You Don't Say

Via Breitbart:

Ayman Al-Zawahiri, the Al-Qaeda number two, in a video posted on the Internet reportedly called US President George W Bush a liar who had "failed in his war against Al-Qaeda." The Qatar-based Arabic-language satellite station Al-Jazeera said that in the video, "Zawahiri called Bush a liar and said he had failed in his war against Al-Qaeda."

On Thursday, Islamist websites on the Internet had said there would be a new video message posted by Zawahiri entitled " Bush, the pope, Darfur and the Crusades."

The comments, made in a video filmed under generator power deep in a guano-covered cave, were deemed to be authentic.

Foley Resigns in Scandal

Disgusting:

Saying he was "deeply sorry," Congressman Mark Foley (R-FL) resigned from Congress today, hours after ABC News questioned him about sexually explicit internet messages with current and former congressional pages under the age of 18.

A spokesman for Foley, the chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, said the congressman submitted his resignation in a letter late this afternoon to Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert.

Get that last bit? He was the chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children.

I hope that someone in law enforcement in both Washington and Florida is smart enough to get a search warrant for his House and home personal computers.

Joe Liebs in Pajamas

Nope, not another lame Eric Muller/Wonkette/Gawker Photoshopping smear, but an interview of Connecticut's Senator Joe Lieberman by Pajamas Media's own Roger Simon.

There's a MF Hamster on the MF Plane!

Are they with us, or with the terrorists?

An Impression UNC Law Could Do Without

I've never had much respect for UNC Law professor Eric L. Muller and now that he has attempted what I assert is visual libel--falsely attributing a photo of one person as being someone else--I have even less.

Muller has a long-standing and quite unhealthy fascination with conservative blogger and columnist Michelle Malkin, and this morning, Muller leveled a charge of hypocrisy against her in this post:

In today's column, Michelle Malkin asks, "Where Have All the Good Girls Gone?"

It's a verbal assault on some twenty-year-old TV personality in Great Britain who "once possessed an uncommon sense of modesty and decorum in the skin-baring age of Britney Spears," and liked to spend her time singing "Blessed Jesus" and clutching "a rosary blessed by the pope," but has now become "the new face of skankdom," a "half-naked" "pop tart" who sums up all that is evil in our new world of "sexpot dolls/characters" and "Bratz babies in thongs." A woman who has gone from "pure-hearted to pure crap," and who, among other horrible things, "drinks" and "parties."

With no further ado, I give you: Michelle Malkin, Spring Break, March 27, 1992. Could that be an all-you-can-drink wristband?

Here, incidentally, is the flickr page where the photo appears. Somebody forwarded it to me a couple of months ago. I chortled. Then I forgot about it -- until today, that is, when her vicious hatchet job on a "half-naked" twenty-year-old "skank" brought it to mind.

Mind you: there's nothing wrong with trips to the beach during college, or all-you-can-drink wristbands, or bikinis.

Just with hypocrisy.

The column stands or falls on its own merits, but Muller's accusation--a link to a trashy, "Girls Gone Wild" themed picture--is serious stuff. Muller says the photo is Malkin.

It isn't.

It is a horribly done Photoshop edit, featuring a shrunken headshot of Malkin poorly imposed in the wrong scale over someone else's body. It is such an obvious fakery one has to assume Muller knew it was faked, but pressed on with what in my mind constitutes something akin to visual libel, presenting a obvious forgery as legitimate.

Gawker Media, which owns Wonkette, is familiar with blogs and so much know just how easy it is to badly fake a Photoshop, and so it was a surprise when, they, too joined Muller in presenting the fake photo as fact.

Malkin is rightfully outraged at the attack, and she should be.

Eric Muller's unhinged obsession has gone far over the line, and I hope that he is called to account for his actions. Malkin does not deserve this, nor does North Carolina's flagship university.

Losing National Security Voters

The always-excellent Lorie Byrd has a column up at Townhall.com hammering Democrats on their dismal national security record. The criticism of what President Bush referred to last night as the "party of cut and run" is well-warranted based, upon a long record of many leading Democrats ignoring, miscasting, and quite possibly "misunderestimating" the very nature and the extent of the threat of Islamic extremism. Not only are the liberal's misconceptions about the jihadist threat dangerous to Westerners, it is also dangerous to Islam itself, ignoring that by refusing to confront Islamic terrorism head on, they may be allowing terrorists to stigmatize over one billion of their co-religionists who are non-violent.

Lorie's column liberally—uh, conservatively—quotes from a post I wrote earlier in the week, Legacy of Lies.

Lorie, who also blogs at Wizbang!, and fellow Townhall.com-er Mary Katherine will be co-panelists with me and many other talented bloggers at the Carolina FreedomNet 2006 blog conference in Greensboro, NC next Saturday.

We hope to see you there.

Off Yonder Rocker

I used to enjoy reading Dean Esmay's blog from time to time, and I can't remember when or why I stopped dropping by. Maybe it was becuase of rants like this.

Quite simply, the attack Esmay levels against Michelle Malkin, Hot Air, and Little Green Footballs is not based in any reality I'm familiar with. All three of these blogs do frequently comment on Islamic terrorism, but they also highlight reform-minded moderate Muslims as well. To state, as Dean has, that these blogs are anti-Muslim is quite simply a falsehood.

I don't know if Esmay is pruposefully lying for some reason, or if he has simply gotten so wrapped up in his interpretation of what he thinks people say that he can't tell what they actually say. In any event, his factless rant and his outbursts of of overwrought emotional violence against his commentors is quite sad. It's rare to see a blogger so publicly implode.

All three blog's Esmay attacked have posted rebuttals.

Michelle Malkin

Hot Air

Little Green Footballs

I hope Dean enjoys the burst of traffic. Odds are that once the dust settles, he will have lost both respect and readers.

An Unlikely Alliance

I wonder what the rest of the Arab world must make of this:

Earlier this week, Israeli press reports suggested that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert met recently with a senior official in the Saudi government, maybe even with the Saudi king.

Olmert denied the reports but praised the Saudis for standing up against Hizballah in recent weeks. The Saudi government also dismissed reports of the meeting as a "fabrication." But other media reports persisted in suggesting that some contacts between Israeli and Saudi officials had taken place.

Whether or not the contacts took place, Saudi Arabia and Israel undoubtedly have a mutual interest -- Iran, said Dr. Guy Bechor from the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya.

Saudi Arabia, a majority Sunni Muslim country, is concerned about the strengthening of ties between Shi'ite Muslims in Iran and Iraq and with Hizballah in Lebanon, said Bechor.

Iran has so far resisted international pressure to suspend its nuclear program, which Western states believe is intended to produce atomic weapons -- something that Iran denies.

"[The Saudis fear that] if there is some type of attack against Iran from the West, Iran will hit Saudi Arabia," said Bechor in a telephone interview.

Saudi Arabia is looking for friends and connections in the region and is working to create a Sunni alliance together with Turkey, Egypt and Jordan, and that anti-terror alliance could secretly include Israel, said Bechor.

The world seems to think that only the United States and Israel are likely to forcefully oppose Iran's apparent desire for nuclear weapons, but if the Saudi government forms ties with Israel over their joint concerns about Iranian intentions, then the dynamics we assumed about the pending conflict have the possibility to radically change.

The hope is that political pressure can be brought to bear to convince Iran that an attempt to develop nuclear weapons is not in their best interests. If a political settlement is unreachable, the shift them focuses to when Iran may face military action, and by whom.

Today Israel reiterated a position held by U.S. President George W. Bush that Iran would not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons, and if Saudi Arabia can be counted upon for either passive or active support in military operations, the likelihood of political and military success in the wake of a pre-emptive strike increases dramatically.

If Saudi Arabia offers "passive" military aide by allowing Israeli strike aircraft to fly through and refuel in Saudi airspace, it would greatly reduce the amount of time IAF strike fights would have to spend in hostile air space, and enable Israeli aircraft to carry more munitions deeper into Iranian territory.

If Saudi Arabia offers active military assistance, particularly air power, then the situation could arise where a joint mission flown by the two most advanced air forces in the Middle East could put hundreds of strike aircraft over Iran, conceivably wrecking much of Iran's nuclear infrastructure without any direct involvement by American military forces at all. It is also worth mentioning that a joint strike conducted by regional powers instead of Western militaries, it would also be far more successful politically.

It seems unlikely that such a joint mission, or a multi-nation alliance mission is in the works, but the possibility will greatly complicate Iranian plans.

Torturing the Truth

The New York Times has issued forth a typically hysterical editorial attacking the anti-terrorism legislation passed by the House yesterday on a vote of line 253-168. The Senate will likely pass their version of the bill today, and President Bush will likely sign the measure into law by the weekend.

I rarely read the Times anymore, especially their editorials, but from time to time, their hyperbole-filled missives are worth the read, if for no other reason than to try to understand just how out of touch the "liberal elite" is with mainstream Americans.

The Times editorial begins:

Here's what happens when this irresponsible Congress railroads a profoundly important bill to serve the mindless politics of a midterm election: The Bush administration uses Republicans' fear of losing their majority to push through ghastly ideas about antiterrorism that will make American troops less safe and do lasting damage to our 217-year-old nation of laws — while actually doing nothing to protect the nation from terrorists. Democrats betray their principles to avoid last-minute attack ads. Our democracy is the big loser.

Hmmmm... the "mindless politics of a midterm election." I wonder, does this ever apply to Democratic-led Congresses, or only Republican-led ones? I think we know the answer.

But here's the gem:

...The Bush administration uses Republicans' fear of losing their majority to push through ghastly ideas about antiterrorism that will make American troops less safe and do lasting damage to our 217-year-old nation of laws — while actually doing nothing to protect the nation from terrorists.

I'd like for the Times to go out of their way for once and try to apply a little logic and reason, and—God forbid, facts—to support their contention that the legislation will make American soldiers "less safe." The truth the Times and its liberal supporters refuse to confront is that our enemies in this war against Islamic terrorism do not now, nor have they ever, followed any civilized notion of how to conduct warfare against military or civilian targets, and when they have been able to capture American soldiers, they have tortured, mutilated and beheaded them.

Perhaps Bill Keller and company should search their own archives:

The American military said today that it had found the remains of what appears to be the two American soldiers captured by insurgents last week in an ambush south of the capital, and a senior Iraqi military official said the two men had been "brutally tortured."

An American military official in Baghdad, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that both bodies showed evidence of "severe trauma" and that they could not be conclusively identified. Insurgents had planted "numerous" bombs along the road leading to the bodies, and around the bodies themselves, the official said, slowing the retrieval of the Americans by 12 hours.

[snip]

General Caldwell declined to speak in detail about the physical condition of those who had been found, but said that the cause of death could not be determined. He said the remains of the men would be sent to the United States for DNA testing to determine definitively their identities. That seemed to suggest that the two Americans had been wounded or mutilated beyond recognition.

"We couldn't identify them," the American military official in Baghdad said.

Neither Mr. Keller nor his liberal supporters in the blogosphere seem to have anything approaching a reasoned response as to how this legislation will make the native barbarity of our enemies any more depraved than it already is. Perhaps the Times thinks they'll use dull knifes for beheading instead of sharp ones. The simple fact remains that no law we pass will affect how terrorists treat captured soldiers. They will brutally torture and kill any soldier they capture after this legislation becomes law, just as they did before.

As for the "lasting damage" the Times shrieks will occur, I notice they didn't try to provide specific details. Fortunately for the Times, hyperbole doesn't rely on factual support, as history shows that past wartime Democratic Presidents have done far more damage to the Constitution than measures our present Administration would even consider.

During World War I, Woodrow Wilson pushed through the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918, cruelly slapping aside the notion that "dissent is the highest form of patriotism" embraced by today's defeatists. Heavy media censorship, the crushing of free speech about the war (at least for those that dissented) and even imprisoning former Presidential candidates was par for the course for Wilson's wartime Presidency.

Bush, in stark contrast, has not made any attempt to muzzle the press, even to the point of allowing classified document leaks to news agencies like the Times without shutting the paper down or putting so much as a single reporter in jail.

The hyperbole continues:

Republicans say Congress must act right now to create procedures for charging and trying terrorists — because the men accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks are available for trial. That's pure propaganda. Those men could have been tried and convicted long ago, but President Bush chose not to. He held them in illegal detention, had them questioned in ways that will make real trials very hard, and invented a transparently illegal system of kangaroo courts to convict them.

It was only after the Supreme Court issued the inevitable ruling striking down Mr. Bush's shadow penal system that he adopted his tone of urgency. It serves a cynical goal: Republican strategists think they can win this fall, not by passing a good law but by forcing Democrats to vote against a bad one so they could be made to look soft on terrorism.

It may come as a shock to the editors of the Times, but Democrats themselves have made themselves look soft on terrorism long before this legislation came around.

The party of "defeat and retreat" features leadership that wants to force the American military into a headlong withdrawal from Iraq, genocidally ignoring the fact that such an act would destabilize the fledgling democracy even worse, possibly leading today's sectarian violence to denigrate into full-scale genocide. John Murtha has yet to explain how withdrawing thousands of miles away to Okinawa will make the streets of Baghdad any safer. Ned Lamont has yet to explain how shifting our forces away from the central front of the war on Terror in Iraq and the terrorist forces assembled there will make America safer. The Fringe Left is far more interested in loosing Iraq to make the Bush Administration look bad than combating terrorism. Their only plan is withdrawal and defeat. Democrats look soft on terrorism because they are soft on terrorism as shown by their own actions, not the actions of any other group.

The screed goes on:

Last week, the White House and three Republican senators announced a terrible deal on this legislation that gave Mr. Bush most of what he wanted, including a blanket waiver for crimes Americans may have committed in the service of his antiterrorism policies. Then Vice President Dick Cheney and his willing lawmakers rewrote the rest of the measure so that it would give Mr. Bush the power to jail pretty much anyone he wants for as long as he wants without charging them, to unilaterally reinterpret the Geneva Conventions, to authorize what normal people consider torture, and to deny justice to hundreds of men captured in error.

This may come as a shock to the Times, but the legislation passed by the House does not reinterpret the murky language of the Geneva Conventions, and in fact, does just the opposite: it clarifies and delineates a clear policy of what constitutes legal interrogation methods. The United States have never before attempted to clearly define how U.S. law should meet Geneva's standards, even though it should have done so when the standard was agreed to in 1929. What upsets the Times and many on the left is that this legislation strips them of their ability to label anything and every interrogation technique they don't like as torture.

The Times Hyperbole Drive (unrelated to the Hitchhiker's Improbability Drive, and far less coherent) then kicks into overdrive as they kick out an unsupported list of possible abuses:

Enemy Combatants: A dangerously broad definition of “illegal enemy combatant” in the bill could subject legal residents of the United States, as well as foreign citizens living in their own countries, to summary arrest and indefinite detention with no hope of appeal. The president could give the power to apply this label to anyone he wanted.

The President patently does not have this power. The House bill's language states that a Combatant Status Review Tribunal or another tribunal will determine if someone is to be classified as an enemy combatant, not the President. The Times goes beyond hyperbole and delivers a falsification.

The Geneva Conventions: The bill would repudiate a half-century of international precedent by allowing Mr. Bush to decide on his own what abusive interrogation methods he considered permissible. And his decision could stay secret — there's no requirement that this list be published

As I stated previously, the legislation passed by the House does not reinterpret the murky language of the Geneva Conventions, and in fact, does just the opposite: it clarifies and delineates a clear policy of what constitutes legal interrogation methods. The Congress should have passed this legislation, or something like it, prior to World War II.

Habeas Corpus: Detainees in U.S. military prisons would lose the basic right to challenge their imprisonment. These cases do not clog the courts, nor coddle terrorists. They simply give wrongly imprisoned people a chance to prove their innocence.

Congress has the power to say that foreign terrorists are not entitled to the rights of American citizenship, and they have done so, much to the chagrin of those who would coddle them.

Judicial Review: The courts would have no power to review any aspect of this new system, except verdicts by military tribunals. The bill would limit appeals and bar legal actions based on the Geneva Conventions, directly or indirectly. All Mr. Bush would have to do to lock anyone up forever is to declare him an illegal combatant and not have a trial.

Again, more hyperbole based upon an outright falsification. President Bush does not determine the status of a captured terrorist; a Combatant Status Review Tribunal made up of military judges makes that determination.

Coerced Evidence: Coerced evidence would be permissible if a judge considered it reliable — already a contradiction in terms — and relevant. Coercion is defined in a way that exempts anything done before the passage of the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act, and anything else Mr. Bush chooses.

The Times does a masterful job of spinning the actual language of the legislation, which stipulates that coerced evidence could only be used if certain conditions were met. Among those conditions are that "totality of the circumstances renders the statement reliable," meaning that other information must support to coerced information. If a detainee confesses under interrogation to a bomb plot and no evidence can be found to support the admission, his confession cannot be used as evidence. Again, President Bush does not make any determinations whatsoever, the language of the bill explicitly delegates that power to the judge.

Secret Evidence: American standards of justice prohibit evidence and testimony that is kept secret from the defendant, whether the accused is a corporate executive or a mass murderer. But the bill as redrafted by Mr. Cheney seems to weaken protections against such evidence.

Of course, the Times is referring to American civil and criminal law, which follows a somewhat different set of rules than the military criminal justice system. With the conviction of terrorist-supporting lawyer Lynne Stewart, an ugly truth already known by many in the legal and intelligence communities was shown to the world; not only were terrorists using confidential lawyer-client letters to smuggle information to one another, they also discovered that some activist lawyers actively participated. The decision to allow some secret evidence and testimony to protect the lives of sources and intelligence operatives is a reasonable one. Apparently, the Times would rather a defendant learn the source of the information so that he could pass it along to others so that the sources could be eliminated. That the source is quite likely to be tortured before being murdered is not apparently a concern of the Times.

Offenses: The definition of torture is unacceptably narrow, a virtual reprise of the deeply cynical memos the administration produced after 9/11. Rape and sexual assault are defined in a retrograde way that covers only forced or coerced activity, and not other forms of nonconsensual sex. The bill would effectively eliminate the idea of rape as torture.

Of course the definition is unacceptably narrow for the Times. As I stated previously, the Congress, by finally defining terrorism, strips the ability of the Times to label anything and everything it wants as torture. The Times loses a rhetorical tool, and that seems to be their primary concern. The assertion made by the Times that "the bill would effectively eliminate the idea of rape as torture" is unconscionable, and a willful distortion of the bill's language and reality. There are literally millions of things the legislation didn't address—the price of tea in China, how long a detainee's hair may be, or if he's allowed to watch The View—but that does not translate into an acceptance or denial of a practice covered under other laws. The bill also refused to stipulate that the detainees cannot be assaulted by wookies or unicorns, so I'm certain the Times will address the oppression of terrorists by fictional beings in their next missive.

The Times finishes with a call to action for Democrats to filibuster the bill, which patently won't happen. Democrats may not like giving America the tools to fight terrorism, but unlike the Times, they are occasionally forced to interact with reality.

Durham Police Turn to Psychic

This is interesting:

After exhausting all leads in the murder case of Janet Abaroa, Durham police homicide investigators are turning to a famed psychic for help.

Lead homicide investigator Jack Cates confirmed Wednesday that investigator S.W. Vaughan has begun using a psychic to assist in developing leads in the 17-month-old probe into the stabbing death of the 25-year-old wife and mother.

Raven Abaroa reported discovering his wife's body in the couple's Ferrand Drive home on April 26, 2005. The murder weapon was never recovered, and while police would not say if there were signs of forced entry into the home, they said they believed the murder "was not a random act."

Cates would not confirm the identity of the psychic, but a source with knowledge of the case told The Herald-Sun that high-profile psychic Laurie McQuary of Lake Oswego, Ore.-based Management by Intuition, had stepped in to help develop leads.

I'm ambivalent on whether or not people have psychic abilities, but when a case goes cold as this one apparently has, any extra set of eyes reviewing the information accumulated so far has to help. I'll be interested to see if this results in new leads.

al Qaeda Letter Apparently Disputes NIE

A letter (PDF) found in the rubble of the safehouse in which al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al Zarqawi was killed seems to dispute some of the dire conclusions reached in the leaked excerpts of the National Intelligence Estimate as published by the New York Times and Washington Post last week.

The captured letter sheds new light on the friction between al-Qa`ida's senior leadership and al-Qa`ida's commanders in Iraq over the appropriate use of violence. The identity of the letter's author, “`Atiyah,” is unknown, but based on the contents of the letter he seems to be a highly placed al-Qa`ida leader who fought in Algeria in the early 1990s. `Atiyah's letter echoes many of the themes found in the October 2005 letter written to Zarqawi by al-Qa`ida's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri; indeed, it goes so far as to explicitly confirm the authenticity of that earlier letter. `Atiyah's admonitions in this letter, like those of Zawahiri in his letter to Zarqawi, also dovetail with other publicly available texts by al-Qa`ida strategists.

Although `Atiyah praises Zarqawi's military success against coalition forces in Iraq, he is most concerned with Zarqawi's failure to understand al-Qa`ida's broader strategic objective: attracting mass support among the wider Sunni Muslim community. `Atiyah reminds Zarqawi that military actions must be subservient to al-Qa`ida's long-term political goals. Zarqawi's use of violence against popular Sunni leaders, according to `Atiyah, is undermining al-Qa`ida's ability to win the “hearts of the people.” 2

According to `Atiyah, Zarqawi's widening scope of operations, culminating with the November 2005 hotel bombings in Amman, Jordan, has alienated fellow Sunnis and reduced support for the global al-Qa`ida movement. In this vein, `Atiyah instructs Zarqawi to avoid killing popular Iraqi Sunni leaders because such actions alienate the very populations that al-Qa`ida seeks to attract to its cause.3 `Atiyah also encourages Zarqawi to forge strategic relationships with moderate Sunnis, particularly tribal and religious leaders, even if these leaders do not accept Zarqawi's religious positions.

`Atiyah instructs Zarqawi to follow orders from Usama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri on major strategic issues, such as initiating a war against Shiites; undertaking large-scale operations; or operating outside of Iraq. `Atiyah goes on to criticize Zarqawi's board of advisors in Iraq for their lack of adequate political and religious expertise, and he warns Zarqawi against the sin of arrogance. Because al-Qa`ida is in what `Atiyah calls a “stage of weakness,” `Atiyah urges Zarqawi to seek counsel from wiser men in Iraq— implying that there might be someone more qualified than Zarqawi to command al-Qa`ida operations in Iraq.

`Atiyah closes with a request that Zarqawi send a messenger to “Waziristan” (likely, Waziristan, Pakistan) in order to establish a reliable line of communication with Bin Laden and Zawahiri. `Atiyah confirms in the letter that al-Qa`ida's overall communications network has been severely disrupted and complains specifically that sending communications to Zarqawi from outside of Iraq remains difficult. Interestingly, he explains how Zarqawi might use jihadi discussion forums to communicate with al-Qa`ida leadership in Waziristan.

According to this captured document:

• Zarqawi had failed to understand and execute al Qaeda's broader strategic objectives, and instead had alienated fellow Sunnis from al Qaeda, reducing their support of the terror organization.
• Zarqawi group did not have "adequate political and religious expertise" and was "in a stage of weakness."
• al Qaeda's communications lines have been severely disrupted.

The al Qaeda letter shows a terrorist group that does not seem to feel it is winning. This seems to be very much in contrast to the version of events as published in the Post's article, where it is claimed that "the situation in Iraq has worsened the U.S. position."

Note that the Post article does not seem to cast a critical eye toward this NIE, even though in the same article, it points out that all of the conclusion in the 2002 NIE "turned out to be false."

I suppose it is possible that both al Qaeda and the United States could be facing concurrent setbacks, but it appears to me that our leader isn't hiding in a mountain cave, nor in any immediate threat of being killed by a missile-equipped drone high overhead.

If I am to believe either document, I think the captured al Qaeda document shows the true situation on the ground far more accurately, as bad as that may be for the media and Democratic Party view.

Alternative Headlines

CNN is currently running with the following headline:

White House refuses to release full terror report

The opening text follows below:

The White House refused Wednesday to release in full a previously secret intelligence assessment that depicts a growing terrorist threat and has fueled the election-season fight over the Iraq war.

Press secretary Tony Snow said releasing the full report, portions of which President Bush declassified on Tuesday, would jeopardize the lives of agents who gathered the information.

"We don't want to put people's lives at risk," Snow told a White House news briefing.

How about we try on some alternative headlines CNN could have run?

White House refuses to endanger intelligence operatives

Snow: '"We don't want to put people's lives at risk'

I guess it's simply a matter of perspective and goals.

Legacy of Lies

The Clintons, the Media, and the WMD Attack On America They Refused to Tell You About

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich has jumped into the controversy over Bill Clinton's hissy fit this past Sunday, stating that Clinton likely went into the interview predetermined to pick a fight:

"I think that as the most experienced professional in the Democratic Party, he didn't walk onto that set and suddenly get upset," Gingrich said. "He probably decided in advance he was going to pick a fight with Chris Wallace."

This, Gingrich said, may have been a good strategy.

"I think as a calculated political decision, it's reasonably smart," he said.

Perhaps Clinton did calculate his response, but I don't know that by casting a light on the common post-/9/11 perception that Clinton obviously didn't do enough to deter terrorism—a perception shared by Osama bin Laden himself—that he calculated wisely.

Senator Clinton attempted to defend her husband yesterday, saying that:

"I'm certain that if my husband and his national security team had been shown a classified report entitled 'Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States,' he would have taken it more seriously than history suggests it was taken by our current president and his national security team."

This is a categorical lie, easily disproven.

The 1993 World Trade Center bombing, financed by al Qaeda's Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, was the first—and to date only—WMD attack in America by al Qaeda and Iraq-affiliated terrorists.

If you have never heard this before, it is because the Clinton Administration downplayed the facts of the case, and a compliant and overwhelmingly liberal mainstream media still refuses to deliver the facts to the America people.

Ramzi Yousef, a Kuwaiti-born al Qaeda terrorist using an Iraqi passport, concocted a plan to detonate a large ammonium nitrate bomb in the basement-level parking decks of WTC 1. The primary intent was to have the foundation of Tower 1 compromised, toppling it into WTC 2, bringing both buildings down and killing as many as possible of the 50,000 people who worked there.

Abdul Rahman Yasin, the Iraqi bomb builder who retreated to Iraq after the attack and lived under Saddam Hussein's protection and with his financial support until the 2003 invasion (just ignore the explicit al Qaeda-Iraq link), created a massive 1,310 lb bomb.

Answers.com has the details about this bomb, which was not a conventional car bomb as we have often been led to believe, but a complex IED and chemical weapon (my bold):

Yousef was assisted by Iraqi bomb maker Abdul Rahman Yasin [1] . Yasin's complex 1310 lb (600 kg) bomb was made of urea pellets, nitroglycerin, sulfuric acid, aluminum azide, magnesium azide, and bottled hydrogen. He added sodium cyanide to the mix as the vapors could go through the ventilation shafts and elevators of the towers. The van that Yousef used had four 20 ft (6 m) long fuses, all covered in surgical tubing. Yasin calculated that the fuse would trigger the bomb in twelve minutes after he had used a cigarette lighter to light the fuse. Yousef wanted the smoke to remain in the tower, therefore catching the public eye by smothering people inside. He anticipated Tower One collapsing onto Tower Two after the blast. The materials to build the bomb cost approximately US$300.

Wikipedia, FAS, and many other sources confirm both the use and the intent of this cyanide-laced weapon.

As any fan of spy movies and novels knows, cyanide salts are extremely lethal even in small doses of 100-200 milligrams. Wikipedia provides the effects:

Once more than 100–200 mg of sodium cyanide is consumed, consciousness is lost within one minute, sometimes within 10 seconds, depending on the strength of the body's immunity and the amount of food present in the stomach. After a span of about 45 minutes, the body goes into a state of coma or deep sleep and the person may die within two hours if not treated medically. During this period, convulsions may occur. Death occurs mainly by cardiac arrest.

Yasin's bomb was designed to use both conventional blast mechanisms to attempt to topple the buildings and create a poisonous cyanide cloud to kill anyone inside Tower 1.

As we know, Yasin's bomb failed in both of its goals.

The World Trade Center Towers still stood despite the al Qaeda attack, and the cyanide, instead of being released as a gas as Yasin had designed, was instead vaporized by the explosion. The first chemical weapons attack by al Qaeda on the United States was a dud.

And so when I hear Hillary Clinton state that her husband would have taken the threat of an al Qaeda attack inside the United States "more seriously than history suggests," than the current President did, I have to laugh. Bill Clinton was President of the United States when lower Manhattan was the victim of an al Qaeda plot executed by an Iraqi bomb-builder who detonated a chemical/conventional weapon under tens of thousands of Americans. President Clinton later knew what the bomb was composed of, knew how it was intended to be used, and what threat al Qaeda posed.

Bill Clinton was President for another 7 years, 10 months, 25 days after this attack.

His record of "fighting" terrorism during that time period speaks for itself.

NIE Declassified, Boring

It's here (PDF) if you really must read it, but it won't tell you news junkies anything you haven't already figured out for yourselves.

The only question I have is whether or not either the NY Times or Washington Post will admit they were used as dupes in a propaganda effort.

I'm guessing they won't.

Update: From Hugh Hewitt:

The democratic Party and its agenda journalist allies are campaigning for retreat from Iraq, a retreat that would be a decisive victory for the jihadists. Thus any vote for any Congressional Democrat is a vote against victory and a vote for vulnerability.

And that is the conclusion supported by the NIE, touted just 48 hours ago by the left as the key document of this political season.

The Democratic Plan for Dealing With Islamic Terrorism

They do make burqas for livestock, don't they?

Re-Stating the Obvious: Some Do Hate America

An increasingly dyspeptic Matthew Yglesias states that we are now the leading terrorist state:

Consequently, the United States now presents itself as what amounts to the globe's largest and most powerful rogue state -- a nuclear-armed superpower capable of projecting military force to the furthest corners of the earth, acting utterly without legal or moral constraint whenever the president proclaims it necessary.

Please tell me why anyone in America should take people like this seriously. At least Yglesias is honest when he strongly implies he and many other liberals like him are not proud to be Americans. At least he's out of denial.

Some Don't Forget

"Do you forget people jumping off the 80th floor or 70th floor when the planes hit them? Can you imagine what it will be for a man or woman to jump from that high?" Karzai asked recalling some of the more shocking scenes from the World Trade Center bombing. "How do we get rid of them? ... Should we wait for them to come and kill us again?"

Thus spoke Hamid Karzai, President of Afghanistan to the media assembled in the East Room of the White House in a joint press conference held with President George W. Bush this morning.

Sometimes, we do forget, or at least we want to.

It is far easier to try to forget, or try to pretend that it could never happen again, or pretend that it was somehow our fault, and that if we were just nicer or better or different in some little way, that that day wouldn't have occurred. It is a shame that man from half a world away had to visit our nation's capitol and remind some of us of what should be so obvious.

Steamed Rice: Condi Slaps Clinton Over Wallace Interview Comments

Bill Clinton's attempt at a face-saving, over-the-top response to Chris Wallace during an interview aired on Fox News Sunday has resulted in Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice responding, saying that much of what Clinton intoned was a lie:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice yesterday accused Bill Clinton of making "flatly false" claims that the Bush administration didn't lift a finger to stop terrorism before the 9/11 attacks.

Rice hammered Clinton, who leveled his charges in a contentious weekend interview with Chris Wallace of Fox News Channel, for his claims that the Bush administration "did not try" to kill Osama bin Laden in the eight months they controlled the White House before the Sept. 11 attacks.

"The notion somehow for eight months the Bush administration sat there and didn't do that is just flatly false - and I think the 9/11 commission understood that," Rice said during a wide-ranging meeting with Post editors and reporters.

"What we did in the eight months was at least as aggressive as what the Clinton administration did in the preceding years," Rice added.

The secretary of state also sharply disputed Clinton's claim that he "left a comprehensive anti-terror strategy" for the incoming Bush team during the presidential transition in 2001.

"We were not left a comprehensive strategy to fight al Qaeda," Rice responded during the hourlong session.

Her strong rebuttal was the Bush administration's first response to Clinton's headline-grabbing interview on Fox on Sunday in which he launched into an over-the-top defense of his handling of terrorism - wagging his finger in the air, leaning forward in his chair and getting red-faced, and even attacking Wallace for improper questioning.

I'm relatively sure that much of what the Bush Administration has done regarding terrorism in the months prior to 9/11 remains classified, and so it is difficult to say with any certainty what steps the Administration may have been taking. I would have hoped that among the first steps of the Administration on the subject after taking office would have been to start revamping the human intelligence effort that Clinton gutted in his eight years in office.

Why did Clinton gut American surveillance? Look to the Donkey:

In the past twenty years, there have been at least two high-profile incidents involving leaks. Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont was forced to resign from the Senate Intelligence Committee after being tied to a series of leaks in the 1980s. Congressman (later Senator) Robert Torricelli revealed secret information acquired by virtue of his position on the House Intelligence Committee. The information involved a source in Guatemala who had been allegedly been involved in a murder at the behest of then-girlfriend Bianca Jagger. The resulting scandal caused a Clinton Administration “human rights scrub” of human intelligence assets who had been alleged to have connections with criminals or terrorists. Of course, the “human rights scrub” placed the very people who would know about the activities of terrorists and other bad guys off limits to the CIA.

In short, Bill Clinton, embarrassed by Democrats leaking top secret information to the press, decided that instead of cracking down on Democrats, that the best thing to do was to sever the CIA's contact with the very people who would be in the best position to give us information about terrorist activity.

This of course, is the same Bill Clinton that invited terrorist leader Yasser Arafat to the White House on numerous occasions and refused to address Iraq's terrorist threat, even though three of the world's most famous terrorists prior to Osama bin Laden—Abu Nidal, Abu Abbas, and the bomb-builder of the 1993 Word Trade Center attacks Abdul Rahman Yasin—lived as Saddam's guests in Baghdad.

The Clinton Adminstration also downplayed the fact that Yasin's bomb was built as a chemical weapon; an ammonium nitrate bomb laced with sodium cyanide. Yasin hoped that the bomb would disperse a cloud of poisonous cyanide smoke, killing thousands in the tower as it went up through the elevator and ventilation shafts. Fortunately, the cyanide was vaporized by the blast instead of dispersed in the smoke, and the tower was not undermined by the blast as he hoped. If Yasin had been successful in his 1993 attempt, the casualties of the 1993 Trade Center Attack would likely have far eclipsed the casualties of 9/11. The Clinton Administration responded by treating the treating the attack as a matter of criminal law instead of urgent national security.

The pattern continued.

20 were killed and 372 were injured in the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing. The Clinton Administration did not respond. FBI Director Louis Freeh notes that neither Clinton nor Sandy "Pants" Berger wanted to deal with the fact that Iran was behind the attacks. In the remaining years of his Presidency, Clinton did precisely nothing to bring the bombers to justice. Frustrated by the Clinton Adminstration's inaction, Freeh finally contacted former President George H.W. Bush to move the case forward (my bold):

I had learned that he [former President Bush] was about to meet Crown Prince Abdullah on another matter. After fully briefing Mr. Bush on the impasse and faxing him the talking points that I had now been working on for over two years, he personally asked the crown prince to allow FBI agents to interview the detained bombers.

After his Saturday meeting with now-King Abdullah, Mr. Bush called me to say that he made the request, and that the Saudis would be calling me. A few hours later, Prince Bandar, then the Saudi ambassador to Washington, asked me to come out to McLean, Va., on Monday to see Crown Prince Abdullah. When I met him with Wyche Fowler, our Saudi ambassador, and FBI counterterrorism chief Dale Watson, the crown prince was holding my talking points. He told me Mr. Bush had made the request for the FBI, which he granted, and told Prince Bandar to instruct Nayef to arrange for FBI agents to interview the prisoners.

Several weeks later, agents interviewed the co-conspirators. For the first time since the 1996 attack, we obtained direct evidence of Iran's complicity. What Mr. Clinton failed to do for three years was accomplished in minutes by his predecessor.

The Clinton Administration's response? According to Freeh, they buried the evidence collected after a series of "damage control" meetings. It was only after Clinton exited office and President George W. Bush and Condoleezza Rice got involved that charges were brought forth against the conspirators on June 21, 2001, five years after the attacks, and just four months after President Bush took office.

That pattern continued.

More than 200 were killed and more than 4,000 were wounded in simultaneous 1998 car bomb explosions on the U. S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. Clinton responded by firing cruise missiles at the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Sudan and at nearly empty al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan. Physical targets were destroyed, but only 20 terrorists were thought to have been killed, and Clinton Secretary of Defense William Cohen said that killing bin Laden, "not our design." Legally, a handful of terrorists were captured, tried, and convicted. Many more terrorists associated with the plot remained free.

Clinton's most robust response to terrorism was still ineffective.

Five months before Clinton left office, 17 sailors were killed and 39 were wounded when the U.S.S. Cole was hit by an al Qaeda suicide boat bomber while refueling in the Yemeni port of Aden. The rules of engagement prevented Cole guards from firing upon the approaching vessels without direct order from senior officers. According to Wikipedia:

Petty Officer Jennifer Kudrick said that if the sentries had fired on the suicide craft "we would have gotten in more trouble for shooting two foreigners than losing 17 American sailors."

Bill Clinton left office having never paid more than lip service to finding or destroying those behind the attack. On November 2, 2002, an armed Predator drone operated by the CIA killed Abu Ali al-Harithi and five other terrorists traveling with him in Yemen. The bombing's mastermind, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, was captured that same month and is currently being held by the United States at an undisclosed location.

Bill Clinton did next to nothing to attack al Qaeda in response to four terrorist attacks on the United States during his eight years in office. That he would feign outrage and falsify excuses for his inaction is to invite the criticism he so richly deserves.

Eats, Shoots Jihadis and Leaves

Another Jihadi leader gets killed:

British forces said they killed a top terrorist leader Monday, identified by Iraqi officials as an al Qaeda leader who had escaped from a U.S. prison in Afghanistan and returned to Iraq.

Omar Farouq was killed in a pre-dawn raid by 250 British troops from the Princess of Wales Royal Regiment on his home in Basra, 340 miles southeast of Baghdad, British forces spokesman Maj. Charlie Burbridge said.

Farouq was killed after he opened fire on British soldiers entering his home, Burbridge said.

"We had information that a terrorist of considerable significance was hiding in Basra; as a result of that information we conducted an operation in an attempt to arrest him," Burbridge told The Associated Press by telephone from southern Iraq. "During the attempted arrest Omar Farouq was killed, which is regrettable because we wanted to arrest him."

I'll admit to being easily amused by this "eats, shoots and leaves" phrasing from above:

Omar Farouq was killed in a pre-dawn raid by 250 British troops...

Killed by 250 British soldiers, or killed during a raid conducted by 250 soldiers? The answer is obviously the latter, but the-less-than-perfect sentence construction creates a quick mental image of 250 British soldiers concurrently pouring lead into one hapless jihadi.

And yes, that's good for a smirk.

Clinton Spins

I had better things to do over the weekend that listen to Bill Clinton try to defend his record of inaction against al Qaeda, but Patterico took the time to show that once again, Bill Clinton is much more interested in imparting spin to defend his miserable record than accept fault for his failures in defending America from Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network of terrorists.

Chris Wallace asked Bill Clinton a very simple, straightforward question of why he didn't do more to get bin Laden, and in response, Clinton accused Wallace of a "conservative hit job."

Mr. Clinton, asking you why you didn't do more is a legitimate question when thousands of people were injured and hundreds killed on attacks against U.S. targets in 1998 and 2000 while you were President.

You admitted you failed, Mr. Clinton. You should have stopped there.

Reuters CEO: All Our Fakes Are Belong to You

He admits to to photo fakery being widespread and almost impossible to detect at this time, which I think is a gutsy thing to do. Allah has the video over at Hot Air.

Osama Bin Dyin'? (Part XXIVIII)

We've got another rumor that Osama bin Laden may have died. Ace makes a more compelling case that I've heard in a while, but until I see a rotting head on a pike, or at least the results of a DNA test, I won't be fully convinced.

The AP story, again not confirmed, is here.

Defending Your Life

I've been reading some of the commentary leveled against the deal reached between the Congress and the White House to continue to use coercive interrogation techniques to extract information from certain high-value terrorists we have captured.

I left a version of the following as a comment (not yet posted) at the ABC News Blog The Blotter in response to criticism of the program there, and I think it sums things up nicely:

...the simple fact of the matter, as Brian Ross has stated in other forums, is that the six techniques advocated for by the CIA do work very effectively. Ross has stated that 14 terrorists have been interrogated using these methods, and all 14 have given up useful intelligence that has saved American lives as a result. None of these terrorists have been permanently injured using these techniques. Not one.

The White House and Congress have merely asked that these effective techniques be continued, to save the lives of our friends and neighbors.

Most Americans have a Jacksonian view of dealing with our nation's enemies. We will afford every right and privilege afforded by the laws of war to an honorable enemy soldier captured on the field of battle. If you fight America honorably, we will treat your honorably, even though you are our enemy. At the same time, if our enemy dismisses the agreed upon common decencies and rights, there are no legal moral or ethical reasons that we should treat them with kidd gloves at the expense of our own lives.

If our enemies are dishonorable, attacking innocent men, woman, and children instead of legitimate targets, then our gloves will come of as well, and we have the right to engage you in total war with all the methods at our disposal to defeat you. And yet, the United States has conducted an exceedingly restrained and honorable war against terrorists and the nations that support terrorism.

Even though we have the unquestioned capability, we have not launched the large-scale carpet bombing campaigns against cities and civilian populations that we did in the Second World War. We use precision-guided weaponry whenever possible, with protection of even enemy-sympathetic citizenry always at the forefront of our mission planning. Our honored military veterans are fully aware of the great pains we take to minimize civilian casualties, even though the pains we take to ensure the safety of innocents often puts our soldiers lives at risk in exchange. We have without a doubt, and without contradiction, the most lethal and compassionate military force that this planet has ever seen.

But even though we are compassionate, we recognize that to survive as this great and compassionate nation, we cannot be weak and cowardly, as many would clearly like us to be.

The techniques we use are unpleasant and coercive, but they are not torture, and it is both dishonest and disheartening to see our own media attempting to blur the line in such a way to make all such life-saving intelligence gathering techniques a crime.

By their own repeated, long-standing and well-documented series of abuses of basic human rights and dignities, the terrorists we have captured have forfeited any right for human treatment, and yet we consistently treat them better than we do domestic criminals in our prisons and jails.

We are clearly on moral ground here, no matter how willing many people in our own nation are willing to give that ground away.

German Woman Saves U. S. Navy SEAL

The power of social networking, as practiced by the blogosphere.

Simply awesome.

Israel: News Agencies May Be Enabling Terrorism

Remember the Reuters news vehicle that was fired upon, but not directly hit by an Israeli helicopter gunship while acting suspiciously near Israeli positions in Gaza?

The Israeli Government Press Office is now stating that they believe armored vehicles licensed to news agencies, such as the Reuters vehicle attacked, might be being used by terrorist groups to launch attacks against Israel:

Armored vehicles that were given to foreign news agencies operating in the country with the authorization of the State of Israel, may be used by hostile groups to carry out terror attacks against Israel, Director of the Government Press Office Danny Seaman warned in a letter addressed to Shin Bet Head Yuval Diskin.

On August 27 an Israel Defense Forces helicopter hit an armored vehicle that belonged to the Reuters news agency in Gaza. According to
Seaman, the incident illustrated the failures in overseeing the use of armored vehicles granted to the foreign media agencies with the permission of the State.

The vehicle's presence in Gaza in itself constituted a violation of its license terms, and moreover, the jeep was carrying only Palestinians – one with links to Hamas who was not a Reuters employee.

Licenses for armored vehicles are granted by the State to foreign news agencies in Israel for the purpose of carrying out journalistic missions in the West Bank and Gaza. The State has even agreed to extend the permits for more than the one year stipulated by the law, on the condition that the license holder is a foreign national and that he alone will drive the car.

"To the best of our knowledge, all of the vehicles' owners have been violating the conditions for a long time now, despite our requests. This is not the first time we are warning that these vehicles will be used by hostile agents to carry out a terror attack against Israel. The recent incident in Gaza only illustrates the danger," Seaman wrote the Shin Bet chief.

In more direct terms, Israel is saying that the Reuters news vehicle was not being operated by newsmen, but terrorists using the vehicle as a sort of "Trojan horse." The press office is directly stating that those injured were not newsmen, but likely terrorists.

As one of the injured non-journalists was a Iranian, we have to ask if this could be considered as an act of war by Iran against Israel.

My gut says "yes." Mein darm also says Israel won't take direct action against Iran.

What hangs in the air as an interesting possibility is the very much implied threat that Israel might very well yank licenses for armored vehicles from news services for violation of the terms of their licenses. Allowing the vehicles to be used for terrorist transportation and attacks would obviously constitute a serious breach of contract.

We've long suspected that international news agencies have been sympathetic to the cause of terrorism. The Israeli Government Press Office is now stating publicly that they believe it as well.

Update: photos added. Thanks to reader "yet to use" for the tip.

LL Cool A

Liberals Love Cool Ahmadinejad:

I keep talking about this with people in real life, but it deserves a blog mention as well -- Mahmoun Ahmadinejad has a pretty sweet hipster style. It all starts with a beard not unlike the one I and many of my twentysomething male friends sport. But it goes deeper. The man went without a tie to address the UN General Assembly. And I was in a bar where the TV was showing his interview with Anderson Cooper (it's DC, these things happen) and while there was no sound, he certainly looked witty and charming. There was also this clip of him walking down some hallway shooting the shit with Kofi Annan. It's like diplomacy! Bush should try it. One gets the sense that he's getting his stody red tie-wearing ass kicked this session by sundry third world goons and it's really not a proud moment for the United States

I left the following response in his comments:

Matt,

There are plenty of fools shuffling down the streets of New York with scruffy beard thinking they know the will of God, it's just that most of them are either homeless or tenured, and none are worth the fawning adoration you bestow on a man that denies the holocaust while advocating its return.

We want to stop him from commiting genocide. They look to him for fashion tips.

Security moms, please take note.

Iranian President Caught in a Lie

This is what he says:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad insisted Thursday that Tehran's nuclear program is peaceful and said he is "at a loss" about what more he can do to provide guarantees. "The bottom line is we do not need a bomb," he said at a news conference on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly. "The time for nuclear bombs has ended," he added.

This is what they do:

Iran successfully test-fired a missile that can avoid radar and hit several targets simultaneously using multiple warheads, the military said Friday.

The Fajr-3, which means "Victory" in Farsi, can reach Israel and US bases in the Middle East, state Iranian media indicated - causing alarm in the United States and Israel. The announcement also is likely to stoke regional tensions and feed suspicion about Tehran's military intentions and nuclear ambitions.

MIRVs--multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles--were developed in the 1960s with one goal in mind, the delivery of multiple nuclear warheads from an intercontinental ballistic missile. Only recently has the United States become the first nation to consider converting MIRVs into non-nuclear weapons systems.

The Fajr-3 mentioned in the article above is designed and tested with a MIRV that carries three warheads. Israel can be effectively "wiped off the map" as Ahmadinejad has promised, with just two nuclear warheads.

Iran says it does not want nuclear weapons, yet it develops and tests nuclear-capable missile systems while continuing to try to hide its nuclear program.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the apocalyptic, holocaust-denying "pocket Hitler" of Tehran, has been caught lying again.

Why the Delay?

I can't understand why Israel has delayed its withdrawal in the wake of a 34-day war instigated by Hezbollah.

After all, UNIFL (the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon) did promise they would keep the peace by acting as a buffer between Hezbollah and Israel, and they are certainly doing a spectacular job thus far.

Here are French tanks under UNIFL in peacekeeping duties. That parking lot is certainly well-defended. No Hezbollah activity there.

Here are Italian peacekeepers under UNIFL. No Hezbollah rockets in these boxes of merchandise.

This French peacekeeper can't see any members of Hezbollah through these sunglasses.

It certainly looks like southern Lebanon is under the kind of helpful protection we've come to expect from the United Nations.

I don't understand the Israeli concerns at all.

Lying About Body Armor

We saw the availability of modern body for our troops raised several times by both parties as an issue in the 2004 elections, and Factcheck.org shows that the half-truths and lies are being raised once more, particularly by a 501(c) PAC called VoteVets.org, that claims to represent military veterans. These veterans should know about the body armor they are issued, and therefore is almost certainly lying on purpose, not from a position of ignorance. Interestingly and perhaps tellingly, the candidates supported by VoteVets.org seem to take stands on issues that would identify them as Democrats, and the one stated Republican candidate is the only one with an active web site to which the VoteVets have not activated the link. Make of that what you will.

Factcheck.org provides the content of the ad in sidebar:

VoteVets Ad: "Armor"

Granato: AK-47, the rifle of choice for terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan.
This is a vest left over from the Vietnam War. It's the protection we were given when we deployed to Iraq.

(Granato shoots AK-47 at vest)

Granato: This is modern body armor, made for today's weapons.

(Granato shoots AK-47 at vest)

Granato: The difference is life or death.

(Mannequins underneath show that modern vest stops bullets but Vietnam-era vest does not.)

Granato: Senator George Allen voted against giving our troops this. Now it's time for us to vote against him.

On Screen: Source: Vote #116, 108th Congress, 1st Session.

Announcer: Vote Vets is responsible for the content of this advertisement.

The problem is that Granato is categorically lying. The vest in question is not left over from the Vietnam War, but was of the PASGAT type issued from the 1980s until the Army began phasing in in the next-generation Interceptor body armor—the first wide-spread issue of military body armor designed to stop bullets, not just shrapnel—in 1999.

I advise you to read the entire Factcheck.org article to educate yourself on the body armor issue in general, and the very dishonest ad being promoted by Votevets.org in specific. This new group should be closely watched.

I'd like to point out that blogs on both ends of the political spectrum are pointing out the lies being spread by VoteVets.org. TPMMuckraker played the issue honestly, even though voteVets seems to be functioning as a Democratic front group.

On the other hand, some folks will never let a little thing like facts get in their way.

The Devil's Recipe

The suspect in a horrific murder in Colorado—where a woman was tied by her neck to a tow-rope and dragged along an interstate highway and surface streets for over a mile to her death—has been arrested. Jose Luis Rubi-Nava is being held without bail yesterday on first-degree murder charges. He is thought to be an illegal immigrant from Mexico.

This, of course, is far from the first death committed in the United States by an illegal alien and it assuredly will not be the last. One can also make the argument that this same crime could have just as easily occurred on the other side of the Rio Grande, and they would be correct.

But this murder happened here, in our country, and a plausible argument can be made that it may never have occurred if Rubi-Nava had not found it so easy, like millions of others, to spill northward across our largely undefended borders.

President Bush has not aggressively defended our borders, something that we expect from a President in a time of peace, much less the current climate of war. This as-yet-unknown woman can credit the White House with allowing her murderer into this country.

Sadly, Jose Rubi-Nava is far from being the only unstable "dangerous material" the current administration has let across our border.

I wonder how many more Americans will have to die from solitary acts, gang crimes or dirty bombs before President Bush realizes than an open border policy such as the one he practices is a devil's recipe inviting murder.

Hussein Staged Photos with Posed Bodies?

Dan Riehl makes the stunning accusation that Associate Press photographer Bilal Hussein, a liberal and MSM cause de jour over the last week, staged photos of posed bodies with Iraqi children on January 25, 2005 in Ramadi, Iraq.

Dan is correct in charging that a body has been clearly moved in the photo about 3-4 feet, and in fact dragged over the top of another body between the first and third photos on his site.

I, however, have some problems with the photos used as examples.

(WARNING: graphic photos follow)

The AP caption for the first photo from Bilal Hussein states:

Iraqi youths stand next to five dead bodies in Ramadi, an insurgent stronghold 113 kilometers (70 miles) west of Baghdad, Saturday, Jan. 29, 2005. Insurgents claimed the men worked for the Americans. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

There is just one minor problem with the caption and photo. There are six bodies in the picture, not five.

I've lightly modified the photos for illustrative purposes. Every body is numbered in green, with a corresponding green line showing the general orientation of the body in question. As a reference point, I've indicated the edge of the concrete curb with a red line as well.

Bodies numbered 1-3 in this photo are clearly separated as distinct and individual bodies, with bodies 4-6 appearing more as an indistinct group because of the camera angle and distance.

We can however, make several observations about bodies 4-6 in this photo:

• body 4 lies on his back wearing blue pants, and lies parallel with and against the curb
• body 5 is wearing dark pants on the far side of body 4, and is laying perpendicular to the curb, with his head just touching it.
• Body 6 is all but completely obscured from this angle, but is betrayed by the blue inner lining of his jacket with obscures the base of the metal curb railing. He is also laying parallel to the curb.

It is critical to note the red line I've drawn to enhance the edge of the concrete curb in this photo. Note not a single body part from any of the six dead men extends above that marked curb edge in this photo.

Now let's look at what is the third photo on Dan's site, showing much the same scene from the opposite angle.

For this angle, body 6 is finally clearly visible. The blue jacket lining noted in the first photo is clearly pronounced, and his relative position the curb and the short metal curb railing conclusively proves that the Associated Press photo editors and caption writers were wrong about the number of bodes in the photo. The existence of a sixth body doesn't show them to be evil or dishonest, just sloppy.

The manipulation of body 5 to create another photo opportunity, however, is another matter entirely. There is no doubt that body 5 has been moved 3-4 feet up an over the curb edge and over the head of body 4 as compared to the body position in photo 1.

The Associate Press is guilty of sloppy photojournalistic fact checking by not even being able to get the number of victims correct, and it's credibility deserved to be called in question over the obvious manipulation of body 4.

It remains to be determined if they employed a terrorist as a photojournalist.

Update: Dan now states these photos were shot on successive days in the same location, with bodies 4-6 dumped January 28 and bodies 1-3 added on January 29. I'm not sure how much that matters to the points I made that:

• AP can't count the six bodies present in the first photo.
• the bodies, whenever they were deposited, had been obviously moved.

ABC News: Torture Works

Apparently, even harsh critics in the CIA say it is an extremely effective (a perfect 14 for 14) and accurate intelligence gathering technique that has proven effective and saved American lives without a single terrorist suffering permament damage.

It's time we get this out the hands out of unsanitary back-alley torturers.

Torture. Let's keep it safe and legal.

Update: Olbermann. Proved a fool again.

Amazon's Tool Time

I was looking through Amazon.com last night and ran across of interesting tools they've developed to help sell merchandise through associated web sites and blogs that seem interesting.

One is the concept of a easily configurable, associate-built e-store that Amazon, being Amazon, had to call an aStore. I put together a quick but functioning aStore; test it out, and let me know what you think about the functionality. As a techie with web usability experience, I find this stuff interesting.

The other concoction is a new "smart" ad-serving software program called Omakase, which is Japanese for "leave it up to us."

I'm not about to start dumping ads in my content, but thought it might be interesting to see what kind of ads that Omakase might dig up for Confederate Yankee.

Voting To Kill

In this mail today was a copy of Jim Geraghty's Voting To Kill: How 9/11 Launched the Era of Republican Leadership. Pressed for time, I slipped it into a cargo pocket of my shorts and took my daughter to her beginning tap/ballet class.

After Little One disappeared behind the door of the dance studio, I schlepped back to the waiting area and began to read, interrupted here and there by toddlers toddling and cross-chatter--all moms; the other solo dad bolted within minutes to return when the lesson was over, and not a second before--and the oddest thing occurred. Geraghty's assumptions were put to the test directly before my eyes.

The first chapter of the book is called "Post-9/11 America" and it deals, as you might guess, with the emotional impact of 9/11 as it reverberates even today. Among the people discussed were "security moms," suburban mothers who had voted Democratic in 1992 and 1996 and 2000, who radically had their worldviews resculpted as they watched five hundred Americans vaporized on live television.

Leading up to the 2004 elections, Democrats seemed to discount the security moms, and they lost. They still discount the security moms, and act as if they never existed. They do exist. I heard them tonight.

Yesterday morning, an equipment malfunction shutdown nearby Shearon Harris nuclear power plant, and the plant remained offline under the non-emergency shutdown today.

As little girls scuffed tap shoes on hardwood floors in the next room and I buried my nose in Chapter One, these moms were discussing more than just the shutdown. They talked about the shutdown, what they would do in the event of a leak, what they thought might happen if terrorists attack, and what they thought the likelihood of a successful attack was (not good, according to the moms). They discussed other possible area targets as well before the line of conversation ran dry and they switched over to another topic... the up-coming year-round schools, l think.

But my point is that while I was reading about the security moms in Voting To Kill that many Democrats seem to think have gone the way of the dinosaurs, there they were--crikey!--all around me, still very much aware and alert and as conversant on matters of nuclear planet security as they are school fundraisers. Security moms are alive and well and now an integral part of the big Who We Are. Democrats will ignore them again in '06, and find new and exciting excuses for why they continue to lose.

Class was over for the night. I learned something. It's also apparent in the first chapter of Voting To Kill, that Democrats obviously haven't.

FEAR: Why The Press Won't Tell You What Ahmadinejad Said

A striking bit of journalistic malpractice seems to have affected the mainstream media web sites this morning, as news site after news site failed to provide their readers with the transcript of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speech last night to the United Nations.

As of noon at ABC News, it is as if Ahmadinejad never spoke, as their was no reference to his address in front of the United Nations on their Web site's front page, and is notably absent from the headlines of their political section as well. I had to search Google News to find this report on their site, which did not link to the transcript, nor provide Ahmadinejad's closing remarks.

Likewise, Ahmadinejad's speech was not easily found on the CBS News site, and when an article was found buried below the fold of their International news section, their story, as well, did not provide a transcript nor a summation of his closing remarks.

The New York Times had Bush's transcript from hours before, but couldn't be troubled to run that of the Iranian President. CNN did likewise.

The Boston Globe, Fox News, MSNBC, and most other news organizations also failed to either discuss the apocalyptic overtones of the Iranian President's remarks, or provide a transcript from easily available wire reports. To their credit, the Washington Post at least provided the transcript far down on their World News page, though they provided precious little commentary otherwise.

What is the reason the world media was apparently so eager to bury the content what was a highly anticipated speech by Iran's flamboyant President?

It was likely his dark conclusion:

Whether we like it or not, justice, peace and virtue will sooner or later prevail in the world, with the will of the almighty God. It is imperative and also desirable that we, too, contribute to the promotion of justice and virtue.

The almighty and merciful God, who is the creator of the universe, is also its lord and ruler. Justice is his command. He commands his creatures to support one another in good, virtue, and piety, and not in decadence and corruption.

He commands his creatures to enjoin one another to righteousness and virtue, and not to sin and transgression. All divine prophets, from the prophet Adam, peace be upon him, to the prophet Moses, to the prophet Jesus Christ, to the prophet Mohammad, have all called humanity to monotheism, justice, brotherhood, love and compassion.

Is it not possible to build a better world based on monotheism, justice, love and respect for the rights of human beings and thereby transform animosities into friendship?

I emphatically declare that today's world, more than ever before, longs for just and righteous people, with love for all humanity, and, above all, longs for the perfect righteous human being and the real savior who has been promised to all peoples and who will establish justice, peace and brotherhood on the planet.

Oh, almighty God, all men and women are your creatures and you have ordained their guidance and salvation. Bestow upon humanity that thirst for justice, the perfect human being promised to all by you, and makers among his followers and among those who strive for his return and his cause.

This same Iranian President spoke in front of the United Nations previously on September 17, 2005, a fact also missing from many news accounts of the last week. Those that did mention Ahmadinejad's September speech uniformly left off the fact that Ahmadinejad claimed that his September speech in Front of the same United Nations chamber was touched by the Divine:

Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad says that when he delivered his speech at the UN General Assembly in September, he felt there was a light around him and that the attention of the world leaders in the audience was unblinkingly focused upon him. The claim has caused a stir in Iran, as a transcript and video recording of Ahmadinejad's comments have been published on an Iranian website, baztab.com. There are also reports that a CD showing Ahmadinejad making the comments also has been widely distributed in Iran. Is the Iranian president claiming to be divinely inspired?

Prague, 29 November 2005 (RFE/RL) -- According the report by baztab.com, President Ahmadinejad made the comments in a meeting with one of Iran's leading clerics, Ayatollah Javadi Amoli.

Ahmadinejad said that someone present at the UN told him that a light surrounded him while he was delivering his speech to the General Assembly. The Iranian president added that he also sensed it.

"He said when you began with the words 'in the name of God,' I saw that you became surrounded by a light until the end [of the speech]," Ahmadinejad appears to say in the video. "I felt it myself, too. I felt that all of a sudden the atmosphere changed there, and for 27-28 minutes all the leaders did not blink."

Ahmadinejad adds that he is not exaggerating.

"I am not exaggerating when I say they did not blink; it's not an exaggeration, because I was looking," he says. "They were astonished as if a hand held them there and made them sit. It had opened their eyes and ears for the message of the Islamic Republic."

During this same speech, Ahmadinejad called for the near-term reappearance of the 12th Imam, who he feels will redeem the world through an apocalypse he feels his sect has the right and responsibility to create. As I noted in August, the mullahcracy that runs Iran belongs to the apocalyptic Hojjatieh sect, a branch of Shia Islam so radical it was banned in 1983 by Ayatollah Khomeini. Their views are, to put it mildly, are startling:

...rooted in the Shiite ideology of martyrdom and violence, the Hojjatieh sect adds messianic and apocalyptic elements to an already volatile theology. They believe that chaos and bloodshed must precede the return of the 12th Imam, called the Mahdi. But unlike the biblical apocalypse, where the return of Jesus is preceded by waves of divinely decreed natural disasters, the summoning of the Mahdi through chaos and violence is wholly in the realm of human action. The Hojjatieh faith puts inordinate stress on the human ability to direct divinely appointed events. By creating the apocalyptic chaos, the Hojjatiehs believe it is entirely in the power of believers to affect the Mahdi's reappearance, the institution of Islamic government worldwide, and the destruction of all competing faiths.

Ahmadinejad's speech last night echoed his beliefs last night. When he stated, "Whether we like it or not, justice, peace and virtue will sooner or later prevail in the world," sooner is now and later is a point that eerily seems to coincide with when many intelligence experts feel Iran may have the capability to build a functional nuclear weapon, and bring about the man-made Armageddon that the Hojjatieh sect feels is their obligation to Allah.

This leads us back full-circle to ask once more why major U.S. and world media outlets have largely refused to issue transcripts of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speech last night to the United Nations, and why they chose to embargo his dramatic closing provided above.

I submit that if the media covered Ahmadinejad's full remarks including the religious references that they clearly and cleverly omitted, then they would have to confront the scope of the clear and present danger that the Iranian regime presents to the rest of the world. Admitting this danger goes against the carefully crafted narrative that they have led themselves to believe, a narrative that they have passed along to their readers and viewers that the United States and Israel are the root causes of problems in the Middle East.

To admit the dangers of the intertwining of Iranian nuclear weapons development with a radical and apocalyptic eschatology is to admit that President George W. Bush is correct in his determination to prevent Iran from developing the ability to effect a religious nuclear war. It is to admit that there are far greater dangers to our freedoms than terrorist surveillance programs and chilled members of al Qaeda.

To admit that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad means precisely what he says, and has said time and again, is to admit to larger dangers that neither the press nor the Democratic party they overwhelming support can admit. To admit to the truth—to show what Iran and its leader represent as a threat to the world—is to shatter a carefully crafted illusion they have formulated that most of the problems of the world originate at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

When faced with revealing a truth that would create cognitive dissonance, the media has made the subconscious decision to simply excise, and then ignore, the facts that undercut their "larger truth." They'd rather risk lives than admit the possibility that President Bush's concerns about a nuclear-armed Iran are precisely on target.

They aren't scared about the possibility of millions of people dying. That are far more fearful that the President is right, and that the world they've created for themselves is all too wrong.

Hiding Behind Children

Whether inspired by Hamas and Hezbollah or Sunni and Shiite terror leaders in Iraq, it's hard to see attempts such as these to use children as bait or targets with anything other than abject contempt:

Shiite militias are encouraging children — some as young as 6 or 7 — to hurl stones and gasoline bombs at U.S. convoys, hoping to lure American troops into ambushes or provoke them into shooting back, U.S. soldiers say.

Gangs of up to 100 children assemble in Sadr City, stronghold of radical anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army militia, and in nearby neighborhoods, U.S. officers said in interviews this week.

American soldiers have seen young men, their faces covered by bandanas, talking with the children before the rock-throwing attacks begin — and sometimes handing out slingshots so the volleys will be more accurate, the troops said.

"It's like a militia operation. They'll mass rocks on the last or second-to-last vehicle" in a U.S. patrol, said Capt. Chris L'Heureux, 30, of Woonsocket, R.I. "There's no doubt in my mind that they're utilizing these kids in a deliberate, thought-out way."

The U.S. military is of course ignoring the attacks thus far. Armored combat vehicles are not threatened by rocks, but it is probably only a matter of time until the same militiamen stoop to an even lower level.

As U.S. forces refuse to be baited by children armed with rocks, it is probably only a matter of time before they arm one of these children with a grenade, knowing that a 6 or 7 year old will not be able to throw the one-pound weapons far enough to keep from killing or wounding themselves.

The deaths of these children--caused directly by al-Sadr's militiamen--will be blamed upon coalition forces in a "Pallywood" production in an attempt to further inflame tensions in an area where al-Sadr's "Mahdi Army" of rag-tag militiamen and death squads are coming under increasing pressure from U.S. and Iraqi Army forces.

There are two ways of resolve this style of cowardly attack before deaths result from the militia's use of children, one military, and one social.

Militarily, U.S. and Iraqi forces--especially Iraqi Army forces--must step up the tempo of operations inside the Sadr City slums of Baghdad, arresting and if necessary killing Muqtada al-Sadr and other leaders of the Madhi Army.

At the same time, Iraqi police and military units need to go on a public relations offensive in Sadr City, informing mothers and fathers of how al-Sadr's militiamen are using their children as bait. It is quite possible that some parents support the cowardly acts of the al Sadr militiamen, but I suspect many will respond with anger towards the militia and their children's too willing participation as did the one mother mentioned in the article:

After several rocks were thrown at passing U.S. vehicles in Shaab, soldiers followed one child home. When soldiers told his mother what had happened, she slapped her son across the face in front of them.

A smart P.R. campaign waged by Shiite soldiers in the Iraqi Army can turn the militia's cowardice and scheming against them, driving a wedge between al Sadr and the people he would use to consolidate his own power. One can only hope that the Iraqi Army is smart enough to realize that this potential for tragedy can be turned into an opportunity to strengthen ties between the Iraqi Army and those they would protect.

Catalytic Conversion

Last week, Pope Benedict XVI spoke at his former university, and during the course of his talk he made reference to an obscure conversation between a Byzantine Christian Emperor and a man described as "an educated Persian."

The emperor in question, Manuel II Paleologos, noted:

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

In the week since Pope Benedict made reference to Manuel II's comment, Muslims have rioted, burned at least seven churches, murdered a nun, and one Muslim leader has even called for the Pope himself to be executed for insulting Islam. Muslim extremists have committed acts of senseless violence in trying to argue that they are a "religion of peace," and seem quite oblivious to the fact that their behavior only reinforces observations made centuries before.

The Pope has issued non-apology apologies thus far, diplomatically stating to Muslims and other critics essentially that, "I'm sorry you aren't smart enough to understand what I meant."

The Pope spoke on the subject again today:

Pope Benedict XVI has said he has "deep respect" for Islam and hopes that his recent remarks that sparked anger from Muslims lead to dialogue among religions.

The pope on Wednesday acknowledged his remarks were open to misinterpretation, but insisted he had not intended to endorse a negative view of Islam.

"I hope that in several occasions during the visit ... my deep respect for great religions, in particular for Muslims -- who worship the one God and with whom we are engaged in defending and promoting together social justice, moral values, peace and freedom for all men -- has emerged clearly," Benedict said during his weekly audience at the Vatican.

"I trust that after the initial reaction, my words at the university of Regensburg can constitute an impulse and encouragement toward positive, even self-critical dialogue both among religions and between modern reason and Christian faith," the pope told thousands of faithful in St. Peter's Square. Security in the square had been stepped up.

As others have noted, I doubt very seriously that the Pope chose to use this rather obscure text accidentally, or without understanding on some level that it might sow the seeds of discord in a world Muslim community, that frankly, seems to need very little instigation to become outraged. Other Catholic luminaries, including the current Archbishop of Sydney and the former Archbishop of Canterbury have supported the thrust of the Pope's comments.

I'm now starting to wonder if this is part of a designed attempt to lead Islam—particularly the often silent voices that claim to be the "moderate Muslim" supermajority—to look within itself and confront the extremists and fundamentalist sects within it. It seems quite possible that the Pope is very sincere in his respect for Islam as a fellow Abrahamic faith. His choice of words last week may have been chosen as a catalyst, and his stated desire for "promoting together social justice, moral values, peace and freedom for all men," is precisely the goal of the Church.

It would be very encouraging if moderate Muslims seize upon this opportunity to look inward, become introspective, and determine that the terror of al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah and other terror groups are not compatible with a "religion of peace." The Pope seems to have created a situation where moderate Muslims can take back their faith from the warlords who have twisted the word of God to meet their own very human desires for empire.

Domineering political forces within Islam are forcing the religion towards a tipping point where the faith will either have to fully embrace a violent Jihad against the rest of the world, or fight an internal Jihad to bring back peace to the religion of peace.

It seems odd and at the same time encouraging that a Catholic Pope seems to be offering moderate Muslims a chance to affect their own Reformation. I hope they are wise enough to capitalize on that possibility. The alternative—the increasing isolation, radicalization and militarization of Islam—promises a dire future for the world at large and Islam in particular if the current trend is not reversed.

Former Archbishop: Pope Was Right

So much for collapsing in fear (h/t: PJM):

THE former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey of Clifton has issued his own challenge to "violent" Islam in a lecture in which he defends the Pope's "extraordinarily effective and lucid" speech.

Lord Carey said that Muslims must address "with great urgency" their religion's association with violence. He made it clear that he believed the "clash of civilisations" endangering the world was not between Islamist extremists and the West, but with Islam as a whole.

"We are living in dangerous and potentially cataclysmic times," he said. "There will be no significant material and economic progress [in Muslim communities] until the Muslim mind is allowed to challenge the status quo of Muslim conventions and even their most cherished shibboleths."

Lord Carey, seem to know the Islamic faith and culture quite well.

Lord Carey, who as Archbishop of Canterbury became a pioneer in Christian-Muslim dialogue, himself quoted a contemporary political scientist, Samuel Huntington, who has said the world is witnessing a "clash of civilisations".

Arguing that Huntington's thesis has some "validity", Lord Carey quoted him as saying: "Islam's borders are bloody and so are its innards. The fundamental problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilisation whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power."

As they say, read the whole thing.

Wipe the Spittle From Your Face, Frances

In an editorial in today's Washington Post, Eugene Robinson has a charateristic hissyfit in the typical liberal style, i.e., long on hysteria, accusation and emotional appeal, and woefully lacking in intelligence, coherence, or logic.

He shrieks:

I wish I could turn to cheerier matters, but I just can't get past this torture issue -- the fact that George W. Bush, the president of the United States of America, persists in demanding that Congress give him the right to torture anyone he considers a "high-value" terrorist suspect. The president of the United States. Interrogation by torture. This just can't be happening.

Mr Robinson begins with quite the stemwinder, but like many liberal arguments, it is based upon hysteria and half-truths, not fact.

What the President asked for is a legal clarification of Article Three of the Geneva Convention, which states:

In the case of armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties, each party to the conflict shall be bound to apply, as a minimum, the following provisions:

1. Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria.

   To this end the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons:

   1. Violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;

   2. Taking of hostages;

   3. Outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment;

   4. The passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.
   
   
2. The wounded and sick shall be collected and cared for.
   

An impartial humanitarian body, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, may offer its services to the Parties to the conflict.

The Parties to the conflict should further endeavour to bring into force, by means of special agreements, all or part of the other provisions of the present Convention.

The application of the preceding provisions shall not affect the legal status of the Parties to the conflict.

Much of Article Three is readily defined, but certain parts of Article Three are legally murky, with no clear legal definition of what constitutes "Outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment" nor of what constitutes "cruel treatment and torture."

President Bush as asked Congress to pass a federal law legally defining the requirements of the United States as they relate to the Geneva Convention, a goal deemed "helpful" by the Judge Advocate Generals of the U.S. Air Force, Army, Marine Corps, and Navy in a signed letter to Sen. John Warner And Rep. Duncan Hunter six days ago.

Major General Scott Black, U.S. Army, Judge Advocate General, when questioned about the subject by Sen. Diane Feinstein, stated of Article Three's prohibition on "Outrages upon personal dignity," stated:

"In its current formulation, it's entirely too vague, and it puts - as you mentioned before - our service members at risk, our own service members at risk."

For Robinson and other dishonest ideologues, providing a legal operating framework for our military and intelligence communities to operate under—instead of the legally dubious gray area that has existed since 1929—would strip away the ability of critics to shrilly proclaim "torture" whenever the notion suits them.

Clearly defining what kind of interrogation procedures are legal, and deciding what behaviors are clearly illegal, will protect our men in women in uniform. Robinson's main complaint seems to be that legal definitions will strip him of his assumed right to excessive hyperbole.

He drones on:

It's past time to stop mincing words. The Decider, or maybe we should now call him the Inquisitor, sticks to anodyne euphemisms. He speaks of "alternative" questioning techniques, and his umbrella term for the whole shop of horrors is "the program." Of course, he won't fully detail the methods that were used in the secret CIA prisons -- and who knows where else? -- but various sources have said they have included not just the infamous "waterboarding," which the administration apparently will reluctantly forswear, but also sleep deprivation, exposure to cold, bombardment with ear-splitting noise and other assaults that cause not just mental duress but physical agony. That is torture, and to call it anything else is a lie.

Mincing words have never been a problem for Robinson, and his proclivity for shredded logic and reason are second to none.

Robinson seems infuriated that the military and intelligence services of the United States will not provide him with a detailed list of interrogation techniques for him to quickly spill into ink, thus rendering the methods less effective. What evils he suspects from a military he clearly detests he cannot say, and it angers him, as does the a list of uncomfortable and annoying but hardly horrific inducements that he calls torture, but many of us experienced to some degree in college, often of our own free will.

Sleep deprivation is a fact of life during final exams. You can't turn on a college or professional football game without an obligatory crowd shot of nimrods in the stands, shirtless, in freezing weather for three hours at a clip. Bombardments of ear-splitting noise describe every dance club or rock concert to which I've ever gone. People willingly pay good money to have variations of these same experiences. To equate these discomforting but minor annoyances to anything resembling legitimate "torture" is the lie, a lie that Mr. Robinson is spreading with very little thought or reason.

Blathering forward, and making progressively less sense, Robinson continues:

It is not possible for our elected representatives to hold any sort of honorable "debate" over torture. Bush says he is waging a "struggle for civilization," but civilized nations do not debate slavery or genocide, and they don't debate torture, either. This spectacle insults and dishonors every American.

I never thought I'd have remind an African-American of this fact, but Mr. Robinson, you are "free at last" because of those very kinds of debates. Civilized nations do debate slavery and genocide, and past sessions of Congress have had to argue against both in this nation.

Creating federal laws--defining the legal and the illegal--are the very essence and purpose of the House and Senate. It is a shame that Mr. Robinson can't seem to grasp that this debate over creating standards to comply with Article Three is a bit of legislation that Congress should have debated and passed 77 years ago.

Robinson's editorial goes on, but to continue to fisk such poor thinking is pointless. His logic is—after all—tortured.

Runaways

I'm with Bryan all the way on this.

Many countries have been state sponsors of terrorism, but France has just become the first state sponsor of hostages.

Enjoy the Brie, boys.

Islamist Who Called For Pope's Execution Was a Drunken Heretic

Gee, what didn't he do?

This week he stood outside Westminster Cathedral in central London to call for the execution of the Pope as punishment for 'insulting Islam'. He fulminated against Pope Benedict XVl, adding: "Whoever insults the message of Mohammed is going to be subject to capital punishment."

It's a long way from his days as a medical student at Southampton University, where, friends say, he drank, indulged in casual sex, smoked cannabis and even took LSD. He called himself 'Andy' and was famed for his ability to drink a pint of cider in a few seconds.

One former acquaintance said: "At parties, like the rest of us, he was rarely without a joint. The morning after one party, I can remember him getting all the roaches (butts) from the spliffs we had smoked the night before out of the ashtrays, cutting them up and making a new one out of the leftovers.

"He would say he was a Muslim and was proud of his Pakistani heritage, but he did-n't seem to attend any of the mosques in Southampton, and I only knew of him having white girlfriends. He certainly shared a bed with them."

On one occasion, 'Andy' and a friend took LSD together. The friend said: "We took far too much and were hallucinating for 20 hours."

Stoner. Drunk. Acidhead. Islamist.

It appears Mr. Choudary is addicted to all sorts of self-destructive behavior.

Gulag University

The U.K. Guardian has obtained a list of seven interrogation techniques that the CIA would like to use to interrogate al Qaeda terror suspects.

They are:

• induced hypothermia
• forcing suspects to stand for prolonged periods
• sleep deprivation
• a technique called "the attention grab" where a suspect's shirt is forcefully seized
• the "attention slap" or open hand slapping that hurts but does not lead to physical damage
• the "belly slap"
• sound and light manipulation

Color me unimpressed. Throw in copious amounts of alcohol and some co-eds, and this sounds more like my college years than torture.

Inducted hypothermia
Hundreds of thousands of people expose themselves to this voluntarily every Saturday for three to five hours at a time, once tailgating is included. It's called going to a college football game.

Torture.

Forcing suspects to stand for prolonged periods
In college, this period is called "registration."

Torture.

sleep deprivation
This is called "final exams," where sleepless nights are commonplace and stress levels stay very high for days at a time.

Torture.

a technique called "the attention grab" where a suspect's shirt is forcefully seized

We called this "going to bars." Sometimes the grabbing was wanted (where we called this horrific act "flirting"), was innocuous (grabbing a friend by the shirt to drag them to the next bar), or was not wanted (grabbing someone to eject them from a bar). I've done all three as a student and short-term bar manager, and at least at my college, you saw a lot of all three on Halloween, where the holiday was one of the biggest celebrations of the year.

Torture.

the "attention slap" or open hand slapping that hurts but does not lead to physical damage

We have another term for this: male bonding.

It was observed pretty consistently throughout college, and it is also called "horsing around." Fraternities--groups people voluntarily joined of their own free will--generally did things that were a lot worse and often lot more disgusting. I'd rather go through a chest slap than get the "wear a raw egg on your head under a hat all day" treatment one fraternity made their pledges go through when I was in school, and the stuff they did in earlier times to pledges would certainly be a war crime in today's climate.

Torture.

the "belly slap"

See above. Not uncommon where testosterone and alcohol intermingle. Annoying? Check. Torture? If so this blogger (certainly an odd duck by any measure) is the Marquis de Sade reincarnated.

sound and light manipulation
Here in the United States, we don't call that torture, we call it "going to bars and concerts." Again, tens of thousands of college students pay good money for this kind of treatment every night of the week.

Torture.

Admittedly, the environment provided by the CIA to carry out interrogations will not be festive and those being interrogated are not there of their own free will, but that hardly constitutes torture. Some normal prison conditions in the United States expose prisoners to far worse treatment, and most of that comes from other inmates. Some prisons such as the Cook County Jail in Dick "Gulag" Durbin's home district are worse than the conditions of Abu Ghraib.

I don't feel outraged if terrorists are slapped around a little bit, or made cold, or tired, or uncomfortable. Run-of-the-mill prisoners in American jails face the same treatment as those terrorists we've captured, and many face far worse.

Many of the techniques described here are no more violent or degrading than what I've seen fraternity pledges exposed to, and to the best of my knowledge, no members of al Qaeda have been forced to serenade a sorority with "You lost that Lovin' Feelin'" wearing nothing but their "tighty whiteys" and a smile on a cold winter morning.

Perhaps when John McCain is done torturing our intelligence gathering capabilities, he can do to the universities what he has already done to campaign finance reform.

Apparently Debatable Murder

AFP's caption writer seems to take issue with Israel treating captured members of Hezbollah like criminals:

Israeli soldiers arrest two alleged Hezbollah militants outside the southern Lebanese village of Bint Jbeil in August 2006. Three suspected Hezbollah fighters who were captured during the Lebanon war were charged in Israel with "murder" and belonging to a "terrorist organisation".(AFP/File) Email Photo Print Photo

Apparently, AFP does not believe that Hezbollah is a "terrorist organisation," nor does it think that killing eight Israeli soldiers in an assault inside Israel during a time of relative peace before the recent conflict was "murder."

AFP did not say what they would prefer Hezbollah to be called, nor did they say what, if any, offense should be ascribed to the deaths of eight Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah gunfire.

Noting the Differences

A British Muslim extremist named Anjem Choudary is stating that Pope Benedict XVI should face execution for quoting from a conversation between 14th Byzantine Christian Emperor Manuel II Paleologos and an educated Persian.

The Pope's speech—a lecture on faith and reason—was a call for a reasoned synergy between faith and science to complete the human soul, and a reasoned dialogue between faiths. Islam has responded with riots around the world, the burning of no less than seven churches thus far, and the murder of a Catholic nun. A reasoned call for a lifestyle balancing secular science and theology has been responded to with unreasoning hatred, including calls for Jihad by al Qaeda and "moderate" Muslims alike.

Pope Benedict XVI called for reason and dialogue between faiths, and worldwide, Islam has responded with violence and the threats of violence, a point not lost on the Archbishop of Sydney:

Cardinal George Pell says "the violent reactions in many parts of the Islamic world" to a speech by Pope Benedict justified one of the main fears expressed by the world's Catholic leader.

"They showed the link for many Islamists between religion and violence, their refusal to respond to criticism with rational arguments, but only with demonstrations, threats and actual violence," Cardinal Pell said in a statement yesterday.

Once upon a time, I was under the belief that Islam was a rational faith, and that those that carried out violent attacks in the name of Islam misunderstood their own faith. It was both presumptuous and ignorant for me to make that assumption, as I see it now reflected in response to a call for reason from a man of God.

The violent acts carried out by Islamists—and the near-total silence from what we like to think is a majority of moderate Muslims—has ended the last illusions about Islam for many around the world. Our eyes are opening to see that Muslims seek not dialogue, but domination. Pope Benedict seeks reciprocity and respect between faiths, and Muslims are responding with attempts at intimidation. We see now that these calls for violence are not a minority viewpoint, but a sincere and troubling part of their core beliefs.

Islam means "submission," and one billion people who practice the faith seem intent on making the other five billion people on this plant submit to their views. Their desire for domination of the world by their increasingly irrational faith shows that it is they, not the West, that seeks to engage in a Holy War. They would be wise to reconsider their views.

The original Crusades saw Christian and Muslim armies that were technologically equals. That equality no longer exists today, and the military superiority of the West over the Islamic world is pronounced. To date, Western reason shaped by Judeo-Christian compassion has prevented us from using our military supremacy to forcefully thwart Islamist plans for world domination with our full might, but our decision to hold that power in check is not without limits.

If practitioners of the Muslim faith think that they can exert their will unchecked through the most violent of means without facing an earthly reckoning beyond their comprehension, they are sadly mistaken. Our rational beliefs have had us regarding Islam as a possible threat to be dealt with surgically, but not one yet worth acting against generally with our full military might.

One act of sufficient scope and horror would change the calculus of the equation. Islamists seem to sincerely believe that nations shaped by Judeo-Christian beliefs are soft, and that we will fall quickly if they act with sufficient aggression and callousness against those they see as infidels.

Islamic leaders should reconsider the ramifications of the widespread Jihad they call for against the West. If they provoke us sufficiently, the same reason that has had us hold ourselves in check to date will dictate that that restraint we have practiced is counterproductive to our continued existence, and Islam will not see another century.

We are not weak, but reasoned, and the Muslims of the world crying for violent Jihad against would be wise to note the difference.

Man Rams Capitol Security Barricade

Not much detail, but CNN reports that he has been arrested and that no one was hurt.

I wonder... has anyone seen Patrick Kennedy lately?

Lost In Translation

I know that some fanatics certainly seem to get off on it, but is calling jihad "the hump of Islam" really what they meant to convey?

Party Clown

Sean Penn fails to dazzle us with his philosophical brilliance, quoting from radical Louisiana populist Huey "Kingfish" Long in a taped Larry King Live interview noted by Brent Baker at Newsbusters.

It's amusing to me that Penn chooses to call several Administration officials "party clowns."

Glass houses, buddy.

Here's Penn wearing fake body armor, or rather, what appears to be an empty (and therefore useless) body armor carrier, in an apparent effort to look "movie tough" in his much documented (he brought along a cameraman and a Rolling Stone reporter) and nearly disastrous rescue attempt after Hurricane Katrina.

If you remember the story, Penn is bailing with that red cup because they almost sank the boat on launch. The near-sinking was captured because Penn had several photographers along with him other than the one on the boat. It's all about the photo op.

When it comes to clowns, Penn clearly knows the role.

Uncomfortable History

Several days ago, Pope Benedict XVI recounted comments made by 14th century Byzantine Christian Emperor Manuel II Paleologos.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

Predictably, Muslims around the world are upset by the recollection:

Turkey's top Islamic cleric, Religious Affairs Directorate head Ali Bardakoglu, asked Benedict on Thursday to apologize about the remarks and unleashed a string of accusations against Christianity, raising tensions before the pontiff's planned visit to Turkey in November on what would be his first papal pilgrimage in a Muslim country.

Bardakoglu said he was deeply offended and called the remarks "extraordinarily worrying, saddening and unfortunate."

On Thursday, when the pope returned to Italy, Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said, "It certainly wasn't the intention of the pope to carry out a deep examination of jihad (holy war) and on Muslim thought on it, much less to offend the sensibility of Muslim believers."

Lombardi insisted the pontiff respects Islam. Benedict wants to "cultivate an attitude of respect and dialogue toward the other religions and cultures, obviously also toward Islam," Lombardi said.

On Friday, Salih Kapusuz, a deputy leader of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's party, said Benedict's remarks were either "the result of pitiful ignorance" about Islam and its prophet, or worse, a deliberate distortion of the truths.

"He has a dark mentality that comes from the darkness of the Middle Ages. He is a poor thing that has not benefited from the spirit of reform in the Christian world," Kapusuz blurted out in comments made to the state-owned Anatolia news agency. "It looks like an effort to revive the mentality of the Crusades."

Would Salih Kapusuz really like to look at the history of the spread of Islam before saying the remarks were "the result of pitiful ignorance?"

I strongly suspect not.

Mohammed himself spread the religion he created by the sword from the Battle of Badr onward. The faith was installed throughout the Middle East, Asia, and Europe by the strength of the sword as much as conversion. From Saudi Arabia through the Hindu Kush ( Kush comes from the Arab root "kushar", or slaughter, literally meaning "slaughter of the Hindus") to Andalusia in what is now modern day Spain, violent jihad in the name of Allah has been the constant companion to the spread of Islam. Islamic violence still marks every corner of the world touched by the amusingly titled "Religion of Peace."

Islam remains the only major world religion that has a primary prophet that advocated and practiced violence to spread his faith. Mohammed led campaigns from Badr to Uhud to the Battle of the Trench and beyond, establishing a long tradition of nearly 1,400 years of violent jihad.

Kapusuz can make reference to the Dark Ages if he would like, but Christian Europe slowly emerged from the Dark Ages through the Renaissance and Reformation; five hundred years later, Islam has yet to emerge from barbarity, a fact revealed every day in newspapers in every nation around the world, as they print stories of Muslims killing "infidels" and subjugating their own people to draconian rule in societies that have been in cultural stasis for over a millennia.

Muslims are of course free to follow their own beliefs, but it is quite telling that they are unwilling or unable to come to grips with the reality of their own history.

Muslims can cry "foul" all they want, but the simple truth of the matter is that the observations of Islam from a man who died 581 years ago still ring true.

How have Muslims responded to Pope Benedict's retelling of Emperor Manuel II Paleologos's 14th century observation?

They've responded with demands for an apology, predictable threats of violence, and perhaps the bombing of a church in Gaza.

It remains to see how many people may die as Islam proves how peaceful it is.

A Question of Literacy at Think Progress

Poor Faiz.

He seems to have problems with the simplest of concepts:

Weekly Standard editor Fred Barnes appeared on Fox this morning to discuss his recent meeting with President Bush in the Oval Office. The key takeaway for Barnes was that "bin Laden doesn't fit with the administration's strategy for combating terrorism." Barnes said that Bush told him capturing bin Laden is "not a top priority use of American resources." Watch it.

[snip]

Bush's priorities have always been skewed. Just months after declaring he wanted bin Laden "dead or alive," Bush said, "I truly am not that concerned about him." Turning his attention away from bin Laden, Bush trained his focus on Iraq — a country he now admits had "nothing" to do with 9/11.
Capturing bin Laden, as Rep. Nancy Pelosi recently pointed out, will not necessarily make America safer because it would come five years too late. Yet, capturing or killing the man responsible for 9/11 should remain a high priority.

Bush said he wanted bin Laden "dead or alive" less than a week after 9/11, and in March of 2002 said that he was "not that concerned about him" in the following context after the Taliban and al Qaeda has been driven from power in Afghanistan.

Q Mr. President, in your speeches now you rarely talk or mention Osama bin Laden. Why is that? Also, can you tell the American people if you have any more information, if you know if he is dead or alive? Final part -- deep in your heart, don't you truly believe that until you find out if he is dead or alive, you won't really eliminate the threat of -- THE PRESIDENT: Deep in my heart I know the man is on the run, if he's alive at all. Who knows if he's hiding in some cave or not; we haven't heard from him in a long time. And the idea of focusing on one person is -- really indicates to me people don't understand the scope of the mission.

Terror is bigger than one person. And he's just -- he's a person who's now been marginalized. His network, his host government has been destroyed. He's the ultimate parasite who found weakness, exploited it, and met his match. He is -- as I mentioned in my speech, I do mention the fact that this is a fellow who is willing to commit youngsters to their death and he, himself, tries to hide -- if, in fact, he's hiding at all.

So I don't know where he is. You know, I just don't spend that much time on him, Kelly, to be honest with you. I'm more worried about making sure that our soldiers are well-supplied; that the strategy is clear; that the coalition is strong; that when we find enemy bunched up like we did in Shahikot Mountains, that the military has all the support it needs to go in and do the job, which they did.
And there will be other battles in Afghanistan. There's going to be other struggles like Shahikot, and I'm just as confident about the outcome of those future battles as I was about Shahikot, where our soldiers are performing brilliantly. We're tough, we're strong, they're well-equipped. We have a good strategy. We are showing the world we know how to fight a guerrilla war with conventional means.

Q But don't you believe that the threat that bin Laden posed won't truly be eliminated until he is found either dead or alive?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, as I say, we haven't heard much from him. And I wouldn't necessarily say he's at the center of any command structure. And, again, I don't know where he is. I -- I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him. I know he is on the run. I was concerned about him, when he had taken over a country. I was concerned about the fact that he was basically running Afghanistan and calling the shots for the Taliban.
But once we set out the policy and started executing the plan, he became -- we shoved him out more and more on the margins. He has no place to train his al Qaeda killers anymore. And if we -- excuse me for a minute -- and if we find a training camp, we'll take care of it. Either we will or our friends will. That's one of the things -- part of the new phase that's becoming apparent to the American people is that we're working closely with other governments to deny sanctuary, or training, or a place to hide, or a place to raise money.

And we've got more work to do. See, that's the thing the American people have got to understand, that we've only been at this six months. This is going to be a long struggle. I keep saying that; I don't know whether you all believe me or not. But time will show you that it's going to take a long time to achieve this objective. And I can assure you, I am not going to blink. And I'm not going to get tired. Because I know what is at stake. And history has called us to action, and I am going to seize this moment for the good of the world, for peace in the world and for freedom.

Faiz, of course, took a single-line comment out of a much larger comment, completely out of context. Sadly, Faiz shows he just didn't understand what Bush was saying here. If he did, he couldn't logically disagree with the President's point.

How did Bush begin his response, back in 2002? With a concept Faiz and most other Democrats can't apparently grasp four years later:

Deep in my heart I know the man is on the run, if he's alive at all. Who knows if he's hiding in some cave or not; we haven't heard from him in a long time. And the idea of focusing on one person is -- really indicates to me people don't understand the scope of the mission.

Terror is bigger than one person. And he's just -- he's a person who's now been marginalized. His network, his host government has been destroyed. He's the ultimate parasite who found weakness, exploited it, and met his match. He is -- as I mentioned in my speech, I do mention the fact that this is a fellow who is willing to commit youngsters to their death and he, himself, tries to hide -- if, in fact, he's hiding at all.

Let's slow it down and break it into tiny little chunks for our liberal friends to comprehend.

Osama bin Laden, in September 2001, was the undisputed leader of al Qaeda in all capacities. By March 2002 when the President made this comment, we were not sure if Osama was even still alive, or if he had been killed on chaotic Afghan battlefields.

Bush is showing her that he understands terrorist organizations do not have a rigid top-down hierarchy. Taking out Osama, while a great public relations victory for the United States and a temporary psychological blow to his followers, would have very little effect on the overall distributed network of cells. The invasion of Afghanistan drove Osama completely out of tactical and operational control of al Qaeda, and thoroughly isolated him. He is still a nice trophy if we happen to catch him, but as a current planner and plotter of terrorism, he is of very little importance, and our top resources should go towards fighting those that still have an active role.

That is what Bush meant over four years ago when he said that:

…focusing on one person is -- really indicates to me people don't understand the scope of the mission.

Bush was precisely right in March of 2002. Even with four years to think about it, Democrats such as Faiz can't seem to grasp a concept so simple it can be explained in less than 30 seconds.

Perhaps he needs another example, one that is a little simpler. Let's use baseball.

A major league batter facing Nolan Ryan at the top of his game was going against one of the greatest pitchers of all time. A hypothetical major league batter facing Nolan Ryan four years after he retired would be facing much less of a threat.

As a nation fighting a global war against Islamic terrorists and the nation-states that support them, we have a lot of high priorities.

Finding a way to decrease sectarian violence and dismantle the insurgency in Iraq. Defeating the Taliban and finding a way to destroy the opium crop that supports it Afghanistan that financially supports it would be another. Finding a way to stop nuclear weapons development and terrorist support in Iran, a nation led by a sect that believes in their ability to force the return of their savior through a burning of the world is another. Dismantling active terrorist cells and the attacks they are attempting is yet another high priority.

Dedicating a large amount of men and resources to track down and kill a single figurehead that lives in remote isolation and who is not thought to play a direct role in planning or executing attacks for over four years is not a high priority, nor should it be. Osama bin Laden, other than sporadically appearing in cheerleading videos, has been taken out of the picture.

Bush knew that in 2002. Four years later, Think Progress and other liberals have yet to understand that basic concept.

They Call Themselves Peace Activists

I know very little about the credibility of the writer or the veracity of his claims, but if he is correct, it appears than one liberal "peace movement" organization may be very close to crossing the line into becoming open terrorist sympathizers (h/t Michelle Malkin):

As a front group for Palestinian terrorists, the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) sends young people from all over the world to the training fields of the West Bank and Gaza to learn from terrorists and to aid them logistically. Stop the ISM has now obtained photographs of ISM leaders and organizers holding AK-47 assault rifles. The images show some of the ISM women disguised as Jews living in the West Bank and in the company of an Al Aksa Martyrs Brigade terrorist.

One of our volunteers in the United Kingdom for Stop the ISM managed to infiltrate the ISM late last June in the Holy Land where the ISM operates in direct support of terrorists. Our volunteer (who prefers to remain anonymous to avoid retaliatory attacks) has had prior experience going undercover for the police in the UK. The photos and intelligence he brought back are proving invaluable to intelligence agencies watching the ISM and have been in official hands for over a month prior to this publication.

Unfortunately, neither U.S. Homeland Security nor the Israeli security agencies have to date regarded the ISM as a serious threat. Some of these ISM people in these photos managed to escape; nevertheless, arrests have been made, and more are forthcoming.

If the ISM sounds vaguely familiar, perhaps a picture will help you remember.

That's ISM activist Rachel Corrie burning a hand-drawn American flag in front of Palestinian school children. Corrie was a far left activist that joined the ISM her senior year at Evergreen State College in Washington. She was killed in 2003 by an Israeli bulldozer as she attempted to protect a network of tunnels being used to smuggle weapons from Egypt into Gaza for Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

It doesn't look like things have changed much, unless you want to consider the possibility that ISM activists are making their long-suspected support for terrorists a little more "hands on" than it once was.

The caption for this photo reads in part:

Gabi laughs it up while Alan, the other ISM volunteer who works at the Faisal Youth Hostel, smiles with his machine gun. To the far right is the al Aksa Martyrs Brigade terrorist overseeing the festivities. Real “peace activists” don't pose with machine guns in the company of terrorists, but the ISM does.

What else is there to say?

From getting run over defending terrorist's weapons tunnels to proudly displaying them in Palestinian prisons, we've got only one thing to say to the leftists of the ISM: You've come a long way, baby.

Loser Control

A pathetic excuse for a human being named Kimbeer Vill shot 20 people at Dawson College in Montreal, Canada yesterday. One of those people later died as a result of her wounds, and six other remain in critical condition, two of them are barely clinging to life. I pray that the injured pull through and are able to get on with their lives with a minimum of physical pain and psychological trauma.

As for Gill, I hope he doesn't mind the smell of roasting meat in a fire that burns, but does not consume. I guess I'm not that compassionate a conservative.

Gill seems cut from the same cloth as his apparent idols, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the psychopathic killers of Columbine that were also into the gothic vampire loser fantasy world of real and imagined death that some people retreat into when they can't cope with reality.

Predictably, the debate about gun control is heating up in Canada, and I'm certain calls will ripple down across our northern border as well.

But this isn't an issue of gun control. This is an issue of loser control.

This is Kimbeer Vill. He is a caricature in many ways, the stereotypical Goth-loving, vampire wannabe with no friends and an anti-social attitude. He is, was, quite simply a loser, and he shot 20 people to prove just how much of a loser he could be.

The gun he carries in the photo above is the Beretta CX4 Storm. Ironically, the CX4 and similar designs were developed largely with the law enforcement community in mind, being developed as longer-ranged companions to police sidearms that still used the officer's pistol ammunition and magazines.

While I cannot claim to have a knowledge of Canadian firearms laws and will leave the details to those more familiar with their provisions, I do know that in the United States, gun dealers do have available to them a certain amount of "loser control" built into firearms laws. I know this firsthand, because one of the many hats I wear is as a part-time gun dealer working behind the gun counter of a sporting goods store.

Even if a potential firearms purchaser has all the appropriate documentation and is cleared by the BATF background check, I still have the right as the seller to deny a suspect purchaser a sale for any reason, or no reason at all.

Most reasons are concrete, but a lot of it is intuition and nuance that boil down to the fact that the dealer doesn't like the way a customer looks or acts or answers a question. It is de facto loser control, a latitude given to dealers to use their experience and judgement to weed out potentially dangerous people who we feel should not be armed.

There is or course no way to know if Kimbeer Vill displayed the kind of behavior that might have caused a dealer to have second thoughts, but as Vill had a penchant from dressing "Goth," in going for the vampire look, and according to what his blog reveals, for reveling in thoughts of death and dying, he seems like he would have been easy enough to red flag. Another dealer I know recently turned down a perspective purchaser based upon very similar reasons.

Gun control as policy very rarely if ever works, but loser control can be surprisingly effective.

It's too bad it was not more effective here.

Revising History

Captain's Quarters (h/t Insty) notes this morning that there appears to be some revisionism occurring in the wake of the recent war between Israel and Hezbollah. Arab states and much of the world media originally trumpeted that the war was a undisputed victory for Hezbollah.

Now, those most directly affected seem to think otherwise:

The war stripped more than a few masks from the players in the region. Nasrallah now has to contend with the fallout from his impatient attack on Israel, from the Lebanese and also from the Iranians who had wanted Hezbollah and their rockets as a threat to be feared, not an attack to be weathered and then discounted. His image as the protector of Lebanon has been shattered, and the Lebanese now see him as a threat instead of a savior. After years of Syrian control, they now have to recognize that a large portion of their country is under de facto Iranian occupation, and they're not happy about it.

This has eroded the veneer of victory that Nasrallah placed on the cease-fire. Western commentators and no shortage of Israeli pundits pointed to Nasrallah's claims to have prevailed as a devastating propaganda offensive that would make Israel and the West look weaker than ever. Arabs have taken a more realistic view of the war's results, including the fact that Nasrallah has to make those claims from undisclosed locations to this day. They scoff at his bravado, noting that Nasrallah's vaunted rocket attacks killed more Israeli Arabs than anyone else and proved singularly ineffective as a deterrent to the Israeli incursion.

I've noted on several occasions almost a month ago that the war went far worse for Hezbollah than the world media was willing to admit.

Hezbollah suffered 500-600+ confirmed fatalities at the hands of the IDF, and another 800-1200 are estimated to have been killed in Israeli air strikes. As Hezbollah's active fighters were estimated to number 1,000 or less with 3,000-5,000 more available before this most recent conflict began, it seems that many more such "victories" will see Hezbollah's military wing wiped from the face of the earth.

In addition to Hezbollah's combat loses, the damage to the infrastructure that they brought upon southern Lebanon is quite severe, and will take years of reconstruction and billions of dollars to repair.

But Hezbollah is not by any stretch the only loser in this war, as the world media, and Arab journalists and photojournalists in particular, have suffered tremendous blows to their credibility.

Early on, Hezbollah attempted to recycle the white phosphorus/WMD claims made in the invasion of Fallujah, and the media willing lapped it up without properly investigating the claims. When those claims were conclusively debunked by chemical analysis of tissue samples take from the victims, the media brushed it aside, and took a hit to their credibility as a result.

Shortly thereafter, an Israeli air strike a mile outside the village of Qana was blamed for the death of nearly 60 family members, most of them children. Mostly Arab photojournalists flocked to the scene and flooded the world press with photo after gruesome photo of dead children, and bloggers began questioning whether or not the photos were staged by Hezbollah for the benefit of the press. The media vehemently denied the claims of staging, even after video evidence of a rescue worker dubbed "Green Helmet" was caught on video directing stretcher bearers to remove the body from an ambulance so that it could be re-shot by an assembled throng of photographers.

Time and again, photojournalists took questionable photograph after questionable photograph after questionable photograph, causing increasing scrutiny of photos coming out of Lebanon, where bloggers wondered if scenes were being posed and manipulated.

The came concrete proof that one prolific photographer has been manipulating images in photo-editing software on his computer before releasing them to publication. He was fired. When a second accusation of fraud was leveled at his work, his entire body of work--over 900 photos--was deleted.

The Israeli-Hezbollah war showed the weaknesses of a news-gathering system where story framing and composition is based as much on marketability as it is factuality, and blatant control by Hezbollah was tacitly agreed to and under-reported by those who had their scenes and stories often chosen and manipulated for them by Hezbollah minders.

Time may indeed show that there were actually three losers in the Israeli-Hezbollah War. Israel lost the political battle, Hezbollah lost the military war, and the media lost its most cherished asset, credibility.

Of all of these losses, the media may have the toughest time recovering.

Err America on the Ropes

And just who do they think they're kidding?

Air America Radio will announce a major restructuring on Friday, which is expected to include a bankruptcy filing, three independent sources have told ThinkProgress.

Air America could remain on the air under the deal, but significant personnel changes are already in the works. Sources say five Air America employees were laid off yesterday and were told there would be no severance without capital infusion or bankruptcy. Also, Air America has ended its relationship with host Jerry Springer.

The right wing is sure to seize on Air America's financial woes as a sign that progressive talk radio is unpopular. In fact, Air America succeeded at creating something that didn't exist: the progressive talk radio format. That format is now established and strong and will continue with or without Air America. Indeed, many of the country's most successful and widely-syndicated progressive talk hosts — Ed Schultz and Stephanie Miller, for instance — aren't even associated with Air America.

While I'm sure Think Progress might even believe what they say is true, facts point us towards the opposite conclusion.

Progressive talk radio at least as voiced on Air America, is unpopular; that is the reason Air America is going bankrupt. The math isn't very hard: very few people listen to them, advertisers know this and won't pay them enough to keep them on the air, and so Air America is in big trouble.

Trying to give them for credit for things that don't exist--"the progressive talk radio format," which is in no appreciable way different than any other talk radio format--is a particularly sad attempt to salvage something from nothing.

I wish Ed Schultz and Stephanie Miller all the best with their progressive radio adventures, and wish them successful career. Liberals need something to listen to, even if they have to buy a satellite radio to tune in many markets. Apparently Shultz and Miller have something all the "big names" on Air America lacked.

Talent.

A Failure of Initiative

This is simply unbelievable:

Taliban terror leaders who had gathered for a funeral - and were secretly being watched by an eye-in-the-sky American drone - dodged assassination because U.S. rules of engagement bar attacks in cemeteries, according to a shocking report.

U.S. intelligence officers in Afghanistan are still fuming about the recent lost opportunity for an easy kill of Taliban honchos packed in tight formation for the burial, NBC News reported.
The unmanned airplane, circling undetected high overhead, fed a continuous satellite feed of the juicy target to officers on the ground.

"We were so excited. I came rushing in with the picture," one U.S. Army officer told NBC.
But that excitement quickly turned to gut-wrenching frustration because the rules of engagement on the ground in Afghanistan blocked the U.S. from mounting a missile or bomb strike in a cemetery, according to the report.

Pentagon officials declined comment and referred The Post to Central Command officers in Afghanistan, who did not respond to a request for comment or explanation.

We had a high concentration of enemy officers exposed with little or no cover, and did not fire upon them because they were in a cemetary?

Was it like this one in a battle in Najaf, Iraq, that was so well known they made a video game out of it?

This is the single most mind-numbingly stupid "shoot/no shoot" determinations I have heard of in this entire war. This was not a situation where that was significant risk of there being collateral damage to nearby civilians. The only people present were Taliban leaders that we want dead, and those in the cemetery that were already dead.

If this story is accurate and there are no mitigating circumstances we are unaware of, then we're looking at two levels of incompetence.

The higher level incompetence of placing cemeteries off limits in the rules of engagement was most likely the decision of senior military officers, perhaps with State Department input. Whoever made such a determination should be stripped of these duties. War is not to be fought politely, and the enemy should not be give a "timeout" from the war unless civilian lives are at risk.

On the direct tactical level, the officer directly in charge of this flight should have taken the initiative and made the determination that attacking such a concentration of Taliban leaders was more important to the success of the mission that was "going by the book."

A constant advantage for U.S. military forces throughout our nation's history has been the ability of individual small unit leaders to deviate from the battle plan when necessary to accomplish the mission on a fast-changing battlefield. Battle to battle, war to war, the decision was made to train our soldiers, from boot camp onward to seize the initiative to complete the mission.

That initiative was lost here.

The officer in charge of this flight certainly followed the rules, but he failed in his larger duty. The military's primary job is to protect the nation by killing its enemies. He unwilling to take the initiative needed to ignore an arbitrary decision, and enemy leaders walked away unscathed to plot death once more.

Update Footage of an estimated 190 massed Taliban from the Hellfire-armed Predator drone (via Fox News):

Based upon how tightly they are grouped, the single drone's Hellfire missiles would have likely have terminated the terrorism careers of every single Talib in this photo.

This military is investigating the leaking of the photo to the Post (h/t Michelle Malkin).

The U.S. military said Wednesday it is looking into the unauthorized release of a photo purportedly taken by an American drone aircraft showing scores of Taliban militants at a funeral in Afghanistan.

NBC News claimed U.S. Army officers wanted to attack the ceremony with missiles carried by the Predator drone, but were prevented under rules of battlefield engagement that bar attacks on cemeteries.

I have no problem with the investigation. A leak, even one that points out such obvious incompetence, is still a leak, no matter what the motive, and needs to be dealt with.

I do hope, however, that the Army spends as much time finding out why an absurd order not to fire upon massed terrorists simply becuase of their location in a cemetery was written. I'd also like them to investigate why that order was not quickly superceded by operational imperatives once the target was clearly identified for the large concentration of enemy forces that it was.

With A Large Pinch of Salt

The ABC News blog The Blotter has a reputation for having good sources within the U.S. intelligence community, so when they take the time to write about known al Qaeda terrorist Adnan El' Shukrijumah not once, but twice in a two-week time span, it is something worth keeping on your radar.

The radar signal got stronger when journalist Hamid Mir said that his contacts in al Qaeda indicate that Shukrijumah might be plotting to detonate a nuclear device in the United States during the Muslim holiday of Ramadan later this month.

Allahpundit notes that this is a probably a false alarm, and I think he is more than likely correct. That said, the first Blotter link above notes that "virtually every" FBI field office is hunting Shukrijumah, so he is deemed a credible threat, if not necessarily a present one.

I first read all the links above when I got home from work late last night, but wanted to sleep on it before commenting.

It seems unlikely to me that Shukrijumah or other al Qaeda operatives would be able to easily obtain a nuclear warhead, and even if they were able to obtain such a device, the chance of successfully smuggling it across an ocean to the United States seems exceedingly remote.

It is far more likely that toxic radioactive substances, however, could be smuggled in or stolen, and combined with homemade explosives (such as TATP, a terrorist favorite) to create a radiological "dirty bomb."

Such a weapon uses the blast effect of high explosives to spread radiation over a local area that would likely affect both the local blast area and locations downwind, perhaps encompassing several square miles in some degree of radiation. The probably destructive capability of a dirty bomb is not that much more significant than that of a conventional high explosive blast, but those in the area contaminated area would face radiation dangers in addition to normal blast effects. There would probably be a higher fatality and injury rate as a result, but nothing approaching the level of even the smallest tactical nuclear warhead.

The primary benefit of such a detonation to terrorists is the fear that will spread. If detonated in a densely populated urban area, the panic such a weapon could instill in the population could possibly cause casualties and disrupt life for a significant length of time, but the area can be decontaminated and returned to use.

The long-term political effects of deploying such a weapon are as yet known, but we can speculate. What will almost immediately occur is that the people of the United States will once again realize that the War on Terrorism does not occur just "over there." Terrorism should be thought of not only as an international issue but a local one as well, and images and stories of American civilians being killed and injured at home is likely to create a cry for the Legislative and Executive branches to take a far more aggressive role in combating terrorism both domestically and overseas.

If it was determined that such a weapon was smuggled into the country, or that those who detonated the weapon came across a border (particularly the Mexican border) to do so, then the politics of border security would radically change in a very short amount of time. I think that an immediate and total crackdown on illegal immigration would occur very quickly, and that Congress would be forced to implement a full border wall, with increased staffing and detection equipment, more lenient chase and capture guidelines for Border Patrol agents, and far harsher penalties for attempted illegal immigration. I do not think it likely that illegal immigrants already in America will be rounded up in massive sweeps, but the public could possibly force lawmakers to consider that possibility. There are simply too many variables in this equation to comment beyond that.

If such a strike were to occur, I think that the White House is almost certain to receive massive complaints from Congressional Conservatives (particularly in the House) because of current lax border security policies, and Democrats would seize upon the opportunity to indicate that the Administration is failing to be effective in the War on Terror. I think this is a double-edged sword, however, as Democrats have been far more lax in regards to border security and illegal immigration than even the White House, so it is unlikely to be a winning issue for them.

The overseas intelligence intercept program that the media and Democrats have tired to spin as "domestic spying" will finally be understood for what it really is, and will no longer be thought of as an encroachment on freedoms, but as the rational extension of intelligence gathering capabilities that it always has been.

Overseas, I think you would see an increased political and diplomatic effort to convince Pakistan to allow Coalition military forces to penetrate deep into the tribal areas of its western border region with Afghanistan so that al Qaeda and Taliban staging and training areas can be forcefully struck. Also in Afghanistan, I think you will see a much more concerted effort to eradicate the poppy crop, the Taliban's single most important funding source. Neither bodes well for al Qaeda's ally.

Next door in Iran, I think that a much more muscular diplomatic response to Iran's nuclear ambitions would be forced by the United States in the wake of a dirty bomb attack on America. Recent radiological destruction would make it impossible for us to allow Iran to continue down the road toward weapons development. Harsh sanctions and a blockade enforced by U.S. military assets would force Iranian leaders to either back down from their nuclear aims, or force them to engage us in a regional conflict in which their mostly conscripted military, primarily armed with obsolete weapons, could not hope to prevail.

If a blockade or conflict in the region with Iran is imminent, you might also expect forces to be built up in Iraq to guard against a cross-border attack by Iran that some intelligence sources say might occur. Once the Iranian threat de-escalates, it seems plausible that the additional Army and Marine units brought in to deal with the Iranian threat might be sent to Iraq to dismantle Shia militias that would suddenly be without their primary supporters, and to al Anbar to take on Sunni insurgents that we do not seem to presently have the manpower to pacify.

These sudden shifts in the region, if they occur, could put Syria in a very unstable position. I will not speculate as the whether or not his Baathist regime would fall without the support of Iran, but it would make Syrian support of terrorism a front-burner topic, perhaps forcing it to finally withdraw support of Islamic terror groups such as Hezbollah.

This is all extremely speculative, of course.

There is presently no way of knowing when a terror attack involving a radiological weapon could occur, nor if it will ever occur, and trying to predict what may happen is admittedly roaming far into speculative territory on a very high, very thin wire.

But there are some things we know for certain.

We do know al Qaeda and similar terrorist organizations have tried to direct attacks on the U.S. mainland before and after 9/11, and to date, all of those other attacks have failed. We know they or other Islamic terrorists will try to attack again. We also know that at some point they are likely to be successful.

What will be our response when that day arrives?

That may largely depend on which political party happens to be in power when and if such an attack occurs.

They Support the Troops

They just won't talk to them. Or make eye contact. Or listen.

But they support the troops.

The End of the World As We Know It...

Mary Katherine Ham admits to watching The View.

She was going to be on the panel after mine at Carolina FreedomNet 2006, but now... I dunno.

It might be time to talk about finding a replacement.

Redefining Winning

According to Richard Cohen, the War on Terror is over, and Osama won:

I hear bin Laden laughing. I heard him all day on Sunday and Monday as the mass murder of Sept. 11, 2001, was memorialized at the Pentagon and in that field in Pennsylvania and, especially, here where the most people died and where countless cameras recorded it all for posterity and an abiding, everlasting, anger. He laughs, the madman does, whenever George Bush says, as he has over and over, that America is "winning this war on terror.'' Osama bin Laden knows better. He has already won.

It is not merely that bin Laden has not been captured or killed and that videotapes keep coming out of his hideout like taunts, it is rather that his initial strategy has borne fruit. It was always his intention to draw America into Afghanistan where, as had been done to the Soviets, they could be mauled by the fierce mujaheddin. He tried and failed when he blew up the USS Cole off Aden at 11:15 a.m. on Oct. 12, 2000, killing 17 sailors and crippling the ship. But he succeeded beyond his wildest expectations when the U.S. responded to the Sept. 11 attacks by invading Afghanistan and, in a beat, then going to war in Iraq. It remains mired in both countries to this day.

To Cohen I pose the question, "What price, victory?"

Al Qaeda has been driven from its training bases in Afghanistan, and can find no more states to openly provide it sanctuary. The Taliban that once supported bin Laden in Afghanistan have been driven from power, and when they emerge, reformed, to attempt to take back their country, they are killed by NATO forces by the hundreds.

Al Qaeda's leaders and specialists, their tacticians and their weapons experts, continue to fall prey to Coalition forces. Some are captured. Many are killed (more than 1,500 to date). More of al Qaeda's leadership circa 9/11 resides in Cuba or in the earth than lives in Afghanistan's frontier or Pakistan's tribal areas. Those that remain skitter from cave to cave knowing that this day may be the day a Hellfire-armed U.S. Air Force drone sends them to Allah, or more likely, some place much more warm and less inviting.

StrategyPage notes that there were eight state sponsors of terrorism on 9/12/01; now the regimes sponsoring terror in Afghanistan and Iraq have been deposed, and Libya, seeing the writing on the wall, has given up without a shot being fired.

I wish more such "victories" for al Qaeda.

If they continue, Islamic terrorism will cease through attrition.

Running Away Toward Genocide

Via Fox News:

Democrats are blasting President Bush for giving what they call a political prime-time speech on the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

In his address Monday from the Oval Office, Bush tied the anniversary to the War on Terror and the need to continue the war in Iraq.

"Whatever mistakes have been made in Iraq, the worst mistake would be to think that if we pulled out, the terrorists would leave us alone," Bush said. "They will not leave us alone. They will follow us. The safety of America depends on the outcome of the battle in the streets of Baghdad.

Democrats were quick to fire off statements declaring Bush's words partisan.

"The president should be ashamed of using a national day of mourning to commandeer the airwaves to give a speech that was designed not to unite the country and commemorate the fallen but to seek support for a war in Iraq that he has admitted had nothing to do with 9/11," Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., said in a statement. "There will be time to debate this president's policies in Iraq. September 11th is not that time."

While Bush's speech itself was poorly delivered according to those who watched it, the quoted section of his speech above is absolutely accurate.

There have been many mistakes made in Iraq, just as there have been major mistakes made in nearly every war the United States has ever fought, from the Revolutionary War until today. But to give up in Iraq, where the United States has never lost a major engagement, would be seen by the Arab world as a victory for Islamic terrorism.

Abruptly pulling out of Iraq would:

• increase the power and prestige of terrorist groups within the Arab world
• inspire despots to expand funding and military support for terrorist groups as an extension of their foreign policy
• lead to greater sectarian violence
• increase the likelihood of a Balkanized state where a full-scale civil war and mass genocide is more possible
• increase the possibility of a regional war, with Turkey and Iran both striking to crush the Kurdish north of the country

The current sectarian violence in Iraq is bloody enough without us relinquishing the country to be feasted upon by its neighbors and internal factions. If you think the "neo-con" war is expensive in terms of lives and treasure, explore the possibilities of the Democratic "peace."

Thousands are currently dying in Iraq each month in sectarian violence. The al Anbar province is in dire straits. Many voices, particularly those on the left, are calling for the United States to retreat. The one thing these voices utterly refuse to acknowledge is the cost of the unconditional surrender they'd effect.

If we withdraw precipitously before Iraq is stabilized, we run the risk of twin genocides in concurrent civil and regional wars.

Sunni vs Shia
Led for decades by bloody Sunni Baathist regimes, the minority Sunnis have been the core of the insurgency, and still retain strong support among some Sunni civilians, particularly in the al Anbar province where they share some ideological roots and goals with al Qaeda in Iraq. The new Iraqi Army, like the old, is primarily composed of Shia soldiers, and if the United States pulls out before the country can be stabilized, there is much concern that the Shia may overrun their former tormentors, setting the scene for potential genocide.

Kurdistan Regional War
Even within the existing Iraqi government the Kurdish north of Iraq have been pushing strongly for a nearly autonomous region under their specific control. They have long dreamed of an independent Kurdistan, encompassing northern Iraq, as well as significant territory in Turkey, Iran, and Syria (see map). Kurds were promised an independent nation-state in the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres, but later wars and treaties kept that from ever coming to pass. Turkey and Iran, who are already engaged in sporadic cross-border conflicts with Kurdish forces today, would likely not hesitate to invade Kurdish Iraq if they feel their own sovereignty may be threatened. The Kurds, known for thousands of years to be ferocious fighters (the word "Kurd" means "warrior" in Kurdish), would likely be able to turn the mountainous areas of Kurdistan to their advantage, with the distinct possibility of making Kurdish and Iranian invasions resemble the bloody Russian invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s. The blood the Kurds would draw from the Iranians in the mountains would almost certainly be translated to massive civilian casualties in Kurdish cities dwarfing anything we've seen in the Iraq War so far.

Based upon these scenarios, the precipitous withdrawal called for in the liberal "peace plan" in Iraq has the potential for casualties ranging from the hundreds of thousands to well over a million. If the Leftist "victory" in Southeast Asia (1.7 million), and the abortive Russian efforts in Afghanistan (900,000) provides us with any sort of a useful yardstick to measure the potential cost of failure, the casualties to Iraq could range into the millions, with millions of more civilians being displaced.

And so we seem to have a choice:

We can commit to finding out precisely what we need to do to make Iraq a self-sustaining country with functioning economic, political, and security systems;

-OR-

We can cut and run—"redeploying" to other parts of the world as leading Democrats are calling for—and wash our hands of the country we created as it falls into internal and region wars that will kill or displace millions.

If we do the latter, history will not look upon our nation kindly... nor should it.

U.S. Embassy in Damascus Attacked

Via CNN:

Syrian security forces on Tuesday killed four gunmen after they tried to storm the U.S. Embassy in Damascus, the Syrian Information Ministry said.

No American diplomats were harmed.

A fifth attacker was wounded and in custody, officials said. It was not immediately clear how many total attackers may have been involved.

"The State Department confirms an attack by unknown assailants," said Kurtis Cooper, a State Department spokesman in Washington. "The event appears to be under control and handled by local authorities."

There was no word of casualties among the Syrian security forces who battled the gunmen.

The embassy was not damaged in the attack.

Sticky Notes was on this quickly, and has some photos of the scene of what appears to be unexploded bombs made of bulk propane cylinders and pipe bombs.

No Americans were hurt, and there are no reports that U.S. Marines stationed at the embassy opened fire.

Al Qaeda's Vietnams

While many are focused (rightly) on remembering what we lost five years ago today, Ralph Peters chose instead to remember what we have since achieved. One of his salient points was to describe the fact that Iraq has become al Qaeda's Vietnam:

No end of lies have been broadcast about our liberation of Iraq and Afghanistan "creating more terrorists." The terrorists were already there, recruited during the decades we looked away. Our arrival on their turf just brought them out of the woodwork.

As for Iraq, Osama & Co. realized full well how high we'd raised the stakes. They had to fight to prevent the emergence of a Middle Eastern democracy. As a result, they've thrown in their reserves - who've been slaughtered by our soldiers and Marines.

The media obsesses on the price of this fight for us, but the terrorists have been forced to pay a terrible cost in trained fighters - while alienating fellow Muslims with their tactics. Pundits will argue forever over whether deposing Saddam was a diversion from the War on Terror, but the proof of its relevance - even if unexpected - is the unaffordable cost we've forced on al Qaeda.

I'm not certain just how much al Qaeda has alienated other Muslims, as many still quite openly pine for the demise of the West in general and Israel and the United States in particular, but we certainly have made that obsession costly.

When al Qaeda ‘s Number Two Ayman al-Zawahri releases a statement promising to bring Jihad to Israel and Arab Gulf States and advises not sending reinforcements to Afghanistan and Iraq, it reveals a pleading weakness in his cause.

"Whatever you do, please don't send reinforcements to Afghanistan and Iraq," he might as well be saying. With the reconstituted Taliban being martyred courtesy of NATO troops by the hundreds, Zawahiri's threats of attacking elsewhere with any significant sustained force ring hollow. He is the Dark Knight of Monty Python's Holy Grail, threatening to "bite your kneecaps off" of King Arthur after his arms and legs have been forcefully removed.

And indeed, many "limbs" of al Qaeda have been unceremoniously lopped off. Beyond bin Laden and al-Zawahiri himself, you'd be hard-pressed to find a "household name" in al Qaeda's leadership. The terrorist organization's most experienced planners, bomb-builders and experienced foot soldiers have been methodically hunted to near extinction, leaving dangerous but error-prone minor-leaguers terrorists to step up against increasingly savvy military and intelligence services around the world that continue to bleed al Qaeda on an almost daily basis.

Continuing Phyrric "victories" by al Qaeda have reduced it to more of a terrorist public relations firm than a viable terrorist entity. Zawahiri can trumpet jihad all he wants to a dwindling supply of fellow believers, but when his message has to pack-muled out from a remote and hidden cave, it becomes increasingly difficult to see his often-promised victory as anything other than a delusional fantasy.

Day of Denial

Today more than any other in the past five years, the Left continues to reveal how much they despise the essence of America.

They continue to mock the moment when our President found out that a sneak attack broader in scope and scale than Pearl Harbor was under way. They mock him for showing the same shock and dismay we all felt. They mock him for being moved near to tears as the realization set in that thousands of innocent Americans were dead or dying and that he, the most powerful single man on the planet, was powerless to stop it.

They belittle our pain as a nation, as if only those who had direct friends and family die had a right to grieve, feel pain, or remorse, or anger and resolve.

They lash out against those who do remember what happened under that bright blue September sky, and preemptively lash out against those who would remember future attacks before they've even come to pass.

They refer to memorial services as pornography, and seek to belittle every remembrance, every solemn moment, every tear, every voice raised in anger.

Well, not every voice.

They have plenty of time for their rage and anger. Anger that their peace and love and puppies plan for world peace came crashing down along with aircraft aluminum and structural steel and glass and human bodies that day in Manhattan, Washington, and Shanksville.

Five years later, American Democrats have more hate in their hearts for their own President than they do for the terrorists that killed almost 3,000 of their countrymen. They refuse to confront terrorism. Some would rather blame America and the world they think they understand, rather than face up to the fact that the world we all thought we knew was just an illusion. They are in catastrophic psychological denial, and cannot face the fact that "the other" they have spent their lives providing moral equivalence for were the ones who attacked our country.

It is so much easier to blame Bush than face the fact that we were attacked because we are the beacon of freedom for the world, and the greatest threat to radical Islam. It is so much easier to blame Bush, than realize that decades of denial led us to that horrific moment. If they can only blame Bush for that day—and every day since that their worldview has been shown to be vapid, self-serving, and a fraud—then their denial can go on, and "reality-based community" can continue to live in a world that has refuses to learn, to adapt, to change.

The Left refuses to learn from 9/11 and knows no way forward. It is why they grasp so insistently to the past, clinging to what was and what might have been, instead of moving forward to forcefully determine what should be and what must be done to secure our freedoms for the future. It is they that childishly insist for the "Perfect War" theory, stating a belief that any war not fought with perfect foresight and accuracy is wrong, while knowing securely no war has ever met their standard.

They show that they hate the present and don't understand the lessons of the recent past. They strive for stagnation and stasis and blaming ourselves, but they offer no hope for the future.

They blame Americans for radical Islamic plans for world domination. They vilify our troops instead of the terrorists they fight. They attack western governments fighting for freedom instead of eastern governments and the terrorists they sponsor that are fighting for oppression and destruction of our way of life.

The Left offers America and true liberalism a death sentence, seeking to repeat the failed policies of 30 years in denial.

We will not listen to them again.

That, perhaps, is their greatest fear of all.

Still Waiting For Kantor

Last week, USA Today columnist Andrew Kantor attacked blogger Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs in a story meant to highlight the "professionalism" of the mainstream media, while calling into question the ethics and accountability of bloggers.

The problem was, Kantor's attack on Johnson was not grounded in fact. Kantor's shoddy research into the issue was exposed, and I formally asked him for a correction to his USA Today article early Saturday morning.

It is now Monday morning, and Mr. Kantor's USA Today article has gone uncorrected, even though I left a detailed comment on his blog explaining precisely where he made his errors, and asked him for a formal correction shortly before he closed comments.

As a result of the inaction to date, I sent the following email to Mr. Kantor this morning:

Dear Mr. Kantor,

I formally asked you this weekend to ask USA Today to correct the factual inaccuracies in your story that accuses Charles Johnson of “digging up” the story on Editor and Publisher's 2003 column by Greg Mitchell. You have not responded to that request on your blog or in email, and no changes have yet appeared in USA Today.

Do you intent to ask USA Today to make those corrections, or do you intend to let the known inaccuracies in your story stand? Please contact me this morning and let me know if you intend to make these corrections, and if you do not intend to ask USA Today to make those corrections, please let me know why.

I also ask to know whether or not you intend to follow up with Editor and Publisher's Greg Mitchell and Charles McKeown to see what their response to the “stealth” rewrite of Mitchell's 2003 column less than four hours after I linked it, and after two weeks of them refusing to answer questions about that rewrite in any way, shape, or form.

Thank you very much for your time and your (expected) prompt response.

Respectfully,

In addition, I sent a request for correction to USA Today.

Kantor professes to be a professional with "pro principles," and yet his inaccurate article has not be changed more than 48 hours after his inaccuracies and incomplete research were detailed to him precisely. Perhaps Mr. Kantor will eventually get around to updating his misleading column, perhaps not.

The fact remains that this professional journalist, like so many the blogosphere has exposed, is no more accurate than the amateurs he dismisses out of hand.

Five Years After

Five years ago this morning, a mid-air collision nearly took place over my home in New Windsor, New York. I wish it had. One of the planes was American Airlines Flight 11. The other was United Airlines Flight 175.

Pajamas Media provides the old and new media round-up of the day that changed our reality, Five Years After.

Update: That was then, this is now:

Five years on, a psychosis has gripped millions who can't and won't fathom the true nature of the war we are in. For many of them, having been born and raised in an essentially post-Christian West, they can't imagine that anyone might be motivated to kill and die because of something a warlord wrote down centuries ago. They cannot imagine any religion other than the one they believe they have outgrown being violent or causing violence. They cannot imagine anyone fighting for a cause that offers no material gains and therefore cannot be negotiated away. In our essentially materialist West, millions lack the imagination to believe that bin Laden's pining for the return of Andalusia to Muslim rule is in his mind a legitimate reason to wage war on America now. They can imagine their own countrymen being so motivated, though, and I think that's key to understanding their state of mind. They can imagine the Rotary Club member down the street plotting mayhem because he goes to church and votes Republican, but they can't imagine that the Muslim in Karachi is a real, live enemy who is actually plotting an attack.

This lack of imagination has bred the anti-war madness we have now. Rather than accept the reality of an enemy that cannot and therefore will not negotiate away what he believes to be the will of God, and rather than accept that this enemy will understand nothing outside total victory or total defeat, and rather than understand that this enemy's goals include enslaving the entire world in a global caliphate, and rather than accept that this reality necessitates the use of all tools including military might to defend ourselves, millions have embraced an alternate reality. The reality of the enemy outside the West and its motivations being too terrifying and too far beyond their own control, millions now imagine that the enemy in this war is within. The enemy, to them, isn't the turbaned man behind the plot to hijack multiple airplanes and crash them into multiple buildings in America. The real enemy, to these millions, is the man in the Oval Office, and the man or men behind him.

Read the tagline above, folks.

Because liberalism is a persistent vegetative state.

It wasn't chosen lightly,and continues to manifest itself to this day.

How Quickly They Forget

A Senate report on prewar intelligence in Iraq says that there is no evidence Saddam Hussein had a relationship with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and al Qaeda. Predictably, Democrats are saying that this undercuts the President's justification for going to war.

They are deadly wrong.

Some intelligence experts might dispute the Senate's conclusions on Iraq, unless, of course, the Senate merely means that they didn't have evidence of Saddam and al-Zarqawi having tea.

Regardless, President Bush sent us to war because Saddam had well-documented ties to many terrorist groups, making Baghdad host to a "Who's Who" of Islamic terrorists.

Abu Abbas, mastermind of Achille Lauro hijacking that saw an elderly, wheelchair-bound Leon Klinghoffer murdered and thrown over the side, was a long-time guest of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and was captured near Baghdad as a direct result of our 2003 invasion.

Abu Nidal, Palestinian terrorist mastermind led the Abu Nidal Organization, was another long-time terrorist-in-residence that died in Baghdad in 2002. The ANO was based in Iraq since 1998, and recieved training, logistical assistance, and financial aid from Iraq. They were shutdown by the invasion of Iraq after killing more than 900 people since 1974, and have not been heard from since.

Abdul Rahman Yasin, the bomb builder in the first World Trade Center attack in 1993, was given money and housing by Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

I have a simple question for Senate Democrats:

How many more terrorist groups targeting and killing Americans would Saddam have had to support before you found an invasion worthwhile?

And please, pardon me, if I don't expect an answer. Democrats haven't had an answer for terrorism in five years, and I do'nt expect they'll suddenly come up with one now.

Andy Kantor Finds a River In Egypt

In a USA Today column of September, 7 entitled, Technology empowers amateur journalism — for better or worse, Andrew Kantor decided—for whatever reason—to attack Charles Johnson of the blog Little Green Footballs and his principles.

Kantor stated:

Take the blog that exposed those Reuters/Adnan Hajj photos — Little Green Footballs (LGF). It's written by a Web designer from California named Charles Johnson.

Johnson took offense to a column by Greg Mitchell, the editor of Editor & Publisher magazine, in which Mitchell decried the baseless attacks on war photographers after the Hajj affair.

So Johnson went from using his technology toolbox like a pro to using it like an amateur. He dug up an article Mitchell wrote in 2003 in which Mitchell admitted that — more than 30 years ago — he faked some quotes while working for a local newspaper in Niagara Falls.

Mitchell was clearly embarrassed — it went against his professional ethics enough that 30 years later he told the story. But what was Johnson's take? He claimed it as proof that Mitchell had "first-hand experience with staging news."

Calling it "staging news" or saying Mitchell "faked a news story" was a bit off the deep end, and neither accusation would have gotten by a professional editor. But Johnson isn't a professional. He's just a guy with a toolbox. He had great success using it, helping to expose the faked Bush National Guard memos, as well as those Adnan Hajj photos.

But he mistook having a well-worn set of professional tools with being equivalent to a well-followed set of pro principles.

For someone who purports to be a professional journalist critiquing and criticizing citizen journalism, Mr. Kanor seems to have a problem with a core element of journalism, i.e. getting his facts and sources correct.

Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs did not "dig up an article Mitchell wrote in 2003."

Jon Ham, currently VP for Communications for The John Locke Foundation wrote about Mitchell's admitted malfeasance the first time around while writing as a professional journalist for the Durham Herald-Sun.

After Mitchell wrote a pair of editorials attacking bloggers (though billed as a defense of war photographers), Mr. Ham sent a link to the 2003 editorial to me, which inspired me to write a post on it on my blog that quickly spread through the blogosphere exactly two weeks ago today.

To the best of my knowledge, every person who wrote about this admitted example in Mitchell's past of staging the news did, in fact, cite my blog as the source, including Little Green Footballs. Mr. Kantor expresses an interest and concern for "pro principles," and so I find it disturbing that he would institute such an attack without getting his basic facts correct.

I'm equally disturbed that a writer of technology does not seem to understand the term "hat tip" which Mr. Johnson used to clearly indicate that I was the source. Perhaps Kantor's understanding of the cyber-culture he covers is perhaps not quite as extensive as he would have his readers believe.

I wish Mr. Kantor had understood that bit of terminology, for if he had, and followed Mr. Johnson's link back to my blog, he would likely have discovered that the act of citing Mr. Mitchell's 2003 editorial led to "someone" at Editor & Publisher to suddenly rewrite the lede of Mr. Mitchell's 2003 editorial to cast him in a far more favorable light. Mitchell is now the obvious suspect in an ethical breach that one Washington, D.C. based newspaper editor said was serious enough to warrant dismissal.

Neither Mitchell, nor publisher Charles McKeown, nor parent company VNU Media's spokesman Will Thoretz will comment two weeks after this clear violation of journalistic ethics, putting up a stonewall of silence, no doubt hoping that the concrete example of journalistic fraud committed in the rewrite of Mitchell's 2003 column will simply die away.

Andrew Kantor say that bloggers have a nice tools for communication, but not the principles. As the editor and publisher of Editor & Publisher both continue to stonewall critics over a serious and obvious breach of journalistic ethics, and no professional journalists with come forth to defend them, I find his nose-in-the-air defense of journalistic principles to ring quite hollow.

( h/t: LGF)

The Reality-Based Community's War On Freedom

The Disney Corporation and ABC has a decision to make today, on whether the American people get to decide what they will watch on television, or if they will defer that decision to operatives of the Democratic Party.

The Path to 9/11, a mini-series based in part upon individual interviews and the 9/11 Commission Report, is being fought tooth-and-nail by grassroots liberal activists and top Democratic Party politicians in an effort to stifle free speech. The Democratic Party has gone so far as to threaten to attempt to challenge ABC's broadcasting license in a clear challenge to this nation's First Amendment. If ABC allows the Democratic Party to set a precedent of censorship through intimidation, then all Americans will have lost a part of their freedom.

Some elements of this mini-series are expected to be critical of the Bush and Clinton Administrations, and it does reputedly dramaticize some minor elements in the interests of accurately portraying the overall truth. That said, the overall treatment of the failings of the American government leading up to the horrific terrorist of September 11, 2001, must be shown. We must learn from our past mistakes to keep from repeating them in the future, and any attempt to prevent The Path to 9/11 from airing is an affront to the 2,973 people who died in lower Manhattan, Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C. as a result of Islamic terrorism.

I strongly urge you to contact ABC, let them know that you support their right to provide the programming of their choice to the American people.

For 230 years we have been a nation of free men and women with the right to debate, dissent, and disagree. We should not forfeit that right to the whims of any political party.

Debate the merits and accuracy of The Path to 9/11 after the American people have had a chance to view it and form their own opinions about its content. That is the American way.

Censorship dictated by political operatives is not.

Operators are Standing By...

The Carolina FreedomNet 2006 half-day blog conference is just a month from now, and if you plan on coming, I suggest you hop over to Carolina Journal Online and check out the details. I hear that the hotel rooms at the reserved rate won't last too much longer, so you might want to act quickly.

The schedule is as follows:

8:00 a.m.-8:30 a.m.: Registration and Continental breakfast

8:30 a.m.-8:45 a.m.: Welcome session

8:45 a.m.-10:15 a.m.: Local vs. Global: What Should Be Your Blog's Focus? Panelists are Raleigh's Lorie Byrd of Wizbang, Greensboro's Sam Hieb of Sam's Notes, Charlotte's Sister Toldjah and Raleigh's Bob Owens of Confederate Yankee.

10:15 a.m.-10:45 a.m.: Break

10:45 a.m.-12:15 p.m.: Panel: How Has The Blogging Phenomenon Affected Politics and Political Discourse? Panelists are Townhall.com's Mary Katharine Ham (formerly of Durham), Jeff Taylor of Charlotte's The Meck Deck, Scott Elliott of Election Projection and Durham's Josh Manchester of The Adventures of Chester.

12:15 p.m.-12:30 p.m.: Break

12:30 p.m.-2:00 p.m.: Luncheon and keynote speech, "The 61st Minute: Inside the Eye of Hurricane Dan" with Scott Johnson of Powerline

I hope to see you there.

Palestinian Terrorists Get New Body Armor

Via Hot Air, Snapped Shot alerts us to new body armor being used by using by Palestinian militants. Lets see if I can provide you with a close-up view of that armor.

Note that it is now available in two-ply.

And yes, they are being used as body armor as the original photo shows.

At least three visibly armed militants are hiding among more than a dozen civilians in this photo, including the man on the far right who is targeting Israeli soldiers.

Like their brethren in Gaza and in Lebanon, terrorists in the West Bank are willing to use civilians as shields, and though it is hard for our western mind to understand, the civilians themselves seem content with that arrangement.

This battle left two so-called civilians dead and 11 wounded.

Somehow, that doesn't upset me as much now as it once might have.

An Inconvenient Freedom of Speech

ABC's upcoming mini-series, "The Path to 9/11" which is scheduled to air the nights of September 10th and 11th, has shown that Democrats of all levels, from bloggers, to the national Democratic Party, to the former President of the United States, are all quite comfortable with muzzling freedom of speech when it suits their purposes.

The mini-series is a dramatized account based on "a variety of sources, including the 9/11 commission report, other published materials and personal interviews," according to ABC spokesman Jonathan Hogan. Parts of The Path to 9/11 are speculative, and ABC freely admits that the film is a dramatization of known events, a very common approach to films ranging from Schindler's List to Bonnie and Clyde.

Despite this common cinematic treatment, Democrats at all levels are actively campaigning to have ABC's mini-series altered or pulled from the air, using tactics ranging from accusations that the film is inaccurate, to threats of retribution against ABC and others involved with the project. It is transparent Stalinism, an attempt to muzzle the freedom of speech of those who do not march lock-step with their ideals, radiating from the top down.

Former President Bill Clinton is demanding that the ABC drama be pulled from the air unless the script is revised to meet with his approval.

The Democratic Party's National Director, Tom MacMahon, released a scathing attack on the film to Democratic supporters, encouraging them to bully ABC into taking the drama off the air, and was caught openly threatening to pull ABC's broadcast license if the network did not acquiesce to his demands. This is an open attempt to blackmail a broadcaster by the officers of the Democratic Party.

Sitting Democratic members of Congress are also calling for the film to be censored. Democrats are unabashedly seeking to given themselves the power of Orwell's Ministry of Truth written about in 1984, and are actively stating their intention punish ABC for thoughtcrimes by threatening the networks broadcast license.

Their behavior is shameful.

No self-respecting American should concede a political party the ability to limit our Freedom of Speech. Hillary Clinton once stated, "we have a right to debate and disgree," but it is painfully apparent that Democrats feel that right applies to them, and only to what they would allow you to see.

In 2001, Cyrus Nowrasteh, the same writer who created "The Path to 9/11," released a film called "The Day Reagan Was Shot." It too, was a fictionalized account. It, too, portrayed many politicians inside the White House in an unflattering light during a moment of crisis for the nation.

Politicians portrayed in that film also criticized Nowrasteh's work and accuracy, but they made no attempt to censor the film and keep it from being aired, as Congressional Democrats and the former President have done with "The Path to 9/11." They made no attempt to blackmail the film's distributor to keep it from coming to air, as the Democratic Party's National Director has done. Republicans attacked the 2001 film for it's inaccuracies, but never attempted to run roughshod over our rights to see a controversial film and form our own opinions in the aftermath.

Democrats from the top down have no such problem with attempting to control what you see, and are proving themselves quite willing to brush aside an inconvenient Freedom of Speech.

Update: Captain Ed notes via email that he recalls the response to this and the other Reagan film as being quite contentious, and Joe Gandelman does a good job showing that many conservatives did in fact throw quite a few rocks at these films from the dubious safety of their own glass houses.

To make my own position clear, I'm against any politically-driven censorship of films, and find such attempts to be vile. If you have any faith in the American public at all, you have to let these films, and future ones like them, stand or fall on their own merits, not those imposed by politicians.

Update: The head of the CIA Counterterrorist Center's Osama bin Laden unit confirms that the Clinton Administration killed the attack plan protrayed in the film, and further contends that the Clinton Administration actually missed 8-10 chances to take out bin Laden.

Accuracy, or Censorship?

The "-based" community is at it again (where did their "reality" go? I have no idea, and I've been trying to find out for years), as Representatives John Conyers, Jr., John Dingell, Jane Harman, and Louise Slaughter, Democrats all, released an open letter to the Walt Disney Company and ABC, asking for "factual accuracy" in the two-part miniseries, "The Path to 9/11."

Mr. Robert A. Iger
President and CEO
The Walt Disney Company

Dear Mr. Iger:

We are advised that ABC is scheduled to air a two-part mini-series entitled "The Path to 9/11" on September 10 and September 11. While we have not yet seen this program, news reports raise serious questions about its accuracy. Therefore, we request that the inaccuracies described herein be addressed immediately and that the program be thoroughly reviewed and revised for accuracy before it airs.

Among our concerns about the program are the following: first, it reportedly contains a scene in which Sandy Berger, the National Security Adviser to President Bill Clinton, declines to give Central Intelligence Agency operatives the authority to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden, and in which those operatives are outside a house where Bin Laden is located. This account has been expressly contradicted by Richard Clarke, a high-ranking counterterrorism official in both the Clinton and Bush Administrations.

Second, the film reportedly contains a scene in which the Central Intelligence Agency declines to share information about the 9/11 hijackers with the FBI and ascribes that failure to the so-called "wall," limiting information sharing by the Department of Justice in certain circumstances, and established by the Department of Justice in an internal memorandum.

This scene is puzzling at best, and inaccurate at worst. According to a Republican Member of the 9/11 Commission, former Senator Slade Gorton, the "Department of Justice guidelines at issue were internal to the Justice Department and were not even sent to any other agency. The guidelines had no effect on the Department of Defense and certainly did not prohibit it from communicating with the FBI, the CIA or anyone else."

These two examples alone create substantial doubt about the overall accuracy of this program. September 11th is a day of mourning and remembrance for every American. We do not believe that it is appropriate for it to be tainted by false assertions of blame or partisan spin.

To avoid that occurrence, we urge you to review this film and correct these and other inaccuracies. We appreciate your prompt attention and reply to this time sensitive matter.

Sincerely,

Representatives John Conyers, Jr., John Dingell, Jane Harman, Louise Slaughter

Let's address the first inaccuracy brought about by our fine upstanding Democrats, the claim apparently made in the film that, "...it reportedly contains a scene in which Sandy Berger, the National Security Adviser to President Bill Clinton, declines to give Central Intelligence Agency operatives the authority to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden..."

This is demonstrably inaccurate, and I thank the fine Congresspeople for pointing that out. There should not be one scene showing Clinton Administration officials declining chances to kill Osama bin Laden, but four.

The 9/11 Commission Report states unequivocally that on four separate occasions--Spring 1998, June 1999, December 1999, and August 2000--U.S. National Security Advisor Sandy Burger was "an obstacle to action," preventing strikes that would have perhaps killed Osama bin Laden, decapitating al Qaeda well in advance of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks that killed nearly three thousand innocent people. This mini-series, if released with only one incidence of the Clinton Adminstration failing to kill Osama bin Laden when he had the chance instead of the four chances we know that Samuel "Sandy" Berger blocked, is a whitewash of history. Like the good Congresspeople said, we deserve accuracy.

Further, I am against any scene in the film that make's the infamous "Gorelick wall" seem "puzzling at best, and inaccurate at worst."

There should be absolutely no doubt of the effect of the Gorelick wall in hindering terrorist investigations:

As the No. 2 person in the Clinton Justice Department, Ms. Gorelick rejected advice from the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, who warned against placing more limits on communications between law-enforcement officials and prosecutors pursuing counterterrorism cases, according to several internal documents written in summer 1995. (none) "It is hard to be totally comfortable with instructions to the FBI prohibiting contact with the United States Attorney's Offices when such prohibitions are not legally required," U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White wrote Ms. Gorelick six years before the 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and at the Pentagon.

As Senator John Cornyn was quoted in the same article:

"These documents show what we've said all along: Commissioner Gorelick has special knowledge of the facts and circumstances leading up to the erection and buttressing of 'that wall' that, before the enactment of the Patriot Act, was the primary obstacle to the sharing of communications between law enforcement and intelligence agencies."

I agree with the four Democratic Representatives that urges Disney/ABC to "review this film and correct these and other inaccuracies."

I do highly suspect, however, that if Disney/ABC squared the film with the historical record that their cries would only become more shrill and bombastic.

As for this and other ham-handed attempts at censorship by liberal Democrats, Giaus astutely notes:

Back when Fahrenheit 911 was the talk of the blogosphere, all the criticism I read was about its accuracy. There were quite a lot of bloggers that were tearing it apart for its twisting of fact. A lot of bloggers wanted to set the record straight, but to my knowledge not one of those people I was reading at that time before I started blogging myself was calling for it to be silenced. They only wanted the record straight.

Now we have a new "docudrama" about 9/11 coming out. And the left side of the blogosphere and mainstream Democratic politicians are calling for it to be radically changed or silenced. Some are gloating that they think they have silenced some voices.

Have you noticed the difference here?

One group decries the accuracy, the other decries the existence. Who is in favor of silencing the opposition again? Who is in favor of curtailing the free speech of others?

I think the answer is obvious.

Beeb "Mine" Exposed

Anti-personnel mine, or battery? Brought to you by the same folks who force children to stand next to unexploded bombs.

And the letter "C."

Dems Call For "No Confidence" Vote on Rumsfeld

Like you didn't expect it:

The Senate on Wednesday is set to debate a resolution that cites "no confidence" in the Bush administration's national security policies or Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's "ability to carry out the job," a Democratic leadership aide said.

The resolution, which was first proposed by Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer of California, will be offered as an amendment to the Defense Department appropriations bill.

Hey, I'm all for it.

While we're at it, why don't we debate a "no confidence" resolution for the Democratic Party, which nearly five years after the 9/11/01 terrorist attack on American, still advocates headlong retreat and disarming our allies as defense policy.

Rusmfeld has made mistakes as has every other Defense Secretary in wartime in American history, but at least he's trying to fight. Democrats are trying to tell us that running away from terrorists is the path to victory, but as a hallowed, still empty hole in Manhattan attests, there is nowhere left to run.

Bush Folds on Terrorist Bill of Rights

Okay, I'm ready for impeachment now:

The Bush administration on Wednesday said all detainees of the U.S. military would be ensured humane treatment, but some such as al Qaeda members would have fewer protections than other war prisoners.

The Pentagon detailed its policies on prisoner treatment shortly before President Bush was to speak on the issue of detainees on Wednesday afternoon. ABC television reported Bush would announce the transfer of a dozen top terrorism suspects held at secret CIA prisons to Defense Department control.

The Pentagon directive, which gives all prisoners protections as defined by the Geneva Conventions, follows heavy international criticism of the United States over military abuse of Iraqis held at Abu Ghraib prison and over its treatment and indefinite detention of terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay.

Let's get a few facts straight about what terrorists are afforded under the Geneva Conventions, starting with the Third Geneva Convention (via Wikipedia):

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."

As al Qaeda and other terrorist groups do not act "under the strictures of the Convention" by torturing and beheading captives time and again, the rights of the Geneva Convention does not apply to them.

Terrorists are not afforded the protected Prisoners of War status, as they fail to meet the standards in Article 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.

To be eligible for Geneva Protections, "militias and members of other volunteer corps" must fulfill all of these qualifications; terrorists satisfy none.

Somewhere in North Waziristan, Osama bin Laden just laughed himself to death.

Update: Tammy Bruce seems to be of a like mind, while AllahPundit searches for a silver lining that I hope is actually there.

Update: Okay, I'm an idiot for beleiving this ABC News Report might reflect what the President actually said.

ABC News has learned that President Bush will announce that high-value detainees now being held at secret CIA prisons will be transferred to the Department of Defense and granted protections under the 1949 Geneva Conventions. It will be the first time the Administration publicly acknowledges the existence of the prisons.

From there, I went on to the Reuters report I cited above with the thought that Bush gave Geneva rights to terrorists. It was the thrust of my entire post.
And I was dead wrong:

The President just pulled one of the best maneuvers of his entire presidency. By transferring most major Al Qaeda terrorists to Guantanamo, and simultaneously sending Congress a bill to rescue the Military Commissions from the Supreme Court's ruling Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the President spectacularly ambushed the Democrats on terrain they fondly thought their own. Now Democrats who oppose (and who have vociferously opposed) the Military Commissions will in effect be opposing the prosecution of the terrorists who planned and launched the attacks of September 11 for war crimes. And if that were not enough, the President also frontally attacked the Hamdan ruling's potentially chilling effect on CIA extraordinary interrogation techniques, by arguing that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions is too vague, and asking Congress to define clearly the criminal law limiting the scope of permissible interrogation.

Taken as a whole, the President's maneuver today turned the political tables completely around. He stole the terms of debate from the Democrats, and rewrote them, all in a single speech. It will be delightful to watch in coming days and hours as bewildered Democrats try to understand what just hit them, and then sort through the rubble of their anti-Bush national security strategy to see what, if anything, remains.

It looks like a lot of us might have gotten blindsided by Bush's sudden and uncharacteristic agility. I could get used to being this kind of wrong.

The Incredible Re-Burning Car of Rafah

The Israeli military was busy Tuesday evening in the Rafha refugee camp in Gaza, striking two separate vehicles driven by Hamas activists, according to the Beeb:

Three Hamas militants have been killed in two Israeli air strikes on cars in Rafah, southern Gaza, Palestinian officials said.

The first attack killed an activist from Hamas' military wing and hurt his companion. Dozens of bystanders were also hurt, Palestinian doctors said.

Two Hamas militants were killed in a second strike on a car in Rafah.

Israeli forces have been carrying out raids and air strikes on Gaza after the capture of an Israeli soldier in June.

Hundreds of Palestinians have since been killed by Israeli action.

An Israeli military spokeswoman said the first of the two strikes on Tuesday targeted militants who were planning an attack on Israel.

"After the aerial attack, there were a number of explosions, proving that the vehicle was carrying explosives," the spokeswoman said.

Photographers from the Associated Press and Reuters were quick to converge upon the two cars, as captured in Yahoo's "Gaza" photostream.

AP's Khalil Hamra captured two photos of the vehicle I've dubbed "Car 1," a white vehicle absent all easily identifiable signs of its doors, roof, and even roof pillars.

The exposed steering wheel and beveled hood, which is apparent in the second photo, are also useful identifiers, as are the rather plain wheels. It is also perhaps worth noting the surroundings of the photo, which shows an audience of many men in paramilitary attire identified as Hamas-led Palestinian Authority's security forces, in a very well-lit and back-lit area.

The second vehicle hit in Israeli air strikes I've dubbed "Car 2," but you may wish to refer to it as the "Incredible Re-Burning Car," or "IRC" for short, for reasons that will shortly become apparent.

Reuters photographer Ibraheem Abu Mustafa, provides us with this photo and caption:

Palestinians help with rescue work on a car as water is sprayed to douse flames following an Israeli airstrike in Rafah camp in the southern Gaza Strip September 5, 2006. Israeli airstrikes killed four Palestinian militants in Gaza on Wednesday, the Israeli military and witnesses said, ratcheting up violence in the coastal strip further.

Please note that the vehicle fire appears to have been doused at this point. Also note that the door pillar extending over the passenger compartment is somewhat intact, as it a battered driver's side door, the roof-supporting column behind the driver's door, and the rear door on the driver's side, which has blown (or perhaps, looking the two sets of hands on it, pushed) upward and inward.

Also please note the five-spoke wheel, the deformed hood, and the dark mark on the left front quarterpanel, which I estimate to be perhaps 3-4 inches from the back of the panel, and roughly eight inches down from the top of the panel. It is worth noting that the crowd make-up in this photo is exclusively civilian in nature, and that the only readily apparent source of light is from the camera's flash, if for no other reason than to firmly establish that the first two photos are a distinctly separate even than the second pair of photos.

And now, a miraculous AP photo and caption of the exact same vehicle... well, not quite.

Palestinians gather around the burning wreckage of a car destroyed in an apparent Israeli airstrike in the Rafah refugee camp, southern Gaza Strip, Tuesday, Sept. 5, 2006.Three Palestinians were killed and 12 wounded late Tuesday in explosions, at least one of them the result of an Israeli airstrike, Palestinians and the Israeli military said.

Suddenly this car, still readily identifiable by its five-spoke wheel, deformed hood and dark quarterpanel mark, has burst into flame, after the door pillar extending over the passenger compartment, the battered driver's side door, the roof-supporting column behind the driver's door, and the rear door on the driver's side have all been removed or pulled down.

Perhaps there are other alternative explanations, but it appears to my eye that parts of the vehicle were pulled out of the way and the car reignited between the time the Reuters photographer took the first picture of this vehicle and the unnamed AP photographer took the far more dramatic second photo. Either that, or the order of the photos are reversed, and these fine resident mechanics and body shop fabricators of Gaza were already well on the way towards reconstructing the car before it was even removed from the scene.

I'll let you decide which scenario is more likely.

Keeping the Peace?

When Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora praised Hezbollah's war against Israel as "legendary" it was disconcerting. When his government refused to disarm Hezbollah, and instead opted for a "if we don't see it, we won't confiscate it (so please hide them)" approach to Hezbollah's weaponry, it was cause for concern.

So what should we make of the Lebanese Army moving anti-aircraft guns into southern Lebanon?

My guess is "nothing good."

The Reality We Live In

Judd from Think Progress offers up a blistering response the upcoming ABC docudrama, Path to 9/11, from former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke:

ThinkProgress has obtained a response to this scene from Richard Clarke, former counterterrorism czar for Bush I, Clinton and Bush II, and now counterterrorism adviser to ABC:

1. Contrary to the movie, no US military or CIA personnel were on the ground in Afghanistan and saw bin Laden.

2. Contrary to the movie, the head of the Northern Alliance, Masood, was no where near the alleged bin Laden camp and did not see UBL.

3. Contrary to the movie, the CIA Director actually said that he could not recommend a strike on the camp because the information was single sourced and we would have no way to know if bin Laden was in the target area by the time a cruise missile hit it.

In short, this scene — which makes the incendiary claim that the Clinton administration passed on a surefire chance to kill or catch bin Laden — never happened. It was completely made up by Nowrasteh.

The actual history is quite different. According to the 9/11 Commission Report (pg. 199), then-CIA Director George Tenet had the authority from President Clinton to kill Bin Laden. Roger Cressy, former NSC director for counterterrorism, has written, “Mr. Clinton approved every request made of him by the CIA and the U.S. military involving using force against bin Laden and al-Qaeda.”

That is what Judd and Richard Clarke have to say.

Decision '08 recalls a quite different and far more true reality by citing the 9/11 Commission Report which states unequivocally that on four separate occasions--Spring 1998, June 1999, December 1999, and August 2000--U.S. National Security Advisor Sandy Burger was "an obstacle to action," preventing strikes that would have perhaps killed Osama bin Laden, decapitating al Qaeda well in advance of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks that killed nearly three thousand innocent people.

Judd at Think Progress and many other liberals would apparently like to pretend that Islamic terrorism was not a threat before George W. Bush was inaugurated. This collective selective amnesia is neither helpful nor realistic. Osama bin Laden was an identified threat well before George W. Bush took office, and his plan to attack on 9/11 is a direct result of watching President Clinton's headlong retreat "redeployment" from Somalia at the behest of the American Left's favorite defeatist, Congressman John Murtha.

William Jefferson Clinton's Presidency spanned 1993-2001. During that time, al Qaeda was suspected to be the inspiration or the cause of a minimum of four separate terrorist attacks against Western targets.

From NPR:

Feb. 26, 1993: A massive bomb explodes in a garage below the World Trade Center in New York City. Six people are killed and more than 1,000 injured in the blast. Analysts cite some links to al Qaeda in the attack, though Osama bin Laden disavowed any connection.

June 25, 1996: A powerful truck bomb explodes outside a U.S. military housing complex near Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, killing 19 American servicemen and wounding several hundred people.

Aug. 7, 1998: Two bombs explode within minutes of each other near the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The blasts kill 264 people.

Oct. 12, 2000: Seventeen American sailors are killed and 39 wounded by a bomb aboard a small boat that targets the USS Cole, a U.S. Navy destroyer refueling in Aden, Yemen.

If the Clinton Administration had acted to attack bin Laden during any of the four chances it had between 1998 and 2000, there is the possibility that bin Laden's death could have averted the attacks that killed 264 and wounded thousands in Kenya and Tanzania. Osama bin Laden's death in any of the four possible attacks that Berger stopped may have kept 17 sailors from being killed in Yemen, and 389 other sailors from being wounded. But Clinton's administration did not act, and missed its chances, not just one time, but four.

This is not to place all the blame for 9/11 on Clinton's administration, as every single administration from Nixon and Ford onward to today, both Democrat and Republican, "fed the beast" by not responding decisively and with overwhelming force to terrorist attacks. Clinton was the first president to face al Qaeda, but he was not the first President to fail against terrorism.

George W. Bush's administration inherited 35+ years of bad decision-making which led up to the 9/11/01 attacks, and the ramifications of those 35 years of fundamentally "misunderestimating" the thread continue to ripple forward as terrorist organizations around the world act on the now long-held belief that their zealotry and willingness to die is stronger than our determination to live in freedom.

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (and of that matter, in Lebanon) have both confused and infuriated the jihadis that are so certain that they can beat the West with outdated weaponry and tenacity, but the simple fact of the matter is that when Western politicians get out of the way and let their militaries fight, western forces have never lost in actions above platoon level in the entire War on Terror. Man-to-man, soldier-to-terrorist, we are quite simply better at killing them than they are killing us.

The reality is that we can and do defeat jihadists when weak-willed politicians let our soldiers fight. It only remains to be seen if the politicians and apologists in free nations will allow us a chance to win.

Update: From time to time, the most recent occupant of the White House shows us that he gets it.

Too Cowardly to Even Call It Retreat

Captain Ed notes this morning an open letter from Democrats calling for a "change of course" in Iraq.

Their "plan" can be summed up in two words:

• disengagement
• retreat

Specifically, they cite four points in their "new direction" for Iraq. They are:

1. transitioning the U.S. mission in Iraq to counter-terrorism, training, logistics and force protection;
2. beginning the phased redeployment of U.S. forces from Iraq before the end of this year;
3. working with Iraqi leaders to disarm the militias and to develop a broad-based and sustainable political settlement, including amending the Constitution to achieve a fair sharing of power and resources; and
4. convening an international conference and contact group to support a political settlement in Iraq, to preserve Iraq's sovereignty, and to revitalize the stalled economic reconstruction and rebuilding effort.

Lets look at what these steps actually propose.

(1) transitioning the U.S. mission in Iraq to counter-terrorism, training, logistics and force protection;

Democrats are stating that they would like for the U.S. military forces in Iraq to take a passive role in combating terrorism in Iraq. In this press release, They throw in the suggestion that U.S. forces would engage in "counter-terrorism," but that has precisely been their role from 2003 to the present. what Democrats are really advocating is their pre-9/11 mindset of counter-terrorism being a police function which is precisely the mindset practiced by U.S. presidents from both parties from the mid 1970s onward that has only emboldened terrorist groups. It was this mindset that inspired Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda to think that slamming airliners into buildings on U.S soil would lead to his ultimate victory. Democrats are willing to concede this point to bin Laden, essentially stating they are willing to re-engage the same reactive approach that has consistently failed to stop the spread of terrorism for three decades. Trying something once and noting it does not work is one thing. Trying the same approach repeatedly even after that approach has been shown to be a categorical failure is the very definition of insanity.

As if their return to the failed policy of reactive counter-terrorism policing isn't passive enough, they expand on just how passive a role they advocate, reducing the American role in Iraq to training, logistics, and force protection. They would have U.S forces train Iraqi forces, but not take them into combat. They would have U.S forces provide logistics and materials to move Iraqi units around, but not use these units to engage terrorists. They would reduce American forces--the best-trained and most experienced active duty military in the world today--to training Iraqis and baby-sitting convoys and hiding in bunkers in fixed installations. Force protection is a defensive measure, designed to minimize losses to specific locations, but does nothing to hunt down and kill terrorists. Quite simply, the Democratic plan is to concede Iraq to any terrorist group that wants to take it, as long as they don't directly attack our forces.

(2) beginning the phased redeployment of U.S. forces from Iraq before the end of this year;

Having conceded Iraq to any Tom, Dick, or Achmed with an Ak-47 and an attitude, the Democrats continue with their self-fulfilling prophecy of failure. As they would have our troops emasculated and reduced to a training and force protection role only, it makes no sense to have them there. Why have soldiers in-theater, if they aren't allowed to fight? And having stripping our soldiers of combat roles, they would do what no enemy force in Iraq above platoon level has ever done; force us into retreat. Of course, they call it "redeployment" to try to cover-up what it really is, but when you concede the country to the terrorists and pull all your soldiers of the battlefield and ship them elsewhere, it is a retreat. A retreat is the "withdrawal of troops to a more favorable position to escape the enemy's superior forces." Democrats apparently feel that terrorists are superior to the American military.

(3) working with Iraqi leaders to disarm the militias and to develop a broad-based and sustainable political settlement, including amending the Constitution to achieve a fair sharing of power and resources; and (4) convening an international conference and contact group to support a political settlement in Iraq, to preserve Iraq's sovereignty, and to revitalize the stalled economic reconstruction and rebuilding effort.

After stripping our soldiers of all offensive capability and then calling for their retreat, Democrats get to the real "meat" of their plan, one that hasn't changed in decades: appeasement politics. They steadfastly refuse to learn from the past, which shows that negotiating with terrorists only emboldens them. If you were a terrorist, and you saw Democrats neuter the American military and force them into retreat (something you yourself cannot do), any paper settlement is merely a formality on your way to complete victory. The Democrats, having shown that they are quite willing to take a defeat of American forces in trade for short term political gains at home, are merely looking for paper solutions so that they can have their "victory" over a weak American president. So by all means go ahead and sign anything they float your way. History shows you won't honor any agreement you sign (and in fact, not being a real government, how are they going to hold you to your agreement? "Sanctions?" Yeah, right). So by all means, go ahead and sign whatever "settlement" Democrats send you, recognizing it for what they truly are; an unconditional surrender of the mightiest military on the planet by the Democratic Party.

The Democratic Party has often been criticized for not having a plan to win the war in Iraq, and this letter indicates that winning is not now and perhaps never has been part of their plan. All they offer here is a sugar-coated defeat, an abandonment of principles, and an abandonment of 25 million Iraqi men, women and children. Democrats are trying to tell you that running away from terrorists is how you beat them.

As the fifth anniversary of the greatest testament to that failed strategy nears, I'm inclined to strongly disagree.

Arrogance Unfettered

A week ago this morning, I caught "someone" creatively editing a three-year-old editorial written by Greg Mitchell of news industry trade Editor & Publisher. The lede in Mitchell's editorial was rewritten to cast him in a more favorable light in a story in which he already admitted to being guilty of journalistic fraud three years ago.

Greg Mitchell wrote this as the lede to his 2003 editorial:

Since the press seems to be in full-disclosure mode these days, I want to finally come clean. Back when I worked for the Niagara Falls (N.Y.) Gazette (now the Niagara Gazette), our city editor asked me to find out what tourists thought about an amazing local event: Engineers had literally “turned off” the famous cataracts, diverting water so they could shore up the crumbling rock face. Were visitors disappointed to find a trickle rather than a roar? Or thrilled about witnessing this once-in-a-lifetime stunt?

It stayed unchanged for over three years until I criticized him for it, at which point the editorial's lede was changed to this within hours:

Since the press seems to be in full-disclosure mode these days, I want to finally come clean. Back in 1967, when I was 19 and worked for the Niagara Falls (N.Y.) Gazette (now the Niagara Gazette) as a summer intern, our city editor asked me to find out what tourists thought about an amazing local event: Engineers had literally "turned off" the famous cataracts, diverting water so they could shore up the crumbling rock face. Were visitors disappointed to find a trickle rather than a roar? Or thrilled about witnessing this once-in-a-lifetime stunt?

The changes—most likely made by Mitchell himself—are obvious:

Since the press seems to be in full-disclosure mode these days, I want to finally come clean. Back in 1967, when I was 19 and worked for the Niagara Falls (N.Y.) Gazette (now the Niagara Gazette) as a summer intern, our city editor asked me to find out what tourists thought about an amazing local event: Engineers had literally "turned off" the famous cataracts, diverting water so they could shore up the crumbling rock face. Were visitors disappointed to find a trickle rather than a roar? Or thrilled about witnessing this once-in-a-lifetime stunt?

Over the course of the week, various bloggers have attempted to contact Mr. Mitchell and other figures inside both Editor & Publisher and its parent company, VNU Media, about this journalistic fraud, and neither publisher Charles McKeown of Editor & Publisher, nor VNU Media's company spokesman Will Thoretz has had enough courtesy, professionalism, or even concern about the reputation about the craft they are supposed to represent to respond to those asking very serious questions about a very real breach in ethics apparently committed by one of their senior staff members.

Media organizations have essentially two ways with which they can deal with situations of journalistic fraud as noted by Dr. David Perlmutter recently and ironically enough, in this editorial in Editor & Publisher about a similar journalistic scandal:

News picture-making media organizations have two paths of possible response to this unnerving new situation. First, they can stonewall, deny, delete, dismiss, counter-slur, or ignore the problem. To some extent, this is what is happening now and, ethical consideration aside, such a strategy is the practical equivalent of taking extra photos of the deck chairs on the Titanic.

The second, much more painful option, is to implement your ideals, the ones we still teach in journalism school. Admit mistakes right away. Correct them with as much fanfare and surface area as you devoted to the original image. Create task forces and investigating panels. Don't delete archives but publish them along with detailed descriptions of what went wrong. Attend to your critics and diversify the sources of imagery, or better yet be brave enough to refuse to show any images of scenes in which you are being told what to show. I would even love to see special inserts or mini-documentaries on how to spot photo bias or photo fakery—in other words, be as transparent, unarrogant, and responsive as you expect those you cover to be.

In an email earlier this week to E&P Publisher Charles McKeown I said:

The self-serving rewrite of Mr. Mitchell's column has been described as "journalistic malpractice," by one media commentator, and another suggested today that Mitchell has a "truth problem." This is obviously not the kind of public face you would want your publication to have.

Neither Mitchell, nor others that have been contacted about this incident have sought to explain what happened, why it happened, and what can be done to prevent this from happening in the future. Editor & Publisher, or at least Mitchell and those under him, seem to be trying to stonewall this, apparently hoping that if they can delay long enough, that the issue will simply go away. I fear that when the issue does finally pass, it will take its "pound of flesh" in the form of the credibility of this publication with it.

Trust in the media continues to fall and circulation continue to decline, precisely because people such as Mitchell seem to think they are beyond accountability and beyond reproach. I ask you to help save your publication.

All it takes is a simple look to the server logs to conclusively identify who rewrote Mitchell's 2003 column late this past Friday afternoon. An even application of the kind of company policies I expect in any large media organization against this kind of unethical behavior should provide the remedy. Address the problem transparently, and you can gain credibility for Editor & Publisher instead of losing it.

Instead, officers of Editor & Publisher and VNU Media have chosen to stonewall, dismiss, and ignore the breach of journalistic ethics in an editorial by one of their senior editors, and have chosen a failed path. They can publish articles about journalistic ethics, but seem incapable of practicing what they preach.

Sadly, Editorial & Publisher is apparently unable to follow the advice that it provides to the publishing world; allowing journalistic malpractice to reign in its halls unchallenged, unfettered, and unafraid.

Waiter, There's a Jihadi In My Soup

It looks like several more British "moderate Muslims" were close to deciding to "prove themselves," as Miss England says, as 14 men were arrested in a series of overnight raids.

Armed police have arrested 14 men following anti-terror raids in London, including 12 arrests at a restaurant in the Borough area.

Two people were held elsewhere in the city in what police said was an intelligence-led operation.

Police said the arrests were not connected to the alleged transatlantic jet bomb plot or the 7 July attacks.

An Islamic school near Tunbridge Wells has also been searched as part of the same operation.

The Jameah Islameah property, on Catt's Hill near Crowborough, East Sussex, is an Islamic teaching facility for boys aged between 11 and 16.

I'm shocked, shocked that an Islamic school may have been used to help plot terror attacks. And appalled. And verklempt, and I'm not even 100% sure what that word means. Most of those arrested, however, were taken into custody at a local halal Chinese restaurant called The Bridge to China Town. Halal food is, of course, food permissible according to Islamic diet restrictions.

Sadly, you'll note that the BBC is so cowed by the "moderates" among them that they can't even directly mention the fact that these men were British-born Pakistani Muslims, preferring to let you infer the facts for the locational data provided.

Great Britain may yet be saved, but the BBC has already been lost to enemy action.

New Republic Sockpuppet Exposed

They never seem to learn.

Gabriel Range's Clone War

The blogosphere is quite abuzz over a British-made mock documentary that envisions a world in the wake of the assassination of U.S. President George W. Bush, where an Emporer Palpatine-like President Dick Cheney institutes a totalitarian government in the United States that instigates a cascading series of wars against Iran, Syria, Venezuela and Cuba.

While I think that filmmaker Gabriel Range made a film that he hopes is supposed to be taken quite seriously, this dark historical fantasy seems to be more of an exploration of the psychology of the darker, more twisted depths of paranoid agi-prop than an attempt to define a realistic alternative future in the event of an assassination.

Is Range truly convinced that the American people would spasmodically accept the nationality of a presidential assassin as a justifiable pretense for war? Americans have certainly had the opportunity, and yet did not try to invade Italy when Giuseppe Zangara tried to kill FDR, nor did we stage a knee-jerk invasion of Iraq in the wake of the 1993 attempt on President H.W. Bush's life by agents of Saddam Hussein.

No, Range assaults the intelligence and the individuality of all Americans, assuming we would embrace the imposition of his fictional totalitarianism and an ever-escalating series of wars without having any mechanisms, or even an inclination, to stop them from occurring. He lumps liberal and conservative, Democrat and Republican, into one stereotype of a bloodthirsty kill-anyone-we-can-because-we-can cartoonish monolith that has never existed in this or any other American lifetime.

We are not clones, Mr. Range.

More than any other, this country is naturally inclined to entertain radically different ideas at the same time, making this war-loving future United States of Death laughably sophomoric, and in the end, next to impossible to believe for anyone who knows the American psychology at all.

We'll learned nothing about an alternate American future from what I've read of this film, but I think we have learned quite a bit about what Gabriel Range thinks of Americans.

Air America Cuts Staff, Financial Problems Cited

An utter shocker, I know:

MIKE MALLOY FIRED BY AIR AMERICA RADIO

There will be no Mike Malloy program on Air America Radio as we have been terminated as of 8/30/06.

We are as shocked as you are, especially since as recently as last Tuesday we were told we had the go-ahead to announce our return to NY airwaves and that our contract was "on the way."

We are told its a financial decision.

Is Air America having financial problems? If so, no Boys & Girls Club in America is safe.

"Snip the red wire. But first..."

Perhaps I'm simply confused as to the best way to dispose of unexploded ordnance, but is tipping an unexploded artillery shell forward, apparently up on its fuse, as this Lebanese soldier does, the smartest way to proceed?

Update: In the comments, my favorite ordnance expert says this soldier is not as dumb as he looks:

The thing has already functioned. And even if it is an ICM projectile, fuze function and dispensing, vice range-to-impact, means he's probably nowhere near where the cargo was ejected, either.

In other words, the Associated Press was dead wrong when they called this an "unexploded shell" in their caption to this photo.

Shocking, I know.

Yeah, That'll Work...

This is kind of like John Mark Karr reassuring you that Wayne Williams would be a great babysitter:

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Friday that Syria would step up border patrols and work with the Lebanese army to stop the flow of weapons to Hezbollah.

Syria will increase its own patrols along the Lebanon-Syria border, and establish joint patrols with the Lebanese army "when possible," Annan said after meeting with Syrian President Bashar Assad in Damascus.

Assad made no public comments after their meeting, but Annan spoke with reporters at the Damascus airport before he departed midday for Qatar.

The U.N. resolution that halted fighting between Israel and Hezbollah calls for an arms embargo on the guerrilla group, and for Lebanon to "secure its borders and other entry points."

Annan said Assad informed him that Syria would "take all necessary measures" to implement paragraph 15 of U.N. resolution 1701, which calls on countries to prevent the sale or supply of weapons to entities in Lebanon without the consent of the Lebanese government or U.N. peacekeepers.

This is the same Syria that armed Hezbollah with medium-range rockets used in the recent conflict against Israeli civilian targets, the same Syria who's leader praised Hezbollah's Pyrrhic "victory." Now more than ever, the cease-fire between Hezbollah and Israel merely appears to be a chance for both sides to rearm and reevaluate their tactics before the next conflagration.

Pretty/Stupid

From the first Muslim Miss England:

The first Muslim to be crowned Miss England has warned that stereotyping members of her community is leading some towards extremism.

Hammasa Kohistani made history last year when she was chosen to represent England in the Miss World pageant.

But one year on, the 19-year-old student from Hounslow feels that winning the coveted beauty title last September was a "sugar coating" for Muslims who have become more alienated in the past 12 months.

She said: "The attitude towards Muslims has got worse over the year. Also the Muslims' attitude to British people has got worse.

"Even moderate Muslims are turning to terrorism to prove themselves. They think they might as well support it because they are stereotyped anyway. It will take a long time for communities to start mixing in more."

"...moderate Muslims are turning to terrorism to prove themselves. They think they might as well support it because they are stereotyped anyway."

According to Ms. Kohistani's logic, alcoholics should forego trying to get their lives back together, say, "the Hell, with it," and go ahead and drink because people expect them to be drunks.

It is a troubling mindset, and one I hope is not widespread in western Muslim communities. If Muslim moderates star to embrace terrorism as a way of "proving themselves" to radicals within the nations they inhabit, current feelings of disassociation that they seem to presently feel will only worsen, becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. If an embrace of terrorism becomes widespread, or more likely, an appearance of the embrace of terrorism becomes widespread, crackdowns against Muslims will only worsen. It could perhaps lead to even worse tensions and violence if the rest of the British population feels significantly threatened.

If Hammasa Kohistani wants to change public opinion and stereotypes against Muslims as she says elsewhere in the article, she needs to encourage Muslims to prove, time and again if necessary, that the violent fundamentalist way is not their own. British Muslims should respond to suspicions not by embracing terrorism, but by becoming the most vigilant fighters against it.

A widespread "we might as well do it anyway" mindset that validates these stereotypes is precisely the wrong message to be sending.