At It Again

It looks like someone is trying to steal Michael Yon's pictures. Again.

This time?

The Washington State Democratic Party, on behalf of congressional candidate Darcy Burner.

Interestingly enough, this seems to be the second time a Democatic group has stolen intellectual property while trying to "help" Burner get elected.

The Charge of the Lightweight Brigade

It seems that John Kerry can't quit charging the guns:

Senator John Kerry issued the following statement in response to White House Press Secretary Tony Snow, assorted right wing nut-jobs, and right wing talk show hosts desperately distorting Kerry’s comments about President Bush to divert attention from their disastrous record:

"If anyone thinks a veteran would criticize the more than 140,000 heroes serving in Iraq and not the president who got us stuck there, they're crazy. This is the classic G.O.P. playbook. I'm sick and tired of these despicable Republican attacks that always seem to come from those who never can be found to serve in war, but love to attack those who did.

I'm not going to be lectured by a stuffed suit White House mouthpiece standing behind a podium, or doughy Rush Limbaugh, who no doubt today will take a break from belittling Michael J. Fox's Parkinson's disease to start lying about me just as they have lied about Iraq. It disgusts me that these Republican hacks, who have never worn the uniform of our country lie and distort so blatantly and carelessly about those who have.

The people who owe our troops an apology are George W. Bush and Dick Cheney who misled America into war and have given us a Katrina foreign policy that has betrayed our ideals, killed and maimed our soldiers, and widened the terrorist threat instead of defeating it. These Republicans are afraid to debate veterans who live and breathe the concerns of our troops, not the empty slogans of an Administration that sent our brave troops to war without body armor.

Bottom line, these Republicans want to debate straw men because they're afraid to debate real men. And this time it won't work because we’re going to stay in their face with the truth and deny them even a sliver of light for their distortions. No Democrat will be bullied by an administration that has a cut and run policy in Afghanistan and a stand still and lose strategy in Iraq."

I'm almost overwhelmed at how politically tone-deaf John Kerry in posting this response on his Web site.

Almost.

Not only does Kerry refuse to apologize for slandering those serving our country, he actually has the gall to try to go on the offensive and attack those condemning his comments. As many of the "assorted right wing nut-jobs" attacking him are current and former members of the military, Kerry insults them not once, but twice.

Kerry even goes so far as to insist that those who are enraged at his slur have resorted to lies and distortions, even though his comments were captured in print, audio, and video formats. The context of his comments was quite clear, and it is disingenuous for him to try to say the video evidence he freely gave of his own accord was a distortion.

His comments devolve from there into what even reads as a high-pitched and hysterical shrieking that seems to indicate that Kerry's immeasurable gaffe is somehow the Bush Administration’s fault. Certainly, the rant will play well on the far left fringe of the Democratic Party, but it serves to alienate almost everyone else in the country that expected a measured apology, not a second attack.

Allied against the overwhelming core of the American populace that respects the military even if they have not served, an anemic John Kerry continues to futilely charge into the guns, perhaps snatching a more perfect Democratic defeat from the jaws of possible victory once more.

Cannon to the Right of Them.

Cannon to the Center.

Cannon all around.

The magic hat lies (and lies, and lies... )

shatter'd and sunder'd.

The Silence Hear 'Round the World

The center-right side of the political blogosphere is buzzing this afternoon over a slur made against the military by Democratic Senator John Kerry while Kerry was stumping for California gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides.

Kerry said:

"You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq."

The remark, a slight against the intelligence of the men and women serving in our nation's military, would doubtlessly have been front page news if uttered by a Republican, but instead, the mainstream media has so far largely given the Democratic Senator from Massachusetts a pass.

Not one story regarding the slur has been posted in major media outlets as reported on Google News as of 1:00 PM, more than 12 hours after Kerry made the comments.

A simple search of Google News For "John Kerry" captured only a handful of reports from conservative blogs, and the single link to anything approaching a major media outlet was post to a Chicago Tribune blog called The Swamp.

As for North Carolina media outlets, neither the Raleigh-based television station Web site WRAL.com nor the McClatchy-owned Raleigh-based newspaper, the News & Observer, deemed the story worth a mention, even though Fort Bragg, Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, and Pope Air Force Base are all within their readership/viewership, as are Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point and Marine Base Camp Lejune.

It almost makes you wonder if the media might be attempting to cover for one political party over the other.

Doubtlessly, when the media does catch up to the story, they will present it as a feud between the Republicans and Kerry, not the reprehensible belittling of our men and women in uniform that Kerry's offhand remark so clearly was.

Update: WRAL finally posted an online article on the subject as I was writing this, setting up the story in such a way as to pit the White House against Kerry.

I guess they had to wait until they could figure out a way to minimize the damage.

Update: It's rare that they deserve such credit, but I'll always give it when due: AllahPundit reports that CNN ran the video clip of Kerry's comments "a good four or five times within the past hour."

In the wake of running terrorsit propaganda videos as news on the 19th, that this could be seen as CNN's attempt to "Lurch" back towards the middle.

Update: Kerry refuses to apologize. But he supports the troops!

John Kerry's Continuing Contempt For the Military

Lurch just can't keep his contempt for our brave soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines hidden any longer.

“You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”

This mindblowingly stupid comment comes courtesy of Allahpundit, who also has Kerry on audio and video over at Hot Air.

I hope that members of our military keep in mind that Kerry is only articulating sentiments that many on the far left have held over and passed down to future generations of service-hating leftists since at least the Vietnam War era, and that our military can voice its displeasure with Kerry's "fellow travelers" at the ballot box exactly one week from today.

If Kerry's backhanded slap at those in uniform isn't a call to get "out the vote" for our brave servicemen and servicewomen and those who support them, I don't know what is.

Update: Republican Senator, Navy Pilot and former POW John McCain lets Kerry have it with both barrels:

Senator Kerry owes an apology to the many thousands of Americans serving in Iraq, who answered their country's call because they are patriots and not because of any deficiencies in their education. Americans from all backgrounds, well off and less fortunate, with high school diplomas and graduate degrees, take seriously their duty to our country, and risk their lives today to defend the rest of us in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.

They all deserve our respect and deepest gratitude for their service. The suggestion that only the least educated Americans would agree to serve in the military and fight in Iraq, is an insult to every soldier serving in combat, and should deeply offend any American with an ounce of appreciation for what they suffer and risk so that the rest of us can sleep more comfortably at night. Without them, we wouldn't live in a country where people securely possess all their God-given rights, including the right to express insensitive, ill-considered and uninformed remarks.

I'm asking CY readers to send a copy of Kerry's comments and the link to the Hot Air URL (copy and paste: http://hotair.com/archives/2006/10/30/audio-john-kerry-on-americas-lazy-uneducated-military/ ) via email to everyone they know of voting age.

As their selected candidate for President of the United States just two short years ago, John Kerry obviously reflects the mindset of many liberals in the Democratic Party. Let them all know what you think of them one week from today on November 7.

Hilferatu

Happy Hilloween

Maryland Shocker: Top Dems Cross Party Lines, Endorse Steele

Okay, I can't even pretend that I saw this coming:

Former Prince George's County executive Wayne K. Curry, backed by five black members of the Prince George's County Council, today endorsed Republican Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele's campaign for the U.S. Senate.

Mr. Curry, a Democrat who became the first black Prince George's county executive in 1994, and served two terms, is influential in Prince George's, the state's second-largest county, with about 846,000 residents, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

But the endorsement itself, while very important, doesn't excite me as much as why Curry seems to be breaking ranks with the state Democratic Party.

Mr. Curry signaled his dissatisfaction with Maryland's Democratic Party last spring, when a Democratic poll was leaked to the press, calling Mr. Steele a "unique threat" to the Democrats.

The poll advised Democrats to "knock Steele down" by linking Mr. Steele to President Bush and national Republicans, to turn Mr. Steele "into a typical Republican in the eyes of voters, as opposed to an African-American candidate."

Mr. Curry was incensed by the poll, and said at the time that Mr. Steele's candidacy presented an "enormously historic" opportunity for blacks that "may ultimately break this sort of vices grip by Democrats who feel entitled to black votes regardless of how they treat black voters."

I've long felt that lock-step voting was bad for blacks as individual voters and as communities, as Democrats felt they didn't have to give them anything other than lip-service attention to blacks during campaign season, while largely ignoring them between elections. The flipside of this, of course, is that Republicans running for office felt that they had no chance of picking up votes from blacks, and they ignored them, too. Both parties took black voters for granted in their own way, and black communities suffered as a result of their political capital being wasted.

Perhaps this movement by a small group of Prince George's County black Democrats is just an anomaly that will prove to be a one-off oddity in the realm of American politics. On the other hand, perhaps other black community and political leaders will key in on Mr. Curry's observations and realize that breaking the vice grip Democrats have on the black vote is the best chance they have of wielding real political power in the future.

Zawahiri Targeted

That is what A.J. Strata, AllahPundit, Bill Roggio and others are thinking today in response to reports that Pakistani military forces killed 80 suspected al Qaeda militants with a strike led by Pakistani helicopter gunships using "precision weapons," Among the confirmed dead so far is radical cleric Maulana Liaqat, who led the al Qaeda-affiliated school.

Roggio suspects that the attack may not have been carried out by Pakistani forces, but instead an combined forces hunter/killer team currently named Task Force 145.

In previous incarnations, this team hunted and killed Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq as TF 626, hunted and coordinated the capture of Saddam Hussein as TF121, and hunted down and killing Saddam's son's Uday and Qusay as TF20.

Whatever the group is called, it is thought to be composed of the most elite American and British Special Forces units from all branches of service, including elements of Delta Force, SEAL Team Six, SAS and SFSG commandos, and US Army, USAF, and RAF special operations air units.

Brian Ross is stating that the attack came from Predator drones.

Zawahiri was targeted and almost killed in a Predator strike under similar circumstances back in January.

Update: The operation appears to be completely Pakistani in execution, as eyewitnesses identified three Pakistani helicopters as having fired upon the Taliban and al Qaeda affiliated madrassa. What is interesting is that the locals have displayed just 20 bodies of the 80 thought to have been killed, even though there is comparatively little rubble remaining to hide bodies according to the few pictures taken from the scene.

We know from previous attacks in the area that the Taliban and al Qaeda forces are quick to claim their bodies for the rubble of such strikes if at all possible, and so the discrepancy between the number claimed killed and those recovered may be an inadverdant indicator of how many militants were indeed killed.

Update: An al Qaeda leader that survived the strike confirmed that the madrassa was used to train militants.

Missing U.S. Soldier Snatched By al Sadr's Mahdi Army

The American translator kidnapped last week has been identified, and it appears that he broke Army regulations by marrying an Iraqi civilian:

A U.S. Army translator missing after being kidnapped in Iraq had broken military rules to marry an Iraqi woman and was visiting her when he was abducted, according to people who claim to be relatives of the wife.

According to a report in Monday editions of The New York Times, the relatives said that the soldier, previously unidentified by the U.S. government, is Ahmed Qusai al-Taei, a 41-year-old Iraqi-American. The family did not know he was a soldier until after the kidnapping, the relatives said.

Taei married a 26-year-old college student, Israa Abdul-Satar, three months ago, the family said. They showed visitors photographs of the couple's wedding and honeymoon, the newspaper reported.

The relatives said members of the Shiite Mahdi Army militia came to the wife's home on Oct. 23 and dragged Taei into their car.

It should be pointed out that the situation al-Taei put himself in is one of the reasons why the military discourages soldiers from marrying into the local population, as it places both the soldier and the family at risk for reprisal attacks.

If al-Sadr's Mahdi Army is indeed behind the kidnapping, the situation has the potential for causing significant a significant political rift, as it may force a more aggressive targeting of the Shiite militia that has formed part of the base of support for Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Entering the Home Stretch

I've mentioned the Scott Elliott's polling web site Election Projection before as being among the most accurate in the 2004 election campaign, and his latest results show the Republicans holding onto a slim lead in the Senate and moving within striking distance of maintaining the all-important House of Representatives.

I consider the House to be "all important" for one simple reason; electing a Democratic House means that John Conyers and Lynn Woolsey and other liberals will be able to accomplish their dream of purposefully losing the War on Terror by defunding the military in Iraq, forcing a precipitous withdrawal, and setting the stage for genocide.

Democrats are loath to admit it publicly, but electing them with be catastrophic not only for Iraq, but for our own nation, which will see Democrats furthering censure and impeachment measured they have already filed against the President and Vice President.

In my opinion (and in the opinions of the two airmen and three soldiers I've recently talked to who just got back from Iraq), we owe it to those soldiers who have been killed and wounded in Iraq and the Iraqi people to finish the job we started there, not leave it abruptly in state chaos.

Looking at the projections provided by Scott's formula, perhaps the security moms and dads that decided the 2004 elections are coming around to that same conclusion.

French Bus Torched by Undescribables

And the Anonymous War continues:

Teenagers set a bus ablaze in Marseilles, France, seriously burning a female passenger and sending three others to the hospital for smoke inhalation.

The group reportedly forced the vehicle's doors opened and threw a flammable liquid into the bus before fleeing, the BBC said Sunday.

Authorities reported several recent bus attacks, coinciding with the one-year anniversary of riots in poor suburbs across France. The deaths of two teens in Paris sparked the riots.

In Paris, about 500 people marched in memory of the two teenage boys who died in 2005. The deaths of the two, both from immigrant families, and suggestions they were fleeing from police touched off weeks of suburban clashes, the BBC said.

During last year's riots, authorities said more than 10,000 cars were set on fire and 300 buildings were firebombed, the BBC said.

It's too bad no one can seem to get a description of the people carrying out these attacks. Apparently, France is being overrun by vague, featureless teenagers.

Oh, the horror...

Blog Headline Writing 101

Clearly, the appropriate title for this post exposing the Democratic activist who created the faux StopSexPredators blog to attack disgraced former Congressman Mark Foley should have been The Face that Launched a Thousand Quips.

Frankly, I'm past the point of caring about the whole Foley issue, but as this guy sowed, so shall he reap.

Pentagon Announces New Front In War On Terror

Via Instapundit, StrategyPage reports that the U.S. military is opening a new front in the War on Terror against one of terrorism's most insidious allies... the mainstream media:

The U.S. Department of Defense is now taking its requests for corrections public through a website known as For the Record (located at http://www.defenselink.mil/home/dodupdate/index-b.html). Here, the Department of Defense is openly calling for corrections from major media outlets, and even noting when they refuse to publish letters to the editor.

The most recent was this past Tuesday, when the DOD published a letter, that the New York Times refused to run, which contained quotes from five generals (former CENTCOM commander Tommy Franks, current CENTCOM commander John Abizaid, MNF Commander George Casey, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers, as well as his successor, Peter Pace) that rebutted a New York Times editorial. This has been picked up by a number of bloggers who have been able to spread the Pentagon's rebuttal – and the efforts of the New York Times to sweep it under the rug – across the country.

The DoD site has specifically challenged the New York Times, Newsweek, and the Weekly Standard.

It's good to see our military is finally willing to start fighting the War on Terror on the media front as well.

Watching Them Shoot At His Own

BBC reporter David Loyn has become an embedded journalist with the Taliban in the Helmand Province of southern Afghanistan, as the terrorists square off against British forces in the region.

I find it quite troubling that a British news organization would send a reporter to embed with those forces attempting to kill their fellow countrymen, and I find it equally troubling that Loyn would accept such an assignment.

I can't imagine Scripps Howard sending Ernie Pyle to report from behind German lines in North Africa, or the Associated Press sending Joe Rosenthal to report from a palm-log bunker on a Japanese island fortress, but perhaps those were more idealistic times where one might expect a nation's news organizations to actually support their own side in a war.

My, how things have changed.

CNN Poll Says Bush Failed: America Not Completely Fascist Yet

Note with amusement that CNN filed this under "Broken Government," and then get sockpuppet some smelling salts :

Most Americans do not believe the Bush administration has gone too far in restricting civil liberties as part of the war on terror, a new CNN poll released Thursday suggests.

While 39 percent of the 1,013 poll respondents said the Bush administration has gone too far, 34 percent said they believe the administration has been about right on the restrictions, according to the Opinion Research Corp. survey. Another 25 percent said the administration has not gone far enough.

Asked whether Bush has more power than any other U.S. president, 65 percent of poll respondents said no. Thirty-three percent said yes. Of those who said yes, a quarter said that was bad for the country.

I'm glad to see that the Halliburton-built concentration camps reeducation centers are finally working.

I was starting to get worried.

Update: Mangled syntax corrected.

Common Goals

Andrew Cochran notes something of interest today in the Counterterrorism Blog:

I'm amazed by the op-eds written by Peter Bergen in today's New York Times tiled, "What Osama Wants," and by Michael Scheuer in yesterday's Washington Times, titled, "Another bin Laden victory." Both men are luminaries in the counterterrorism community on the basis of their brave and objective work inside terrorist cases and events, and also due to their open criticism of numerous elements of current national security strategy. Mr. Bergen is a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, known in Washington more for criticizing President Bush than for agreeing with him. But both men endorse the current strategy in Iraq and express certainty that the loss of GOP control of the U.S. Congress would be an outright victory for Al Qaeda and jihadists. Frankly, I never would have imagined that either man would write this so close to the election. Given their backgrounds, their views should be taken seriously as a forecast by two world-reknowned and objective experts of probable jihadist reaction to the election.

Considering that Democratic and al Qaeda rhetoric in the 2004 Presidential campaign was almost identical, this should hardly be surprising.

When the language of the Democratic Party's leading luminaries is indistinguishable from that of those who desire to destroy the American way of life, it might be time to reevaluate their choice of words and their positions.

Keep that in mind, Security Moms.

The Enemy of My Enemy

It is by now a well known fact that Islamic terrorist and insurgent groups are extremely media savvy, producing and packaging their own propaganda, staging false media events, and timing both individual attacks and campaigns in an attempt to influence public opinion so that they might win wars through media manipulation that they are far too weak to win militarily.

I don't doubt that the media knows that attacks are purposefully increased leading up to major events such as national elections in nations allied against terrorists, and yet, that fact rarely, if ever, receives any acknowledgement.

Is it too much to ask for professional media oranizations to acknowledge that the news they report is part of a carefully considered and purposefully shaped terrorist campaign targeted for media consumption, or have we come to a point where we should simply assume that they are willing pawns, conspiring with terrorists toward a common goal?

Does it sound far-fetched that the enemies of our way of life might conspire with those in our own ranks to attempt to defeat what they consider a common adversary?

It shouldn't.

It has happened before, and most assuredly is happening again.

This Message Brought to You By Embryos Against Dishonest Actors

A response to Michael J. Fox from Scott Ott (Links shamelessly stolen from Allah at Hot Air).

To date, embryonic cell research has brought forth not one cure, and instead, is plagued with the problem of uncontrolled cell division.

Uncontrolled cell division, of course, has another name.

New War Spin: Fighting Makes Army Unsuited For Combat

Baltimore Sun reporter David Wood makes that claim citing the Army's vice chief of staff, Gen. Richard Cody, in an oddly-titled article, "Warfare skills eroding as Army fights insurgents":

Pressed by the demands of fighting insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. Army has been unable to maintain proficiency in the kind of high-intensity mechanized warfare that toppled Saddam Hussein and would be needed again if the Army were called on to fight in Korea or in other future crises, senior officers acknowledge.

Soldiers once skilled at fighting in tanks and armored vehicles have spent three years carrying out street patrols, police duty and raids on suspected insurgent safe houses. Officers who were experienced at maneuvering dozens of tanks and coordinating high-speed maneuvers with artillery, attack helicopters and strike fighters now run human intelligence networks, negotiate with clan elders and oversee Iraqi police training and neighborhood trash pickup.

The Army's senior leaders say there is scant time to train troops in high-intensity skills and to practice large-scale mechanized maneuvers when combat brigades return home. With barely 12 months between deployments, there is hardly enough time to fix damaged gear and train new soldiers in counterinsurgency operations. Some units have the time to train but find their tanks are either still in Iraq or in repair depots.

The Army's vice chief of staff, Gen. Richard Cody, recently told reporters that there is growing concern that the Army's skills are eroding and that if the war in Iraq continues at current levels, the United States could eventually have "an army that can only fight a counterinsurgency." Cody is broadly responsible for manning, equipping and training the force.

While General Cody is a career military officer and I am but a humble civilian blogger, I beg to differ with his analysis. Put simply, it seems doubtful that large U.S. mechanized units will every again square off against comparable units in large scale, high-intensity maneuver warfare, if that is indeed the assertion he was trying to make.

Advances in imagery and signals intelligence makes it doubtful that an opposing Army could assemble a large mechanized force without U.S. commanders learning of its location, at which point other intelligence gathering assets would be able to determine the force make-up and develop precise targeting coordinates. At this point, Air Force, Navy, and Marine strike fighters and bombers, along with cruise missiles and long-range artillery assets such as the MLRS and ER-MLRS can repeatedly engage opposing force armor concentrations at a range of hundreds of miles. Once closer, any surviving units can be engaged with close air support by Army and Marine attack helicopters and conventional artillery assets, in addition to on-going attacks from Air Force and Navy strike fighters and bombers. By the time American armor closes to within their several-mile striking distance, the bulk of enemy forces will likely be destroyed, at which point the job for American armored forces will likely be identifying and destroying surviving remaining enemy armored forces that are significantly degraded and largely immobilized.

Likewise, if General Cody does not see large armor-versus armor conflicts on the horizon, the practical experience gained over the past three years in urban street fighting probably makes our soldiers better prepared for future conflicts. The kind of overwhelming short range fire-support and long range "sniping" against fixed position targets that Neil Prakash wrote about in his now-defunct milblog Armor Geddon seems to be the future of heavy armored units in heavily integrated combined arms warfare.

General Casey may indeed have a point if we once again face an opposing force that can deny us the air superiority needed to make a combined arms battlespace its most effective, but as our most pressing projected opponents—Iran, North Korea, and Pakistan, according to the article—do not have that capability, his concerns seem to me to be the complaints of the kind of stereotypical general wedded to past tactics, guilty of always fighting the past war.

Note: John Donovan tells me via email that he might address the Sun article in more detail later today at Castle Argghhh!

Snatching Defeat From the Jaws of Victory

Mary Katharine Ham vlogs that it appears once again that Democrats may be priming themselves for another electoral meltdown.

I agree. Now all they need is some good theme music.

Virtual Reporting: Live from Rear Lines

Michael Fumento, who has embedded as a journalist three times with combat units stationed in Iraq's al Anbar province, launches a scathing attack against the way the mainstream media is covering the war in Iraq:

Would you trust a Hurricane Katrina report datelined "direct from Detroit"? Or coverage of the World Trade Center attack from Chicago? Why then should we believe a Time Magazine investigation of the Haditha killings that was reported not from Haditha but from Baghdad? Or a Los Angeles Times article on a purported Fallujah-like attack on Ramadi reported by four journalists in Baghdad and one in Washington? Yet we do, essentially because we have no choice. A war in a country the size of California is essentially covered from a single city. Plug the name of Iraqi cities other than Baghdad into Google News and you’ll find that time and again the reporters are in Iraq’s capital, nowhere near the scene. Capt. David Gramling, public affairs officer for the unit I’m currently embedded with, puts it nicely: "I think it would be pretty hard to report on Baghdad from out here." Welcome to the not-so-brave new world of Iraq war correspondence.

Vietnam was the first war to give us reporting in virtually real time. Iraq is the first to give us virtual reporting. That doesn’t necessarily make it biased against the war; it does make it biased against the truth.

Put simply, it's hemorrhoid reporting: "if it bleeds it leads," and you only get it from the rear.

Helping Heroes

Via Michelle Malkin this morning, a call to support milblogger Reid Stanley of A Storm in Afghanistan.

Reid's wife Ellicia has been diagnosed with cancer in her breasts, lungs and brain. The prognosis is terminal, and hospice care is not covered under his military benefits.

I humbly ask my readers for two things:

First and foremost, if you are able, please contribute financially to help his family through this traumatic time if you are able, and keep them in your prayers.

Second, please contact your Congressmen and Senators to ask that hospice care for the immedate family members of servicemen be added to the benefits package of those serving this nation. Our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines risk their lives to protect us. It seems only right that we provide for them and their families when they need it most.

Coincidences

Okay, I'll confess my ignorance and ask the question:

Has anyone else ever seen an African-Palestinian terrorist before?

There is the possibility that the gunman pictured is just a very dark-skinned Arab, or that the color balance was incorrect in this photo. Indeed, another photo of what appears to be the same individual at the same location does apparently show somewhat lighter skin. But with the population of Gaza being 99.4% Arab Palestinian and the remaining 0.6% being Jewish, the question is obvious:

Who is that masked man?

Do we now have photo evidence that Palestianians are importing terrorists from North African terrorist groups? And would that perhaps explain why the Associated Press photographer who shot this photo was kidnapped just hours after this picture was published?

Enquiring minds want to know.

Abandon All Hope

This child was weak—perhaps injured or dying—as this photo was taken in the Darfur region of Sudan in 2004. He may already be dead. One thing is certain; the future of millions of children throughout the Middle East just like him will be affected by you very soon.

As you read this, Darfar is a largely abandoned genocide. Supported by the Sudanese government, Arab janjaweed militias are exterminating Africans of the Fur, Zaghawa, and Massaleit ethnic groups. Estimates of the number of dead vary, and millions are thought to be displaced. We know that children and babies are among the targets of the janjaweed attacks, and that dismemberment is a not uncommon tactic. We also know that the violence in Darfur is projected to worsen throughout the rest of the year.

If current U.S. political trends hold, Iraq may become another Darfur, and Darfur well may be on its way to becoming another Rwanda.

As Victor David Hansen notes of unexpected outcomes today:

Where does all this lead? Not where most expect. The Left thinks that the “fiasco” in Iraq will bring a repudiation of George Bush, and lead to its return to power. Perhaps. But more likely it will bring a return of realpolitik to American foreign policy, in which no action abroad is allowable (so much for the liberals’ project of saving Darfur), and our diplomacy is predicated only on stability abroad. The idealism of trying to birth consensual government will be discredited; but with its demise also ends any attention to Arab moderates, who whined for years about our support for the House of Saud, Pakistani generals, Gulf autocrats, or our neglect of the mayhem wrought by Islamists in Afghanistan. We know now that when the United States tries to spend blood and treasure in Afghanistan and Iraq that it will be slandered as naïve or imperialistic.

Every major Democratic candidate in this fall’s congressional race—save one principled independent Democrat in Connecticut—is pushing for the United States to withdraw from Iraq. Some moderate Republicans are taking this tack as well. They claim that they want U.S. forces out of Iraq because our continued presence there only invites attacks against American soldiers, saps the national treasury, weakens our ability to respond to other threats such as Iran and North Korea, and weakens our image in the international community.

All of these points have some merit.

U.S. soldiers would be far safer if redeployed to Okinawa. There are no insurgents, no sectarian militias, and no roving bands of al Qaeda terrorists there.

The War in Iraq is indeed expensive, costing over 336 billion dollars and growing according to one anti-war web site.

Having such a large commitment of soldiers currently in, returning from, or preparing to go to Iraq certainly absorbs a significant portion of our current military strength, though it barely occupies our force projection from the Navy and Air Force to any extent.

And let us not forget that our international image is indeed tarnished, particularly among those nations of the world community run by strongmen, despots, and dictators that would see a weaker and more isolationist United States as a benefit for their own foreign policy desires.

But what no candidate in favor of withdrawal wants to address is what will happen to the Iraqi people if anti-war candidates do take control of Congress and attempt to live up to their campaign promises.

Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) and other leading Democrats have already made their intentions abundantly clear:

Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) will chair the powerful Ways and Means Committee if Democrats win control of the House next year, but his main goal in 2007 does not fall within his panel’s jurisdiction. "I can’t stop this war, " a frustrated Rangel said in a recent interview, reiterating his vow to retire from Congress if Democrats fall short of a majority in the House.

But when pressed on how he could stop the war even if Democrats control the House during the last years of President Bush’s second term, Rangel paused before saying, "You’ve got to be able to pay for the war, don’t you?"

Rangel’s views on funding the war are shared by many of his colleagues – especially within the 73-member Out of Iraq Caucus.

Some Democratic legislators want to halt funding for the war immediately, while others say they would allocate money for activities such as reconstruction, setting up international security forces, and the ultimate withdrawal of U.S. troops.

"Personally, I wouldn’t spend another dime [on the war,] " said Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.).
Woolsey is among the Democrats in Congress who are hoping to control the power of the purse in 2007 to force an end to the war. Woolsey and some of her colleagues note that Congress helped force the end of Vietnam War by refusing to pay for it.

If Democrats take control of the House of Representatives, they will cut funding to the war effort. What they will not publicly admit is that the nearly immediate precipitous withdrawal that that would force will almost certainly destroy any hopes of Iraq being able to develop a representative form of government.

An impending, unimpeded civil war dwarfing the current level of sectarian violence will quite probably lead to genocide in Iraq, and yet, politicians in the House would not likely respond by reinserting U.S forces to help halt the violence. To do so would be to admit that they were wrong to force such an abrupt withdrawal.

Photo of an Iraqi family near the Iranian border courtesy of Michael Yon.

The price of such short-sighted political miscalculations will be paid for with the blood of Iraqi, men, women, and children. They do not want an even wider civil war, but lack any authority or capability to stop it on their own. No one can predict just how bad the violence would become, but anyone addressing the situation honestly must acknowledge that the number of those killed, injured and displaced will be far greater than the already unacceptable casualties thus far.

The Democratic Party’s intention is not genocide in Iraq, but if they come to power in Congress, that is almost assuredly what they will cause. Their much-discussed and on-going drive for isolationism is precursor to mass murder.

And yet, Iraqi civilians will not be the only victims of a Democratic Congress. A Democratic House that refuses to allow American forces the opportunity to attempt to stabilize a situation we created will have no political capital to intwt in interceding in other conflicts where we have even less direct interests.

As Hanson notes in his article linked above, no action abroad will be permissible if we withdraw from Iraq. There can be no intervention to stop the genocide in Darfur. There can be no intervention in any other "hot spots" that may develop around the world ,because a Democratic Congress that abandoned Iraq will have committed itself to a policy of non-intervention worldwide.

It is well within the realm of possibility that American voters will determine with their votes on November 7 whether or not we will see this mistake of inaction repeated in other nations in the Middle East and Africa in coming years.

The cost in blood and treasure of the current "Republican" war may yet pale in comparison to the human suffering imposed by a pending Democratic "peace."

U.S. Soldier Missing in Baghdad

Breaking on al-Reuters:

A U.S. soldier was reported missing in Baghdad on Monday, the military said.

The soldier, part of a multi-national division in the Iraqi capital, went missing at about 7:30 p.m. local time, the U.S. military said in a statement.

"Coalition and Iraqi Security Forces immediately responded to attempt to locate the soldier, the search is ongoing," the statement said.

The limited information coming out thus far does not indicate the circumstances under which the soldier went missing. In June, two soldiers were captured, tortured and eventually beheaded after a larger force was drawn away and their isolated position was overrun.

It has not been confirmed that this soldier was indeed captured, but that is of course the fear.

More as this develops.

Update: Fox News television mentioned the story briefly. The soldier, a translator, was kidnapped. The kidnapping was reported by an Iraqi civilian who witnessed it..

As expected, the bottomfeeders at the Democratic Underground are already insisting that any impending torture is, of course, President Bush's fault for signing the Military Commissions Act nine days ago.

Never miss a chance, kids, no matter how petty.

Update: This may be something:

An employee at Baghdad's al-Furat TV, which was raided by American forces earlier Monday, said the U.S. forces conducting the search told him they were looking for an abducted American officer of Iraqi descent.

The employee said U.S. soldiers and Mouwafak al-Rubaie, the government's national security adviser who went to the station during the raid, told him the missing officer had left to join family members in Baghdad's Karadah district.

The officer's wife, also an Iraqi-American, was reportedly in the capital visiting family, according to the reports passed on by the al-Furat employee.

Having relatives in the combat zone means that this particular soldier had a great degree of potential exposure. I hope that whoever kidnapped the missing soldier did not use his family members or his spouse as bait leading to his capture.

Update: Snatched on the way to his family? that is what I take away from this line:

American troops who raided Baghdad's al-Furat TV on Monday said they were looking for an abducted American officer of Iraqi descent who had gone to join family members in Karradah.

This is starting to sound like this specific officer may have been targeted, bring about the possibility that whoever took him is looking for intelligence, not just a random soldier to torture for propaganda purposes ahead of the election.

Of Monsters and Mouse-Guns

The M16/M4 family assault rifles have served the U.S. military for longer than I've been alive, and during that 39-year run, it has always been fielded with a 5.56mm NATO catridge. The success of the.22-caliber centerfire round relies almost totally upon velocity, and the short-barreled M4 carbine issued to many of our troops today means that they are equipped with a weapon and cartridge combination that places their lives at risk.

Nowhere in recent memory was anecdotal evidence more apparent than in Michael Yon's widely read dispatch, Gates of Fire, where CSM Robert Prosser engaged a terrorist in Mosul at point-blank range after LTC Eric Kurilla was shot in a storefront ambush:

Prosser ran around the corner, passed the two young soldiers who were crouched low, then by me and right to the shop, where he started firing at men inside.

A man came forward, trying to shoot Kurilla with a pistol, apparently realizing his only escape was by fighting his way out, or dying in the process. Kurilla was aiming at the doorway waiting for him to come out. Had Prosser not come at that precise moment, who knows what the outcome might have been.

Prosser shot the man at least four times with his M4 rifle. But the American M4 rifles are weak - after Prosser landed three nearly point blank shots in the man’s abdomen, splattering a testicle with a fourth, the man just staggered back, regrouped and tried to shoot Prosser.

Prosser’s M4 carbine failed to seriously incapacitate the terrorist even after he was shot with four 5.56 NATO rounds at almost contact range. Prosser ended up capturing the terrorist after intense hand-to-hand combat. The terrorist survived his wounds.

This incident, written about fourteen months ago, immediately came to mind when I spoke last week with another soldier that had been based in Mosul and Ramadi during his latest tour. The last insurgent he shot took two 5.56 NATO rounds from an M4 in the chest, and the terrorist didn't go down. It took a third round through the head to kill him.

These are not the only "failure to stop" stories I've heard about regarding the 5.56 NATO round, and as the shorter-barreled M4 variant becomes more common through the military, these stories most assuredly won't be the last. I'd like to see the statistics of those American soldiers killed or wounded by those insurgents and terrorists that had already taken one or more hits to the torso, but I imagine that even if the military did maintain such statistics, they would probably be classified.

We know that the M4 does not have a long-enough barrel (14.5") to generate the velocities needed for 5.56 NATO cartridges designed for peak velocities in the 20" barrel of the M16. We also know that future assault weapons programs like the XM8 (with an even shorter 12.5" barrel) have been shelved. So does this mean that American soldiers are destined to use under-performing weapons for the time to come?

A handful of weaponsmiths are hoping to develop larger-diameter cartridges that will be able met the needs of American soldiers, among these cartridges being the 6.8 SPC and the 6.5 Grendel.

These cartridges are designed to fit existing 5.56 NATO-compatible weapons systems, meaning that these new and more powerful cartridges could be retrofitted to existing M16s/M4s with a minimum of modifications (new upper receiver, barrel, magazines, etc). That said, with the historically sloth-like speed of the military procurement system, expect our soldiers to be fielding "under-gunned" 5.56 NATO-chambered M4s for a long-time to come.

When Narrative is More Important than Reality

Pat Tillman, a former NFL safety with the Arizona Cardinals, quit the NFL in May of 2002 and joined the Army eight months after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. He enlisted along with his brother Kevin Tillman, who gave up his own chance to play professional baseball. Both brothers excelled in the Army and were assigned to the 75th Ranger Regiment, and saw duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pat Tillman was killed by "friendly fire" in Afghanistan on April 22, 2004.

I thank the Tillmans for their service in the American military. They both gave up potential fame and fortune to serve our country, something that is increasingly rare among celebrities of this age. They put America first, and their own dreams and ambitions second. I was touched by their personal sacrifice, and felt sorrow when I learned that Pat Tillman had given his life for his nation.

Kevin Tillman has since left the U.S. Military, and on October 19, published an article remembering his brother and condemning U.S foreign policy towards combating terrorism.

When you read his article you can feel the frustration and anger Kevin Tillman feels, no doubt due to his own experiences as a soldier and as someone who has experienced direct personal loss as result of the War on Terror. That does not excuse him, however, from using his position of what Maureen Dowd called "absolute moral authority" when applying it to Cindy Sheehan, to spread unsupported hyperbole, innuendo, and half-truths.

Tillman repeats common canards of the anti-war left, but his own military service does not make for him an unassailable shield, nor does restating them make these tired conventions any more true. Saddam Hussein's Iraq did, without any doubt at all, harbor terrorists. We know the most famous of them by name, including Abu Nidal, Abu Abbas, and Abdul Rahman Yasin. They all killed Americans, and they all lived as Saddam's guests. Yasin was the man who built the 1993 World Trade Center bomb laced with sodium cyanide, the first and so far only attempted chemical weapons attack on American civilians.

Only those on the anti-war left ever (purposefully) misstated that Iraq was involved with the terrorist attacks of September 11, and only the anti-war left ever stated that Saddam's Iraq received uranium from Niger. The Bush Adminstration did not hold those positions. An honest accounting would show that the United States invaded Iraq not because of any involvement with September 11, but because September 11 made us realize how much of a threat Saddam's Iraq could be. Saddam's Iraq were behind previous terror attacks against U. S. targets, and retained the know-how to reconstitute both biological and chemical weapons programs.

Tillman's diatribe is dramatized hyperbole, and some of his commentary is purposefully erroneous and obtuse.

His statement that the suspension of habeus corpus has even occurred is an outright falsehood; no foreign soldier in any war in this nation’s history has ever had habeus corpus rights, and no American civilian is threatened by the Military Commissions Act, which applies only to "alien unlawful enemy combatants"... foreign terrorists.

And yet, Kevin Tillman does provide one unassailable truth in his diatribe, when he stated that, "Somehow a narrative is more important than reality."

His narrative—devoid of concrete facts, long on assertion, hyperbole, and emotional appeal—is just that kind of narrative.

Kevin Tillman purposefully misstates why we went to war in Iraq, even conflating the insurgency and the current sectarian violence as a reason for invasion, and he fundamentally misunderstands—or perhaps avoids—recognizing the essential fact that al Qaeda and terrorist-supporting states such as Syria and Iran have decided to make Iraq the central front in the War on Terror.

Like it or not, Iraq is where the terrorsits are, partially due to our actions, but also due to the emphasis terrorists and their supporters have poured into winning in Iraq.

This leftist anti-war narrative relies on the misguided belief that if we withdraw from Iraq, that somehow, terrorists would cease trying to attack and kill American civilians. That misguided position of disengagement should have died when we were attacked on September 11, 2001, long before we ever invaded Iraq or Afghanistan.

Islamic terrorists have stated time and again the intention to come after us, no matter what we do, and our past withdrawals have only served to embolden them.

It's too bad Kevin Tillman couldn't work that one over-arching and essential fact into his narrative.

Incompetence in the Media War

Michael Yon reports that in what is widely recognized as a "media war" in Iraq, our leader in the public relations battle is an analogue to Forrest Gump.

I talked last night to three infantrymen who were recently back from service in Ramadi and Mosul, and like the two Air Force flight mechanics just back from daily runs to Baghdad from Kuwait I talked to Wednesday night, they said that what the media has been reporting out of Iraq is nothing like what they've seen.

It's bad enough that the terrorist want to use the media (and that the media are quite happy to be used), but when incompetents like LTC Barry Johnson functionally censor reporting, only the terrorists side of the story is told, and that's no way to win a media-driven war.

More Liberal Outreach Towards Christians

Iowahawk had a fall-down funny spoof of a letter from DNC Chairman to banjo-plucking, cross-burning Christian conservatives earlier this week that encompassed the disdain many far left liberals seem to have for religiously-oriented traditional values voters.

AFP decided today to join in the fun, with the slight difference being that they were attempting to provide not satire, but news:

The top US general defended the leadership of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, saying it is inspired by God.

"He leads in a way that the good Lord tells him is best for our country," said Marine General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Rumsfeld is "a man whose patriotism focus, energy, drive, is exceeded by no one else I know ... quite simply, he works harder than anybody else in our building," Pace said at a ceremony at the Southern Command (Southcom) in Miami.

Rumsfeld has faced a storm of criticism and calls for his resignation, largely over his handling of the Iraq war.

As is typical of the left-leaning media, they seem amazed that leaders in these modern times pray for guidance from a power higher than themselves, and thought that detail was so newsworthy as to make it this story's lede. Other elements, such as Rumsfeld's controversial leadership style, and an apparent show of support at this ceremony from the military estalishment are far more newsworthy elements of the day's events to most people, but not so to AFP.

AFP seems to want to portray Rumsfeld's faith in God as an unpleasant aspect of his personality... perhaps another reason he should resign. I can only wonder what AFP must think about the 77% of Americans that also share his Christian faith. "Horror above horrors," they seem to be saying, "those people pray to Jesus."

Indeed.

Of course, I'm only speculating about what AFP appears to mean. I don't have to speculate, however, about the contempt for Christians dripping from the lips of liberal bloggers.

Cernig seems comfortable comparing Christians in the Bush Administration with al Qaeda terrorists:

Both the Bush administration and Al Qaida extremists like to claim God is on their side. One of those claims has to be wrong, and since it is a matter of faith which has no chance of objective proof this side of heaven I wish they would both just shut the f**k up about it.

Agnostic conservative/practicing liberal Andy Sullivan drips contempt in his Christianism Watch:

Surely the military leadership can be a place where expression of religious faith of one particular variety is restrained. Especially when we are at war with Islamic extremists, and when we must take every care to make sure our millitary [sic] actions aren't perceived abroad as religiously motivated. And surely military decisions should be made on an empirical, pragmatic basis, rather than on messages from Heaven.

The Agonist mockingly suggests that we should be building shrines to Rumsfeld:

High on Martin Luther's 1517 list of grievances was the concept that itermediaries[sic] between God and Man were necessary; that certain select individuals (a.k.a. "priests") relayed Divine will to the rest of us who were too stupid, spiritually inept or otherwise religiously-challenged. Conversely, the Great Unwashed could pray to saints to relay requests to The Big Guy.

After reading this I wonder if we should be building little shrines on our front lawns to Donald Rumsfeld.

Think Progress was wise enough to keep their contempt under wraps and simply chose to provide the lede, knowing that their commenters would do the damage. Sadly, a Christian Democrat was one of the early commenters, asking rather reasonably:

Rummy is on another level, and should be rightly criticized from all angles and positions, but at the end of the day, how can any sane person say they don’t listen to god? I mean, each soul engages uniquely with God in contemplating divine mysteries according to its innate ability, and this engagement persists for all eternity, for the mysteries of the godhead are inexhaustible, as is the enthusiastic application of the souls’ intellectual ability.

He was quickly shouted down...

For all your flowery rhetoric, you are very obtuse.

We all know what the general said -that God is actually telling Rusmfeld what to do, not that he is merely seeking divine guidance.

Do you actually talk to your god?

And again...

How can any sane person say that god is talking to them?

There is, of course much more, both on the Think Progress thread (including another suggestion that Christians = terrorists) and elsewhere around the blogosphere.

I personally know very few people that are either moderates or conservatives (Democrat or Republican) who feel that a belief in God is a political proposition, and yet so may secular leftists are quick to equate the religious faith of our nation’s leaders as a trait of one political party. From there, they seem to tie their hatred of the Bush Administration to a deep-seated and abiding contempt for Christians. Of course, many of them were likely contemptuous of Christians when Bill Clinton was in the White House as well, they just had fewer outlets (no blogosphere, no mySpace, etc) with which to voice their disgust.

Just Another Day in Tehran

Lovely:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Friday called Israel's leaders a "group of terrorists" and threatened any country that supports the Jewish state.

"You imposed a group of terrorists ... on the region," Ahmadinejad said, addressing the U.S. and its allies. "It is in your own interest to distance yourself from these criminals... This is an ultimatum. Don't complain tomorrow."

"Nations will take revenge," he told a crowd of thousands gathered at a pro-Palestinian rally in the capital Tehran.

Ahmadinejad said Israel no longer had any reason to exist and would soon disappear.

"This regime, thanks to God, has lost the reason for its existence," he said.

"Efforts to stabilize this fake (Israeli) regime, by the grace of God, have completely failed... You should believe that this regime is disappearing," he said.

What Ahmadinejad's thinly-veiled threat failed to mention is that his apocalyptic Hojjatieh sect quite likely has the intention of "helping" Israel out of existence once Iran has both nuclear warheads and the ability to deliver them.

The implicit threats of this particular exchange, which CNN provides coverage of in greater depth, are directed at Europe:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has warned Europe that it may pay a heavy price for its support of Israel.

"You should believe that this regime (Israel) cannot last and has no more benefit to you. What benefit have you got in supporting this regime, except the hatred of the nations?" he said in nationally broadcast speech Friday.

"We have advised the Europeans that the Americans are far away, but you are the neighbors of the nations in this region," he said.

"We inform you that the nations are like an ocean that is welling up, and if a storm begins, the dimensions will not stay limited to Palestine, and you may get hurt."

I wonder how much longer the pint-sized Holocaust denier will continue to issue threats against the world community without any measurable response from those countries he has threatened to put in the crosshairs.

Time and again, Ahmadinejad says Iran only wants to continue its nuclear program for peaceful means, only to quickly reissue threats that most understand to be links to implied of attacks by MIRV-equipped ICBMs.

I won't be shocked to find that the world will only recognize the threat that Ahmadinejad's Hojjatieh sect brings to hundreds of thousand if not millions of lives as they attempt to bring forth the Hidden Imam. I suspect it will only be after Iran's missiles are launched, and by then it will be far too late.

What's Amarah Wit You?

A developing story in Iraq is the seizure of the southern Iraqi city of Amarah today by roughly 800 militiamen of Muqtada al-Sadr's al-Mahdi Army in response to the kidnapping of the teenage brother of the local head of the a-Madhi Army. the kidnapping came on the heels of the assassination of the head of police intelligence in the area, who belonged to another Shiite militia, the Badr Brigade. The Associated Press is among many of the news organizations covering the story.

The takeover of Amarah is just the latest example of intra-sectarian fighting in Iraq that shows that the current U.S. strategy in Iraq is not working. As a recently-back-from-Iraq Phillip Carter noted yesterday:

During the last two years, the U.S. presence in Iraq has consolidated in massive superfortresses like Anaconda and shut down dozens of smaller bases and outposts across the country. This operational withdrawal was meant to make the U.S. presence more efficient and to reduce the risk of having small units deployed on small bases where they might be vulnerable to insurgent attack; it also forced the Iraqis to become more self-sufficient in securing their own cities. Unfortunately, this has come at a price. When a massive flare-up happens in places like Balad, Tikrit, or Kirkuk, all cities without a permanent U.S. presence, our military must respond from afar, its effectiveness and responsiveness limited by distance.

* * *

This violent weekend proves that America needs to radically change its course in Iraq, while some form of victory still lies within our grasp. First, the U.S. military must reverse its trend of consolidation and redeploy its forces into Iraq's cities. Efficiency and force protection cannot define our military footprint in Iraq; if those are our goals, we may as well bring our troops home today. Instead, we must assume risk by pushing U.S. forces out into small patrol bases in the middle of Iraq's cities where they are able to work closely with Iraqi leaders and own the streets. Counterinsurgency requires engagement. The most effective U.S. efforts thus far in Iraq have been those that followed this maxim, like the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment in Tal Afar, which established numerous bases within the city and attacked the insurgency from within with a mix of political, economic, and military action.

I hope that the current situation spurs military leaders in Iraq towards to solution that Carter rightly advocates, starting with a direct confrontation of the 800 al-Mahdi militiamen that have taken over Amarah.

Logistically, it isn't possible for just 800 unsupported militia fighters to establish and maintain the "total control"(as the media so breathlessly puts it) of a city as large as Amarah, which has an estimated population of 340,000 spread across the geographical boundaries formed by the fork of three rivers.

A more detailed satellite map from GlobalSecurity.org can be seen here.

Based upon map data alone, this would be an extremely difficult city for a much larger, better equipped and better trained conventional military force to hold, much less a militia. It seems that geography could be used to section off parts of the city, which could then be cleared of militiamen in the following manner.

Conventional military units could be used to set-up checkpoints in blockading positions around the roads leading into Amrah, while small special operations units from the Iraqi military and supported by U.S. intelligence and strike aircraft should be able to locate and observe concentrations of militiamen (untrained forces have a tendency to cluster) and inflict significant casualties with precision weapons. Militiamen patrolling the city in vehicles would seem to be prime targets for hit-and-run ambushes, which could be assembled on the fly with intelligence from overhead U.S. drone aircraft.

There is no need to engage these militia forces in a frontal assault with conventional forces that would lead to significant damage to the civilian infrastructure when precise intelligence, coordinated small arms and the use of smaller precision airborne munitions could achieve the same objectives.

If such a plan is able to be implemented, the militiamen would be forced to surrender, attempt to escape, or die as they move around the city. Once sufficiently weakened, conventional Iraqi Army and Police forces should be able to mop-up any remaining forces and reestablish control.

American and Iraqi military and police forces must rein in militias, reestablish localized bases across Iraq to better provide stability and quick response capabilities, and work to bring economic and political force to bear to make lasting changes on a local level.

I'm not sure if we need "more boots on the ground" to stabilize Iraq, but I am quite certain that we cannot improve the situation by isolating our forces in large bases and letting militias and sectarian gangs run free.

"All politics is local," said someone very wise. So are insurgencies, which cannot be defeated from the PX of a large megabase.

Update: Bill Roggio has related thoughts on dealing with Mahdi Army leader Muqtada al-Sadr.

Update: The Iraqi Army came in with two companies of soldiers from Basra, and have retaken the city. The threat of going up against a large conventional Army force was apparently enough for the militiamen.

As a side note, Wikipedia (where I got my population number from) claims Amarah's population as being 340,000 in 2002. Lexicorient.com places the city's population at 420,000 as of 2005. The AP article from today states that the population is 750,000.

I think we just found the missing people from the Lancet study.

Democrats Plot Impeachment

Wonder what the Democrats will do first if they managed to gain control of the House of Representatives?

Wonder no more (h/t: Ace):

A plan is in place to censure and impeach President Bush and Vice President Cheney. Orchestrated and organized by the radical Left and Congressman John Conyers, Jr., this plan is ready to go should the Democratic Party take control of the House of Representatives in November.

The plan is the ultimate manifestation of left-wing hatred for George W. Bush rooted in the contentious election of 2000. Since failing to defeat Bush in 2004, the Left has focused its efforts on destroying his presidency by assembling a list of charges aimed at impeaching him.

The article is from FrontPageMag.com and therefore normally of dubious veracity, except for the tiny, troubling details that Democrats have already introduced to Congress H.Res 635 to investigate articles of impeachment, H.Res. 636 to censure President Bush, and H.Res. 637 to censure Vice President Cheney.

Democrats are apparently preparing to attempt to impeach their way into the White House while soldiers are deployed overseas in two wars, a nuclear North Korea threatening the world with nuclear weapons, and an Iran desperate trying to obtain nuclear weapons threatens to wipe Israel off the map.

Is everyone motivated to vote now, or do you like our nation's odds under President Pelosi?

Update: For the record, Lorie Byrd called this back in May.

Her post includes a link to a Washington Post article where Nancy Pelosi promised a series of investigations if the Democrats took control of the House, and when asked about impeachment as a result of the investigations, she said, "You never know where it leads to."

Leading Democrats--not those "on the fringe" as some liberals would have you believe-- are behind these efforts. Maxine Waters, Jim McDermott, Jerrold Nadler, Lynn Woolsey etc, are just some of the House Democrats that have signed on as co-sponsers to all three of Charlie Rangel's censure and impeach resolutions cited above.

Brown and Yellow: Great on Heidi Klum, Not So Good On Voting

Yeah, I Google-baited the snot out of that one. What of it?

Anyway, it seems that a Vietnamese immigrant running for Congress in California might be behind letters sent to Hispanic voters in Orange County telling them that illegal aliens and immigrants can't vote.

No, I'm not kidding:

State investigators have linked a Republican campaign to letters sent to thousands of Orange County Hispanics warning them they could go to jail or be deported if they vote next month, a spokesman for the attorney general said.

"We have identified where we believe the mailing list was obtained," said Nathan Barankin, spokesman for Attorney General Bill Lockyer.

He declined to identify the specific Republican campaign Wednesday, citing the ongoing investigation.

The Los Angeles Times and The Orange County Register both reported Thursday that the investigation appeared to be focused on the campaign of Tan D. Nguyen, a Republican who immigrated to the U.S. from Vietnam as a child and is now challenging Democratic Rep. Loretta Sanchez for her seat in Congress. Nguyen's Web site says he opposes illegal immigration.

The letter, written in Spanish, tells recipients: "You are advised that if your residence in this country is illegal or you are an immigrant, voting in a federal election is a crime that could result in jail time."

In fact, immigrants who are naturalized U.S. citizens can vote.

The fact that he himself is an immigrant seems to have been lost on Mr. Nguyen, though if California is anything at all like North Carolina it is quite possible that illegal aliens could easily cast a ballot.

Were these letters sent out to kindly remind Orange County voters not to break the law, or were they sent out to intimidate voters? I'd guess "yes," which would appear to be just slightly illegal, hence the Attorney General's involvement.

What Nguyen should have done was to send out letters printed in Spanish, Screenwriterese, and Ghost to remind people that illegal aliens, fictional characters, and the dead can't vote, which would have a far more chilling effect on a wider front of the Democratic base, without having crossed legal lines.

Terrorist Public Relations: This is CNN

The most prominent story on CNN.com's home page this morning is the airing of clips from a insurgent group's propaganda video, and the accompanying news story focusing on the use of insurgent snipers targeting American soldiers. CNN obtained the video from the Islamic Army of Iraq through intermediaries. A similar video from the same group has been circulating since November of 2005 (sidenote: I have not recently seen the 2005 video, and cannot verify if any of the scenes from the 2005 release were used in today's CNN story, and so this might be something worth checking).

The video report and the accompanying story are not particularly newsworthy in and of themselves; insurgent sniper attacks and IEDs have been their primary means of combat since the early days of the war, and sniper attacks have been well-documented.

In any event, the article and video provided by CNN—brace yourselves—doesn't provide anything approaching a honest telling of why insurgent snipers are a "newsworthy" item.

Insurgent snipers in Iraq, as a rule, are armed with Soviet-designed variants of the Druganov rifle, as can been seen employed by an Iraqi insurgent embedded with the New York Times here. The use of snipers using such weapons is one of only a handful of tactics that still work for Iraqi insurgents.

Previous tactics used by the insurgency earlier in the war—large-scale ambushes, fighting from entrenched positions—led to brief, intense battles where the training and weaponry of U.S. forces often completely wiped out insurgent units. The insurgency has never won a sizable engagement against U.S. forces, and has since had to adapt to tactics that give them a batter chance to survive.

This leaves them in a situation with very reduced options, among them being the employment of snipers. The use of snipers is the only tactic they use that can:

• readily be filmed, and;
• does not cause significant civilian casualties as a result (which is bad for propaganda purposes).

The three other methods used by Iraqi insurgents—IEDs, suicide bombings, and mortar attacks—do not meet these criteria.

Even when remotely controlled, IEDs often indiscriminately kill and wound civilians when targeting Iraqi and Coalition forces. Suicide bombings, which typically produce the largest number of overall casualties of any of insurgent tactic, typically kill and injure more civilians that anyone else, as this story today readily attests (my bold):

In the deadliest attack, police opened fire on a bomber as he drove an explosives-laden fuel truck towards the Tamam police station.

The driver was shot dead, but the fuel ignited and set off the explosives, police said.

Civilians bore the brunt of the attack, as many of the casualties were motorists waiting to buy fuel at a nearby petrol station.

Insurgents also use mortars to attack coalition forces, but the attacks are not easily filmed, and are not often effective (though on the rare occasions they are, they can be quiet dramatic).

This leaves the filming of sniper attacks as the only real viable option for insurgents wishing to film an attack that won't also inflame the Iraqi population against them. They can selectively target Americans when they shoot video of sniper attacks for propaganda purposes. They even go out of their way to make this point in the CNN story.

"People are around them," warns the spotter, who seems to be operating the video camera. "Want me to find another place?"

"No, no," comes the reply, "give me a moment."

But this "point" of targeting just Americans is laughable; insurgents routinely target Iraqis, killing 4,000 Iraqi policemen and wounding 8,000 more in the past two years alone.

None of these facts, however, deserves a mention the CNN story that provides the release of insurgent propaganda.

Carefully-edited sniper attacks are all that the insurgency really has going in their favor… except of course, for the dissemination of this propaganda by news outlets like CNN.

Johns Hopkins/Lancet Study Demolished

Via Bryan at Hot Air, the politically-timed Johns Hopkins/Lancet study stating that more than 655,000 Iraqis have died as a result of the Iraq War has had its very suspect methodology thoroughly crushed:

After doing survey research in Iraq for nearly two years, I was surprised to read that a study by a group from Johns Hopkins University claims that 655,000 Iraqis have died as a result of the war. Don't get me wrong, there have been far too many deaths in Iraq by anyone's measure; some of them have been friends of mine. But the Johns Hopkins tally is wildly at odds with any numbers I have seen in that country. Survey results frequently have a margin of error of plus or minus 3% or 5%--not 1200%.

The group--associated with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health--employed cluster sampling for in-person interviews, which is the methodology that I and most researchers use in developing countries. Here, in the U.S., opinion surveys often use telephone polls, selecting individuals at random. But for a country lacking in telephone penetration, door-to-door interviews are required: Neighborhoods are selected at random, and then individuals are selected at random in "clusters" within each neighborhood for door-to-door interviews. Without cluster sampling, the expense and time associated with travel would make in-person interviewing virtually impossible.

However, the key to the validity of cluster sampling is to use enough cluster points. In their 2006 report, "Mortality after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: a cross-sectional sample survey," the Johns Hopkins team says it used 47 cluster points for their sample of 1,849 interviews. This is astonishing: I wouldn't survey a junior high school, no less an entire country, using only 47 cluster points.

Neither would anyone else. For its 2004 survey of Iraq, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) used 2,200 cluster points of 10 interviews each for a total sample of 21,688. True, interviews are expensive and not everyone has the U.N.'s bank account. However, even for a similarly sized sample, that is an extraordinarily small number of cluster points. A 2005 survey conducted by ABC News, Time magazine, the BBC, NHK and Der Spiegel used 135 cluster points with a sample size of 1,711--almost three times that of the Johns Hopkins team for 93% of the sample size.

Since the beginning, Les Roberts, one of the primary authors of the study has mantained that the study is methodologically sound.

Uh, not quite:

Curious about the kind of people who would have the chutzpah to claim to a national audience that this kind of research was methodologically sound, I contacted Johns Hopkins University and was referred to Les Roberts, one of the primary authors of the study. Dr. Roberts defended his 47 cluster points, saying that this was standard. I'm not sure whose standards these are.

Appendix A of the Johns Hopkins survey, for example, cites several other studies of mortality in war zones, and uses the citations to validate the group's use of cluster sampling. One study is by the International Rescue Committee in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which used 750 cluster points. Harvard's School of Public Health, in a 1992 survey of Iraq, used 271 cluster points. Another study in Kosovo cites the use of 50 cluster points, but this was for a population of just 1.6 million, compared to Iraq's 27 million.

When I pointed out these numbers to Dr. Roberts, he said that the appendices were written by a student and should be ignored. Which led me to wonder what other sections of the survey should be ignored.

With so few cluster points, it is highly unlikely the Johns Hopkins survey is representative of the population in Iraq. However, there is a definitive method of establishing if it is. Recording the gender, age, education and other demographic characteristics of the respondents allows a researcher to compare his survey results to a known demographic instrument, such as a census.

Dr. Roberts said that his team's surveyors did not ask demographic questions. I was so surprised to hear this that I emailed him later in the day to ask a second time if his team asked demographic questions and compared the results to the 1997 Iraqi census. Dr. Roberts replied that he had not even looked at the Iraqi census.

And so, while the gender and the age of the deceased were recorded in the 2006 Johns Hopkins study, nobody, according to Dr. Roberts, recorded demographic information for the living survey respondents. This would be the first survey I have looked at in my 15 years of looking that did not ask demographic questions of its respondents. But don't take my word for it--try using Google to find a survey that does not ask demographic questions.

Reviews of the Johns Hopkins/Lancet study casts strong doubts upon the credibility of the methodology used. When compared to other studies, I’d venture to say that the Johns Hopkins study is worthless and irreproducible, perhaps purposefully so. The timing of the report, once again issued in the weeks preceding a national election, casts strong doubts upon the intentions, credibility, and integrity of the researchers.

Then again, their campaign contributions and affiliations should have tipped you to their biases long ago.

More Cowbell: Dow Tops 12,000 for First Time Under Bush

Via—where else?—Fox News:

The Dow Jones industrial average swept past 12,000 for the first time Wednesday, extending its march into record territory as investors signaled their growing optimism about corporate earnings and the economy.

The index of 30 big-name stocks surpassed 12,000 just after trading began, having already set closing records seven times over the past two weeks. It took the Dow 7 1/2 years to make the trip from 11,000, having been pummeled during that time by the dot-com bust, recession and the aftermath of the 2001 terror attacks.

Funny how those "tax cuts for the rich" seem to be stimulating the economy for the entire nation. These are tax cuts that Democrat Charles Rangel said don't "merit renewal."

Of course, Rangel isn't content to just end the tax cuts that have stimulated the economy to these record-breaking levels; he wants to raise your taxes. All of your taxes. Across the board, "no question about it."

Expect all of the tax cuts to end, and for this booming economy to tank, if Democrats win the House of Representatives on Nov. 7.

Jon Tester: Funded by Hate

In the wake of the Mike Rogers attempt to "out" a conservative senator (using conveniently anonymous sources, of course) and the overwhelming support the practice of "outing" has among the rabid left wing, Dan Riehl comes out on the offensive against Democratic politicians that seem more than willing to profit from hate:

If you think this is a small matter, I'd argue you're wrong. In total, from swimming in a sea of hate that responded to the death of innocent contractors in Iraq with ">"screw 'em">" prominent Democrat candidates have profited to the tune of $3.5 Million dollars. Below are just a few.

Last I looked, Tester running in Montana had half a million dollars in the bank. Half of those dollars came from a Netroots web now claiming an Idaho Senator is a homosexual three weeks before an election, as if it's anyone's business besides his, even if he were.

Is that the type of Democrat Tester is running as in Montana? Lamont is an empty suit, but he had no trouble filling his pockets with $400k from the very same source. And what of Jim Webb? Does he have a position on Gays in the military? Perhaps it's out.

DNC Chair Howard Dean, Senators Barbara Boxer and Harry Reid, among others, traveled to Nevada to solicit support and lavish praise on the same individual whose blog is now featuring the clearest example of homophobic-laced hate in politics I've ever seen. Even today, they are raising money for a so-called expanded field.

The Democrat Party built this network and that blog. They funded it with advertising, many, including John Kerry, have written copy for it and fueled its rage. And they reaped the fruit of that rage in dollars and in hype.

Both parties have their share of those filled with hate, and I don't think that is in dispute. Nor do I think that a politician or his campaign can thoroughly research all of their small contributors to weed out and refuse contributions from those with extremist ideas. It simply isn't feasible.

But candidates such as Jon Tester, who has apparently received half of his funding from the extreme left wing of the blogosphere that overwhelming supports outing as a political tool, shouldn't have that excuse.

National Democratic leaders such as Harry Reid and Barbara Boxer should not be lavishing praise on a blogger that seemed to reveal in the death of American security contractors like Scott Helvenston, a former Navy SEAL that was among four contractors killed, burned, and mutilated trying to help Eurest Support Services deliver food shipments to American troops.

Some on the right responded to their deaths by creating scholarship funds. Some on the left responded with an enthusiastic "screw 'em"":

Every death should be on the front page (2.70 / 40)

Let the people see what war is like. This isn’t an Xbox game. There are real repercussions to Bush’s folly.

That said, I feel nothing over the death of merceneries [sic]. They aren’t in Iraq because of orders, or because they are there trying to help the people make Iraq a better place. They are there to wage war for profit. Screw them.

by kos on Thu Apr 1st, 2004 at 12:08:56 PDT

On the other hand, perhaps Jon Tester is aware of the politics of those that support him. They are, after all, among his largest financial supporters. By taking such large contributions from the Kossacks, perhaps "screw them" is a message Jon Tester, Harry Reid, and Barbara Boxer are willing to stand behind.

Democratic Blogger "Outs" Senator

Pretty disgusting behavior, but par for the course for Mike Rogers, who seems to get off on this sort of thing. Rogers accuses Idaho Republican Larry Craig, a father of three and a grandfather of nine, of being a closeted homosexual. Craig denies the charge.

I suppose it is possible Craig or other Republicans are closeted gays, but... so what?

I personally find women attractive, but should that be the only defining trait I use to weigh and measure every activity and interest I have? Why should my sexual orientation be the driving force in my life, overriding all other considerations?

Most people I know primarily care about issues of national security, taxes, crime, controlling growth, education, personal finances, and their family's spiritual and physical well-being. They aren't so emotionally stunted that they can only see their entire world through a single narrow prism of sexual preference, trying to somehow relate it it to all things. Average folks don't twist their realities this way. They have multi-faceted lives.

Sadly, Rogers has generated a tremendous amount of support from blog-reading Democrats, as presently a supermajority of them (70%) support "outing" as a political tool.

I'm rather disgusted by this, and I am not alone.

Conservatives want to fight terrorists, and Democrats want to fight homosexuals.

Sounds like someone has their priorities really screwed up.

Bushitler Signs Pro-Torture Bill, Opens Concentration Camps in Pasadena

President Bush signed important pro-torture legislation into law today according to top liberal blogs, opening the floodgates of totalitarianism and completing America’s rapid descent from a land of unrivaled prosperity and freedom into a police state exactly like Iraq under Saddam Hussein's benevolent rule.

"You know, I just love wiping my backside with the Constitution," said the President and newly crowned Emperor for Life. "It’s a great day to be alive... as long as you aren’t a hippie, or a terrorist." When approached for comment by the White House Press Corps, White House Spokesman Tony Snow gleefully referred reporters down a dark hallway, where muffled gunshots were later heard.

The House Republican leadership which helped push through the landmark legislation completing the destruction of America’s civil liberties, left the signing ceremony to join Vice President Cheney. Cheney was rumored to be hunting captured ACLU lawyers on a private game preserve near Lubbock, TX.

California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger celebrated by gassing thousands of marsh hippies south of Bakersfield, and Republican strategist KKKarl Rove set off the opening salvo in a barrage of high explosive artillery shells that leveled Columbia University.

Starbucks around the nation are currently under siege, and free thought has now been assigned a cost of $29.95, payable directly to the Republican National Committee.

Howard Dean, currently cowering under Glenn Greenwald's couch in Brazil, could not be reached for comment.

Update: Rev up the "wah" meter. The Daou Report just liked, ensuring us a long line of whiny hippies telling us precisely why using non-invasive interrogation techniques that cause no lasting damage makes the United States exactly like China under Mao, or Russia under Stalin, or Cuba under Castro… which is kinda weird, since they tend to like those guys.

Oh, well, we'll have them IP tracked and interred by the end of the day. Isn’t that right "madmatt," or as we will refer to you from now on, "70.230.8.210"?

Do not move from your location near Highway 24 North and Bingham Farms in Franklin, MI. Agents will be there soon.

THE BUSHCO JUNTA NEVER SLEEPS!

Gun Season

Woodlots and fields across the United States are filling with hunters of game both large and small throughout the coming weeks as rifle and shotgun seasons start in many jurisdictions around the country, but every year about this time we also see an increase—at least anecdotally—of a number of home invasions as the holiday season approaches. ‘Tis the season to be robbing.

As a result, it seems that as we get closer to the holidays, we see an increase in the number of potential firearms purchasers inquiring about home defense weapons for the first time.

Most potential purchasers turn to the "gun expert" in their family or circle of friends for guidance, who often in turn glean their information from other shooters and from gun magazines. Employees of gun shops are often another resource that people know and trust. Sadly, most of the information provided by all of these experts is—in my not so humble opinion—completely wrong.

Pick up any popular gun magazine in the United States today, and you will be quickly overwhelmed at the plethora of tricked-out tactical carbines based on the M16/AR15 platform, intimidating 12-guage combat shotguns, and highly customized pistols costing thousands of dollars. Odds are that when the conversation comes around to which firearms is best suited for home defense, gun magazine authors and your neighborhoods experts will quickly zero in on a 12-guage pump-action shotgun in one flavor or another, with 00-buckshot often mentioned as the ammunition of choice.

You could make a worse choice—a long-barreled single-shot Sharps rifle in .45/70, or on the other extreme, a cheap .25 semi-automatic pistol—but the ubiquitous 12-guage pump touted by neighborhood amateurs and professional gun writers is often the wrong choice for most homeowners.

I first addressed the point when I wrote a post called Overcoming The "Viagra Theory" of Home Defense on March 15 in response to an Instapundit reader looking for advice on a home security shotgun that could be used by her and her husband.

She wrote:

I have a great little .22 Browning rifle for plinking, but my husband and I are looking to purchase a shotgun for home security. Not sure what's the best shotgun to get for this, although I'm leaning towards a pump action for the sound effects, which I'm told can be a good deterrent. Would love to hear recommendations from folks. Also wondering if we can get a shotgun that can also be used for trap or skeet, or are guns just too specialized these days? Looking for cost info too, for new and used. Thanks for your advice!

This is very similar to the questions I got from husband-and-wife customers of mine two weeks ago under a far more stressful situation. They were two young homeowners awoken the previous night when someone attempted to force open the back door of their home. When they came to me the following evening they were still visibly shaken as they explained that they’d talked to an "expert" they knew who suggested a 12-gauge pump shotgun equipped with a extended magazine and filled with 00-buckshot cartridges. They were not the first customers sent to me who had been told to make that specific choice by the "experts" they knew, and they won't be the last. They went home with something else.

Why?

As mentioned previously, gun geeks are a knowledgeable lot, but not all of what they "know" applies to all people in all situations. Most of your gun magazine writers are by definition long-term firearms users, usually with military, law enforcement, and/or hunting backgrounds. The vast majority of these writers became familiar with the idea of a 12-gauge shotgun filled with 00-buckshot because that is the most common gauge and loading issued to military and police shotgun users over the past 100 years. As a result, the conventional wisdom, based upon decades of successful use of this combination in military and police shootings, not to mention millions of successful big-game animals harvested, is that this loading works. It is almost unquestioned.

But are soldiers and police officers the same audience as home defense purchasers, and would they use their firearms in the same way, and in the same kinds of situations? The answer to all of these questions is a resounding "no."

12-gauge shotguns used by the military are primarily used for close-quarters offensive operations, like house-to-house fighting, and in guarding prisoners. Shotguns used by police are generally used to augment handguns in standoff situations or for guarding prisoners. In both instances, the person wielding the shotgun, either soldier or policeman, is likely to be a reasonably fit male with formal weapons training that is interjecting himself into a situation where he desires to control and overwhelm an opponent with superior short-range firepower.

Homeowners defending their lives against home invasion do not share the same goals, training, or in many instances, physical characteristics as those assumed by gun writers and other experts.

Unless the Census Bureau is way off, the majority of the American population is neither young nor male, nor necessarily in the best of health. Once you consider that a significant number of potential home defense customers are small-framed women, men, or youth, or may be aging, or may have other issues that prevent them from easily controlling a full-size 12-gauge shotgun, the absurdity of recommending this firearm to all home defense users becomes readily apparent.

In the example of my customers above, both were on the short and stocky side, and a full-size shotgun of any gauge was simply out of the equation. Neither could easily shoulder the weapon. All too often, gun writers and other experts overlook this basic issue.

In addition to the size of their frames, neither customer had much experience with firearms nor physically very strong, and so expecting them to reasonably control a shotgun with a pistol grip was also a dubious prospect. The fact that they lived in a community with a relatively high population density—small homes back-to-back and side to side-to-side small lots—made overpenetration also a significant issue.

What did I end up recommending?

This, specifically, even though it was not something we currently had in stock at the time.

While sniffed at by the experts, a .410-bore shotgun loaded with birdshot possesses more close-range stopping power than any popular handgun caliber, with far less danger of overpenetration. It is also much easier to operate and shoot accurately in high-stress situations than any handgun (which required well-practiced fine motor skills). The fact that this particular variant came with a laser-sight made it even more appropriate for these specific customers.

Is a .410 pump shotgun the "perfect" home defense weapon? Of course not; no weapon exists that can address the needs of all homes and homeowners. But what the HS 410 and other similar shotguns offer is a better compromise for most users, one that can be employed more successfully by a greater number of people. It is also often found at a far more reasonable price that the four-figure tactical firearms that seem to compose the bulk of the gun media's editorializing these days.

The advice I gave to the two customers I worked with was partially heeded. They were determined to leave the gun counter with something that night, and as I happened to be out of .410s at that time, they did as good as the could have under their self-imposed deadline.

They went with smaller shotgun than the full-size extended-magazine military-issue 12-gauge recommended by their friend. They selected a youth model 20-gauge with a shorter stock that both of them could handle reasonably well. They also went with light target loads instead of buckshot, which will be just as effective for the 12-15 foot ranges that they would expect, while being far safer in their dense suburban neighborhood.

There is no "one size fits all" solution for home defense. I simply wish more "experts" were willing to admit it.

Update: Just to clarify points made above, the average defensive gun use in home invasion shooting is across a room—generally 3-5 yards. At those ranges, common 12-gauge birdshot loadings penetrate 4.5 inches into ballistic gelatin for #8 shot, and 7.5 inches for #5 shot.

At the same range, 00-buckshot will penetrate 22 inches of ballistic gelatin, or translated into English, it will go through your target with enough velocity left to potentially wound or kill someone on the other side of your target, even if you hit your target with 100% of the pellets fired.

.410 loadings will of course have a smaller mass of shot (11/16 of a ounce at 1100+ fps) than the 12 gauge loading (1 ¼ oz of shot at 1200 fps) and a slightly lower velocity, but as Mossberg noted in it’s own research, that produces more than 800 ft/lbs of force at the home defense ranges mentioned, or about twice that of the venerable 230-grain Federal Hydrashok in.45ACP. and at these 3-5 yard ranges, they are quite capable of a one-shot stop.

If additional shots are necessary, the low-recoil, low-report of a .410 will make follow-up shots considerably easier than would a larger-bore shotgun. Fire a 12-gauge in an enclosed 12x12 box in low-light conditions, and tell me how easy it is to simulate a self-imposed flash-bang. Your odds of survival go down dramatically if you temporarily give up two of your five senses.

Update: I also realize now that I failed to specify which loading I'd recommend for a .410 shotgun for home defense. I tend to prefer the Winchester X4134 loading, a 3" shell loaded with 11/16 oz. of #4 shot, the Federal H413 GameShok with #4 shot, or the Remington Express Extra Long Range #4 shot in the SP413 loading.

These 3" loadings will in most circumstances at a 3-5 yard range produce a hole 1-3" in diameter penetrating up to 6 inches to the dead center of a human target, and the low-impulse recoil will allow rapid follow-up shots.

Again, no gun is suited for all self-defense scenarios, but for those who will choose to barricade themselves in a predetermined safe room and will have the good sense to stay there until arrive and clear the home, this particular firearm and ammunition choice may be ideal for some.

No. Korea: ''A Declaration of War''

Captain Poofy is starting to sound like a great proponent of regime change, primarily his own:

Blaming the United States for instigating U.N. Security Council sanctions against it, North Korea on Tuesday called the resolution approved over the weekend a "declaration of war."

North Korea's Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency that the country wants "peace but is not afraid of war."

The North "vehemently denounces the resolution, a product of the U.S. hostile policy toward (the North) and totally refutes it," the statement said, according to a report from The Associated Press.

North Korea's statement followed U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice calling the U.N. resolution a "clear message" that Pyongyang must "make a new set of calculations" about its nuclear endeavors.

"North Korea cannot endanger the world and then expect other nations to conduct business as usual in arms or missile parts," Rice told reporters on Monday. "It cannot destabilize the international system and then expect to exploit elaborate financial networks built for peaceful commerce."

As some have mentioned previously, the nuclear gambit is North Korea's last straw. They have nothing else with which to threaten the world. Their nuclear threats fall short with missiles that won't fly and nuclear weapons that won't detonate, and their massive conventional army is decades obsolete. All the have left is their arms business, and the U.N. blockade is taking that away.

At the current rate of escalation, I would not be all that surprised to find North Korea may very well be considering a disasterous invasion of South Korea if a pending second nuke test fails. They had so little to begin with, that they have almost nothing else to lose.

Left-Wing Lawyer to be Sentenced For Aiding Terrorism

Lynne Stewart, the radical liberal lawyer convicted of providing material support for terrorism, faces being sentenced for up to 30 years today. Her defense team's strategy?

She and her allies are pinning their hopes for leniency on a strategy that argues she became so emotionally involved in the sheik's case that she acted irrationally — a strategy that is underpinned by a sealed letter to the court from a psychiatrist.

A psychiatric report submitted to the federal judge in Manhattan who will decide the sentence, John Koeltl, claims that several emotional events in Stewart's life suggest her actions were motivated by "human factors of her client and his situation" and not by politics, according to portions of the psychiatric report.

The psychiatrist, Steven Teich, points to 11 emotional events that he claims prompted her to want to take action on Abdel Rahman's behalf, Stewart's attorneys say. Among the events that make Dr.Teich's list are her experiences seeing Abdel Rahman incarcerated and the 1995 suicide of a drug defendant named Dominick Maldonado, whom Stewart had once represented.

"Ms. Stewart's commitment to the protection of her client, the Sheik, in prison was magnified by emotions from her perceived failure to protect her former client Mr. Maldonado, which had, consequently, resulted in his death by suicide," Mr. Teich wrote.

While the evaluation by Dr. Teich is filed under seal, Stewart's attorneys quote portions of it at length in public legal papers.

Stewart's behavior was "emotionally based and sometimes impulsive" and her mental state while representing Abdel Rahman "immobilized her critical ability to evaluate the potential consequences of her actions," according to the psychiatric report.

In other words, they are claiming that Stewart became a traitor to her country because she let her perceived failures and emotions get the better of her, not because she was inherently or willfully disloyal.

Somehow, that defense sounds familiar... where have I heard it before?

This "emotionally-based and sometimes impulsive" behavior did not start in 2000 or in September 11, 2001, in October of 2001, or March of 2003. It is instead a inherent structural flaw in a group of people going back decades.

Once upon a time liberals were classic liberals, pulling for individual rights, equal opportunity, freedom, and peace. I didn't agree with the methods they espoused towards realizing their ideals, but I could at least respect their ideals, if not their plans for implementation.

Somewhere, however, liberals began to lose their liberalism and thirst for universal freedoms. As Dr. Sanity noted, they traded their ideals for ideology, and have now reached a point where:

...every issue supported by the Left, and almost all of the behavior exhibited by the Left is completely antithetical to classical liberal philosophies. There is no longer a commitment to personal liberty or to freedom. The Left is far too busy to promote freedom for the common man or woman, because their time is taken up advocating freedom for tyrants who oppress the common man; terrorists who kill the common man; and religious fanatics who subjugate the common woman.

The intellectuals who once promoted the IDEA of freedom, now are ensnared in an IDEOLOGY that depends for its very existence on the silencing of speech; the suppression of ideas; and the persecution of those who dare to refute its tenets.

Patriotism and love of one’s country is mocked by those who once fought to bring the American Dream to all American citizens; and who once championed those who were prevented from sharing in that Dream. Slowly and inexorably those idealists who once shouted, “we shall overcome,” morphed into a toxic culture promoting a never-ending victimhood that cannot possibly be overcome. Love of American ideals and values was transformed into the most perverse and vile anti-Americanism –where all things originating or “tainted” as American are uniquely bad; and where America became the source of all evil in the world.

This is the worldview that seems to have ensnared Lynne Stewart, and forms the basis for her defense as she is about to be sentenced for aiding and abetting terrorism. "I didn't mean to become a traitor," seems to be her cry, "my emotions made me do it." It seems beyond her that emotions led her to support those who would take away everything that she professed to support in a lifetime of liberal activism.

Liberals are not liberal anymore, and have not been for decades.

Many no longer even choose to identify themselves as such, perhaps subconsciously acknowledging that as they brand themselves as "progressives," without even realizing what they are progressing towards; Statism, the destruction of free speech, the crushing of dissent, the willful abandonment of a platform that once declared all should have equal rights to life liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Their new platform is something else entirely.

Progressives don’t want peace; they just don't support our going to war.

They push to surrender in Iraq and Afghanistan—or as the style it, "redeploy"—because they claim that the cost of American lives is too high. The are ashamed to address what occurred when they were able to convince us to withdraw from Somalia and Vietnam. They perhaps saved tens of thousands of American soldier's lives by forcing politically-motivated withdrawals, but at what cost?

Millions died in Southeast Asia as a result of a successful anti-war movement in the United States forcing us to retreat, and the Murtha-led retreat from Somalia inspired Osama bin Laden to the African embassy bombings, the attack on the USS Cole, and eventually 9/11/01.

Progressives still claim to support individual freedoms and feminism and equality, but shamefully propose to abandon two fledgling nations struggling to find democracy to Islamists that subjugate people for being of a different ethnic group, or religion, or race, or gender.

How is this surrender to oppression in any way in confluence with the classical concept of liberalism? Put bluntly, it is not.

Liberalism, or at least those who today claim to be liberal and progressive, has become the refuge of back-biting isolationists that long ago gave up any pretense of finding freedom and equality concepts worth fighting for in favor of a morally bankrupt ideology blindly seeking power and relevance at any cost. Once more, those that claim to be liberals urge us to turn our backs on the ideals that made American great.

Justice. Honor. Freedom. Equality.

These noble concepts are snorted at with derision by an American Left today that in no way shares the ideals of those who came before. No one truly interested in human rights and justice and equality could abandon Iraq to insurgent Islamists and elements of al Qaeda advocating sharia law, nor abandoning Afghanistan to a brutal Taliban that subjugates women and murders homosexuals and others who deemed unworthy under brutal and primitive Sharia law. These "liberals" would condemn more than 50 million people to oppression because the price we've paid thus far is too much for their tender sensibilities.

Lynne Stewart braces for sentencing today as one liberal that long ago abandoned her stated principles in favor of an ideology most un-American. Thousands more just like her view her impending incarceration as a travesty of justice, without understanding that it is instead their beliefs that run counter to every ideal this nation holds dear. Ironically, they think they are the voices of freedom and reason.

Freedom is not earned by submission. Cowardice does not buy liberty. Retreat does not win equality.

Somehow, so called liberals lost sight of those basic facts long ago.

Update: I said "cowardice does not buy liberty"... but convicted felon and liberal moneyman George Soros came damn close. Soros funded a significant portion of Stewart's legal defense.

Stewart was sentenced today to to a whopping 28 months in prison. Her paralegal Ahmed Sattar got 24 years for conspiracy to kidnap and kill those in a foreign country.

Congressional Page Sex Predator Dies

That's the headline he would have gotten had he been a Republican unashamed of having sex with a page just 17 years old.

Guards: I Can't Gitmo Satisfaction

If some of the stories told to Sgt. Heather Cerveny by guards at Guantanamo Bay are true, I hope the offenders are appropriately punished, but parts of Cerveny’s affidavit are simply sad:

During my conversations with these people, one Sailor who called himself Bo (rank and last name unknown) told the group stories involving detainees. Bo was 19 years old and had been working at Guantanamo Bay for almost one year. He was about 5”10” and 180 pounds. He was Caucasian, with blond hair and blue eyes. Bo told the other guards and me about him beating different detainees being help in the prison. One such story Bo told involved him taking a detainee by the head and hitting the detainee’s head into the cell door. Bo said that his actions wee known to others. I asked him if he had been charged with an offense for beating and abusing this detainee. He told me nothing happened to him. He received neither nonjudicial punishment or court-martial. And he never even received formal counseling. He was eventually moved to the maintenance section but this did not occur until some time after the incident where he slammed the detainee’s head into the cell door.

Detainee abuse is a bad thing, but Sgt. Heather’s apparent incredulity that Bo didn’t even get counseling makes me either want to laugh or cry… I haven’t decided which yet.

It is worth noting that this and all the other admissions came as a lonely, undoubtedly horny sailors were trying to impress a girl in a bar. Pardon me if I hold out hope that his apparent attempt to be “bar tough” is just one more lie to join the hundreds of millions told in a fruitless attempt to impress women.

What Sgt. Heather also seems to consider abuse outside of several claims of hitting detainees, however, is well, questionable.

I recall speaking with a guard named Steven. Steven was a Caucasian male, about 5”8”, 170 pounds, with brown hair and brown eyes. He stated that he used to work in Camp 5 but he now works in Camp 6. He works on one of the “blocks” as a guard. He told me that even when a detainee is being good, they will take his personal items away. He said that they do this to anger the detainees so that they can punish them when they object or complain. I asked Steven why he treats detainees this way. He said it is because he hates the detainees and that they are bad people. And he stated that he doesn’t like having to take care of them or be nice to them. Steven also added that his “only job was to keep the detainees alive.” I understood this to mean that as long as the detainees were kept alive, he didn’t care what happened to them.

I bet Sgt. Heather is probably a very nice person, kind to old people and animals, and is probably just the girl you’d like to take home to meet dear old Mom and Dad, but would someone please explain to her what holy Hell these people are in prison for?

They are Islamic terrorists who want nothing more than to see Americans dead. These same inmates have a long record of flinging various bodily liquids at guards, assaulting them with homemade weapons, and generally not being nice people. God forbid that Steven doesn’t like them and occasionally confiscates the personal effects from an inmate that once forced him to remove a uniform covered in , urine, feces, spit, or semen, or who once tried to cut him with a shiv.

And God forbid, she’s upset that they might not be getting their mail in a timely manner:

I asked Shawn why it often takes 6 months of so for them to get their mail. Shawn replied that there is often a delay because the mailroom personnel have to look through everything and get it translated prior to the mail being forwarded to detainees. I then asked why it would possibly still take six months if the mail matter was printed in English. Shawn said there wouldn’t really be a reason and it was not uncommon for them to withhold the mail of detainees until they, the mailroom clerks, decided to forward the mail.

Prisoner abuse—hitting and punching them without prevarication or just cause—is patently wrong. But Sgt. Heather seems to be under the delusion that Marines and sailors have a duty to be nice and go out of their way to provide prompt, courteous, and friendly service to terrorists, as if Guantanamo Bay was a resort. Someone needs to write this little Marine paralegal a reality check.

Of course, Brian Ross sees this as a major scandal. I guess Foleygate must not be having the desired effect.

Number Crunched

Thank you, Asymmetrical Information commenter Yancey Ward:

If there have been 650,000 excess deaths, and my understanding is that violence is the predominate cause of this excess, then I wonder about the ratio of wounded to dead. From my reading of history, in war there is about a 3 to 1 or greater ratio of wounded to dead in combat. If we take the study seriously, then we should also have well over 1.5 million wounded. Has anyone checked this out?

According to the Lancet’s disputed study, 601,027 people—al Qaeda terrorists, insurgents, Iraqi soldiers, police, and true civilians—have been killed violently ("the most common cause being gunfire," says the summary) since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

We also know that for every combat-related death, there are usually a far greater number of casualties. As Donald Sensing notes in a 2004 post to his blog, the United States sustained a ratio of wounded to killed of 2.3:1 in World War II, 3.28:1 in Vietnam, and 9.5:1 in the current Iraq war (a more current Newsday article from last week puts that figure at roughly 8:1).

The numbers look the way they do largely because of the advances made in medical and defensive technologies since the World War II and Vietnam era. U.S. soldiers that sustain wounds today will often survive what would have been killing wounds of 40 to 60 years ago, and they often won't sustain wounds where they might have in prior wars because of advances in vehicle and personnel armor.

Iraqi civilians do not wear body armor and as a rule neither do most insurgents or al Qaeda terrorists (though there are exceptions to that rule as well). Many Iraqi police and Army units do have body armor, as well as some lightly armored vehicles. While it is a simple SWAG, it would probably not be unreasonable to suspect that medical technologies available to the average Iraqi are probably not any worse than what our soldiers faced in World War Two, and may be better and approaching or exceeding Vietnam-era levels in some urban areas.

It is far from valid science (I, at least, admit it), but one might assume that a wounded to killed ratios of all Iraqis probably fits within the 2.3:1 and 3.28:1 figures of these prior wars, and a slightly higher number afforded by modern medical methods used in Iraqi civilian hospitals.

If we can therefore make that assumption (and I'm not entirely sure that we can, but I'm going to in an endeavor to prove a point) that the Lancet accurately states that 601,027 Iraqis have been killed violently since 2003, then there would logically be a minimum of 1,382,363-1,971,369 Iraqis wounded by violence (using the WWII and Vietnam ratios). If the ratio of wounded surviving is better than that, then there should be in excess of 2 million wounded Iraqis in addition to those killed by violence, or a grand total of 1,983,390-2,572,396 Iraqi civilians that have either killed or wounded since 2003.

The CIA World Factbook estimates the population of Iraq at 26,783,383 as of July.

Does the Lancet really want to stand behind a study that seems to suggest almost a tenth of Iraq's population has been killed or wounded in the past 3 years, and the world somehow overlooked it?

Funny think, statistics.

Update: In a post titled, Reality checks: some responses to the latest Lancet estimates, the staff of IraqBodyCount.org accuses the Lancet of over-inflating the civilian body count in Iraq.

Interestingly enough, IBC asked where the wounded are, how the media could have overlooked such carnage, how the Iraqi government could have participated in such a cover-up, and where the death certificates are.

If those questions sound familiar, it's because you've been reading this blog.

Coroner in Lloyd Inquest Fails to Prove His Charge

I'd like to know how this British Assistant Deputy coroner can justify this conclusion:

A coroner ruled on Friday that a British journalist who died in Iraq at the start of the war was unlawfully killed by American forces.

Lloyd, a correspondent with the British TV network ITN , was killed outside Basra in southern Iraq in March 2003.

Oxfordshire Assistant Deputy Coroner Andrew Walker said he'll be writing the director of public prosecutions to seek to bring the perpetrators to justice.

"Terry Lloyd died following a gunshot wound to the head. The evidence this bullet was fired by the Americans is overwhelming," Walker said.

Lebanese interpreter Hussein Osman also was killed in the ITN crew, and cameraman Fred Nerac remains missing. ITN cameraman Daniel Demoustier survived.

Lloyd -- who was aged 50 -- was shot in the back during U.S. and Iraqi crossfire and was apparently shot by U.S. forces when he was taken away in a minibus for treatment.

"There is no doubt that the minibus presented no threat to the American forces. There is no doubt it was an unlawful act of fire upon the minibus," Walker said.

It is tragic when any civilian is killed in combat, but the simple fact that the bullet that killed Mr. Lloyd was fired by an American unit does not establish that:

• that the vehicle was intentionally fired upon;
• that the vehicle could be considered "no threat" if it was targeted.

Assistant Deputy Coroner Walker is attempting to make the claim that Marine tanks were able to identify this as a civilian vehicle, and that despite that, they decided to willfully fire upon it. He does not support his charge.

It is tragic that in this instance that the vehicle in this instance was perhaps a civilian vehicle attempting to provide care for a wounded journalist, but there is no evidence presented by Coroner Walker to the public that supports his charge that the vehicle carrying Lloyd was specifically targeted. Further, Walker does not establish the fact much less that it was knowingly targeted as a noncombatant, non-threat vehicle. For that matter, the inquiry seems to gloss over previous reports that the "civilian" van was also carrying Iraqi soldiers.

Much more detail about the incident is provided in a TimesOnline article which gives a general picture of the event, but it hardly provides enough detail to warrant Walker's statement that Terry Lloyd was "unlawfully killed." There is no released evidence supporting that the van was targeted, and sufficient reason to suspect that the fire that killed Lloyd were fired at Iraqi soldiers engaged with U.S. forces at the time.

I feel sorrow for the Lloyd family, but this inquest, at least what has been released thus far, does not support the coroner's conclusion. Terry Lloyd's death was tragic, but nothing released thus far supports a charge of murder.

Questionable Methods, Questionable Results

It seems that the British Lancet has a certain problematic pattern of behavior:

From ABC News last year:

Indian experts say a new study which found that some 10 million female foetuses may have been aborted in the country in the past 20 years was sensationalist and inaccurate.

The study, published online by British medical journal The Lancet, says the practice of selective abortion is due to a traditional preference for boys in India.

"It is a sensational piece of work. We are very, very concerned about this study," activist Sabu George said, who has been campaigning against the practice of foeticide for more than two decades.

"An unreasonable estimate will undermine the issue," he said.

Exaggerated? An unreasonable estimate in the Lancet? Shocking.

Worried about the hype generated about "Frankenfood?" If you want to guess where it came from, thank this New York Times article in 1999:

a prestigious medical journal is publishing a study suggesting that genetically modified food may be harmful, even though the research has been widely criticized by scientists and was found wanting by some of the journal's own referees.

The Lancet, a journal based in England, said had it decided to publish the study in part to spur debate and to avoid being accused of suppressing information on a controversial subject.

The study is also likely to be seized upon by opponents of such food in the United States, where consumers have until recently expressed little concern about the genetically altered corn and soybeans that have swept quietly into their diets.

Charles Margulis of the Washington office of Greenpeace was quoted as saying, "I think it gives it a certain scientific credibility. It's going to increase concern here in the United States." But the decision to publish the study is itself generating debate: some scientists say the Lancet has lowered its standards and subverted the peer review process.

Subverting peer review and lowering its standards of accuracy? Surely, this is not the Lancet we're talking about.

Speaking of questionable accuracy and low standards, do you remember the 1998 study linking the common childhood MMR (measels,/mumps/rubella)vaccine to autism? It didn't do too well.

Ten of the original 13 authors of a controversial 1998 medical report which implied a link between autism and the combined MMR vaccine for measles, mumps, and rubella, have retracted the paper's interpretations.

The retraction will be printed in the 6 March issue of The Lancet, which published the original paper. One author could not be reached and two others, Peter Harvey and lead author Andrew Wakefield, refused to join the retraction.

"We wish to make it clear that in this paper no causal link was established between MMR vaccine and autism as the data were insufficient," write the 10 authors in their retraction. "However, the possibility of such a link was raised and consequent events have had major implications for public health."

The original paper, which was based on parental and medical reports of just a dozen children, suggested a "possible relation" between autism, bowel disease, and MMR. The paper added it "did not prove an association".

The Lancet rushed through a under-sampled study spearheaded by a possibly dishonest scientist. Interesting.

It seems that sometimes a desire to influence or shock public sensibilities seems to get the better of the Lancet from time to time, as it did when it claimed just prior to the 2004 elections that 8,000-194,000 (but most often trumpeted as 100,000) Iraqi civilians had been killed.

Funny, how the UN Development Program Iraq Living Conditions Survey using similar cluster survey methodology but on a far greater scale, recorded only 24,000 deaths published five months later with a 95% confidence interval of 18,000 to 29,000.

If you didn't know any better, you might just think their studies were driven by leadership more interested in exerting political influence than presenting valid science.

It's a good thing that couldn’t be the case.

In Your Hands

Scott Elliott wrote this very impassioned call to action for conservative voters yesterday:

Here we are enduring the ongoing saga of Foleygate, immersed in a steady stream of scandalous revelations about who and when, what and where. After news broke of former GOP Rep. Mark Foley's disgraceful acts, it was only a matter of time before the headlines would begin tolling the death knell for the GOP’s chances in November. "GOP in meltdown" was the headline recently at MSN online. "Bush approval sinks to new low" was another. Phrases like "tipping point" and "nail in the coffin" are being banged out of keyboard after keyboard across the country faster than my 8-year-old can tell you his life story.

And why shouldn't they be? After suffering through a withering summer in which their fortunes seemed to steadily decline into resignation, many Republicans feel the Foley scandal is indeed the coup de resistance for Democrats ravenous to regain the gavel of power on Capitol Hill. The undersea earth has shifted; the tsunami is on its way. And there's nothing we can do to stop the coming tidal wave from crashing down on November 7. There is no force to stand against the swelling political seas. Hey, we had a nice run; it's time to close up shop and accept the inevitable, right?

I can hear Jimmy V. turning in his grave and the editorial board at The New York Times shrieking with delight. Are we really giving up? With so much to lose, so much on the table, with America's very future hanging in the balance, surely we can't be calling it quits. If we learned anything from the last three elections, it is that participation, not polls, pundits or pooh-poohing, makes or breaks an election.

In 2000, ineffective GOP mobilization efforts and disaffected GOP voters afforded Al Gore 500,000 more votes than George W. Bush. In 2002 and 2004, a transformation of miraculous proportions took place in the Republican get-out-the-vote machine. It culminated in the GOP control of both congressional chambers and the re-election of a Republican president who received over 3 million more votes than his opponent and nearly 8 million more than any previous presidential candidate in history.

Scott, by the way, knows a thing or two about elections. His web site, called Election Projection, was only off of getting the exact electoral vote count correct by three in the 2004 Presidential race.

Despite all the gloom and doom from the media, his present models are calling the Senate a dead heat and predicting that the Republicans will hold onto the House by five seats, quite a far cry from the slaughter many on the left are merrily predicting.

In fact, the only way it seems that the Republicans could lose the House is if we decide not to vote. So vote already, and if you haven't registered, you need to do so quickly. Here in North Carolina, tomorrow is the last day to register to vote.

A web site geared at getting out voters called PayAttention.org has all the details about registering and voting in your area. Please register, and use your right to vote.

If you don't, some patchouli-stinking liberal front group might just do it for you.

Thank You

I think I responded to everyone who contributed funds to my "blegburst" personally, but I’d like to do so again publicly. I’m both deeply touched and humbled that so many people—almost none of which I’ve every met in person—were kind enough to donate money to help me purchase a replacement for my aging Dell desktop.

I swung by the TigerDirect outlet store here in Raleigh during lunch and was able to find a solid, basic laptop that I think will take care of my needs quite nicely. I'll likely pick it up next week when the transfer of funds from PayPal to my bank is complete.

I couldn't have done it without the support of both blog readers and of course, my fellow bloggers, who linked to my bleg.

Bloggers and blog readers are truly wonderful folks.

From the bottom of my cold conservative heart, thank you.

Dirty, Dirty Harry

If current Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid suddenly find himself on the wrong end of a full investigation by the Senate Ethics Committee for a undisclosed land deal that made him quite rich, he'll have no one to blame but himself, and perhaps, the company he keeps:

Reid's avoidance of disclosure hid two aspects of his business relationships. The first was his association with Jay Brown, who has a history of being involved in scandal. The NY Times describes him as "a prominent Las Vegas lawyer," but they never get around to mentioning his involvement in a federal bribery case in Las Vegas. Nor do they mention Brown's work as a lobbyist, as the AP did, nor do they follow up on the AP's report of connections between Brown and organized crime.

The other part Reid wanted to keep secret was the financial ties between himself and Harvey Whittemore. The AP story reported that Reid bought the parcel from "a developer who was benefiting from a government land swap that Reid supported," a perfect description of Whittemore in 1998 when Reid purchased the land. For the next seven years, Reid would work to ease Whittemore's difficulties in developing the Coyote Springs project by forcing the government to swap its right-of-way for less valuable land owned by Whittemore; he tried to get the government to literally give away more of its land to Whittemore, although he would not succeed; and in the end, he pressed federal regulators to lift a endangered-species restriction on Whittemore's Coyote Springs real estate. All of this helped give Whittemore an opportunity to make tens of millions on residential and commercial development in the former test range site.

Personally, I'm not big on covering corruption scandals, but I've been hearing for quite some time that "Dirty Harry" has long held ties with the shadiest of characters, so this wouldn't unduly surprise me. What happens next?

Time will tell.

Confirming or Debunking the Lancet Study with One Simple Question

The controversial and disputed Johns Hopkins study published (free reg required) in the Lancet today claims an additional 654,965 deaths as the result of the Iraq War since 2003, 610,000 of those deaths as a result of violence. It also claims they were able to verify that 92% of those 629 claimed killed in their survey had valid death certificates.

Using the research of the John Hopkins study, the Iraqi Ministry of Health should be able to therefore produce roughly 602,568 total death certificates (654,965 x 92%), and 561,200 (610,000 x 92%) of these death certificates should by attributed to violent deaths, if they do in fact collect such information nationally.

If they have far, far less death certificates on file, then the Lancet study will have invalidated itself using it's own methodology, would it not?

I'll also be very interested to find out whether or not Gilbert Burnham of John Hopkins or the editors of the Lancet made any attempt to check their figures against any available compilations of the number of death certificates issued in Iraq as a check on their research. Iraqi morgues regularly and independently released their own figures until September, when the Iraqi government took over that responsibility, which was after the data in the study was compiled by June of 2006.

Other Estimates
Not surprisingly the study figures--far beyond every other survey done by orders of magnitude--are widely discounted by most, and run contrary to every previous attempt to estimate casualties.

Iraq Body Count, a well-respected site that tracks the number of casualties in Iraq based upon media reports, lists the maximum number of casualties to date at 48,693.

The Brookings Institute reports (PDF) their estimate, based upon IBC and United Nations Cumulative data until August 31, 2006, to be a slightly higher figure of 62,000 civilian deaths due to violence. Michael E. O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution said of the Lancet numbers:

"I do not believe the new numbers. I think they're way off," he said.

A June 25, 2006 Los Angeles Times report comes up with another set of figures:

The Times attempted to reach a comprehensive figure by obtaining statistics from the Baghdad morgue and the Health Ministry and checking those numbers against a sampling of local health departments for possible undercounts.

The Health Ministry gathers numbers from hospitals in the capital and the outlying provinces. If a victim of violence dies at a hospital or arrives dead, medical officials issue a death certificate. Relatives claim the body directly from the hospital and arrange for a speedy burial in keeping with Muslim beliefs.

If the morgue receives a body — usually those deemed suspicious deaths — officials there issue the death certificate.

Health Ministry officials said that because death certificates are issued and counted separately, the two data sets are not overlapping.

The Baghdad morgue received 30,204 bodies from 2003 through mid-2006, while the Health Ministry said it had documented 18,933 deaths from "military clashes" and "terrorist attacks" from April 5, 2004, to June 1, 2006. Together, the toll reaches 49,137.

Obviously, the Johns Hopkins study figures published in today’s Lancet are far higher than any previous estimates. It will be quite interesting to see if these figures—already dismissed by every world leader and military leader commenting on it so far—can indeed be defended.

As Bryan notes at Hot Air:

The Lancet study would have us believe that 2.5% of Iraq has been killed by the war in the past three years. It would have us believe that more Iraqis have died as a result of a mid-sized insurgency than Americans died in World War II. Or the Civil War. Or Germans, who died in World War II, fighting against the combined might of the USSR, the British Empire and the United States, at a time when Germany was reduced to conscripting young boys and old men to resist those armies as they approached Berlin.

This study, in other words, is nonsense on stilts.

Of course it is, but it will be most entertaining if we can debunk them using their own informaiton against them.

Update: A word on public health methodology from a medical professional at Jane Galt:

And sorry, but the defense that it's as soundly designed as can be expected for these kinds of public health surveys is a weak one. Retrospective, interview-based studies like this are poor designs. It may be the standard way of gathering data in the public health field, but that doesn't make it the best methodology, and it certainly doesn't make its statistics sound. For too long the field of public health has relied on these types of shotty shoddy numbers to influence public policy, whether it's the number of people who die from second hand smoke or the number who die from eating the wrong kinds of cooking oils.

The same blog post notes that Lancet-published studies of the past have been throughly debunked for shoddy research.

Help You, Help Me: The First Blegburst (Bumped)

Update: A huge "thank you" is in order to all my fellow bloggers who linked this post (you know who you are), and to the readers who were kind enough to contribute so generously so far. Thanks to your donations, I am very close to being able to get a replacement PC for this old clunker. I couldn't do this without you, and I'm touched by all your support.

I guess I wasn't paying very close attention, but at some point yesterday I cracked a million visits on ye olde Sitemeter, a good chunk of which came from this post that took me longer to upload than create.

I think this a milestone of some sort, and so I'll do what bloggers often take this once-in-lifetime opportunity to do: bleg. But not just any bleg.

What's a bleg?

According to Samizdata:

Bleg verb. To use one's blog to beg for assistance (usually for information, occasionally for money). One who does so is a 'blegger'. Usually intended as humorous.

Yes, usually intended as humorous, and I think I would be quite tickled, neigh, giddy at the thought of those of you who have visited this humble blog over the past year and eleven months contributing just one small dime for each visit you've made.

Granted, Sally Struthers claims that for one dime a day that you can "give the gift of hope, the gift of life," to some small child in Africa, but does that starving urchin plop down in front of a keyboard several times each day to keep you entertained with wit and insight?

I think not.

Besides, as a social conservative, I'm pretty sure that's pretty much welfare, and how are we going to force them to get off their sickbeds and learn to provide for themselves if we make them reliant on charity? Help them learn self-sufficiency by giving me your money instead.

For unlike rudimentary every day supplies like "food" and "water" that the impoverished can get almost anywhere not devoured by famine and pestilence, I have more technical needs that must be satisfied so that I can to continue to bring you this dreck the high-quality content and occasional tomfoolery you've come to expect here at Confederate Yankee.

Specifically, I need a new computer.

The Dell Dimension L733R that I've held together since 2001 with spit and bailing wire is coming apart (and getting just a bit groady). And yes, I blegged for cash for a replacement almost a year ago, but you know, my drug problem came first, and the blegged cash went to paying that off. Damn doctors.

And so I implore you to use what you've gained from this record-breaking Republican Economy to help me ensure your blog-reading enjoyment. Help fund the equipment I need to continue bringing you both insightful conservative commentary, bias against media bias, and crude, sophomoric PhotoShops.

But wait, there's more!

And I will give something back to the blogging community in kind for your support, a new, powerful and practical concept: blegburst.

How do I know it's new? It's not here.

And it’s imminently useful, especially to those of you in the blogging community.

But Bob, How does it work?

I'm so glad you asked.

Put simply, a blegburst is when you beg for money or some other sort of assistance online, and other bloggers link your plea. And the coolest thing is this: as blegbursts are brand page-spanking new, you can participate in the very first one.

Isn't that exciting?

Wow! What do I need to do to participate?

It's actually quite simple. Simply link this post in one of your own blog posts. It really is that simple.

Plus, no smelly, starving kids!

It's a win-win situation for all, and I and my new computer thank you for your support.

Small Plane Hits NYC Skyscraper

I hope this is just an accident:

The aircraft struck the 20th floor of a building on East 72nd Street, said Fire Department spokeswoman Emily Rahimi. Witnesses said the crash caused a loud noise, and burning and falling debris was seen. Flames were seen shooting out of the windows.

"There's huge pieces of debris falling," said one witness who refused to give her full name. "There's so much falling now, I've got to get away."

The article goes on to say that this is a 50 story building, meaning that 30 stories of the building is above the site of the strike, which would likely make it difficult for people to escape through the elevators. The relatively low strike and small size of the plane might make a rooftop helicopter evacuation plausible, but I just don't have enough details to know.

It is too early to know how bad the fire may be or what the proximate cause was at this point. More as this develops...

Update From Allah's description, it does indeed sound like an accident and it appears that the NYFD will bring this under control, if they haven't already.

Update: NY Yankee's pitcher Cory Lidle and an instructor pilot were killed in the crash.

The Greatest Conspiracy Ever

Complete and utter crap.

I'm frankly amazed that the same idiots who brought us the massively inflated body count study just before the 2004 election cycle would be stupid enough to try to float their same lies again, saying that as many as 650,000 Iraqis have died since the war began in 2003, 601,000 from violence.

Proving once again that there are "lies, damn lies, and statistics," this study overestimates the number of actual deaths by just a mere 600,000 or so, according to the widely-regarded anti-war Iraq Body Count which puts the maximum number of Iraqis killed at less than 50,000.

Even the basic premise of the study is dishonest, taking into account all Iraqi deaths over the past few years—car crashes, cancer, heart attacks, adverse drug reactions; anything will do—and including those non-war-related deaths along with the deaths of insurgents, Iraqi police, Iraqi military, and "legitimate" civilian combat-related deaths.

Now I'm not surprised that someone blatantly dishonest enough to use sockpuppets to protect his fragile ego is supporting this dreck, but I expect people with a modicum of common sense to realize, that as Blue Crab Boulevard notes, that for this study to be close to valid, that an additional 15,500 people are dying each month than every recognized government and private estimate of deaths has ever supported. That's 400-500 additional deaths per day than any media outlet on the planet has reported.

Let's use common sense for just a second: if this study was even third of what they claim (which would be almost 217,000 civilian deaths), don't you think that such a catastrophic loss of live would have been noticed by someone? al Jazeera, or al Manar, or maybe slightly larger and well-funded news organizations, such as the Associated Press, Reuters, or United Press International? Of course it would have. It is a mathematical impossibility to have hidden even this number of civilian combat deaths from a war zone so thoroughly saturated with media.

As a former President once said, you can fool all of the people some of the time, all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time. It would have taken the greatest cover-up in human history to have been able to have covered up 217,000 civilian deaths as a result of the war, much less the massively inflated body count of 650,000.

As I just left in the comments at Matthew Yglesias' site:

...Where are the bodies?

The Iraq war is extremely well covered by the international news media and is of specific interest to the Arab media in particular, and yet not a single media outlet in the world will independently claim even ten-percent of what this study suggests. Don’t it set off even the slightest alarm bells when a figure this greatly inflated comes across your radar?

A simple, cursory look at the well-respected anti-war site Iraq Body Count will reflect that the maximum number of civilian deaths is less than 50,000.

I know some are completely blinded by partisanship on both sides of this issue, but common sense has to tell you this study (once again timed for release before an election—how convenient, that) is patently absurd.

To buy these conclusions, you have to swallow the impossibility that Reuters, the Associated Press, UPI, the BBC, the New York Times, the Guardian, Robert Fisk, al Manar, al Jazeera, and every other news conglomeration in Iraq are a willful part of the largest cover-up in human history, hiding three times of the number of those killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined (214,000 according to wikipedia) over the course of three-plus years.

It’s patently absurd.

I know we disagree and disagree strongly over the Iraq war, but even the most rabidly anti-war bloggers should come out strongly against this politically-motivated farce, if for no other reason than to protect your own integrity.

This “study” is a blatant falsehood, and you know it.

So say so.

And yet, odds are neither Yglesias, nor Sock Puppet, nor Think Progress, nor Rising Hegemon, nor attytood, nor any other liberal blog likely have the integrity to challenge the study nor the world's media outlets.

It is quite simple: either all of the world's media organizations are involved with a massive conspiracy with the U.S., British, and Iraqi governments for more than three years to cover up massive civilian losses roughly triple the number of those killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki

--OR--

This study, like the one issued before it, is another statistical lie.

I'll let you and Occam figure out which is more likely.

Update: The Iraqis think this study is bogus as well h/t HotAir:

THE Iraqi Government described as "exaggerated" an independent US study which estimated that 655,000 Iraqis had died since the 2003 US invasion.

US President George W. Mr Bush had similarly called the report "not credible".

The study estimated that one Iraqi in 40 had died as a result of the conflict by comparing the death rates from the period before the war to the period from March 2003 to June 2006.

"This figure, which in reality has no basis, is exaggerated," said Iraqi government spokesman Ali Debbagh.

"It is a figure which flies in the face of the most obvious truths," he said, calling on research institutions to adopt precise and transparent criteria especially when the research concerns victim tolls.

The study has no basis in reality, and flies in the face of the most obvious truths.

Of course, that's just the Iraqis saying that, not the report of an anti-war Democrat researcher who has contributed money to anti-war candidates, so the Iraqis are assuredly wrong.

Update: One of the "Loose Changers" in the comments accidentally helped provide a good self-debunking point contained in the report:

If you'd bother to read the study before denouncing it, you'd find that they were able to produce Death Certificates to verify 90% of the reported deaths in the sampled households.

If that is indeed the case and the study results are validly extrapolated, then the Iraqi government should be able to produce 540,000 death certificates. Even if they can provide death certificates for just half of those that the study authors claim were killed by violence, then government morgues should be able to produce 300,000 death certificates, which again the media would have picked up very quickly as the media consistently uses the Iraqi morgues as a source for fatalities for their stories on a daily basis.

In short, the study provides the evidence—or lack thereof—debunking itself.

Update: Baghdad dentist Omar Fadil cuts loose:

When the statistics announced by hospitals and military here, or even by the UN, did not satisfy their lust for more deaths, they resorted to mathematics to get a fake number that satisfies their sadistic urges.

When I read the report I can only feel apathy and inhumanity from those who did the count towards the victims and towards our suffering as a whole. I can tell they were so pleased when the equations their twisted minds designed led to those numbers and nothing can convince me that they did their so called research out of compassion or care.

To me their motives are clear, all they want is to prove that our struggle for freedom was the wrong thing to do. And they shamelessly use lies to do this…when they did not find the death they wanted to see on the ground, they faked it on paper! They disgust me…

This fake research is an insult to every man, woman and child who lost their lives.

As they say, read the whole thing.

Welcoming my new Co-Blogger, Regan Teresa MacNeil

Um, you might notice that the site is acting a bit, well, possessed this morning, with the content inexplicably centered, the "Digg It" button missing and the "show comments" link going to Digg instead.

I have no earthly idea why this is happening as I have nott knowingly altered my templates in quite a while. Hopefully we can get this cleared up soon, and I apologize for the unexpected weirdness.

Update: Of course, now that I post this, everything looks fine. Oh well... Tech genius and dear brother Phin of Apothegm Designs cleared up the snafu within mere minutes.

Just a plug for him and his partner Sadie in case any of my fellow bloggers are thinking about a blog design, redesign, or platform change: they really know their stuff.

Confirmed: Blast ''Non-nuclear''

How do I know?

'cause Michael Yon told me so.

This of course, means my "Divine Strake" guestimate of earlier this week was correct.

Yeah, even a blind hog can find an acorn every once in a while...

Update: Mary Katharine Ham and Allahpundit have more.

Greatest Political Ad Ever

Go see it.

Allah's got the other one.

The Other "Blue Dress Moment"

Things just keep getting worse for Bubba.

It was bad enough that his attempts to censor the recent "Road to 9/11" mini-series backfired and instead exposed his incompetence in dealing with al Qaeda, reminding the world that he allowed an attempted chemical weapons attack on Manhattan to go unchallenged militarily. Now the ripples of North Korea's nuclear (or not) blast have shown the 1994 Agreed Framework Clinton allowed Jimmy Carter to lead has led us to our present state of affairs. North Korea, a rogue state that has always sold every weapons system it has ever developed to the highest bidder is threatening to fire a nuclear-armed missile. Given their history, we might look at this as both nuclear gamesmanship and a product demonstration.

As time wears on and more failures are revealed, William Jefferson Clinton, the charismatic Man From Hope, is proving to be arguably the least competent foreign policy President of the twentieth century.

It must be said that every president since the early 1970s has failed in one way or another in dealing with terrorism. From Nixon and Ford, down through Carter and Reagan, to George H.W. Bush, Americans suffered through a string of terrorist attacks nearly unanswered.

Bill Clinton, however, established a new low point of inaction. He froze out his CIA Director, never meeting with him in two years, leading Woolsey to resign in disgust. Even though a new terror network was emerging to confront America directly, Clinton continued to treat the matter as a law enforcement issue. Clinton steadfastly refused to confront terrorism, as even his own top advisor Dick Morris noted:

The weekly strategy meetings at the White House throughout 1995 and 1996 featured an escalating drumbeat of advice to President Clinton to take decisive steps to crack down on terrorism. The polls gave these ideas a green light. But Clinton hesitated and failed to act, always finding a reason why some other concern was more important.

Clinton's unstated policy ignoring of the growing threat of al Qaeda emboldened them, leading to a plot that ultimately unfolded on the morning of September 11, 2001. Jumping office workers in Manhattan, a flaming facade in the Pentagon, and a rubble-strewn field in Pennsylvania are the legacy of President Clinton's decision to always find "some other concern" instead of acting against an increasingly bold al Qaeda terrorist network.

But what Clinton didn't accomplish against terrorism while he was in office may eventually pale in comparison to his incompetence in allowing rogue states to develop the technology to manufacture nuclear warheads and the weapons systems to deliver them.

On Clinton's watch, China successfully sold a conversion plant to Iran and the gas need to test the uranium enrichment process. In 1996, as Clinton froze out the CIA Director, Iran was busily constructing the Arak heavy water plant. Iran began the secret uranium enrichment facility at Natanz in 2000.

During the same time period, North Korea was secretly expanding it's nuclear weapons research and designing long-range multi-stage missiles, even as the gullible Clinton sent Secretary of State Madeline Albright to fulfill her own historical blue dress moment.

Bill Clinton left office in 2001, leaving us a world safe for terrorism instead of from it, and with two rogue nations developing nuclear weapons programs. Perhaps we cold have known of all of these programs far earlier, had he and Congressional Democrats not emasculated with constant calls for intelligence agency budget cuts.

Bill Clinton fundamentally misunderstood the threats posed by rouge nations aspiring to nuclear weapons capability and blinded American intelligence agencies that may have exposed them earlier. He fundamentally understood the causes of and how to confront Islamic terrorism.

Clinton's "do nothing" legacy is echoed today by Democratic Senators and Congressmen that rose through the ranks during his presidency. These Senators and Congressmen—Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi among them—still hold desperately to the same flawed misconceptions that led us to a point where are today. We now face not one, but two rouge nations on the cusp of being able to provide terrorist organizations with nuclear warheads.

President Clinton's "blue dress moment" with a White House intern led to the President being exposed as a distracted man with weak moral values who lied under oath.

President Clinton’s other "blue dress moment," —sending Madeline Albright to negotiate for a piece of paper that was never honored—now becomes emblematic of his failures on the nuclear proliferation front as well, and may ultimately be a far more damning part of his legacy of charismatic incompetence.

North Korean Seppuku?

Can someone please tell me when the firing of an ICBM armed with a nuclear warhead was not universally recognized as an act of war?

North Korea stepped up its threats aimed at Washington, saying it could fire a nuclear[sic] nuclear-tipped missile unless the United States acts to resolve its standoff with Pyongyang, the Yonhap news agency reported Tuesday from Beijing.

Even if Pyongyang is confirmed to have nuclear weapons, experts say it's unlikely the North has a bomb design small and light enough to be mounted atop a missile. Their long-range missile capability also remains in question, after a test rocket in July apparently fizzled out shortly after takeoff.

"We hope the situation will be resolved before an unfortunate incident of us firing a nuclear missile comes," Yonhap quoted an unidentified North Korean official as saying. "That depends on how the U.S. will act."

The official said the nuclear test was "an expression of our intention to face the United States across the negotiating table," reported Yonhap, which didn't say how or where it contacted the official, or why no name was given.

More after I have a chance to think about what this means...

NorK Dork Corked

And Bill Gertz agrees with that initial speculation, just 24 short hours later:

U.S. intelligence agencies say, based on preliminary indications, that North Korea did not produce its first nuclear blast yesterday.

U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that seismic readings show that the conventional high explosives used to create a chain reaction in a plutonium-based device went off, but that the blast's readings were shy of a typical nuclear detonation.

"We're still evaluating the data, and as more data comes in, we hope to develop a clearer picture," said one official familiar with intelligence reports.

"There was a seismic event that registered about 4 on the Richter scale, but it still isn't clear if it was a nuclear test. You can get that kind of seismic reading from high explosives."

It still remains, of course, to see if this assessment is correct. It could have been a faulty nuke, after all.

As ever, the sleepless Allah is on the case.

Update: Related thoughts at AoC.

Who Do You Trust?

According to USAToday's new poll, the pachyderms are toast:

A Capitol Hill sex scandal has reinforced public doubts about Republican leadership and pushed Democrats to a huge lead in the race for control of Congress four weeks before Election Day, the latest USA TODAY/Gallup Poll shows.

Democrats had a 23-point lead over Republicans in every group of people questioned — likely voters, registered voters and adults — on which party's House candidate would get their vote. That's double the lead Republicans had a month before they seized control of Congress in 1994 and the Democrats' largest advantage among registered voters since 1978.

Nearly three in 10 registered voters said their representative doesn't deserve re-election — the highest level since 1994. President Bush's approval rating was 37% in the new poll, down from 44% in a Sept. 15-17 poll. And for the first time since the question was asked in 2002, Democrats did better than Republicans on who would best handle terrorism, 46%-41%.

"It's hard to see how the climate is going to shift dramatically between now and Election Day," said John Pitney, a former GOP aide on Capitol Hill who now teaches at Claremont-McKenna College in California. He said Iraq remains the biggest problem for Republicans: "People just don't like inconclusive wars."

The plummeting GOP ratings in the poll of 1,007 adults, taken Friday through Sunday, come amid a series of events that have given Democrats ammunition to argue that the country needs a new direction.

Ah, the sounds of wishful thinking.

Now, it may very well come to pass that the Republicans have made enough mistakes to finally lose to a feckless Donkey, but I'll be among those surprised if that is the case. As I said in a previous post, "you can't beat something with nothing."

And what, precisely, do Democrats really have to offer the American voter other than "we aren't Republicans?"

If Democrats gain control of Congress, you can flush any pretense of border security down the drain. It will go from weak, to nonexistant.

As for Iraq, forget it: Speaker Pelosi will push to have the troops "redeployed" to some place useful like Guam, and faster than you can say "Rwanda," you'll see a nation of 26 million ripped completely to shreds. Think Iraq is bad with us there now? See what happens to it if the party of "cut and run" takes over and allows bin Laden his victory.

And allow bin Laden's victory they will. The Democrats have already shown they have no stomach for fighting in Iraq, so how long do you really think it would take for them to concoct a storyline saying that since bin Laden isn't in Afghanistan, than we shouldn't be either? Guam's going to get might crowded.

As for Mr. Kim and the NorKs, we've seen what happens when President Bush tried the preferred Democratic solution of multilateral talks. Expect it to get even worse as Dems push the same failed strategies in dealing with Iran. Oh, and kiss you missile defense goodbye.

Taxes? Going up if Democrats have their way.

Jobs? Going down because taxes are going up.

The current record-high stock market? Gone in the mist.

And don't even get me going on the endless poltically-driven investigations that will completely cripple the government. Think two weeks of Foleygate is bad? Try two years of the same shrill whine as they try to Get Bush.

But hopefuly, that unpleasantness won't come to pass. Between now and November 7, Foleygate will fade, along with the Democratic chance for victory. The Democrats won't win the House, but lose it by six, as I previously mentioned.

Interestingly enough, Scott Elliott's extremely accurate Election Projection currently has the Elephants taking the House by five (220-215), so I feel my SWAG has some merit. The Senate is closer and currently a dead heat, but once again, I predict that the election will come down to the all-but-forgotten Security Moms (and Dads) on November 7.

If the Democrats can convince them that by withdrawing from Iraq (and Afghanistan, which you know they will cry for next) is in this nation's best interests, and that allowing Iran to develop nuclear weapons uncontested is a smart strategy, then the Republicans deserve to lose.

I happen to think that the American voter is smarter than pollsters give them credit for. You can't beat something with nothing, even when the media is on your side.

NoDong, Little Action

Even as North Korea came under international condemnation today after boasting that it had tested a nuclear device, there were serious doubts about the strength of the weapon.

We have assessed that the explosion in North Korea was a sub-kiloton explosion,” said the intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. He added, “We don’t know, in fact, whether it was a nuclear explosion.” He spoke as intelligence analysts in Washington were in the early stages of assessing the explosion.

New York Times

Note: PhotoShop Jihad on the NorKs.

Did North Korea Call or Bluff?

I speculated last night that the North Korean nuclear test could possibly be "spoofed" by North Korea detonating a massive conventional explosive instead, just as the United States had planned with an operation called "Divine Strake" that was scheduled to take place in Nevada earlier this year using a massive ammonium nitrate bomb of 770 tons (Divine Strake was postponed, but may be rescheduled for 2007).

Some are stating that the seismic data is showing that the yield is even lower than that planned for Divine Strake, around 550 tons. This can be interpreted a couple of different ways, providing that the actual yield was in the range of 550 tons.

(1) The North Korean nuclear test was a fake. North Korea was hoping to get by on a bluff using a massive conventional explosion, hoping that it would be close enough to make the world think they had detonated the real thing.

(2) The North Korean nuclear test was a dud. Several experts are stating the possibility that the North Koreans detonated a shoddily built nuclear warhead that was more or less a dud, not achieving even a twentieth of the power one should expect from a plutonium warhead detonation.

And then there is the seismic data.

This is the seismic wave of a blast in North Korea that corresponds with the time that North Korea claims to have conducted their test, as currently shown on CNN.com.

I'm no seismic expert by any measure and would never claim to be, but does this data look similar to the seismic data of the confirmed simultaneous Indian nuclear tests of May 11, 1998, and a nearby earthquake that I culled from a Lawrence Livermore Web page?

The confirmed Indian nuclear tests show a massive initial spike, then much less intense aftershocks tapering off relatively quickly when compared to an earthquake. The north Korean blast seems to have ramped up before spiking and settling back down.

To my untrained eye, it appears that the North Korean test didn't act in the same way that the Indian detonation did, going from normal seismic activity to a massive spike before receding. It appears to have ramped up at first, then spiked, then tapered off.

I don't know if experts can easily determine the difference between a fizzled nuclear blast and a conventional detonation for the simple reason that I don't understand the physics involved. I would think, however, that even a partial nuclear dud would not "ramp up" as the North Korean test did, but just go off with much less of a "pop."

I'll turn this back over to the experts, but for now, the more I see, the more I question just how successful this test was. I don't know if it was a fake or a dud, but it certainly doesn't appear to be what we expected from a competently constructed modern nuclear warhead.

Updates: they are coming fast and furious, so hang on.

Josh Manchester, who I just met in person this past weekend and found to be very impressive, has a couple of posts I consider must-reads. Allah has compiled continuing breaking news from the beginning of this story on Hot Air. Start here and continue on here. Glenn Reynolds is of course providing roundups and passing out Instalanches here and here. Pajamas Media has an on-going thread here.

Mary Katherine Ham started off here last night and continues on today. No word yet on whether or not she's wearing the hated orange yet.

Wizbang has a roundup going as does another new friend, Sister Toldjah.

Expect information overload. I'm sure more is on the way.

North Korea Detonates Nuke, Enters Refractory Period

Developing:

North Korea said Monday it has performed its first-ever nuclear weapons test, which would confirm that the country has a working atomic bomb as it has long claimed.

The country's official Korean Central News Agency said the underground test was performed successfully "with indigenous wisdom and technology 100 percent," and that no radioactive material leaked from that test site.

"It marks a historic event as it greatly encouraged and pleased the (Korean People's Army) and people that have wished to have powerful self-reliant defense capability," KCNA said. "It will contribute to defending the peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and in the area around it."

I suspect that we'll find out that this was a real test of a small nuclear warhead, but I would not be surprised in the least to find out that this was a large conventional blast like we had planned earlier this year in Nevada in an operation named "Divine Strake."

Time will tell, but I think North Korea miscalculated. They don' t seem to have any other threats to issue now that they've test-fired both missiles and warheads in the past year. They've essentially fired out with everything they have, and I don't see that they have anything with which to negotiate now.

Bad dictator. Dumb move.

Update: MKH and Allah are all over this. Back to my sick bed I go...

Update: Josh Manchester has a must-read analysis of the situation in his TCS Daily article, "Stalking the Hermit."

Update: Captain Ed ain't buying it. Not yet, anyway.

Update: Pushing their luck: Norks say they might test another. This could escalate quickly, both diplomatically and perhaps even militarily. Stay tuned...

Carolina FreedomNet Wrap-up

I'm a bit under the weather now and intend to crawl back in bed momentarily, but I wanted to take a second to thank the John Locke Foundation for inviting me to participate on a panel at Carolina Freedomnet 2006.

While I've spent a lot of time with fellow bloggers via email and the occasional phone call, FreedomNet was the first time I actually got to meet some of my fellow bloggers in person, and I can't tell you how nice they all are.

I got in Friday night and caught up with Jon Ham of John Locke, Kay Ham (Jon's wife, Mary Katharine's mom, great lady), Abby Misemer and Missy Nurrenbrock, sisters who came up all the way from Florida for the conference, Kory Swanson of John Locke, and another blogger you might just have heard of, Scott Johnson of Powerline. We went dinner in one of the excellent Koury Convention Center restaurants, and I was amazed at just how well informed Abby and Missy were. I think they knew Powerline as well as Scott did, and he was visibly impressed.

After dinner we went back to a suite and I got to meet my fellow panelists, Sister Toldjah, Lorie Byrd of Wizbang!, Scott Elliott of Election Projection, and Josh Manchester of The Adventures of Chester. It was interesting that these folks, many of whom I've been reading for a long time, were quite a bit like I expected them to be.

Your personality really does come out in your blogging, I guess.

We had a delightful, wide-ranging discussion that was just, well, cool. I felt right at home. The fashionably late Ms. Ham joined us after 10:30-ish when her flight got in. We palled around a while, and I think we decided we needed to kidnap Allah and take him to a NASCAR race to expand his cultural horizons, but we need to work out the details.

This was my first conference panel since college and so I was a little nervous, but I finally managed to drop-off around 2:00 AM.

I awoke the next morning to a call from my brother (phin of phin's blog, Phineas G of Agent Bedhead, and half of the Apothegm Designs blog design masters) saying that he's gotten a wild hair and registered for the conference at 4:15 AM and had driven up and was standing in the lobby. I was touched, to put it mildly, that he took the time out of his insanely busy schedule to make the trip.

I was on the first panel with Lorie Byrd, Sister Toldjah and Sam Heib of Sam's Notes, who I unfortunately didn't get to spend any time with beforehand, but who was quite intelligent and well-spoken on the panel.

While we were going there was a minor disturbance as a very rude gentleman made a loud and obnoxious exit. I found out later that the scruffy Garrison Keillor look-alike was apparently attempting to drum up traffic for his own blog. Personally, I'd suggest compelling content instead of temper tantrums, but to each his own. I'd tell you more about what we said during our panel discussion, but it all went by in a blur.

Bonus: Bruce of GayPatriot was sitting in the front row, which was something we found out just before our panel ended. It was neat to get a chance to meet him.

Mary Katharine Ham was the only blogger whose work I was familiar with on the second panel prior to the conference, but that will change quickly. I was very impressed with Josh Manchester and Scott Elliott from talking with them some the night before, listening to them during the panel discussion, and talking with them after the conference was over. As they are all local, I'm going to try to make an effort to keep in touch. Jeff Taylor, who writes for Reason and Hit & Run in addition to the Meck Deck, was extremely bright as well.

Lunch was good (ever had a blue potato before? I hadn't, but it was good), and the Scot Johnson gave the keynote address, "The 61st Minute: Inside the Eye of Hurricane Dan," which of course was about the "September Surprise" orchestrated by CBS News in which they allowed themselves to be duped into using fake Texas Air National Guard records to support a story they wanted to be true.

I knew the story of Johnson's "The sixty-first minute" of course, as do almost all bloggers. It is without a doubt the most famous single blog post written so far, one that shredded the reputation of a a news network and their top reporters and producers as willing political partisans. Hearing Scott recount his feelings that morning and throughout the afternoon as experts began to help him build the case against CBS News was riveting, even though I knew the basics of the story before.

In short, Carolina Freedomnet 2006 was an excellent experience all the way around, and I cannot thank the staff of the John Locke Foundation enough for their hospitality. I can't wait to do it again next year.

Carolina Freedomnet 2006

We might not all have soccer player legs, but I still think there are plenty of reasons to come see us at Carolina Freedomnet 2006 tomorrow if you can.

Ground Zero Cross Finds New Home

Via yesterday's Washington Times:

A cross-shaped steel beam that survived the 2001 World Trade Center terrorist attack to become a symbol of hope amid the ruins was moved Thursday from ground zero to a nearby church, accompanied by a procession of victims' families, clergy and construction workers.

The 2-ton, 20-foot-high cross was placed on a flatbed truck for the three-block trip to its new home, St. Peter's Church, which had served as a sanctuary for rescue workers searching for human remains from the Sept. 11 attack.

"This piece of steel meant more to many people than any piece of steel ever," said Richard Sheirer, head of the city Office of Emergency Management five years ago. "It goes beyond any religion."

Ironworkers sang "God Bless America" as hundreds of people walked behind the cross to its temporary home facing ground zero outside the 18th-century church, the city's oldest Roman Catholic parish.

"This cross is a sign of consolation and inspiration to workers who served at ground zero for the 10 months of recovery," said the Rev. Brian Jordan, a Franciscan priest who had blessed the T-beam days after it was pulled from the wreckage. "Some interpret it as a cross. Others see it as an artifact that has historical and architectural importance, a reminder that is also a sign of closure."

The Ground Zero Cross will one day likely be part of the Formal Ground Zero Memorial or the September 11 Museum.

Johann Christoph Arnold wrote a touching article about the hope inspired by the Ground Zero Cross on Catholic Planet.

Censored Again By ABC News

In the spirit of giving it that "old college try" once more, I once again attempted to ask Brian Ross of the ABC News blog "The Blotter" two questions I first attempted to pose days ago in the comments section of a Blotter blog post.

The two questions were quite simple, and something to the effect of:

• When did Ross become aware of the existence of the instant messages between Congressman Foley and House pages?
• Were these instant messages given to Ross and the Staff of The Blotter directly by the pages, or were they filtered through an intermediary?

I say these were "something to the effect" of the question I asked, because ABC's Blotter comments are moderated, and the moderator did not allow these questions to be posted.

I made another attempt this even to ask those questions in the comments of latest Blotter Foleygate entry, the post titled Three More Former Pages Accuse Foley of Online Sexual Approaches.

The post, about three more Congressional pages coming forward from the classes of 1998, 2000 and 2002 to claim they were "sexually approached" over the Internet by Foley, seemed another perfectly logical chance to ask Brian Ross and his investigative news team at ABC News the questions about the origins of the explicit instant messages that broke the story wide open.

And so I opened the comments section of this Blotter blog post and wrote the following, typo and all:

I've attempted to ask two very simply questions of Brian Ross before, but somehow the comment I submitted disappeared (surely a technical glitch) and so I'll try to submit these questions once more:

(1) When did Brian Ross become aware of the existence of the instant messages?

(2) Were these instant messages given to Ross and the staff of The Blotter directly by the pages, or were they filtered through an intermediary?

At the time I wrote my comment, the last posted comment showing was one made by Kris Flaneur at 11:13:47 PM (see screencap)

After I clicked "post" I was redirected to the Blotter "glitch page," where obvious problems in the form submission are parsed for errors and kicked back to the reader for correction. You've doubtlessly come across similar only forms issues before. You simple correct your mistake and move on. My goof was trying to too quickly type in my blog's URL in the appropriate field, and I missed a "p" in "http://" addressing. ABC News needs to get their web team to better integrate this page into their site by the way; the site design continuity completely falls apart here, as you can see in the second screen cap:

In any event, I fixed the URL and successfully submitted my questions to Brian Ross and the Blotter staff for the second time. Note above that comments are only posted to the site after they have been reviewed by a human moderator and approved.

We'll see soon enough if these questions go down the memory hole once more, prompting more and more bloggers to ask the question: "What did Brain Ross know, and when did he know it?" If Ross & Co. drop the questions once more, I'll have to start thinking I'm onto something.

As of 9:00 AM, 30 more coments have been added, all after I submitted my comment. ABC News has censored my questions to Brian Ross, again.

What did you know, Brain, when, and from whom did you get these IMs?

Update": Michelle Malkin gets results by taking my questions directly to Jeffrey W. Schneider of ABC News.

Mr. Schneider answers my first question about when ABC News became aware of the instant messages, but he didn't really give me the answers I was looking for to the second question, perhaps because I didn't ask it correctly.

I asked: Were these instant messages given to Ross and the Staff of The Blotter directly by the pages, or were they filtered through an intermediary?

He gave an honest response that ABC News obtained the IMs from "former pages who contacted us after reading that first story."

What I should have asked, and what I actually meant to ask, was whether or not the pages who gave the IMs to ABC News were the same pages that participated in the instant messaging sessions, or if the IMs were turned over to ABC News by other Congressional pages who were not participants in the IMs.

I've asked Mr. Schneider if he would be kind enough to clarify this small but important distinction, and await his response.

Update: Mr. Schneider was kind enough to respond:

As we have reported, the IMs came to us from other pages.

Thus, we can clarify that the Congressional pages who were targeted by disgraced former Congressman Mark Foley were preyed upon twice; once by Foley, and for a second time by their fellow pages, who were the ones who turned the IMs over to ABC News.

Others may have caught this already, but it's news to me that this is confirmed. It seems that Drudge's story yesterday is indeed correct, at least as far as that the saved instant messages obviously got into the wrong hands.

But which page or pages sent the instant messages to ABC News?

MacsMind posts a series of unfortunate events that points to one possible suspect. If his case is sound, this is going to get much uglier before it gets better.

Chemical Fire Forces NC Town's Evacuation

Didn't get too much sleep last night. I was glued to the television, trying to guess how bad a chemical fire in a neighboring town was going to get and whether or not we'd need to evacuate:

Shifting winds forced Apex officials to expand an evacuation area early Friday to protect residents from a chemical gas plume that continued to spread from an industrial fire that has raged since late Thursday.

Town Manager Bruce Radford said a leak at the EQ North Carolina plant on Investment Boulevard sent several large plumes of chlorine gas into the air around 9 p.m. Thursday. A large fire broke out at the plant afterward, sending flames more than 100 feet into the night sky and setting off multiple explosions.

EQ is a licensed hazardous-waste facility that serves businesses

Apex and Wake County officials declared a state of emergency early Friday and evacuated about 16,000 people -- half of Apex -- within hours.

The fire started shortly after a chlorine gas leak was detected. As of now, the fire is still burning, and firefighters have rightly decided it would be safer to let it burn itself out. The sun is coming up and the winds going to shift, possibly forcing more evacuations.

EQ, the company that blew up, had closed and the last employee had left by 7:00 PM. The chlorine gas leak was detected around 9:00 PM and the fire came shortly afterward.

It is too early to determine a cause.

Hastert Kills GOP? Nope.

Methinks I smell a dirty diaper:

House Republican candidates will suffer massive losses if House Speaker Dennis Hastert remains speaker until Election Day, according to internal polling data from a prominent GOP pollster, FOX News has learned.

"The data suggests Americans have bailed on the speaker," a Republican source briefed on the polling data told FOX News. "And the difference could be between a 20-seat loss and 50-seat loss."

Most GOP lawmakers have stood by Hastert, pending a full airing of the facts in his handling of the Mark Foley affair, in which the former Florida representative was caught exchanging salacious messages with teen pages in Congress. The new polling data, however, suggests that many voters already have made up their minds.

I'd be very curious to know who this pollster is, and what allegiances he may or may not have to any factions within the Republican Party, for the simple reason that this poll flies in the face of common sense, and reeks of Inside the Beltway hysteria.

People are going to walk into their polling pace and cast votes for the candidates on their ballots.

Have you ever gone to the ballot box and thought, "you know, Congressman "X" really screwed up. Even though he isn't from my district, I'm going to vote for someone with a radically different viewpoint than my own to teach him a lesson, even if I get screwed in the process."

What, you don't think like that? I don't think many other folks do, either.

Unless they live in his district, people don't get to vote for or against Denny Hastert, and they aren't going to radically shift their voting of their candidates representing their interests to spite themselves.

Allah may be right and Hastert very well resign tomorrow, but if he doesn't resign, the world will not end. The Republican Party won't lose by 50 seats, and it won't lose by 20 seats. It won't lose at all.

My prediction: If Hastert stays, the Republicans keep control of the House by six seats. Why?

A party with something—even an imperfect something—always beats a party of nothing, and that is something ever voter knows in his gut that they haven't created a poll to measure.

Foley Pranked/ Ross Exposed?

It looks like I was at least halfway on target when I attempted to ask the staff of the ABC News blog The Blotter when Brian Ross became aware of the Foley instant messages and if the came directly from the Congressional pages involved or from a third party intermediary.

If Matt Drudge is right, we've got a partial answer to the second question:

According to two people close to former congressional page Jordan Edmund, the now famous lurid AOL Instant Message exchanges that led to the resignation of Mark Foley were part of an online prank that by mistake got into the hands of enemy political operatives, the DRUDGE REPORT can reveal.

According to one Oklahoma source who knows the former page very well, Edmund, a conservative Republican, goaded an unwitting Foley to type embarrassing comments that were then shared with a small group of young Hill politicos. The prank went awry when the saved IM sessions got into the hands of political operatives favorable to Democrats.

The primary source, an ally of Edmund, adamantly proclaims that the former page is not a homosexual. The prank scenario was confirmed by a second associate of Edmund. Both are fearful that their political careers will be affected if they are publicly brought into the matter.

The prank scenario only applies to the Edmund IM sessions and does not necessarily apply to any other exchanges between the former congressman and others.

The news come on the heels that Edmund has hired former Timothy McVeigh attorney, Stephen Jones.

This of course does not change the fact that Foley is an admitted predator, nor does it having any bearing on instant messages by other pages, nor does it make any apparent impact on the fact that Foley was able to get away with this for as long as he did. On Capitol Hill, we still don't know "who knew what, when" and if anyone else failed in their duties in protecting Congressional pages, and if so, if their failure would warrant resignation. That's what the ethics investigation is for. Until we have a better understand of what is going on in this very fluid situation, I think it's best to call off the call for heads.

I am however, brought back to my original question that I submitted to the ABC News blog comments section that disappeared (no doubt due to a technical glitch, similar to the one that exposed the page's screen name).

Brian Ross: When did you first become aware of these instant messages between House pages and Mark Foley, and who was that third party intermediary?

Inquiring minds want to know.

...Not As They Do

Sometimes I simply pity the sad, bile-filled world occupied by extremists on both ends of the political spectrum, those that seem to believe "the ends justify the means" in any and all occasions.

Such is the case with the two conservative bloggers that "outed" the former Congressional page that exchanged instant messages with disgraced Republican Congressman Mark Foley. Just as disgusting are those on the opposite end of the political spectrum that feign outrage over this act when they almost certainly would have done the same if the situation was reversed.

A prime example of this duality is Judd at the far left blog Think Progress.

Judd and his fellow extremists on the far left have now "attacked "right wing" blogger Roger L. Simon for linking to the story outing the Congressional page on his personal site and on the Pajamas Media portal (Note: I am also a Pajamas Media affiliated blogger), and "right wing" blogger Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit.com for linking to the Simon story.

It must be confusing for Simon--a Greenwich Village-loving former Civil Rights worker, novelist and screenwriter--and Reynolds--a libertarian who once stated he desired a world with "legally married gay couples with assault weapons in their closets"--to be labeled as representative of the "right wing" as Judd would make them out to be, but theri position relative to him only serves notice to just how far out on the extreme left Judd resides.

I personally disapprove of linking to the sites that outed the former page, but Judd was quite dishonest in how he attacked Simon, as while Simon linked the post, it wasn't his post's major focus:

Only the Greek playwright's manic disposition could correctly characterize the times in which we live when the semi-sex life of an obscure congressman leads to the downfall of an administration and the rise of Nancy Pelosi (!) as Speaker of the House followed by... what... impeachment hearings? Lysistrata anyone? Meanwhile, does anyone think it is ironic that so-called progressives who excoriated eavesdropping on terrorists are feasting on the publication of supposedly confidential email and IMs? You can forget about privacy. It no longer exists, if it ever did. The Patriot Act, if you think about it, is on some levels a joke, the Constitution a sideshow. The craven and rapacious stalk the corridors of power egged on by a loathesome media as hypocrisy rules and child abuse rears its ugly head with the age of consent debated by people whose only interest is their own ambitions. Meanwhile, lost in the shadows, an enemy whose "Messenger" married a nine -year old watches and waits.

The focus of Simon's post was the irony of Big Brother-paranoid liberals now glorifying in the once-private emails and instant messages of their fellow citizens. It was precisely this far left hypocrisy that Reynolds cited:

Hmm: "Meanwhile, does anyone think it is ironic that so-called progressives who excoriated eavesdropping on terrorists are feasting on the publication of supposedly confidential email and IMs? You can forget about privacy. It no longer exists, if it ever did."

Neither Simon nor Reynolds mentioned the page's name. Reynolds did not link to the blog that named the page in any way, shape or form. Simon only did so in a larger concept of showing how easily some can change their tune when it suits their political needs.

And Simon is indeed right in that respect, as a simple search of Think Progress itself shows.

Checking the emails, instant message and other communications of suspected terrorists? Think Progress is against it.

Making political hay out of the emails and instant messages of a page-molesting Republican? Think Progress is all for it, as are most other liberal sites.

Perhaps I might find the left's Republican witch hunt in the wake of Foley's resignation far more believable if they hadn't done so much to keep Democratic Congressmen accused of similar offenses in office in the past.

Democrat Mel Reynolds, unlike Foley, actually had sex with a 16 year-old. He was indicted in April of 1994, and re-elected by Democrats that November all the same. Reynolds only left Congress months after being convicted on 12 counts of sexual assault, obstruction of justice and the solicitation of child pornography.

Democrat Gerry Studds, unlike Foley, was a Congressman who had sex with a 17 year-old page and refused to apologize for it. Studds even turned his back to Congress in disrespect as they read a censure motion against him. Democrats kept him in office until he finally retired 13 years afterward.

Perhaps I could find Judd's outrage just a little more sincere if his party didn't have a track record of electing and re-electing the known sexual predators in their midst.

Where It Hurts

It seems that certain liberal gossip blogs don't care who they malign or misrepresent, as long as they can turn a smear to their advantage.

I mentioned last week how obsessed UNC Law Professor Eric Muller, the gossip blog Wonkette, and its parent company Gawker Media used a photoshopped picture to attack conservative blogger and journalist Michelle Malkin for what they misrepresented as "hypocrisy." Muller has since apologized.

He is the only one.

It now turns out that even after the owner of many of the pictures stolen from various Webshots.com accounts pressed both Wonkette and Gawker Media to stop the smear campaign, they have thus far to refused to answer her emails or justify their continued smears.

In response, Ashley Herzog, the owner of many of the stolen photos shown on the faked photo site, has come forward to write scathing rebuke directed at those involved:

...I wrote an e-mail to Wonkette, the blog that first posted the pictures. I explained that only one picture on the page showed the real Michelle Malkin – I took it at the Conservative Political Action Conference last February, where I briefly met her. The others had been stolen from my webpage.

Three days later my letter remained unanswered, and the smear campaign against Malkin raged on. I sent a second request to Gawker, the media empire that owns Wonkette, detailing the theft of my pictures. I was optimistic that a conglomerate worth tens of millions of dollars would show some accountability toward its audience.

Two days have passed, and my inbox is still empty.

This is the brave new world of Internet media. Like many Americans, I entered it with a naïve notion of bloggers as modern-day pamphleteers, throwing the cover off stories that the establishment media won't touch. I believed that Internet blogs, being far more democratic mediums than mainstream television networks and newspapers, would show respect for the truth.

But after visiting a few popular blogs, I realized I was sadly mistaken. At best, many zero in on political gossip and absurd non-issues, such as whether a conservative author ever posed in a swimsuit. At worst, many political blogs are cesspools of racism, misogyny, and obscenity, not to mention vicious lies.

The posts and links to my pictures are still up, and I'm no longer anticipating a response from Gawker. They are a multimillion-dollar behemoth; I'm a college kid with a claim to a few stolen photographs. They have nothing to lose by ignoring me.

However, it seems the fallout from the Malkin hoax is far from over. This morning, I received an anxious message from an Ohio State student who had just discovered the fake photo page.

She identified herself as “the girl in the bikini� and explained that Malkin's face had been photoshopped onto her body. She asked what we could do to stop the pictures from being circulated.

The answer, unfortunately, is probably “nothing.� Gawker and its ilk appear willing to perpetuate bald-faced lies in order to advance an agenda. And they don't mind taking a few innocent college girls along for the ride.

Obviously, neither the staff of Wonkette nor Gawker Media gives a fig about their continued exploitation of Ashley Herzog's photos, their exploitation of Meredith Chan, the young woman in the real bikini photo used in the Photoshop.

But there is a way to make Gawker Media respond, and that by hitting them where it hurts... the wallet. Gawker Media is estimated to be worth $76 million dollars, with their primary income generated by advertising.

I suggest that those who feel strongly about this agenda-driven abuse of Malkin, Herzog and Chan should consider a boycott of Gawker Media advertisers, accompanied by an email to the companies explaining just why they will not be purchasing products advertised on Gawker Media Web sites.

One can easily visit Gawker or Wonkette to compile a list of companies to contact.

I quickly compiled of companies advertising on these sites, including BellSouth's yellowpages.com, CarMax, Panasonic, and FSGBooks, but you can easily create your own list as well.

I'm linking them to this Malkin article called "The Gawker Smear Machine" among others, just so they know who they are spending their advertising dollars with.

I may be wrong, but I doubt this is the kind of attention they'll enjoy.

Not 18

There are a lot of folks getting this wrong, so follow the bold:

The page pursued by Mark Foley was 17 at the time Foley began sending explicit instant messages.

The young man was 17 when the IMs began and continued to receive IMs after he turned 18, including the now infamous House vote instant message, were sent.

That in no way mitigates the fact that a Congressman abused his position of authority in the pursuit of sexual gratification from those under his influence whether the victim is 16 or 60.

He's Baaaack...

Okay, not really, but it is an interesting retro-modern concept, and one I hope that works out well for Michael Totten and others writing for The New Pamphleeter.

Reprehensible Behavior

I'm a bit behind the curve on this one, but it seems that a pair of conservative bloggers exploited a mistake by ABC News and exposed the name of one of the teens that exchanged instant messages with disgraced (and now former) Florida Republican Congressman Mark Foley.

Frankly, I'm disgusted by this, and I will not link to the blogs or even mention them by name. As Michelle Malkin notes:

There was absolutely no good reason to expose the former congressional page's name and identity. Seizing on ABC News' redaction failure and reporting errors (more on that in a moment) to play gotcha in a feeble attempt to avenge Foley is not a sufficient reason to obliterate the young man's privacy. The young man was the prey, not the predator.

Outing is a horrible practice when used to attempt to bully closeted gays. Outing is even more reprehensible when used to attack those who are the targets of sexual predators.

The Gay-Baiting Left

They can call it a "big tent" party all they want, but by their actions, it's rather clear that what liberals are hiding under is just another name for a large white sheet:

There's a list going around. Those disseminating it call it "The List." It's a roster of top-level Republican congressional aides who are gay.

On CBS News on Tuesday, correspondent Gloria Borger reported that there's anger among House Republicans at what an unidentified House GOPer called a "network of gay staffers and gay members who protect each other and did the Speaker a disservice." The implication is that these gay Republicans somehow helped page-pursuing Mark Foley before his ugly (and possibly illegal) conduct was exposed. The List--drawn up by gay politicos--is a partial accounting of who on Capitol Hill might be in that network.

I have a copy. I'm not going to publish it.

Not going to publish it? He's just going to mention the positions held by those on the list, as well as which Congressional offices they work for. David Corn's the kid in class who claimed he didn't "tattle" even as he pointed at the other kids. The "List" was compiled by liberal activists over the course of several years.

There is a vile, bullying aspect at play here in the left as they once again attack a minority group for daring to wander off of what Democrats feel are the borders of their liberal plantation.

A black conservative? Must be a race traitor. Let's call him Sambo, or better yet, stalk him.

A gay conservative? Let's invoke the 3/5 compromise, because gay conservatives don't have full citizenship.

Nothing like whipping up on an uppity minority to get that liberal superiority Jones satisfied.

One of these days, voters in different minority groups are going to realize that by giving the overwhelming supermajority of their votes to one party, no matter how they are treated by that party, that they've made themselves a political non-entity. They've taken themselves completely out of play, and given aware their power.

Only once both parties have the think that they could gain or lose their votes as values-based individuals and families—and not a monolithic special interest groups—will they have any real power as people.

It never amazes me that liberals abuse those they claim to represent. It only amazes me that those they abuse put up with the abuse.

A War on Terror Over

Terrorism ending not with a bang, but a whimper:

The Irish Republican Army has begun reducing its membership and shut down key units responsible for weapons-making, arms smuggling and training, an expert panel reported Wednesday in findings designed to spur a revival of Catholic-Protestant cooperation in Northern Ireland.

The British and Irish governments warmly welcomed the 60-page assessment of the Independent Monitoring Commission, a four-man panel that includes former directors of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and the anti-terrorist unit of Scotland Yard.

The assessment reported that the IRA — which last year declared a formal end to its campaign to overthrow Northern Ireland by force and handed its weapons stockpiles to disarmament chiefs — had recently shut down three command units and "run down its terrorist capability.''
The report said the IRA has disbanded military structures, including the departments responsible for weapons procurement, engineering and training, and it had cut back rank-and-file members and stopped payments to them, the report said.

"We do not believe that PIRA is now engaged in terrorism," it added, using the group's full formal name of Provisional IRA. "We do not believe that PIRA is undertaking terrorist-type training. We do not believe that PIRA has been recruiting. ... The leadership is seeking to reduce the size of the organization. We have no evidence of targeting, procurement or engineering activity.''

The commission said the leadership of the IRA does not consider a return to terrorism as in any way a viable option and it continues to direct its members not to engage in criminal activity.

The Provisional IRA, (PIRA or "Provos") first emerged in 1969 to end Northern Ireland's status within the United Kingdom and force a united socialist Irish state through terrorist attacks. "The Troubles" lasted from the late 1960s until the late 1990s.

After 30 years of war, and an occasionally broken cease-fire measured in years, the Provos turned in their weaponry—thousands of small arms, grenades, some heavy machine guns and even surface-to-air missiles—in 2005. A year later, comand and control elements are slowly dismantling and recruitment has stopped.

The Provos called it the "Long War," and convincing arguments can be made that this was a sectarian conflict, or even a civil war.

The PIRA and other nationalist groups were only willing to negotiate a political settlement once they determined after decades of low-intensity warfare that loyalists and the British Army were not leaving. They finally accepted the inevitable, that they could not beat an indigenous government supported by its own military and police forces and strong external interests acting on the government's behalf.

Somehow, this all seems vaguely reassuring.

Who Knew What, When

Flopping Aces said he saw Dick Morris making a starling charge last night on Hannity & Colmes.

It's hearsay evidence at best.

Morris says he was told by a "respected reporter" has proof that a senior Democratic member of Congress knew about Foley's sexually explicit instant messages to House pages months ago.

It remains to be seen if there is any validity to this charge. If a reporter (and that's a big "if") has such evidence, then that reporter has a moral obligation to come forward with the story. If the evidence is reasonably solid, then we would be looking at a situation where at least one Democrat knew that a sexual predator was preying upon theses teens, and did nothing for months to warn the House leadership or law enforcement of Foley's actions for obvious political gain.

Which brings me back to my questions yesterday that disappeared at the ABC News blog, The Blotter.

The questions were:

• when did Ross become aware of the existence of these instant messages?
• were these instant messages given to Ross and the Staff of The Blotter directly by the pages, or were they filtered through an intermediary?

We know that Brian Ross of ABC News has been the lead journalist on this story, and that Ross's ABC News team has compiled at least 52 separate instant messages between Foley and House pages. It seems logical that if Morris really did make the claim that a respected reporter knew of a senior House Democrat sitting on this claim, that Brian Ross, as the reporter most immersed in this story, is likely the reporter to which Morris refers.

Update: Jonah G. has the transcript (my bold):

HANNITY: All right, perhaps, but we'll examine that in the next segment. But I think more importantly here there's some fundamental, I think, fairness issues here.

Everybody that I know is glad Foley is gone, but there seems to be an issue here to purposefully politicize this issue, and I find that equally repugnant to me. And, more importantly, I think this takes on a whole new dimension, and this is it, that, if in the pursuit of political power you are going to falsely accuse individuals of knowing things about horrible scandals like this, you better have evidence, because we live in America, and those American people you're describing are fair-minded.

MORRIS: And that's going to back fire.

HANNITY: And when innocent people are smeared, Dick, I've got to believe that people would tend to side with the people that are being smeared. And I see that this is happening more and more in this scandal.

MORRIS: And that's going to back fire on the Democrats by focusing on what did Hastert know, because you know that some of the Democratic congressmen knew. I had a reporter who told me today that she knows that one very prominent member of the Democratic leadership knew about this for months. And it came out through...

HANNITY: That's a big story.

MORRIS: ... a left-wing — came out — yes, but it's up to her to break it. And came...

ALAN COLMES, CO-HOST: But, Dick, it's the Republican leadership we're dealing with here. It's their leadership.

MORRIS: Yes. I mean, the Democratic leadership knew, was what she told me. And I think that, obviously, it came out through a liberal Web site, and obviously it was fed to ABC through one of their more liberal channels. And obviously there were Democratic fingerprints on it.

But I don't think that the public is going to care much about what Hastert knew and what the Democratic leadership knew and any of that. They are going to focus on the details of this scandal, and they'll be very glad that it came out, and they will feel that it epitomizes what's wrong with Congress.

COLMES: All right, Dick, we only have a few moments here before we have to break again. But, look, this actually appeared on a Web site, "Stop Sexual Predators." I don't know that that's a liberal Web site.

We know that the Democrat in the page program in Congress was not informed. Only the Republicans knew. To actually put any blame for this on the Democratic leadership, as if they should have done something, when it's clear the Republican leadership didn't, is really not taking responsibility where it belongs.

MORRIS: Listen, I hate to take both of you on at once, but you're both missing the point. This is not a Democratic or a Republican scandal. It's a congressional scandal.

Well, the pronoun "she" and "her" seems to blow my Brian Ross theory all to Hell unless Morris was intentionally misdirecting attention away from his source. The fact remains that Morris willing to go on the record and say that Congress is to blame here, not just one party. Knowing how dirty both parties can be, that seems an honest assessment.

Now it is a matter of determining which other bums in addition to Foley need to be thrown out, and I suspect there are one or two more on both sides of the aisle. Anyone who knew about Foley's IMs (the emails were too ambiguous to act upon) to these pages and withheld that knowledge for any reason is little better than Foley himself, and is an accessory after the fact.

What Did Brian Ross Know, and When Did He Know It?

Suddenly, I'm very interested in knowing what the posting policy is at the ABC New blog, "The Blotter." Not the official policy, but the unofficial policy used by ABC News to determine which submitted comments get posted, and which ones get deleted before publication.

Their latest blog post reveals the text of another disgusting instant message between former Florida Congressman Mark Foley and an underage page, one that claims:

Former Congressman Mark Foley (R-FL) interrupted a vote on the floor of the House in 2003 to engage in Internet sex with a high school student who had served as a congressional page, according to new Internet instant messages provided to ABC News by former pages.

Claiming that Foley "interrupted" the vote is of course hyperbole (“Stop the vote! I have, err, business to take care of!� Foley was not heard to say) and not really of interest, but I did note that the instant message was made in April of 2003. 2003 was also the year that the original and far less than inflammatory emails between Foley and other pages were written.

I thought it was quite interesting that all of the reveals communications so far have dated from 2003, and so I typed in the comments section simple questions for Brian Ross and the staff of The Blotter.

I noted that all of the electronic communications that have come forward so far were dated 2003, and that Ross himself knew of the emails for 13 months before publishing his first comments on the blog.

I then asked Ross to answer a couple of simple questions in a comment to The Blotter, namely:

• when did Ross become aware of the existence of these instant messages, and;
• were these instant messages given to Ross and the Staff of The Blotter directly by the pages, or were they filtered through an intermediary.

At least, that is roughly what I remember typing. Somehow the comment didn't end up being posted on The Blotter, though literally dozens of other comments have been posted since the time I submitted very reasonable questions.

If I didn't know better, I'd think that that the staff of The Blotter was censoring comments. There are of course legitimate reasons to censor comments, ranging from removing foul and abusive language to deleting off topic comments, and many bloggers (including myself) often engage in precisely that kind of editing to keep a blog post's comments thread on topic and relevant.

But to censor legitimate on-topic questions and comments is another matter entirely, and I'm surprised that the staff of the Blotter, seasoned journalists all, is so thin-skinned that they felt compelled to kill a comment asking them logical questions about the key elements of the story itself. It was unlikely that Ross or the other ABC News reporters on this story would have actually answered these two rather simple questions, but to go so far as to keep other readers for seeing these questions only makes their answers more pressing.

What did Brian Ross know, and When did he know it? Did the pages themselves send these instant messages to the Blotter, and if so, when? Was there an intermediary involved?

I'd like to get answers to the questions, but the staff of the Blotter obviously doesn't even want the questions to be asked.

Khomeini Letter Mentioned Call For Nuclear Weapons Deployment against Iraq

I'm sure Ted Koppel will tell us this was taken out of context:

Former Iranian president Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has published a confidential letter by the late ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, which has stirred a great deal of controversy in Iran, in part because the letter refers to a military commander's call to pursue nuclear weapons to be deployed against Iran's hostile neighbor, Iraq.

The letter's significance, and the critical timing of its disclosure, cannot be overstated. Until now, there had been no official voices in favor of nuclear proliferation and plenty of opposite declarations
led by Khomeini's successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has issued a religious decree, a fatwa, against it.

In his letter to political leaders, dated 1988, Khomeini does not make any judgment on the commander's position, which he mentions in passing in a narrative devoted to explaining the underlying reasons for his fateful decision to accept a United Nations resolution calling for a ceasefire in the Iran-Iraq War. These were the government's financial inability to persecute the war, failures in the battlefield, Saddam Hussein's backing by the United States, the increasing Americanization of the war, etc.

Khomeini's letter sets out the requirements of military commanders if they are to continue fighting against Iraq. It mentions more aircraft, helicopters, men and weapons, and also quotes the top commander saying that Iran would - within five years - need laser-guided and atomic weapons if it were to win the war.

I'm just thankful that Iranian's current leaders are past that militant desire.

Driven to Distraction

Pull up Memeorandum, any major news web site, or political blog this morning, and you'll see two stories prominently featured, one on the Amish school shooting that has claimed five lives so far in rural Pennsylvania, and the other one dealing with the fallout of disgraced Florida Congressman Mark Foley's sexually explicit computer communications with teenaged pages in the House of Representatives.

It is clear that Foley's conduct is disgusting, unethical, and possibly criminal. It is also clear that (barring another major news event) this will be the political hot-button topic for at least the remainder of the week, due in no small part to how badly the House Republican leadership has responded to this clearly inappropriate behavior.

Washington and those who cover it love a juicy scandal. and this certainly reaches a sustainable level of interest for political junkies.

By all accounts, Mark Foley carried out explicit conversations with teen boys. Investigations should be launched by the appropriate law enforcement agencies to see if Foley broke any laws. If he did, he should be prosecuted to the fullest extent the criminal justice system can provide. We can hope that Foley's predatory behavior has been confined to the keyboard, and that he never had to opportunity to physically act out any desires he may have had.

We can also probably agree with perfect 20/20 hindsight that the House Leadership should have more thoroughly investigated Foley's conduct, even though the parents of the page asked them to keep the matter quiet, and we can certainly fault their absence of leadership since this story came to light.

We can even understand the Democratic plan to conflate this and grasp upon it as a major issue just five weeks out from a national election. If the Republicans were the minority party and had the chance to beat the Democratic Party over the head with this, they certainly would. All of that said, this story is not important when compared to the more pressing business facing the nation.

We have 140,000 soldiers in Iraq apparently unable to effectively reduce increasing sectarian violence, and no one in either party able to articulate a viable plan to bring safety and security to the 26 million citizens of Iraq.

We have a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan suffering crushing battlefield defeats, but we are unable to muster up the political will to go after their training camps in Pakistan, measurably improve Afghanistan's infrastructure, or destroy a poppy crop that fills the Taliban's coffers and our streets with drugs.

We have an apocalyptic religious sect ruling Iran that is so radical that Ayatollah Khomeini outlawed it while he was alive, that is attempting to acquire nuclear weapons and has already stated an intention to "wipe Israel off the map," with the apparent goal of spurring a massive retaliatory strike in the hopes that nuclear explosions over Tehran will usher forth the Twelfth Imam to bring forth the Apocalypse, not to mention North Korean threatening to detonate one of their nuclear warheads.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have major issues affecting millions of lives around the world facing us that will be determined in part by how we vote in just five short weeks.

It is perfectly understandable that Democrats would seize upon such a minor issue as Foleygate and inflate its importance if they can, because such a minor issue that is something of a scale on which they may be able to operate. But we have far more pressing concerns as a nation than the predatory emails of a degenerate Congressman affecting a handful of teen boys. We have issues that affect the very lives of tens of millions of people around the world that have suddenly been put on a backburner.

It's time we place Foleygate in its proper context as a sideshow and continue to press both political parties in America to deal with the very real and mortal threats facing other nations and our own.

Too many lives hang in the balance to do otherwise.

WaTimes Calls for Hastert's Head

Nothing like a good old-fashioned lynching, eh boys?

Sexual predators come in all shapes, sizes and partisan hues, in institutions within and without government. When predators are found they must be dealt with, forcefully and swiftly. This time the offender is a Republican, and Republicans can't simply "get ahead" of the scandal by competing to make the most noise in calls for a full investigation. The time for that is long past.

House Speaker Dennis Hastert must do the only right thing, and resign his speakership at once. Either he was grossly negligent for not taking the red flags fully into account and ordering a swift investigation, for not even remembering the order of events leading up to last week's revelations -- or he deliberately looked the other way in hopes that a brewing scandal would simply blow away.

I'm not sure if the Times has something they're withholding or if they are just far ahead of the story to a Leopoldian extreme, but what has been presented so far doesn't support their call for Hastert's resignation.

I'm not Hastert fan, and can't recall him having done much of anything as Speaker--which may well be enough reason to hang him out to dry according to some--but I'm simply seen nothing in the emails that should have warranted a major concern based purely on their content.

Denny Hastert has been utterly forgettable Speaker of the House, but I want to see more evidence that he was somehow either involved in covering up the scandal, or through gross negligence was unaware of a serious evidence of the likelihood of Foley's scandal, before calling for him to be cast down.

If the Times wants Hastert gone over this, they need to make a solid case to their readers. So far, I think they've failed to do so.

Update: Captain Ed makes a very valid argument for replacing Hastert:

As I wrote earlier, the strange reluctance of Republicans to investigate the earlier e-mails combined with Hastert's clumsy attempts to distance himself from the scandal on Friday have compounded the scandal -- which by all rights should fall completely on Mark Foley himself. Hastert's staffers told the press on Friday that he hadn't known of a problem with Foley, forcing John Boehner to retract his statement that he himself had told Hastert of the issue. Only after Thomas Reynolds went public the next day did Hastert himself admit that he had known of the earlier e-mails.

But let's put that aside for the moment, and concentrate on what Hastert and the leadership say they did in response to Foley. Once they found out about the e-mails through the complaint of an underage page, all they did was ask Foley about it, and accepted his denials at face value. Incredibly, no one apparently ever asked any of Foley's former or current pages if they had noticed any inappropriate behavior from the Congressman. What kind of an investigation doesn't address the reality of patterns in allegedly predatory behavior? Foley's uncommon interest in young teenage boys had become parlor talk among the pages, but either Hastert didn't want to find that out or deliberately avoided it. Hastert apparently made the decision not to follow procedures and refer the matter to the Page Board, the bipartisan committee that oversees pages, and that looks very clearly like a cover-up.

And someone has to explain why Foley retained his position on the Caucus for Missing and Exploited Children. No one saw a problem with this?

Even ascribing the best of intentions to Hastert and the other members of leadership, personal friendship with Foley doesn't excuse that level of incompetence. Furthermore, when the scandal broke, Hastert should have immediately explained his involvement in the earlier complaint, rather than wait for it to dribble out. That's what leadership means: controlling a situation and providing an example rather than allowing events to control you and your party. All Hastert needed to do was to come out on Friday and said, "We had a complaint about suggestive e-mails this winter, and we relied on Mark Foley's word that nothing more untoward had occurred. In hindsight, that was a mistake, but we wanted to honor the wishes of the parents and not make a public spectacle of the situation." It wouldn't have explained the earlier incompetence, but at least it would have dampened the firestorm that erupted around the changing stories of House leadership.

Perhaps Hastert should be replaced. He has not shown signs of leadership at any point in his tenure that I can readily recall, and he has now twice "stepped in it" (the first time was the absurd argument that Congressional offices are somehow out of legal jurisdiction during the William Jefferson investigation) when he has opened his mouth.

The sad fact of the matter is that incompetence is all to often the defining characteristic of "leadership" members in both parties and in the Congressional rank-and-file. If competence in government is going to be our new standard, the only people left in the halls of Congress will be the custodial staff. That's not necessarily a bad thing.

They at least, know how to clean up messes without making them worse.

A School Shooting In Amish Country

This verges on the surreal:

Six people were killed by a gunman at a one-room Amish schoolhouse in Lancaster County Monday, according to the county coroner.

Earlier, state police Cpl. Ralph Striebig said "there are a number of people dead. ... The exact number I do not know yet."

The police told FOX News that it was in fact a hostage situation and that the shooter is now killed. There were at least 12 people injured, along with the deaths, police said. Not motive is yet known.

The anti-individualist philosophy and emphasis on humility in the Amish faith makes one of their schools an odd venue for a school shooting, a crime that seems most often linked to those completely immersed in their own selfishness to a homicidal degree.

I'm not sure that anyone can precisely state what the motivations for this shooter or the others in the recent rash of school shootings may be, but I'll go ahead and argue that a society that teaches non-competitiveness on one hand and mindless recreational violence on the other is to blame as the root cause.

Not sure of what I'm talking about?

Check out the youth sports programs in your area schools and parks & recreation departments, and see if they keep score during games, or if they emphasis noncompetitive games. I know some communities where this is the case, because parents don't want children to want to deal with the "trauma" of loosing a tee ball or soccer game. Instead of learning to confront and push through losing to learn from it (which we used to call developing "character"), today's kids are often taught to avoid taking part in situations where they might lose and hurt their all-important self esteem, even if their highly regarded self esteem is unwarranted.

While these examples apply to sports, you can also look to school systems that socially promote children even though they cannot do grade-level work, or even worse, school systems that dumb-down passing grades to such a low level that passing is inevitable. Some tests for some school systems now consider "passing" to be only getting 30%-40% of questions on standardized tests correct.

Our education systems are overrun by teachers who can't teach rote facts, and more importantly, they can't teach our children to think. We are matriculating millions of American children who are completely unprepared to overcome challenges and failures in their lives.

At the same time that these same children are taught that the stupid and arrogant (Bam Margera, Natalie Maines, Paris Hilton, etc) can triumph but they can't, they ae also exposed to a media machine that cranks out slasher movies and extremely violent music lyrics and video games one after another.

We end up with children ill-equipped for success, unable to deal with failure, and programmed to see immediate violence as an acceptable answer to their short-term problems.

We shouldn't question why we've had so many school shootings lately. We should question why we've have had so few.

Update: The shooter has been identified as 32-year old delivery driver who carried out the attack in retaliation for something that happened "decades ago."

As you sow...

Not All Quiet on Iran's Western Front

Iran Focus has a short post up this morning claiming that a network of "separatists:"

...was being supported and strengthened by the intelligence apparatuses of certain neighboring states and a European country which it did not identify.

The insurgent network was spread throughout two cities, including the Iranian capital of Tehran. You won't see this as a featured story by the Associated Press or Reuters, or mention on CNN or CBS News. Commenting upon the Iranian insurgency would be… problematic. It interferes with how the western news media often presents Iranian thought as a near monolith rallying behind President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, even as this is far from the case.

I suspect international news organizations purposefully under-report the long-running dissention and insurgency in the Iranian population—and propagate the Iranian government's views internally and as they apply to foreign policy (think CNN in Baghdad)—so that they are not frozen out completely of the news trickle (calling what the Iranian government censors allow a news cycle would be too generous) within the country by Ahmadinejad's government.

The fact remains that there have been several attempts on Ahmadinejad's life within Iran during the past year that have received relatively little media attention. Iran has been fighting its own long-term, low intensity insurgencies, with both Sunni Baluchis and Kurds rebelling against the central Shiite government.

In addition, Iran's government does not represent the views of all Iranian Shiites. Many Shiites believe that Iran has a legitimate right to nuclear power, but they are increasingly worried that the thinly-veiled drive towards nuclear weaponry by Ahmadinejad's apocalyptic Hojjatieh sect is pushing the country towards a conflict that they cannot win.

Iran has blamed Great Britain for supporting the elements of the Iranian insurgency, but has not yet been able to present any solid proof of those claims, as opposed to the solid physical evidence against Iran in providing material support for Hezbollah in Lebanon, Palestinian factions in the West Bank and Gaza, and the sectarian Shia violence in Iraq, in the form of captured Iranian weaponry. It would be logical, of course, for Western powers to support the various low-level insurgencies in Iran. Attacks in Iran's oil and gas producing regions can pose a threat to the stability of the central government. Hopefully Iranians can accomplish regime change without need for direct military intervention by Western armies, saving many lives on both sides.

Iran is fighting—and taking hits—from its own insurgencies, and yet mainstream media organizations seem to purposefully limit reporting on them.

One might wonder if their coverage is purposefully Jordanesque.

Foley Follows Rehab Script

Disgraced Congressman Mark Foley becomes a Kennedy.

Letter purpordedly sent to WPBF, the ABC affiliate in West Palm Beach, from former congressman, Mark Foley:

X X X X X

October 1, 2006

Painfully, the events that led to my resignation have crystalized recognition of my longstanding significant alcohol and emotional difficulties.

I strongly believe that I am an alcoholic and have accepted the need for immediate treatment for alcoholism and related behavioral problems.

On Saturday, with the loving support of my family and friends, I made arrangements to enter a renowned in-patient facility to address my disease and related issues.

I deeply regret and accept full responsibility for the harm I have caused.

Over the weekend, I communicated extensively with one of the most respected mental health experts in Palm Beach County, Florida, who has been instrumental in counseling and assisting me.

Attorney David Roth, my good friend of four decades has been requested by me to fully and completely cooperate regarding any inquiries that may arise during my treatment.

Words cannot express my gratitude for the prayers and words of encouragement that have been conveyed to me.

Sincerely,

Mark A. Foley

X X X X X

A spokeswoman for WPBF says that a reporter went to Roth's house where a woman, allegedly Roth's wife, confirmed a fax had been sent.

This is another transparent attempt to shift blame from a man to something he's imbibed, but considering how often society allows people to get away with this little trick, you can't blame Kennedy-Gibson Foley for following the script.

Perhaps if it turns out that a certain suspect liberal group was hiding the Foley story for months--which would be disgusting-- then they can use the same excuse.

CREW is a liberal public interest group funded by George Soros and seems to have its fingerprints all over this scandal.

The question isn't whether or not Foley is a lowlife pervert who belongs in jail. He does. The question isn't whether the House leadership did a good enough job with the Foley case when it came to their attention. They probably didn't.

The real question is if CREW sat on these emails for months with the knowledge that children were at risk on the Hill thanks to stalker Foley.

Foley is scum and deserves to be prosecuted, as does anyone who knew of his sexual interest in children and decided to not to take the story to the authorities, thereby putting other children at risk.