dismissal of al-Zarqawi as a fictional character, one can only assume that from their enlightened perspective, Osama bin Laden is but a figment of our imagination as well.

Silly, silly us.

The Saddam Dossier

Allow me to crow a bit this morning, as I'm extremely proud of and happy for Ray Robinson, who comments occasionally here at Confederate Yankee and helped me out immensely with his technical expertise in a series of posts debunking the "white phosphorus is a chemical weapon" myth of last November.

Ray went on to establish his own blog in March, and now has a new column at FoxNews.com, called "The Saddam Dossier."

What does Fox News plan to accomplish with this series?

Was Saddam Hussein a security threat to the United States? Did the Iraqi dictator have connections to Al Qaeda or other terrorist ties? What happened to the weapons of mass destruction everyone believed were in his possession? Did Saddam move them? Did they ever exist?

All of those questions have been dogging President George W. Bush and his administration since the start of the Iraq war. Politicians and respected U.S. military and intelligence officials have weighed in publicly on both sides of the debate, but until recently the general public has had little of the information necessary to make a fully informed decision on its own.

But that is changing.

The U.S. government seized thousands of classified Iraqi government papers when Saddam's regime was toppled, and Washington recently released a trove of these documents on the Pentagon's Foreign Military Studies Office Web site.

The documents, many in Arabic and with no accompanying translation, provide multiple insights into events inside pre-war Iraq. The dossier, however, is huge and disorganized. Digging out its secrets is a laborious task — one that the U.S. government decided to leave to others.

[snip]

With a small cadre of independent translators to support his efforts, Robison will now translate and analyze scores of the unexplored trove of documents from Saddam's regime in a FOXNews.com exclusive series: The Saddam Dossier.

In addition to translation, Robison will provide analysis based upon his work for the Iraq Survey Group and his military operations research experience. On occasion, he or a translator will remark in the translation itself for clarity, but will maintain the integrity of the document. All of their work will be linked online to the original Arabic texts, stored on the Foreign Military Studies Office Web site. Robison's analysis, however, is based on his own opinions.

"It is my belief," Robison says, "that those who just want to know the truth will find new and shocking information in these documents and may even change their beliefs about the reasons for the war."

The first installment of "The Saddam Dossier," Terror Links to Saddam's Inner Circle is online, and examines documents that connect Saddam's Iraq with the Taliban.

The much vaunted liberal cry of "Bush Lied, People Died" has never been so threatened.

Thanks for Catching Up...

CNN, today:

Thousands of pounds of armor added to military Humvees, intended to protect U.S. troops, have made the vehicles more likely to roll over, killing and injuring soldiers in Iraq, a newspaper reported.

"I believe the up-armoring has caused more deaths than it has saved," said Scott Badenoch, a former Delphi Corp. vehicle dynamics expert told the Dayton Daily News for Sunday editions.

Since the start of the war, Congress and the Army have spent tens of millions of dollars on armor for the Humvee fleet in Iraq, the newspaper reported Sunday.

That armor -- much of it installed on the M1114 Humvee built at the Armor Holdings Inc. plant north of Cincinnati, Ohio -- has shielded soldiers from harm.

But serious accidents involving the M1114 have increased as the war has progressed, and the accidents were much more likely to be rollovers than those of other Humvee models, the newspaper reported.

USA Today, March 2005:

The Army is baffled by a recent spate of vehicle accidents in Iraq — many of them rollovers involving armored Humvees — that have claimed more than a dozen lives this year.

One key concern: Soldiers lack the skills to handle the heavier Humvees and are losing control as they speed through ambush areas before insurgents detonate roadside bombs.

"An individual feels that if he goes faster he can avoid that threat," says Lt. Col. Michael Tarutani, an Army official tracking the accidents. "But now he's exceeded, first, maybe his capabilities, and then maybe the speed for those conditions."

In the past four full months, the numbers of serious vehicle accidents and fatalities in Iraq have more than doubled from the previous four months, records provided by the Army show. In the first 10 weeks of this year, 14 soldiers were killed in accidents involving Humvees or trucks. All but one died in rollovers. If that rate continues, the number of soldiers killed in such accidents this year would be almost double the 39 soldiers killed in 2004. Detailed records involving Marines were not available.

Perhaps recycling a year-old article is "news" for CNN, but their story is well-known to anyone who has been following this war... or any other.

Just as with the human body armor that some have been pushing, there is a significant trade-off, because added armor decreases mobility and flexibility. More armor does not always mean more survivability, as the heavier armor slows soldiers down and puts them in the enemy's kill zone longer. Firepower almost always ends up defeating a slowed, moderately-armored enemy.

It's a formula that has held for hundreds of years, at least since the Battle of Crécy in 1346.

I'm glad CNN is finally catching up.

Memorium

A soldier remembered at Blue Crab Boulevard.

My Lai, or My Lie?

Perhaps this should not be surprising, but Marine Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich gives a version of events exactly opposite of those described by "cold-blooded" Congressman John Murtha and the Sunni residents of Haditha in a story by Josh White in the Washington Post:

Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich, 26, told his attorney that several civilians were killed Nov. 19 when his squad went after insurgents who were firing at them from inside a house. The Marine said there was no vengeful massacre, but he described a house-to-house hunt that went tragically awry in the middle of a chaotic battlefield.

[snip]

Wuterich's version contradicts that of the Iraqis, who described a massacre of men, women and children after a bomb killed a Marine. Haditha residents have said that innocent civilians were executed, that some begged for their lives before being shot and that children were killed indiscriminately.

Wuterich told his attorney in initial interviews over nearly 12 hours last week that the shootings were the unfortunate result of a methodical sweep for enemies in a firefight. Two attorneys for other Marines involved in the incident said Wuterich's account is consistent with those they had heard from their clients.

Other comments in the Post article also seem to contradict claims of a cover-up levied by some.

I will not comment at this time to say which version of events is correct, but I'll note that Dan Riehl captured last week the various inconsistencies in the media-reported statements of Haditha residents, which makes this appear to be anything other than a cut-and-dried case as the media so eagerly reported it at first. I'll also note that radio traffic and reputed surveillance video from drone aircraft in the area can provide nearly irrefutable evidence supportingor disproving the facts as presented by some in this case. As Rick Moran notes at Right Wing Nut House:

One side or the other is lying in spectacular fashion.

And not just little inconsistencies in eyewitness testimony that one would expect in a war zone either. There are extremely disturbing indications that press reports detailing eyewitness accounts have failed to reconcile what Iraqis in Haditha were telling them with other known facts that were either conveniently left out or ignored altogether. There are also clear and unambiguous cases where Iraqi eyewitnesses have changed their stories 2, 3, and even more times.

It will be very interesting to see which side is lying, and what the repercussions of that lying will be.

Zarqawi Strike Aftermath

AllahPundit digs this up from the Times of London:

Al-Zarqawi's second wife Israa, in her late teens, and their 18-month-old baby, Abdul Rahman, died in the strike, Jordanian officials told The Times. Israa was the daughter of Yassin Jarrad, a Palestinian Islamic militant, who is blamed for the killing in 2004 of Ayatollah Muhammad Baqr al-Hakim, the Iraqi Shia leader.

Officials also said that Jordan would not allow the body of al-Zarqawi to be buried in his native country.

I guess I should feel sorrow that Zarqawi's wife and child died, but I can't seem to find my sympathy right now. Israa is the daughter and wife of terrorists, and the world is diminished by her loss no more than it was when Eva Braun died, and perhaps less.

Abdul Rahman, some are sure to note, was only an 18-month old infant, and it is true that he has done nothing wrong. He was however, the son and grandson of terrorists, and odds were that he would have grown into the "family business." If Uday and Qusay Hussein are any indication, he could have grown up to be even more of a sociopath than his father.

But the violent termination of the al-Zarqawi bloodline isn't the only news of note in this Times article. The move to center stage of Zarqawi's suspected successor shoots holes in one of the most firmly held liberal lies about the war, that Iraq had no ties with al Qaeda before the 2003 invasion:

...al-Zarqawi's likely successor was an Egyptian national, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, whom the radical leader first met in 2001 at a terrorism training camp in Afghanistan. Al-Masri, who has a $50,000 (£27,000) price on his head, is believed have come to Baghdad in 2002 on a mission to set up al-Qaeda's first cell in Iraq.

al-Masri was setting up al Qaeda cells in Iraq prior to the 2003 invasion?

So much for the liberal lie that there were no terrorists in Iraq prior to the 2003 invasion (well except for Abu Nidal. And Abu Abbas. And Abdul Rahman Yasin. And—oh, you get the point)

Look for this "fact" to be hammered again and again as long as al-Masri remains alive.

Loose Lips

After reading this post at the Corner (h/t Instapundit)and just a few minutes of internal deliberation, I decided that we need to find the man in this article and make an example of him to others:

The Americans had gotten close before, but Mr. Zarqawi had always managed to get away. He was an elusive and wary figure who knew well how much the Americans relied on high technology to track down suspects: he and his men refrained from using cellphones, knowing how easily they could be tracked. Instead, American officials said, they relied on handheld satellite phones, manufactured by a company called Thuraya, to communicate with one another. The Thurayas were more difficult to track.

Indeed, what the Americans had always lacked was someone from inside Mr. Zarqawi's network, Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, who would betray him — someone close enough and trusted enough to show the Americans where he was.

According to a Pentagon official, the Americans finally got one. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because details of the raid are classified, said that an Iraqi informant inside Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia provided the critical piece of intelligence about Mr. Rahman's meeting with Mr. Zarqawi. The source's identity was not clear — nor was it clear how that source was able to pinpoint Mr. Zarqawi's location without getting killed himself.

"We have a guy on the inside who led us directly to Zarqawi," the official said.

This man should be hunted down ruthlessly, exposed, and imprisoned, or if allowed by law, executed as a warning to others. I'm talking, of course, about the “Pentagon official” who “spoke on condition of anonymity because details of the raid are classified.”

Once again, the Pentagon leaked classified National Security information to the New York Times. Once again, the Times published this information with reckless disregard for the lives it puts in danger.

We had an asset inside al Qaeda, one that helped us find and kill al-Zarqawi and seven of his top lieutenants. This same asset could have presumably stayed hidden and provided further intelligence, helping roll up other senior terrorist leaders in al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, dismantling their network from the inside. Perhaps he or she could have shortened the war to some extent, and in doing so, could have saved the lives of American soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines, or more likely, save the lives of the Iraqi soldiers, police, and civilians who have been the focus of the brunt of al Qaeda's attacks.

Instead, the Pentagon leaks continue, and this asset was compromised within one day of al-Zarqawi's end.

Evil men who could have been compromised will continue to haunt this earth. The blood of good men—and women, and children—will continue to soak Iraqi soil. All because of a simple betrayal that this anonymous Pentagon official no doubt sees as nothing, or almost nothing; a simple favor for a journalist.

But this “favor” can cost lives in a war far from over, and this “favor” is a form of treason, a form of espionage, and a form of sabotage, one that should be exposed and prosecuted with ruthless aggression.

When people talk in war, people die. It's time to root out those that talk, and put them where they belong.

6/11/06 Update: It's like Chris Muir can read my mind...

This is CNN

As you can see in the screen capture above, CNN appears almost disconsolent that Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in an airstrike late yesterday afternoon, lamenting with the headline, 'al-Zarqawi Betrayed.'

CNN also shows a prominent picture on the CNN.com home page not of al-Zarqawi, or of celebrating Iraqis, or of President George Bush, or of Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki, or anything else of major importance to this story, but focuses instead of neighboring home destroyed in the airstrike.

It seems that CNN would like to focus on something, perhaps anything other than marking al-Zarqawi's death as a victory for the coalition, and the network that turned a blind eye to Saddam's terrorism seemed almost delighted to feature a video clip breathlessly proclaiming "(Watch how attacks turned nearby houses to heaps of cinder blocks --3:23)".

Whether more sympathy for the devil or corporate echoes of Eason Jordan disgraceful tenure, CNN seems bound and determined to tarnish any positive news coming out of Iraq, even news as big as the death of a terrorist mastermind.

Lost In Translation?

Perhaps Juan Cole should call his blog Poorly Informed Comment:

[my bold]

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki announced Thursday morning that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had been killed, along with 7 aides, in a gun battle with US and Iraqi troops at Baqubah.

Of course, the article Juan Cole linked to said nothing of the sort:

Al Qaeda's leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, has been killed in a joint U.S. and Iraqi military raid north of Baghdad, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki announced on Thursday...

How he could get the most basic of facts wrong—that al-Zarqawi was killed in an airstrike—in such a widely reported story, is absolutely astounding.

Perhaps he's having translation issues again?

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi Is...

Dead. Dead. Dead.

Veracity of Haditha Witnesses is Questionable

I'm starting to understand why the Naval Criminal Investigative Service has been working so long to develop physical evidence and forensics to base their Haditha investigation on.

Dan Riehl notes in comparisons of "witness" interviews in various media outlets that few if any of the Haditha witnesses are credible. One of the witnesses even admits to knowing that an IED blast was imminent.

This information would in no way make it acceptable for U.S. Marines to shoot civilians (in Haditha or anywhere else) without just cause, but it does make this incident far more complex than many initially thought.

Young Americans

Raw.

That one word sums up what I've seen in the trailer of Pat Dollard's Young Americans (link on this page definitely NSFW), a documentary shot over seven months in places like Fallujah and Ramadi in the Sunni Triangle of Iraq with U.S. Marines.

Dollard was injured in an IED attack on his Humvee on February 18.

The HMMWV Dollard was in when it was destroyed by an IED in Ramadi, Iraq.

Unlike others reporting events in Iraq who were injured by IEDs, a Google News search reveals just one only article about Patrick Dollard in Iraq. I guess if you aren't reporting the right stories you don't deserve much of a mention.

The trailer I viewed for Young Americans is, if anything, excruciatingly raw, often vulgar, but almost certainly real footage of how frontline Marines act after the networks retire back to the Green Zone.

Private Zachary Kother (left), Pat Dollard (center), Lance Corporal Eric Cybulski (right). survived the IED attack that killed Lt. Almar Fitzgerald and Corporal Matthew Conley.

Dollard himself is something of a controversial figure, a former Hollywood agent and producer (read more here) that looks like a cross between Anthony Perkins and R. Lee Ermey who generates strong opinions from those who know him.

All the footage taken in Dollard's seven months in Iraq in Ramadi, Fallujah and other part of the "Triangle of Death" were shot by Dollard himself or the Marines he was with, and the 600 hours of high-def footage is being edited into a 15-20 hour ultra-reality series for cable.

Dollard's "Young Americans" trailer isn't pretty, isn't politically correct, and isn't going to be liked by many people.

In short, it's war.

Other Than Honorable

Today, quite a few news outlets and blogs are discussing the case of Army 1st. Lt. Ehren Watada, an officer in the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division based in Fort Lewis, Washington, who has stated the intention to refuse deployment to Iraq with the rest of his unit this month. His stated reason?

"I feel that we have been lied to and betrayed by this administration," Watada said Tuesday in a telephone interview from Fort Lewis. "It is the duty, the obligation of every soldier, and specifically the officers, to evaluate the legality, the truth behind every order — including the order to go to war."

If Watada follows through with his stated intentions, he will likely be the first military officer to refuse deployment to Iraq. Further in the article, Watada's father explains his son's reasoning:

His father — Robert Watada, a retired Hawaii state official — was opposed to the war in Vietnam, and was able to do alternative service in the Peace Corps in Peru.

And Robert Watada said he laid out the "pros and cons" of military service as his son considered joining the service in the spring of 2003 as the invasion of Iraq was launched.

"He knew very well of my decision not to go to Vietnam, and he had to make his own decision to join the Army," Robert Watada said. "It was very noble. He felt like he wanted to do his part for his country."

After the younger Watada enlisted, he was sent to officer-training school in Georgia. Watada said he supported the war at that time because he believed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

"I had my doubts," he said. "But I felt like the president is our leader, and he won't betray our trust, and he would know what he was talking about, and let's give him the benefit of the doubt." Over the past year, his feeling changed as he read up on the war and became convinced that there was "intentional manipulation of intelligence" by the Bush administration.

In January, Watada told his commanders that he believed that the war was unlawful, and therefore, so were his deployment orders. He did not, however, consider himself a conscientious objector, since he was willing to fight in wars that were justified, legal and in defense of the nation.

So Watada's basic argument is this: he joined the U.S. Army several months after the invasion of Iraq in March of 2003, because he believed that Iraq under Saddam Hussein possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs). For reasons not clearly stated, Watada then determined that in his mind, "that we have been lied to and betrayed by this administration," and that he didn't have to deploy in what he regarded as an "illegal" and "immoral" war.

Watada's stance has garnered the support of many on the far left, presumably from the very same web sites and blogs where he "read up on the war" and became convinced that "there was 'intentional manipulation of intelligence' by the Bush administration."

I might have some sympathy for Lt. Watada's position if he had formally stated his opposition to the war to his superiors in his nearly three years of continuous military service until this point. Instead, he withheld these sentiments until his deployment orders were issued. Watada's newly-pronounced idealism reeks of an attempt to cover for other mortal flaws in his own character, shows a profound lack of loyalty to his men, and betrays an absence of any true and binding morality.

Soldiers do not get to pick and choose their wars, yet hundreds of thousands of American soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, Guardsmen, and Reserves have cycled into an out of Iraqi in the past three years of war, and while many perhaps felt that this war was not one they would chose, they followed their lawful orders to deploy.

They do not do this because they love combat, nor death, nor deprivation. They give up families, stability and even their lives, because of honor, duty and loyalty. They do this because of bonds between soldiers that civilians such as you or I will never truly understand.

Ehren Watada has betrayed the men in his command. He has shown that his fear of dying, and flailing political sensibilities are stronger than is sense of duty and loyalty to his men, and be betrayed his oath and his commitment to this nation.

Based upon the previous convinctions of other soldiers and sailors, Watada will likely be court-martialed and demoted, perhaps sentenced to prison, and when he is finally excreted from the military criminal justice system, it will be with with a Other-Than-Honorable (OTH) discharge, with which he will be able to continue to live out an other-than-honorable life.

Update: Kim Priestap at Wizbang and Michelle Malkin have more.

Breaking: LAW in Durham

WRAL TV (no story link yet) in Raleigh is reporting that two light antitank weapons have been found by a contractor working at a home in Durham, NC. A weapons disposal team is on the way from Fort Bragg.

More as the story develops.

Blind Speculation: I'm going on a hunch that if a contractor found these in a home being renovated, they may be older rockets, perhaps 70s-era M72s... and they very well could be inert.

Update: Via WRAL:

Authorities said a contractor found two suspected rocket launchers under a Durham home early Tuesday evening.

According to police, the contractor was doing work on a rental property on Midland Terrace around 6:30 p.m. when he discovered found two items that appeared to be lightweight anti-tank weapons in a crawl space under the house.

Police evacuated residences in the immediate vicinity and blocked Midland Terrace between Faucette Avenue and Cheek Road. Durham, state and federal authorities responded to the scene after the discovery. Authorities said that a bomb squad from Fort Bragg is expected to arrive at the scene overnight to inspect and dispose of the device.

According to authorities, no one was injured by the weapons. Police are trying to determine where the devices came from and how they ended up in that location.

Google Maps shows us that the suspected anti-tank weapons are in one of these homes not too far from the I-85/U.S. 70 interchange between Floyd Drive and Aiken Avenue.

Hopefully, members of the Duke University Lacrosse team were not among the renters.

6:49 AM Update: WRAL states that Fort Bragg EOD has removed the devices and confirms that "two items originally believed to be two anti-tank weapons -- each measuring around two feet in length" are in fact inert.

Their length and description all but confirms them as the disposable launcher tube-and-firing mechanism of the obsolete M72 LAW, which is 24.8 inches long (closed), or the reloadable M190 training variant of the same weapons system.

I suspect that the tube assemblies were obtained as souvenirs, and I cannot immediately find any applicable firearms legislation that would indicate that the possession of such devices would be illegal, since they cannot readily be made into functional weapons.

Shooting Messengers

Ann Coulter, she of 9/11/01 "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity" fame, has released her new book Godless: The Church of Liberalism and has quickly (and predictably) generated a media firestorm with her rhetoric.

A key graph of her book that has generated a significant amount of heat in the liberal blogosphere after Today Show host Matt Lauer read this portion of her book on the air, regarding a group of 9/11 widows:

"These self-obsessed women seem genuinely unaware that 9-11 was an attack on our nation and acted like as if the terrorist attack only happened to them. They believe the entire country was required to marinate in their exquisite personal agony. Apparently, denouncing Bush was part of the closure process." And this part is the part I really need to talk to you about: "These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by griefparrazies. I have never seen people enjoying their husband's death so much."

Think Progress has a transcript of the entire exchange, in which Coulter attacks what she calls the "left's doctrine of infallibility."

Lauer was predictably almost speechless, and most of the liberal blog reaction proved that they either didn't understand the meaning of her commentary, or it didn't have an effective rebuttal for this line of attack.

Peter Daou of The Grit and Steve Soto at the Left Coaster were reduced to griping about the fact that Lauer interviewed Coulter, and never sought to engage Coulter's point. The point, of course, was simply this: personal tragedy does not bestow omnipotence upon the bereaved.

The particular group Coulter reviles is a group of just four 9/11 widows sometimes known as "the Jersey girls" that did, in fact use the celebrity afforded by their spouses deaths on 9/11/01 to make plenty of noise in support of John Kerry's Presidential run in 2004. These women do have the right to voice their opinion, and the right to politicize that opinion on stage as loud as the public is willing to bear. But just as certainly, the fact that they were made widows because of a horrific terrorist attack did not grant them unassailable credibility or inherent wisdom.

Excessive hyperbole aside, Coulter was right on this point.

Despite the much-mocked and paraphrased fallacy of Maureen Dowd (before she was walled up Amontillado-like behind the wall of Times Select) that "the moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq is absolute," the death of a loved one does not automatically grant intelligence or insightfulness or Truth, nor does it grant a Writ of Veracity, where the speaker can no longer be challenged because of the shield of personal loss.

Both sides have been "grief pimps" at times, trotting out survivors of one tragedy or another who conveniently fit their political needs of the day, but is it s a disingenuous person indeed that attacks the messenger for this, instead of an obviously perverse message.

The so-called Jersey Girls have my sympathy for their personal loss, but they are not qualified to preach unopposed about matters of public policy.

No one is.

A Higher Standard

Think of this CNN report the next time you here a member of the media or a hyperventilating liberal blogger intone that the military is whitewashing potential war crimes in Iraq:

Seven Marines and a Navy medical corpsman are being held in the brig at California's Camp Pendleton, as commanders weigh possible charges against them in connection with the April 26 killing.

[snip]

An attorney representing the Navy medical corpsman, expressed concern that the media frenzy surrounding the case "has contributed to the current conditions my client is enduring at the Camp Pendleton Brig."

"There are known terrorists incarcerated in military facilities around the world who enjoy more freedom and less restriction than he is experiencing," Jeremiah J. Sullivan said in a statement issued to the media.

"During the one brief period per day he is allowed to utilize the recreational yard, my client remains shackled at the hands, waist, and ankles. Anytime he walks within the recreational yard he is escorted by at least one military prison guard who grasps onto his waist shackles at all times. The balance of his time is spent in solitary confinement," Sullivan said.

If this account is accurate, then captured al Qaeda terrorists confined at Guantanamo Bay have more freedom that do U.S. military servicemen and women that have not yet been charged with a crime.

A Rather Dim View on Atrocity Reporting

Former CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather apparently advocates the killing of newsmen who report on suspected war crimes.

In "Lone Star," an unauthorized bio of Rather out this September, Alan Weisman writes that [Morley] Safer "has not been a friend of Rather's for years, since their days in Vietnam." The final straw came when Rather took over for Safer not long after Safer's jolting report about the burning of a Vietnam village by a platoon of U.S. Marines.

"When Rather replaced me . . . he went to a group of Marines and said, 'If I were you guys, I would have shot him.' Or words to that effect," Safer tells Weisman. "And that my report should never have gone on the air." Asked whether Rather had ripped his fellow newsman to cozy up with the troops, Safer bristles, "Who the hell knows why? Have I ever confronted him about it? No. Now we just have a polite relationship."

Of course, this might not mean that Gunga Dan would support shooting today's reporters.

He might just have a different perspective on this war entirely.

Praise be to AllahPundit for the link.

"A Link In A Great Chain"

"Be Seated."

"Men, this stuff we hear about America wanting to stay out of the war, not wanting to fight, is a lot of bullshit. Americans love to fight - traditionally. All real Americans love the sting and clash of battle. When you were kids, you all admired the champion marble player; the fastest runner; the big league ball players; the toughest boxers. Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans despise cowards. Americans play to win - all the time. I wouldn't give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. That's why Americans have never lost, not ever will lose a war, for the very thought of losing is hateful to an American."

"You are not all going to die. Only two percent of you here today would die in a major battle. Death must not be feared. Every man is frightened at first in battle. If he says he isn't, he's a goddamn liar. Some men are cowards, yes! But they fight just the same, or get the hell shamed out of them watching men who do fight who are just as scared. The real hero is the man who fights even though he is scared. Some get over their fright in a minute under fire, some take an hour. For some it takes days. But the real man never lets fear of death overpower his honor, his sense of duty to this country and his innate manhood."

"All through your army career you men have bitched about "This chickenshit drilling." That is all for a purpose. Drilling and discipline must be maintained in any army if for only one reason -- INSTANT OBEDIENCE TO ORDERS AND TO CREATE CONSTANT ALERTNESS. I don't give a damn for a man who is not always on his toes. You men are veterans or you wouldn't be here. You are ready. A man to continue breathing must be alert at all times. If not, sometime a German son-of-a-bitch will sneak up behind him and beat him to death with a sock full of shit."

"There are 400 neatly marked graves somewhere in Sicily all because one man went to sleep on his job -- but they were German graves for we caught the bastard asleep before his officers did. An Army is a team. Lives, sleeps, eats, fights as a team. This individual heroic stuff is a lot of crap. The bilious bastards who wrote that kind of stuff for the Saturday Evening Post don't know any more about real fighting, under fire, than they do about fucking. We have the best food, the finest equipment, the best spirit and the best fighting men in the world. Why, by God, I actually pity these poor sons-of-bitches we are going up against. By God, I do!"

"My men don't surrender. I don't want to hear of any soldier under my command being captured unless he is hit. Even if you are hit, you can still fight. That's not just bullshit, either. The kind of man I want under me is like the lieutenant in Libya, who, with a Lugar against his chest, jerked off his helmet, swept the gun aside with one hand and busted hell out of the Boche with the helmet. Then he jumped on the gun and went out and killed another German: All this with a bullet through his lung. That's a man for you."

"All real heroes are not story book combat fighters either. Every man in the army plays a vital part. Every little job is essential. Don't ever let down, thinking your role is unimportant. Every man has a job to do. Every man is a link in the great chain. What if every truck driver decided that he didn't like the whine of the shells overhead, turned yellow and jumped headlong into the ditch? He could say to himself, "They won't miss me -- just one in thousands." What if every man said that? Where in hell would we be now? No, thank God, Americans don't say that! Every man does his job; every man serves the whole. Every department, every unit, is important to the vast scheme of things. The Ordnance men are needed to supply the guns, the Quartermaster to bring up the food and clothes to us -- for where we're going there isn't a hell of a lot to steal. Every last man in the mess hall, even the one who heats the water to keep us from getting the GI shits has a job to do. Even the chaplain is important, for if we get killed and if he is not there to bury us we'd all go to hell."

"Each man must not only think of himself, but of his buddy fighting beside him. We don't want yellow cowards in this army. They should all be killed off like flies. If not they will go back home after the war and breed more cowards. The brave men will breed brave men. Kill off the goddamn cowards and we'll have a nation of brave men."

"One of the bravest men I ever saw in the African campaign was the fellow I saw on top of a telegraph pole in the midst of furious fire while we were plowing toward Tunis. I stopped and asked what the hell he was doing up there at that time. He answered, "Fixing the wire, sir." "Isn't it a little unhealthy right now?," I asked. "Yes sir, but this goddamn wire's got to be fixed." There was a real soldier. There was a man who devoted all he had to his duty, no matter how great the odds, no matter how seemingly insignificant his duty might appear at the time."

"You should have seen those trucks on the road to Gabes. The drivers were magnificent. All day and all night they rolled over those son-of-a-bitching roads, never stopping, never faltering from their course, with shells bursting around them all the time. We got through on good old American guts. Many of these men drove over forty consecutive hours. These weren't combat men. But they were soldiers with a job to do. They did it -- and in a whale of a way they did it. They were part of a team. Without them the fight would have been lost. All the links in the chain pulled together and that chain became unbreakable."

"Don't forget, you don't know I'm here. No word of the fact is to be mentioned in any letters. The world is not supposed to know what the hell became of me. I'm not supposed to be commanding this Army. I'm not even supposed to be in England. Let the first bastards to find out be the goddamn Germans. Someday I want them to raise up on their hind legs and howl, 'Jesus Christ, it's the goddamn Third Army and that son-of-a-bitch Patton again.'"

"We want to get the hell over there. We want to get over there and clear the goddamn thing up. You can't win a war lying down. The quicker we clean up this goddamn mess, the quicker we can take a jaunt against the purple pissing Japs an clean their nest out too, before the Marines get all the goddamn credit."

"Sure, we all want to be home. We want this thing over with. The quickest way to get it over is to get the bastards. The quicker they are whipped, the quicker we go home. The shortest way home is through Berlin. When a man is lying in a shell hole, if he just stays there all day, a Boche will get him eventually, and the hell with that idea. The hell with taking it. My men don't dig foxholes. I don't want them to. Foxholes only slow up an offensive. Keep moving. And don't give the enemy time to dig one. We'll win this war but we'll win it only by fighting and by showing the Germans we've got more guts than they have."

"There is one great thing you men will all be able to say when you go home. You may thank God for it. Thank God, that at least, thirty years from now, when you are sitting around the fireside with your grandson on your knees, and he asks you what you did in the great war, you won't have to cough and say, 'I shoveled shit in Louisiana.' No, Sir, you can look him straight in the eye and say, 'Son, your Granddaddy rode with the Great Third Army and a Son-of-a-Goddamned-Bitch named George Patton!'"

"That is all."

God Bless the veterans of the Great Crusade launched on this day in Normandy, France in 1944, and the soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen that today carry on that same fighting spirit.

Update: BlackFive has far more.

Never Say Die

One of the best sporting comebacks I've ever seen.

Well, since the 1992 Peach Bowl when my beloved Pirates came back to beat N.C. State 37-34 to cap off a 11-1 1991 season, anyway.

I Guess She Hates Him, Too

I guess reminding Cindy Sheehan that the UN (not the U.S.) imposed sanctions on Iraq, that the Koran flushing never happened, and that white phosphorus is not a chemical weapon (or no more than TNT is a chemical weapon) and that it is no way related to napalm and that it cannot be "enhanced" by it, wouldn't do much good.

Support the troops? I support only those who are NOT supporting the exploitation of the Iraqi people, and those who do not allow the war profiteers to carry on with their death and destruction all for the sake of an opulent lifestyle. I do not support those who are supporting a criminally insane and treacherous foreign policy.

Interestingly, Cindy Sheehan's son Casey "supported the exploitation" (by her definition, not mine) by volunteering to go on a rescue mission into Sadr City. It cost him his life.

I guess Cindy hates him, too.

(h/t Allah)

A Matter of Priorities

A rouge nation with budding nuclear weapons capabilities is being run by a cult obsessed with End Times eschatology, and threatens ten of millions of lives in southwest Asia. Sectarian violence continues in Iraq. We're importing poverty in record amounts through a southern border that leaks like a sieve, and Patrick Kennedy is out of rehab and back on the road.

Mr. President, if you really think I care about gay marriage right now, you're out of your ever-lovin' mind.

An Atrocity of Atrocities?

It is but one of several atrocity cases that you will find the press laying at the feet of American Marines in Iraq, but the death of Hashim the Lame strikes me as among the most curious, and potentially the most troubling.

Other incidents in Iraq have led to the deaths of Iraqi civilians at the hands of American Marines. Haditha was the incident that triggered the current media frenzy, and is under investigation as a possible war crime after 24 Iraqi civilians were killed by a Marine unit after an IED attack killed on of their own.

In Ishaqi, a disputed number of women and children were killed after an air strike was called in on a house that was engaging Marines with intense small arms fire. The Marines were cleared after an investigation determined that men with ties to al Qaeda, including an al Qaeda financier, initiated the firefight. The financier was pulled alive from the rubble and is now in U.S. custody.

In both of these incidents, the Marines were responding to immediate provocations. If Iraqi accounts of the death of Hashim Ibrahim Awad al-Zobaie are correct, this killing had no such immediate trigger.

The official Marine account and the version of events told by Iraqi villagers could not be more different:

Members of the Marine foot patrol under investigation in the case said they came upon Hashim digging a hole for a bomb near his home in the Sunni Arab village of about 30 homes near Abu Ghraib, west of Baghdad. The Marines said they killed Hashim in a brief gun battle and that they found an AK-47 assault rifle and a shovel by his side.

According to accounts given by Hashim's neighbors and members of his family, and apparently supported by photographs, the Marines went to Hashim's home, took the 52-year-old disabled Iraqi outside and shot him four times in the face. The assault rifle and shovel next to his body had been planted by the Marines, who had borrowed them from a villager, family members and other residents said.

The family members of al-Zobaie have agreed to allow an exhumation and autopsy, which should she light onto which version of events is more accurate. I'm hoping that the Marine account is accurate for the simple reason that the alternative—that Marines singled out and premeditated the murder of a cripple for unknown reasons—is so difficult to contemplate.

The Silence of the Lambs

If you visit the always useful memeorandum.com to see how the blogosphere is responding to the arrests of 17 terrorists in Canada, you'll notice something: not a single left-of-center blog of note will discuss it.

Not yesterday afternoon.

Not last night.

Not this morning.

Ace of Spades noticed this phenomenon last night, and writes:

Not a word about it at has-been harridan Jane Hamsher's combination blog-slash-application for voluntary state psychiatric confinement.

The Daily Kos mentions it as a single item in an open thread about three other news stories, the other three fairly trivial.

Mostly Open Threads are opened. Later in the day, "Georgia" posts this:

Open Thread

by georgia10

Sat Jun 03, 2006 at 05:03:58 PM PDT

It's a slow news day...so what's going on in your corner of the world?

Yes, very slow news day, Georgia. So what's going on? Well, in the state you either live in or share the name of, two Muslim extremists -- or, should I say, Terrorist-Americans -- are named as co-conspirators with the Toronto megabombers.

So, no big whoop. Go back to sleep.

Nada at former Democratic strategist (or something) Peter Daou's "The Grit" blog. He does have time to mention Haditha, of course.

Nothing at Atrios, despite a higher post-to-open-thread ratio today.

Nothing at Jesus' General... though he does think he's pretty funny for showing American kids at a gun range, with a caption saying "GOOD," and Palestinian kids parading with guns, with a caption saying "BAD." Apparently it is lost on him that the American kids shoot at targets, whereas the Palestinian kids (who are younger) shoot at human beings.

Oh, and blow themselves up in pizzarias.

Nothing on Andrew Sullivan. He talks about -- yes, wait for it! -- Haditha and the other alleged "massacres," and also about how much spiritual support disco-pop-synth band Pet Shop Boys have provided him.

Otherwise-- radio silence.

IS ANY LEFT WING BLOGGER COMMENTING ON THIS STORY AT ALL?

Or is it too dangerous to alienate readers by presenting discomfiting facts?

Why, one would almost imagine that a victory in the War on Terror is unwelcome news to them. It's almos as if it's... bad news for them or something.

One could almost venture to postulate, even, that their political and personal interests are precisely aligned with the terrorists'.

Almost.

The Man That Liberals Hate Most lays on the snark:

Somehow, I have a feeling someone's civil rights were violated during all this “investigating” and “probing.” And if that's the case, well, then the terrorists will have already won.

Although to be sure, lots of buildings and public transit venues in a number of countries remain intact as a result—and thousands of innocent civilians were probably spared. Still, small consolation indeed if it turns out some “spy agency” somewhere plucked a conversation out of (cyber)space and used it to zero in on these guys.

Keep an eye on Glenn Greenwald's site for updates and analysis on how, during these overlapping probes, the Constitution was shredded.

Yes, the "true patriots" are silent as the grave on this subject. This "unpleasantness" reminds them we are at war, which tends to destroy the wall of illusion they've been laboring to build since 9/11/01 that we are isolated and safe.

I'm sure they'll snap back later today. They can't let reality intrude over fantasy for too long, you know.

Close to Home: Terror Sweep in Canada

Via CNN:

Canadian police on Saturday said they have prevented a major al Qaeda-inspired terror plot to attack targets in southern Ontario.

Twelve adults and five young people were arrested, authorities said.

"This group took steps to acquire three tons of ammonium nitrate and other components necessary to create explosive devices," said Royal Canadian Mounted Police Assistant Commissioner Mike McDonell in a statement.

"To put this in context, the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people took one ton of ammonium nitrate."

The detained suspects are all men, Canadian residents "from a variety of backgrounds" and followers of a "dangerous ideology inspired by al Qaeda," said Luc Portelance, assistant director of operations for Canadian Security Intelligence Service, in a news conference.

The targets were all in Toronto, CNN's Jeanne Meserve reported at least one source as telling her.

The charges include: participating in terrorist group activity, including training and recruitment; the provision of property for terrorist purposes; and the "commission of indictable offenses, including firearms and explosives in association with a terrorist group."

What authorities are not saying—and will almost certainly not confirm—is the distinct possibility that this plot was uncovered via the NSA foreign intelligence surveillance program that the NY Times tried to label a “domestic spying” program. As most international communications into North America filter through U.S. switching equipment, it seems logical that if international communications were involved, the NSA would be the lead agency handing off information their counterparts in Canadian border police and intelligence agencies.

CNN also suggests—but doesn't support—is that this raid could be tied to the London terror raid conducted Friday that foiled a suspected chemical weapons plot.

Update: Via Stop the ACLU, it appears that internet monitoring was indeed responsible for helping break the al Qaeda cell:

The investigation began back in 2004, when CSIS was monitoring Internet sites and tracing the paths of Canadians believed to have ties to international terrorist organizations. Local youths espousing fundamentalist views drew special attention, sources say.

[snip]

Four months after authorities began to fear that Canada might have its own homegrown terrorist cell, two Americans entered the picture.

Ehsanul Islam Sadequee, a 19-year-old U.S. citizen of Bangladeshi descent who had attended high school in Ontario, and Syed Haris Ahmed, 21, a student at Georgia Tech, boarded a Greyhound bus in Atlanta on March 6, 2005, and travelled to Toronto to meet "like-minded Islamic extremists," a U.S. court document alleges.

The NSA program, as repeated described, tracked targeted communications between terror suspects in the United States, and other countries... like Canada.

I think we have a winner.

Live From Kabul

Blogger Bill Roggio is in Kabul, Afghanistan, and has a podcast up at Pajamas Media about the recent anti-American riots.

Exhumation (NOT YET) Granted in Haditha (Updated)

Update: Lawhawk wrote to inform me that I goofed, and he was right: the families of the victims have not yet granted the NCIS permission, but that the NCIS is looking to exhume the bodies of those killed. Big difference. If permission is not granted, it could potentially make the case more difficult for presecutors.

As the Haditha investigation goes forward, Iraqis appear to have reversed course and are now allowing the bodies of the victims to be exhumed so that forensic evidence could be collected by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) investigation. Traditionally, Muslims do not allow disinterment.

The Washington Post's article about this development caught my attention with this paragraph, particularly the sentence highlighted in bold:

A source close to the inquiry said Naval Criminal Investigative Service officials have interviewed families of the dead several times and have visited the homes where the shootings allegedly occurred to collect as much evidence as possible. Exhuming the bodies could help investigators determine the distance at which shots were fired, the caliber of the bullets and the angles of the shots, possibly crucial details in determining how events unfolded and who might have been involved.

Forensically, I was initially perplexed at how they intended to judge the distance at which the shots were fired. At extremely close ranges inside a house, the terminal velocity of bullets can't change much from 15 feet to 5, but the possibility is that shots would leave varying amounts of powder residue depending on their distance to target. A shot at contact range would presumably deposit far more residue on the victim's body around the wound than would a shot fired from across a room. I know it depends upon the exact circumstances, but it would seem that closer contact range shots might be more consistent with an execution, where shots from across a room might be more consistent with room-clearing fire.

It may perhaps be nothing but a mere formality (in fact, that is what I suspect and what WaPo reporter Josh White just confirms via email) but the investigators are also interested in verifying the caliber of the bullets.

This might be of interest because all all standard Marine Corps entry weapons (variants of the M4 and M16 rifles, and the M249 SAW) are 5.56 NATO caliber weapons, with the possible exception of the 9mm NATO round in the M9 Beretta pistol and the 12-gauge round fired by shotguns sometimes used by entry teams.

I think it is highly unlikely that the autopsies with uncover any other weapon calibers, but if 7.62/.30 caliber bullets or bullet fragments are found, then this case would get very, very interesting, to say the least.

The U.S. has 7.62 NATO rounds in use by the Marine Corps, but they occur primarily in sniper rifle systems and the M240 medium machine guns—neither of which are practical for house-to-house raids cited in this case. The 7.62x39 Warsaw pact round, or ".30 Russian" as it is sometimes know, is the standard caliber for the Russian small arms favored by the insurgency. Anything other than 5.56mm NATO or 9mm NATO rounds would be a major surprise.

In any event, I hope that the NCIS investigation is able to find conclusive, unambiguous evidence so that the Marines involved face justice based upon the strength of solid evidence, not mere speculation or questionable eyewitness accounts.

Update: I'm not certain of the veracity of the charge, but I'll put out the link so that you can read it and decide for yourself. Sweetness & Light notes that the doctor who conducted the initial autopsies may have ties to an insurgency-supporting group.

Eating the BBC Alive

I was going to post on the BBC's recent attempt to place another "atrocity" at the feet of the American military, but Bruce Kesler at The Democracy Project gutted them so thoroughly that any attempt to add to his takedown it is wasted effort.

Read the whole thing.

It's nice we can truth the free world's media to be skeptical of our troops while blindly believing insurgent cameramen to be truthful, isn't it?

Update: And just to further gut the BBC, ABC News is reporting that U.S. investigators who started an inquiry into this incident in March have called these allegations "unfounded," and that U.S. forces followed the rules of engagement, capturing the al Qaeda suspect that was the focus of the raid.

I hope they have a recipe for crow.

An Empty Nation

Via Hot Air this morning, I was shocked to find—and I do mean shocked—to find an editorial in The Nation passing judgement on the Marines involved in the Haditha killings, and blaming it all on—you guessed it—George W. Bush. You didn't see it? It was sandwiched between their monthly column highlighting the heroes of Afghanistan and Iraq, and a sidebar piece about how things are so much better in Iraq now in 2006 than planners dared to dream in 2002. Oh wait… The Nation has never written such articles, have they? My bad.

No, instead they hitch their wagon to the charges leveled by floundering redeployment specialist John Murtha. Before he blamed senior military leadership for a cover-up and implied that randomly murdering civilians was a matter of policy (not to mention just pure fun, right John?), Murtha found the time to judge the Marines in the Haditha incident "cold-blooded killers" based upon preliminary NCIS reports given to him by sources within the military.

Murtha does not bother to wait for the investigation to be complete. Murtha doesn't bother to see what the final investigator's report, scheduled at the time of his outburst to be released 60 days later, may say. He doesn't wait for charges to be brought, or a for the trial to even be scheduled. He simply pronounced the Marines guilty of premeditated murder, a capital offense. We need no trial. We need no jury and we need no judge. From behind the safety of a microphone, Judge Dreadful has made his pronouncement.

This of course, is just the kind of fuel The Nation relies on. If prematurely sentencing up to a dozen Marines in what could be capital case can be slanted in some way to tarnish the White House, then the Marines they would sacrifice without benefit of a trial are worth it.

I always thought that liberals were against the death penalty.

I guess it just depends on who they get to kill.

RFK Jr.'s Racial Politics

Yesterday, I became aware that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was going to be releasing an article in Rolling Stone magazine today alleging massive voter fraud in the 2004 President election. I remarked that such an article had the great possibility of being a spectacular implosion, and opined about what the article was likely to discover:

I suspect the content of the article will provide bold headline-inducing accusations, weave nebulous connections and schemes, and in the end, fail to provide any sort of evidence that can be considered solid, or bring forth witnesses that won't almost immediately be found to have credibility problems.

Even the flimsiest of evidence will be enough for the more excitable types on the far left, but barring something truly explosive and concrete (which is something that has been sorely lacking in every Democratic “bombshell” of the past six years), I imagine this will be grist for the Democratic Underground types for months to come, and largely forgotten within the next week by everyone else.

Now that the article has been released in Rolling Stone, my supposition turned out to be woefully unprepared for just how low this particular Kennedy was will to stoop.

Not only is Kennedy guilty of providing no actual support of election fraud in any of, "13,000 elections run by 13,000 independent, quasi-sovereign counties and municipalities," as he calls them, the tone of the article he wrote reveals itself to be something far, far worse: nothing more and nothing less than Democratic electioneering, as an attempt to smear the name of Ken Blackwell, a black conservative gubernatorial candidate in Ohio.

There is a reason that the Washington Post labeled Democratic cries of election fraud a "conspiracy theory," and the New York Times (source, full text) declared "there is no evidence of vote theft or errors on a large scale." RFK's shoddy research (much of it largely irrelevant statistical analysis of exit polling data from carefully selected analysts and Democratic pollsters) is merely a framework for an unscrupulous, and rather blatant political agenda.

Kennedy's article was constructed for one reason, and one reason only; to smear a black fiscal and socially conservative candidate that has charisma, integrity, and cross-cultural appeal--in short, a real chance of winning. Blackwell defeated Attorney General Jim Petro in the 2006 Republican primary with 56% of the vote, and has been significantly closing the gap with Democratic frontrunner Ted Strickland in recent weeks. Strickland led Blackwell by 16 points in a Russmussen poll on May 8, but that gap has dramatically to just six points in a May 25 UC-Ohio poll.

As Blackwell continues to close in on a candidate that seems increasingly unable to find traction, the Kennedy assault targeting Blackwell's duties in the 2004 President elections seems like nothing less than an attempt to smear a black conservative and attempt to save the 2006 Ohio governorship Strickland seems primed to fumble away.

Ohio Democrats fear a Strickland loss, but the national Democratic Party fears that Blackwell may be in the vanguard of black conservatives that may cut across racial and party lines, eroding their traditional stranglehold on the black vote.

For 40 years Democrats have virtually ignored the black community, coasting on increasingly empty promises from the civil rights era, while still being able to count on their votes. With the emergence of Ken Blackwell in Ohio, Lynn Swann in Pennsylvania, and Michael Steele in Maryland, the DNC is absolutely terrified that black voters might veer away from the increasingly radicalized liberal politics that share little in common with many middle class suburban and rural black voters. They fear this year's slate of black conservatives could be be the end of their dominion.

Kennedy, a white Massachusetts liberal born of privilege, seeks to smear a self-made conservative black candidate that emerged from a traditional blue-color home under the flimsiest of pretenses to keep black voters, as his potential running mate Hillary Clinton might say, "on the plantation."

We've learned to expect almost any level of debauchery from the Kennedy clan, but this new race-driven low of RFK, Jr. goes beyond the pale.

Update: fixed some some minor grammar errors.

When Specific Words Matter

I do not think that Will Dunham at al-Reuters—or perhaps his military sources—quite understands the definition of the word "unprovolked."

Mr. Dunham runs with this lede:

A preliminary military inquiry found evidence that U.S. Marines killed two dozen Iraqi civilians in an unprovoked attack in November, contradicting the troops' account, U.S. officials said on Wednesday.

While the killings of up to 24 Iraqi civilians that day may be wrong and even criminally so, it was not by any means "unprovoked."

“Unprovolked” conjures up a certain image and a specific definition, namely :

Not provoked or prompted: an unprovolked attack

Clearly, the Marines in Haditha on November 19, 2005 were provoked into action by a very concrete, undisputed event: the detonation of an improvised explosive device by an unknown individual or individuals that killed one Marine and wounded two others. The Marine response to this attack seems to be both misdirected and clearly unacceptable in its result (we'll trust the military criminal justice system to determine the extent of criminal culpability), but if the brutal killing of you fellow Marine in a tremendous explosion isn't provoking, I don't know what is.

I suspect that some will say that the difference between "unprovoked" and "misdirected" is no difference at all, but obviously, if they are willing to argue the point, then those very different words and what they represent to the future of the accused, does indeed matter.

Hurricane Season 2006 Begins

It's that time of year again.

From VOA News:

Well-known U.S. storm forecaster William Gray has predicted an active Atlantic hurricane season. Gray and his team at Colorado State University say 17 tropical storms can be expected this season, with nine of them becoming hurricanes. He added that five of the storms will be major hurricanes.

Last week, officials at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicted there will be up to 16 named storms. They said they expect 10 of them to become hurricanes, and that six of them could become major hurricanes.

The Atlantic hurricane season runs from June 1 through November 30.

NOAA and Gray say the world is in a 20-year cycle that will continue to bring strong storms.
The 2005 storm season was the most destructive in recorded history, with seven major hurricanes, including Katrina, which killed some 1,300 people along the U.S. Gulf Coast.

In case you have forgotten Katrina—which I admit is unlikely—these never before released photos taken by a North Carolina church relief team should jog your memory. They were taken between September17-22, 2005 between Gretna, Louisiana (just across the Mississippi River from New Orleans), and Waveland, Mississippi.

A heavily damaged Mardi Gras float in a destroyed Louisiana warehouse.

A mobile home lot, trailer long gone, and a twisted rail bed. Mississippi.

Destroyed gas station, only the pumps are upright. Mississippi.

A home destroyed. Storm surge took away much of the first floor. Trees appear to have collapsed on the rest. Mississippi.

A tangle of vehicles including cars, motorcycles and tractors from garage crushed by the storm surge. Mississippi.

The remains of an unknown commercial building. Destroyed by storm surge. Mississippi.

If these photos are sobering, then they've served their purpose. As someone who has been through hurricanes in the past, I created a Hurricane Survival Guide last summer to try to help people prepare. It is still there, still (I hope) relevant, and you are more than welcome to use it as a rough guide for the busy season ahead.

Of course, the best hurricane survival tip is this: when it comes, be far, far away. Everything you own, no matter how much personal value it has, is just stuff.

You can't replace you.