A Message to the Democratic Party Leadership

From YouTube:

Cpl Chris Mason recorded a video message for the Democratic Party Leadership before he was killed in action in Iraq. Chris was killed by Al Qaeda terrorist. He produced this video on November 12th 2006 at FOB Summerall. This video just recently worked its way to me (his dad) on March 23rd 2007, now I am posting it to the internet for him. It reflects his beliefs about the war in Iraq, the people of Iraq, freedom, why he joined the US military, what he expected after joining the military, and if the warriors lost in the war will be lives wasted.

Cpl Mason was killed on November 28th, 2006 by Al-Qaeda Terrorist forces operating in Iraq.

He was laid to rest December 12th 2006, exactly thirty days after making this video statement to the Democratic Party Leadership.

From Chris Mason's memorial web site:

He was killed in "The War on Terrorism" by Al-Qaeda terrorist forces in a small town "Siniyah, Iraq." Chris was ambushed and killed by Al-Qaeda terrorist while he was moving into position to provide fire support for his fellow paratroopers. They had come under heavy small arms fire from Al-Qaeda forces and could not disengage. He died soon after being hit by an IED, but DOD has him being killed by small arms fire, during a firefight with Al-Qaeda at the same location. Bottom line is he was doing what needed to be done for his country..

The President of the United States, George W. Bush, authorized on Feb 1, 2007 that the following quote be placed on Chris's headstone.... "We Will Not Tire, We Will Not Falter, And We Will Not Fail" with the president's signature affixed there after.

There are few men who will pick up a weapon and fight for this country, and my son was one of the few. He died standing toe to toe with Al-Qaeda.

Strength and Honor son, I stand proud for you. Airborne.

James Dobson Can Kiss My...

...grits.

I am really and truly getting quite perturbed with the sanctimonious self-importance of one James Dobson. From CNN, about Fred Thompson:

In an interview with "U.S. News & World Report," Dobson said, "I don't think he's a Christian."

A Thompson spokesman quickly contested Dobson's statement, saying "Thompson is indeed a Christian. He was baptized into the Church of Christ."

But a declaration of Thompson's religion will not be enough for Dobson, who is viewed as being widely influential with evangelical Christians, a key Republican voting bloc.

"We were pleased to learn from his spokesperson that Sen. Thompson professes to be a believer," said Nima Reza, a Dobson spokesman. "Thompson hasn't clearly communicated his religious faith, and many evangelical Christians might find this a barrier to supporting him."

Many evangelicals would prefer it if Doctor Dobson would simply shut up, and quit attempting to speak for us.

The last I checked, James Dobson cannot peer into the soul of Thompson, any more that he can see into the heart of any other man. For him to question whether someone else is a Christian, or "Christian enough" speaks of his own quite human arrogance, not of any divine knowledge.

Perhaps it is time for Doctor Dobson to recall that "clearly communicating" one is a Christian is quite different than actually living as one.

EFP Importer Captured

And the Iranian dominoes in Iraq continue to fall:

U.S. and Iraqi forces detained a suspect linked to networks bringing sophisticated roadside bombs into Iraq during a raid Friday in the main Shiite district in Baghdad.

[snip]

The suspect, who was detained by U.S. and Iraqi forces during a raid in the Shiite militia stronghold of Sadr City, was believed to be tied to networks bringing the weapons known as explosively formed projectiles, or EFPs, into Iraq, the military said.

It did not name the suspect or the groups he was accused of having ties to, but the U.S. military has asserted in recent months that Iran's Revolutionary Guards and Quds force have been providing Shiite militias with weapons and parts for sophisticated armor-piercing bombs. The EFPs are responsible for the deaths of more than 170 American and coalition soldiers since mid-2004, the military says.

The most important "nugget" to be gleaned from these three short paragraphs is that the man who was apprehended was part of a network importing explosively-formed penetrators into Iraq.

There are those on the political left here in the United States who have attempted to provide Iran with a figleaf for their involvement, implying that the EFPs used against American forces were indigenous weapons because some captured EFPs were made using some components—primarily the short sections of pipe used to form the canister containing the copper disk and explosive charge—that came from various parts of Iraq and other countries in the region. The man captured was part of a network smuggling in completed munitions, not components.

I'd also note that Judi was wrong in his the terminology he used to describe the weapons the network was smuggling in to Iraq. Sadly, this is a consistent problem among Associated Press reporters. I'll give Judi the same advice I gave his superior, Kim Gamel: Learn the Tech, or Take up Baking.

Oh, My

I can fully appreciate the fact that our ideological opposites don't support the war in Iraq and would prefer that our military be recalled. I can even accept some of their rationalizations, even though I think they are purposefully downplaying the full-on genocide that would be the likely result of their retreat-at-any-cost mentality, of what they view as a Republican war in Iraq. To be fair, the Iraq War isn't the only thing liberals see as a "Republican war." They seem to think everything is the result of one Republican War or another, except, perhaps, their own War on Hyperbole.

Rick Moran highlights one example of the overwrought wailing and knashing of frappacino-stained teeth this morning, a post on the liberal blog Booman Tribune that is highly emotional, to put it mildly:

So here we are in the midst of an escalation oops, surge, in their futile involvement in the Fertile Delta, sending ever more of what they have been determined to be our fully expendable American youth to die amid the filthy corrupt realities of the modern, oil saturated Arab world. All the while our boy Junior adds daily to his litany of pious pronouncements on peace and freedom for a part of the world where there is little respect for peace and no respect for liberty because 13 centuries of Islamic fatalism and authoritarian rule have not allowed, and may never allow either.

As the bullets and shrapnel fly and the bodies are stacked in great rotting piles and the Mothers of Iraq and the Mothers of America weep in endless screams of pain and anguish our congress plays political games in a disgusting, half ass tug of war with President Puke that makes me want to offer Monica Lewinsky a chance to perform just one more public service so that we might at long last give the Republicans and the Democrats something to get stirred up about enough to impeach this criminal son of a bitch.

I talked briefly with a young man today who is leaving for Army boot camp in a few days. We were introduced by his friend's father who is a close friend of mine from my favorite watering hole, the local pool hall. The young man is 19, fresh of face and rosy cheeked, not an ounce of guile in his spirit and ripe for the slaughter. As we spoke I couldn't shake the feeling that I might never see the kid alive again. I wanted to cry as I shook his hand and told him to pay attention and cover his ass.

The author is said to be Bob Higgins, but the near-hysterical, semi-coherent and sobbing tone of the post sounds like it could easily have come from the dead-on lefty-spoofing troll known as CheChe.

Both the Moran and Higgen's posts were proximately triggered by a Joshua Partlow article in this morning's Washington Post titled, Gunmen Go On Rampage In Iraqi City, a follow-up story on the Tal Afar massacre two days ago that I've discussed previously.

For those of you just coming to this story, the Tal Afar massacre were the extrajudicial summary executions of 45-60 Sunni men in a Sunni neighborhood by off-duty Iraqi police and militiamen (all believed to be Shia) in retaliation for a pair of truck bombs in primarily Shia areas earlier that day that killed 63 and wounded 150.

The revenge attacks are chilling, and an undoubted setback, and yet they are perhaps unsurprising in some ways, as the Shia have been hit time and time again by insurgent forces recently, and finally hit their breaking point. There is obviously no excuse for the attacks and a joint investigation by Iraqi Interior Ministry, Ministry of Defense, and the Ministry for National Security is underway.

It is unknown if the recent tit-for-tat in Tal Afar is just the beginning of a resurgence of violent in that Iraqi citizen, or if time with prove these to be horrible isolated incidents.

One thing is for certain, however. There are not "great rotting piles" of bodies in Iraq to speak of yet (Sunni and Shia alike bury their dead within 24 hours), but if liberals such as Higgens get their way and force an arbitrary withdrawal date, "great rotting piles" of dead Iraqis are indeed in Iraq’s future, as noted yesterday by New York Times Baghdad bureau chief John Burns in an interview with Matt Lauer on Today:

LAUER: What do you think happens if there's a date certain set for that withdrawal?

BURNS: If United States troops stay, there will be mounting casualties and costs for the American taxpayer. If they leave, I think from the perspective of watching this war for four years or more in Baghdad, there's no doubt that the conflict could get a great deal worse very quickly, and we'd see levels of suffering and of casualties amongst Iraqis that potentially could dwarf the ones we've seen to this point."

And later: "Most would agree there is a civil war, but a countervaling force exercised principally by Americans but also other coalition troops is a very significant factor that leaves the potential for a considerable worsening once you remove that countervaling force. . . Remove that countervaling force and then there will be no limit to this violence."

LAUER: What about this idea that if we leave, we leave behind a vacuum that other states in that region will rush to fill?

BURNS: Very difficult to tell what they would do, but of course this could come as a wake-up call to them, once they were convinced that American troops were going to withdraw and that they might get drawn in, perhaps they would get serious amongst themselves about drawing up some sort of compact to avoid that possibility, but that's purely in the realm of speculation. We really don't know what their intentions would be, but there's certainly a potential for regional conflict.

None of these concerns seem to touch the American political left, which views this as a "Republican War," our soldiers as children "ripe for the slaughter," and notably silent about the hihg probabability that the catastrophic and arbitrary withdrawal they would arrange would lead to more slaughter in Iraq, and perhaps a regional war fought primarily in Iraq.

I noted on March 8 in Left Behind:

It is expected that the power vacuum left by a Democrat-forced American military retreat from Iraq would be filled by foreign nations fueling a sectarian war in Iraq that would be both civil and proxy in nature. Saudi Arabia has made clear their intention to provide military and financial resources to Iraq's Sunni minority to hopefully keep their co-religionists from being "ethnically cleansed," while Iran would continue or increase its military and financial support of Shia factions in hopes of gaining a sphere of influence over oil-rich southern Iraq.

The end result of the Democrat plan of defeat would be a war-torn landscape not too dissimilar to the Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian War, writ large.

A repeat of events like the Srebrenica massacre are possible in Iraq's future if Democrats have their way.

Democrats, of course, know this, but simply seem to find political games in America far more important than the regional destabilization and projected increase in civilian deaths their plan for defeat would bring.

Democrats claim to care about our troops, which they do, when it’s politically convenient and they’re fresh out of spit.

Sadly, the millions of Iraqi civilians that would suffer as a result of their plan for defeat don't matter nearly as much to Democrat politicians.

Iraqi children won't send out important action alerts over frappacinos, or fund presidential campaigns in either America. It isn't their grandchildren that will suffer and die if we leave before the job is done.

The Democrats won't mention the cost of pandering to their radical base.

Apparently the one thing too shameful to discuss is the legacy they would leave behind.

Perpetually-anguished liberals like Bob Higgins are always quick to lament the lives lost in Iraq as they occur, holding them up as examples of the evils of what they see as a Republican War. Higgins closes his post saying:

I am sick of reading of war, hearing of war, writing of war and speaking of war and I know that all of the knowledge of war that comprises so much of my own human experience has only created in my soul a world in which I no longer have a thirst to live. I will take to my eternal grave the knowledge and stench of war and death and in my dead ears will dwell the clamor of the agonized keening of all the victims of war of human history.

The hell with it, I need a drink.

Higgins is sick of reading of war, hearing of war, writing of war and speaking of war.

I suspect that this means he will refuse to write or think about the widespread genocide and the regional war that may result from liberal policy of arbitrary surrender for which he so feverishly advocates.

Dollard on Limbaugh

I haven't had a chance to listen to it yet, but Pat Dollard was on with Rush Limbaugh yesterday talking about his Marine war documentary, Young Americans. He shot me a YouTube link to the exchange.

For those of you not familiar with the name Pat Dollard, a bit of brief background may be in order.

Dollard is a former Hollywood agent with an admittedly checkered past, who , with no military or filmmaking experience, took off the Iraq to embed with the Marines to film a raw documentary. The easily offended need not apply, but if you want to see some video clips, go here. Definitely NSFW.

Wikipedia offers up this biographical background:

Pat was a Hollywood talent agent, manager, and producer most known for guiding the career of Oscar-winning director Steven Soderbergh from his neophyte "sex, lies & videotape" days on up through "Ocean's Twelve" and his multi-picture deal with Mark Cuban's HDNET cable channel. Dollard came from a long line of liberals, and Robert Kennedy, Jr. delivered the eulogy at the funeral of his sister, Ann Dollard. Despite this, Dollard became known as a rare Hollywood conservative in the mid-90's, and is now known as a conservative filmmaker, journalist and pundit. He has been widely attacked by the left for the pro-war stance displayed in early clips of his documentary series "Young Americans". He is becoming known as the right wing version of Michael Moore and Hunter S. Thompson.

Wikipedia also offers up this summary of his activities in Iraq:

While still running a management company, repping Soderbergh and helping to service Soderbergh and George Clooney's production company at Warner Brothers (Section 8 Films), Dollard decided to do a little side project for a few weeks in the three worst combat zones in Iraq: Fallujah, The Triangle of Death, and Ramadi. What was supposed to be a 2-4 week quickie documentary, morphed instead into a 7 month, graphic, unfettered portrait of the frontline hell of these three combat zones. Dollard lived constantly in the dangerous "hootches" with the Marines he covered, and patrolled with them and was severely wounded on more than one occasion. He shot 700 hours of hi-def footage, as reported by the website "Confederate Yankee". His work has been discussed at U.S. News and World Report, Variety, the Huffington Post, the New York Times, Fox News (Guest Appearance), The Washington Times, and "Vanity Fair".

The Wikipedia bio is a bit scant in describing how Pat got wounded: Dollard was in Humvees hit by IEDs not twice, one of which killed two of the Marines he was with, and filled his legs with shrapnel. Crazy, brave, or perhaps a lot of each, Dollard returned each time, and intends to return again.

Like many embeds, Pat is self-financing his ventures. If interested, you can donate here. Look for the PayPal button.

Carry Me

In many ways, this is simply an unremarkable picture.

Scenes like the one above, with smiling Iraqi children clamoring for the attention of U.S soldiers, are commonplace throughout Iraq. There is absolutely nothing special about them at all.

Today, Democrats in the United States Senate passed a war spending bill that would mandate U.S. military forces begin withdrawing troops within 120 days of passage, with a goal of ending combat operations by March 31, 2008.

New York Times Baghdad bureau chief John Burns noted this morning that if the U.S withdraws, "there's no doubt that the conflict could get a great deal worse very quickly, and we'd see levels of suffering and of casualties amongst Iraqis that potentially could dwarf the ones we've seen to this point."

If Burns is right and Democrats succeed in instigating a genocide, I wonder who will carry the Iraqi children... and how busy those pallbearers will be.

Former Cheif Of Staff Says Gonzales Was Involved in DOJ Firings

I can't claim that I've been following the story of Attorney General Gonzales and the U.S. District Attorney firings case much, as I've had other things I find personally more interesting to discuss. That said, I've scanned the headlines, and today's testimony by the AG's former Cheif of Staff is casting fresh doubts on Gonzales' memory at best, and his honesty at worst:

The former chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales testified today that contrary to Mr. Gonzales’s earlier assertions, the attorney general was involved in discussions to fire United States attorneys.

"I don't think the attorney general's statement that he was not involved in any discussions about U.S. attorney removals is accurate," the former Gonzales aide, D. Kyle Sampson, said under questioning at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.

"I don't think it's accurate," Mr. Sampson repeated under questioning by Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the panel’s ranking Republican. "I think he's recently clarified it. But I remember discussing with him this process of asking certain U.S. attorneys to resign, and I believe that he was present at the meeting on Nov. 27."

It was disclosed last week that Justice Department documents showed Mr. Gonzales to be present at the Nov. 27, 2006, session in which the firing of federal prosecutors was discussed. That disclosure seemed to contradict Mr. Gonzales’s assertions at a March 13 news conference that he was not involved in talks about letting the prosecutors go.

I said a few weeks ago that I don't know if the issue of the dismissals is important or not, but if he's lying or has severe memory problems, either would seem to mean he is unfit to continue in his role as Attorney General.

At this point, whether the firings were legitimate or not seems inconsequential. If the United States Attorney General cannot adequately and competently defend himself over an issue that doesn't seem to be remotely criminal, he hardly seems fit to defend the laws of this nation.

Embedded Frustrations

If you are a journalist or blogger who wants to embed in Iraq, good luck making it through the PAO system. As a pair of prominent bloggers tell us on the record, getting into Iraq can be all but impossible thanks to obstacles put in place by the U.S. military's Pubic Affairs Office, and once there, the PAO seems to delight in making the life of an embed a living hell.

I wrote last week about embedded journalist Michael Yon being threatened with expulsion from Iraq by U.S. Army General Vincent Brooks, in a post called The Silencer. If the history I cobbled together is correct--and I believe it is--Brooks has held a grudge against Yon since 2005, when Brooks was the lead PAO (Public Affairs Officer) for the war, and a former spokesman for U.S. Central Command known as the "the face of the U.S. military" during his tenure in that position.

Brooks seems to have several points of irritation with Yon.

The first was a dispatch Yon published called Proximity Delays, in which Yon criticized the arcane and seemingly arbitrary censorship of Yon's writing by the military PAO system, which would ask him not to write about events, only to see that same PAO system release information "mangled into meaninglessness" to the world's media outlets. As a result, Yon was ordered not to write about an event that became his most famous individual dispatch, "Gates of Fire."

During a firefight in Mosul, LTC Kurilla was shot three times and CSM Robert Prosser was engaged in hand-to-hand conflict when Yon picked up the M4 carbine Prosser had dropped, and violated embed rules by engaging in combat, an event chronicled in words and pictures in Gates of Fire. After the battle was over, Yon described his debriefing thusly:

When I came back into the TOC, Major Michael Lawrence - who I often challenge to pull-up contests, and who so far has beat me (barely) every time - looked me square and professionally, in the direct way of a military leader and asked, "Mike, did you pick up a weapon today?" "I did." "Did you fire that weapon?" "I did." "If you pick up another weapon, you are out of here the next day. Understood?" "Understand." "We still have to discuss what happened today."

Writers are not permitted to fight. I asked SFC Bowman to look at the photos and hear what happened. Erik Kurilla and CSM Prosser were witness, but I did not want the men of Deuce Four who were not there to think I had picked up a weapon without just cause. I approached SFC Bowman specifically, because he is fair, and is respected by the officers and men. Bowman would listen with an open mind. While looking at the photos, Bowman said, "Mike, it's simple. Were you in fear for your life or the lives of others?"

"Thank you Sergeant Bowman," I said.

For the combat soldiers of the Deuce Four Stryker Brigade, that others had their lives potentially hanging on the actions of someone intervening was enough. Senior Army officers, including Brooks, thought otherwise, and Yon discussed last week:

The first time the Army threatened to kick me out was in late 2005, just after I published a dispatch called "Gates of Fire." Some of the senior level public affairs people who'd been upset by "Proximity Delays" were looking ever since for a reason to kick me out and they wanted to use "Gates of Fire" as a catapult. In the events described in that dispatch, I broke some rules by, for instance, firing a weapon during combat when some of our soldiers were fighting fairly close quarters and one was wounded and still under enemy fire. That’s right. I'm not sure what message the senior level public affairs people thought that would convey had they succeeded, (which they didn't) but it was clear to me what they valued most. They want the press on a short leash, even at the expense of the life of a soldier.

These events where Yon bent or broke the PAO's diktats were possible grounds for expulsion, to be sure, but these authoritative decrees were arbitrary, and made little sense on the battlefield. Did the PAO stifle Yon purposefully so that they could bask in the attention of releasing the capture of the Zarqawi letter? Would the PAO system rather that Yon stood by and watch American soldiers die than intercede?

With two seemingly arbitrary strikes against him already, Yon once again found conflict when the Army.

On May 2, 2005, Yon took a photo of U.S. Army Major Mark Bieger cradling an Iraqi girl named Farah who was wounded by a car bomb. The photo became the iconic photo of the war to date, and was selected as Time magazine's website readers as the most important picture of the year with almost 70% of the vote.

Yon agreed to let the Army use the photo for internal publication, but was shocked when the Army violated Yon's copyright, and released the photo to the world through the PAO, unattributed and unauthorized. After a seven-month stalemate with Army lawyers, attention from the media and the resulting blogswarm embarrassed the Army into having a more senior Army lawyer review and later settle the case.

The senior officer involved in this embarrassing case of copyright infringement? None other than then Chief of Public Affairs, Brigadier General Vincent Brooks. Ironically, Yon thanked him at the time.

Back in Iraq in a different role (deputy commanding general - support for Multinational Division-Baghdad), Brooks apparently still harbors his grudge, sending Yon an an email threatening to kick him out of Iraq.

Last night, Yon posted RUBS (Raw, Unedited and Barely Spell-checked) #2, in which he notes continued attempts by the Army to make his reporting as difficult as possible:

Generals with billions of dollars at their disposal gild their own MOCs (Media Operations Centers) with space-tech broadcasting gear, allowing them to bounce down live to America and the world, while journalists are not permitted to hook their computers into the unsecure "NIPR" internet lines. Public Affairs officers stagger like sway-backed mules with shifting excuses for why media have no secure places to live and work at the major bases, and why every solution for communications is ad hoc.

Journalists are welcome to come here and report. Sort of. On Camp Victory, celebrity media passing through might get star treatment at the Joint Visitors Bureau on the lake by the palace, but others get a cot in the KBR tents where itinerant men – not soldiers usually – often stay for a day or two before shipping off to parts unknown around Iraq, or the world. The tent-mates are Americans, Iraqis, Indians and others. In a tent where I recently stayed, MPs handcuffed one giant of a man, an American, before he could make good his threat to "stomp the liver out" of one of the tent-mates. In this jailhouse atmosphere, some men's eyes dart crow-like to shiny objects, and a journalist with expensive gear is reluctant to even take a shower or to eat without a way to secure the crow bait. If a five minute shower or twenty minute trip to a mess hall is unwise, the idea of going on a five or ten day combat mission, leaving non-essential gear behind, is out of the question. As is lugging it along.

Senior officers know this. I made sure. But when I told one senior ranking man about my concern for the expensive gear, his response was "I don't care."

Apparently unable to find a legitimate excuse to throw Yon out of Iraq, senior army officers at the PAO (many of which are still friendly with a threatening Vincent "The Silencer" Brooks) seem intent on making it as difficult as possible for Yon to do his job. They apparently want him to quit and leave Iraq.

At least he got in.

Michael Fumento another highly-regarded embedded journalist and blogger with three al Anbar embeds under his belt, can't get back into the country, once again thanks to U.S. military Public Affairs:

I asked for two embeds in the Baghdad area or one in Baghdad and one in Diyala, a hotspot on the Iranian border. These would allow the reporting I specialize in, which isn't "war" generally but combat. I like to report on the men doing the fighting (see this and this, for example). One person said of my “New Band of Brothers” article, it’s "Great stuff with a great unit in a very tough neighborhood!" That was General David Petraeus, now commander of coalition forces in Iraq...

...During this time I corresponded with high-ranking Public Affairs Officers who tried to make me out to be the bad guy because I didn't want to travel eight time zones on my own dime and write about nothing. One essentially told me that a good journalist can make lemonade out of lemons. The saying, of course, is to make lemonade "When life gives you lemons," not "When we give you lemons." They might as well have said, "Hey baby, just relax and enjoy it."

Fumento told me via email last week that since releasing that post on March 3, he appears to have been "blacklisted."

Since that piece appeared, NO PAO in all of Iraq will respond to my e-mails. That includes the Marines in Anbar who earlier made it quite clear they were very eager to have me back. CPIC blacklisted me. So while I don't know the particulars yet of why Yon is on the s--t list I certainly agree that CPIC has its head up its butt in catering to every little whim of MSM reporters who are stabbing our troops and the war effort in the back even as it blocks the efforts of citizen embeds who pay out of their own pockets to get down and dirty with the troops and make every effort to report what's really going on in Iraq.

Yon and Fumento aren't the only experienced embeds I spoke with that criticized the capricious, arbitrary and vindictive nature of the military PAO system, a system that doesn't understand the importance of embedded journalists and bloggers in getting information to the public, and simultaneously seems intent on destroying that which it doesn't understand.

As Fumento closed in his post Why I'm Not Embedded in Iraq: The Army isn't Helping Win the War at Home:

In a guerrilla war, perception is more important than reality. For example, the Tet Offensive saw the Viet Cong crushed, but the media converted it into an incredible communist victory. When CPIC caters to reporters who put headlines before facts, who want to portray the war as hopeless, and who show the military in as bad a light as possible and then proceeds to shunt aside reporters with a track record for veracity and supporting the troops, it shows utter ignorance of this truism. Somehow I don't think this was part of Gen. Petraeus's plan.

From what I've read of General Petraeus, he has an excellent conceptual grasp of how to fight and win a military campaign against an insurgency.

I sincerely hope he can come to understand the importance of using embeds to win the media war against the insurgency as well.

Feinstein: As Corrupt as They Come

If a story breaking tonight by Metroactive is correct, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California should consider calling Martha Stewart for advice on how to decorate her prison cell:

Dianne Feinstein has resigned from the Military Construction Appropriations subcommittee. As previously and extensively reviewed in these pages, Feinstein was chairperson and ranking member of MILCON for six years, during which time she had a conflict of interest due to her husband Richard C. Blum's ownership of two major defense contractors, who were awarded billions of dollars for military construction projects approved by Feinstein.

As MILCON leader, Feinstein relished the details of military construction, even micromanaging one project at the level of its sewer design. She regularly took junkets to military bases around the world to inspect construction projects, some of which were contracted to her husband's companies, Perini Corp. and URS Corp.

It will be interesting to see how this story develops.

On the Brink?

RIA Novosti (Russia) reports that American forces seem to be preparing for a combined air and land assault on Iran:

Russian military intelligence services are reporting a flurry of activity by U.S. Armed Forces near Iran's borders, a high-ranking security source said Tuesday.

"The latest military intelligence data point to heightened U.S. military preparations for both an air and ground operation against Iran," the official said, adding that the Pentagon has probably not yet made a final decision as to when an attack will be launched.

He said the Pentagon is looking for a way to deliver a strike against Iran "that would enable the Americans to bring the country to its knees at minimal cost."

Feh.

I strongly doubt that there is anything to this account, with the possible exception that we might be positioning forces in a bluff. I don't claim to know the dispostion or concentration of American ground forces within striking distance of Iran, but I don't think that a force sufficient to stage an invasion of Iran could be drawn up without any word leaking out.

Then again, these accounts sound a little ominous, and make my crystal ball sound pretty accurate, even though I question the timing.

Out in Left Field

I hate to say this, but Gateway Pundit is voyaging into conspiracy theory territory on this one.

First, he's unable to differentiate between unrelated bomb attacks elsewhere in Iraq (Ramadi and Abu Ghraib) and the two truck blasts in Tal Afar. How he can be so far off, I don't know... but he is.

Second, he is insisting that any additional information that becomes available in later stories about this event are indicative of a conspiracy, coverup, or shift of some sort. An early report that indicates police involvement is not negated by the discovery that elements in addition to the police may be involved. That is why they call them "developing stories."

I confirmed this story this morning before posting on it originally, and just learned moments ago that Alaa Al Taii, MOI Communications director has annouced a joint investigation by the Interior Ministry , Ministry of Defense, and and the Ministry for National Security is beginning, and that Interior Minister Bolani will personally be involved, and will visit the scene in Tal Afar tomorrow.

The incident reported by the Associated Press' Sinan Salaheddin as cited in my previous post appears to be correct, and the conflicting accounts are over details, not over the essnetial substance of the story.

This incident is not a hoax, some sort of conspiracy, or blame-shifting operation in effect. Our allies snapped, and massacred between 45-60 men.

As inconvenient and horrible as that is, it is the apparent truth.

Stalking the Dying

It seems to be a new trend for some with particularly low moral fiber.

From liberals celebrating that White House Spokesman Tony Snow has cancer (see here from Tom Elia, and comments captured here from the Washington Post), to a particuarly insane former Los Angeles teacher (also a liberal) by the name of Eliot Stein tormenting the fans and daughter of Cathy Seipp as she lay dying by pretending to be her on a similar web site with her name in the URL, and renoucing her life's work.

For once, I simply lack the words to describe how deplorably monsterous some of those on the political left have become.

Send a Chickenhawk to War

Time and again, we've heard liberals call conservative bloggers "chickenhawks," and tell them that if they care so much about the Iraq War, they should go join it (interestingly enough, I do know of a single liberal blogger that has volunteered to go serve in the Afghan theater, the war they ostensibly support. I've never claimed liberals were smart, nor consistent).

Now is the time that my liberal readers have a chance to put their money where their mouths are. If they care so much about conservatives going to Iraq, here's a chance to finance a trip.

The Pentagon has extended an invitation to send a pair of RedState bloggers to Iraq, and they are currently attempting to raise $7500 to make this trip happen.

Ante up, guys.

You might finally realize your dream of placing conservative bloggers in a position where they might come under gunfire, thereby giving Charles Karel Bouley and other Huffington Post bloggers a chance to say they deserved it. "What goes around comes around," etc.

Alternatively, you can contribute funds to support a liberal blogger who wants to go to Iraq to report what they see with their own eyes.

Good luck finding one.

Update: Oh Bartleby! Oh, the stupidity! Noted lefty war-reporting plagiarist Sean Paul Kelly decided to call the Redstate bloggers that are planning to embed "chickenhawks," without bothering with the little detail that one of the bloggers, Jeff Emanual, is a former USAF Spec Ops TAC.

Confronted with the fact that Emanuel has already served, Kelly offered up a lame, "well, since so many soldiers are doing two and three tours, why not enlist again?"

As I addressed to "Lex Steele" in the comments:

Increasingly, it appears to me that that the best liberals intend to do is provide lip service (and no commitment or support) to one campaign, while attempting to set the stage for a defeat in the other. As has been noted elsewhere and as you allude above, Iraq is seen by those of you on the left as a Republican War. Liberals, in their self-serving way, have decided that they don't need to fight, and in fact, shouldn't. Better patriotism through apathy, I suppose, when your side isn't actively trying to undermine the war and the military itself by attacking recruiting stations, harrassing campus recruiters, insulting them in classrooms, questioning their intelligence, and burning U.S. soldiers in effigy.

No, in your world, only "pro-war" (i.e., Republicans/conservatives) people should serve in this nation's military, and perhaps only then if they individually agree with the specific war they are called upon to fight.

Liberals have no obligation to serve their country in a Republican war. That is what you're trying to say, isn't it Lex?

Funny, how I don't recall our soldiers wearing a GOP flag on their shoulders, and distinctly recall that it was an American flag that was defecated on last week by anti-war liberals.

Update: Well, doesn't that beat all.

We do have a liberal blogger that has requested to go to Iraqi along with the two from Redstate. Can anyone at RedState contact the Pentagon to see if they have room for a third blogger?

I don't always agree with the politics of Gun-Toting Liberal, but I typically respect his opinion, even when I disagree with it. He's intelligent and thoughtful and I think it would be an excellent idea to include him on his embed. If they will arrange for him to make the journey, I hope you'll help finance his trip.

Upon his safe return, I will be very interested to see how visiting Iraq may affect his feeling about the war, for better, or for ill.

Correction: It was GTL co-blogger Alexander Paul Melonas that is interested in embedding.

Lowe Point

I've admired the job former N.C. State star Sidney Lowe has done as the coach of State's basketball team in his first year. He's simply a classy person.

His son, apparently is not.

The 21-year-old son of North Carolina State basketball coach Sidney Lowe faces charges in two armed incidents, including one in which a UNC-Greensboro student from Raleigh was shot in the back.

Police at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro said Sidney R. Lowe II surrendered to authorities Tuesday and was charged with eight counts, including felony aiding and abetting attempted armed robbery, in connection with Saturday's shooting and attempted robbery inside Weil Residence Hall.

Greensboro city police filed 14 additonal charges, including felony assault, in connection with a home invasion that took place on March 16.

Rampage in Tal Afar

Simply awful:

Off-duty Shiite policemen enraged by massive bombings in the northern town of Tal Afar went on a revenge spree against Sunni residents there on Wednesday, killing at least 45 men, police and hospital officials said.

The policemen began roaming the town's Sunni neighborhoods on foot early in the morning, shooting at Sunni residents and homes

A senior hospital official in Tal Afar said at least 45 men ages 15 to 60 were killed and four others were wounded.

Police said dozens of Sunnis were killed or wounded, but they had no precise figures. The shooting continued for more than two hours, the officials said.

Army troops later moved into the Sunni areas to stop the violence and a curfew was slapped on the entire town, according to Wathiq al-Hamdani, the provincial police chief and his head of operations, Brig. Abdul-Karim al-Jibouri.

Tal Afar is a city of 220,000, and unlike their neighbors, the residents are nearly all Turkmen. the city's population is roughly 60-percent Shia, and the city is divided into 18 neighborhoods along tribal lines. Middle East Online reports that the dead were found handcuffed and blindfolded, shot in the back of the head, execution style. The revenge killings took place shortly after the truck bombings, in the Sunni neighborhood of Wahada. It is not yet known why this particular Sunni neighborhood was targeted.

The rampage ended with the arrival of an Iraqi Army unit.

Time reports that the Iraqi Army has already arrested 18 Tal Afar policemen for the killings based on eyewitness accounts from the victim's family, and also stated that Shia militiamen participated in the attacks.

The Tal Afar police have been confined to barracks and that police from Mosul (30 miles to the east of Tal Afar) were moving in to provide security. Brig. Abdul-Karim al-Jibouri is moving in to take control of the operations on the ground, and to presumably start an investigation.

The massacre--there is no other way to describe it--was in response to two truck bombings carried out by Sunni militants yesterday that killed 63 and wounded 150.

The Sunnis already distrust the Shia-dominated police forces, and the two-hour revenge attack is sure to sour relations even more.

How much relations will sour depends in large part on how the Iraqi police forces themselves respond to the attack. Confining the local police to their barracks is the first step, but it is necessary for an investigation to immediately begin, and for those responsible for the attacks to be arrested (if there are more than the 18 captured so far) and tried for their crimes.

If there is any good news at all to report from this massacre, it is that the Shia-dominated Iraqi Army was able to move in and arrest many if not all of those responsible for the attacks and restore order without U.S. involvement.

HuffPo: Tony Snow Deserved Cancer

Ah, the commenters at the Huffington Post are at it again:

I admit my bias shows with these stories. I hear about Tony Snow and say to myself, well, stand up every day, lie to the American people at the behest of your dictator-esque boss and well, how could a cancer NOT grow in you. Work for Fox News, spinning the truth in to a billion knots and how can your gut not rot? I know, it's terrible. I admit it. I don't wish anyone harm, even Tony Snow. And I do hope he recovers or at least does what he feels is best and surrounds himself with friends and family for his journey. But in the back of my head there's Justin Timberlake's "What goes around, goes around, comes around, comes all the way back around, ya.."

Oh, hang on. that wasn't a commenter, but a mainstream (for the Huffington Post) HuffPo blogger, Charles Karel Bouley.

You guys remember Charles Karel Bouley, don't you ? He's the nice gentlemen that thinks God killed Boy Scouts in revenge for discriminating against gays. No, really.

Class of the Huffington Post, indeed.

Update: Allah has a roundup.

Sewage Flood Engulfs Gaza Village

Revolting beyond description:

At least five Palestinians including two toddlers drowned in a “sewage tsunami” today, when a water treatment reservoir burst its embankment, flooding a village in the northern Gaza Strip.

The deluge, triggered by the collapse of a system aid organisations had long warned was dangerously overburdened, submerged dozens of homes in the Bedouin village of Umm al-Nasr beneath a cesspool of foul-smelling effluent.

Two women in their 70s, a teenage girl and two boys aged one and two died in the flood. At least 15 people were injured and local medics say scores more are still missing.

This AFP picture pulled from Yahoo! News photos gives you an idea of how massive the sewage spill was. The waters these men are paddling in are full of bacteria and human waste. I cannot even begin to imagine the stench or the near total destruction this breach has created in the village of Umm al-Nasr.

I know from reading hurricane-related coverage that the mold and bacteria that can result from other kinds of flooding mandate that some buildings be razed as a result. I would imagine that by western standards, any structure inundated with raw sewage would almost certainly have to be destroyed, but I fear that in Umm al-Nasr, many of the residents, primarily poor Bedouin shepherds, do not have the resources to rebuild, and will endeavor to reoccupy their bacteria-infested homes. If this occurs, I suspect the death toll will sadly increase from disease.

As is so often the case involving anything in Gaza, the story's political overtones were among the foul things that quickly rose to the surface.

The Hamas movement, the leading partner in a newly formed Palestinian unity government, blamed the disaster on a foreign aid boycott slapped on the Palestinian Authority a year ago when the Islamist hardliners first came to power. Israel and the West consider Hamas a terrorist outfit.

In a statement, Hamas said: “The overflowing of the [reservoir] is one of the results of the suspension of international aid to our people, which is preventing the government from improving and developing infrastructure.”

To the credit of the Times, they deftly debunked Hamas in the immediately following paragraph.

As far back as January 2004, UN aid agencies in the Gaza Strip had warned that the sewage treatment facility was operating far beyond its capacity and posed a grave danger to nearby residents.

Also sadly stereotypical was how residents responded to the interior minister who rushed to the scene to inspect the damage. What did the residents feel? Justifiable outrage.

And recoil.

Hopefully the people of Umm al-Nasr will receive aid to help them cleanse and rebuild their village. It's too bad Hamas and other Palestinian groups let the water treatment facilities deteriorate to such a deadly condition in the first place.

The Surge at Home

Via Instapundit, Frank Warner notes that public opinion on the progress of the Iraq War is slightly more optimistic:

One little-publicized finding of the new Pew poll is that, compared to last month, Americans now are slightly more optimistic about the Iraq war.

The portion of Americans who believe the war is going "very well" or "fairly well" for the United States increased from the all-time low of 30 percent in February to 40 percent this month.

This bump in support comes just as E.J. Dionne calls the battle for a free Iraq "a conflict that grows more unpopular by the day." Which day in March?

In the last month, the percent of Americans saying the war is going "not too well" or "not well at all" dropped from 67 to 56.

I'd caution that the influx of American soldiers into the Baghdad security plan is just beginning, with the full force of the "surge" arriving in June, even as Democrats futily push forward with their plan to lose the war.

It will be intersting to see if this change in the Pew poll of those who think the war is going "very well" or "fairly well" continues to grow as more soldiers enter Iraq, and if the number of those who think the war is going "not too well" or "nor well at all" drops further. This, of course, will be dictated largely by how the war progresses on the ground.

If definitive progress is made in coming months, it will be very interesting to see how that affects the polls, and the actions of House and Senate Democrats. Bills to lose the war by setting artificial and arbitrary deadlines are being set up for a Presidential veto, and it will be very interesting to see if Pelosi, Murtha, etc will continue to attempt to lose the war if measurable progress is made in the coming months.

I doubt that the most strident anti-war critics will be silenced by any hope of victory, and it could be interesting to see how Democrats attempt to placate their radical base if further progress occurs.

Update: Brian attempts to answer the question, "How's that surge going?"

A Different Second Amendment

Coming across on Drudge:

SENATE STAFFER BUSTED FOR CARRYING WEBB'S LOADED GUN... Phillip Thompson, executive assistant to Senator James Webb (D-VA ), has been arrested by Capitol Hill Police on Monday for 'inadvertently' holding the senator's loaded gun, according to a person close to the investigation. A Senate staffer reports that Thompson was arrested for carrying the gun in a bag through security into a Senate office building while the Senator was parking his car. Thompson was booked for carrying a pistol without a license (CPWL) and for possessing unregistered ammunition. According to congressional rules, congressmen and senators, not staff, are allowed to have a gun on federal property. Developing...

Let me see if I understand this:

Congressmen and Senators can bring firearms into heavily-protected federal buildings guarded by permanent on-duty police officers, but residents of Washington, DC are not allowed to have weapons to defend themselves or their families in their homes.

Nope, no double standard here.

Bush Responsible for Iranian Adulterers Being Stoned to Death For Past Millennia

Right, Andrew?

According to Sullivan Logic, the Iranian people, who have a culture thousands of years older than our own, could not function as a society until George W. Bush came along to show them how to act, for better, or for worse. Or at least the worst part.

It has been a very long time since anyone has accused Andrew Sullivan of being overly logical or coherent, and I don't think we are in any danger of anyone making that argument anytime soon.

Ted Rall: Kill the All

In a cartoon ostensibly about the options for Iraq available to General David Petraeus, cartoonist Ted Rall states in one panel:

Hate to admit it, but Saddam knew what he was doing after all. Too bad we had to hang the bastard!

What did Rall's Saddam suggest?

Troublemakers, eh? Kill them. Kill their families. Kill everyone who's ever met them.

Rall must not have had room in the panel for "...and let God sort them out," though it certainly seems implied.

The Army's Worst Recruiter

Look past the overwrought editorializing of Pam Spaulding to focus on the anti-gay and probably racist tirade ascribed to U.S. Army recruiter, Sgt. Marcia Ramode, from an official army.mil email address.

Ramode is required to display professional courtesy, even if she fervently disagrees with someone else's opinions or lifestyle. If these emails are legitimate, then Ramode should face a disciplinary hearing, and I suspect, a court martial.

The irony of this, of course, is that the person Ramode was attacking in these emails could hardly be a less professional soldier than Ramode herself.

Update: A certain liberal buffoonist apparently has reading comprehension problems, and cites the closing paragraph of this post to say saying I'm attacking the gay man who was the target of Sgt. Ramode's tirades.

Perhaps being "reality-based" means, in his mind, that he can simply make up whatever meaning he wants out of what someone else writes (it sure seems to work for Glenn Ryan Ellers Wilson Thomas Ellensberg Greenwald), but he has his facts completely turned around.

Those of us with a reasonable grasp of conversational English language might note that the comment closing the post above criticizes Sgt. Ramode for being very unprofessional, and that the gay civilian she was arguing with would make a better soldier than she.

Somehow, this is an "attack." I guess liberals consider the insinuation that someone might be a decent soldier to be offensive.

I Fought the Lawn...

...and the lawn almost won.

I rented a rear-tine tiller to cut through the red clay and rock so that I can reseed my backyard over the weekend.

Fun thing rocky soil; tilling isn't easy anywhere, I suspect, but when you've got a 400 lb machine bucking every few feet when it hits a softball-sized rock, it takes a heavy toll on both the machine and operator. The yard killed the tiller. I broke off no less than four tines in the rocky soil, and perhaps as many as six. The folks I rented it from couldn't even get the engine to re-fire to unload it, and told me that it was going to have to be retired.

Sunburned, blistered and sore, I'm not feeling too good myself.

Light posting expected today due to work-related meetings.

Peacekeeper Cargo Plane Shot Down in Somalia

A witness claims it was hit by a SAM during its ascent. Details are still sketchy right now, and there doesn't seem to be any word on how many people were on the plane, or if anyone on the ground was killed or wounded as a result of the plane coming down.

As of yet it doesn't look like anyone has taken claim for the attack, but the obvious suspects are Somali Islamists.

Landscape of War

I'm not familar with Mike Gudgell of ABC News, but his "Reporter's Notebook" article about what he is seeing in Iraq is a must read.

A taste of Gudgell's article, starting on page 3:

According to the U.S. military, a group of al Qaeda in Iraq fighters recently entered a small village east of Baghdad and announced they would be back and would take several houses for their base. When they returned two days later, their convoy was attacked by villagers. The military found out when the villagers told them to come out and pick up bodies and prisoners.

The numbers of civilian deaths are down a little but that's only a small part of the story. It's the little things together that make the difference. It might be too early to tell if this is a tipping point in the war, but it does appear as though the momentum has changed.

There's a long way to go, but there is room for some hope. It depends on your perspective; those snapshots and keyhole views of the broad landscape of what is a living war.

I strongly urge you to read the entire article. Gudgell is matter of fact, and pulls no punches.

More, please.

The Silencer

This is U.S. Army General Vincent K. Brooks.

He might look familiar as the man once known as the "the face of the U.S. military" for his role as spokesman for U.S. Central Command during the beginning of the Iraq War, He was the former chief PAO (Public Affairs Officer) of the US Army. He is currently the deputy commanding general - support for Multinational Division-Baghdad.

Vincent Brooks is also the general that has just threatened to kick Michael Yon out of Iraq.

A general emailed in the past 24 hours threatening to kick me out. The first time the Army threatened to kick me out was in late 2005, just after I published a dispatch called “Gates of Fire.” Some of the senior level public affairs people who’d been upset by “Proximity Delays” were looking ever since for a reason to kick me out and they wanted to use “Gates of Fire” as a catapult. In the events described in that dispatch, I broke some rules by, for instance, firing a weapon during combat when some of our soldiers were fighting fairly close quarters and one was wounded and still under enemy fire. That’s right. I’m not sure what message the senior level public affairs people thought that would convey had they succeeded, (which they didn’t) but it was clear to me what they valued most. They want the press on a short leash, even at the expense of the life of a soldier.

Brooks was chief PAO when the miltary wanted to kick Yon out of Iraq in 2005 over his the "Proximity Delays" and "Gates of Fire" dispatches, and apparently Brooks still harbors a grudge. Now that Yon finds himself in Brooks' territory again, it appears he has taken special interest in trying to kep Yon from doing his job.

Austin Bay weighs in on the witch hunt:

This is stupid... Telling Michael Yon to exit the theater is the WWII equivalent of telling Ernie Pyle to quit filing dispatches.

With terrorist propaganda blanketing the Internet, General Brooks seems intent on silencing one of the few long-term combat journalists in Iraq that can offer a competing voice.

Not a smart move, at all.

Update: Yon speaks about the media war.

Edwards to Suspend Campaign... or Not

So says The Politico, which seems to have been overwhelmed by a pair of links from Drudge.

John Edwards is suspending his campaign for President, and may drop out completely, because his wife has suffered a recurrence of the cancer that sickened her in 2004, when she was diagnosed with breast cancer, an Edwards friend told The Politico.

"At a minimum he's going to suspend" the campaign, the source said. "Nobody knows precisely how serious her recurrence is. It'll be another couple of days before there's complete clarity."

Other news outlets, including Fox News and CNN, are running screamers that report otherwise. It looks like The Politico jumped the gun.

CNN gets their story posted first:

Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards said Thursday his wife's cancer had returned but his bid for the White House will go on.

John Edwards said tests this week had shown his wife, Elizabeth, had cancer in a rib on her right side. He said the cancer is treatable but not curable.

Elizabeth Edwards said she was "incredibly optimistic" and said her expectations about the future were unchanged.

John Edwards will apparently continue his doomed (okay, perhaps not the best word) Presidential campaign, even though his wife Elizabeth appears to have had a resurgence of cancer.

Frankly, I don't know whether to commend them for their courage as a family in trying to push on with their lives throught the cancer's return, or whether the candidate should be condemned for continuing an unlikely run despite Elizabeth's incurable cancer coming out of remission.

In any event, I'll be praying for Elizabeth Edwards tonight, hoping that God spares her from this cancer, and what appears to be her husband's naked ambition.

al-Sadr Spokesman Captured; Held For Karbala Attacks

Two brothers with ties to Muqtada al-Sadr have been arrested for their role in the killing of five American soldiers in Karbala two months ago.

From CNN:

"Over the past several days, coalition forces in Basra and Hilla captured Qais Khazali, his brother Laith Khazali and several other members of the Khazali network," the U.S. military said in a statement.

Qais Khazali has been known to reporters as a spokesman for al-Sadr's political movement, and Reuters news agency reported that Khazali is a senior aide to the anti-American cleric.

Al-Sadr's Mehdi Army, a Shiite militia, is suspected of being involved in Iraq's sectarian violence.

The U.S. military said the Khazali network is "directly connected" to the January killings in Karbala, the Shiite holy city south of Baghdad.

On Wednesday, a U.S. official said the brothers were suspected of being part of a network using weapons known as explosively formed projectiles or penetrators. Bush administration officials have alleged that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard's Quds Force have provided these munitions to Shiite groups in Iraq.

Those grains of salt I spoke of yesterday? They just got smaller, especially when considered with other developments, all of which are providing more evidence that the Iranian role in the Iraq War may be larger than we were previously aware, and potentially growing.

Cartoon Justice

The editor of a French satire magazine has been acquitted of insulting Muslims by re-publishing cartoons of Mohammed.

Paris will begin burning this evening.

Red Meat. Season Well With Large Grains of Salt

It's based upon unconfirmed reports from unknown informants, but the allegations made in this story could be interesting if corroborated by another source:

Iraqi insurgents, guerrilla fighters and death squads are being trained in secret camps in Iran with the blessing of top Tehran leaders and at least three senior Iraqi political figures, an Iranian opposition figure said Tuesday.

Would-be Iraqi fighters are smuggled into Iran, schooled in everything from sniper techniques to explosive devices and sent back to Iraq to wage war on U.S.-led coalition forces, Alireza Jafarzadeh said at a news conference.

It is important to note that Jafarzadeh has worked for the Mujahedin al-Khalq, an anti-Iranian terrorist group, and presently leads the Washington-based Strategic Policy Consulting think tank.

Perhaps the most interesting part of his claim is his specificity of those named as being among the Iranian leaders involved in the plot.

Jafarzadeh said Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, are closely connected to the training. He said Abu Ahmad Al-Ramisi, governor of southern Iraq's Al-Muthanna province, and two members of Iraq's National Assembly are also involved.

He identified one as Hadi Al-Ameri, who he said is chairman of the legislature's security committee and head of the Badr Corps, the Iran-based military wing of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. The other is an assembly member known in Iraq as Abu Mehdi Mohandas, he said.

Before the day is out, I expect that a fevered left-wing blogger (or ten) will state that the Bush Administration is behind Jafarzadeh's comments, and that these comments will be used to justify a military attack on Iran.

I don't think that is the case.

If there is any Administration involvement behind Jafarzadeh's charges, it seems that the goal of such specific charges would be to embarrass the Iranian government to stop or restrict their involvement in funding and supplying violence in Iraq.

It is known fact that Iran is supplying anti-government forces within Iraq with weapons—the confiscation of more than 100 Iranian Styer HS50 sniper rifles proves that beyond any reasonable doubt—but blaming Iran the nation is far easier for the mullacracy to dodge than are charges levied against individual Iranian officials.

Will specifically alleging the involvement of key senior Iranian government officials have any impact in slowing the flow of weapons, funding, or training from Iran to Iraq's anti-government forces? I somewhat doubt it, but at this point, it may be the only option on the table.

An Inadequate Response to a Father's Loss

Yesterday in his Chicago Tribune blog "Change of Subject", Eric Zorn wrote about a two-page letter written to President Bush by Richard Landeck, father of Captain Kevin Landeck. Captain Landeck and Staff Sgt. Terrance D. Dunn were soldiers of the Tenth Mountain Division killed by a roadside bomb on February 6, south of Baghdad.

Richard Landeck said he mailed his letter to the President a little more than six weeks ago, and has yet to receive a response.

The letter, written two days after his son's death, is printed in full on Zorn's blog, but I'll replicate it here as well.

Feb 4, 2007

Dear Mr. Bush:

This will be the only time I will refer to you with any type of respect.

My son was killed in Iraq on February 2, 2007. His name is Captain Kevin Landeck.

He served with the Tenth Mountain Division. He was killed while riding in a Humvee by a roadside bomb just south of Baghdad. He has a loving mother, a loving father and loving sister.

You took him away from us. He celebrated his 26th birthday January 30th and was married for 17 months. He graduated from Purdue University and went through the ROTC program. That is where he met his future wife. He was proud to be a part of the military and took exceptional pride in becoming a leader of men. He accepted his role as a platoon leader with exceptional enthusiasm and was proud to serve his country.

I had many conversations with Kevin before he left to serve as well as during his deployment. The message he continued to send to me was that of incompetence. Incompetence by you, (Vice President Richard) Cheney and (former Secretary of Defense Donald) Rumsfeld. Incompetence by some of his commanders as well as the overall strategy of your decisions.

When I asked him about what he thought about your decision to "surge" more troops to Baghdad, he told me, "until the Iraqis pick up the ball, we are going to get cut to shreds. It doesn’t matter how many troops Bush sends, nothing has been addressed to solve the problem he started."

Answer me this: How in the world can you justify invading Iraq when the problem began and continues to lie in Afghanistan? I don’t want your idiotic standard answer about keeping America safe. What did Sadaam Hussein have to do with 9/11? We all know it had to do with the first Iraq war where your father failed to take Sadaam down.

Well George, you have succeeded in taking down over 3,100 of our best young men, my son being one of them. Kevin told me many times we are not fighting terrorism in Iraq and they could not do their jobs as soldiers. He said they are trained to be on the offensive and to fight but all they are doing is acting like policemen.

Well George, you or some "genius" like you who have never fought in a war but enjoy all the perks your positions afford you are making life and death decisions. In the case of my son, you made a death decision.

Let me explain a few other points he and I discussed. He said when he and his men were riding down the road in their Humvees, roadside bombs would explode and they would hear bullets bouncing off their vehicle. He said they were scared. He thought "why should we be the ones who are scared?" He asked permission to take some of his men out at night with their night vision glasses because as he said "we own the night" and watch for the people who are setting roadside bombs and "take them out." He said, "I want them to be the ones that are scared." He was denied permission. Why? It made perfect sense to me and other people who I told about this.

When he was at a checkpoint he was told that if a vehicle was coming at them even at a high rate of speed he could not arbitrarily use his weapon. He had to wave his arms and, if the vehicle did not stop, he could fire a warning shot over the vehicle. If the vehicle did not stop then, he could shoot at the tires. If the vehicle did not yet stop he could take a shot at the driver. Who in their right mind made that kind of decision?

How would you like to be at a check point with a vehicle coming at you that won't stop and go through all those motions? You will never know!

You or Cheney or Rumsfeld will never know the anguish, the worry, the sleepless nights, the waiting for the loved one who may never return. If the soldiers were able to do their jobs and the ego's of politicians like you, your "cronies" and some commanders had their heads on straight, we would be out of this mess which we should not be involved with in the first place.

My family and I deserve and explanation directly from you... not some assistant who will likely read this and toss it. This war is wrong.

I want you to look me and my wife and daughter directly in the eye and tell me why my son died. We should not be there, but because of your ineptness and lack of correct information I have lost my son, my pride and joy, my hero!

Again, you, Cheney and Rumsfeld will never understand what the families of soldiers are going through and don't try to tell me you do. My wife, my daughter and I cannot believe we have lost our only son and brother to a ridiculous political war that you seem to want to maintain. I hope you and Cheney and Rumsfeld and all the other people on your band wagon sleep well at night... we certainly don't.

Richard Landeck

Proud father of a fallen soldier

Eric Zorn's position on the war is abundantly clear and permeates his blog entry like grease on a paper bag, and so I'll skip his unseemly attempt to hijack Richard Landeck's grief, and focus on the letter itself.

I first read Mr. Landeck's letter on Zorn's blog last night. The anger, anguish, and loss he feels over what he sees as the needless death of his son has to wash through all but the hardest of hearts. Richard Landeck clearly loved a son he will never see again, never watch mature, raise children, and grandchildren...

I could not easily come to terms with the hurt and rage behind Landeck's letter, the loss of his son, framed by what both the grieving father and the lost son thought of the Iraq War. I still can't.

I cannot imagine sending a child to fight a war in which neither my child nor I believed, nor the pain that Mr. Landeck, his wife, daughter, and widowed daughter-in-law must now endure as the result of Captain Landeck's death. There is a huge void now in their lives that will never be filled, one that cannot be expressed. Others will see the pain and sense the loss, but they be unable to address it, and they will feel shame. There simply are no words to sooth a wound to the soul.

My own response, couched in that same embarrassed shame of not knowing what to say, is unfulfilling, and inadequate.

I somewhat suspect that President Bush has not personally seen Mr. Landeck's letter. Even if he has, what precisely would he say? What should he say? How do you respond to a grieving father that hold's you personally responsible for his son's death?

Would Richard Landeck have felt any less rage, anger, or loss if his son had been killed by an IED in Khandahar, Afghanistan? Would Kevin's death have been "better" if he had died fighting another war started by this same President? Somehow, I doubt the suffering of the Landeck family would have been much less.

We cannot fill that part of our lives where a fallen loved one once stood.

Mr. Landeck has exercised the option to feel that his son's mission and death were not worthwhile. He has every right to feel that way, to question the competence of the leaders that placed his son in combat, the commanders on the ground that declined Captain Landeck's requests for a certain specific type of mission, and the rules of engagement.

Mr. Landeck has that right, but is doesn't mean he is right.

Neither Bush, nor Cheney, nor Rumsfeld, nor the generals, nor the colonels, are responsible for the deaths of Captain Landeck and Staff Sgt. Dunn on February 6. The names of the man or men who planted and triggered the roadside bomb that took the lives of these soldiers may never be known.

What is known is that these men, and others like them, will continue to plant roadside bombs, detonate VBIEDs in markets or in front of police stations, killing and wounding scores of soldiers, policemen, and civilians until men like Captain Landeck stop them.

Sixty-three years and seventeen days before Kevin Landeck died, correspondent Ernie Pyle wrote about the death of another U.S. Army Captain highly regarded by his men.

The unburdened mules moved off to their olive orchard. The men in the road seemed reluctant to leave. They stood around, and gradually one by one I could sense them moving close to Capt. Waskow's body. Not so much to look, I think, as to say something in finality to him, and to themselves. I stood close by and I could hear.

One soldier came and looked down, and he said out loud, "God damn it." That's all he said, and then he walked away. Another one came. He said, "God damn it to hell anyway." He looked down for a few last moments, and then he turned and left.

Another man came; I think he was an officer. It was hard to tell officers from men in the half light, for all were bearded and grimy dirty. The man looked down into the dead captain's face, and then he spoke directly to him, as though he were alive. He said: "I'm sorry, old man."

Then a soldier came and stood beside the officer, and bent over, and he too spoke to his dead captain, not in a whisper but awfully tenderly, and he said:

"I sure am sorry, sir."

Then the first man squatted down, and he reached down and took the dead hand, and he sat there for a full five minutes, holding the dead hand in his own and looking intently into the dead face, and he never uttered a sound all the time he sat there.

And finally he put the hand down, and then reached up and gently straightened the points of the captain's shirt collar, and then he sort of rearranged the tattered edges of his uniform around the wound. And then he got up and walked away down the road in the moonlight, all alone.

I sure am sorry, Mr. Landeck.

It is an inadequate response to a grieving father, but it is all I have to give.

Iraqi Police, Tribesmen Brutally Suppress Anti-Coalition War Group; Dozens Killed While Attempting To Speak Truth To Power

Or at least that is how Keith Olbermann is likely to report it.

Haditha Photo Seems to Question Wuterich's Memory

I missed the 60 Minutes interview of Marine Frank Wuterich that Allah discussed on Hot Air yesterday, and therefore can't dispute nor affirm the Neil Boortz claim that the interview was, "one of the most outrageous displays of media bias ever."

What I will comment on briefly, however, is the screen capture Allah was able to grab of a photo showing the bodies of the five Iraqis that Wuterich said he suspected of planting the IED, and then shot as they were running away.

The picture is grainy and not of great quality, and I don't have the detail I would generally like to have, but I'll make an observation all the same:

I don't think these men were running, from anyone.

The bodies are closely clustered together within steps of the car in which they were traveling. A person standing still, if shot with a killing wound or multiple wounds, often falls in place. They may get up and move locations, but based upon what I interpret as pooled blood in the admittedly sub-par photo, I don't think that occurred.

It is highly unlikely, if this men had decided to run, that:

• they would have taken off in unison;
• that Wuterich would have been able to react, fire, and fatally hit five running men within feet of the vehicle.
• that they would have fallen in unison if on the move when shot.

It isn't impossible that this occurred, but I think it is very unlikely.

Now, we don't know if the bodies of the men have been touched. I think that if they had been moved (dragged) that blood trails would have been in evidence, even in a picture with quality this poor. I think that if they have been touched, they might have been rolled over to see if they were still alive, but I don't think they would have been turned to face the opposite direction.

In general, I'd expect someone shot during the first few steps while attempting to flee (which would almost have to be the case if the Wuterich account can be correlated in any way to the photo) would fall headfirst in the direction that momentum would take them. I'd also find it unlikely that a person taking just a few steps would generate enough momentum to somersault.

All that said, look at the orientation of the bodies in the photo.

Two bodies (labeled 1 and 2) are oriented clearly with their heads generally toward the car, which makes it doubtful they could have been moving away from the vehicle, at least at any speed approaching a run. The body closest to the camera, labeled 3, is roughly in the position you might expect of someone standing still when shot, then falling backward. The black box I drew, merely for illustrative purposes, gives a very rough idea of where the shots appear to have come from, based upon a number of guestimates, factoring in the position of the white car, and the object in the top right that would have likely screened these men from view of anyone much further back down the road.

The photo, bad as it may be, seems to validate the Dela Cruz version of events, and based upon Dela Cruz's own description of what he did to one of the bodies, might even explain why the stain near the head of the body labeled 2 appears to be lighter in color than the other dark stains around the bodies in the photo.

This, of course, does nothing to establish the guilt or innocence of Wuterich, nor any of the other Marines. It does nothing to establish a state of mind, nor a motive.

What is does suggest, at the very least, is that Wuterich does not recall events as the photo seems to suggest they took place.

Give Dumb a Chance

Anti-War protestors support the troops... by burning them in effigy, of course.

This display just boggles the mind for sheer stupidity, but then, consider the source:

Truly, how many more Christian Muslims must die?

Bong water is not an acceptable tea substitute, kids.

Questionable Caption of the Day

I don't think there is a lot to this AFP photo and caption, but there is just barely enough to make it interesting.

The photo shows a pair of parked HMMWVs on the left, a single U.S. soldier running, and a mostly hidden HMMWV that appears to have been hit by an IED between two large trucks that may (or may not) be recovery vehicles.

The caption reads:

A US soldier takes cover as a roadside bomb targets a US convoy in Baghdad's Bayaa district. Meanwhile, Iraq hanged Saddam Hussein's former deputy Taha Yassin Ramadan as the nation entered the fifth year of the US-led war still battling a raging insurgency and sectarian conflict.(AFP/Wissam Sami)

The caption is present tense, and is is quite possible that combat engineers have detected another IED near the site where the one HMMWV was disabled. It is not uncommon of insurgents to place multiple IEDs at an ambush location.

That said, there is no sign that the attack happened with the immediacy the caption suggests.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that mounted vehicle patrols in Baghdad typically do not bring recovery vehicles with them, and yet, it appears that two recovery vehicles are positioned in front of and behind the damaged HMMWV. The close proximity of the two other HMMWVs in the picture on the left-hand side (both in relation to the damaged vehicle, and to each other), strongly suggests that security had already been established and the site cleared of other possible IED threats.

Then there is the fact we see recovery vehicles and no movement other than the one soldier, suggests that those soldiers in the damaged HMMWV have already been evacuated from the area.

An AP picture taken in the same neighborhood on the same day seems to be from the same incident (the door in the street the AP photo also seems to match up with the missing door in the AFP photo), and states that casualties were medevaced by helicopter from the scene. This would have happened in advance of a vehicle recovery effort. Perhaps more telling, the AP caption mentions only one bomb.

Is the AFP exaggerating the immedicacy of this photo in order to sell it to news outlets? It's impossible to tell from just a pair of photos, but it would not be all that surprising if that turned out to be the case.

DOJ Document Dump

The House Judiciary Committee has posted more than 3,000 emails released by the Justice Department in regards to the firing of eight U.S. Attorneys by the Justice Department.

I don't have the time (nor the inclination) to dig through the documents, but maybe you do.

The documents are posted, and more will be posted, on the House Judiciary Committee web site in the right hand column in PDF format, 50 emails per PDF. If you find anything interesting, please post your findings in the comments. Please provide the text you cite, what you think it means, and which PDF document it came from.

This story has certainly evolved into a scandal, but for all the embarrassment and grandstanding, I still don't see where anything illegal has occurred. Have I just not been following this closely enough?

Choosing Victims

Kristin Collins of the Raleigh, NC News & Observer is all about feelings today, in a near-hysterical lament about the impact of immigration enforcement on local illegal alien families. Pardon me while I grab a tissue:

Maricruz and her husband had lived illegally in the United States so long she had almost forgotten it was a crime.

Then, on Jan. 24, her husband disappeared.

U.S. immigration officials arrested him and 20 other workers at Smithfield Foods' gigantic Bladen County slaughterhouse. They drove him to Georgia and locked him up as an illegal immigrant.

You know Kristin, you just aren't making a strong enough case for their victimhood. Could you try a little harder?

Yeah, now this is what I'm talking about:

Maricruz said it was well-known in her village near Acapulco, in the Mexican state of Guerrero, that there were well-paying jobs at the Bladen County plant. Two of her brothers had already made their way to Tar Heel and were working for Smithfield.

In Mexico, they lived with her parents -- a dozen people in a two-room house. Her husband earned money picking crops. The pay at Smithfield started at about $8 an hour. To them, it was an incredible sum.

They rented an apartment in the Robeson County town of Lumberton, about 100 miles south of Raleigh. Eight years ago they had a son, Andy, a U.S. citizen who has never seen Mexico.

Maricruz got a part-time job cleaning rooms at a hotel. Juan enrolled in English classes. They joined a Catholic church. They spent weekends with their extended family, all of whom lived within a 20-mile radius.

They regularly sent money to their families in Mexico, paying for their daughter to enroll in a university there. They started paying on a piece of land in Mexico, so they could one day return.

Maricruz said she never worried about their immigration status. She seemed only vaguely aware that their residency in North Carolina was illegal and said she didn't realize, until her husband's arrest, that they could be deported.

And then, on that Wednesday in January, Juan didn't arrive to pick her up from work. Smithfield officials told her only that her husband no longer worked there, she said.

Eight days after his disappearance, Juan called from Georgia's Stewart Detention Center.

"He told me not to cry," Maricruz said, "that he was OK."

But they do cry

A few weeks after the arrests, a group of families gathered in a Catholic church in Red Springs to tell their stories. Children played in the corners. Teenagers talked of their fears that their mothers would also be taken. Wives cried at the thought of returning to Mexico. Parents pleaded for the return of their grown children.

All said they had no idea why their family members had been chosen for arrest from the plant's more than 5,000 workers, about half of whom are Hispanic. All, including Maricruz, said their relatives were longtime Smithfield employees who had never been convicted of a crime.

Now, that's how you establish a good victimhood piece. Establish the "American Dream" aspects of their lives, while overlooking as much as possible the fact that they are criminally in this country. Collins refuse to ask the obvious question: How can these "victims" pay a coyote to smuggle them across the border (mentioned elsewhere in the article), buy false birth certificates and social security cards, and then claim of the woman she profiles:

She seemed only vaguely aware that their residency in North Carolina was illegal and said she didn't realize, until her husband's arrest, that they could be deported.

Kristin Collins isn't a reporter looking to find answers to obvious questions. She is an advocate transparently interested in promoting a cause.

To advocate for her cause, Collins overlooks stories that have been of far more importance to her English-speaking readers. That or perhaps Collins doesn’t know two other writers at the N&O, Thomas McDonald and Marti McGuire, who wrote recently. about an illegal alien that killed a father and son in a hit-and-run accident that saw a father and his nine-year-old son burned beyond recognition. The killer, Luciano Tellez, had twice been convicted of drunk driving in North Carolina, but had not been deported. Leeanna Newman was killed by another drunk illegal behind the wheel on Feb 6. Illegals account for 5-percent of NC's population, and yet they account for 18-percent of our DWI arrests and a string of recent deaths. It is an epidemic Collins ignores to promote her chosen cause.

This isn’t professional journalism. This is naked advocacy supporting criminal behavior.

Collins goes all out to get one side of the story.

The illegal alien families she profiles are allowed to be victims. Those that have been killed by illegals driving drunk apparently are not.

30,000 Strong

The Gathering of Eagles in Washington, DC this past weekend was huge; the National Park Service estimated that 30,000 supporters showed up. Michelle Malkin was there, and has an excellent roundup, complete with photos.

The socialists, communists, anarchists, radical Muslims and others in the pro-defeat crowd were unable to deface the Vietnam Veterans Memorial as they had done in anti-war marches in the past. Momma Moonbat, Cindy Sheehan, was at her borderline-insane, America-hating worst.

Wilson Outed Plame?

Sweetness & Light has a fascinating chronology posted this morning that suggests that it was Joe Wilson himself that "outed" the identity of his non-covert wife, CIA analyst Plame, in an attempt to lend credibility to the Niger story he was trying to pitch to various national media outlets, who at the time, apparently didn't see his story as being credible enough to publish.

I haven't followed the story very much even though I know others are completely enthalled with it, so tell me: is there anything wrong with this chronology?

Or did a publicity-hungry Joe Wilson "out" his own wife?

A Gathering of Eagles

The Gathering of Eagles is today in Washington, DC. It is a gathering of military veterans and proud Americans that will be ther to protect the Vietnam Veterans Memorial ("The Wall") from an anti-war protest sponsered by radical Muslim groups, anarchists, leftover 60s radicals, Marxists, and others invested in an American defeat.

Michelle Malkin and Bryan Preston will be there, as will Melanie Morgan and what we expect to be a substantial number of veterans groups and the families and friends of active duty soldiers.

FBI: Extremists Might Be Driving Your Kids To School, But Don't Worry About It

Yeah, this is comforting:

Members of extremist groups have signed up as school bus drivers in the United States, counterterror officials said Friday, in a cautionary bulletin to police. An FBI spokesman said "parents and children have nothing to fear."

Asked about the alert notice, the FBI's Rich Kolko said "there are no threats, no plots and no history leading us to believe there is any reason for concern," although law enforcement agencies around the country were asked to watch out for kids' safety.

The bulletin, parts of which were read to The Associated Press, did not say how often foreign extremists have sought to acquire licenses to drive school buses, or where. It was sent Friday as part of what officials said was a routine FBI and Homeland Security Department advisory to local law enforcement.

Look, either extremists are a threat--hence the advisory--or they aren't. Informing law enforcement to watch out for known members of extremist groups driving school buses--I'll read this as terrorists until someone gives me good reason not to--and then telling parents not to worry is asinine.

Sockpuppet Censorship

Oh, the joys of being Greenwald!

In an entry to his blog on Salon.com yesterday, noted sock-puppeteer Glenn Ryan Ellers Wilson Thomas Ellensberg Greenwald attacked Charles Johnson, the face of the "pony-tailed jazz guitarist/web designer 9/11 liberal" stereotype so commonly associated with modern conservatism.

After briefly mention other denizens of the riech-wing establishment, Ellers Thomas chastised Johnson for comments left by frequent visitors in a post to Johnson's rather obscure blog about nauseated footballs.

Wrote Ryan Ellensberg:

But commenters at Little Green Footballs have not only expressed surprise, but outright support, for Mohammed's assassination plot against a former U.S. President. They are out in droves expressing sorrow that Al Qaeda did not have the opportunity to carry out its plot.

Let us first recall that LGF's Charles Johnson was one of the leaders of the Outrage Brigade driving the big "story" -- that made it into virtually every national media outlet -- of how anonymous HuffPost commenters expressed sorrow that the bombing in Afghanistan did not result in Dick Cheney's death. In her post that spawned the media coverage, Michelle Malkin touted Johnson's righteous condemnation that "this kind of sick, twisted thinking is everywhere in the 'progressive' blogosphere...And it's even sicker than it appears at first glance, because many of these freaks want to see Cheney dead so that he can't become president if someone assassinates President Bush."

Yet here are multiple comments from Johnson's standard, regular followers -- all of whom have to register as LGF users, a device Johnson uses to ban commenters of whom he disapproves -- expressing explicit support for Al Qaeda's plot against President Carter:

GREWTEG, the author of the best-selling How Would a Patriot Act? (who answered his own question by moving to another country) then provided screenshots of seven comments from six commenters, pulled from a comment thread presently 474 comments long. In the part-time Brazilian's defense, he probably completed his Salon.com entry several hours before his 10:14 AM posting time, meaning he was cherry-picking through a smaller, more representative number of comments, which at the time he completed his article was only made up of about 461 comments.

The comments, other than the 454 or so he ignored, are devastating.

The first two commenters, "buzzsawmonkey" (clearly a relative of manbearpig) and "blame canada" are in favor, at least rhetorically, of allowing Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to finish alleged assassination plots against former Presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter.

The next three commenters--well, two news ones, and manbearpig buzzsawmonkey again--repeat the theme.

Glenn Wilsonberg then states:

And more commenters than one can chronicle offered the "justification" for murdering Carter; it's the same "rationale" previously provided by John Hinderaker: namely, Carter is on the side of Islamic Terrorists:

He then posts the two he/they could chronicle.

Not content to cherry-pick these seven comments from roughly 461 as being representative of the commenters, GREWTEG then decides that since Johnson hasn't deleted these comments, that he must therefore, ipso facto, QED, E Pluribus Unum, and carte blache, agree with each and every one of them! (my bold below)

Can we crank up the outraged media stories? How long do you think it will be before we hear from Howard Kurtz with a front-page Washington Post story, Wolf Blitzer and Sean Hannity with dramatic television coverage? Having blog commenters cheer on the assassination plots of U.S. officials is big, big, big news, we recently learned.

Here, one of the largest right-wing blog communities which pretends to be opposed to Al Qaeda is expressing support for Al Qaeda murder plots against former U.S. Presidents. The significance is overwhelming and self-evident, and many American journalists have shown how commendably eager they are to transcend partisan differences and rise up in righteous condemnation against this sort of "sick" bile.

And, several important factors distinguish this story from the HuffPost story, making it more meaningful. Unlike Huffington Post, which deleted the comments in question, Johnson has left them on his blog. Even more significantly, Johnson actively and regularly deletes comments he does not like, which lends some credibility to the notion that he approves of these comments, or at least does not find them sufficiently offensive to delete them, the way he does with scores of other comments.

Ah-Hah!

Take that reich-wingers!

Because Johnson does not censor each and every comment on his blog, he is therefore guilty of copious amounts of non-censorship, clearly a hanging crime under the Brazilian-American Sockpuppet Speech Act of 1798.

As we well know, responsible citizenship requires copious amounts of censorship, from censoring the networks allowed to carry debates, to stipulating acceptable public appearances by public servants.

By allowing comments on his blog that may not match his own views, Johnson clearly goes beyond the boundaries of acceptable discourse.

What does he think this is, a free country?

BDS-CV

Charles Krauthammer has a brutal column up in today's Washington Post called Diagnosis Cheney, focusing on a hit piece by Michelle Cottle in the liberal New Republic. The thrust of Cottle's article, apparently, is an attempt to diagnose the Vice President as being mentally ill because of his history of cardiac disease.

Krauthammer, a real psychiatrist in addition to being a political columnist, guts the "evidence" provided by Cottle, evidence that is so flimsy that any coherent layman would readily recognize as political, and not psychiatric in nature.

Well, that isn't exactly true. Krauthammer does amusingly suggest that the 1,900 word New Republic article may reveal an underlying syndrome from which Cottle may be suffering.

I was at first inclined to pass off Cottle's piece as a weird put-on -- when people become particularly deranged about this administration, it's hard to tell -- but her earnest and lengthy piling on of medical research about dementia and cardiovascular disease suggests that she is quite serious.

And supremely silly. Such silliness has a pedigree, mind you. It is in the great tradition of the 1964 poll of psychiatrists that found Barry Goldwater clinically paranoid. Goldwater having become over the years the liberals' favorite conservative (because of his libertarianism), nary a word is heard today about him being mentally ill or about that shameful election-year misuse of medical authority by the psychiatrists who responded to the poll. The disease they saw in Goldwater was, in fact, deviation from liberalism, which remains today so incomprehensible to some that it must be explained by resort to arterial plaques and cardiac ejection fractions.

If there's a diagnosis to be made here, it is this: yet another case of the one other syndrome I have been credited with identifying, a condition that addles the brain of otherwise normal journalists and can strike without warning -- Bush Derangement Syndrome, Cheney Variant.

If memeorandum.com is correct, there has thus far been three blog entries posted on the Krauthammer column, with conservative responses provided by Betsy Newmark and Sister Toldjah to date, with an post by liberal Don Q at TPM Cafe be the only attempt at a liberal response thus far.

And an amusing post it is, with Don trotting out another long-running platitude in rebuttal to Krauthammer, one that can best be summarized as, "because of the hypocrisy!" (copyright Jeff Goldstein):

From Don Q:

But you know, psycho- I mean psychiatrist-columnist Krauthammer himself likes to conduct remote diagnoses. Back in May 2004, Al Gore called on Rumsfeld and Tenet to resign, and criticized the conduct of the war in Iraq.

And our buddy Krauthammer, on Fox News with Brit Hume, said that Al Gore was "off his lithium." Lithium, of course, is used to treat heavy mental conditions like bipolar disorder.

Don't you see the obvious brilliance of Don Q? Krauthammer is a hypocrite because, he, too, made a long-distance diagnosis!

But Don Q's analysis really isn't that intelligent, is it?

Whether you look at this example, or others that he cites, Don purposefully conflates Krauthammer's flippant metaphorical comments as a political columnist into being serious psychiatric evaluations, which they clearly and decidedly are not meant to be.

Far from showing Krauthammer to be a hypocrite, his post merely goes to show that Don Q lacks the basic mental agility to note that Krauthammer's political commentary and his psychiatric practice are two distinct facets of an accomplished multi-dimensional life. To accomplish his political goals, Don Q purposefully ignores reality to promote his agenda, which amusingly enough, is precisely what Krauthammer catches Cottle doing.

Perhaps this suggests that Don Q should quit tilting at columnists, and see a professional to diagnose his own condition, which seems to be Bush Derangement Syndrome—Krauthammer Variant.

I jest, of course.

Learn the Tech, Or Take Up Baking

As you've probably come to understand by now, reporters that don't understand the subject matter they write about really irritate me. Enter the Associated Press' Kim Gamel (my bold):

The U.S. military said the attack against the Americans began when a bomb went off as a U.S. unit was returning from a search operation, Moments later, a second bomb exploded, killing the four and wounding two other soldiers.

A demolition team that searched the site after the attack found an explosively formed projectile, a type of high-tech bomb the U.S. military believes is being supplied by Iran in support of Shiite militias. The device was detonated by the team.

This is an explosively formed projectile:

It is a spent bullet, an expended hunk of metal, no longer a threat.

What Gamel meant to write that they detonated an explosively formed penetrator, one of these:

This is a live explosive device, and a very dangerous one. This is what EOD team destroyed, not the inert slug of metal as Gamel misreported.

It's rather disappointing that we can't trust a professional war reporter for the world's largest news organization to get such important distinctions correct, but a disappointment that is now hardly surprising.

Lawbreaker?

It matters little to me who is in power at the time, but we need to have a unified national voice, and that means the offical federal government representatives, whoever they are at the time, should be the only ones negotiating with foreign powers on behalf of the United States. Period.

I'm not sure that what Howard Dean admits to is illegal, but to my layman's eye, his actions seem dangerously close (h/t phin).

Iranian Defector May Soon Be Wanted for Mass Murder

Ali Reza Asghari, the former Iranian deputy defense minister and General who is thought to have defected after years of spying on the Iranian government, is one of six Iranians cited in an international arrest warrant that may be issued by Interpol later this month for the 1994 bombing of a Buenos Aires Jewish Center that took 85 lives.

The six concerned are Imad Fayez Mughniyah, Ali Fallahijan, Mohsen Rabbani, Ahmad Reza Asghari, Ahmad Vahidi and Mohsen Rezai.

Applications for the arrest of Ali Akbar Velayati and Hadi Soleimanpour, as well as Mr Rafsanjani, were rejected.

No-one has ever been convicted of the 1994 bombing - the worst terror attack in Argentine history - and the government has admitted failures in its initial investigation.

Last year it said it believed Iran ordered the attack, and militant group Hezbollah carried it out.

Asghari is though to have been instrumental in founding Hezbollah in the 1980s, and was a key liasion between Hezbollah and the Iranian government.

The "Mr Rafsanjani" referenced in the article is former Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

Gore Effect Hits Middle East

Ah... Lebanon in April.

Emails Suggest Attorney Firings Were Legit

So says Patterico:

These e-mails confirm my conclusion from yesterday: the media is manufacturing a phony scandal out of these firings, and piggybacking it onto the genuine scandal of the Justice Department’s misleading testimony to Congress about the responsibility for the firings. If these e-mails are given a fair reading, they support the idea that U.S. Attorneys were pushed out largely for legitimate reasons relating to the performance of the USAs in question.

It is starting to sound like this furor here is probably more hype than substance. Not that this will placate or convince the more rabid denizens on the far left, mind you, who hold the Bush Adminstration personally responsible for 9/11, global warming, and cooties.

Edwards Campaign Not Poisoned; World Indifferent

I can't for the life of me figure out why someone thought John Edwards was worthy of even a fake anthrax attack, but all the same, it happened yesterday at his campaign headquarters in Chapel Hill:

The white powder in an envelope discovered Wednesday at the national headquarters of Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards did not contain anthrax. The campaign office was reopening today, Deputy Campaign Manager Jonathan Prince said.

“The test results of the white powdery substance received yesterday have come back negative, and the authorities have informed us that it is safe to return to the office," Prince said in a statement this morning.

[snip]

A woman working in Edwards' campaign office in Southern Village found the powder at 4 p.m. as she opened mail for the former senator. She immediately threw the white legal-size envelope into a nearby mail bin and rushed to wash her hands, said Jane Cousins, a spokeswoman for the Chapel Hill police.

Police were called to the office at 410 Market St. in the mix of offices, shops and homes in the southern Chapel Hill community. Federal, county and regional investigators were called to assist.

By late Wednesday, the envelope had been taken to the parking lot of the Chapel Hill Police Department several miles away on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.

White powder in letters has been associated with anthrax since an attack in 2001 killed five people and sickened 17. The substance was mailed to lawmakers on Capitol Hill and members of the news media in New York and Florida just weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The Edwards campaign worker did not know to whom the envelope was addressed or where it was from, investigators said. Chapel Hill police said they didn't know whether there was any written message in the envelope.

To date, I’ve seen no mention of this story outside of the local media or in the larger blogs. I guess a fake anthrax attack on Edwards just isn’t worth commenting on.

I've written the several of the law enforcement agencies investigating this incident to see if they could provide further information about the attack. Specifically, I've asked if there was a note or letter in the envelope communicating a possible motive for the attack, and I've also asked whether the letter came through the U.S. Mail or a courier service, such as FedEx or UPS. I also asked if the letter bore a postmark or originating address that might indicate where the letter was mailed from.

I'll update this post if they respond.

Update: The FBI has responded:

The FBI is conducting a federal investigation regarding the suspicious letter sent to the office of John Edwards. We are investigating for any potential WMD issues/violations, and due to its ongoing status, no further comments are being provided at this time.

This is a joint, cooperative investigation between the FBI, Chapel Hill Police Department, Chapel Hill Fire Department, and the Orange County Public Health Department.

I imagine that the other agencies involved will also refuse comment while the investigation is on-going.

Khalid Sheik Mohammed Confesses

I have very little to add to what has already been said about Mohammed's confession, and think Jules Crittenden covers my disgust with Mohammed's self-aggrandizing quite well:

It’s all a matter of language and perspective. We’re really just the same. Until you remember that virtually all his intended targets in the Twin Towers were civilians. Every one of his intended targets in Bali and Mombasa was an innocent vacationer. All his targets on all those airplanes. It is inequivocably murder carried out not to achieve any military objective, rather for whatever political or symply psychological advantage and economic damage might be achieved by terror and chaos. He did it to impress people. He wraps himself in history and distortion and calls it war. It is revolting, and it is bullshit, but it is his right. He is allowed to speak and say whatever he wants in advance of the judgments that await him. And we can look at this vile filth, and consider it for what it is worth.

Four al Qaeda Militants Sentenced to Death

Now, if they can only capture the three of them that are still on the run, they might be able to carry out the sentence:

Jordan's military court on Thursday sentenced to death four Iraqi al-Qaida militants charged with terror attacks on Jordanians in Iraq. Of the four, only one is in custody while the other three remain at large and were tried in absentia.

The court also handed down sentences to 10 others in the case also at large and believed to be in hiding in Iraq ranging from 15 years in jail with hard labor to life imprisonment.

The group's alleged mastermind, Ziad Khalaf Raja al-Karbouly, was charged with leading the group of 14 in plotting attacks on trucks with Jordanian license plates on Iraqi roads to murder those on board.

As things continue to fall apart for al Qaeda in Iraq, I find that the execution of these death sentences are quite likely, whether or not these men ever see a Jordanian jail first.

Clinton Won't Withdraw From Iraq

This won't endear her to the netroots, but then, what could? For those Democrats that have a toe in reality, however, Hillary just showed that she may be the first grown-up running for the Democratic Presidential nomination. Well, almost:

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton foresees a “remaining military as well as political mission” in Iraq, and says that if elected president, she would keep a reduced but significant military force there to fight Al Qaeda, deter Iranian aggression, protect the Kurds and possibly support the Iraqi military.

In a half-hour interview on Tuesday in her Senate office, Mrs. Clinton said the scaled-down American military force that she would maintain in Iraq after taking office would stay off the streets in Baghdad and would no longer try to protect Iraqis from sectarian violence — even if it descended into ethnic cleansing.

It is good to see that Hillary recognized the need to help support the Iraqi government, but her statement about not protecting Iraqis from sectarian violence, "even if it descended into ethnic cleansing," is troubling.

If "President Hillary" is serious that she would take no action in the event of an attempted genocide, then her behavior would verge upon criminal. If, however, Clinton is merely issuing "tough love" to encourage Sunni, Shia, and Kurd to work together, then her pronouncement makes far more practical sense.

It will be interesting to see how or if the other Democratic candidates will try to shift their positions as they watch Hilliary outmanuver them to the electable middle.

Update: Captain Ed critiques Clinton's statement more harshly.

When You Care Enough to Scrape Out the Very Best

Abortion e-cards. Great.

Allah asked a good question... What about all the upbeat cards?

My contribution:

You Lost Another One?

I owe the French an apology. Until now, I thought that France was the only nation capable of losing a war that they were not fighting.

According to YNET News, yet another senior Iranian officer has gone missing:

Three weeks ago the Iranian armed forces command in Teheran lost contact with a senior officer who had been serving in Iraq with the al-Quds unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, according to a senior Iranian official cited in the Wednesday edition of the London-based Arabic daily al-Sharq al-Awsat.

The Iranian source said that it is still unclear why contact with the officer, Colonel Amir Muhammad Shirazi, was lost. "It is possible that the American forces in Iraq arrested him along with a group of 13 Iranian military and intelligence officials," he said, adding that this is just one of the scenarios being investigated by Tehran.

Of course, this begs the question, "What was a senior Iranian al-Quds force commander doing in Iraq if he wasn't supporting the insurgency?" Don't expect the NY Times to dig too deeply into the existence of Colonel Amir Muhammad Shirazi, much less his disappearance.

The article also claims that another Iranian colonel was sentenced to death by an Iranian court for collaborating with American forces in the war Iran is not waging in Iraq, and that "dozens" of Iranian officers have also defected.

These allegations should be taken with a shaker of salt until they can be confirmed, but if these allegations are correct, Iran is hemorrhaging both intelligence and operatives at an alarming rate.

Update: This is too rich.

I picked up a link from Salon.com's Blog Report, and now instead of discussing the disappearing Iranian officers that were the subject of the post, I have Salon's liberal readers attempting to defend the 20th Century accomplishments of the French military.

On the Gonzalez Mess

While I've tried to keep up with my reading on the subject, you might note that I haven't posted yet on the U.S. Attorney's story. Quite frankly, it has me confused over whether it is really important or not, but I feel somewhat better this morning when I discovered (via Ann Althouse blogging at Instapundit), that the far more capable legal mind of Orin Kerr is also unsure:

On a more serious note, I haven't written about the U.S. Attorney's story because I'm having a hard time figuring out just how big a deal it is. Parts of it are obviously very troubling: I was very disturbed to learn of the Domenici calls, for example. More broadly, I have longrunning objections to the extent to which DOJ is under White House control, objections that this story helps bring to the fore (although my objections are based on my views of sound policy, not on law).

At the same time, several parts of the story seem overblown. U.S. Attorneys are political appointees who serve at the pleasure of the President, and the press seems to overlook that in a lot of its reporting. Also, I know one or two of the Administration figures named in some of the stories, and based on my knowledge of them and their character (although no secret details of the story — I have not spoken with anyone about it) I have a feeling that they're getting a bad rap.

So in the end I don't quite know where I come out based on what we know. Without knowing where I come out, I don't feel I have much helpful to add. I realize that this may mean I am missing a big story. Perhaps this will prove to be a simply huge scandal, and in time it will seem odd that we weren't all blogging about it. But I don't know what I'm supposed to do when I read a story and I'm not sure what to make of it.

Quite frankly, I don't think we know what we don't know in regards to this issue, and I think that some of the political posturing we're seeing, such as Senator Chuck Shumer's statement, "This has become as serious as it gets" is merely that--posturing.

It is worth noting that Shumer is cited in this same Dana Milbank column as being "the Democrats' point man in the Valerie Plame investigation," an investigation which found no illegal activity is the release of Plame's name, and only convicted Lewis Libby for lying about his involvement. Hot air is one of Shumer's specialties.

Another person with legal experience, prosecutor Patrick Frey, notes that the White House released emails related to the case that apparently show that the White House had good reason for firing many of the prosecutors, including failures to prosecute drug cases, failure to prosecute illegal immigrants, failure to investigate charges of voter fraud, and failures to carry out Administration policies. Many Presidential Administrations have fired all U.S. Attorneys when they came to power, including the Clinton Administration, for no reason other than pure politics. That the Bush Administration fired these Attorneys for cause seems, well, refreshing, if that is indeed what occurred.

The scandal, such as it is, seems to revolve around Attorney General Gonzales' inept handling of what should have been a minor issue at best.

Is there any fire to go with this smoke?

Again, we may not know what we do not know, but of what we have seen presented thus far, the Democratic cry of scandal seems based on very thin evidence.

Jimmy Can't Read

It appears that James Cameron's claim to have found the tomb and ossuaries of Jesus Christ and his family, which were never taken seriously by biblical scholars, may have resulted from an inabilty to properly read and translate the Greek writing on at least one ossuary.

The film and book suggest that a first-century ossuary found in a south Jerusalem cave in 1980 contained the remains of Jesus, contradicting the Christian belief that he was resurrected and ascended to heaven. Ossuaries are stone boxes used at the time to store the bones of the dead.

The filmmakers also suggest that Mary Magdalene was buried in the tomb, that she and Jesus were married, and that an ossuary labeled "Judah son of Jesus" belonged to their son.

The scholars who analyzed the Greek inscription on one of the ossuaries after its discovery read it as "Mariamene e Mara," meaning "Mary the teacher" or "Mary the master."

Before the movie was screened, Jacobovici said that particular inscription provided crucial support for his claim. The name Mariamene is rare, and in some early Christian texts it is believed to refer to Mary Magdalene.

But having analyzed the inscription, Pfann published a detailed article on his university's Web site asserting that it doesn't read "Mariamene" at all.

The inscription, Pfann said, is made up of two names inscribed by two different hands: the first, "Mariame," was inscribed in a formal Greek script, and later, when the bones of another woman were added to the box, another scribe using a different cursive script added the words "kai Mara," meaning "and Mara." Mara is a different form of the name Martha.

According to Pfann's reading, the ossuary did not house the bones of "Mary the teacher," but rather of two women, "Mary and Martha."

"In view of the above, there is no longer any reason to be tempted to link this ossuary ... to Mary Magdalene or any other person in biblical, non-biblical or church tradition," Pfann wrote.

In the interest of telling a good story, Pfann said, the documentary engaged in some "fudging" of the facts.

Okay, an inability to read and an apparent willingness to deceive.

Somehow, I doubt anyone is all that surprised.

Unacceptable Opinions

Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, infuriated many yesterday when he said in an interview that he thought homosexual behavior was immoral, and likened it to adultery:

Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Monday that he supports the Pentagon's "don't ask, don't tell" ban on gays serving in the military because homosexual acts "are immoral," akin to a member of the armed forces conducting an adulterous affair with the spouse of another service member.

Responding to a question about a Clinton-era policy that is coming under renewed scrutiny amid fears of future U.S. troop shortages, Pace said the Pentagon should not "condone" immoral behavior by allowing gay soldiers to serve openly. He said his views were based on his personal "upbringing," in which he was taught that certain types of conduct are immoral.

As you may imagine, all the usual suspects were there to quickly condemn Pace's comments, including one liberal blogger that hoped to organized a petition drive to have him fired. To date, Pace refuses to apologize.

I've got very mixed feelings about this particular story.

I personally dislike "don't ask, don't tell."

The official military position, as I understand it, is that they don't want openly gay soldiers serving in the military because it could cause dissention in the ranks. As openly gay soldiers have served in armies worldwide for thousands of years--including our Greek friends portrayed in the now-playing "300"--I find that argument especially weak, if not insulting to our soldiers. Are proponents of "don't ask, don't tell" trying to convince us that our military men and women are so fickle, mentally weak and easily rattled that the mere presence of openly gay soldiers in the ranks is enough to topple our military, or at the very least, reduce its combat effectiveness? If so, our top generals must be far more afraid of Cirque du Soleil than al Qaeda.

No, I think that "don't ask, don't tell" comes down to anti-gay bigotry in our military, which is notoriously conservative (and I mean socially, not politically, though that probably applies as well). The policy implemented during the Clinton Administration was a mistake then, and continues to be a mistake now, causing the military to lose potential applicants that are intelligent, skilled, and otherwise exemplary material, solely on the basis of sexual preference. We have lost good soldiers because of this, as well as intelligence assets, including Arab linguists that are already in short supply. "Don't ask, don't tell" is hurting the War against Islamic terrorism in very measurable ways.

But for all that is wrong with the policy, I'm even more appalled by the hysterical responses of some of those who have taken issue with Pace's comments. Apparently, Pace's opinion is too much to handle for some oppressively self-righteous gay advocates, including one that is calling for Pace to resign, and another, John Aravosis, that shrieks so shrilly that it only reinforces the stereotype that some in the military have against allowing gays to serve. Apparently, these blogger-advocates are quite content to exercise their freedom of speech, while attempting to punish Pace for exercising his. What they advocate is nothing less than censorship, pure and simple, and in a hysterically cartoonish way at that.

If John Aravosis, Pam Spaulding, etc want to help convince our military that allowing gay and lesbian soldiers to serve openly is in our nation's best interests, then by all means, they should help develop a compelling case to prove to Congress and the military that is policy is outdated and counterproductive. If advocates truly want gay and lesbian Americans to have the opportunity to serve their country, then they should fight for that right with logic, reason, and intelligence.

Instead, they attempt to claim victim status once again, and hope to shame Pace into retracting his comments, or force his resignation. Quite simply, they hurt their cause with a call for censorship instead of reasoned debate.

Air America Offers to Host Republican Presidential Debates

Please understand that this is meant purely as a snub by the floundering liberal radio network.

On the other hand, if the state Republican chairmen of Iowa, Nevada, South Carolina, or New Hampshire accept the offer, Air America can revel in something entirely new on a liberal talk radio network... listeners.

Second Verse, Same as the First

If you read either Left Behind from last week or The United Left of Defeat from yesterday, then this editorial from the Washington Post today might sound very familiar:

The only constituency House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ignored in her plan for amending President Bush's supplemental war funding bill are the people of the country that U.S. troops are fighting to stabilize. The Democratic proposal doesn't attempt to answer the question of why August 2008 is the right moment for the Iraqi government to lose all support from U.S. combat units. It doesn't hint at what might happen if American forces were to leave at the end of this year -- a development that would be triggered by the Iraqi government's weakness. It doesn't explain how continued U.S. interests in Iraq, which holds the world's second-largest oil reserves and a substantial cadre of al-Qaeda militants, would be protected after 2008; in fact, it may prohibit U.S. forces from returning once they leave.

In short, the Democratic proposal to be taken up this week is an attempt to impose detailed management on a war without regard for the war itself. Will Iraq collapse into unrestrained civil conflict with "massive civilian casualties," as the U.S. intelligence community predicts in the event of a rapid withdrawal? Will al-Qaeda establish a powerful new base for launching attacks on the United States and its allies? Will there be a regional war that sucks in Iraqi neighbors such as Saudi Arabia or Turkey? The House legislation is indifferent: Whether or not any of those events happened, U.S. forces would be gone.

If anything, the WaPo editorial is more targeted in exposing the cynical nature of the "slow bleed" Democrats. Not only does this Executioner's Congress not care about the fate of the Iraqi people or the larger Sunni-Shia regional war that may result from their craven political acts, they also want their genocidal proposals implemented in time to benfit them politically. I know that I alluded to this, but this editorial takes them head-on in their defeatism.

I said it yesterday, and will reiterate it again today:

On a fundamental level, leftists are no longer Americans first. They nakedly place their partisan political objectives above those of the nation as a whole. Blinded by internal domestic politics they fail, perhaps purposefully, to account for how their actions vindicate the long-term strategic goals of Islamic terrorists and undermine the credibility of the United States on the world stage. They rank partisan politics above national interests. They are the United Left of Defeat; their stated agenda and goals shows clearly that they view the long-term health and well-being of United States of America—and the success of the state of Iraq, and the larger War against Islamic Terrorism—as secondary issues to their own continued quest for more political power.

Their primary and overriding interest of the Left is their own political success and vindication. They have created a belief system around the thought that if the United States is successful in helping the Iraqi people emerge from this conflict as a more-or-less stable parliamentary democracy, that the war would be a victory for George Bush and the neo-conservative movement.

They are incapable of seeing it as a victory for the Iraqi people, whom they have made abundantly clear though their choices of rhetoric and proposed legislation, are secondary citizens of the world, at best. They refuse to acknowledge the possibility of a victory in Iraq as being good for the United States, the Iraqi people, or the world at large. They have chosen sides, and they do not side with the best interests of our country, or that of other free nations.

I never thought I would live to see a day where a substantial portion of the American poltical establishment placed party politics above national security.

Sadly, that day has clearly arrived, as even the national media are beginning to pickup.

An Inconvenient Truth for Al Gore

At least he'll aways have his Oscar, even if his documentary isn't supported by the data:

"I don’t want to pick on Al Gore," Don J. Easterbrook, an emeritus professor of geology at Western Washington University, told hundreds of experts at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America. "But there are a lot of inaccuracies in the statements we are seeing, and we have to temper that with real data."

Mr. Gore, in an e-mail exchange about the critics, said his work made "the most important and salient points" about climate change, if not "some nuances and distinctions" scientists might want. "The degree of scientific consensus on global warming has never been stronger," he said, adding, "I am trying to communicate the essence of it in the lay language that I understand."

Although Mr. Gore is not a scientist, he does rely heavily on the authority of science in "An Inconvenient Truth," which is why scientists are sensitive to its details and claims.

Criticisms of Mr. Gore have come not only from conservative groups and prominent skeptics of catastrophic warming, but also from rank-and-file scientists like Dr. Easterbook, who told his peers that he had no political ax to grind. A few see natural variation as more central to global warming than heat-trapping gases. Many appear to occupy a middle ground in the climate debate, seeing human activity as a serious threat but challenging what they call the extremism of both skeptics and zealots.

Kevin Vranes, a climatologist at the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado, said he sensed a growing backlash against exaggeration. While praising Mr. Gore for "getting the message out," Dr. Vranes questioned whether his presentations were "overselling our certainty about knowing the future."

Typically, the concern is not over the existence of climate change, or the idea that the human production of heat-trapping gases is partly or largely to blame for the globe's recent warming. The question is whether Mr. Gore has gone beyond the scientific evidence.

"He's a very polarizing figure in the science community," said Roger A. Pielke Jr., an environmental scientist who is a colleague of Dr. Vranes at the University of Colorado center. "Very quickly, these discussions turn from the issue to the person, and become a referendum on Mr. Gore."

Gore's fellow global warming co-religionists will most likely discount the attempt to inject actual science into the global warming debate. As we well know, science and faith do not always go hand-in-hand.

Ernie is Dead

Mike Yon's latest dispatch, "Ernie is Dead" will be posted soon on Foxnews.com.

"Ernie" is Ernie Pyle, the highly respected war correspondent from Scripps-Howard newspapers who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1944. A collection of 40 of Pyle's columns have been collected by Indiana University's Journalism School here.

Pyle's most famous column, The Death of Captain Waskow, shows care, respect, and unvarnished humanity for the American soldier. It is doubtful that a similar column could be printed by today's media, which vacillates between treating our soldiers as unfeeling automatonic criminals and childlike victims. Today, many liberals would refer to someone like Pyle as a right wing propagandist. We just think of him as an American legend.

I'll link Yon's article in an update when it comes online.

Update: Yon's dispatch is now online at FoxNews.com before transitioning over to the extended entry at Michael Yon Online.

True to the title, Michael makes some very interesting observations about combat journalism, and dings both the professional media and bloggers as warranted.

The rules, like the times and tents, have changed. Joe Galloway is retired. Journalists who in previous wars might have spent long tours with combat forces are rare. There have been a few, such as Lee Pitts who was here to cover a Tennessee National Guard deployment for a Tennessee paper. Or Rich Oppel of the New York Times, who has been here repeatedly for longer than typical journalists. John Burns needs no introduction. Likewise Dexter Filkins or Michael Ware. But journalists who roam the battlefield with the troops and write freely for long periods are completely gone. That doesn’t mean good journalists are gone. There are plenty of those, but mostly they are somewhere else, or they only come to Iraq for quick tours.

There is the new brand of journalists, the independents, of which I am a charter member. Many bloggers, along with their readers, are changing the face of journalism. Glenn Reynolds, from the immensely popular blog "Instapundit," which I check regularly, calls the new media "An Army of Davids," who are already changing the media by holding it more accountable. A number of very effective blog-storms have provided a needed check to balance the system. Don’t ever fake a photo: Bob at Confederate Yankee is watching.

Huge amounts of blog-energy go into attacks on mainstream media war coverage that might be better spent ignoring the irritant and offering alternative sources, in view of how critical any and all media coverage is to shaping public opinion which in turn determines the outcome of this war. These skirmishes between mainstream and alternative media produce only friendly fire casualties, and neither side can claim a monopoly on accuracy and objectivity. While the reliability and/or agendas of many mainstream media sources are questionable, the blogworld is also often too eager to anoint anyone who's not mainstream as a guru-of-something. If this were the art-world, it would be like anointing anyone with some skill at putting brush to canvas as the "new Rembrandt."

But the dirty secret known to only a few is that many of these "new Rembrandts" are clever forgeries. Some bloggers who advertise themselves as war correspondents with numerous "embeds" in the war, with the implication that they've spent more time on the ground than their mainstream war correspondent counterparts, mostly have spent very little time here, especially in comparison to those mainstream war correspondents.

This week, journalists are all around this area—ABC, Fox, New York Times, Associated Press, The Telegraph, Stars & Stripes (DoD publication) and others, all flagships—but where are the bloggers? Prohibitive costs, very high risks, and an increasingly shrinking market for the work probably contribute to the poor showing. Will the blog-world still maintain the attack on coverage from the mainstream media? Instead of looking for mistakes in some coverage, the common cause might be better served by well-informed bloggers searching all sources for the reports that get it right and driving readers to those.

As if often the case, Yon is direct and offers his honest opinion of the problems of both the media and blogosphere.

Perhaps Yon is right, in that bloggers such as myself should spend more energy directing readers to alternative sources of information, than merely exhaust our resources shooting down erroneous media accounts. I know that in my case, I spent quite a bit of time proving that Associated Press source "Jamil Hussein" was every bit as much a fake as were the 24 people that never died in AP's Hurriyah mosque attack coverage, but for all my efforts, it accomplished very little. We forced Jamil into silence as a named source, and perhaps causing certain AP executives and reporters some heartburn, but none of them were held accountable for what I still feel is a serious case of journalistic fraud. I still think the story was worth pursuing, but might my efforts have been better spent trying to track down alternative sources? It's tough to know, and may vary from story to story, but it is something I'll now consider as I move forward.

As for the "new Rembrandts," I was a participant in a series of heated email exchanges over the past few days (still on-going) involving Yon and a blogger Yon clearly considers a "clever forgery." I'd prefer not to get into the details as I respect both Yon and the work of the person he suspects, and hope that this is a situation where a lack of clear communications, not deception, is the culprit. Time will tell.

That said, the point Yon makes is correct: we must police our own, just as surely as we police the professional media, and hold both the mainstream media journalist and citizen-journalist (blogger) to similar standards of accuracy and credibility.

The focus of Yon's article is also quite true, in that we have very few combat journalists dedicated to long-term embeds with U.S. and Iraqi forces, and when we lack that perspective, we lose something in our war coverage. I can certainly understand it we simply don't have the journalists willing to commit to long-term embeds with our forces, and certainly understand that most bloggers, which tend to hold other full-time jobs, simply can't afford to self-finance the substantial cost of embedding. I hope however, that if journalists and bloggers are willing and able to embed, that they can get the financial backing of media organizations to embark on that most dangerous of journalistic missions.

Ernie Pyle is dead. I wonder if his successors are being given the chance they need to keep his legacy alive.

Duke Lacrosse Rape Case: A Year Later, Coach K Speaks Out

It was a year ago tonight that a stripper in Durham alleged that she was gang-raped at a Duke Lacrosse team party. Today, Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski speaks out:

"The one thing that I wish we would have done is just out, publicly say, 'Look, those are our kids. And we're gonna support 'em, because they're still our kids.' That's what I wish we would have done," Krzyzewski told Bob Costas, a sports commentator who has a television show on HBO. "And I'm not sure that we did -- I don't think we did a good job of that."

For months, bloggers and others have criticized Duke, accusing the university of not standing behind the players as the judicial process unfolded.

Since the spring, defense lawyers have poked gaping holes in the prosecution's case against three former lacrosse players -- David Evans, Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann. District Attorney Mike Nifong, the prosecutor who led the investigation, has resigned from the case and is in a battle to save his law license.

One segment of "Costas Now," an hour-long sports program that airs tonight at 10, will be a one-on-one interview with Krzyzewski, according to Kris Goddard with HBO Sports media relations. According to excerpts from the transcript, Krzyzewski criticizes Duke professors for their criticisms of big-time sports at the university.

"We had almost 100 professors come out publicly against certain things in athletics," Krzyzewski told Costas, "and I was a little bit shocked at that. But it shows that there's a latent hostility or whatever you want to say towards sports on campus. I thought it was inappropriate, to be quite frank with you."

Krzyzewski did not speak on the case as it began last year at the specific request of Duke University President Richard Brodhead. Brodhead seems to have had little problem with the "Gang of 88," a group of Duek Professors that were quick to condemn the players.

Rape charges have since been dropped against the players after teh accuser offered multiple and inconsitent stories, and DNA evidence showed that the accuser had sex with several men at the time DNA was collected, but none of them were Duke Lacrosse players.

Sexual assualt and kidnapping charges are still levied against the players, but those charges may be dropped. State prosecutors took over the case after Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong stepped down from the case in disgrace, after allegedly withholding DNA evidence that exonerated the players.

The United Left of Defeat

The Los Angeles Times, of all places, posted an excellent editorial this morning, lambasting the defeatist cant that has been issuing forth from House Democrats, as Democrats responding to their left-wing base have continued their attempt to force a loss in the Iraq War by way of micromanaging our military into defeat.

Characteristically, it seems that liberal politicians such as John Murtha and Nancy Pelosi, along with their strident defenders on the political left, have sought to frame the conflict in Iraq as a Republican-only war. Both in Congress and in the blogosphere, liberals see the Iraq War as a conservative political weakness, and think that by forcing a withdrawal, that they will gain political strength. Indeed, if they are successful in undermining the war effort, you can count on them claiming a victory, however fleeting that "victory" may be.

On a fundamental level, leftists are no longer Americans first. They nakedly place their partisan political objectives above those of the nation as a whole. Blinded by internal domestic politics they fail, perhaps purposefully, to account for how their actions vindicate the long-term strategic goals of Islamic terrorists and undermine the credibility of the United States on the world stage. They rank partisan politics above national interests. They are the United Left of Defeat; their stated agenda and goals shows clearly that they view the long-term health and well-being of United States of America—and the success of the state of Iraq, and the larger War against Islamic Terrorism—as secondary issues to their own continued quest for more political power.

Their primary and overriding interest of the Left is their own political success and vindication. They have created a belief system around the thought that if the United States is successful in helping the Iraqi people emerge from this conflict as a more-or-less stable parliamentary democracy, that the war would be a victory for George Bush and the neo-conservative movement.

They are incapable of seeing it as a victory for the Iraqi people, whom they have made abundantly clear though their choices of rhetoric and proposed legislation, are secondary citizens of the world, at best. They refuse to acknowledge the possibility of a victory in Iraq as being good for the United States, the Iraqi people, or the world at large. They have chosen sides, and they do not side with the best interests of our country, or that of other free nations.

As I noted last week, Democrats are quick to call for the end of American involvement in Iraq, while purposefully failing to mention the catastrophic political and human cost to Iraqi civilians that would result from the arbitrary and complete withdrawal that they hope for. They dare not speak of the all-out civil war that could result, nor the wider Sunni vs. Shia regional war that could develop. They have become an Executioner's Congress, willing to lay waste to Iraqi and other Middle Eastern lives to satisify the needs of their base for domestic liberal political consumption.

These same liberal politicians fail to speak about how a defeat in Iraq will be a major victory for Islamic extremism, and will extend, perhaps by decades, what has been rightfully identified as Our Children's Children's War. They purposefully fail to inform their constituencies that a loss in Iraq will lead to a rekindling of the same expansionist Islamic mindset that enabled the rise of al Qaeda, the Taliban, and other Islamic extremist groups.

Democrats are willing, even eager to hand George Bush a defeat in Iraq, but are unwilling to take credit for the loss they will hand to all Americans. Liberals love to tell us that the War in Iraq is a great recruiting tool for Islamic terrorists, but in their naked cowardice, Pelosi, Murtha, and their ilk refuse to mention how much more of a recruiting tool an American defeat in Iraq would be for these same extremist elements.

That such a Democrat-led defeat would be a boon for terrorist recruiters is obvious, and yet, Democrats will not acknowledge the effect their assistance will provide.

They are unwilling to tell their constituents the obvious truth of their actions, which is that terrorists inspired by a Democratic-led defeat in Iraq would seek to expand upon their Democrat-delivered victory. If Democrats are successful, our war against Islamic extremism will expand, not be brought to a close.

All of these truths are self-evident and readily apparent to those willing to face reality, but the political far left has long ago abandoned reality for something it prefers called a "reality-based" community. They pick and choose the reality to which they would respond, ignoring the inconvenient truth that their world exists only in as much as society's defenders—the same military and police that they typically despise—allow this illusion to survive.

Liberals refuse to address the fact that their plans for a U.S. defeat in Iraq weakens both Iraq and the United States, and that the defeat they long for will increase both terrorist recruiting and the possibility of more terrorist attacks.

The radical Left wing of the Democrat Party is driven by their own short-term political goals and refuses to view the future health and well-being of the United States as a whole as their primary concern. To defeat "George Bush's War," they are willing to sacrifice the sacrifices made by our soldiers and their families, and the lives of those future generations of American military and civilian families that will bear the bloody costs of their agenda-driven myopia. Of the tens of millions Iraqi lives that hang in the balance, they care even less.

As is evidenced in their words and deeds, liberal political success, however short-lived, is their primary and overriding goal. What is best for America and Americans are matters of ever-decreasing importance among those who would wreck the world for their fleeting, dishonorable moment in the sun.

Montel Hell

You would expect a former military man like talk show host Montel Williams to take good care of the military families he invited on his show to talk about the stress deployments take on the husbands, wives and children left behind when our armed forces deploy overseas into a combat zone.

Instead, the 22-year veteran of the Marines and Navy ran a bait-and-switch, changing the subject to another topic, the problems encountered by some troops as the result of anthrax vaccinations. Williams heavily skewed reality to present only the side of this topic that would cause the most consternation, referred to the troops as "guinea pigs" repeatedly, and asserted that our military was being treated so badly that no one would ever volunteer for the armed forces again and that the draft would have to be reinstated.

The ambushed families were shocked and angered, as can evidenced in an accounting of the ordeal at SpouseBuzz, a military families web site:

The trouble started during the second taping, when we learned that Montel's agenda with military people wasn't what it had been portrayed to be when our group was invited to attend. And as military families have been burned so often by unscrupulous media members (I'm not attacking the ones who work professionally here!), we probably should have sensed it from the beginning. We were going to be ambushed.

And later:

But it got worse. The show was being presented in the most scaremongering fashion possible. There was only attention given to the worst cases. There was no attention given to those who had experienced no adverse affects, or only the mild swelling and soreness around the injection site, even though we had people like that present with us. There was no mention about the actual percentages such reactions actually occur in. And there was no mention of those, like an EOD friend of mine, who actually requested the vaccine and makes sure to keep it updated.

Finally, we all got up and left during a break before the taping was over. And I should probably add that there was a quite acrimonious exchange with Montel that resulted in one person being escorted out by the show security (who were very polite and professional, for the record). I did say, "You told us this was going to be about deployment, Montel!" to which the reply was, "Please, just leave." If there was any discussion of how deployment issues affect family members after we left, it happened without us. All I can say is that the direction and tone of the show definately made it look like the topic was not going to come up.

Ambushing military families is something that no American should stand for. If you would politely like to tell Montel Williams that you find his bait-and-switch attack deplorable, please contact the show via this form.

Our military families deserve better, especially from someone who should understand what these families are already going through with their military family members deployed overseas.

Who Is Writing the Captions for AFP?

As I do from time to time, I was scanning though Yahoo! News images to see if anything interesting might be going on, when I came across the following.

Unless Nancy Pelosi snuck something into law in the past hour or so, the AFP caption writer is apparently going far beyond bias to outright fabrication.

There is a certain amount of editorializing that we are used to in many news organizations, and the "Brushing aside US public opinion" comment is a clear example of that, but then the writer goes beyond editorializing to complete fabrication, whe he or she states (my bold), "the Pentagon is to send more soldiers to Iraq on top of the extra troops announced in January which may now have to stay in the country until February 2008."

There is no set timetable for the withdrawal of U.S forces in Iraq in February 2008, nor at any other time. The writer is simply making up the news.

And no, I'm not buying the explanation that the writer might mean that the troops announced in January might be there until February 08. As many of the troops of the "surge" announced in January will not even deploy until later this spring or summer, that means their deployments would be roughly 6-9 months long, and that is clearly not what the writer is trying to convey.

I suspect that is the same caption writer the wrote the captions here:

I was able to find several stories discussing Clinton's comments, and yet in neither account can I find Clinton using the term "shabby rehabilitation," nor anything even reasonably close.

Well, that isn't entirely true.

I was able to find the words "shabby rehabilitation" in one account.

Did AFP crib from the Iranian-government controlled news agency, or was the AFP caption biased enough that it fit perfectly into the headline of the press agency of a repressive government?

In either event, I'm not sure it matters. What is clear is that our AFP caption writer seem quite content to make up the news as they go along.

Update: Added links to the Yahoo! photos.

Are They Serious?

Filipino Muslims are protesting against a Christian preacher who said Muslims might have violent tendencies by calling for him to be beheaded.

I'm guessing they won't like this tee shirt, then.

This Dana's No Plato

When I first heard that they were making a movie out of the Greek's epic last stand at Thermopylae. In 480 BC, a few thousands Greeks--Thespians, Thebians,and Spartans--held the narrow mountain pass for three days against a Persian forces estimated to be composed of 250,000-2 million men to secure a retreat for the rest of the Greek army.

I was a little disappointed to find out that the movie was based on a Frank Miller comic book 300 ("graphic novel," whatever) instead of the actual battle itself, and not being a fan of the last Miller-based movie I saw (Sin City, (which I cut off in disgust after 15-20 minutes because it was more cheesy than a bag of Cheetos), and I planned not to watch it. I still probably won't, but might consider it, if the reviews aren't too bad.

Ace has read a review of the movie, and wasn't too pleased. Not with the movie, but with the whining of the Slate critic, Dana Stevens.

Here's a taste of Ace's opening salvo on poor Stevens:

Ah, the twitty little snots at Slate, all trying so hard to ape Michael Kinsley's snideness without having the deftness or talent to carry it off charmingly. Where every book, tv show, and movie is evaluated entirely according to how it flatters, or discomfits, their left-liberal mocha-marxist politics.

What's the matter, Dana? Did the big bad men scare you?

Please. Grow up, and stop being such an insipid, screechy girl for Christ's sakes.

From there, Ace really let's you know what he thinks of her blinders-on review, in no uncertain terms.

Content warning for language, but then, you knew that.

Update: A non-wussy review from across the Pond Canada.

Rangers Lead the Way

Glenn got it posted first, but here's another photo of American combat soldiers in Baghdad, courtesy of embedded journalist Michael Yon.

Glenn also does a nice job of linking to other embeds, and reminds readers that these guys are all largely (if not exclusively) reader supported. Want to support the troops? Head on over and drop a few dollars to support the citizen-journalists that dare to go outside the wire to get you the stories that other media can't or won't provide.

Radar Gun

Left Behind

As House Democrats trumpet the release of their "son of 'Slow Bleed'" legislation to evict American forces from the Iraq War, Rep. David Obey, D-Wis was credited with an interesting set of pull quotes in one too-telling Associated Press paragraph:

Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., and chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said the proposal would bring an "orderly and responsible close" to American participation in what he called an Iraqi "civil war."

Like the larger Democrat-led effort to lose the war, this statement avoids mentioning—purposefully, in my estimation—that the proposed election-time retreat would end just American involvement in the war. The Democrats refuse to embrace the consequences of such a retreat.

It is expected that the power vacuum left by a Democrat-forced American military retreat from Iraq would be filled by foreign nations fueling a sectarian war in Iraq that would be both civil and proxy in nature. Saudi Arabia has made clear their intention to provide military and financial resources to Iraq's Sunni minority to hopefully keep their co-religionists from being "ethnically cleansed," while Iran would continue or increase its military and financial support of Shia factions in hopes of gaining a sphere of influence over oil-rich southern Iraq.

The end result of the Democrat plan of defeat would be a war-torn landscape not too dissimilar to the Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian War, writ large.

A repeat of events like the Srebrenica massacre are possible in Iraq's future if Democrats have their way.

Democrats, of course, know this, but simply seem to find political games in America far more important than the regional destabilization and projected increase in civilian deaths their plan for defeat would bring.

Democrats claim to care about our troops, which they do, when it’s politically convenient and they’re fresh out of spit.

Sadly, the millions of Iraqi civilians that would suffer as a result of their plan for defeat don't matter nearly as much to Democrat politicians.

Iraqi children won't send out important action alerts over frappacinos, or fund presidential campaigns in either America. It isn't their grandchildren that will suffer and die if we leave before the job is done.

The Democrats won't mention the cost of pandering to their radical base.

Apparently the one thing too shameful to discuss is the legacy they would leave behind.

Update: Pretty good analysis, Mr Dorkage:

People here will tell you they are mostly afraid of one thing-that we will leave soon, like we have since Vietnam, Somalia, etc., and that they will then be at the mercy of the terrorists who seep in from Iran, Syria, Egypt, and Saudia Arabia. A self-fulfilling circle, helped out vastly by our 'anti-war' citizens back home, who ironically enable wars as this by forcing constant US retreats through our political process. People here - real people, not 'Jamil Husseins' - want us here to give them time to reform their society.

I speculate this is one of the reasons I observed such high morale in our soldiers here. They are wanted here, unlike, say, in San Francisco. But, I digress.

Update: Democrat plan is "failure at any cost." Ouch.

U.S. Halts Imaginary Cubans in Security Drill

This goes along with the Bush Adminstration's simulated immigration enforcement of the U.S./Mexican border quite well.

Congo Uranium Arrests

What would Joe Wilson do?

The Democratic Republic of Congo's top atomic energy official is being held over allegations of uranium smuggling.

Atomic energy centre director Fortunat Lumu and an aide have been questioned since their arrest on Tuesday.

A large quantity of uranium is reported to have gone missing in recent years, although state prosecutor Tshimanga Mukeba did not reveal any figures.

He told the BBC an "important quantity" of uranium was taken from the nuclear centre and they were investigating.

DR Congo's daily newspaper Le Phare reported that more than 100 bars of uranium as well as an unknown quantity of uranium contained in helmet-shaped cases, had disappeared from the nuclear centre in Kinshasa as part of a vast trafficking of the material going back years.

But the BBC's Kinshasa correspondent, Arnaud Zajtman, says that as of yet, no evidence has been made public to support the allegations made by the newspaper.

It would be very intersting to know just how far back "years" entails, and who received the missing uranium. My completely unsubstantiated guess is that it ended up somewhere warm and sandy.

Breaking: Suspicious Package Found on White House Grounds

At least that is the screamer running across the top of this ABC News article at the moment. Curiously, this screamer is absent on the front page.

Nothing yet from CNN or Fox News. Will update as info comes in, but note that in the past, very little has come from similiar scares, and chucking a box over the fence isn't quite a credible threat in most instances.

Update: Bad Info? The screamer (above) was pulled within seconds of this post going up. Apparently nothing to see here, move along...

Patriotic American Suggests Spray-Painting Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall during Anti-War Protest

An IndyMedia poster has suggested bringing spraypaint to deface the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial in Washington, D.C. during an anti-war rally on March 17.

It is not known if Ramsey Clark, Maxine Waters, Cynthia McKinney, Medea Benjamin or the leaders of the eight Islamic organizations sponsoring the event have any knowledge of these or similar plans by the activists they've attracted, though they are aware of a counter-demonstration by a conglomeration of veterans' groups and concerned citizens called A Gathering of Eagles, which will be at the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial to protect it from just the kind of attack promoted on IndyMedia.

Cindy Sheehan, who plans on attending the anti-war protest, derided the veterans as "abused and misused in your war of choice" (referring to Vietnam) and stated that these veterans were "poor misguided, brainwashed and propagandized."

(h/t antimedia)

Frontline Voices

On Monday, Newsbusters brought us a post about a visit to Iraq by NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams, revealing the following:

Visiting Iraq, NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams learned from Army officers that Iraqis want U.S. forces to remain in their country, from NBC News Baghdad reporter Richard Engel that Al-Sadr's insurgents have stepped down and are counting on pressure from anti-war opponents to provide them with victory, and from retired General and NBC News military analyst Wayne Downey that U.S. troops are proud of their mission. Traveling with Lieutenant General Ray Odierno for stories on his Monday newscast, Williams ran a clip of Army Colonel John Charlton proclaiming that Iraqis “do not want us to leave” and a soundbite from Army Lt. Colonel Charles Ferry who asserted: "The people here are very glad to see us.” Williams marveled: "You just said, 'They don't want us to leave.' That's the tenth time today I've heard that. I've got to go back to the States and do a newscast that every night has another politician or 12 of them saying, 'We have got to get out of that godforsaken place.'

MSNBC.com provides a version of Williams' story as well, closing with LTC Ferry's comments on the discrepancy between what American (mostly Democrat) politicians are saying about retreating in defeat, and the Iraqi civilian claim that they want us to stay and that they are happy we are there.

As for the morale of our soldiers, Micheal Yon noted in his dispatch "Meanwhile" yesterday (my bold):

There’s a lot of talk back at home that morale among American forces is low here. While writing this, I called Rich Oppel from the New York Times, who is in Baghdad, to ask him how morale looked from his vantage. Rich said that a lot of the soldiers are not happy with the extensions of their tours, something I have heard soldiers complain about also. However, I watch morale very closely. More closely than all else. Low morale in a particular unit can be the result of poor leadership in that unit, or just not getting mail, for instance. But gauging morale is not a simple affair of asking a few soldiers. A person has to live with them across Iraq. Having done so, my opinion is that overall troop morale is good to high. (If their morale could be bottled, it would probably would sell like crack, then be outlawed.)

Brian Williams, Richard Engle and GEN(R) Wayne Downing in Iraq experiencing some "technical dificulties" with their communications gear. Exclusive photo courtesy of Michael Yon, who is staying "just a few tents down" from them.

Iraqi civilians are telling our soldiers that they are happy they are there (something I've noticed not just in Ramadi, but in Baghdad and elsewhere). Obviously, not everyone is delighted with our presence—the militias, insurgents, terrorists, and criminal gangs in Iraq, and politicians, anti-war activists and many journalists worldwide come to mind—but the average Iraqi knows that the best chance they have of securing peace in their nation must rely on American forces backing Iraqi forces until the Iraqis alone are capable of providing their own security.

In the meantime, early reports on the Baghdad security operations thus far are carefully optimistic:

...the Bush administration says the president's decision to send more troops into Iraq is showing some "encouraging signs," though "too early" to call a success.

President Bush listed some of those "encouraging signs" in an address to American veterans.

They include the deployment of additional Iraqi army brigades in Baghdad, lifting restrictions on coalition forces to secure the capital, and rounding up more than 700 Shia extremists and large weapons caches.

The locals appear to be noting the changes as well.

Since us and Iraqi troops made their joint push into Baghdad, streets are getting busier. Stores that were closed down are re-opening and murders are down.

There has even been little resistance in Sadr City.

The last time American troops tried to secure this section of Baghdad they were met by Moqtada al Sadr's Mahdi militia.

"If there's one thing that has jumped out at me, this being the edge of Sadr City, it's been how well we've been received by the people, how friendly a reception we've gotten," said U.S. Army Captain Noll.

U.S. soldiers taking part in a search during Baghdad security operations two weeks ago. Photo courtesy of Michael Yon.

Presently, 21,500 U.S. soldiers are slowly building up in a "surge" to help the Iraqi government's security operations, and the Pentagon may request up to 7,000 more troops as operations expand into al Anbar province. As Brian Williams seemed to note in his broadcast (available at Hot Air), we can help the Iraqis secure their country, if only certain politicians would simply stop trying to undermine the effort.

New Democrat Plan: Bleed Slower

Thanks be to Allah, for knowing a rat in sheep's clothing when he sees one:

House Democrats are pushing to add billions of dollars to President Bush's $93.4 billion request for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, including $900 million for troops suffering from brain injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder.

An additional $2.5 billion would go to strengthen training and readiness for forces not deployed in war zones, and $1.4 billion would go to address housing allowance shortfalls.

At the same time, the Pentagon said Tuesday it needs about $1 billion more to support Bush's decision to send 21,500 additional combat troops to Iraq. It also said it has decided against using the pending supplemental bill to procure combat and cargo aircraft, few if any of which could have been built in time to affect the war.

The $1 billion would support at least 4,000 additional support troops, Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England told the House Budget Committee. Up to a total of 7,000 support troops might needed, England said.

The Democratic add-ons for military health care, readiness and mine-resistant vehicles are aimed in part at making the bill more attractive to lawmakers, including Republicans who might be considering voting against the measure over language that would curb deployments of troops to Iraq who have had insufficient rest or training or who already had served there for more than a year.

Democrats are, as Allah notes, attempting to craft a "poison pill" of a bill:

The proposed compromise is a diluted version of Murtha’s slow bleed except instead of funding being cut off if troops are deployed without having met certain readiness levels, Bush would have the option of waiving the necessary certifications — as long as he does so publicly. They’re willing to continue paying for the war they hate, in other words; they just want to keep Bush’s face on the mission and make sure KIAs going forward can be blamed on inadequate training (a la Murtha blaming Haditha on “fatigue”) instead of enemy action.

Democrats aren't any less willing to lose the war than they were before, they're just more craven in their methods.

Michael Yon: Meanwhile

Why actually learning about the war from those who are there, matters:

With the odometer running over many embeds, Mellinger has taken me about 4,000 miles (total) up and down Iraqi roads, visiting units from north to south, east to west, showing that the military truly opens their doors to writers who will stick it out. They don’t even have to like you: my fights with the Army are well-known, yet they continue to open their doors. There’s a lesson in there. I wrote that Iraq was in a civil war shortly after covering the first elections. I wrote about commanders who did poorly, and ISF units that couldn’t shoot straight, and I wrote about the veneer of victory in Afghanistan cracking under the weight of a poppy-fueled Taliban resurgence. Yet they still let me in.

It’s a reminder of why I am so proud of my country, despite our many problems. It’s also a caution about why we must stick with our people who have been mostly abandoned at war. I understand the position of the journalists. Especially the ones who get blown up or shot at fairly regularly, but the informed interest of ordinary Americans is critical to the outcome of this war. And the truth is that our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, most of whom rarely (if ever) see a writer, are abandoned by default.

As always with Yon's dispatches, read the whole thing.

Final Deep Thought on The Libby Conviction, Before I Dismiss It For Eternity For The Relatively Minor Case That It Is

Thank God Scooter Libby was convicted. If he been acquitted, an irate Jane Hamsher would have depleted the global supply of black ink for months.

Bin Laden Brother-in-Law Killed

Not new, but new to me.

Jamal Khalifa, Osama bin Laden’s brother-in-law and mercenary recruited, was instrumental in recruitirg more than 1,000 young Filipino Muslims, including Abdurajak Abubakar Janjalani, to the Afghanistan jihad against the former Soviet Union was killed in Madagascar recently.

Reports said Khalifa was shot dead by unidentified gunmen in Madagascar. Agence France-Presse quoted Khalifa’s brother as telling the Dubai-based Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya television, that a gang of 25 to 30 people raided Khalifa’s room. Khalifa, who traded in gems, “was killed in cold blood while sleeping in his room" his brother, Malek, said.

There doesn't seem to be any evidence that Khalifa had recent contact with bin Laden, or that the death was necessarily anything other than crime-related.

Libby Verdict to be Delivered at Noon

Breaking.

Details to follow.

Update: Guilty on four of five counts:

Former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby has been found guilty on four of five counts in his perjury and obstruction of justice trial.

Libby, 56, faces a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison and a fine of $1 million.

Libby was convicted of:

• obstruction of justice when he intentionally deceived a grand jury investigating the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame;
• making a false statement by intentionally lying to FBI agents about a conversation with NBC newsman Tim Russert;
• perjury when he lied in court about his conversation with Russert;
• a second count of perjury when he lied in court about conversations with other reporters.

Jurors cleared him of a second count of making a false statement relating to a conversation he had with Matt Cooper of Time magazine.

I fully expect Tom Maguire to have an analysis posted at Just One Minute.

The netroots will assuredly go nuts over this for days.

Hot Air is already all over it.

Update: How long do you think it will be before Bush pardons Libby? Will he wait for the appeals process to exhaust itself, will he sign off as he leaves office in 2009?

No Room for Success

At least that is what we find via memeorandum.com, as a poster using the pseudonym "Chris in Paris writes on liberal Americablog:

Nine US troops killed in explosions during combat, just on the heels of 28 Iraqis killed Monday in yet another round of bombings. Yesterday I heard plenty of chatter from the pro-war crowd who talked about the great successes of the latest campaign but I've been unable to see a change and hear of the same old bloody mess day after day. How much blood is enough for the pro-war crowd?

Shaun Mullen at The Moderate Voice writes:

The downtick in stories in the prints, on TV and online about violence in Baghdad is encouraging and would seem to be a result of the onset of Operation Imposing Law, the so-called “surge” security crackdown in the capital.

But the relative calm is illusory. Anti-American cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr has withdrawn to Iran and his Mahdi Army and ethnic cleansing squads have withdrawn into the shadows, and I suspect that it’s only a matter of time before the surge is declared a success, both cleric and army are heard from again and the downtick is history.

Then there are the tireless cheerleaders like Omar, who blogs at Iraq the Model and has been writing for Pajamas Media. Omar’s latest sighting of the light at the end of the tunnel was dutifully picked up by Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit:

“Violent incidents are still decreasing in number and impact in Baghdad. Yesterday for instance the only reported incident was the abduction of an adviser to the minister of defense by gunmen in western Baghdad. It was less than 24 hours until the security forces succeeded in freeing the abducted general and arresting 4 of his captors.”

It is not my intention to deprecate Omar and Glenn. They mean well and I too want the security crackdown to succeed. But I winced when I read Omar’s words because I knew that it was only a matter of time before the calm was shattered.

In fact, it was less than 12 hours after he posted his wishful thinking that a suicide car bomber detonated explosives in a book market along busy Mutanabi Street in central Baghdad, killing 28 people and wounding 56 others. (Details here on the blast and deaths of nine U.S. soldiers north of the capital.)

Yes, Baghdad is a big place and the security sweep is currently focused in the Sadr City slum district. Troops cannot be everywhere. But in a war characterized by abysmally poor planning followed by four years of missteps, it is not merely premature to declare that Operation Imposing Law is going well after so short a time, it is folly.

Perhaps I'm reading too much into these comments, but "Chris in Paris" and Shaun Mullen both seem to be purposefully obtuse.

Yes, nine soldiers from Task Force Lighting died in two separate IED attacks north of Baghdad, and 28 Iraqis died Monday, just as 14 more Iraqis died nationwide today. I have little doubt that more Coalition soldiers and Iraqi civilians will die tomorrow, and the day after that. People die in war.

But what "Chris in Paris" either cannot see in the very account he cited, or perhaps prefers not to see, is that not one of the deaths cited over the past two days in Iraq reported by this CNN article came through the once common practice of sectarian death squads kidnapping Iraqi citizens, torturing them, and dumping their bodies in the streets.

Mullen is right to be cautious, but he too, is far more pessimistic than objective, and apparently almost willing to declare any minor setback during the security plan as evidence of failure.

This past Saturday, Arab news broadcasts from Al-Jazeera, Al-Arabiya, Al-Sharqiya, Al-Hurra, Al-Iraqiya, Al-Fourat, Al-Baghdadiya, and Al-Sumariya --eight television stations in all-- did not issue a single account of sectarian kidnappings, torture and murder in Baghdad. None.

That is not a positive change?

On Sunday, more than a thousand U.S. and Iraqi soldiers swept through Sadr City, home of the Madhi Army, without a single shot being fired in opposition. On that day, just one Baghdadi, an editor of the independent Al Mashriq newspaper, was killed when a kidnapping attempt failed in what was almost assuredly a targeted attempt, not a random death squad act.

That is not a positive change?

29 members of al Qaeda have been captured across Iraq, including the two brothers of Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq. In the same article they mention that Fuad Ahmed al-Mufraji, an assassination specialist dubbed "arrested the most dangerous man in northern Iraq," was also captured.

This follows on the heels of a battle last week where Iraqi forces routed an al Qaeda attack on a village in al Anbar, capturing 50 terrorists and killing 80.

These are not a positive changes?

Iraq is not a safe country by any stretch of the imagination, and the high points noted above are perhaps transitory in nature, but they are real, and they do show at least temporary improvements. It is a pity that both critics seem unwilling to weigh these concrete successes equally with setbacks both real and possible.

"Chris in Paris," and Shaun Mullen with him, seem intent on seeing only what they want to see. Are they ideologically immune to any accounts the show the slightest signs of improvement in Iraq?

It seems that like so many opponents of the war, they have far too much emotionally invested in failure.

She Just Can't Help It

Ann Coulter just labeled John Edwards' campaign manager a terrorist supporter.

IT'S ALWAYS GOOD TO DIVERT BONIOR FROM HIS PRINCIPAL PASTIME WHICH IS FRONTING FOR ARAB TERRORISTS.

I've got a screen capture as well, should the comment disappear.

I suppose it is just a matter of time before Coulter takes a sudden fancy to Kevin Federline.

The Air Bodies

Let's reorder a couple of key paragraphs from this New York Times article to make it more chronologically consistant, and see if you can tell what's missing:

On Sunday night, American forces at a small base in Tape Ahmed Beg, in Kapisa Province, northeast of the capital, Kabul, came under rocket fire at 9 p.m., the United States military said in a statement. When two men with Kalashnikov rifles were spotted entering a compound, the Americans called an airstrike, which ended the engagement, it said. [paragraph 5]

Nine members of a family, including five women and three children, were killed in an American airstrike in central Afghanistan late Sunday during a battle with militants, Afghan officials said Monday. [paragraph 1]

What is obviously missing from this story is the status of the two men with AK-pattern rifles that were the trigger for the airstrike.

Did they somehow survive the strike? Were the killed along with the five women and three children? Why did they retreat to that particular compound? Were they possibly returning to their own homes? Did they vanish into thin air?

As far as these curiously incurious reporters are concerned, that answer appears to be just as good as any.

Collateral Damage

It has been a rough weekend for American forces in Afghanistan. In two separate instances, U.S. forces engaged with Taliban and al Qaeda forces have killed approximately 19 Afghan civilians, according to the U.K. Guardian:

Two incidents involving American forces have left around 19 Afghan civilians dead since yesterday, prompting furious protests against the US and Nato. In the first incident, up to 10 civilians were killed yesterday as a convoy of US marines fled after being attacked by a suicide bomber in a minivan in eastern Nangarhar province.

Nine Afghan witnesses said US marines had fired indiscriminately on civilian cars and pedestrians as they sped away, the Associated Press reported.

The US military said it was unclear what had happened and militant gunmen may have been to blame for the deaths.

Then today Afghan officials said nine civilians had been killed after a Nato air strike hit a house during a firefight between US forces and militants, killing nine Afghans who lived there.

Civilians die in war. No matter how many precautions we take, no matter how careful we try to be to target only combatants, our enemies purposefully hide among civilians, dress as civilians, and use occupied civilian dwellings as impromptu fortresses.

It is because of this that I have some reservations about the nature of the protests levied again U.S. and NATO forces in the wake of these two incidents. While any civilian life snuffed out by terrorists is worth the same as those killed by NATO forces, few Afghan protests seem to value these deaths equally, or if those protests do exist, they unerringly fail to attract worldwide media attention.

That is odd, considering how this particular media account concluded:

The US-based Human Rights Watch has estimated that more than 100 Afghan civilians died as a result of Nato and coalition assaults in 2006.

A count by the Associated Press, based on reports from Afghan, Nato and coalition officials, puts the overall civilian death toll in 2006 at 834, most from militant attacks.

If the accounts from Human Rights Watch and the Associated Press are close to correct, the Taliban and al Qaeda kill more Afghan civilians than do coalition forces by a ratio of roughly 8-1. Despite this huge disparity, I cannot recall the last time I read a media account where the civilian death toll exacted by these Islamist forces led to widespread protests.

Do Afghan citizens simply not care when their friends and relatives are killed by the Taliban or al Qaeda? I find that rather hard to believe.

Could it be that the same civilians who chant "Death to America! Death to Karzai!" today, do so knowing that they will suffer no retaliatory strikes from Taliban spies in their midst, fearing that if they protested the murders caused by the Islamists, that they would suffer a far worse fate than usually visited by a bullet or bomb? I suspect this is the case to a certain extent, and find it rather uncritical of the professional media not to notice nor report on this discrepancy.

It is a shame that civilians die in war, but equally shameful that the media frames the accounts of what transpired they way they have.

The events around the Nangarhar incident are very much up in the air, but the Guardian is almost libelous in their purposeful neglect of detail in describing the airstrike on the house in Kapisa.

They state:

...today Afghan officials said nine civilians had been killed after a Nato air strike hit a house during a firefight between US forces and militants, killing nine Afghans who lived there.

The air strike came after militants had fired on a Nato base in Kapisa province, just north of Kabul.

Later a house was hit, killing five women, three boys and a man, said Sayad Mohammad Dawood Hashimmi, Kapisa's deputy governor.

The Guardian presents the story of this airstrike in such a way as to make it seem like the airstrike may have accidentally hit a house full of civilians.

This is not the truth.

After the rocket attack on the NATO base, armed militants were observed retreating into the Afghan home. In a defensive measure, U.S forces called in a precision strike that leveled the building where the Taliban terrorists had retreated.

It was the Taliban that brought fire down on the "five women, three boys and a man" by using that home as a fighting position. It would be nice for the "professional" journalists at the Guardian and other news outlets to reveal that fact, but apparently, such facts only get in the way of the story they prefer to tell.

Accuracy, it seems, is also "collateral damage."

650,000 Iraqis Have Died, Or...

...the Lancet Study is politically-driven fake news cooked up by a group of anti-war Democrat scientists that should probably be fired for academic fraud.

I called this study complete and utter crap months ago, but neve thought they'd stoop as far as the article indicates they may have.

Heh. Allahpundit notes the "perils of using stringers" to conduct reporting.

On that note, it might be worth mentioning that I'll be on KSFO 560 With Lee Rodgers & Melanie Morgan this morning discussing that other stringer-generated scandal, starring our favorite Iraqi Police Captain that never existed.

You can listen via online streaming at 6:05 PST/9:05 EST at KSFO 560 via the "listen now" link.

Update: For those of you who might have missed it, the KSFO interview will be replayed on the internet at 1:10PM Eastern time today at www.ksfo.com (click on LISTEN NOW).

For those of you just coming to this story, I'd recommend that you read the following:

J-Damn

The Jamil Hussein Name Game -- Iraqi General Weighs In

Iraqi General Disputes AP Claim on Jamil Hussein

AP Re-Enters Hurriyah; Is Unable to Find Lost Credibility

AP: The Art of the Dodge

And last but not least:

Hurriyah: Where We Go From Here

According to the Iraqi Interior Ministry spokesman, "Jamil Hussein" never existed, and the Associated Press story of January 4 released by Steven R. Hurst is an apparent fabrication.

The Associated Press is apparently far more interested in burying any story that shows that their Hurriyah reporting was inaccurate, or that they allegedly used a falsified name for a source against their own code of ethics, than they are in transparent or accurate reporting.

Why am I not surprised?

Vile Coulter Does It Again

Should we bomb Connecticut, kill their pundits, and convert them to Christianity?

Ann Coulter is a verbal suicide bomber, willing to blow away her credibility and that of those around her for a few extra moments of infamy. Sooner or later, CPAC and other conservative and Republican groups are going to learn that Coulter is far more interested in promoting herself than any ideology they share.

Captain Ed said it a bit more tactfully than I might, but he said it well:

At some point, Republicans will need to get over their issues with homosexuality. Regardless of whether one believes it to be a choice or a hardwired response, it has little impact on anyone but the gay or lesbian person. We can argue that homosexuality doesn't require legal protection, but not when we have our front-line activists referring to them as "faggots" or worse. That indicates a disturbing level of animosity rather than a true desire to allow people the same rights and protections regardless of their lifestyles.

Ann Coulter can be an entertaining and incisive wit. Unfortunately, she can also be a loose cannon, and CPAC might want to consider that the next time around.

Ann Coulter stopped being an asset for conservatives a long time ago. I think it is time we move on past her.

So While We're Here, Would You Like a Swatch?

Just when we least expected it, the Swiss accidentally invaded Liechtenstein:

What began as a routine training exercise almost ended in an embarrassing diplomatic incident after a company of Swiss soldiers got lost at night and marched into neighboring Liechtenstein.

According to Swiss daily Blick, the 170 infantry soldiers wandered just over a mile across an unmarked border into the tiny principality early Thursday before realizing their mistake and turning back.

A spokesman for the Swiss army confirmed the story but said that there were unlikely to be any serious repercussions for the mistaken invasion.

Swiss Army knives are apparently far better than Swiss Army compasses.

Long Ago and Far Away (From Mattering)

Other than the faintly Clintonesque stink surrounding it, Jules Crittenden captures everything I wanted to say about the latest presidential candidate scandal (right down to the Monty Python reference) in Sins of the Great-Great-Great Grandfather.

Rumors of War

Correspondent: What do you think of the new Security Plan? Answer quickly… before the next explosion! [Al Bayyna Al Jadidah Newspaper] (1 MAR)

As we all know, the Baghdad Security Plan (BSP) has been underway for several weeks, and while it is far to early to judge how effective the program will be, the opinion of how the plan is progressing among Baghdadis is almost as important as any measurable yardsticks gauging success.

This morning, I was provided with a copy of an Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) newsletter, THE BAGHDAD MOSQUITO, 2 March 2007, Volume IV, Edition 1257.

The newsletter tracks accounts in the Iraqi media (newspapers, television, and radio), and perhaps as importantly, public opinion and commonly-shared rumors.

Here is a selection of some of the more interesting rumors and Iraqi opinion as related to OSINT yesterday, March 1, from Iraqi citizens. Please keep in mind these are rumors, and may or may not be true:

• Sharqiya TV channel discovered from a secret source that a few days ago, Muqtada Al Sadr called his high level associates, including those in the government, and told them to leave Iraq within 12 hours.
• Sunnis believe that the new Baghdad Security Plan (BSP) has focused only on Sunni areas. Interestingly, when Iraqi forces conduct solo raids without US forces, they make mass arrests of Sunnis without any concrete charges. When these same forces accompany US forces, only one or two Sunnis are arrested. The one or two that are arrested are usually arrested due to their possession of forbidden medium or heavy weapons.
• Around three or four days ago, residents in the Kadhimiya area of Baghdad captured an Afghan suicide bomber. However, rather than turning the bomber over to coalition forces, the Mahdi Army attempted to interrogate the man but were unable to so they executed hi on the spot. It is believed the bomber was going to detonate himself in Kadhimiya Shrine.
• Iran is sponsoring Al Qaida in Iraq’s activities in concert with pro-Iranian elements inside the Iraqi government. Iran provides funding and weapons to Al Qaida. Al Qaida then purposely operates in Sunni areas, where there may or may not be any actual Sunni resistance. Once Al Qaida begins its activities in a given Sunni area, pro-Iranian elements in the government advise the MNF that operations should be conducted in that area. Once MNF approval is given, then preferably Iraqi forces, under the cover of anti-Al Qaida operations, conduct ethnic cleansing and displacement operations of the targeted Sunni area.
• Recently, since the beginning of the new BSP, a Shiite family that had been displaced returned to the Mansour area of Baghdad. When asked why they returned, the father of the family stated they came back because the Mahdi Army commander that had displaced them has been arrested by US forces.

The next group of rumors should be called, "Everybody hates Al Mahdi."

• Some Iraqis believe that the US was behind the recent attempted assassination of VP Adil Abd Al Mahdi. They point out that the US searched the area in question an hour or two before the bombing occurred.
• Some Iraqis believe that the recent attempted assassination of VP Abd Al Mahdi was a joint effort between the Sadr Movement and Dawa Party who both fear that Abd Al Mahdi will take the PM position from current PM, Nuri Al Maliki.
• Some Iraqis believe that the recent attempted assassination of VP Abd Al Mahdi was carried out by forces related to former PM Ayad Allawi, who wants to take the PM position from current PM, Nuri Al Maliki.

And as promised, here is the OSINT report on how different sects view the new Baghdad Security Plan (BSP):

How Is The New Baghdad Security Plan (BSP) Going?

The group’s views on this question differed by their sects and the areas in which they live. A snapshot of some Baghdad areas follows.

The Dora area is witnessing daily clashes between the residents there and Iraqi forces because the residents do not and will not, accept the presence of Iraqi forces without their being accompanied by the US. This is based on the residence distrust of the Iraqi forces due to militia/Iranian infiltration of these forces and the mass arrests/kidnappings that have occurred there in the past. The residents are very appreciative of recent US efforts to provide them with fuel and heaters, as well as that the US forced the current Iraqi government to provide them with electricity. The people of Dora say they will accept a US/Iraqi Combat Outpost BUT until the residents can trust the Iraqi forces, only Sunni military members should be part of such an outpost. This includes a Sunni commander of these forces.

One area that has not improved with the new BSP is the Saydia/Bayaa area. This area is still witnessing displacements, kidnappings, and assassinations. However, militia and/or terrorist activity is not conducted in the open. Snipers are operating from the roofs of homes and buildings in the area. There have been a few US patrols but not many.

The Kadhimiya area of Baghdad has changed some. Prior to the new BSP this area was fairly calm due to the majority Shiite population and militia provided security. There is now more of a US patrol presence in the area and the militias no longer appear out in the open. However, when an event does occur, Mahdi Army members still appear on very short notice, as witnessed by Rumor # 9 above [note: this related to the rumor of the Afghan suicide bomber executed by the Madhi Army militia -- ed]. Services were and still are fairly good in this area.

The Mansour area has not changed much with the new BSP. The pattern for this area, as before, continues to be quiet days with little or no activity, to days of intense attacks and clashes. There are also still sporadic clashes between Sunni and Shiite militias in this area as well as kidnappings and assassinations between the two sects.

The area that has probably benefited the most under the new BSP is the Shaab/Hay Urr area of NE Baghdad. A Sunni resident reported that when the plan began, US forces conducted raids against suspected militia/terrorist targets which ahs succeeded in forcing the Mahdi Army out of this area. The Mahdi Army had been exercising heavy handed control of this area previously. Prior to the new plan, residents report finding five to ten bodies every morning and the control of the markets there by Mahdi Army though extortion. Now, there is no noticeable presence of militia. Some families that had been displaced have returned and the markets and neighborhoods are becoming lively again. The residents credit this improvement to the US forces efforts to chase the Mahdi Army from the area and the presence of the US Combat Outpost there as well.

Overall this week, Iraqis are more pessimistic about the new BSP than they were last week. This week’s pessimism is related to the continuing lack of confidence in the current Iraqi government which transfers into a lack of confidence in the Iraqi Army and Iraqi Police. The group continues, for the most part, to believe that the current Iraqi government is still full of corruption and overwhelming Iranian influence.

In short, the Baghdadis interviewed may or may not be impressed with the BSP as executed thus far, depending on what they've seen in their neighborhoods, and what sect they belong to.

In areas where Coalition forces have been active (especially U.S forces), the residents seem to have a better opinion of how the plan is progressing. In areas where the plan is being implemented primarily by Iraqi forces, which many Sunnis do not trust, the plan is not seen as working, and it has led to conflict... which shouldn't be all that surprising, as government forces are focusing operations on stomping out the Sunni insurgents operating there, and have been accused in the past of operating as cover for Madhi Army death squads.

Areas where U.S. combat outposts have been established seem to be displacing the Madhi Army militiamen, and while it is far too early to know if a long-term change will result, these areas seem for the present to be "becoming lively again," and the residents credit U.S. forces.

Iraqi opinion overall is mixed, but more pessimistic, and this is likely due to expectations (or at least hopes) that the new BSP would reduce violence across all areas of Baghdad as soon as it began, and for those people who are not in the neighborhoods being secured first, there is some obvious disappointment.

The opinions contained in this edition of THE BAGHDAD MOSQUITO seem to reinforce the importance of the plan to "surge" more American forces into Baghdad over the next weeks and months.

It seems that regardless of whether the neighborhood is Shia, Sunni, or mixed, they seem to have more confidence in U.S. forces to be able to help bring security, at least in the short term. Sunni Baghdadis seem more receptive to U.S. forces than they do the Shia-dominated Iraqi police and military, but they do seem willing to accept predominately Sunni military units with Sunni commanders acting in conjunction with U.S. forces.

It is important to note that the BSP/"surge" is only in its opening stages, but that most citizens hope it will succeed. The downside of what they are reporting is that the changes have not been uniform nor widespread, and that Iraqis simply do not yet have faith in their own forces to enforce the plan equally across sectarian lines.

Standing on Their Own: The View From Amiriyat al Falluja

While much of the blogosphere today seems focused on John McCain's announcement that he's zzzzz... ah, um, running for President (and being a putz), or which side of the blogosphere is the most profane, and the "professional" media is glued to Anna Nicole Smith's burial plans, Reuters has produced a story about the war in Iraq that seems to be having a very difficult time finding the front page.

Iraqi security forces killed dozens of al Qaeda militants who attacked a village in western Anbar province on Wednesday, during fierce clashes that lasted much of the day, police officials said on Thursday.

Sunni tribal leaders are involved in an escalating power struggle with Sunni al Qaeda for control of Anbar, a vast desert province that is the heart of the Sunni Arab insurgency in Iraq.

Interior Ministry spokesman Abdul Karim Khalaf said foreign Arabs and Afghanis were among some 80 militants killed and 50 captured in the clashes in Amiriyat al Falluja, a village where local tribes had opposed al Qaeda.

A police official in the area, Ahmed al-Falluji, put the number of militants killed at 70, with three police killed.

If you read the entire article, you'll note something that should be of great interest to readers here in the United States: when al Qaeda attacked the village, residents of this Anbar province town turned not to the U.S. military to take back their homes, but Iraqi security forces, and it was these Iraqi security forces, with no U.S. military involvement at all, that crushed the al Qaeda attack.

Amiriyat al Falluja is only a small town in western Iraq, and it is by no measure the largest battle here in Anbar's past or future, but this battle still bears noting. Why? It is the embodiment of what both Democrats and Republicans should be hoping for in regards to the future of Iraq.

In this town, on this day, Iraqi soldiers and policemen fought a pitched battle against a sizable force of al Qaeda fighters, and prevailed without our guidance, and without our intervention. They won this battle convincingly, standing on their own. What's more, the local citizens trusted them to be able to do so.

This is perhaps an isolated incident in an isolated corner of the western Iraqi desert, but it is, after all, exactly what we've hoped for. Iraqi policemen and soldiers came through for their fellow Iraqi citizens, and carried the day. We've been waiting for such news for four long years.

It's a shame that few of us in this country seem destined to ever hear about it.