Iraq War Saves Iraqi Lives?

Via Ace, something at Say Anything that qualifies as fascinating if true:

According to figures from the CIA World Factbook there are roughly 864,588 live births in Iraq every year (about 31.44 for every 1,000 citizens). In 2003 there was an infant mortality rate in Iraq of 55.16 per 1,000 births, or about 47,690 infant deaths.

In 2006 that infant mortality rate has dropped to 48.64 deaths per 1,000 births. Or about 42,503 infant deaths/year. Or about 5,187 fewer dead infants every year than in 2003.

So is it safe to say that we’ve saved roughly (and these numbers are, admittedly, very rough) 15,000 infant lives since invading Iraq? I think that would be in the ballpark.

And just think of that. 15,000 lives saved.

The anti-war folks may be quick to respond to that number with talk about the approximate 62,570 Iraqi civilians who have died in Iraq since the invasion over four years ago, a number that works out to about 15,323 dead civilians a year, but I’d point out that fewer Iraqis are dying now in the violence in Iraq than were dying under Saddam’s cruel regime.

According to this article the Documental Centre for Human Rights in Iraq has compiled information on over 600,000 civilian executions in Iraq under Saddam Hussein’s regime. That’s probably low as its just the executions we know about and it doesn’t include those who died because Saddam diverted money from the UN’s humanitarian oil-for-food program into his own coffers, but we’ll use it anyway. If we consider that Saddam Hussein was in power for 24 years, those 600,000 executions puts his yearly death toll at about 25,000/year.

So even with a conservative estimate as to the number of civilian deaths under Saddam there are still 10,000 fewer civilian deaths in that country per year now.

I think these figures and the conclusions reached are very much open for criticism, and I, for one, think Rob Port may be wrong with his figures.

Let's use another set of figures that Port chose not to use, those that estimate the numbers of Iraqis and other local regional military and civilian lives killed as a result of Saddam's two elective wars, the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War, and the 1990-91 Gulf War, to get a better idea of those casualties directly attributed to Saddam's regime prior to the 2003 invasion.

After all, it hardly seems fair to factor in Iraqi casualties that were a result of our 2003 invasion, without also factoring in casualty estimates that were a result of Saddam's invasions as well.

Wikipedia notes that roughly a half million Iranians, including Iranian soldiers, militiamen, and civilians were killed or wounded as a result of Saddam's first elective war, and Iraq suffered roughly 375,000 casualties to soldiers, militias and civilians.

Hard numbers are tough to come by and may never specifically be known, but for the sake of argument, let's estimate that of the 875,000 total casualties, that 25-percent were fatalities. This gives us a rough estimate of fatalities of 218,750 for this war.

Also worth noting are the number of deaths of Iraqis that can be linked to Saddam's 1990 invasion of Kuwait and his 1991 expulsion.

Once again :Wikipedia notes that the estimates are imprecise, but that Iraqi's army probably suffered about 20,000 military casualties. The Wikipedia entry doesn't mention the Kuwaiti deaths that resulted from Saddam's invasion. I'll thrown out an even 1,000 for argument's sake, and will update if anyone can find an accurate source.

All told, combining these new figures with those compiled by Rob Port and cited above, means that Saddam is responsible for roughly 839,750 deaths, even when excluding all Coalition casualties that resulted in expelling Saddam's military from Kuwait in 1991 through today.

When combat deaths resulting from his elective wars are added to his civilian executions, Saddam was responsible for about 34,990 deaths/year during his reign, not 25,000 deaths/year.

This would apparently mean that there are far more than 10,000 military and civilian lives in the region being saved per year as result of our invasion, but those numbers are open to be challenged, due to my well known personal incompatibility with anything resembling math.

ABC News: Reaching, Failing Yet Again, and My Fleeting Affair with Holly Hunter

It is getting increasingly difficult to describe stories published by ABC News as anything remotely approaching competent journalism.

Today, ABC runs the headline Va. Tech Shooter, Victim Linked to Gun Range, in an attempt to establish a connection between Seung-Hui Cho and his first victim, Emily Hilscher.

The connection?

Cho used the Jefferson National Forest Firing Range at least three times in the six weeks prior to the Virginia Tech massacre. Heather Haugh, Emily Hilscher's roommate, said that Hilscher went to that range with her boyfriend Karl David Thornhill, perhaps even a month ago.

The ABC News reporter, Lara Setrakian, then states:

The link between Hilscher and Cho is unclear, but possibly crucial to understanding a motive behind the April 16 attack.

Interesting line. Setrakian essentially admits there is no clear link, but then speculates that a link that may not even exist is "possibly crucial to understanding a motive."

Setrakian presents no evidence that Cho and Hilscher were at the range at the same time, same day, or even the same week.

This is "crucial?" Do we blindly speculate much?

You know, I was in a sporting goods store some years ago in Middletown, NY, when actress Holly Hunter purchased a treadmill, and I actually helped her and the guy she was with load it. Does that prove we have some sort of relationship? Apparently it would to ABC News, as it is a far more concrete link than this Cho/Hilscher story.

Sadly, blind speculation and incompetence, along with outright, still uncorrected falsehoods, are sadly becoming the new journalistic standards of ABC News, where "ABC" seems to be defined as "anything but credible."

Holly, if you read this, and remotely remember that tender handful of seconds we almost had together almost talking in a Middletown, NY parking lot... call me.

Broadside

Ouch:

FOREMAN: Let me ask you quickly, Jim, there's been a lot made of the media improvements by the insurgents, that they're doing a great job of getting their message out. What are we going to see from our military as we move forward against that press machine, when they try to balance it?

HANSON: You make a good point. you forced me to point out you guys did put out a pretty heinous video of snipers, of the insurgents killing U.S. troops on CNN, so you guys to some extent helped them with their own propaganda.

That's gonna leave a mark.

Redstate Conspiracy Theorizing Conclusively Debunked

Last week I confronted RedState blog for a post by "streiff" attempting to say that they had a photo of an American GI "flipping off" an Associated Press photojournalist by the name of Maya Alleruzzo. Another Redstate contributor, "Thomas," went on further to claim that the picture in question was PhotoShopped.

Neither claim was true.

This is the photo in question:

The caption that ran with the photo at the time stated:

Staff Sgt Patrick Lockett 25, of Huntsville Alabama of Alpha Troop, 3rd Squadron, 1st Cavalry Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division patrols in Al Kargoulia, 25 miles (40 kilometers) east of Baghdad, Iraq, Fri., April 20, 2007. The 3rd Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division is back in Iraq for the third time since rolling into Baghdad in 2003. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

The caption incorrectly cites Lockett as a Staff Sgt, when he is actually a SFC, but that is a much more trivial matter. What does matter is that Redstate never issued a correction for their false claim, even when I sent them an email alerting them to my previous post, which clearly shows an CY-enhanced photo showing that the finger shown is actually SFC Lockett's trigger or index finger.

Clearly, Lockett was not "flipping off" the AP photographer.

Over the weekend I got in touch with MAJ Joseph (Joe) R. Sowers, 3rd HBCT/3rd ID Public Affairs Officer, who contacted the soldier in the picture, Lockett, directly.

Lockett clearly states:

In the picture, it is my trigger finger outside of my trigger well. I would never give a reporter, nor any Iraqi citizen, a middle finger. I am more professional than that. I am a SFC in the United States Army and proud of what I do.

Now that SFC Lockett himself unequivocally supported what the enhanced photo clearly shows, will "streiff" and "Thomas" at Redstate have the common decency to apologize for their incorrect claims and issue either a correction or a retraction? I certainly hope so. Their credibility hangs in the balance.

As for the Associated Press photojournalist, Lockett's commanding officer, COL Wayne Grigsby, had this to say:

In my opinion, Maya Alleruzzo is an excellent photojournalist who accurately portrayed the Sledgehammer Soldier executing his duties to standard, to include, his weapon on safe and his finger outside the trigger well.

Maya Alleruzzo is an excellent representation of the media. Her efforts allowed us to showcase the outstanding work of our great young Soldiers that we would otherwise have not been able to do. We consider her an honorary member of the Sledgehammer Team. We would welcome her back in the brigade at any time.

Journalists make mistakes. So do bloggers. The only way for any of us to maintain our credibility is to admit those mistakes, and attempt to correct the record.

I hope that Redstate will therefore correct their claims regarding SFC Lockett and photographer Maya Alleruzzo. They unfairly attacked the professionalism of SFC Lockett, and misrepresented the esteem with which the 3rd Heavy holds Alleruzzo, apparently for their own amusement.

Faced with the facts, Redstate should do the right thing and correct their inaccurate, defamatory post.

Update Mike Krempasky just discovered that the general comments form at Redstate has apparently been down for at least a week, which is why no one there got or responded to my messages.

Erick's response, on Redstate, however, is sad; a non-apology apology, blaming everyone else.

Another Police State Liberal Attempts to Subvert the Constitution

The Second and Fourth Amendments?

Toss them out the window.

Now, how would one disarm the American population? First of all, federal or state laws would need to make it a crime punishable by a $1,000 fine and one year in prison per weapon to possess a firearm. The population would then be given three months to turn in their guns, without penalty.

Second Amendment? Just ignore that.

But Bill Clinton's former Ambassador to the Congo isn't done yet: now comes the police state. If this liberal has his way, kiss your Fourth Amendment search and seizure rights goodbye as well:

The disarmament process would begin after the initial three-month amnesty. Special squads of police would be formed and trained to carry out the work. Then, on a random basis to permit no advance warning, city blocks and stretches of suburban and rural areas would be cordoned off and searches carried out in every business, dwelling, and empty building. All firearms would be seized. The owners of weapons found in the searches would be prosecuted: $1,000 and one year in prison for each firearm.

Mr. Simpson's staggering suggestion to subvert the Bill of Rights is not the first we've heard in the past weeks, but coming from a former American diplomat who was presumably charged with acting within Constitutional bounds, it is among the most disturbing.

Perhaps Simpson doesn't see the obvious irony that the Founders created the Second Amendment not to ensure hunting, but to protect American citizens from men precisely like himself.

To dismantle the Second, as John Adams noted in "A Defence of the Constitutions of the United States":

...is to demolish every constitution, and lay the laws prostrate, so that liberty can be enjoyed by no man; it is a dissolution of the government.

Patrick Henry warned:

Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined.

And not a Founder, but still important, are the words of Supreme Court Associate Justice Joseph Story:

The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them.

Story is not to subtly noting that would-be tyrants (like Simpson) that attempt to run roughshod over America's Constitution, and attempt to overwhelm the people with the power of the State (in the guise of his noted "special police"), are inviting an armed, violent, and morally just reprisal to restore and retain those hard-won liberties.

Scorched Earth

A Thomas Ricks article at the Washington Post points to an article in the Armed Forces Journal by Lt. Col. Paul Yingling that blasts the failures of the general officer corps (past and present) and politicians in preparing for and fighting the Long War.

It's simply brilliant.

I strongly urge you to read the entire article, and for that matter, bookmark it, so you can return to it later.

There will be many who will read Yingling's article and attempt to spin, twist or varnish it into an attack against particular generals (active duty or retired), specific Presidents, and specific Congresses.

To do so completely misunderstands the article, and the systemic nature of the problem.

What Yingling is attempting to convey, if I understand his article correctly, is that the problems being experienced by our military in Iraq today began a half century ago. The United States was successful in World War Two because of it's ability to fight a large-scale, highly mobile, high-tech war. As a result, the general staff of the time focused on their successes and built a military for the next half century to fight that kind of war. They never learned from French failures or limited successes in Indochina or Algeria, and therefore, repeated the same failures in Vietnam. The moderate successes and lessons that should have been learned as a result of this conflict by the military and the Executive and Legislative branches were quickly discarded.

As a result, we were not on any level prepared to engage in what should have been predictable counterinsurgency operations, and did not have any competent active duty or retired general officers to advise Congress or the Executive Branch.

Yingling is careful not to blame any specific individuals, and it bears repeating that no specific individuals should be blamed. This is an institutional problem crossing several institutions, civilian and military, going back decades.

There are those tempted to use Yingling's article to attack specific individuals (as indeed, WaPo's Ricks has done, as have several bloggers so far). More journalists and bloggers more interested in the sounds of their own voices and pushing their own agendas than actually learning something, will likely continue this trend.

Sadly, it seems, Yingling may be a modern day Cassandra, offering up prophetic advice that other chose to ignore.

But as Yingling concludes, all is not lost:

This article began with Frederick the Great's admonition to his officers to focus their energies on the larger aspects of war. The Prussian monarch's innovations had made his army the terror of Europe, but he knew that his adversaries were learning and adapting. Frederick feared that his generals would master his system of war without thinking deeply about the ever-changing nature of war, and in doing so would place Prussia's security at risk. These fears would prove prophetic. At the Battle of Valmy in 1792, Frederick's successors were checked by France's ragtag citizen army. In the fourteen years that followed, Prussia's generals assumed without much reflection that the wars of the future would look much like those of the past. In 1806, the Prussian Army marched lockstep into defeat and disaster at the hands of Napoleon at Jena. Frederick's prophecy had come to pass; Prussia became a French vassal.

Iraq is America's Valmy. America's generals have been checked by a form of war that they did not prepare for and do not understand. They spent the years following the 1991 Gulf War mastering a system of war without thinking deeply about the ever changing nature of war. They marched into Iraq having assumed without much reflection that the wars of the future would look much like the wars of the past. Those few who saw clearly our vulnerability to insurgent tactics said and did little to prepare for these dangers. As at Valmy, this one debacle, however humiliating, will not in itself signal national disaster. The hour is late, but not too late to prepare for the challenges of the Long War. We still have time to select as our generals those who possess the intelligence to visualize future conflicts and the moral courage to advise civilian policymakers on the preparations needed for our security. The power and the responsibility to identify such generals lie with the U.S. Congress. If Congress does not act, our Jena awaits us.

Yingling notes that we can still prepare to win the challenges of the Long War, a war that does not stop at the borders of Iraq or Afghanistan, and will likely and necessarily (and I stress this is my interpretation, not Yingling's) include actions in the Horn of Africa, Syria, Iran, and Pakistan at a minimum.

As Americans, we have the ability and resources to adapt to nearly any contingency. It falls upon us to make sure that our leadership, military and civilian, is constructed in such a way as to be able to properly engage the public in what is undoubtedly Our Children's Children's War, whether we chose to engage in it, or not.

If any bright spot exists in Yingling's blistering article, it is that his call for the kind of general officer corps that we need has at least one present-duty officer that seems to largely (if not completely) meet his proposed standards for creativeness, intelligence, and courageousness, and that general may be at the right place, with the right skills and experience, to yet help guide a successful change in direction.

Nintendo Border Patrol

I guess this goes along with the "virtual arrests" and "virtual deportments."

Notice that while they promise they "will be able to identify, detect and classify more than 95 percent of illegal entries with the virtual wall," they say absolutely nothing about actually arresting anyone.

Stoner Militia Busted in Alabama

Sounds like they took the lyrics to Steve Earle's Copperhead Road just a little too seriously:

Federal and state agents swooped down Thursday morning on a group calling itself "The Free Militia" and uncovered a small arsenal of home-made weapons that included a rocket launcher, 130 hand grenades and 70 Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) similiar to the kind used by insurgents against American GIs in Iraq.

[snip]

Officials said ATF agents encountered booby traps at one of the search sites.

The weapons cache also included a machine gun, a short barreled shot-gun, two silencers, numerous other firearms, 2500 rounds of ammunition, explosive components, and commercial fireworks. Agents also found more than 120 marijuana plants, Martin said.

I can only assume that the commercial fireworks recovered were used as components in the other explosive devices recovered.

Based upon the story so far, the now not-so-Free Militia sounds like it might be as much of a drug operation as much as an extremist group. Luckily, we have enough space in federal prisons that these gentlemen shouldn't be a problem for anyone for a very long time.

Race-Baiting Twits

I don't know whether Chris Matthews or Elizabeth Edwards is the bigger idiot here per se, be as Edwards is trying to escort Silky Pony into the White House stable, I'd say it is probably her.

Confirmed: Va Tech Shooter Used Standard Magazines

Virginia State Police Public Relations Manager Corinne Geller confirms via email that Cho Seung-Hui only used standard capacity magazines in a rampage last Monday at Virginia Tech that left more than 50 Virginia Tech students and faculty dead or injured.

"We are not identifying the capacity of the magazines or number of magazines purchased prior or in Cho's possession at the time of the shootings. I can tell you that the magazines were standard issue."

Numerous, immediate, and still erroneous media claims that Cho used high capacity or extended magazines containing as many as 33 rounds are patently false. Geller confirms that Cho used only standard capacity magazines, which for a Glock 19, is 15 rounds.

Today's Democrats: Championing Genocide

Via Newsbusters, CNN's Michael Ware and Kyra Phillips blast Democrat plans to abandon Iraq (my bold):

...[Kiran] Chetry asked the pair "would all of us, all the American troops pulling out, help the situation?"

Phillips and Ware both loudly protested: "Oh, no! No. No way!"

Phillips zeroed in on the problems a U.S. withdrawal would cause for the Iraqis: "It would be a disaster. I mean, I had a chance to sit down with the Minister of Defense, to General Petraeus, to Admiral Fallon, head of CENTCOM. I asked them all the question whether Iraqi or U.S. military — there is no way U.S. troops could pull out. It would be a disaster. They're doing too much training, they’re helping the Iraqis not only with security, but trying to get the government up and running. I mean, this is a country of 'Let's Make a Deal,' there's so much corruption still. If the U.S. military left — they have rules of engagement, they have an idea, a focus. It would be a disaster."

Ware agreed, but argued that winning the war was in America's best interest: "Well, even more than that, if you just wanted to look at it purely in terms of American national interest, if U.S. troops leave now, you're giving Iraq to Iran, a member of President Bush's 'Axis of Evil,' and al Qaeda. That's who will own it. And so, coming back now, I'm struck by the nature of the debate on Capitol Hill, how delusional it is. Whether you're for this war, or against it; whether you've supported the way it's been executed, or not; it doesn't matter. You've broke it, you've got to fix it now. You can't leave, or it's going to come and blow back on America."

The comments made by Ware and Phillips echo those of New York Times Baghdad bureau chief John Burns in an interview with Matt Lauer on Today from March 30 (bold in original):

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.

As I stated March 8:

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.

...

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.

I was brought up believing that the United States was a champion for liberty and freedom around the world.

Today's Democrats obviously disagree, and instead, advocate a disasterous failed state, potential regional war, and possible genocide.

At least one former Democrat understands how wrong that is.

To me, there is only one choice that protects America's security -- and that is to stand, and fight, and win.

Harry Reid: No Clement Vallandingham

Via the ever vigilant, all-knowing Allahpundit, calls for Democrat Harry Reid to resign for saying that the Iraq war is "lost".

Says Rep. Duncan Hunter, a ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee:

"In my opinion Sen. Reid, having made that statement, which can only have a demoralizing effect on our troops and an effect of encouragement of the adversary, I think it would be appropriate for Sen. Reid to resign his position as the leader of the United States Senate," he said.

It will never happen, of course, even as Reid stakes his claim as the modern-day Clement Vallandingham.

Actually, that comparison isn't fair to Vallandingham.

Vallandingham was always against the Civil War and was consistent in his position, even though that eventually led to him being tried in a military tribunal for "uttering disloyal sentiments," prison, and his eventual expulsion from the United States.

Reid, on the other hand, was an advocate for going to war against Iraq, before he was against it.

We stopped the fighting [in 1991] on an agreement that Iraq would take steps to assure the world that it would not engage in further aggression and that it would destroy its weapons of mass destruction. It has refused to take those steps. That refusal constitutes a breach of the armistice which renders it void and justifies resumption of the armed conflict.

Addressing the US Senate
October 9, 2002
Congressional Record, p. S10145

I find it interesting to note that Reid's 2002 justification for war against Iraq mirrors my own, and is entirely accurate, even to this day. As Reid noted, whether or not Iraq actually had WMDs was irrelevant; Saddam repeatedly violated the terms of the 1991 cease-fire.

Reid voted to go to war, and most recently, was part of the unanimous Senate vote to confirm Lt. General David Petraeus to run the Iraq War exactly three months ago today.

Since then, Reid has declared that he would not believe Petraeus if the General reported any progress in the Iraq War:

BASH: You talked several times about General Petraeus. You know that he is here in town. He was at the White House today, sitting with the president in the Oval Office and the president said that he wants to make it clear that Washington should not be telling him, General Petraeus, a commander on the ground in Iraq, what to do, particularly, the president was talking about Democrats in Congress. He also said that General Petraeus is going to come to the Hill and make it clear to you that there is progress going on in Iraq, that the so-called surge is working. Will you believe him when he says that?

REID: No, I don't believe him, because it's not happening. All you have to do is look at the facts.

[Note: the above was pulled from a CNN "The Situation Room" transcript at http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0704/23/sitroom.02.html, which has since gone missing]

Harry Reid pushed for war against Iraq when that was the popular position. Now that the war is unpopular, he declares the war "lost" and pushes for defeat.

On January 26, Harry Reid voted to confirm General David Petraeus to run the Iraq war, presumably basing his decision on Petraeus' capability and competence. Less than three months later, he publicly states that he will refuse to believe anything General Petraeus says that does not match his own weathervane opinion.

Vallandingham was perhaps treasonous, but he was at the very least honest and consistent about his positions, even as he sought to wreck the future of the United States.

We cannot say the same about Harry Reid.

Update: Captain's Quarters notes The Five Myths of Harry Reid.

Anonymous VT Massacre Investigator(s) Caught Misleading Media

The media keeps getting the basic facts wrong about the Virginia Tech massacre, but now an anonymous police investigator or investigators can be proven to be contributing to the problem:

Investigators said that over the next few weeks, he went to the Wal-Mart in Christiansburg on March 31, April 7, April 8 and April 13. During those visits, he bought cargo pants, sunglasses and .22-caliber ammunition. He also bought a hunting knife, gloves, a phone item and a granola bar. He visited Dick's Sporting Goods for extra ammo clips. He bought chains at Home Depot that he later used to hold shut the doors of Norris Hall.

Note the "investigators" for the above Associated Press article are anonymous.

The NY Times provides us with this similar claim:

Crime scene technicians recovered 17 spent magazines of ammunition, the majority of which were for Cho's 9mm handgun, a law enforcement official said.

"He ended up buying a load of mags from Wal-Mart and Dick's Sporting Goods," said an official, who asked not to be identified. "This was a thought-out process. He thought this through."

Two stories citing anonymous officials, and both are repeating nearly identical claims.

Demonstrably false claims.

News flash: Dick's Sporting Goods doesn't carry any handgun magazines of any kind, at any location. Walmart also does not carry pistols or pistol magazines.

I called the Dick's locations in Christiansburg and Roanoke this evening and I spoke with employees in the hunting department (called "the Lodge"). They confirmed what I already knew from visiting Dick's locations in New York and North Carolina over the past five years; while the chain carries ammunition, they've never carried pistols or pistol magazines.

I spoke with the young lady in the sporting good department of the Christiansburg Walmart, which took a bit longer than the Dick's calls. I had to first explain to her that when I was asking about "pistol magazines" I was not talking about handgun-related periodicals. Once that point was clarified, I confirmed that Walmart do not sell ammunition holding devices for pistols, either.

Two of the nation's top news organizations are telling hundreds of thousands of news consumers demonstrable lies because journalists were/are too lazy to spend the minimal amount of time it takes (three calls in five minutes) to fact-check an anonymous source regarding claims made about two huge retail store chains and their role in this nation's largest mass murder shooting.

If the media is this lazy investigating the facts of the largest mass shooting in American history just a little more than one week after it occurred, I can only imagine how little effort they put into more pedestrian stories.

Cho Still Had Ammunition When He Committed Suicide

On Deadline is reporting that Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho still had additional ammunition with him when he died in an updated to a blog entry on the shooting timeline.

The shootings at Norris Hall lasted nine minutes, and it is now apparent that the massacre would not have last much longer in any event, as Cho shot himself just after police officers shot the lock off a first floor door of Norris Hall and entered the building.

The obvious inference I'm tempted to make is that Cho heard the police gunfire and decided to take his life as a result of the perimeter being breached, not because he was low on ammunition, and not because he was out of potential targets. He apparently wanted to successfully commit suicide, rather than face the possibility of being taken alive and having to face the consequences of his murder spree.

I don’t know that the evidence supports these assumptions, but with no easily detectable motive or trigger for the largest mass shooting in American history, inferences and assumptions may be all we have.

Update: Over at Hot Air, AP makes a chilling speculation (my bold):

The theory right now is that he shot himself when he heard them shoot through their way through the front door of Norris Hall. Which makes the fact that VTech was a gun-free zone that much harder — if he'd heard a gunshot in the building earlier in his rampage, he might have turned his own gun on himself sooner thinking it was the police.

There is of course no way to know if that is what would have transpired, and it is probably pointless to wonder how many of the 59 killed or wounded by Cho might not have been shot had he suspected that he was about to come under fire or had actual aimed shots directed his way, distracting him from his attack.

When I was in grad school, I suspected that several fellow students (mostly women) were occasionally armed, and knew for a fact one person was armed almost every day I saw him.

We, too, were a "gun free" school, but I felt a bit safer knowing that we weren't quite as gun free as the administration would have liked.

Abnormal Psychology

A psychology major has admitted to being the person who has been placing a memorial stone for Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho among those of his victims:

A senior Virginia Tech psychology major has identified herself in a letter to the editor in the Collegiate Times as the person who's been placing a stone at the memorial for Seung-Hui Cho.

The writer, Katelynn L. Johnson, wrote in the lengthy letter that she placed the stone at the memorial at 4 a.m. last Thursday morning in the dark to avoid drawing attention.

"I refuse to do what is popular and agree with everyone around me that only 32 people died on Monday. 33 died."She said in the letter that she intends to continue adding a stone whenever it is removed, as was the case earlier this week.

I somewhat suspect this student aced VT's PSYCH 3014: Abnormal Psychology, based largely upon her own head start on the subject.

The fact that Cho coldly murdered 32 others and wounded 29 more before taking his own life doesn't seem to be of much concern to Ms. Johnson, who is in the process of making herself the most unpopular living student on campus by memorializing a mass murderer.

Sometimes, He Makes Me Laugh

Dana Milbank, that is, not his target, Dennis Kucinich:

"I do not stand alone," Dennis Kucinich said as he stood, alone, in front of a cluster of microphones yesterday evening.

The Ohio congressman, a Democratic presidential candidate, was holding a news conference outside the Capitol to announce that he had just filed articles of impeachment against Vice President Cheney. But subsequent questioning quickly revealed that Kucinich had not yet persuaded any of his 434 colleagues to be a cosponsor, that he had not even discussed the matter with House Democratic leaders, and that he had not raised the subject with the Judiciary Committee.

Kucinich did have one thing: a copy of the Declaration of Independence. And he was not afraid to read it. "We hold these truths to be self-evident," the aspiring impeachment manager read at the start of his news conference. He continued all the way through the bit about the right of the people to abolish the government.

"These words from the Declaration of Independence are instructive at this moment," he said.

A reporter from the Cleveland Plain Dealer encouraged USS Kucinich to contact planet Earth. "But Nancy Pelosi says this is not going anywhere," she pointed out.

"Have you talked to her today?" Kucinich shot back.

"Yes, I did," she replied.

Kucinich had not expected that answer. "Then I would say I have not talked to her," he acknowledged.

It was not an auspicious beginning for the impeachment of Richard B. Cheney.

Notes Raleigh AP history and government teacher Betsy Newmark:

It's rather surprising that he couldn't get even one other Democrat to go along - there must be quite a few who want to charge Cheney with all sorts of crimes and misdemeanors. Perhaps they just don't like being in the same news cycle with Kucinich.

I also don't understand why he's reading the Declaration of Independence. It is the Constitution which is relevant for an impeachment. Is Kucinich preaching the necessity of revolution after Cheney's supposed "Long train of abuses and usurpations?" If so, wouldn't waiting a couple of years be a better plan than to begin a revolution? Or does Kucinich just not understand what he's reading?

Enter a comically serious HuffPuffer:

On Tuesday, Representative Dennis Kucinich introduced articles of impeachment against Vice-President Cheney. There are three articles: manipulation of intelligence to deceive Congress and the American people, fabricating a threat from Iraqi weapons of mass destruction prior to the invasion of Iraq; manipulation of intelligence to deceive Congress and the American people about an alleged relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda prior to the invasion of Iraq; and threatening aggression against Iran, in violation of the U.N. Charter and the U.S. Constitution.

(Kucinich seems to be one of the few Members of Congress aware that threatening to attack other countries is a violation of the U.N. Charter, a treaty to which the U.S. is signatory.)

The author chided Milbank for his amusing dismissal of Kucinich, and even attempted to twist Milbank's article into an attack on women:

From Mr. Milbank's aggressive journalism, we learn that Kucinich is "perhaps 5 feet 6 inches tall in shoes" and that "he approached the microphones, which nearly reached his eye level." We also learn that Kucinich was undeterred by "wind that ruffled his text and the few strands of his hair that were insufficiently weighted by Brylcreem."

Feminists take note. It is not only women politicians who can expect to face irrelevant and inappropriate media commentary about their appearance. Apparently, as a male politician, if you oppose the imperial ambitions of the Washington pundit class too vigorously, you can be an honorary woman.

Robert Naiman, the writer of this HuffPuff fluff, is quite serious, even if it reads more like the content of The Onion than a "serious" political blog. It makes you wonder just how much reality is left in the "reality-based" community.

Run for Your Lives! The High Caps Are Loose!

Embarrassingly close to home:

Memphis police were looking Monday night for the thieves who stole seven weapons from a North Carolina SWAT team van parked in South Memphis. Members of the SWAT team based in Raleigh, N.C., were eating at Interstate Bar-B-Que, 2265 S. Third, about 3:30 p.m. Monday when they realized their van had been broken into, said Lt. Jerry Gwyn of Memphis felony response.

The weapons stolen from my local SWAT team were:

3- Sig Sauer Model 551, .223 caliber, Fully Automatic Assault Rifles, in black nylon cases (with several hundred rounds of ammunition) 2 - Remington Model 870, pump action 12 gauge shotguns 1 - Sig Sauer Model 229, .357 caliber semi-auto handgun 1 - Sig Sauer Model 226, .357 caliber semi-auto handgun

One of the SIG assault rifles--a real one, not the semi-automatic rifles the media has falsely labeled as assault rifles-- has been recovered after apparently being purchased along with some ammunition by one of the fine, upstanding citizens of Memphis.

The media has really dropped the ball on the most alarming aspect of this case, the flow of 30-round magazines onto American streets. The SIG 551, like most .223/5.56x45mm duty rifles, uses 30-round magazines.

Where are the magazines? Why aren't they being reported on?

Clearly, the American public can't handle the thought of such magazines being released, and the media is participating in a willful cover-up to minimize the hysteria that would surely sweep the nation if it was found that such high capacity magazines were allowed to run free.

Sure, the police say they are looking for the criminals holding two outstanding machine guns, a pair of shotguns, and a pair of pistols, but we know that the magazines are the real threat.

White Flag Harry Reid: We're Losing This War, and the Troops are Liars

"Senator Lost" Harry Reid, has unilaterally declared that the Iraq War is lost. Uh, Senator... how would you know and other top Democrats know, when you continue to skip briefings?

What's curious is that congressional Democrats don't seem much interested in what's actually happening in Iraq. The commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, returns to Washington this week, but last week Pelosi's office said "scheduling conflicts" prevented him from briefing House members. Two days later, the members-only meeting was scheduled, but the episode brings to mind the fact that Pelosi and other top House Democrats skipped a Pentagon videoconference with Petraeus on March 8.

Reid even labeled General David Petraeus a liar:

BASH: You talked several times about General Petraeus. You know that he is here in town. He was at the White House today, sitting with the president in the Oval Office and the president said that he wants to make it clear that Washington should not be telling him, General Petraeus, a commander on the ground in Iraq, what to do, particularly, the president was talking about Democrats in Congress.

He also said that General Petraeus is going to come to the Hill and make it clear to you that there is progress going on in Iraq, that the so-called surge is working. Will you believe him when he says that?

REID: No, I don't believe him, because it's not happening. All you have to do is look at the facts.

Look at the facts, Harry? You refuse to address the facts.

Here are a few comments for "Senator Lost" from men on the ground.

From a letter to Op-for:

We are winning over here in Al Anbar province. I don't know about Baghdad, but Ramadi was considered THE hotspot in Al Anbar, the worse province, and it has been very quiet. The city is calm, the kids are playing in the streets, the local shops are open, the power is on at night, and daily commerce is the norm rather than the exception. There have been no complex attacks since March. That is HUGE progress. This quiet time is allowing the Iraqi Army and Iraqi Police to establish themselves in the eyes of the people. The Iraqi people also want IA's and IP's in their areas. The Sunni Sheiks are behind us and giving us full support. This means that almost all Sunnis in Al Anbar are now committed to supporting the US and Iraqi forces. It also means that almost all insurgents left out here are AQ. FYI, the surge is just beginning. Gen Petraeus' strategy is just getting started and we're seeing huge gains here.

However, you don't see Harry Reid talking about this. When I saw what he said, it really pissed me off. That guy does not know what is going on over here because he hasn't bothered to come and find out. The truth on the ground in Al Anbar is not politically convenient for him, so he completely ignored it.

I suppose Reid considers this soldier a liar as well.

What does he think about Sgt. Turkovich, from his own state of Nevada?

"We're not losing this war."

That's how a Las Vegas Army Reserve sergeant and Iraq war veteran who is heading out again for Operation Iraqi Freedom reacted Friday to Nevada Sen. Harry Reid's assessment that the war in Iraq is "lost."

"I don't believe the war is lost," Sgt. George Turkovich, 24, said as he stood with other soldiers near a shipping container that had been packed for their deployment to Kuwait.

The soldiers leave today for a six-week training stint at Camp Atterbury, Ind., before heading overseas to run a camp in support of the war effort. It is uncertain if their yearlong tour will take them to Iraq.

"Unfortunately, politics has taken a huge role in this war affecting our rules of engagement," said Turkovich, a 2001 Palo Verde High School graduate. "This is a guerrilla war that we're fighting, and they're going to tie our hands.

"So it does make it a lot harder for us to fight the enemy, but we're not losing this war," he said.

Turkovich's commander, Lt. Col. Steven Cox:

"I find it exceedingly difficult to believe that the American people would leave their military dangling in the wind the way the good senator is doing," Cox said.

"Defeatism ... from our elected officials does not serve us well in the field," he said. "They embolden the enemy, and they actually leave them with the feeling that they can defeat us and win this.

"All they have to do is wait us out because the American resolve is waning," he said.

Cox said he's "not sure the senator accurately echoes the people he represents. ... I believe his tactics are more of shock in trying to sway public opinion. He may have spoken out of turn."

Obviously, these brave soldiers are liars, right Senator Reid?

But we're not done just yet.

Marine Corporal Tyler Rock, currently in Ramadi, was a bit more direct in his criticism:

yeah and i got a qoute for that douche harry reid. these families need us here. obviously he has never been in iraq. or at least the area worth seeing. the parts where insurgency is rampant and the buildings are blown to pieces. we need to stay here and help rebuild. if iraq didnt want us here then why do we have IP's voluntering everyday to rebuild their cities. and working directly with us too. same with the IA's. it sucks that iraqi's have more patriotism for a country that has turned to complete shit more than the people in america who drink starbucks everyday. we could leave this place and say we are sorry to the terrorists. and then we could wait for 3,000 more american civilians to die before we say "hey thats not nice" again. and the sad thing is after we WIN this war. people like him will say he was there for us the whole time.

1st Lt, Matthew McGirr, another Ramadi Marine, agrees and offers a blistering response of his own:

We are reaching a tipping point in this fight. We have finally learned this culture. We have finally begun to commit the necessary forces. We have truly learned to fight a counter-insurgency. Very real gains are being made despite claims from our Congress that we have already lost. A counter-insurgency battle is not one of quickly attained and easily recognizeable benchmarks. It is not won in a year or four. It takes time, resolve, and a willingness to use what we have learned from past mistakes and expectations. From firsthand experience I can tell you, this "Surge" is working. We need to continue to support these people and give them a fighting chance at creating a nation on their own terms.

To echo the sentiments of my fellow Marine in 1/6, the reality of what is happening on the ground in places like Ramadi is not being reported to the American public. The pundits and politicians on both sides do not fully grasp the conditions on the ground here. They are arrogantly and irresponsibly using this war and the troops who fight in it for political gain and election currency. They manipulate the truth or do not care enough to seek it out. At least I know where I stand with the citizens of Ar Ramadi.

"At least I know where I stand with the citizens of Ar Ramadi."

Ouch. Do Democrat leaders support the troops?

The troops sure don't seem to think so, and they're more than likely right.

Update: Blackfive has an excellent post on how counter-insurgency works called COIN: The Gravity Well. It's a must-read.

Allah now has the Reid video up at HotAir, which turns one today.

Update: JD Johannes reports that indeed, "the war may be over and we just don't realize it" in parts of al Anbar.

Not As It Appears

Redstate is currently running a post by "streiff" called AP is Popular with the Troops that claims to show an American soldier on patrol in Iraq "flipping off" the Associated Press photographer, Maya Alleruzzo.

Blackfive provides a link to the original caption that IDs the soldier as:

Staff Sgt Patrick Lockett 25, of Huntsville Alabama of Alpha Troop, 3rd Squadron, 1st Cavalry Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division patrols in Al Kargoulia, 25 miles (40 kilometers) east of Baghdad, Iraq, Fri., April 20, 2007. The 3rd Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division is back in Iraq for the third time since rolling into Baghdad in 2003. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

On first blush, it appears to be exactly what RedState and Blackfive describe. But sometimes, even pictures can tell less than the whole story.

I got an email from Michael Yon this morning that including the following:

Bob,

You are the man for this. Maya Alleruzzo, currently a photographer for AP, is getting flack. I know Maya and she is very pro troop…

I would email to Redstate directly but their email address is on my laptop (somewhere else). I think it's just a mistake because the people at Redstate have their hearts in the right place. Maya is out here in the worst parts of Iraq and she's a treasure -- though I know her association with AP puts her into harm's way.

I'm trying to run down Staff Sgt Lockett, who would be the ultimate authority on what was occurring in this picture. If I get a response, I'll be sure to post it. In the meantime, I trust Yon, who seems to know Alleruzzo, and the work of Alleruzzo herself. In addition to taking photos for the Associated Press, Alleruzzo occasionally writes.

Does this author of this article strike you as the kind of person our soldiers would flip off? How about this one, detailing the courage of a paralyzed Iraqi officer?

I don't think so. This sounds like the kind of photographer/journalist that soldiers would love to have around.

Of course, a closer look at the image may tell the story on its own.

I've cropped and enlarged the photo, and done some extremely high-tech phalanges modeling. Count the fingers, folks.

Unless Staff Sgt. Lockett is related to the Six-Fingered Man from The Princess Bride, the photo itself seems to provide the debunking. The bones extending from the wrist (crude gray lines) through the pinky finger define the outside shape of Lockett's glove and the hand it contains, and from there it is a simple matter to merely count the remaining knuckle impressions (shown with white dots) on the glove itself to account for the ring, middle, and index fingers.

It is the index finger you see alongside the M4 receiver, with the other three fingers (middle finger included) curled around the pistol grip of the carbine.

It seems a blogosphere retraction is in order.

Update: I'm very disappointed with Redstate at the moment. I sent them an email alerting them to the apparent fact that their claims were false, and to date, they've refused to issue a correction.

Apparently, they're either not monitoring their email, or are possessed by their own brand of "truthiness."

Facing Wolves

This is perhaps one of the most disturbing aspects of the Virginia Tech massacre I've read thus far (my bold).

Police are still searching for a motive. Cho, the 23-year-old English major who was described as reclusive and extremely shy, left behind a package of videos and letters railing against privilege and wealth, but did not say how he chose his victims...

Those victims apparently did not fight back against Cho's ambush. Massello said he did not recall any injuries suggesting a struggle. Many victims had defensive wounds, indicating they tried to shield themselves from Cho's gunfire, he said.

Massello said Cho hit many of his victims several times.

The media's portrayal of the Virginia Tech massacre has been abysmal and highly inaccurate during the course of the past week. Because of their well-documented shortcomings, I've wanted to avoided commenting on certain aspects of the events of April 16 in Norris Hall at Virginia Tech, where Cho Seung-Hui shot to death 30 of his victims, and wounded 29 more.

During this time period, primarily local media accounts have started to create a patchwork of stories that are helping us piece together an image of how individual students reacted during this tragedy, one that has disturbed several people I've spoken with, both online and in person.

No one could have easily predicted that a student such as Cho would have gone on a murderous rampage, and no one knows how they would respond to an event such as this unless they're faced with a similar situation themselves.

It is because of this that I was concerned when I read John Derbyshire's NRO Blog entry The Spirit of Self Defense, posted just one day after the massacre, when so few facts were known.

He wrote:

As NRO's designated chickenhawk, let me be the one to ask: Where was the spirit of self-defense here? Setting aside the ludicrous campus ban on licensed conceals, why didn't anyone rush the guy? It's not like this was Rambo, hosing the place down with automatic weapons. He had two handguns for goodness' sake—one of them reportedly a .22. At the very least, count the shots and jump him reloading or changing hands. Better yet, just jump him. Handguns aren't very accurate, even at close range. I shoot mine all the time at the range, and I still can't hit squat. I doubt this guy was any better than I am. And even if hit, a .22 needs to find something important to do real damage—your chances aren't bad. Yes, yes, I know it's easy to say these things: but didn't the heroes of Flight 93 teach us anything? As the cliche goes—and like most cliches. It's true—none of us knows what he'd do in a dire situation like that. I hope, however, that if I thought I was going to die anyway, I'd at least take a run at the guy.

I think we can all agree that people react to high stress unexpected situations differently, and that how we response is influenced by our previous training and experiences. I don't think it is reasonable to expect that anyone in the situation at Norris Hall would have any previous training or experience to handle the situation of a heavily-armed student shooting up a classroom building, though oddly enough, there was a student, Regina Rohde, enrolled at Virgina Tech that was not at Norris Hall who survived the Columbine High School massacre. Even that experience would not have prepared anyone to "take a run at the guy" as Derbyshire suggested. Something else in a person's background or make-up would have to make them act in such a counterintuitive way as to attempt to attack someone with a firearm. I'll note that counterintuitive is not necessarily the same as wrong.

Arguably, it should make us re-examine the basic, emotional "fight or flight" response. Wikipedia describes the reaction to acute stress thusly:

The fight-or-flight response, also called the acute stress response, was first described by Walter Cannon in 1927. His theory states that animals react to threats with a general discharge of the sympathetic nervous system, priming the animal for fighting or fleeing. This response was later recognized as the first stage of a general adaptation syndrome that regulates stress responses among vertebrates and other organisms.

About.com provides a more useful definition:

This is the body’s response to perceived threat or danger. During this reaction, certain hormones like adrenalin and cortisol are released, speeding the heart rate, slowing digestion, shunting blood flow to major muscle groups, and changing various other autonomic nervous functions, giving the body a burst of energy and strength. Originally named for its ability to enable us to physically fight or run away when faced with danger, it’s now activated in situations where neither response is appropriate, like in traffic or during a stressful day at work.

While the massacre itself was shocking enough, the anecdotal evidence pieced together showing that many students (rightly) fled, and that at least some of those who couldn't escape simply let themselves be shot (including at least one student who curled into a ball and allowed Cho to shoot him). The corner's comments shows that he found no evidence suggesting wounds consistent with someone attempting to defend themselves when their lives were in mortal jeopardy. This is shocking in its own right.

Obviously, many of the 59 students, faculty and staff shot by Cho had a very limited chance to react, and there were students in those classrooms who were not shot at all only as a matter of chance. Why is it, though, that when the fight or flight response engaged as it undoubtedly was in Norris Hall, that it appears not a single soul did as Derbyshire asked, "take a run at the guy"?

This isn't a question of bravery by any measure, and I don't want anyone to misconstrue it as such. I am honestly curious as to why the "fight" part of the "fight or flight" response apparently never kicked in to any one of the students, faculty, and staff members who could not escape.

When a man is in the process of gunning down your classmates in a ruthless manner and obviously has the same intention of doing the same to you, you are presented with a very short list of options:

• do nothing or attempt to hide (a passive response)
• attempt to block the gunman from entering the classroom (an active response)
• attempt to attack the gunman, if only to save your own life (an active response)
want to take on of the above options, but succumb to shock (a blocked response)

That is far from being any sort of a clinical response and may not be accurate. It is simply a layman's understanding of how someone may react in the very crudest terms to a horrible situation.

In this circumstance, the flight response is by far the best option, and for those who were able to escape before Cho started shooting in their classrooms, it paid off. But I'm not concerned with the actions of those who were able to escape, but with the actions of those who were unable to escape. What of those who were left?

While we do know that some students were successful in barricading doors and prevented Cho from entering (and that one professor and at least one student died attempting to barricade doors). Once Cho was able to enter classrooms, however, not a single person attempted to attack him according to the coroner, even though that might have been their best option for survival. I speak of this not to condemn, but only in an effort to understand why.

Mark Steyn made an admirable attempt to understand why in A Culture of Passivity. I'm not sure I agree with it, but the following bears reflecting upon:

it’s deeply damaging to portray fit fully formed adults as children who need to be protected. We should be raising them to understand that there will be moments in life when you need to protect yourself — and, in a “horrible” world, there may come moments when you have to choose between protecting yourself or others. It is a poor reflection on us that, in those first critical seconds where one has to make a decision, only an elderly Holocaust survivor, Professor Librescu, understood instinctively the obligation to act.

At the time Steyn wrote his article, not all of the facts were known. We now know that another student died trying to prevent Cho from entering his classroom and was gunned down, just as we know that several other students kept pressing against the door, even as Cho fired through. These brave men all saved lives attempting to preventing a wolf from entering among the sheep. These men are what you would recognize from Bill Whittle's seminal essay Tribes as sheepdogs. Whittle borrowed this description from Lt. Col. Dave Grossman's seminar The Bulletproof Mind as Whittle was writing about the survivors of Hurricane Katrina.

Whittle cited Grossman as stating:

One Vietnam veteran, an old retired colonel, once said this to me: "Most of the people in our society are sheep. They are kind, gentle, productive creatures who can only hurt one another by accident."

This is true. Remember, the murder rate is six per 100,000 per year, and the aggravated assault rate is four per 1,000 per year. What this means is that the vast majority of Americans are not inclined to hurt one another.

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

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

I mean nothing negative by calling them sheep. To me it is like the pretty, blue robin's egg. Inside it is soft and gooey but someday it will grow into something wonderful. But the egg cannot survive without its hard blue shell. Police officers, soldiers and other warriors are like that shell, and someday the civilization they protect will grow into something wonderful. For now, though, they need warriors to protect them from the predators.

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

"Then there are sheepdogs," he went on, "and I'm a sheepdog. I live to protect the flock and confront the wolf." Or, as a sign in one California law enforcement agency put it, "We intimidate those who intimidate others."

If you have no capacity for violence then you are a healthy productive citizen: a sheep. If you have a capacity for violence and no empathy for your fellow citizens, then you have defined an aggressive sociopath--a wolf. But what if you have a capacity for violence, and a deep love for your fellow citizens? Then you are a sheepdog, a warrior, someone who is walking the hero's path. Someone who can walk into the heart of darkness, into the universal human phobia, and walk out unscathed.

He continues:

Let me expand on this old soldier's excellent model of the sheep, wolves, and sheepdogs. We know that the sheep live in denial; that is what makes them sheep. They do not want to believe that there is evil in the world. They can accept the fact that fires can happen, which is why they want fire extinguishers, fire sprinklers, fire alarms and fire exits throughout their kids' schools. But many of them are outraged at the idea of putting an armed police officer in their kid's school. Our children are dozens of times more likely to be killed, and thousands of times more likely to be seriously injured, by school violence than by school fires, but the sheep's only response to the possibility of violence is denial. The idea of someone coming to kill or harm their children is just too hard, so they choose the path of denial.

The sheep generally do not like the sheepdog. He looks a lot like the wolf. He has fangs and the capacity for violence. The difference, though, is that the sheepdog must not, cannot and will not ever harm the sheep. Any sheepdog that intentionally harms the lowliest little lamb will be punished and removed. The world cannot work any other way, at least not in a representative democracy or a republic such as ours.

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

While it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that,
an' "Tommy, fall be'ind,"
But it's "Please to walk in front, sir,"
when there's trouble in the wind,
There's trouble in the wind, my boys,
there's trouble in the wind,
O it's "Please to walk in front, sir,"
when there's trouble in the wind.

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

Whittle continues on his own:

Here is the Grey philosophy I try to live by:

Sometimes, Bad Things Happen. Some things are beyond my control, beyond the control of the smartest and best people we have, even beyond the awesome, subtle and unlimited control of the simpering, sub-human village idiot from Texas.

Hurricanes come. They have come for all of human history, and more are coming. Barbarians also come to steal or destroy what they cannot make themselves, and they, like human tempests, have swept a path of destruction through civilization since before history was written on clay tablets on the banks of the Euphrates.

I am not a wolf. I have never harmed a person in my life. But I am not a sheep, either. I know these forces are out there, and wishing it were not so will not only not make them go away – it will rob me of my chance to kick their ass when they show up.

And further:

It takes courage to fight oncoming storms. Courage.

Courage isn’t free. It is taught, taught by certain tribes who have been around enough and seen enough incoming storms to know what one looks like.

Tribes is an excellent essay, though perhaps imperfect to apply to the students, faculty and staff trapped inside Norris Hall last Monday. That said, I am forced to wonder why not one of those 59 people shot, nor those who were not shot, did not make an attempt to defend at least themselves, if not others. The "extreme provocation" that Grossman noted can make even sheep attack was certainly present in Norris Hall a week ago today, and yet, not one apparently acted upon it.

Have we become as a culture so adverse to the idea of conflict that we will willing surrender our lives and the lives of others to avoid fighting back?

I am trapped, and think perhaps, that we all are.

Have we become so enamored with the idea of conflict avoidance and conflict resolution at all costs, that we have forgotten that at some points, conflict is the only correct response? Do we not need to teach courage, or at least self-preservation, as well?

I can offer no answers. I don't even know if I'm asking the right questions.

I do think, however, that as a society, somebody should find the right questions to ask, and do all we can to get those answers.

If not, we give our futures to the wolves to decide.

RIP: Congresswoman Juanita Millender-McDonald

Our thoughts and prayers go out this morning to the family, friends, and collegues of California Congresswoman Juanita Millender-McDonald, who lost her battle with cancer yesterday.

WaPo has the story.

Is a Mandatory Waiting Period a Good Idea?

From falsely reporting (ansd still refusing to correct) a claim that the expiration of the 1994 Crime Bill permitted the sale of high capacity and extended magazines, to claims that he purchased a pistol and ammunition online to citing incompetent experts, the "professional" media has consistantly made inaccurate, unsupported, and erroneous claims about the firearms, magazines, ammunition and firearms laws surrounding the Virginia Tech massacre committed one week ago today.

Should we perhaps consider a mandatory waiting period on the media's reporting of gun crimes... or would we best be served by making them pass a basic background and competence check before allowing them to write?

The pen is mightier than the sword, after all, so it is reasonable to make sure that those who use them are capable of using them responsibly.

Update: How about this for a new bumper sticker: "Michael Isikoff's keyboard has killed more people than Ted Kennedy's car, or my guns."

An Axis of Embarrassment: Saddam's WMD Bunkers Found?

Via Lucianne, just another crazed conspiracy theorist:

Mr Gaubatz verbally told the Iraq Study Group (ISG) of his findings, and asked them to come with heavy equipment to breach the concrete of the bunkers and uncover their sealed contents. But to his consternation, the ISG told him they didn’t have the manpower or equipment to do it and that it would be 'unsafe' to try.

'The problem was that the ISG were concentrating their efforts in looking for WMD in northern Iraq and this was in the south,' says Mr Gaubatz. 'They were just swept up by reports of WMD in so many different locations. But we told them that if they didn't excavate these sites, others would.'

That, he says, is precisely what happened. He subsequently learnt from Iraqi, CIA and British intelligence that the WMD buried in the four sites were excavated by Iraqis and Syrians, with help from the Russians, and moved to Syria. The location in Syria of this material, he says, is also known to these intelligence agencies. The worst-case scenario has now come about. Saddam’s nuclear, biological and chemical material is in the hands of a rogue terrorist state — and one with close links to Iran.

When Mr Gaubatz returned to the US, he tried to bring all this to light. Two congressmen, Peter Hoekstra, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and Curt Weldon, were keen to follow up his account. To his horror, however, when they tried to access his classified intelligence reports, they were told that all 60 of them — which, in the routine way, he had sent in 2003 to the computer clearing-house at a US airbase in Saudi Arabia — had mysteriously gone missing. These written reports had never even been seen by the ISG.

One theory is that they were inadvertently destroyed when the computer's database was accidentally erased in the subsequent US evacuation of the airbase. Mr Gaubatz, however, suspects dirty work at the crossroads. It is unlikely, he says, that no copies were made of his intelligence. And he says that all attempts by Messrs Hoekstra and Weldon to extract information from the Defence Department and CIA have been relentlessly stonewalled.

In 2005, the CIA held a belated inquiry into the disappearance of this intelligence. Only then did its agents visit the sites — to report that they had indeed been looted.

Hoekstra, the CIA, and now this nut Gaubatz... who is he, anyway?

The problem the US authorities have is that they can't dismiss Mr Gaubatz as a rogue agent — because they have repeatedly decorated him for his work in the field. In 2003, he received awards for his 'courage and resolve in saving lives and being critical for information flow'. In 2001, he was decorated for being the 'lead agent in a classified investigation, arguably the most sensitive counter-intelligence investigation currently in the entire Department of Defence' and because his 'reports were such high quality, many were published in the Air Force's daily threat product for senior USAF leaders or re-transmitted at the national level to all security agencies in US government'.

What a loon. No credibility at all.

And he poses an interesting delimma, if correct:

The Republicans won't touch this because it would reveal the incompetence of the Bush administration in failing to neutralise the danger of Iraqi WMD. The Democrats won't touch it because it would show President Bush was right to invade Iraq in the first place. It is an axis of embarrassment.

Quite true.

Should this Gaubatz guy, ISG and DIA supervisor Ray Robinson and other decorated "nutters" be correct, then Dubya is shown to be even more incompetent than both Democrats and Republicans have ever dared fear, and yet, Democrats couldn't call him on it, because they would have to admit he was right to topple Saddam in the first place, and they might have to back up that fact by confronting Syria... probably with "important action alerts."

Temporary Safety

It never ceases to amaze me how little self-avowed liberals are so purposefully ignorant about their own Constitution:

Our famous Constitution, about which many of us are generally so proud, enshrines -- along with the right to freedom of speech, press, religion and assembly -- the right to own guns. That's an apples and oranges list if there ever was one.

Not all of us are so proud and triumphant about the gun-guarantee clause. The right to free speech, press, religion and assembly and so on seem to be working well, but the gun part, not so much.

The dolt who wrote this, Tom Plate, is not surprisingly the former editor of the Los Angeles Times.

He is hardly alone.

Another journalist, Walter Shapiro of Salon stated the following earlier this week:

Fifteen unambiguous words are all that would be required to quell the American-as-apple-pie cycle of gun violence that has now tearfully enshrined Virginia Tech in the record book of mass murder. Here are the 15 words that would deliver a mortal wound to our bang-bang culture of death: "The second article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed."

[snip]

Looking at the Bill of Rights with more than two centuries' hindsight, it is simply irrational that firearms have a protected position on par with freedom of speech and religion. Were Americans -- liberal or conservative -- writing a Constitution completely from scratch today, they probably would agree that something akin to "freedom to drive" was more far important than the "right to bear arms." The rights of state militias (which many liberal legal theorists argue is the essence of the Second Amendment) are as much a throwback to an 18th century mind-set as restrictions on quartering soldiers in private homes during peacetime (the little-remembered Third Amendment).

Alexander Hamilton, were he still alive today, may have chosen to respond to these craven abdications of responsibility by reiterating the following:

To model our political system upon speculations of lasting tranquility, is to calculate on the weaker springs of the human character.

What Hamilton means, and both to Plate and Shaprio are too dim, too pampered, and yes, too cowardly to let cross their minds, is the fact that no system of government is perfect, including our own Republic. It is the very nature of government to attempt to consolidate power, usurping for itself the rights and powers afforded to other branches and levels of governments on some occasions, and always, always from the people themselves.

It is because of the creeping pervasiveness and the promised tyranny of government (the same tyranny liberals constantly accuse the Executive of trying to implement on every other issue facing this nation, but noticeably fall silent on here) that arms must always be held by the people, for the people, as Noah Webster observed in "An Examination of the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution."

Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretence, raised in the United States. A military force, at the command of Congress, can execute no laws, but such as the people perceive to be just and constitutional; for they will possess the power, and jealousy will instantly inspire the inclination, to resist the execution of a law which appears to them unjust and oppressive.

The Second Amendment was never about hunting, or sportsmanship. The Second Amendment was, and still is, the singular Amendment guaranteeing all others. To dismantle the Second, as John Adams noted in "A Defence of the Constitutions of the United States,":

...is to demolish every constitution, and lay the laws prostrate, so that liberty can be enjoyed by no man; it is a dissolution of the government.

As goes the Second Amendment, so does the United States of America itself. Without a "well regulated militia"--"regulated" meaning practiced and competent with arms, the "militia" recognized as all people of military age and capability--the United States falls.

Noted Patrick Henry:

Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined.

The Second Amendment of the Constitution was never about self defense from criminals. To the Founders, that right was inherent, provided by the Creator above. The purpose of the Second Amendment was to enshrine in this nation the capability to take this nation back by force from a corrupt government, overthrowing it if necessary.

So wrote Supreme Court Associate Justice Joseph Story in "Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States":

The next amendment is: 'A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.'

"The importance of this article will scarcely be doubted by any persons, who have duly reflected upon the subject. The militia is the natural defence of a free country against sudden foreign invasions, domestic insurrections, and domestic usurpations of power by rulers...

The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them.(1) And yet, though this truth would seem so clear, and the importance of a well regulated militia would seem so undeniable, it cannot be disguised, that among the American people there is a growing indifference to any system of militia discipline, and a strong disposition, from a sense of its burdens, to be rid.

It is no accident that Justice Story chose to use the word "palladium" to describe the critical importance of the Second Amendment, which is defined as:

1. A safeguard, especially one viewed as a guarantee of the integrity of social institutions: the Bill of Rights, palladium of American civil liberties.
2. A sacred object that was believed to have the power to preserve a city or state possessing it.

The Second Amendment is our palladium, that sacred object that preserves our Republic as a nation of men instead of a nation of laws slaved to tyrants.

Story accurately pegs Plate, Shapiro, and others that do not wish to be yoked with the responsibility of protecting themselves, or their nation. It is a burden too heavy for them to carry, a responsibility they wish to be rid of. To a man, their ilk ignores the lessons history would teach, and call for the power and responsibility to be handed to the very state that would ensnare them.

They are sheep: fearful, bleating, unwilling to deal with the weighted cost of freedom. They would trade all their freedoms for the temporary illusion of safety.

I think we know how the Founder might have responded to that sentiment.

Joe Biden: The Virginia Tech Massacre is the GOP's Fault

I kid you not:

Speaking at Al Sharpton's National Action Network event in New York, Biden said President Bush, Newt Gingrich and Karl Rove are responsible for what he called "the politics of polarization."

Biden said Republicans have created an environment that brings bad things to the United States.

"I would argue, since 1994 with the Gingrich revolution, just take a look at Iraq, Venezuela, Katrina, what's gone down at Virginia Tech, Darfur, Imus. Take a look. This didn't happen accidentally, all these things," he said.

I'm surprised Biden didn't find time to work in bird flu, the Sumatra-Andaman earthquake and tsunami, some 9/11 "truth," and John Edward's $400 haircut in there as well. Perhaps he's saving those for a rainy day.

Va Tech Massacre Updates: An Incompetent Retired ATF Agent; and a Dishonest Lede from CBS

Allahpundit has been burning the midnight oil at Hot Air, and has some shocking updates on the Virginia Tech massacre perpetrated by a deranged student, Cho Seung-Hui.

First, NBC is now claiming that Cho had a staggering number of magazines, including extended 33-round magazines:

Virginia State Police say they're nearly done with their on-scene investigation at Virginia Tech. But inside the classroom building, investigators say they found a surprising number of handgun magazines, or clips — 17. Some, officials say, were high-capacity magazines that hold 33 rounds. That means, investigators say, that Cho may have fired at least 200 times during his killing spree on Monday.

As AP notes, this contradicts a WaPo story I cited yesterday, which said:

Cho reloaded several times, using 15-round magazines for the Glock and 10-round magazines for the Walther, investigators said...

I wouldn't be surprised to see that Cho had multiple magazines, but 17 is a huge number of full magazines to carry. If 15 of those were standard 15 round Glock 19 magazines, that would give him 225 rounds, plus 20 in the 2 10-round P22 factory magazines for a total of 245 rounds. If some of those Glock magazines were the extended 31 and 33-round magazines as NBC now claims, he could easily have been carrying in excess of 300 rounds, and that doesn't include any loose or boxed ammunition he may have had.

I'll try to run this down, and see which investigators are getting this story right.

Before I go on, however, I'm going to take issue with retired ATF agent Joseph Vince, who NBC quotes in their article:

In the photos Cho sent to NBC, he showed some of his ammunition — hollow-point rounds, purchased, officials say, in the weeks before the shootings. Law enforcement officials say hollow-points are generally considered more lethal.

Joseph Vince, a retired ATF agent, agrees.

"It's not something that you would need for home protection, because what you are trying to do is eliminate an immediate threat," Vince says. "The idea of killing is what this ammunition portrays to me."

Vince is unequivocally wrong in this instance, and I don't see how he could be misquoted.

Hollowpoint and frangible ammunition is precisely the kind of ammunition you would want for home defense and personal protection.

Vince seems to be implying that FMJ ball, soft-nosed, wadcutter, semi-wadcutter or round-nosed lead bullets would be a more favorable choice for home defense than hollowpoints or frangible ammunition, and that is not only wrong, but ignorant and I'd go as far as to say it is stupid.

FMJ ball, soft-nosed (jacketed bullets with an exposed lead tip), wadcutter, semi-wadcutter or round-nosed lead bullets are solid bullets that do not typically change shape much when encountering human-sized targets or most building materials. As a result, if someone has to fire one of these bullets at a person, only one of two things can happen:

• The shooter hits his target and the bullet over-penetrates, goes through his target, and runs the risk of going through building materials and other people with enough velocity to kill or wound someone else. Depending on the caliber, these bullets can hit a human and retain enough energy to completely pass through with enough force to go through several more sheetrock walls and still retain enough energy to kill someone else. Because these bullets typically go through a target while still retaining a great amount of energy, they are by definition not translating that energy into stopping power, and cause less damage to the primary target than would hollowpoint or frangible ammunition, which tend to expend more or all of their energy into the target, translating to more stopping power on directly comparable shots.
• The shooter misses his target, and the bullet goes through multiple layers of building materials. FMJ ball, soft-nosed (jacketed bullets with an exposed lead tip), wadcutter, semi-wadcutter or round-nosed lead bullets will typically retain their shape and energy far better than hollowpoint or frangible ammunition, and will therefore penetrate far more layers of building materials. Many solid centerfire pistol bullets will penetrate more than a dozen layers of sheetrock if they don't encounter something with more mass (a 2x stud, other materials, or a human body).

I recall at least one instance where a home owner in a home invasion scenario fired a FMJ bullet (.45 ACP 230-grain FMJ, I think) that missed his target, exited his home, completely went through another home entirely, and finally lodged in the far bedroom wall of a third home, above a sleeping girl's head. Had she been sitting up, she could have been seriously injured or killed.

Hollowpoints that function as designed open into a mushroom shape, and offer far more surface area for friction to affect once they start encountering other objects. They will not penetrate as far as the various solid bullet designs in identical circumstances as a result. If they hit their human target, the hollowpoint bullet transfers mote energy into a target, and stands greater likelihood of incapacitating the assailant when compared to identical shot placement from any of the solid bullet designs. Likewise, those hollowpoints that completely penetrate the human target will be more likely to stop faster than solid designed when encountering building materials, also because of the wider surface area.

In most (not all) home defense scenarios, frangible ammunition, while far more expensive than either the hollowpoint or solid ammunition designs, is the best option. When a homeowner confronts an assailant and is forced to fire directly at his target with no intervening material separating them, the frangible bullet fragments inside the target, transferring most or all of it's ammunition to its target on a hit. Tests on French alpine goats in the Strasbourg (sp?) tests confirmed that frangible bullet designs are superior to all other bullets designs in incapacitating a human-sized target, with various hollowpoint designs coming in behind, and solid designs behind hollowpoints in terms of effectiveness.

Joseph Vince, retired AFT agent or not, is horribly, horribly wrong here.

Allahpundit goes on to note that if Virginia had forwarded Choo's mental health evaluation to the federal government, Cho should have never been able to buy the Glock:

The magistrate ruled in 2005 that Cho presented “an imminent danger to self or others as a result of mental illness, or is so seriously mentally ill as to be substantially unable to care for self and is incapable of volunteering or unwilling to volunteer for treatment.” He should have been in the FBI’s NICS system, but apparently states don’t always provide mental-health records as fully as they might or should.

If this CBS News story is correct, then Cho bought his Walther P22 online. Horrors!

Oh wait. He didn't. Media ignorance and misrepresentation once again rears its ugly head:

On this same day, the gun was shipped to JND Pawnbrokers in Blacksburg, Va., where Cho picked up the gun two days later. The federally licensed store then did a background check.

First, the sequence of events in paragraph is backwards. Cho could only pick up the gun after the NICS check, and that is what occurred. CBS News ignorance, or purposeful design? You make the call.

The actual sequence of events run in direct opposition to what the article claims in the lede:

On Feb. 2, Cho Seung-Hui bought a Walther .22 caliber pistol from the online retail store www.thegunsource.com. It was the first and only time he ever used this particular Web site.

Without a Federal Firearms License (FFL), Cho could not directly by a gun through mail order or online, as the lede improperly states. It isn't until the final paragraph that we learn Cho did not buy the gun from the online site.

Instead, he chose the model he wanted and had it shipped to a business with a FFL, where he then went through the normal purchase process, as you would in any retail firearms purchase.

This tragedy at Virginia Tech is horrible, but the reporting of it thus far is showing us either the professional media is a bunch of bumbling incompetents, or are agenda-driven deceivers.

I'm not sure which possibility frightens me the most.

Update: Ace calls foul. Actually, he calls a word I won't use on a family-friendly blog, but you get the picture. Go read it.

Hammering Ross

I'm not the only one noting the anti-gun dishonesty of Brian Ross and ABC News.

The Washington Times rips into them in "Inside Politics," calling the deceptive Ross and Dana Hughes blog entry a Media Misfire.

I'd add that they quote impeccable sources.

The Lyrical McCain

Ah, how interesting...

Another man — wondering if an attack on Iran is in the works — wanted to know when America is going to "send an air mail message to Tehran." McCain began his answer by changing the words to a popular Beach Boys song. "Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran," he sang to the tune of Barbara Ann. "Iran is dedicated to the destruction of Israel. That alone should concern us but now they are trying for nuclear capabilities. I totally support the President when he says we will not allow Iran to destroy Israel."

He stopped short of answering the actual question and did not say if he supports an invasion of Iran.

I haven't been this amused by a sung answer to a political question since I spoofed Phil Collins in 2005 in a story about a famous Cuban boy with the headline, It's No Fun, Being an Illegal Elian.

Now if would just launch into a redition of "Another one bites the dust" in reference to McCain-Feingold, I might just forgive him.

A Proposal for Collegiate Concealed Carry

One of my liberal regulars made the following observation in this post, which got me thinking if there was a "right way" to implement the carrying of concealed weapons at colleges and universities:

The thing that surprises me about the news coverage is the idea that this can be blamed on the fact that this campus was a "no firearm" zone. I didn't know that there was a "fully armed" option when it came to college campuses.

Let's all cast our minds back to college, shall we? I'm willing to bet that every one of us was, to some degree or another, a horse's ass back then. Do we want fully-armed horse's asses on our college campuses? It seems like a bad idea to me.

The idea that more weapons on campus would solve this problem is counterintuitive. This guy was on campus, and he had a weapon, and he killed 33 people.

"Fully armed" college campuses are of course a horrible idea for the very reasons implied above, which are primarily a lack of maturity and the abundant flow of alcohol and other recreational drugs. It would be a recipe for further increasing recipients of the Darwin Awards, and that is something we are certainly against.

What is reasonable, however, is giving students, faculty, and staff who meet certain rigorous standards the ability to bring handguns on campus for the defense of themselves and others in extraordinary life-threatening circumstances.

Here is my proposal.

The minimum age to purchase a handgun is 21 years old in most states. By definition, this would limit concealed carry to mostly juniors, seniors and graduate students, non-traditional (older) underclassmen, faculty, and staff.

Limit concealed carry to students housed off-campus, and to faculty and staff members. Firearms would not be allowed in the dormitories. This is both a practical and legal consideration. In-dorm firearms could not be secured properly and uniformly, and should not be allowed.

Those students, faculty and staff must prove that they have secure storage for their firearms in their off-campus dwellings.

They must register the firearm they wish to carry on campus with the university police, and qualify with that firearm to show proficiency and safety at least once per calendar year. These requirements are already served by the current CCW licensing process in some states, and actually exceed the CCW licensing of others, who may only require a one-time qualifying performance. It is also comparable to the qualifying guidelines of most police departments.

In addition to these state guidelines, those faculty, staff and off-campus students who qualify under state CCW guidelines should also take a university-prescribed course detailing any additional campus restrictions, and then require them to pass a written test showing these understand both state CCW laws and campus restrictions.

Universities should adopt guidelines for acceptable firearms and ammunition for those who wish to carry on campus, using the following as a general outline:

• All university-approved CCW firearms shall be of modern design and sound mechanical shape, as shall holsters and spare magazine carriers;
• All firearms shall be of standard self-defense calibers, and these calibers are designated as follows: .380 ACP, .38 Special, 9mm Parabellum, .357 SIG, 40 S&W, .44 Special, and .45 ACP or comparable cartridges;
• All firearms using lower-powered cartridges (below .380 ACP) shall not be allowed;
• All firearms using higher-power cartridges (.357, .41, 44 Magnums, and above) shall not be allowed;
• All firearms using bottlenecked ammunition ( exception: .357 SIG) shall not be allowed;
• Only commercially-loaded frangible ammunition shall be allowed.
• Pistol magazines shall be of "standard length" (not exceeding the butt of the firearm but more than 1 inch, including any "bump" pads). The number of magazines would be restricted to one in the firearm and one spare magazine in an approved spare magazine carrier.

The guidelines above are very practical in nature. Certain calibers are simply better than others for CCW purposes, and the calibers cited above encompass the overwhelming majority of those in which defensive handguns are chambered. The frangible ammunition mandate may be new to some that are more familiar with full metal-jacketed (FMJ) and hollowpoint ammunition, and so may need to be explained.

Frangible ammunition is designed to fragment or disintegrate upon or shortly after contact. This significantly reduces the dangers associated with overpenetration, by transferring most or all of the projectile's energy into the target as the bullet fragments. While typically being more lethal to the target, frangible ammunition is not as likely to penetrate structural components (walls, floors, doors). Glaser and MagSafe are two of the most common examples.

As for carrying and storage guidelines, all students would be required to carry their firearms and magazines on their persons at all times while on campus (not in a desk, satchel, purse, or bookbag), and all faculty and staff would be expected to follow these same guidelines, with the additional provision that firearms can be kept in individual locked offices in university-approved, bolted-down gun storage safes for faculty and staff.

The requirements and restrictions outlines above are only a rough roadmap of reasonable outlines for a campus concealed carry program.

A similarly-implemented plan would create an atmosphere where the faculty, staff, and students can be confident that those who are allowed to carry concealed weapons on campus are perhaps better trained than their CCW-licensed counterparts in the rest of society, and are arguably as well trained as some municipal police officers.

Your thoughts?

Return Address: Ishmael

On MSNBC:

NBC News President Steve Capus said the network received the package in Wednesday morning's mail delivery and immediately turned the material over to FBI agents in New York. The FBI is assisting Virginia State Police in the investigation.

The package included a long, "rambling, manifesto-like statement embedded with a series of photographs," Capus said. The material is "hard-to-follow ... disturbing, very disturbing — very angry, profanity-laced," he said.

It does not include any images of the shootings Monday, but it does include "vague references," including “things like 'This didn’t have to happen,'" Capus said in an interview late Wednesday afternoon.

One of the photos.

It shows Cho with the murder weapons, the Glock 19 in his right hand, the Walther P22 in his left.

And in a related article:

Among the materials are 23 QuickTime video files showing Cho talking directly to the camera, Capus said. He does not name anyone specifically, but he talks at length about religion and his hatred of the wealthy.

I'm watching the coverage on NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams as they discuss the case. The return address was "Ishmael," as written on Cho's arm. Cho's comments spoke of himself in the past tense.

I'm not sure what to say about this at this point.

Update: Ace glibly notes, "It really would have been a good idea to lock the campus down after the first shootings, eh?"

Despite Dishonest Media Hype, Va. Tech Shooter Used Standard Capacity Magazines In Shooting Spree

Thanks to Ace and Allah, I was led to a Washington Post article that explains that the shooter at Virginia Tech used standard capacity magazines during his rampage:

The Glock was used in two shootings, first in a dormitory and then in Norris Hall more than 2 1/2 hours later, officials said. A surveillance tape, which has now been watched by federal agents, shows Cho buying the Glock, sources said. Both guns are semiautomatic, which means that one round is fired for every finger pull.

Cho reloaded several times, using 15-round magazines for the Glock and 10-round magazines for the Walther, investigators said, adding that he had the cryptic words "Ismale Ax" tattooed on one arm. Although there are many theories, sources said, no one knows what it means.

As I stated yesterday, the magazines used in the Virginia Tech massacre were of standard capacity. Let me take this opportunity to do what the media has failed to do, and explain the difference between standard capacity magazines, magazines manufactured during the crime bill, and extended magazines as the terms relate to pistols.

Standard Capacity Magazines
Standard capacity magazines are those magazines designed by the manufacturer to fit within the magazine well in the butt (handgrip) of a pistol. The capacity varies from pistol to pistol, depending on how the firearm was designed. Most modern 9mm pistols are designed to house between 13-17 cartridges in each magazine without noticeably protruding from the bottom of the pistol.

This is a picture of a Glock 19 with a standard capacity magazine of 15 rounds, as designed by the manufacturer.

"Crime Bill" Magazines
A provision of the 1994 "Crime Bill" was the so-called "assault weapon" ban, and part of the ban placed a limit of ten cartridges on any magazine manufactured after the law took effect (it did not ban the ownership, sale, or purchase of then of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of standard capacity and extended capacity magazines manufactured prior to the law's implementation). Under this law, any magazine with more than ten rounds was declared a "high capacity" magazine, even though the overwhelming majority of these magazines were actually standard-sized magazines as designed by firearms designers. "High capacity" was and is purely a political designation, not a practical one.

Typically, the exact same magazine body were used in pre-ban, ban, and post-ban magazines, with internal block limiting the number of cartridges that could be loaded into magazines produced during the ban period (It was also relatively simple to remove the block from many magazines and return them to their standard capacity with a simple replacement of parts if one wanted to, but with so many pre-ban magazines for sale, few saw the need).

This is a picture of a Glock 19 with a AW-ban capacity magazine of 10 rounds.

Actually, it's the exact same picture, but as the ban and standard magazines still used the same magazine body, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference in the pistol's profile anyway.

Extended Magazines
As they relate to pistols, extended magazines are those magazines that extend perceptibly beyond the butt (handgrip) of the pistol. Extended magazines do not always mean high capacity magazines. Ten-round magazines for 1911-style .45ACP pistols were quite legal to manufacture between 1994-2004, but they still extended quite a bit beyond the pistol's natural butt.

This is a picture of a Glock 18 (the Glock 19's larger, machine pistol cousin) with an extended 33-round magazine that would fit the Glock 19.

Brian Ross of the "Blotter", ABC News, and Keith Olbercavemann were factually wrong is when they stated or implied that the 1994 law in any way restricted the sale, purchase, or ownership of any of the above magazines.

The law simply did not do what they claimed, and tens of thousands--perhaps hundreds thousands of such magazines--were bought and sold via retail purchase in stores, catalogs, and online during the 1994-2004 period. All the 1994 law did was ban the manufacture of magazines greater than ten rounds during that time period, which ultimately was a trivial matter. While the cost of some standard and extended magazines did rise considerably during the ban, they were never in short supply because so many magazines were already on the market.

Others and I have also noted that the size of the magazine also has very little to do with the carnage at Virginia Tech on Monday. It takes most shooters between 1-3 seconds to change an empty magazine for a full magazine, and there was no indication that Cho was rushed, especially as he had a second gun, presumably with a full magazine already loaded, at hand.

There are some forces in the media that are using this tragedy in Blacksburg to try to push a political agenda, and they are will to twist the truth or even lie to you in order to push it.

It's a sad, sick fact, but that is the media we have.

Striking the Balance

SWAT teams wearing body armor and carrying machine guns stormed an administrative building at Virginia Tech this morning:

Virginia Tech students still on edge after the deadliest shooting in modern U.S. history got another scare Wednesday morning as police in SWAT gear with weapons drawn swarmed Burruss Hall, which houses the president's office.

The threat of suspicious activity turned out to be unfounded, said Virginia State Police spokeswoman Corinne Geller said, and the building was reopened. But students were rattled.

"They were just screaming, 'Get off the sidewalks,'" said Terryn Wingler-Petty, a junior from Wisconsin. "They seemed very confused about what was going on. They were just trying to get people organized."

One officer was seen escorting a crying young woman out of Burruss Hall, telling her, "It's OK. It's OK."

To the best of my knowledge, Cho Seung-Hui killed himself with a bullet to the head on Monday morning after killing 32 innocent people and wounding many more, and he is still dead. Based upon thousands of years of human experience with one notable exception some 2,000 years ago, he is forecast to remain deceased.

So why is Virginia Tech still blanketed with heavily-armed and understandably tense police officers, many of which are dealing themselves with the aftershocks of trauma from the largest mass shooting by an individual in U.S. history, just two days ago?

Part of the reason is to provide the public perception that something is being done and that the tragic massacre of two days ago will not be repeated on this ravaged, grief-stricken campus, a campus already awash in disbelief, shock, and fear. The officers are meant to provide psychological security as much as they are to provide physical security.

But as this morning's frightening false alarm showed, sometimes an overwhelming police presence in the wake of a traumatic event can instead lead to situation that increases or extends fears.

Today, Virginia Tech may very well be the safest college campus in the United States, but the massive display of force by police comes with its own costs.

Heavily-armed and no doubt highly-stressed first responders chasing ghosts and rumors are adding trauma to still fragile students like the young woman noted in the story above.

While a heightened police presence is still warranted to deal with the inevitable false alarms and to help provide a feeling of security, it is two days too late for the need of heavy body armor, and no current reason for police to walk around campus with tactical carbines. The time for such things has passed. On this day and in days forward, badges and "Smokie the Bear" covers should be enough. Enough, but not too much.

There is a balance, an equilibrium, an illusion of normalcy that must be regained for healing to begin.

Hopefully the officials at Virginia Tech will be able to find this equilibrium sooner, rather than later.

Giving Dumb a Chance

On the off chance that the ABC News staff of "The Blotter" is just ignorant of their subject matter and not nakedly pursuing a political agenda, I sent the following comment to their latest blog entry on the Virginia Tech shooting, in efforts to clear up a previous post that was patently false.

I'm still waiting for a retraction of the completely false story posted to the Blotter, "Lapse of Federal Law Allows Sale of Large Ammo Clips."

Ross and Hughes falsely stated that "High capacity ammo clips became widely available for sale when Congress failed to renew a law that banned assault weapons."

The AW Ban provision of the 1994 Crime Bill in no way restricted the sale, purchase, or ownership of magazines of more than ten rounds during the 1994-2004 period, and only restricted the sale of high-capacity magazines manufactured after this date. Tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of high-capacity magazines were bought and sold during the 1994-2004 time period in retail stores, via catalog sales, or online, and all sales and purchases were completely legal.

Nor were Ross and Hughes correct when they said, "Web sites now advertise overnight UPS delivery of the clips, which carry up to 40 rounds for both semi-automatic rifles, including 9mm pistols, and handguns."

These magazines were always available for legal purchase online (or anywhere else) since the World Wide Web was created. Their false implication that sales only began after 2004 is laughable, and completely false.

The blog entry was not only incorrect, it was deceptive, and showed a basic ignorance of the AW Ban and magazine provisions of the 1994 "Crime Bill."

ABC News and "The Blotter" owe their readership an apology and a retraction for this blatantly incorrect and perhaps purposefully fraudulent blog posting.

The media is allowed to occasionally make mistakes, but responsible journalists admit and correct their mistakes. It only remains to be seen if Brian Ross, The Blotter, and ABC News are responsible journalists.

NOTE: This comment has been cross-posted as part of a blog entry at http://confederateyankee.mu.nu/

I somewhat doubt that Brian Ross and ABC News has the integrity to issue a retraction of their inaccurate and agenda-driven post, but at least I'll be able to show that I made the attempt to have them correct the record.

Update: I fought the dumb, and the dumb won. My comment was deleted by ABC News employees moderating "The Blotter." Obviously, pursuing a political agenda is far more important to ABC News than is actually reporting facts.

So Simple, Even a Journalist Can Do It

I've roundly criticized ABC's Brian Ross for his blatant falsehoods regarding the "assault weapons" ban provision of the 1994 Crime Bill, but it appears that not only has ABC News refused to retract these false claims, it appears that the lie is spreading among other members of the ignorati.

Enter one of the least, shall we say, "mentally agile" disciples of this profession at MSNBC.

Allahpundit Ian has the video of Olbermann parroting of Ross' falsehoods.

At least one of the weapons used by the shooter is believed, as we said, to be in nine millimeter semi-automatic pistol, which would be like this one, with a clip designed to hold more than 10 shots. Clips like those were banned under the Assault Weapons Law of 1994, but Congress and President Bush allowed that law to expire more than two years ago.

I'll try this once more, making it so easy that even journalists can understand it.

High-capacity magazines were never outlawed. They were never illegal to own, buy or sell, person-to-person, in retail stores, catalogs, or online.

Part of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 was the so-called Federal Assault Weapons Ban, which was a ban on certain cosmetic features found on some firearms. It was, in fact, nothing more than "scary-looking gun" law.

Banned "assault rifles" were easily made legal again by manufacturers who merely had to remove the offensive accessories, such as flash hiders, pistol grip-style stocks, or bayonets lugs, none of which affected the rate of fire, accuracy or velocity of the firearms in question. Older firearms arbitrarily (and inaccurately) deemed assault weapons by the ban that were already in the market were grandfathered in, and the new "post-ban" assault weapons sold quite well during the length of the so-called ban.

Another provision of the ban was a ban on the manufacture of "large capacity ammunition feeding devices," which the law defined, again arbitrarily, as those rifle and pistol magazines that hold in excess of then rounds of ammunition.

Where Ross, ABC New, Olbermann and others are dead wrong is when they attempt to imply that the ban on the manufacture of new magazines of more than ten rounds was a ban on all high-capacity magazines. This is patently false.

There are literally hundreds of thousands, if not millions of firearms in America primarily designed to use magazines of more than ten rounds. Most of these firearms were sold by the manufacturer with at least two magazines, and there was and is a robust industry for magazines for these firearms. By the time the "large capacity ammunition feeding devices" stipulation of the 1994 AW Ban provision was implemented into law, there were literally millions of such magazines in America, and hundreds of thousands more available for retail and commercial sale.

The AW Ban did not make owning nor selling such magazines illegal. As a result, magazines of more than ten rounds were available for uninterrupted sale during the entire ten-year life of the AW ban. It was never illegal to own, sell, or buy such magazines. All the ban actually did was to spur interest in purchasing such magazines, and manufacturers literally had to work overtime to meet anticipated demand prior to the implementation of the law.

As a result of supply and demand, once the "ban" (which it never was in any meaningful way) went into effect, some magazines increased significantly in cost, and some were even in relatively short supply, but they were always available in retail stores, catalogs and online, and they were always legal to own, buy, or sell.

I'm growing increasingly tired of journalists such as Brain Ross, ABC News, and Keith Olbermann spouting falsehoods, when they have obviously been too lazy--or perhaps just to agenda-driven--to simply read the law itself, or even point a web browser in the direction of Google.

These so-called journalists have forfeited their credibility by refusing to address the truth, and instead, decided to foist upon an unsuspecting public, blatant falsehoods to further a political agenda.

We've come to expect our media to be biased. We shouldn't have to deal with them blatantly, recklessly, and repeatedly lying to further their private policy beliefs.

Iranian Weapons Intercepted On the Way To the Taliban

Well, it looks like the mullacracy is willing to supply just about any insurgency, doesn't it?

U.S. forces recently intercepted Iranian-made weapons intended for Taliban fighters in Afghanistan, the Pentagon's top general said Tuesday, suggesting wider Iranian war involvement in the region.

It appeared to be the first publicly disclosed instance of Iranian arms entering Afghanistan, although it was not immediately clear whether the weapons came directly from Iran or were shipped through a third party.

Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that unlike in Iraq, where U.S. officials say they are certain that arms are being supplied to insurgents by Iran's secretive Quds Force, the Iranian link in Afghanistan is murky.

"It is not as clear in Afghanistan which Iranian entity is responsible, but we have intercepted weapons in Afghanistan headed for the Taliban that were made in Iran," Pace told a group of reporters over breakfast.

He said the weapons, including mortars and C-4 plastic explosives, were intercepted in Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan within the past month. He did not describe the quantity of intercepted materials or say whether it was the first time American forces had found Iranian-made arms in that country.

If accurate, this seems to throw cold water on claims that Iran wouldn't support Sunni groups as willingly as they would Shiite militias.

Damn Occam, Full Speed Ahead

It is becoming abundantly clear that Brian Ross isn't the only member of ABC News that has the intention of using the Virginia Tech massacre to push an anti-gun political agenda, with extended magazines being mentioned again, even though there has been no corroboration that they played any factor at all:

It is unknown at this time if his guns had standard or extended clips, which, depending on the weapon, can fire as many as 30 shots before the gun has to be reloaded.

Actually, we do know for a fact that one of the weapons used, a Walther P22 that was his most recent purchase is only available with a ten-round magazine. Extended magazines for this pistol do not exist.

Extended magazines for Glocks (designed with the selective-fire Glock 18 machine pistol in mind, a weapon practically unavailable to American shooters) are capable of being used in Glock 19s do exist, but they are rather rare to encounter, and are typically found only online or through catalog order. They are rarely carried in most gun stores.

The reason is quite simple; Glocks are typically purchased for sport (target) shooting and personal defense by both civilians and police departments. When a Glock is fed an extended 31-round or even less common 33-round magazine, the weight of the extra 16-18 rounds dramatically changes the balance and weight of the pistol to make it butt-heavy, making it a bit more difficult to shoot, and the extra length and weight make it all but impossible to carry in any practical manner.

There is also no indication at all that he purchased his weapons, ammunition and accessories from anywhere other than the Roanoke gun shop where he purchased both pistols roughly a month apart, but as first voiced in Brian Ross' patently false "Blotter" blog entry yesterday and carried forth in this news article, the "deciders" at ABC News seem to have decided that they are going to hammer the extended magazine angle of this story, whether or not such magazines were even used.

"Truthy" used to be the standard for satire-based news shows. God help us now that it is ABC's new apparent standard for news.

Brian Ross' Gun Idiocy Rides Again

I've already slapped around Ross and ABC News for refusing to retract an entry on "The Blotter" that was remarkably fact-free, but Ross seems determined to further showcase his ignorance in yet another post today, attempted to tell us that one of the guns used was a 22 millimeter handgun.

Cho Seung-Hui bought his first gun, a 9 mm handgun, on March 13 and his second weapon, a 22 mm handgun, within the last week, law enforcement officials tell ABCNews.com.

Well, that would certainly explain why the casualty figures were so high. 20, 25 and 30 millimeter cannons are used as armament on helicopters, fighter aircraft and armored vehicles. Of course, no handgun could fire such a massive shell, outside of a Hollywood fantasy.

It is also worth noting that the ABC News picture associated with this blog entry is inaccurate as well.

It shows a picture of the Virginia Tech shooter as well as a Walther PPK or PPK/S in .380 ACP; a firearm and cartridge not used in the shooting.

The firearms used were a 9mm Glock 19 and a Walther P22 in .22 caliber.

Virginia Tech Shooter, Weapons Identified

Allahpundit has the story on the shooter, who has been identified as Seung Hui Cho (CNN calls him Cho Seung Hui), a Korean national, a permanent resident of the United States and a Virginia Tech student.

I'm cross-referencing this to Curt at Flopping Aces, who noted in an update a post to a firearms message board, where a gun shop employee claims (site currently down) he sold Cho the firearms used in the shooting:

"Well, I'm screwed. They found a receipt in the gunman's pocket indicating that he bought the gun from me in March. ATF is at my shop right now. See you later, I'm on my way to the shop right now."

[...]"Call BS all you like, but I just spent the last several hours with 3 ATF agents. I saw the shooter's picture. I know his name and home address. I also know that he used a Glock 19 and a Walther P-22. The serial number was ground off the Glock. Why would he do that and still keep the receipt in his pocket from when he bought the gun? ATF told me that they are going to keep this low-key and not report this to the tv news. However, they cautioned that it will leak out eventually, and that I should be ready to deal with CNN, FOX, etc. My 32 camera surveillance system recorded the event 35 days ago. This is a digital system that only keeps the video for 35 days. We got lucky. By the way, the paperwork for Mr. Cho was perfect, thank God."

I'm as disgusted as you probably are with the poster's focus on himself among all the real carnage around him, but that fact remains that he named "Mr. Cho" more than 12 hours before officials, so I think his claim that he sold these firearms to Cho is probably legitimate.

The firearms used in the shooting appear to be a Glock 19 (left, above), a 9mm pistol very popular with police agencies in many countries including the United States, and a Walther P22 (right, above), a .22 caliber pistol that is primarily used as a practice or target pistol. The Glock is typically sold with two standard 15-round factory magazines, a capacity fairly standard among comparable sized 9mm pistols. The P22 is typically sold with a pair of ten-round magazines.

Does ABC News or Brian Ross Have Any Integrity at All?

A day after posting a blog entry replete with falsehoods, and despite more than dozens of comments pointing out the factual inaccuracies of the story, Brian Ross and Dana Hughes of the ABC News blog "The Blotter" have yet to issue a retraction.

Does ABC News have an obligation to report facts, or is peddling a political agenda buttressed by lies their preferred stock in trade?

As I noted yesterday, the ABC News blog did not get so much as a single fact in their blog entry correct.

The Ross entry states that high-capacity magazines "became widely available for sale when Congress failed to renew a law that banned assault weapons." This is a patently false statement, containing no truth at all.

High-capacity magazines have been around for more than half a century, and the sale of high-capacity magazines was not impacted whatsoever by the 1994 Crime Bill. These magazines were freely and commercially available, both in retail stores and online, without interruption, for the 10-year life of the ban, the decades preceding it, and afterward.

Ross implies that high-capacity magazines are now for sale on Web sites as a result of the ban expiring. Again, this is a deceptive, inaccurate statement.

The fact of the matter is that high-capacity magazines were always available for purchase (as noted above) both online, and in retail stores, without interruption.

I stated yesterday:

This Blotter entry by Ross and Hughes is a study in bias, wrapped around ignorance, justified by fear.

I'll now add to this that it is now quite possible that Ross' entry is a study in willful media deception as well. The Blotter's own moderated comments section contains dozens of posts warning ABC News that the information contained in the post was incorrect.

Brian Ross and Dana Hughes can't even get their facts right about the 94 AW law nor can ABC fabricate a legit connection between high capacity magazine availability and this crime. Just the usual liberal bias against gun ownership. Posted by: sssss | Apr 16, 2007 3:07:54 PM

---

For the record, the federal law that lapsed didn't have any effect on the sale of high-cap magazines. Sales of existing magazines with capacities over ten rounds was entirely legal after the 1994 Act. What was prohibited was the manufacture of new magazines.
Posted by: Jeffersonian | Apr 16, 2007 3:09:34 PM

---

The magazines (not clips) were available during the ban on them, as anything that had been manufactured prior to the ban was grandfathered in. The "ban" banned nothing and was democratic showmanship at it's worse.
You can't ban firearms in the US, they are a constitutionally protected right. Again, the shooter is at fault, not the tool he used.
Posted by: Brian Heck | Apr 16, 2007 3:25:08 PM

---

Lets stick to facts for a side story. This article implies that the person guilty of this used large capacity clips and assault style weapons. all unknown @ this time. As an earlier post stated - lots of small capacity magazines can sould like one large capacity. The Magazine size limit was no clips 10 or over could be manufactured for sale in the US. this didn't stop the existing quantity to be resold.
As to the description of spraying requires large capacity clips. Two handguns with 9 round clips would sound like 18 rounds going off rapidly. If the person was truely Spraying fire into classrooms then Large capacity clips were the least infraction. Automatic weapons as seen in hollywood flicks spraying fire downrange were banned in 1934 for private ownership. either the person had a license for the weapon (unlikely)or modified (in violation of the law) the weapon to fire automaticly.
Again I ask to stick to facts and not jump to conclusions about what may have exasperated the situation to promote a political agenda.
Posted by: glenn | Apr 16, 2007 3:26:18 PM

This is just a sampling of comments left in the moderated comments thread accompanying the Ross blog entry.
Every single one of these comments went past an ABC News employee. This ABC News employee either decided not to investigate the multiple inaccuracies noted by readers, or passed the information on to Ross, who also declined to address the multiple falsehoods contained in his post. In either event, Ross and ABC News have had ample time to correct a blog entry devoid of facts, and they have declined to do so.

This is media malpractice and what many would consider willful deception.

Facts and truth do not apparently matter to ABC News.

Pushing a political agenda is clearly their goal, even if that agenda must be supported by abject falsehoods.

Update: It is also worth noting that one of the weapons used did not have a high-capacity magazine by any definition, and the other is typically used with a standard 15-round non-extended magazine that is moe or less an industry norm for pistols of its size.

The Blotter: Never Let Tragedy or Stupidity Get in the Way of Your Political Agenda

Brian Ross and Dana Hughes prove just how little they know about firearms, laws related to them, and the effects of both with their knee-jerk response to today's Virginia Tech shootings, where they attempt to place the blame not on the shooter, but on high-capacity magazines:

High capacity ammo clips became widely available for sale when Congress failed to renew a law that banned assault weapons.

Web sites now advertise overnight UPS delivery of the clips, which carry up to 40 rounds for both semi-automatic rifles and handguns.

"High capacity magazines read extreme firepower and gusto. Stock Up!" is the headline of one of many gun shop Web sites.

Virginia law enforcement officials have not identified the weapon used in the shootings today at Virginia Tech, but gun experts say the number of shots fired indicate, at the very least, that the gunman had large quantities of ammunition.

"When you have a weapon that can shoot off 20, 30 rounds very quickly, you're going to have a lot more injuries," said Peter Hamm of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

"It's not one or two shots at a time when you're putting 20 bullets, spraying them into a classroom or into a dorm room," Hamm said.

This blog entry is so ignorant and factually incorrect on so many levels that ABC News should immediately print a correction or a retraction, and require Ross and Hughes to go to a basic firearms safety class before ever being allowed to write about the subject again.

They state:

High capacity ammo clips became widely available for sale when Congress failed to renew a law that banned assault weapons.

This is absolutely and totally false.

First, "clips," literally thin strips of metal designed to hold cartridges for ease in loading, were never addressed in the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994.

For that matter, the law never banned existing high magazines either, "magazines" being the word that Ross and Hughes needed, but were too technically ignorant to use.

As a matter of practical fact, if Hughes and Ross had bothered to speak with any experts at all, they would have discovered that high-capacity magazines were never in short supply prior to 1994, and the commercial sale of high-capacity magazines was never slowed, much less stopped, during the ten years the ban was in effect from 1994-2004.

The commercial sale of high capacity magazines was legal during the ban, and the supply of pre-existing magazines was so plentiful that prices for many magazines never increased. In some instances, prices actually dropped.

Web sites now advertise overnight UPS delivery of the clips, which carry up to 40 rounds for both semi-automatic rifles and handguns.

Again, Ross and Hughes are lazy and factually incorrect.

Large commercial sporting good stores sold high capacity magazines during the entire life of the ban, because the ban never affected the sale of existing magazines, and there were warehouses full of them. Nor are we limited to 40-round magazines (not clips, which are something else entirely). If you want a 100-round magazine, you can have it shipped the very next day. You always could.

"High capacity magazines read extreme firepower and gusto. Stock Up!" is the headline of one of many gun shop Web sites.

Horrible grammar, perhaps, but at least they know the difference between a magazine and a clip. Online and commercial retail stores, again, have never been affected by the ban in any measurable way, nor have been consumers.

Virginia law enforcement officials have not identified the weapon used in the shootings today at Virginia Tech, but gun experts say the number of shots fired indicate, at the very least, that the gunman had large quantities of ammunition.

There are tens of million of people in this nation with "large quantities of ammunition." Does that mean we're all criminals in the minds of these ABC reporters? Probably.

The fact of the matter is that high-capacity magazines were never difficult to get, and that even standard capacity magazines would have made very little difference in today's tragic shooting. For anyone with even a rudimentary familiarity with their firearm, changing a magazine takes less than three seconds. Those who practice can make a magazine change in less than that. Whether a shooter has two 15-round magazines or three 10-round magazines, the outcome would likely be very much the same.

Once again, Ross and Hughes spray rhetorical blanks, and hit nothing.

But they aren't quite done yet: now they need an expert opinion to provide the illusion of competence and objectivity.

Send in the clown.

"When you have a weapon that can shoot off 20, 30 rounds very quickly, you're going to have a lot more injuries," said Peter Hamm of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

"It's not one or two shots at a time when you're putting 20 bullets, spraying them into a classroom or into a dorm room," Hamm said.

I sholdn't have to point out the fact that their "expert" is from the anti-gun Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, a viciously anti-gun group, who is as light on the facts and as high on rhetoric as is Ross and Hughes. Note how Hamm purposefully uses the word "spray" to create an image of machine gun fire, even though machine guns are strictly regulated, and no one is even suggesting one was used in Blacksburg. I’d also note the obvious and undisputed fact that a weapon with a high-capacity magazine does not fire any faster than one with a regular magazine.

This Blotter entry by Ross and Hughes is a study in bias, wrapped around ignorance, justified by fear.

I don't think that is how ABC News should run their newsroom, but then, that is their decision to make.

Multiple Shootings at Virginia Tech

At least one shooter eyewitnesses identified as an "Asian" male wearing military load-bearing equipment has shot between 7-17 students and faculty members at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia.

One fatality has been confirmed, and one shooter is in custody as the campus remains on a lockdown while police search for a second gunman. The first shootings took place in a dormitory, and a second rounds of gunfire erupted in an engineering classroom building at the opposite end of campus hours later. The campus has been shutdown and students are locked down as police scour the campus for a possible second shooter.

Collegiate Times, the Va. Tech student newspaper, is stating that there are 22 fatalities, including one shooter. The web site also states that three men were arrested and escorted from the engineering building.

I'm not sure how accurate these accounts are, and cannot find a corroborating source to support these claimed fatalities. I would therefore recommend this being regarded as rumor for now. If true, however, this may be the deadliest collegiate shooting in modern history.

Update High number of fatalities confirmed, via AP.

Update: The following is an educated guess, and may be incorrect: Based upon the high number of fatalities among those shot, and the high number of victims overall, and the description of the shooter as wearing some sort of load-bearing vest, I'm going to make an educated guess and suggest that the shooter was likely armed with a 7.62x39mm semi-automatic rifle, probably patterned on the AK-47.

There are a couple of reasons why I feel this is probably the type of weapon used.

1. The description a shooter "wearing a vest covered in clips." The witness seems to be describing load-bearing equipment, typically made for either 5.56 NATO or 7.62x39 magazines, the two most standard assault rifle calibers. The typical standard magazine for each weapon is typically 30 rounds.
2. Of the two calibers, the 7.62x39 is a far more lethal bullet across a wider range of conditions than the 5.56 NATO or slightly less powerful .223 Remington variant that can be fired from the same weapon. People shot with 5.56 NATO rounds often survive after even being hit with multiple shots. The high number of fatalities suggests a more lethal caliber and/or cartridge.
3. The rifles patterned after AK-series are typically far less expensive (often less than $500) than those patterned on the AR15/M16 platform (often more than $900-1,000), and are also often more plentiful for sale.

Obviously, our prayers go out to those Virginia Tech faculty, students, staff, and family members affected by this tragedy.

Update: I'd like to make one last statement about this after reading Allah's latest update, noting that a bill to allow students to carry handguns was recently quashed in the Virginia General Assembly.

When I was a T.A. in graduate school at East Carolina University in the mid-1990s, I knew several graduate and undergraduate students that illegally carried concealed weapons on a fairly regular basis. Contrary to what you might suspect, most of these students were female liberal arts majors. One of my students in the class that I taught brought a Browning .380 to class every day. I felt safe knowing my fellow students were armed. I also felt better when the left the building at night that they could protect themselves and others from any predators that may have been about.

Would the number of students shot at Virginia Tech today have been lower if student there were allowed to take a training class, get a permit, and carry a concealed weapon on campus? There is of course not way to be sure. I do think it is obvious that an armed student or faculty member could have at least made taking their lives a far more difficult.

I'd urge a far more somber Virginia General Assembly, and the General Assembly of other states, to consider letting student who have satisfied their state requirements to carry concealed weapons also carry those weapons on campus. The lives saved may belong to someone dear to them.

Update: 32 killed, 28 wounded. NBC is citing two anonymous law enforcement officials as saying that a pair of 9mm handguns were used in the rampage. This does not seem to match up with eariler reports of the shooter wearing what sounded like military load-bearing equipment, and if accurate, means my earlier educated guess was based upon inaccurate assumptions, as I noted it could be.

A clearer picture separating the fact from rumor will begin to emerge over the coming days.

AOL Poll Results Thus Far: Can Rosie

It's not looking good for a certain 9/11 Truther.

As of 1:06 PM (EDT), 82% of 6,873 people casting votes in the America Online poll agree that Rosie O' Donnell should be fired.

The link for the Drudge Report probably isn't helping Rosie fans, but I doubt it is swinging things too much.

Continuing to Cry Defeat

I must thank blog aggregator Memeorandum this morning for providing this link about the latest Charles Krauthammer column, which in turn, led to a Melanie Phillips blog entry highlighting key points of a Fouad Ajami editorial, Iraq in the Balance.

Among the subjects the Ajami essay touches upon are the long history of Sunni and Shia animosity, the failure of salvation for the Sunni insurgency, and the distrust of Iranian-backed Shia militias as Iraq enters what Ajami calls the "final, decisive phase":

There is a growing Shia unease with the Mahdi Army--and with the venality and incompetence of the Sadrists represented in the cabinet--and an increasing faith that the government and its instruments of order are the surer bet. The crackdown on the Mahdi Army that the new American commander, Gen. David Petraeus, has launched has the backing of the ruling Shia coalition. Iraqi police and army units have taken to the field against elements of the Mahdi army. In recent days, in the southern city of Diwaniyya, American and Iraqi forces have together battled the forces of Moqtada al-Sadr. To the extent that the Shia now see Iraq as their own country, their tolerance for mayhem and chaos has receded. Sadr may damn the American occupiers, but ordinary Shia men and women know that the liberty that came their way had been a gift of the Americans.

The young men of little education--earnest displaced villagers with the ways of the countryside showing through their features and dialect and shiny suits--who guarded me through Baghdad, spoke of old terrors, and of the joy and dignity of this new order. Children and nephews and younger brothers of men lost to the terror of the Baath, they are done with the old servitude. They behold the Americans keeping the peace of their troubled land with undisguised gratitude. It hasn't been always brilliant, this campaign waged in Iraq. But its mistakes can never smother its honor, and no apology for it is due the Arab autocrats who had averted their gaze from Iraq's long night of terror under the Baath.

...

One can never reconcile the beneficiaries of illegitimate, abnormal power to the end of their dominion. But this current re-alignment in Iraq carries with it a gift for the possible redemption of modern Islam among the Arabs. Hitherto Sunni Islam had taken its hegemony for granted and extremist strands within it have shown a refusal to accept "the other." Conversely, Shia history has been distorted by weakness and exclusion and by a concomitant abdication of responsibility.
A Shia-led state in Baghdad--with a strong Kurdish presence in it and a big niche for the Sunnis--can go a long way toward changing the region's terrible habits and expectations of authority and command. The Sunnis would still be hegemonic in the Arab councils of power beyond Iraq, but their monopoly would yield to the pluralism and complexity of that region.

"Watch your adjectives" is the admonition given American officers by Gen. Petraeus. In Baghdad, Americans and Iraqis alike know that this big endeavor has entered its final, decisive phase. Iraq has surprised and disappointed us before, but as they and we watch our adjectives there can be discerned the shape of a new country, a rough balance of forces commensurate with the demography of the place and with the outcome of a war that its erstwhile Sunni rulers had launched and lost. We made this history and should now make our peace with it.

Without any shred of a doubt, we are in the final, decisive phase of this war.

The "surge" of American troops into Iraq only half-begun as part of Commanding General David Petraeus' counter-insurgency doctrine will be the final major push of American forces into the Iraq theater. With the success of the surge, the stabilization of Iraq means that American forces should be able to start drawing down in victory. If the surge does not work, the American public will be able to elect a President in 2008 that will bring our troops home in defeat. Either way, the surge represents America's endgame, for better or worse.

Based upon the success of French Lt. Col. David Galula's counter-insurgency efforts in Algeria, General Petraeus literally wrote the book on American counter-insurgency, Army Field Manual FM3-24 (PDF).

The Baghdad security plan, expanding to other parts of Iraq, comes at a time when al Qaeda has lost support in its former base of al Anbar province, where Sunni tribes once loyal to al Qaeda have turned against it. Within the past months, Sunni tribesmen that have recently joined the Iraqi police and military by the hundreds and thousands have fought pitched battles that al Qaeda has invariably lost, and the Sunni supporters of al Qaeda in Iraq are continuing to fracture, as noted as recently as yesterday.

As Krauthammer states in his recent op-ed with a nod to Ajami:

Fouad Ajami, just returned from his seventh trip to Iraq, is similarly guardedly optimistic and explains the change this way: Fundamentally, the Sunnis have lost the battle of Baghdad. They initiated it with an indiscriminate terror campaign they assumed would cow the Shiites, whom they view with contempt as congenitally quiescent, lower-class former subjects. They learned otherwise after the Samarra bombing in February 2006 kindled Shiite fury -- a savage militia campaign of kidnapping, indiscriminate murder and ethnic cleansing that has made Baghdad a largely Shiite city.

Petraeus is trying now to complete the defeat of the Sunni insurgents in Baghdad -- without the barbarism of the Shiite militias, whom his forces are simultaneously pursuing and suppressing.

Meanwhile, John Wixted points out that the media-declared "civil war" in Iraq is not a civil war:

Again, these Sunni insurgent groups are unhappy (not happy) with al Qaeda for indiscriminately slaughtering Shiite civilians in Iraq. How does that fit into the "civil war" schema? Answer: it doesn't. Think about the Tal Afar bombing again, the one that you thought was just part of the cycle of violence in a escalating civil war between Shiite militias and Sunni insurgents. There is just one tiny little problem with that superficial analysis: the major Sunni insurgent groups are extremely displeased with bombings like that. That being the case, you should now be able to appreciate the fact that, contrary to the standard analysis, the Tal Afar bombing (like many similar bombings) was not carried out by Sunni insurgents in their civil war against Shiites. Instead, those bombings represent al Qaeda in action. They are, in effect, counterattacks in our war on terror, not retaliatory strikes in a civil war.

The Sunni insurgents have come to realize that al Qaeda is not helping them in their fight against American troops. Instead, al Qaeda is trying to provoke a civil war, which benefits al Qaeda alone. That is, al Qaeda is trying to get Muqtada al Sadr's Mahdi Army to once again start executing Sunnis in Baghdad. That's why the Sunni insurgents are not happy. They have no interest in a civil war because it does not benefit them in any way. They want al Qaeda to help fight the Americans, and that's what al Qaeda was doing for a while. It's what George Bush wanted al Qaeda to do as well (at least I suspect as much). But al Qaeda came up with a fiendish alternative plan, and it has been amazingly effective up until now. Predictably, in response to al Qaeda's repeated atrocities against Shiite civilians, most Americans and all Democratic politicians think they are watching a civil war unfold in Iraq and have become demoralized as a result (just as al Qaeda knew they would -- it's always that way with the weak-willed America).

[snip]

All of this should also serve to update your thinking about Muqtada al Sadr's Mahdi Army, which, contrary to what you might believe, was killing Sunnis in Baghdad in an effort to stop those atrocities being carried out by al Qaeda against Shiite civilians. But now the Mahdi Army is cooperating with the troop surge, so those executions have come way down. Perhaps Muqtada realized that he was just playing into al Qaeda's hands (and the truth is, he was).

Unfortunately, last month, al Qaeda successfully slaughtered many hundreds of Shiites, and that increase in violence offset the decrease in violence by the Mahdi Army, so overall civilian casualties in Iraq remained essentially unchanged. However, the fact that the Sunni insurgency is beginning to resist al Qaeda, and the fact that they have even implored Osama bin Laden to call off attacks against civilians by al Qaeda in Iraq could be highly significant. If the Mahdi Army continues to cooperate (and all signs suggest that they will despite the Tal Afar bombing) and if al Qaeda can be induced to stop slaughtering civilians, then the troop surge will be seen as a resounding success because civilian casualties will come way down.

In short, Sunni tribes former aligned with al Qaeda are turning against them and joining the Iraqi military and police forces by the thousands. At the same time, Shia militias are staying their hands (for the most part), while the more militant offshoots of the Madhi Army are being either rounded up or shot down as are their Sunni opposites.

All in all, there is a picture beginning to emerge that shows the more radical and divisive elements of both the Sunni and Shia sects are slowly but steadily being whittled away. Sunnis and Shias formerly loyal to al Qaeda or al Sadr quietly melt away, inform on their former allies, or actively join forces with the Coalition and Iraqi government. These extremists that now only exist to cause terror in a fractured nation tiring of war, are losing.

Aligned against these growing signs of progress, we once again encounter our ever-present enemy... Democrats:

A memo from a top House Democrat says party leaders must not yield to White House pressure on Iraq and should cast President Bush as increasingly detached from public opinion.

Bush has said he will not negotiate with Democrats on legislation that would finance the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through September if it sets an end date for the Iraq war. Holding only a narrow majority in Congress, Democrats do not have enough votes to override the president's veto.

In a memo to party leaders, Rep. Rahm Emanuel says that as long as Democrats continue to ratchet up the pressure on Bush, the president loses ground.

Like many Democrats, Emanuel shows that in his eyes, the real enemy in the War on Terror (a name, I'd add, Democrats are cravenly trying to change) is American President George W. Bush, not al Qaeda terrorists or Shia militiamen.

The gathering signs of progress in Iraq means that the window of opportunity to claim a "victory" for Democrats—a headlong retreat and possible genocide that could result from a too quick withdrawal before Iraq is stabilized, which they would then attempt to pin on Bush—is closing.

If signs of progress continue to cautiously crop up in Iraq, the media-determined and Democrat-supported narrative of defeat may slowly begin to fall away, which is the worst possible situation for Democrats.

Should the surge continue to prove effective and Iraqis continue towards a path towards a reconciliation and a fair division of assets among the sects, it is not hard to see that public opinion will begin to turn against the liberal Democrat leadership, who have done all that is within their power to lose the war. Nobody likes someone who cheers against the home team, especially if the home team(s) rallies to win.

Only time will tell if the "rally" in Iraq is successful, but that is a chance Democrat leaders such as Emanuel, Reid, and Pelosi aren't will to take, and why they endeavor to lose Iraq by forfeit.

Screening Outside the Wire

The Washington State University Young Republicans screened Outside the Wire by JD Johannes, a former Marine, who joined the Marinesbecause:

... JD Johannes did not study hard or take his secondary education seriously, because he came from a rural, midwestern town, and because he had no other opportunities, Johannes was easily conned into joining the Marines by a high-pressure salesman in Dress Blues.

Just like U.S. Senator John Kerry said, JD Johannes got stuck in Iraq.

A synopsis of the screening is recounted on palousitics, including some barbed comments at Democrats who tried to upstage both the movie and the Iraq war veterans that were to address the audience and take questions after the film.

The young democrats expressed vivid interest in expressing opinions and produce questions to us, the WSU College Republicans. Dan Ryder and I articulated to the young democrats that no such exchange would take place in any shape or form. I was unequivocal in expressing that this documentary should leave you to derive your own opinions of the troops/war and that the WSU College Republicans did not feel qualified in hosting questions. After all, we did not serve in Iraq.

The young democrats "staged" a walkout upon hearing our truthful and legitimate response. This was a display upon epic proportions of the infantile demeanor of such a group that preaches the freedom of expression, ideas, opinions, etc. Their actions were pusillanimous in nature and a flat out slap in the face to the attendees, our organization, our great country and more acutely speaking, the Veterans of our brave service men and women present. They are a sickening disgrace. A classic display of uncouth trash.

The quote of the day, however, goes to one of the Iraq War veterans during a Q&A session after the screening to a question that was never asked.

One question that never came up was "can you support the troops if you don’t support the war?" After the question and answer session ended a Vet replied, "Absolutely not, how can you support someone if you don't support what he or she is doing?"

I've wondered about that same question myself, and have yet to hear what I would consider a reasonable answer.

Not Quite Innocent

Terry Moran is sure to be creamed for this contrarian opinion, but I tend to think he's right:

So as we rightly cover the vindication of these young men and focus on the genuine ordeal they have endured, let us also remember a few other things:

They were part of a team that collected $800 to purchase the time of two strippers.

Their team specifically requested at least one white stripper.

During the incident, racial epithets were hurled at the strippers.

Colin Finnerty was charged with assault in Washington, DC, in 2005.

The "Duke Three" are without a doubt innocent of the crimes of rape and kidnapping levied by a mentally-disturbed stripper and a dishonest district attorney, but they are not innocents. There is a huge distinction between being innocent of a crime, and some of the comments made during the defense lawyer's press conference that painted these three young men as almost being ripe for canonization.

They are part of a group that deserves criticism for their actions. These three young men are not criminals, but nor should they or their teammates be made into heroes. We should be able to redress the travesty of justice committed against them without making them into idols or figureheads of purity, when they clearly are not.

Black Panther Calls Malkin a Prostitute

Ah, leftists in action.

On the show she apparently creamed him, according to Don Surber:

You could almost feel the delight in her as she knew she had him. She stuck to her guns while he sputtered and locked into the name-calling mode. He is so stuck in the '60s (although he is far too young to have lived much then) that he could not understand that women really are the equal of men and that they can think for themselves — and mature into the same conservatives that educated men become.

Malkin's response to Malik Shabazz's name-calling is here.

It's rather sad in this day and age that women and minorities, especially women who are minorities, are treated so horribly if they have political opinions that stray from what some people think that their skin color should believe.

Because Unfair Charges are Wrong

One day after normally cautious North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper blasted the handling of the Duke Lacrosse rape case and took the extraordinary step of declaring the charged players innocent of all counts, disgraced Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong has issued a trite semi-apology:

Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong acknowledged today that three former Duke University lacrosse players were "wrongfully accused" of sexual assault.

Nifong released a statement one day after N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper dismissed the charges against the lacrosse players and declared them "innocent" and the victims of an "unchecked" prosecutor who rushed to judgment.

"It is and has always been the goal of our criminal justice system to see that the guilty are punished and that the innocent are set free," Nifong wrote. "No system based on human judgment can ever work perfectly.

"Those of us who work within that system can only make the best judgments we can," Nifong continued. "To the extent that I made judgments that utimately [sic] proved to be incorrect, I apologize to the three suspects that were wrongly accused. ... It is my sincere desire that the actions of Attorney General Cooper will serve to remedy any remaining injury that has resulted from these cases."

But Nifong disputed Cooper's assessment of him as a "rogue" prosecutor.

"The fact that I instead chose to seek that review should in and of itself call into question the characterizations of this prosecution as 'rogue' and 'unchecked,'" he wrote.

Shorter Mike Nifong: "I'll accept that charges shouldn't have been brought, but don't call me a "rogue" just because I conspired to hide evidence that would have exonerated the accused and used a mentally-disturbed girl's inconsistent stories as a battering ram to bludgeon my way into an elected office I promised to the governor himself I would not run for.

"Why, it is horrible to stigmatize someone with an inaccurate description.

'Cause that would, you know, be wrong."

Nifong faces a hearing at the North Carolina State Bar's Disciplinary Hearing Committee tomorrow afternoon at 4:00 PM, which will determine if he will be stripped of his law license.

Ten Fred Thompson Facts

From U.S News & World Report:

1. Fred Thompson has two speeds: Walk and Kill.
2. Fred Thompson once shot down a German fighter plane with his finger, by yelling, "Bang!"
3. Fred Thompson has counted to infinity. Twice.
4. Fred Thompson is the only man to ever defeat a brick wall in a game of tennis.
5. The opening scene of the movie "Saving Private Ryan" is loosely based on games of dodge ball Fred Thompson played in second grade.
6. When Fred Thompson goes to donate blood, he declines the syringe, and instead requests a hand gun and a bucket.
7. Fred Thompson’s house has no doors, only walls that he walks through.
8. When taking the SAT, write "Fred Thompson" for every answer. You will score a 1600.
9. The show Survivor had the original premise of putting people on an island with Fred Thompson. There were no survivors and the pilot episode tape has been burned.
10. Fred Thompson ordered a Big Mac at Burger King, and got one.

At least I think that is from U.S News & World Report.

I hired Katie Couric's producer as my fact checker, and now I'm not so sure.* *

Meanwhile, in the Other War...

I think the casualty figures are probably inflated, but the overall impact is still worth noting:

President Gen. Pervez Musharraf said Thursday that tribesmen have killed about 300 foreign militants during a weekslong offensive near the Afghan border and acknowledged for first time that they received military support.

The fighting that began last month in South Waziristan has targeted mainly Uzbek militants with links to al-Qaida who have sheltered in the tribal region since escaping the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001.

"The people of South Waziristan now have risen against the foreigners. They have killed about 300 of them, and they got support from the Pakistan army. They asked for support," Musharraf said in a speech at a military conference in Islamabad.

This amounts to a stronger enemy force killing off a weaker enemy force, and not something that I'd necessarily say is worth celebrating. However, if enough Taliban tribesmen and al Qaeda-linked militants kill each other, it might bleed their enthusiasm to take their jihad to NATO forces in Afghanistan for the time being.

Smoking Kills

Mike Yon reports from within a British Army assault on al Sadr-alligned Shia militia forces, a fight that saw 26-27 militiamen killed and 4,000 rounds of ammunition expended.

The British forces suffered no wounded, at least until after the battle was well over....

Duke Players Innocent / Media Outs Accuser

Read Ace for the analysis of Attorney General Roy Cooper's press conference stating the Duke Lacrosse players were innocent of all legal charges brought against them.

The Raleigh News and Observer, perhaps upset that the public furor, class warfare and racial acrimony they helped stir up turned out to be false, reacted by "outing" the accuser.

Her identity was an open secret for months on the Internet, but the decision to publish the name of someone that might be less than stable in the community where she lives seems punitive in nature, and perhaps more than a little dangerous.

Update: The N&O explains why they outed her.

Fox piles on. Hard.

Most other media outlets display a little bit of class.

Fisking Fisk

The man who has been wrong so often that he became a verb, is at it again:

Faced with an ever-more ruthless insurgency in Baghdad - despite President George Bush's "surge" in troops - US forces in the city are now planning a massive and highly controversial counter-insurgency operation that will seal off vast areas of the city, enclosing whole neighbourhoods with barricades and allowing only Iraqis with newly issued ID cards to enter.

The campaign of "gated communities" - whose genesis was in the Vietnam War - will involve up to 30 of the city's 89 official districts and will be the most ambitious counter-insurgency programme yet mounted by the US in Iraq.

The system has been used - and has spectacularly failed - in the past, and its inauguration in Iraq is as much a sign of American desperation at the country's continued descent into civil conflict as it is of US determination to "win" the war against an Iraqi insurgency that has cost the lives of more than 3,200 American troops. The system of "gating" areas under foreign occupation failed during the French war against FLN insurgents in Algeria and again during the American war in Vietnam. Israel has employed similar practices during its occupation of Palestinian territory - again, with little success.

Mr. Fisk claims that the style of counterinsurgency to be used in Baghdad had its "genesis" in the Vietnam War. This is especially troubling, considering that in the very next paragraph, Fisk brings up the French war in Algeria as another example.

The seminal work of counter-insurgency, Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice was written in 1964 by French Lt. Col David Galula, eight years after he first implemented them in 1956 in Greater Kabylia, east of Algiers.

The United States did not bring ground troops into Vietnam until the first detachment of 3,500 Marines was dispatched on March 8, 1965, nearly a decade after Galula began modern counter-insurgency tactics in Algeria.

I'm quite curious: does Robert Fisk conduct his research using "alternative history" books as a guide?

Is the Associated Press At it Again?

You'll likely remember that the Associated Press uncritically published an Association of Muslim Scholars claim on November 25, 2006 that 18 Sunni worshipers were killed in an "inferno" at the Al Muhaimin mosque in the Hurriyah neighborhood of Baghdad:

And the Association of Muslim Scholars, the most influential Sunni organization in Iraq, said even more victims were burned to death in attacks on the four mosques. It claimed a total of 18 people had died in an inferno at the al-Muhaimin mosque.

The claim has never been substantiated.

To the contrary, the Iraqi military forces reported no evidence of a fire having ever occurred inside the mosque, a conclusion also supported in U.S. military accounts. A photo of the interior of the mosque taken the very next day proves there was no "inferno."

The Associated Press has never issued a retraction or a correction for this clearly fabricated claim.

But why throw away a perfectly good source, just because they've been caught fabricating stories?

Today, the Associated Press once again used the Association of Muslim Scholars as a quite dubious source:

The Muslim Scholars Association, a Sunni group, issued a statement quoting witnesses as saying Tuesday's battle began after Iraqi troops entered a mosque and executed two young men in front of other worshippers. Ground forces used tear gas on civilians, it said.

"The association condemns this horrible crime carried out by occupiers and the government," the statement said.

But the witness in Fadhil said the two men were executed in an outdoor vegetable market, not in the mosque. The Iraqi military was not immediately available to comment on the claim.

Why does the Associated Press continue to use an organization with an obvious political agenda, ties to al Qaeda, and a documented history of providing false information as a source?

Pelosi Diplomacy: Legitimizing Terrorism

When Democrat Presidential candidates Clinton, Obama and Edwards dropped out of the Congressional Black Caucus Institute debate that was going to be co-sponsored by Fox News, many liberals crowed over the decision. It is their contention that Fox News is an "illegitimate" news source (or a "propaganda machine," or not even a news outlet at all. Someone should tell Nielsen), and that if these candidates had answered the questions provided by the CBCI in a televised debate on Fox News, it would "legitimize" the network.

Their central argument seems to be that if these Democrat candidates appeared on Fox, that their very presence would legitimize the news network.

Using that same logic, what then, should they make of this?

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Tom Lantos, D-San Mateo, just back from a trip to Syria that sparked sharp criticism from Republicans and the Bush administration, suggested Tuesday that they may be interested in taking another diplomatic trip - to open a dialogue with Iran.

The Democratic speaker from San Francisco and Lantos, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, were asked at a press conference in San Francisco Tuesday whether on the heels of their recent trip to the Middle East they would be interested in extending their diplomacy in the troubled region with a visit to Iran.

"Speaking just for myself, I would be ready to get on a plane tomorrow morning, because however objectionable, unfair and inaccurate many of (Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's) statements are, it is important that we have a dialogue with him,'' Lantos said. "Speaking for myself, I'm ready to go -- and knowing the speaker, I think that she might be.''

Pelosi did not dispute that statement, and noted that Lantos -- a Hungarian-born survivor of the Holocaust -- brought "great experience, knowledge and judgment" to the recent bipartisan congressional delegation trip to Israel, the Palestinian territories, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia in addition to Syria.

Pelosi has already been hammered for undermining U.S. foreign policy and possibly committing a felony when she visited Syrian President Bashir Assad, leader of a Baathist dictatorship that serves as a conduit for weapons bound for terror groups Hezbollah and Hamas, and is a regime that is implicated in the assassination of Lebanon's former prime minister.

Not content with botching her last and possibly illegal attempt to create her own foreign policy separate from that of the official position of the United States, Pelosi seems open to the idea of visiting Iran, a brutal mullacracy that provides munitions and training to terrorist groups, whose officials will be indicted for murder, a regime that has conclusively shipped a significant quantity of weapons into Iraq that have killed American soldiers.

Apparently, the double standard is this:

Liberals are solidly behind the idea of boycotting a news network to avoid giving them legitimacy, but they are in favor of defying their own government's foreign policy to lend legitimacy to yet another terrorist state that has sponsored attacks on our allies and are actively engaged in trying to kill U.S. soldiers.

tbogg: Imus wannabe

"Nappy-headed ho's" had been overused, so he went with the next best thing.

Sure, tbogg's a hypocritical racist, but making a racist attack on a conservative black woman is perfectly acceptable behavior for liberals.

Anticipate other liberal bloggers coming to his defense by sundown.

Update: tbogg's comments echo those of Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau from April 7, 2004, which prompted this response:

Recently, Trudeau’s political observations ran a red light in referring to the nation’s National Security Advisor, Dr. Condoleezza Rice, a black woman, as "brown sugar." Frankly, the political satire in the April 7, 2004 Doonesbury escapes me and most women I know, black or white, liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican. It draws on centuries of deep-rooted, wicked and indefensible portrayals of black women. In doing so, it is decidedly unfunny. The only purpose served by this cartoon strip is that it proved one sad fact: despite the contentions of many, in 21st century America, race and gender still matter.

[snip]

The fact is that black women at the apex of power have struggled long and hard for respect. The struggle still continues. This is why in this context, references to black women as brown sugar are not funny. It reminds us of the historical exploitation of black women in America. It reminds us that there are those who believe that no matter how accomplished we may become, no matter how educated we are, and no matter how many books we read, black women should remain in "their place," figuratively or literally. This place is one that is out of public view.

tbogg joins a long list of liberals that feel it is their right to use racial slurs against black conservatives.

Some of these past racial attacks on Secretary Rice included Garry Trudeau's "Doonesbury" comic strip having President Bush refer to her as "Brown Sugar," Ted Rall's cartoon suggesting she was a "house nigga" needing "racial re-education" and Jeff Danziger depicting her a the slave "Prissy" from the movie "Gone With the Wind." Additionally, former entertainer Harry Belafonte referred to Secretary Rice as a "house slave" and "sell-out," while NAACP chairman Julian Bond called her a "shield" used by the Bush Administration to deflect racial criticism.

And lest we forget, liberal Steve Gilliard's Sambo smear against another black conservative, Michael Steele.

Tolerance. It's a liberal value.

Except when they don't feel like it.

Some of the News That's Fit to Print

Gateway Pundit correctly nails the leading regional and world media outlets for vastly over-exaggerating the actual number of protestors making noise on behalf of Tehran resident Mookie al Sadr in an anti-U.S. protest over the weekend.

A sampling of the media's inaccurate mis-reporting:

• The Associated Press: "Tens of thousands of Shiites..."
• New York Times: "Tens of thousands of protesters loyal to Moktada al-Sadr..."
• Reuters: "Tens of thousands of people waving Iraqi flags..."
• Gulf Daily News: "Hundreds of thousands of chanting Iraqi Shi'ites burned and stamped..."
• Guardian (UK): "Hundreds of thousands of supporters of the radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr..."

And now, a reality break.

As Bugs Bunny says, "That's all, folks."

Even Duke University football games get better turn-out than the 5,000-7,000 shown in the image above.

I'd be very interested to discover which organizations actually had reporters in Najaf for the protests, if those reporters were bureau reporters or local stringers, and where they came up with their figures. Thinking I'd actually get a response to any of these questions from these news organizations is, of course, absurd. The media doesn't like the idea of accountability.

I'll update this with more detail if information becomes available.

Update: Crap! I screwed up. the photo above was clearly captioned as being from Baghdad in the MNF-I article , and I did the "assume" thing, and thought that Gateway Pundit captioned the photo correctly (he didn't), and got it completely wrong.

SSG Craig Zentkovich said via email that he shot this picture from the top of the Sheraton hotel in 2005. You have my apologies.

Democrat Iraq War Grandstanding Angers Veterans' Groups

Both the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) and American Legion have issued statements hammering a Democrat Congress that continues to play games with Iraq War funding.

From the VFW:

"The funding package contained artificial troop withdrawal deadlines that would ultimately break the morale of our troops in the field and directly jeopardize their safety," said Lisicki, who ascends to national commander in August and was here today to host a meeting of future leaders from the VFW’s 54 departments.

"I am calling on all the members of the United States Senate and House of Representatives to, for now, reserve further debate and provide the funds needed by our troops to prosecute the Global War on Terror," he said, noting that Iraq was clearly the centerpiece of that war on terrorism, and that the House and the Senate funding packages were also loaded with extraneous spending not related to the war on terrorism.

"This isn’t a Democrat or Republican issue. It's about American men and women tasked with fighting a war, and who are now being told their effort and sacrifice doesn't matter because a date on the calendar will send them home whether they've finished the job or not," he said.

Lisicki, Vietnam veteran from Carteret, N.J., said that when Congress reconvenes, they need to approve funding for war-related requirements only, and debate the other issues in separate legislation.

"We ask Congress to never cut or withhold funding for troops deployed or being deployed to a war zone," he said. "They must ensure that those who are sent to war have the best equipment and our strongest support. Give them the tools necessary to complete the mission you sent them on, and do it without further delay."

From the American Legion:

"This is an attempt to implement a congressional strategy by imposing timelines for the withdrawal of military personnel from combat zones through a "slow bleed" process by eventually reducing military funding," Morin said. "Rather than the President's and General Petraeus's reinforcement policy that is making progress in securing Baghdad."

The American Legion is supportive of many of the other provisions contained in the U.S. Troop Readiness, Veterans' Health, and Iraq Accountability Act, but we strongly believe the President's initial request is not the vehicle for these provisions, especially the specific language that sets congressional deadlines and mandatory troops movements. The other emergency funding recommendations to the FY 2007 budget should be openly addressed in a subsequent appropriations package in a timely manner.

"The men and women of the armed forces in the theater of operation are dependent on this emergency funding to sustain and achieve their military missions," Morin explained. "Members of Congress should not be armchair generals."

"Recognizing our history as a Nation, The American Legion supports the Commander in Chief, the commanders on the front lines, and the men and women serving in harms' way," Morin said. "We entrust Congress to do the right thing in supporting our military men and women who are fighting to protect our values and way of life.

Thank God there was no mandated timetable after the Battle of the Bulge or Iwo Jima. Thank God, there was no mandated withdrawal or imposed exit strategy at Valley Forge or our Country would have lost the American Revolution."

In addition to these veterans groups, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael G. Mullen, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley and Marine Commandant Gen. James T. Conway have also issued a letter imploring the Democrat Congress to quit playing games with the funding of our soldiers:

"Without approval of the supplemental funds in April, the armed services will be forced to take increasingly disruptive measures in order to sustain combat operations," the four general and flag officers wrote in their letter. "The impacts on readiness and quality of life could be profound. We will have to implement spending restrictions and reprogram billions of dollars."

The Stories They Don't Tell

As is typically the case for many media organizations in Iraq, CNN this morning chose a lede for their Iraq coverage focusing on the day's body count:

In two separate incidents, bombers in Iraq targeted a college district in Baghdad and a police recruiting center in Diyala province killing at least 15 people on Tuesday, local authorities told CNN.

Meanwhile, coalition forces pounded insurgent targets across Iraq on Tuesday, the military said. They launched raids in Anbar, in the west of the country, and Baghdad and continued their Operation Black Eagle push that began last week against Shiite militias in the southern city of Diwaniya.

That effort so far has killed 14 people and wounded 61 others, among them Shiite militia members, an Interior Ministry official told CNN.

This is hardly surprising. Body counts provide concrete numbers, even if those numbers don't tell the entire story of a war that they and other media outlets determined long ago was already lost. Sadly, this reliance on body counts tells only a fraction of the story of the events taking place in Iraq.

Five paragraphs into the story, we get a hint as to another part of the story of the Iraq War, one that they chose not to cover in detail.

Dressed in a black abaya -- a traditional Muslim robe, usually black in color, covering the body from head to toe -- the woman detonated her explosives belt in a crowd of about 200 police recruits, police and hospital officials told the Associated Press.

The police recruiting center targeted by this suicide bomber in Muqdadiya is located in the Diyala province, where insurgents have fled from security operations in Baghdad.

Iraqi police typically suffer far greater casualties than either Iraqi or American military units, and yet two hundred Iraqis were lined up to join.

Joining the Iraqi police is the most dangerous occupation in Iraq, with the IP suffering greater casualties day in and day out than either the American or Iraqi militaries. Iraqis who join the police not only take immense personal risks; their families are often targeted for retaliation by terrorists as well. It is far safer to remain civilian and avoid these risks... and yet they join, not just in Diyala, but in Ramadi, Karbala, Baghdad, and Fallujah.

Why do they join?

The answers will certainly vary from recruit to recruit, from province to province and from city to village, but the fact remains that they continue to join the most dangerous job in Iraq in large numbers.

It would be nice for CNN, the Associated Press, and other news outlets to spend some time asking these recruits why they take such risks not only with their own lives, but with the lives of their families.

Are they militiamen looking to infiltrate the police? Are they simply tired of the random violence that threatens their families and hoping to stop it? Are they merely looking for work, any work, no matter how dangerous that work may be? Do they actually think that joining the police might help bring stability to their war-torn cities and towns?

We do not know.

It is far easier for the media to ask the simple questions of who died where, and provide copy about orchestrated protests, or produce photos of suffering and death. "If it bleeds, it leads," has been, and continues to be, the mantra of a news media interested in covering only the obvious and superficial sotires of the day.

The deeper, inner struggles, the jihad of ordinary Iraqis who purposefully take extraordinary risks, goes unremarked upon... and still they come by tens and hundreds, from across Iraq. They join the police and don uniforms, knowing that doing so makes them certain targets.

I'd like to know why, but no one seems interested in telling their stories.

Our Would-Be Fearless Democratic Leaders Run Away From... A Television Network?

It seems that two more Democrats have fled the unspeakable horrors of a debate on Fox News.

I'm not sure that re-establishing that they will "bravely run away" at the first sign of a differing thought is the message they will want to keep reinforcing, is it?

Imus: An Appropriate Response

Radio talk show host Don Imus got himself in a world of trouble for referring to female basketball players at Rutgers University as "nappy headed ho's" last week, a comment still being discussed today, in the New York Times, on the Imus show itself, and elsewhere.

Predictably, there are those calling for Imus to be fired for the comments, and perhaps their argument would have some merit in a perfect world, but ours is not a perfect world. Should Imus get fired for this incident, a bidding war for his services would likely soon erupt, and Imus might very well profit from his transgressions, not learn from them.

There is another option, however, that would hit Imus on a more personal level, and would potentially remind him that the words he chooses to use in the future may have repercussions.

The City of New York, where Imus works and maintains a residence, issues "may issue" concealed carry licenses, allowing the police to determine who is allowed to have a concealed handgun. This is according the Sullivan Act, and in practice, it means that very, very few permits are issued.

Don Imus has a well-known history of alcohol and cocaine abuse in his past, and while he claims to have been clean for many years, his substance abuse history is certainly enough reason to deny him a permit even in "shall issue" areas. It is clearly his fame, and fame alone, that has afforded him the privilege to carry a gun in New York City.

It only seems fitting that his infamy caused him to be stripped of this privilege as well.

There is very little reason to think that Don Imus has any greater need to carry a concealed weapon in New York than anyone else, and there are some very good reasons that should have precluded him from ever getting a permit at all. By stripping Imus of his privilege and the false sense of security that comes with it, it might serve to remind Imus that he is not a law unto himself, and it may remind him in the future that the words he chooses to use may place him in harm's way.

If carrying a gun can give some people a false sense of invulnerability, then stripping someone that has (undeservedly) had that privilege may serve to bring them down to earth. Let him face the world without a Glock to lend bravado to his racism, misogyny, and homophobia. I think a disarmed Imus would prove to be a defanged one as well, and one less inclined to attack others with such reckless abandon.

Update: Double-secret probation?

The Agony of Queen Elizabeth

Poor Elizabeth Edwards.

I'm quite certain that I, like Mrs. Edwards, wouldn't feel comfortable living with a neighbor who is quick to pull a firearm on trespassers. That is just one of many reasons why I wouldn't live anywhere near a contemporary of hers, Paul Hackett.

But the questionable (and perhaps illegal) use of a firearm by Edward's neighbor seems to be only part of her gripe against him.

Edwards seems far more concerned that Monty Johnson, a "rabid, rabid Republican," refuses to clean up his "slummy" property just to spite her lavish 28,000 square-foot mansion.

How terribly gauche of him.

It seems that it is Queen Elizabeth's opinion that nearby property owners have a duty to suitably improve the aesthetic appeal of the neighborhood now that she has graced them with her presence. That Johnson claims to be a working man with a limited income to spend on property improvements doesn’t seem a worthwhile excuse.

Perhaps the lack of proper deference by their neighbors is the reason that the other home for the Edwards family is a million-dollar beach house on private island, a gated community that won't allow blue collar riff raff like Monty Johnson to spoil the ocean views.

John and Elizabeth Edwards talk about two Americas. It's too bad they don't have enough room for working class people in either one of them.

What's Next, Reid and bin Laden?

From the murderous dictators of terrorist-sponsoring regimes to Islamist leaders themselves:

A top U.S. Democratic congressman met a leader of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's most powerful rival, the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, U.S. officials and the Islamist group said Saturday.

Visiting House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer met with the head of the Muslim Brotherhood's parliamentary bloc, Mohammed Saad el-Katatni, twice on Thursday -- once at the parliament building and then at the home of the U.S. ambassador to Egypt, said Brotherhood spokesman Hamdi Hassan.

Most of you are probably not that familiar with el-Katatni, who believes in restoring the caliphate and instituting fundementalist sharia law, but you are certainly more familiar with another Muslim Brotherhood alumnus named Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's cavemate.

Nice folks the Democrat leadership is spending time with these days.

Edwards Turns Tail and Runs... Again

How exceedingly brave:

Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards on Friday pulled out of a second debate co-hosted by Fox News Channel, saying the cable network has a conservative slant.

The Edwards campaign said it will not attend the September 23 debate in Detroit hosted by Fox News and the Congressional Black Caucus Institute, but officials added that Edwards is "looking forward" to a different debate hosted by the institute and CNN in South Carolina in January 2008.

"We believe there's just no reason for Democrats to give Fox a platform to advance the right-wing agenda while pretending they're objective," said Jonathan Prince, Edwards' deputy campaign manager.

Thank you, "Senator Gone," for once again showing us your true colors.

It's quite telling when a man who seeks to hold the most powerful political job on this planet is afraid to show up at a debate because the "political slant" of the television network hosting the event is too intimidating.

Not surprisingly, many nations on this planet are even more intimidating than television networks. A candidate that cannot handle a few hours in a television studio is obviously incapable of guiding us through any crisis more dire than a shortage of hair care products.

I thank Edwards for showing this nation his inabilty to handle even such minor issues so early in his candidacy.

Speaker of the Big House

Logan Act, anyone?

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi may well have committed a felony in traveling to Damascus this week, against the wishes of the president, to communicate on foreign-policy issues with Syrian President Bashar Assad. The administration isn't going to want to touch this political hot potato, nor should it become a partisan issue. Maybe special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, whose aggressive prosecution of Lewis Libby establishes his independence from White House influence, should be called back.

The Logan Act makes it a felony and provides for a prison sentence of up to three years for any American, "without authority of the United States," to communicate with a foreign government in an effort to influence that government's behavior on any "disputes or controversies with the United States." Some background on this statute helps to understand why Ms. Pelosi may be in serious trouble.

President John Adams requested the statute after a Pennsylvania pacifist named George Logan traveled to France in 1798 to assure the French government that the American people favored peace in the undeclared "Quasi War" being fought on the high seas between the two countries. In proposing the law, Rep. Roger Griswold of Connecticut explained that the object was, as recorded in the Annals of Congress, "to punish a crime which goes to the destruction of the executive power of the government. He meant that description of crime which arises from an interference of individual citizens in the negotiations of our executive with foreign governments."

The debate on this bill ran nearly 150 pages in the Annals. On Jan. 16, 1799, Rep. Isaac Parker of Massachusetts explained, "the people of the United States have given to the executive department the power to negotiate with foreign governments, and to carry on all foreign relations, and that it is therefore an usurpation of that power for an individual to undertake to correspond with any foreign power on any dispute between the two governments, or for any state government, or any other department of the general government, to do it."

Nominating Patrick Fitzgerald to pursue this investigation is not, of course, within the WSJ's power, but it is an excellent suggestion all the same.

The author Robert F. Turner notes that it is quite possible that Pelosi's actions violate not just federal law (and a felony at that), but may have violated her oath of office as well.

Interestingly enough, President Bush tried to keep Pelosi from making this mistake. It's a shame she didn't have enough sense to listen.

New DOD Report Indicates No Ties Between Saddam and al Qaeda; New e-Book Indicates Just the Opposite

I QUESTION THE TIMING!

The Washington Post has an article posted this morning by R. Jeffery Smith that seems to put to rest allegations that Saddam Hussein's government was directly in contact with al Qaeda before the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Interestingly, the release of this report came on the same day that Vice President Dick Cheney repeated allegations of cooperation:

The report's release came on the same day that Vice President Cheney, appearing on Rush Limbaugh's radio program, repeated his allegation that al-Qaeda was operating inside Iraq "before we ever launched" the war, under the direction of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the terrorist killed last June.

"This is al-Qaeda operating in Iraq," Cheney told Limbaugh's listeners about Zarqawi, whom he said had "led the charge for Iraq." Cheney cited the alleged history to illustrate his argument that withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq would "play right into the hands of al-Qaeda."

Folks, unless the Veep has information I don't (which is quite possible), he is possibly conflating two things here.

There is no doubt whatsoever that Zarqawi was a terrorist operating in Iraq by late 2001, and that he was well established prior to the 2003 invasion. There is also no doubt at all that he shared the same radical Sunni Islamist philosophy as al Qaeda. What does not seem to be supported by the report is Zarqawi's direct contact with al Qaeda prior to the 2003 invasion.

But one thing the report does apparently reinforce is that Saddam Hussein did have ties to other terror groups, which Smith glosses over (my bold):

Instead, the report said, the CIA had concluded in June 2002 that there were few substantiated contacts between al-Qaeda operatives and Iraqi officials and had said that it lacked evidence of a long-term relationship like the ones Iraq had forged with other terrorist groups.

But is the DOD report accurate?

As we well know, millions of documents were captured after the fall of the Iraqi government, and the overwhelming majority of those documents have yet to be translated, thanks to the rise of the insurgency in Iraq. U.S. intelligence assets have always been extremely thin in regards to Arab translators, and those translators we do have are being used--and rightfully so--in active intelligence operations, not the historical review of documents from a regime that no longer exists. It is simply a matter of priorities.

But while U.S. military assets are correctly focused on current intelligence exploitation, a former member of the Iraq Study Group and his co-authors has gone though the documentation released by DOD, and has come to a vastly different series of conclusions, published in a new e-book, Both In One Trench: Saddam's Support to the Global Jihad Movement and International Terrorism.

I have a review copy of the book and I'm just starting on it, but if Robinson, Dunaway and al-Hadir are correct, then there may be reason to doubt the accuracy of the DOD report, not because DOD is being deceptive in any way, but simply because they are working from limited data that results from their assets being needed elsewhere.

Some of the bombshell conclusions published in the book are stunning:

The Saddam regime supported Islamic terrorists the same as it supported other ‘secular’ terrorists. The key to understanding this issue is the logical distinction between working with Islamic extremists to achieve mutual objectives outside of Iraq versus having them exist uncontrolled inside Iraq. Saddam’s regime was “open for business” to leaders from al-Qaeda, Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the Taliban, Hamas, Afghani warlords and other Islamic extremist organizations.

2. Documents provide strong evidence that Saddam was the instigator and ultimate mastermind behind the Battle of Mogadishu in 1993. They also provide evidence to suspect that Saddam was complicit in the Millennium Plot as executed by al Qaeda against the United States. Furthermore, documents reveal what may be foreknowledge by Saddam of the American anthrax attack that occurred within days of 9/11.

3. Saddam was in material breach of UN resolutions. The authorization from Congress for the use of force in Iraq was based largely on the failure of the Saddam regime to comply with its obligations under agreement to the UN. This fact is salient; the Saddam regime was in a state of noncompliance. WMD, while a significant part of the argument before the war, was never the sole justification despite cynical attempts by historical revisionists to portray it as the only justification provided by the Bush Administration.

4. Saddam corrupted mightily. He used pacifists, leftists, and even environmentalists to spread his propaganda. His intelligence agencies claimed to have sources all over the world in sensitive organizations, including the UN and the American media.

5. There are indications of activities in Iraq that we cannot make full determination on at this time, but which raise interesting questions. While we cannot make conclusions, we will pass the relevant information to the reader who may draw his or her own conclusions. For instance, a report by a respected journalist about a claim of an Iraqi underground nuclear test that happened in the late 1980’s appears to have sparked concern within the Saddam regime. The internal memorandum shows active steps to conceal evidence related to the story.

6. For the sake of history we make the startling revelation that during President Bush’s 2006 State of the Union Address, a spy for Saddam Hussein sat with the First Lady, Laura Bush. It should be noted that it was practically impossible to know this, and at the time the man was a leader of the Afghan reform movement that supported the overthrow of the Taliban.

Does the evidence support the allegations made by the authors? If so, does the documentation captured in Iraq provide the documentary evidence to justify the Iraq War?

At 200+ pages, this book promises to be an interesting read. If the conclusions made are supported, it may just be the most important book released since the beginning of the War On Terror.

I Think They Have Pills For This

When Editor and Publisher first pimped Joe Klein's article yesterday, I thought it might be a serious indictment of a flawed Presidency.

Uh, no.

Klein's article reads like a comment thread on the Democratic Underground, over the top to the point of making Klein look roughly as credible as Rosie O'Donnell, if with a slightly better grasp of the English language. It is an exercise is excessive hyperbole, is poorly sourced, and highly speculative.

The Iraq War was solely predicated upon Saddam Hussein trying to killed George H.W. Bush? The 2000 election was "stolen?" Please.

I expect that from the same forthing fringe that insists "9/11 was an inside job," but I expect better from both Time and Klein.

All this rant firmly establishes is that Joe Klein has a deep, seething hatred for President Bush, and that he not above trashing his own credibility to display it.

Nice Story. Now Comes the SAPI Truth

Via Instapundit, I ran into this article on Gizmodo, where they claim an Apple Ipod saved the life of a soldier by slowing a bullet that hit him in the chest:

He was on patrol in Iraq when he met an armed insurgent carrying an AK-47. Both opened fire, and the bullet heading toward Kevin hit his chest right where his iPod was, which was enough to slow down the bullet to not pierce entirely through the body armor.

It's a great story, and one that is great word-of-mouth marketing for Apple. Too bad it probably isn't true.

Our soldiers wear Interceptor body armor manufactured by a company called Point Blank. Interceptor armor used by our troops in Iraq is composed of an outer tactical vest (OTV) that will stop 9mm bullets, and small arms protective inserts (SAPI) plates made of boron carbide ceramic and backed with bullet-resistant liner that cover the chest, back and sides. These SAPI plates are designed to stop three 7.62 bullets.

An Ipod? Not so much.

If the soldier was shot in a head-on confrontation as the story seems to describe, the SAPI plate on his chest is responsible for saving his life, not a piece of fruity electronic equipment.

Update: Is this story merely an urban legend? I just got a response back from JOC PAO (Joint Operations, Public Affairs in Iraq) suggesting that may be the case:

Hi Bob,

We got another query in on this story yesterday, and have sent it out to
3rd IDs units to see if this guy exists. We have not yet heard anything
back.

I suspect this is one of life's Urban Myths....

However if we get an answer back from the division I'll forward it on to
you!

Regards

Tracy Peyman
Lt Cdr RN
JOC PAO OIC
MNC-I

Something tells me this is likely going to end up on Snopes as a hoax.

Under Siege in Idahoistan

Quagmire!

For years, ATV-riding, gun-toting sport shooters have flouted gun laws in part of Idaho's high desert by taking pot shots at ground squirrels and other animals. Now, officials say, they're also setting their sights on National Guard tanks that train in the area.

Rifles and pistols have been banned in a 68,000-acre area of the Snake River Birds of Prey National Conservation Area since 1996.

But the federal Bureau of Land Management is considering expanding the gun-restricted area by 41,000 acres to try to limit shootings at Idaho Army National Guard troops who report slugs bouncing off their tanks on a regular basis.

"There's a segment of the shooting community that will shoot at anything that moves," said John Sullivan, the area's manager.

Faced with inadequate manpower and renegades that won’t respect the rule of law, we must abandon Idaho.

Thee is no word as of yet on whether or not Speaker of the Knessett Nancy Pelosi and Congressman John Murtha have been able to come up with a suitable plan to redeploy the Idaho National Guard.

Pelosi is said to be considering retreating to neighboring Oregon, but is concerned over recent "friendly fire" incidents.

Because of this, Murtha is said to be exploring the option of stationing the Idaho National Guard in Montreal, where a quick reaction force could respond in just one day and 13 hours (at highway driving speeds) to any emergency in Boise.

Montel Williams: At it Again

As a rule, I couldn't care less about daytime television, but the agenda-driven jihad of talk show host Montel Williams continues, once more attempting to use military veterans and their families as political props.

On March 12, I commented on Montel's ambush of military families, that saw some family members leave in tears before the taping was over, and at least one escorted out by security.

This morning, a reader tipped me to this article, discussing the experiences of Keli Frasier, a 24-year-old who served 11 months in Iraq and came home with symptoms later diagnosed as post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

This is the part of the article that caught my emailer's eye:

For Frasier, the sharpest memories are of moments that never made the air from the show taped in New York.

When she told Williams she was treated well by the Department of Veterans Affairs, he seemed to lose interest and moved quickly to another segment, she said.

During a commercial break, though, he gestured to her and commented, “This soldier’s not going to complain,” Frasier said.

She was whisked away to the airport and never spoke again to Williams, she said.

This is at least the second time Williams has attempted to use military veterans and their families as political pawns, a move especially despicable, considering that Williams himself is a veteran and knows—or should know—what these servicemen and their families are experiencing.

As now demonstrated twice in less than a month, Williams has chosen to obscure any anecdotal evidence that conflicts with his political views, by simply editing them out of the show.

Return to Sender

Okay, I'll admit it... Nancy "International Woman of Diplomacy" Pelosi is much more entertaining than Denny whats-his-name ever was. Hastert was relatively quiet, and didn't give anyone much of a reason to talk about him as he did his job.

Nancy? A veritable comedy of errors:

Pelosi, who met in Damascus with Syrian President Bashar Assad over the objections of US President George W. Bush, said she brought a message to Assad from Olmert saying that Israel was ready for peace talks.

"We were very pleased with the reassurances we received from the president [Assad] that he was ready to resume the peace process. He was ready to engage in negotiations for peace with Israel," Pelosi said after meeting Assad.

She said the meeting with the Syrian leader "enabled us to communicate a message from Prime Minister Olmert that Israel was ready to engage in peace talks as well."

According to officials in the Prime Minister's Office, however, this was not what transpired during her meeting with Olmert.

The officials said Olmert had told Pelosi that he thought her trip to Damascus was a mistake, and that when she asked - nevertheless - whether he had a message for Assad, Olmert said Syria should first stop supporting terrorism and "act like a normal country," and only then would Israel be willing to hold discussions.

The first part of that message, the officials said, was lost in what was reported from Damascus on Wednesday.

Madame Speaker ignored the advice of two heads of state in order to meet with a terrorist-supporting dictator, and once she met with said dictator, she delivered a message so inaccurate to was necessary to publicly correct her.

Pelosi has botched her unwanted and unwelcome attempt at international diplomacy, but she did manage to at least get Israel and Syria to agree on one thing... her incompetence.

Update: In an editorial this morning, the Washington Post blasts Nancy Pelosi's foolish shuttle diplomacy:

...Ms. Pelosi not only misrepresented Israel's position but was virtually alone in failing to discern that Mr. Assad's words were mere propaganda.

... Mr. Bush said that thanks to the speaker's freelancing Mr. Assad was getting mixed messages from the United States. Ms. Pelosi responded by pointing out that Republican congressmen had visited Syria without drawing presidential censure. That's true enough -- but those other congressmen didn't try to introduce a new U.S. diplomatic initiative in the Middle East. "We came in friendship, hope, and determined that the road to Damascus is a road to peace," Ms. Pelosi grandly declared.

Never mind that that statement is ludicrous: As any diplomat with knowledge of the region could have told Ms. Pelosi, Mr. Assad is a corrupt thug whose overriding priority at the moment is not peace with Israel but heading off U.N. charges that he orchestrated the murder of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri. The really striking development here is the attempt by a Democratic congressional leader to substitute her own foreign policy for that of a sitting Republican president. Two weeks ago Ms. Pelosi rammed legislation through the House of Representatives that would strip Mr. Bush of his authority as commander in chief to manage troop movements in Iraq. Now she is attempting to introduce a new Middle East policy that directly conflicts with that of the president. We have found much to criticize in Mr. Bush's military strategy and regional diplomacy. But Ms. Pelosi's attempt to establish a shadow presidency is not only counterproductive, it is foolish.

Ed Morrissey also steps away from his normally measured tones at Captains Quarters and fires a broadside at Pelosi and the Democrats:

The Democrats, led by Pelosi, have tried to undermine Bush for years. Now that they have the majority in Congress, they can give full vent to their schemes. The efforts of the past couple of months show that the Democrats want to turn the Constitution upside down, strip the executive branch of its power, and make Congress the supreme power in the American system.

Well, sorry, but that's the British system. Perhaps Pelosi would be more comfortable there or in Canada, but here in the US, the elected President has all of the Constitutional authority to conduct foreign policy and command the military. That remains true even when Congress dislikes the policies in both areas.

For those doubting whether or not the Post editorial and Morrissey's blog entry are accurate in criticising Pelosi and her fellow Democrats for attempting to usurp powers not rightfully theirs, I have a little document I'd like to direct you to, called the Constitution of the United States, specificially, Article II, Section 2, which enumerate the powers of the Presidency:

Section 2. The President shall be commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several states, when called into the actual service of the United States; he may require the opinion, in writing, of the principal officer in each of the executive departments, upon any subject relating to the duties of their respective offices, and he shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment.

He shall have power, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, judges of the Supreme Court, and all other officers of the United States, whose appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by law: but the Congress may by law vest the appointment of such inferior officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the courts of law, or in the heads of departments.

The President shall have power to fill up all vacancies that may happen during the recess of the Senate, by granting commissions which shall expire at the end of their next session.

The two selections I placed in bold above show that the President, and only the President, has the authority to command the armed forces and appoint ambassadors to conduct U.S. foreign policy.

Article I, Section 8 defines the scope of the powers of the Congress. The current Democratic Congress, as both Morrissey and the Post note, are attempting to stretch to (and perhaps past) the breaking point the powers afforded them by the Constitution of the United States.

Where this will lead is anyone's guess.

SecDef Gates Confronts Reid Surrender Plan

Democrat Harry Reid has already stated his opinion that the Iraqi War is "is not worth another drop of American blood," making me wonder just how much Iraqi blood may spill from Iraqi if his plan for defeat is implemented.

According to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, quite a lot:

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Wednesday warned that limiting troops' activities in Iraq and withdrawing from Baghdad could lead to "ethnic cleansing" in the capital and elsewhere in the country.

Gates' comment followed a proposal from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to end most spending on the Iraq war in 2008, limiting it to targeted operations against al Qaeda, training for Iraqi troops and U.S. force protection.

"One real possibility is if we abandon some of these areas and withdraw into the countryside or whatever to do these targeted missions that you could have a fairly significant ethnic cleansing inside Baghdad and in Iraq more broadly," Gates said.

"What we do know is if Baghdad is in flames and the whole city is engulfed in violence, the prospects for a political solution are almost nonexistent," he said on the Laura Ingraham syndicated radio program.

Gates is saying that the Democrat plan will most likely lead to genocide, a conclusion others have reached as well.

The preferred Democrat solution of a mindless retreat all but promises an escalation according to New York Times Baghdad bureau chief John Burns, that could result in "levels of suffering and of casualties amongst Iraqis that potentially could dwarf the ones we've seen to this point."

For all their rhetoric, those who claim to be anti-war certainly seem driven to create violence and bloodshed virtually without limits.

War Song

While the rest of the world seems focused on Iranian promises to free 15 British sailors kidnapped 1.5 miles inside Iraqi waters, former pro-Taliban tribesmen are pushing forward with what they say is a final offensive to crush foreign al Qaeda fighters in Pakistan's South Waziristan tribal region.

The fighting against entrenched Uzbek, Chechen and Arab positions is intense:

Tribesmen stormed a bunker manned by foreign militants early on Wednesday and killed 11 Uzbeks and captured another 14, residents said, citing the tribal forces.

"Soon after morning prayers there was a heavy sound of war drums and tribesmen were seen leaving in different directions amid shouts of 'Allahu Akhbar' (God is Greatest) and 'Victory, victory, victory'," Malik Sangeen Khan, a resident of the region's main town of Wana, said.

"Since this morning there have been massive sounds of rockets and gunfire. It is louder even than the Pakistani military operations here in 2004."

It seems rather pathetic that the Musharraf government is claiming these battles vindicate his 2006 peace accord, a deal which effectively ceded Waziristan to Taliban and al Qaeda forces after Pakistan's Army suffered heavy losses in the area in 2004-2006.

I don't think anyone could have easily predicted this red-on-red conflict between former allies, but as long as Taliban and al Qaeda loyalists continue to kill each other instead of staging incursions into Afghanistan, very few people outside of Waziristan are likely to complain.

More Democrat Maturity

As if the lynching threats issued against Karl Rove this morning weren't enough proof of liberal immaturity, Democrats running the House Armed Services Committee have determined how they can easily end the Global War on Terror... by simply excising the phrase:

The House Armed Services Committee is banishing the global war on terror from the 2008 defense budget.

This is not because the war has been won, lost or even called off, but because the committee’s Democratic leadership doesn’t like the phrase.

A memo for the committee staff, circulated March 27, says the 2008 bill and its accompanying explanatory report that will set defense policy should be specific about military operations and “avoid using colloquialisms.”

The political reasoning behind this Democrat initiative is clear: by limiting the description to reference specific operations, Democrats can attempt to ignore the essential nature of the wider war against terrorism sponsored by both Sunni and Shia Islamists.

This is simply another example of Democrats attempting to "wish away" the reality that this conflict is not confined to specific fronts or to a specific enemy, but rather, an entrenched set of ideologies that will take far longer to dismantle.

A Thousand Words of Subservience

As noted by blogger Paul Geary at The New Editor last night (h/t Instapundit), Nancy Pelosi is raising hackles for deciding to cover her head while visiting (against the President's advice) the capital city of Damascus, Syria, to meet with Syrian dictator Bashar Assad.

Up to 90% of the foreign suicide bombers in Iraq filter through Syria. Assad himself threatened former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri just months before Hariri was assassinated, and Syria's government—perhaps Assad himself—is suspected of having a hand in the murder.

Bush was correct in noting that Pelosi's trip only encourages a well-known state sponsor of terror. Republicans Joe Pitts (PA), Frank Wolf (VA) and Robert Aderholt (AL) also held meetings this past week with Assad that should be condemned, as have Senators John Kerry (D-MA), Bill Nelson (D-FL) Chris Dodd (D-CT), and Arlen Specter (R-PA) over the past few months.

All of these Congressmen and Senators should be rebuked for their actions, which lend credibility to a murderous regime, and I do mean all of them, Democrat and Republican. They do not represent, nor can they negotiate, the foreign policy of the United States.

But Pelosi, just a pretzel and a Big Mac away from the Presidency, and the highest ranking member of Congress as Speaker of the House, deserves special scrutiny for her actions.

While all of these trips were inadvisable, Pelosi's position lends credibility to a state that sponsors several major terrorist groups, terrorists that have killed hundreds of American servicemen, and who have killed hundreds of our allies. Pelosi's defiant trip is a thumb to the eye of U.S. foreign policy, one that sets a horrible precedent.

I am unaware of any Speaker of the House in this nation's history that has visited an antagonistic power while our military was engaged in combat. It is the equivalent of Speaker Sam Rayburn visiting China in the late summer of 1950 during the Korean War.

Make no mistake: Pelosi's trip undercuts our servicemen that are currently fighting against terrorists in Iraq that come through Syria with a wink and a nod. This trip is a propaganda coup that will be used by Syria, the terrorists they sponsor, and Islamists worldwide.

Notes Geary:

This picture disgusts me. What message is Nancy Pelosi trying to send? Are women equal to men, or not? Why is modesty foisted only upon women? That's the inconvenient truth for conservative Muslims, and for liberal Americans trying desperately (and unsuccessfully) to reconcile the desire for understanding between cultures, and those cultures' starkly illiberal practices.

While her term as Speaker is only months old, the image above may very well become the defining visual image associated with Pelosi’s Speakership: the most powerful woman in American politics donning a scarf in deference to Islamic practice, knowing full well the symbolism that act carried.

Pelosi donned the head covering while visiting the Ommayad Mosque in Damascus, a move that will be correctly interpreted by Muslims around the world as a nod to the subservience of women as noted in the Koran, in Surah an-Nur ayah 31:

'Wa qul li al-mu'minat yaghdudna min absarihinna wa yahfathna furujahunna wa laa yubdina zenatahunna illa maa thahara min haa wal-yadribna bi khumurihinna ala juyubihinna; wa laa yubdina zenatahunna illa li bu'ulatihinna aw aba'ihinna aw aba'i bu'ulatihinna aw abna'ihinna aw abna'i bu'ulatihinna aw ikhwanihinna aw bani ikhwanihinna aw bani akhawatihinna aw nisa'ihinna aw maa malakat aymanuhunna aw at-tabi'ina ghayri ulu'l-irbat min ar-rijal aw at-tifl allathina lam yathharu ala awrat an-nisa wa laa yadribna bi arjulihinna li yu'lama maa yukhfina min zenatahinna. Wa tubu ilaAllahi jami'an, ayyuha al-mu'minun la'allakum tuflihun'

And say to the faithful women to lower their gazes, and to guard their private parts, and not to display their beauty except what is apparent of it, and to extend their headcoverings (khimars) to cover their bosoms (jaybs), and not to display their beauty except to their husbands, or their fathers, or their husband's fathers, or their sons, or their husband's sons, or their brothers, or their brothers' sons, or their sisters' sons, or their womenfolk, or what their right hands rule (slaves), or the followers from the men who do not feel sexual desire, or the small children to whom the nakedness of women is not apparent, and not to strike their feet (on the ground) so as to make known what they hide of their adornments. And turn in repentance to Allah together, O you the faithful, in order that you are successful.

Her scarf will be interpreted as a hijab or khimar, which indeed its purpose in her visit to Ommayad. The symbolism of the photo was easy to predict in advance, and easily avoidable by simply changing her itinerary. Instead, Nancy Peolosi disgraced herself, her position, the Congress and the United States, and certainly not least of all, women who seek equality around the world.

Get used to seeing this image. It will dog Pelosi until the end of her days in office.

Update: Even more pathetic than I thought. Pelosi couldn't even deliver a simple message correctly.

Childish

Protesting political figures is acceptable behavior.

Pelting them is not:

White House Advisor Karl Rove was the target of a protest on the American University campus Tuesday night, NBC 4 reported.

Rove was on the campus to talk to the College Republicans, but when he got outside more than a dozen students began throwing things at him and at his car, an American University spokesperson said.

I'm rather disappointed by the antics of these children, who followed up this part of their tantrum by lying down in front of Rove's car until security bodily removed them. No one was arrested in the incident. It is uncertain if any might have been given a "time-out" by campus police.

Update: I'm closing the comments on this thread, as liberals coming in from Salon's Blog Report have made several comments wishing far worse treatment to the body of Karl Rove (roasting on a spit in one example; prayers that he would be lynched in two others. And yes, I have screen caps and IP addresses).

I've got better things to do with my morning than watch liberals issue empty frothing threats that justify the contempt so many people have for them.

No Global War on Terror Here

An Iraqi Sunni insurgent group calling itself the "Arrows of Righteousness" holding two German hostages has given the German government 10 more days to withdrawn their soldiers from Afghanistan.

Drudge Might Have Been Right

If this is accurate, will I have to issue an apology for my apology now?

I only ask because I just stumbled across an account from an AFP journalist at the John McCain press conference in Baghdad, confirming that a reporter was giggling during the press conference:

"I studied warfare. I'm a student of history. If you control the capital city of a nation you have a significant advantage," countered McCain as one reporter giggled at the back.

Considering how this same article describes how the "slightly incredulous" journalists who covered the press conference "openly scoffed afterwards," it doesn't seem that far-fetched that someone in the press corps might have taken the opportunity to slip in a mocking comment in a stage whisper, just loud enough for fellow journalists to hear it, but not loud enough to be picked up by microphones directed at McCain.

If the press conference official that leaked to Drudge was standing behind the last row of reporters as I've seen them do in the past, he might have been in a position to hear someone quietly mocking McCain's comments, even if those comments were perhaps meant from private consumption.

If Raw Story is correct, Michael Ware happened to be sitting in the back row at that press conference, just where this AFP reporter places the giggler.

Let the games begin, again.

Update: Nope, Drudge is still wrong. The giggling reporter was not Ware, and the press conference was not interrupted, according to Raw Story.

BREAKING: AFP Reporter Doesn't Like Terrorists

Actually, it would be more accurate to state that Jenni Matthew doesn't like the word "terrorist."

In an operation targeting presumed Al-Qaeda fighters near Anbar's former rebel town of Fallujah, a US warplane killed six "terrorists" in an air strike while forces on the ground arrested another seven, the military said.

Perhaps I'm just reading too much into the tone of the overall article, but it seems that Jenni Matthew detests having to use the word terrorist to describe, well, terrorists.

She doesn't like to assign blame to them, either:

Since the launch of a massive security operation in Baghdad in February, Iraqi and US troops have reduced execution-style killings in the capital, but car bombings carried out by suspected militants remain a major headache.

I shouldn't have to point out the obvious fact to Ms. Matthew that when people carry out car bombings, they are not suspected of anything; they are militants, period. As somebody once said, "words means things," and to label those guilty of manufacturing and detonating bombs often targeting civilians as "suspected" militants is deceptive.

Lesson Unlearned

"This is the lesson: never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy."

--Winston Churchill, Harrow School, 29 October 1941

Oh, how the mighty have fallen:

British Prime Minister Tony Blair warned Iran on Tuesday that his government would have to take increasingly tough decisions if 15 captive sailors are not quickly released.

Iran captured 15 of Britain's sailors and marines and then paraded them in front of cameras repeatedly for propaganda purposes in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions on treatment of prisoners, and all Blair can muster are more empty, spineless rhetoric.

John Derbyshire takes the deliberately provacative stance that:

I certainly think that those British captives who have let themselves be put forward on Iranian TV, that woman wearing a headscarf, and the young man apologizing to the Iranian gangster-rulers, should be court-martialed for dereliction of duty when they get back to Blighty, with shooting definitely an option.

If Derbyshire is to shoot all those who were derelict in their duties, he should be sure to bring along enough ammunition to dispatch a substantial portion of the chain of command of the British Navy and the Blair government itself. All were, and continue to be, abject failures in dealing with a crisis that they allowed to occur.

The simple fact of the matter is that Iran was the aggressor, and the British Navy, acting under orders from Blair's government, were the enablers. Iran is clearly to blame for the kidnapping, but Blair's government allowed the kidnapping to take place when it had the means and the ability to blow the Iranian pirate fleet out of the water, if it only had the fortitude and sense of self preservation to do so.

I don't agree with Blair's spinelessness, any more than I agree with his fellow countryman Patrick Cockburn taking the coward's way out, blaming the United States for the kidnapping (a story that is a mish-mash of old information and unsupported conjecture).

This isn't the first Iranian attempt to capture western Coalition soldiers to use as bargaining chips. Cockburn's uninformed speculation that the British soldiers were kidnapped in response to U.S. forces capturing Iranian operatives in Iraq is flatly, factually wrong; Iranian forces ventured into Iraq in an attempt to capture U.S forces back in September, well in advance of the Iranian operatives' arrest that Cockburn says is the trigger for the kidnapping. What is criminal is that the British Navy were aware of the attempt in September, and another attempt to kidnap American soldiers during a raid on Karbala that saw five U.S soldiers killed, and did not take any obvious steps to protect their soldiers, sailors and marines before the attack, did nothing during the attack, and has done nothing since except utter empty rhetoric.

No, the United States is not remotely responsible for the capture of these 15 Britons. Iran is responsible for the brazen attempt, invading 1.5 miles into Iraqi waters to attempt the kidnapping, and the British are responsible for letting a much weaker foe steal their personnel without even attempting to defend them.

Cockburn wishes to blame others for his countrymen's kidnapping. Perhaps he should focus less on assigning blame to others, and recognize that the problem plaguing Britain is the inaction, lack of a sense of self preservation, and lack of honor of the British people themselves.

Ware Outburst Apology

As noted in an update to this post, Matt Drudge apparently got April-fooled when he posted a "Drudge Exclusive" that CNN reporter Michael Ware heckled John McCain during a press conference in Baghdad. Video of the press conference shows that Ware did not say or do anything unprofessional during the press conference.

I typically do "that journalistic thing" and try to find a corroborating source for any news article I write about, but that isn't always easy to get, especially in the case of exclusives. As a result, when I run across an exclusive, I try to judge the credibility of the source, and the apparent validity of the information based on surrounding events.

In this particular case I had to consider the source, Matt Drudge. Drudge does occasionally screw up on his exclusives, but typically, as a news aggregator, his site turns out to be more often than not accurate. I'm sure that there are those of you who will dispute this, but don't confuse the accuracy of what he typically features on his site with the apparent bias he harbors in deciding which stories to promote.

Michael Ware had just spoken derisively of John McCain, and so it seemed possible that the events could occur. It seemed that the story could be accurate, based upon Ware's recent outburst and a pattern of reporting that betrays his biases.

Those of us who linked the Drudge account, including myself, screwed up and linked to an inaccurate story. I apologize to my readers.

Ninety Percent of Success is Just Showing Up

So perhaps the braintrusts of certain liberal blogs might want to get all of their facts straight before pitching a hissyfit over the fact General Petraeus ended up giving a Republican-only briefing last month.

It turns out that invitations to the videoconference were extended to both Democrats and Republicans, but no Democrats showed up.

Perhaps they were out of spit.

Feingold/Reid: Retreat Now, and We Can Still Lose This

Russ Feingold and Harry Reid say that the war in Iraqi isn't being lost fast enough, and will sponsor a retreat bill in the Senate that would largely defund the war and require a pullout to begin 120 days after the bill became law.

Meanwhile, on the ground in al Anbar, soldier/blogger "Teflon Don" speculates that the insurgency may be reaching a tipping point.

I'll try to keep writing about the winds here in Al-Anbar. I'll go out on a little bit of a limb and say that the insurgency is quickly approaching a tipping point. If things continue as they are right now, our military won't need a surge to chase the terrorists out of Anbar- the citizens will do it for us, which is as it should be. It's beginning to show already: more local tips, more police recruits (far more than anticipated), and sadly- in bigger and more desperate Al-Qaeda attacks.

He concludes this thought-provoking post by stating:

It's a big job, but I think we may have finally learned enough forgotten lessons from places like East Timor, Vietnam, Ireland, Malaysia, and others that it just might work this time.

Color me hopeful.

It might not come as much of a surprise to discover that others on the ground in Iraq are also seeing these same hopeful signs, which is perhaps why Reid and Feingold are so desperately trying to push to lose the war now before signs of a positive change become more widely known.

Perhaps Harry and Russ should do a little reading.

Vermont Plots Succession From Union

I say we let them.

No War for ice cream!

Creative Gun Reporting

Somehow, I just don't believe that the reporter who wrote this San Mateo County Times story, Christine Morente, was actually there (h/t Michelle Malkin):

KIMBERLY SHRUM grips a Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum revolver and aims at a target 25 yards away. Bang.

A hot shell casing hits the floor, joining hundreds of others littering the concrete at Jackson Arms Indoor Shooting Range in South San Francisco.

Just to point out the obvious to the oblivious, the scenario described above simply cannot happen.

Morente stated Shrum is firing a Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum revolver. Shell casings remain in the chamber of a revolver until manually removed by the shooter; they cannot as Morente described "hit the floor" as a result of pulling the trigger. The automatic ejection of a fired shell is physically impossible with revolvers.

These is basic firearm design fact not open to discussion. What does appear to be open for discussion is whether or not Morente was actually at the Jackson Arms Shooting Range with Shrum as her article implies.

How the Democrats Can Win In Iraq

It was all for show:

If President Bush vetoes an Iraq war spending bill as promised, Congress quickly will provide the money without the withdrawal timeline the White House objects to because no lawmaker "wants to play chicken with our troops," Sen. Barack Obama said Sunday.

"My expectation is that we will continue to try to ratchet up the pressure on the president to change course," the Democratic presidential candidate said in an interview with The Associated Press. "I don't think that we will see a majority of the Senate vote to cut off funding at this stage."

I think Obama is stretching the truth a bit when he says, "no lawmaker wants to play chicken with the troops." Playing chicken with the troops is the preferred Democrat tactic these days, and passing the recent meaningless pork-laden bills through the House and Senate when they know they could not override a veto are concrete examples of this in action.

What Obama perhaps should have said is that no Democrat wants to get caught playing chicken with the troops, as John "Okinawa" Murtha has done several times, first when he accused Marines in Haditha of "cold-blooded murder" well before the investigation had concluded, and just months ago, when he attempted to undercut deployments by the arbitrary setting of readiness standards which would mark units as unfit for combat if they did not have key equipment before deploying.

The later tactic was especially dishonest and calculating, as units typically do not carry certain heavy equipment with them—for example, tanks and IFVs—that are already in Iraq. These assets are turned over to newly arriving units by the units they replace. It is largely because of his record of "playing chicken" that we have heard relatively little from him since his last attempt to use our soldiers as pawns.

Will the Democrats overplay their hand, and go too far once more?

Top Democrats are concerned that they will:

Backed by a unified party and fresh from a slew of legislative victories, Democratic leaders appear to believe there is hardly any territory they cannot stray onto, a development that has Republican political operatives gleeful and some Democrats worried. Rep. Tom Cole (Okla.), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, warned of a "political price" at the polls: "If they let their constituents and their ideology drive them past the point where the American people are comfortable, they will find how quickly the voters will react."

Leon E. Panetta, who was a top White House aide when President Bill Clinton pulled himself off the mat through repeated confrontations with Congress, sees the same risk. He urged Democrats to stick to their turf on such issues as immigration, health care and popular social programs, and to prove they can govern.

"That's where their strength is," Panetta said. "If they go into total confrontation mode on these other things, where they just pass bills and the president vetoes them, that's a recipe for losing seats in the next election."

Notes Ed Morrissey:

The Democrats are about to retreat on Iraq war spending, after giving Bush an opportunity for an easy veto. It's bad enough that the Democrats played a game of chicken that they couldn't possibly win the last two weeks. They compounded the error by larding the final bills up with so much pork that Bush can now easily justify the veto on the grounds of containing corruption -- and make the Democrats look as if they will only fund the troops if they can get their own snouts into the trough as well.

Citing the same article, Dan Riehl wryly notes:

According to the Washington Post, while America is struggling with two difficult wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as part of the war on terror, the Democrats are planning to broaden the front by increasing their attacks... on Bush.

The left end of the Democrat Party tips their hand to show they are uniting against their "true enemy," George W. Bush, once more. Perhaps, though, our nation’s best chance for victory in Iraq is for more moderate and conservative Democrats to change tactics on Iraq if the current Baghdad security plan begins to bear fruit later this summer.

If the "surge" shows signs of success, Democrats can turn on a dime to attack the Administration for not employing the COIN strategy advocated by General Petraeus far earlier in the war. They can then legitimately maintain that they support the troops and Iraq, and claim they are still anti-war at the same time by advocating a strategy that proved a successful template in the Malayan Emergency and other previous conflicts, a strategy many experts feel will result in far fewer civilian casualties over the long term.

They can easily justify this stance by stating that the tactics and strategy first created by French Lt. Col David Galula in Algeria in 1956 and adopted by General Petraeus in Counterinsurgency Field Manual FM3-24
as the only real "anti-war" position for a war already engaged, one that will eventually not only win the war in Iraq, but one that will save the most Iraqi lives in the process, and one would avoid fears of both a genocide and a wider regional war that the current Democrat plan of defeat seems to promise.

Many Americans still hold the Democrats responsible for the millions of lives lost as the result of the American pullout of Vietnam after the Viet Cong were effectively destroyed as a result of the Tet Offensive. Conservative Democrats are wary of setting the stage for yet another genocide which would only further erode their reputation on national security issues, and can avoid this label if they can find a way to justify advocating the Petraeus plan. That opportunity may present itself in coming months.

Are Democrats nimble enough to make such a transition? If they are, what will have to occur to make this bit of political jujitsu possible?

First and foremost, the COIN strategy being deployed by General Petraeus must show solid progress in coming months. Galula was able to effect noticeable change in Algeria in a very limited amount of time, and so it is possible for the security operations currently starting to ramp up to start making the desired changes.

Second, the Iraqi political and security apparatus are going to have to show significant signs of progress as well. There is reason to believe this is possible.

The al Anbar "Awakening" discussed at Acute Politics and elsewhere shows that a growing number of Sunni tribes in the most volatile province of Iraq are interested in change, and in political discussion. If they can be effectively engaged politically and find a voice for their concerns through the political process, this will be a blow to insurgent recruiting and to al Qaeda terrorists, who long relied upon Sunni support. This support for al Qaeda is failing rapidly, as a growing string of Sunni tribal attacks on the terror organization—including an attack yesterday that killed 21 members of al Qaeda by Iraqi security forces and Sunni tribesmen—shows the situation on the ground is evolving against outside Sunni influence.

Concurrently, Iran’s network supporting Shia forces are being rolled up at an astonishing rate, with more than 300 operatives captured in the past two months alone. There is little doubt that many of these arrests have come from intelligence provided by Iranian Quds Force soldiers captured in Iraq, but more quietly, nationalistic Iraqi Shia are turning against Iranian influence and proving tips leading to the compromise of Iranian operatives and operations.

The collapse of the relationship between al Qaeda and their former Shia allies and the turning of Iraqi Shia against Iranian influence is a good start, but only a start. The Iraqi government is going to have to find ways of engaging Sunnis, Baathists, and the "good” JAM Shia militias, and incorporate them into the political process, which will be exceedingly difficult and will not happen quickly. Many Americans will find the negotiations distasteful, but such a reconciliation is necessary, and it always has been.

If the political and military conditions do evolve as stated—and I readily admit that that is a very big "if"—Democrats have the opportunity to shift positions to envelop the Republicans in a political pincers movement. They will be able to outflank the Republicans with a pro-victory position that points out the long-running incompetence of the Administration in handling the war to this point, while evolving their position to match conditions on the ground to support a victory that Democrats can claim political credit for.

This of course will be a hard sell to many of the more stridently anti-war/pro-defeat Democrats, but for those that are more pragmatic, it affords an opportunity to reestablish national security bona files that have been languishing since the Vietnam War.

To pull this off, Steny Hoyer and the Blue Dog Democrats will have to play a vital role in persuading Nancy Pelosi that a victory in Iraq is in the party's best interests, and with Pelosi's well-known views, this may be a very tough sell. If it could work, however, the Democrats would be in a far better position in 2008 to win even more seats in the House and Senate. Democrat candidates running for President—especially Hillary Clinton—could stand to evolve their platforms to pick up votes from conservative voters, votes that would not be on the table otherwise.

In short, if the conditions on the ground over coming months indicate that success in Iraq is possible, Democrats that can read the tea leaves and adapt to a pro-victory position stand to route a bumbling Republican Party, relegating it to the sidelines for decades to come.

Petraeus Interview

John Noonan at OpFor has an interview with Commanding U.S. Gneral David Petraeus posted that is certainly worth a read.

In addition, I'd strongly recommend reading this Arthur Herman article article on how to win the war in Iraq, which provides the historical background of the COIN strategy currently being rolled out by General Petraeus in Iraq.

Once you've read it you'll wonder why the strategy contained within wasn't rolled out in 2004.

Michael Ware's CNN Career: Dead, and Loving It

A few days back in the comments at Hot Air I somewhat defended CNN's Michael Ware.

I can't defend this:

During a live press conference in Bagdad [sic], Senators McCain and Graham were heckled by CNN reporter Michael Ware. An official at the press conference called Ware’s conduct "outrageous," saying, "here you have two United States Senators in Bagdad giving first-hand reports while Ware is laughing and mocking their comments. I've never witnessed such disrespect. This guy is an activist not a reporter."

Senators McCain and Graham flew into Iraq and drove into Bagdad, making stops at an open market and a joint Iraq/American military security outpost before appearing at the press conference.

This is not the first time Michael Ware has taken issue with Senator McCain's comments about early progress in Iraq. Last week, after Senator McCain told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that he needed to catch up on the news coming out of Iraq, Michael Ware responded, saying:

“I don't know what part of Neverland Senator McCain is talking about when he says we can go strolling in Baghdad.”

Michael Ware has also publicly expressed his views on the war last year in an interview with Bill Maher, saying, "I've been given a front-row ticket to watch this slow-motion train wreck... I try to stay as drunk for as long as possible while I'm here … In fact, I'm drinking now."

I'll be somewhat surprised if Ware receives anything more than a slap on the wrist for his actions. Ware isn't any more of an activist than reporters from other news organizations in Iraq. At least he didn't stoop to hiding his agenda behind imaginary police captains.

Update: Hmmm... I'm starting to wonder if Drudge got "April Fooled."