Right Intention

Gitmo

2005-06-15T06:12:00.000-04:00

There are a couple of good columns on Gitmo this morning. First up is Jonah Goldberg:

There are good guys and bad guys in this story, and as much as it pains some to hear it, we are the good guys. We are not talking about confused teenagers caught up in events larger than themselves. We aren't talking about mistaken identities. We're talking about the cream of our enemy's crop in the war on terror...

Any new Gitmo would quickly gain the same reputation as the old one because a) al-Qaida is under strict orders to allege all manner of abuses for propaganda purposes, especially now that such tactics have proved so useful, and b) because the "international community" and other lovers of runny cheese desperately want such allegations to be true, regardless of the evidence. That the head of Amnesty International could call Gitmo, where we spend more money on the care and feeding of detainees than we do on our own troops, the "Gulag of our time" is all the evidence we need for that. Caving into such bullying would send the unmistakable message that American can be rolled.

Next is Rich Lowry:

The administration should defend the facility there unabashedly. It should force Democrats to argue that the 9/11 hijackers shouldn’t have women stand too close to them and that rice pilaf isn’t good enough fare. It should make Democrats explain how to fight a war on terror without detaining enemy fighters, and work to stem the panic, rather than surrendering to it.

Of all the reasons given as to why we should shut down Gitmo, the most stupid reason- and its difficult to narrow it down to one- is that it is generating such bad press that it makes the Arab world hate us and creates more terrorists. This is almost too stupid for words.

Message to the left: They already hate us. Let's try that again. They already hate us. One more time. THEY ALREADY HATE US! 9/11 ALREADY HAPPENED! THESE PEOPLE CANNOT BE BARGAINED WITH. THEY CAN'T BE REASONED WITH! AND THEY WON'T STOP UNTIL THEY KILL EVERY ONE OF US! WHAT ABOUT THAT DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND?!!! (Thanks, Arnie)

Here's another thing the left doesn't get. One of the reasons their first reaction is to try to appease terrorists- other than being craven, spineless wimps, that is- is that terrorists have raised the cost of opposing them. Say a bad word about them and they are likely to try to kill you by cutting off your head with a dull knife and put a videotape of the event on the internet. On the other hand, when the Democrats have their way, the cost of opposing the US is very low. There is literally almost nothing that our enemies can say or do that will convince Democrats to take strong measures. Indeed, Democrats are more likely to blame the US when we are attacked. Therefore, our enemies can say or do pretty much anything they want with little fear of retaliation. This is why in times of strife the US cannot afford to have Democrats in power.

But even when Democrats are out of power, they do tremendous damage to our security. As Republicans are trying to raise the cost of attacking the US, the Democrats (and their media allies) are steadily trying to lower it again through giving our enemies hope by siding with them at every instance.

Democrats need to decide once and for all which side they are on. In the war on terror, either one is part of the problem or part of the solution. And Democrats, through their repeated actions, have shown they are part of the problem.

Liberals Responsible For America's Bad Reputation

2005-06-14T06:32:00.000-04:00

Leftists and their media allies are the primary cause of America's damaged reputation, not America's actions. I'm glad someone agrees with me.

If I hear one more time how the United States better clean up its image in the world so we don't further alienate foreigners and generate more terrorists, I think I'm going to wretch.

There is no small amount of irony in the fact that the people who are doing their level best to make sure the news is dominated by stories portraying America as imperialistic and inhumane are the same ones warning that we dare not permit our image to deteriorate.

This is pretty much what I wrote the other day:

Leftists and their media allies spend all day every day attacking our detention policies for terrorists. Eventually their nonstop slander/deceit/lies start to negatively impact public opinion. And then the left/media uses the negative public perception as proof that our detention policies are bad. It's the same template the left/media uses for the US in general and Bush as well. And few call them on it.

Great minds think alike.

Thanks, America

2005-06-10T07:48:00.000-04:00

Little Green Footballs found a nice post from an Australian blogger:

Where do I start? I've wanted to say this for a long time. It is unbelievable that America gets badmouthed all the time. America has helped the cause of freedom more than anyone else. First of all I'd like to thank America for saving Australia's butt at the Battle of the Coral Sea in WWII. This prevented the Japanese from landing here, and bringing with them the concept of "comfort women". I think Australia's nature is such that we would have sacrificed 90% of our population rather than hand over any woman. America's intervention meant that we were never required to make that terrible choice. Thanks America!

Then of course there's the fact that you saved Europe's butt, not once but 3 times - WWI, WWII and the Cold War. I don't know why we don't hear more thanks from Europe for this. But in the absence of thanks from ungrateful recipients of American largesse, let me say it instead - thanks America!

Be sure to read the whole thing. It's nice someone has noticed how generous we are.

But it also makes me wonder about the American left. Why do lefties believe that the single best response to any attack on America; whether it be physical, verbal or legal; for grievances real or imagined; is to side with the attacker, prostrate ourselves in front them and beg for forgiveness? America is not perfect by any means. We had and continue to have our dark moments. But America is without question the single most open, free, and generous country this planet has ever seen. We have nothing to apologize for. And it infuriates me to see the American left openly side with our enemies in almost every instance. It's yet another reason I want little to do with liberals these days.

Media Drives The Story

2005-06-09T20:48:00.000-04:00

This column in the National Review gets it right:

You gotta admire the liberal media’s modesty. For the last three years, it has been promoting the story that the Bush administration has a policy of torturing terror detainees. Now, such mouthpieces of the anti-administration Left as the New York Times are calling for the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility on the ground that its reputation for prisoner abuse is jeopardizing the war on terror. Take some credit, guys! It may be true that Guantanamo Bay has become synonymous with lawlessness throughout vast swathes of the Western and Muslim worlds. But no one is more responsible for that reputation than the New York Times, Newsweek, the Washington Post, and other mainstream media outlets, which have never encountered a prisoner-abuse story that they didn’t find credible and worthy of broadcast.

This is so true. And it's nothing short of amazing. Leftists and their media allies spend all day every day attacking our detention policies for terrorists. Eventually their nonstop slander/deceit/lies start to negatively impact public opinion. And then the left/media uses the negative public perception as proof that our detention policies are bad. It's the same template the left/media uses for the US in general and Bush as well. And few call them on it.

John Bolton

2005-05-27T22:45:00.000-04:00

So the Democrats are at it again:

Democrats blocked an up-or-down vote on the nomination of John R. Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations yesterday, opening their first filibuster of the year three days after a bipartisan deal to avoid filibusters of judicial nominees.

Some may try to argue that the Bolton nomination was not part of the agreement. Technically that is true. But it demonstrates perfectly that any Bush appointment, judge or otherwise, beyond the three in the agreement will be filibustered.

As I wrote just the other day:

You have to be a special kind of stupid to believe the Democrats have any intention of honoring the spirit of this deal.

I knew I was right. And as much of a cynic as I am, even I'm surprised at the speed at which the Democrats reneged on the deal.

France Set To Vote Against EU Constitution

2005-05-27T17:04:00.000-04:00

Setting the stage for humiliation:

THE leader of France’s ruling party has privately admitted that Sunday’s referendum on the European constitution will result in a “no” vote, throwing Europe into turmoil.

“The thing is lost,” Nicolas Sarkozy told French ministers during an ill-tempered meeting. “It will be a little ‘no’ or a big ‘no’,” he was quoted as telling Jean-Pierre Raffarin, the Prime Minister, whom he accused of leading a feeble campaign.

This is shaping up to be a massive blow to French pride. Good. I hope it hurts.

Jimmy Carter At It Again

2005-05-27T16:35:00.000-04:00

Jimmy Carter is hard at work botching another third world election.

The EU report also said former U.S. President Carter, who led a team of 50 election observers, undermined the electoral process and EU criticism with "his premature blessing of the elections and early positive assessment of the results."

Let's hope this one is not as disasterous as Venezuala. But in any event, Jimmy Carter should go away before he does any more damage.

Minorities Need To Work Harder

2005-05-25T21:06:00.000-04:00

This is absolutely, positively, on target:

On average, Asian students spend twice as much time doing homework as their non-Asian classmates. They believe they’ll get in trouble at home if their grades fall below A-, while for whites the ‘‘trouble threshold’’ is B-, and for blacks and Hispanics, C-. They don’t believe that success or failure in school depends on factors beyond their control. ‘‘They believed instead that their academic performance depended almost entirely on how hard they worked,’’ the Thernstroms write, summarizing the findings of survey researcher Laurence Steinberg. ‘‘Their performance was within their control. A grade below an A was evidence of insufficient effort.’’...

Which returns me to the University of Massachusetts, and the current flap over the decision to name Dr. Michael Collins to run the Boston campus instead of the acting chancellor, J. Keith Motley. One of three finalists for the job, Motley would have been the first black chancellor of UMass-Boston.

The chairman of the UMass board of trustees says the choice came down to Collins’s executive experience -- while Motley was a dean of student services at another university, Collins spent 10 years running a multibillion-dollar hospital network. But a vocal chorus of disgruntled Motley supporters are calling the decision racist...

Is there a connection between the Asian math whizzes at Quincy High and the accusations of racism against the UMass board of trustees? Not an obvious one. And yet I can’t help wondering what kind of message black students absorb when racism is invoked, as it so often is, to condemn anything black politicians and activists disapprove of. Who is more likely to succeed -- the child who grows up in a culture that tells him success depends on his own hard work, or the one who keeps hearing that until white prejudice is eradicated, minorities will never get a fair shake?

Asian kids don’t have a gene for calculus or getting into Yale. They have a culture that demands hard work, cares deeply about academic success, and rejects ‘‘racism’’ as an excuse for mediocrity. When the same can be said about black American culture -- or, for that matter, about white American culture -- the math club at Quincy High will look very different.

More people need to say this out loud. Victimization is one of the real sources of power for minorities in our culture as we play on the guilt of white people for past grievances to get what we want. It makes excuses for people's failures.

Shouting racism at every instance cheapens the word and makes actual instances of racism more difficult to believe. It needs to stop. Pass the word on to Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.

What Were They Thinking?

2005-05-24T07:41:00.000-04:00

The Republicans caved on judges. There is no other way to say it. What an awful deal.

The looming Senate showdown over filibustered judicial nominees has been averted by a bipartisan agreement that gives both sides some -- but not all -- of what they wanted.

The agreement, announced late Monday, came after days of talks among a group of centrist senators.

The crisis had prompted bitter debate over partisan power that could have permanently changed the rules, and perhaps the character, of the Senate.

Under the agreement, three of President Bush's nominees for appellate courts stalled by Democratic filibusters will go forward and two others will remain subject to filibuster.

What compromise? The Democrats got everything they wanted. They get to kill some more nominations and kept their right to filibuster all in exchange for some vague promise to use it more responsibly in the future.

Why would these Republicans sign on to this agreement? What, so they could get a few seconds of non-negative coverage from the liberal media? Are you serious?

Oh, it gets better:

The group's members also agreed that they would oppose attempts to filibuster future judicial nominees except under "extraordinary circumstances."

What would constitute "extraordinary circumstances" was not defined.

Oh, you can't define "extraordinary circumstances"? I'll do it for you. It means anyone to the right of Lenin will be painted as an extremist and will be filibustered. Even as we speak, the Democrats are hard at work trying to paint any likely candidate for the Supreme Court as "extraordinary". Baseless Democratic accusations, and the mindless repetition of those accusations by their MSM allies, can make anyone look extreme. Just look at Priscilla Owen, Janice Brown and John Bolton. Hoping the word "extraordinary" will prevent Democrats from using the filibuster irresponsibly is like hoping a sense of guilt will prevent a starving pit bull from eating a raw steak sitting on the countertop. It ain't gonna happen.

Do you know how another way one can tell this was a bad deal? Simple. That ass hat Harry Reid is jumping for joy.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid later welcomed the deal and indicated Democrats would continue to filibuster Myers and Saad, likely dooming their nominations.

"This is really good news for every American," the Nevada Democrat told reporters. "Checks and balances have been protected."

I want to puke.

You have to be a special kind of stupid to believe the Democrats have any intention of honoring the spirit of this deal. The Democratic party under the leadership of Reid, Pelosi and Dean has descended even further into madness. They are little more than an irresponsible group of zealots who is bullying their way into getting pretty much everything they want. Unreal.

Way to go, Republicans. You will pay an awful price at the polls for this one. Hope it was worth it to you.

Blacks and Liberals

2005-05-24T06:52:00.000-04:00

Thomas Sowell wrote a column about a topic that I care about in particular; which is the relationship between Blacks and Liberals. Here's the key quote:

Achievement is not what liberalism is about. Victimhood and dependency are.

In my opinion, that is absolutely true. Whatever noble goals and ideals liberalism had 40-50 years ago, it has morphed into a system where victimhood and dependency are desired outcomes, and are used as weapons to help Democrats maintain power. Or in this case since the Democrats are losing elections with increasing frequency, help the Democrats maintain relevance.

This is not a new tactic. Trying to keep a population pissed off by deflecting its attention from more important matters with inflammatory speech or scare tactics is an old trick. Just look at the Middle East. Arab strongmen have long held onto power partially by deflecting the population's dissatisfaction by blaming pretty much everything bad in their countries on the US and Israel. And it has worked.

Way to go, Democrats. You should be proud.

It's Working.....

2005-05-23T17:40:00.000-04:00

From the Opinion Journal:

To venture into the Arab world, as I did recently over four weeks in Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan and Iraq, is to travel into Bush Country. I was to encounter people from practically all Arab lands, to listen in on a great debate about the possibility of freedom and liberty. I met Lebanese giddy with the Cedar Revolution that liberated their country from the Syrian prison that had seemed an unalterable curse. They were under no illusions about the change that had come their way. They knew that this new history was the gift of an American president who had put the Syrian rulers on notice. The speed with which Syria quit Lebanon was astonishing, a race to the border to forestall an American strike that the regime could not discount. I met Syrians in the know who admitted that the fear of American power, and the example of American forces flushing Saddam Hussein out of his spider hole, now drive Syrian policy. They hang on George Bush's words in Damascus, I was told: the rulers wondering if Iraq was a crystal ball in which they could glimpse their future.

The weight of American power, historically on the side of the dominant order, now drives this new quest among the Arabs.

This is really driving leftists crazy. And I love every second of it. It's fun to watch the "not in my name" crowd, curled up in a fetal position, chanting "Bush had nothing to do with this, Bush had nothing to do with this" like they did when Reagan's plan worked against the Soviet Union.

Schadenfreude is a great, great feeling.

Psycho Left Drives Away Another Liberal

2005-05-22T20:30:00.000-04:00

Here is a lengthy, but incredibly well written, column about a liberal who has had it with the left. Here's a snippet:

Nightfall, Jan. 30. Eight-million Iraqi voters have finished risking their lives to endorse freedom and defy fascism. Three things happen in rapid succession. The right cheers. The left demurs. I walk away from a long-term intimate relationship. I'm separating not from a person but a cause: the political philosophy that for more than three decades has shaped my character and consciousness, my sense of self and community, even my sense of cosmos.

I'm leaving the left -- more precisely, the American cultural left and what it has become during our time together.

I choose this day for my departure because I can no longer abide the simpering voices of self-styled progressives -- people who once championed solidarity with oppressed populations everywhere -- reciting all the ways Iraq's democratic experiment might yet implode.

My estrangement hasn't happened overnight. Out of the corner of my eye I watched what was coming for more than three decades, yet refused to truly see. Now it's all too obvious. Leading voices in America's "peace" movement are actually cheering against self-determination for a long-suffering Third World country because they hate George W. Bush more than they love freedom.

This was in the San Francisco Chronicle. I'm surprised the newspapers didn't spontaneously combust from having such heresy inside.

Jokes aside, I can identify with the writer of this column. I went through a similar process. The Democrtatic party that I believed in was the JFK version. It was the one that believed America was a force for good in the world. It was patriotic. It was a party that wasn't afraid to back up its words with actions. It believed in equality of opportunity, not outcome. It believed in freedom and democracy for everyone on the planet. And so forth.

After 9/11, I took a hard look at myself and re-examined my beliefs. And I figured out one thing. I hadn't changed. My beliefs, which I describe as center left, were pretty much intact. And in the past those beliefs usually led me to vote for Democrats. It was more of a reflex, really. Unless a Republican really convinced me he/she would be better, I'd vote Democrat.

But now, as I really listened to what the Democratic party was saying, I realized one thing. I have nothing in common with these people. I have no idea when and how the Democratic party morphed into America-hating, dictator-loving, wussy, socialists. But that they have is undeniable. The group of people whose beliefs most closely mirror mine are known as Republicans. That's how I voted and will likely vote for the forseeable future. And I suspect the author of this column and myself will not be the last ones to undergo this transformation.

Media Promotes Hatred Of America

2005-05-22T16:22:00.000-04:00

Instapundit- who else? - found this at Riding Sun. As Glenn would say, here's the money quote:

If I were to offer Newsweek a suggestion, it would be this: Any story or cover you're ashamed to run in America probably shouldn't be used in other countries, either.

It seems to me that the media expends a significant amount of resources towards denigrating Bush, our military and America in general to foreign audiences. Is it because the liberal media is infected with the same sort of weird, self loathing of all things Western that infects a good chunk of the left? Is it because the media is simply trying to market it's products to an existing anti-American market? Or is it a combination of the two? It's probably a combination.

And to be fair to the left, it's not only our newspapers and magazines that promote America hatred. Celebrities do it (Michael Moore anyone?), as do some authors and academics. The examples are too numerous to mention.

I think its fair to say that the level of anti-Americanism is higher than it would be otherwise due to the left's concerted effort to make America look bad at every opportunity, whatever the reason may be. But what's really infuriating is that these same people then castigate our country for being disliked, even though they are at least partially responsible for the dislike. Am I the only one who has noticed this?

Star Wars

2005-05-22T09:43:00.000-04:00

I saw Star Wars last night. I was going to write a review, but I stumbled across this one courtesy of Polipundit. The author makes excellent points on the political nature of the film which are well thought out and quite different than what one would expect. I cannot improve on this so I won't try. Read it.

There has been a lot of discussion about George Lucas' politics, statements, and the content of Revenge of the Sith lately in the blogosphere. Now that I've seen the movie, I thought it was time I gave my own point of view on what I saw. My take is going to be a little different than what you've seen elsewhere.

E-mail From A Soldier

2005-05-20T08:19:00.000-04:00

From Chrenkoff's site. Go over there and read the whole thing. Here's the key line:

If this is how liberals support the troops, then could they please f*cking STOP already?

That pretty much says it all. If the media refuses to be on our side, could they at least stop siding with the enemy? That's a rhetorical question. We all know the answer to that.

Let's Not Fight Amongst Ourselves...

2005-05-18T20:49:00.000-04:00

There's a reason I don't read the works of avowed leftists like David Corn. It's not good for my blood pressure. But I inadvertently clicked on a link from Instapundit that took me there. And despite myself, I ended up reading a column Corn wrote defending Michael Isikoff from an attack by the liberal media watchdog group Media Matters. Since I already wasted several minutes of my life reading it, I figured I may as well spend a couple of more writing what I thought about it.

Here's a good place to start:

I know, I know. Never try to give someone constructive advice. Yet I'm at it again. My pals at Media Matters have dumped on my friend Michael Isikoff. In my most recent "Capital Games" column at www.thenation.com I attempted to broker a ceasefire and remind the MMers that the real enemy is the White House that is fully exploiting the Newsweek mess to undermine an already weak-kneed media.

Translation: Let us not fight amongst ourselves for we have a common enemy. The White House.

The real enemy is the White House? Think about that for a second. He wrote that the White House is the enemy of the press. Well, at least he is upfront about it. Judging by their collective actions, it's pretty obvious that most of the media believes that Bush is the enemy, but few actually admit it. I've got news for you, Dave. The White House and an ever increasing number of Americans are considering the likes of you the enemy.

Some may try to argue that Corn didn't mean that the White House isn't the enemy in all circumstances, just in this one instance. Spare me.

And don't you just love the "week-kneed media" comment? The press continually attacks Bush with a ferocity that makes a pack of rabid pit bulls look like newborn kittens in comparison. But he thinks the media is weak kneed in its dealings with the White House. What planet is he on?

What particularly ticks off the good folks at Media Matters--which was founded by David Brock, the right-wing journalist who defected from the conservative movement--is that Isikoff was a "leading reporter on the so-called 'Clinton scandals' in the 1990s, including the Paula Jones, Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky cases."

I was not fond of the witch hunt against Clinton for getting fellatio from an ugly intern, either. I think it was a monumental waste of time. Clearly we had better things to do as a country.

My point is that the MM slam on Isikoff is one-sided. His "checkered" past includes work that liberal media-watchers might consider rather positive. He broke the story of how Alberto Gonzalez, when he was Texas Governor George W. Bush's chief counsel in 1996, connived to get Bush out of a jury duty so that Bush would not have to acknowledge he had once been arrested for drunk driving. (Today Gonzalez is the nation's attorney general.) Isikoff also was a lead debunker of the allegation that Vice President Dick Cheney tossed about before the invasion of Iraq concerning a supposed meeting between Mohamed Atta, the 9/11 ringleader, and an Iraqi intelligence official in Prague. (Isikoff accurately reported that the CIA and FBI had found nothing to this charge.) Last year, after the Abu Ghraib scandal broke, Isikoff unearthed the first Justice Department memos showing that the Bush administration had stripped Geneva Convention protections from the prisoners at Guantanamo. He and Mark Hosenball--who together write Newsweek's "Terror Watch" column--recently disclosed that Haliburton had cut a hush-hush deal in Iran and that former GOP presidential candidate Jack Kemp had been questioned by federal investigators about his ties to a businessman under investigation in the oil-for-food scandal. Last year, they detailed how CBS--in the wake of the Dan Rather fiasco--had censored a 60 Minutes segment on the forged documents purporting to show Iraqi efforts to obtain uranium in Niger.

Got all that? He does say that part of what bothered him about the Lewinsky matter was that it was a private issue (not quoted, and I agree) and offered up some professional decisions he made consistent with that. But then he goes on to quote a number of stories he thinks are "good stuff" which consist entirely of attacking the Bush administration. It would lead a neutral observer to conclude what he really likes about these stories versus Lewinsky is that they attack Republicans and the other attacked a Democrat.

Still, here's a modest suggestion to Media Matters (and I do hope my friends there consider this constructive criticism): don't use this occasion to revive the old battles of the Clinton days; Isikoff is not the enemy.

There it is again. Bush is the enemy.

Instead, consider this slice of Elisabeth Bumiller's piece in today'sThe New York Times:

Republicans close to the White House said that although President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney were genuinely angered by the Newsweek article, West Wing officials were also exploiting it in an effort to put a check on the press.

"There's no expectation that they're going to bring down Newsweek, but there is a feeling that there is no check on what you guys do," said one outside Bush adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he did not want to be identified as talking about possible motives of the White House.

"In the course of any administration," he continued, "you have three or four opportunities, at most, with a high-profile press mistake. And if you're going to make a point - and no White House is ever going to love the way it's covered - you have to highlight those places where there is a screw-up."

Good. I hope this is true and the White House is successful in its efforts. But David seems offended:

So the White House is eagerly waging war on the media.

Close, but not quite, David. Your terminology is wrong. Let me help you out. It's called a "counterattack". Allow me to explain. Several times in this column you have called the White House the enemy of liberal media. You then listed a number of negative articles attacking the administration as evidence of good journalism. You are the ones who declared war on the administration, not the other way around. And in a war, when your enemy exposes a weakness in the midst of a unrelenting assault, a good soldier will exploit it and fight back. That's known as a counterattack.

And notice how that sentence has a little bit of victimization to it? He's whining that the White House is fighting back. It's childish to attack someone and then be offended when you are hit back.

The Bushies peddled the phony tale that Iraq posed a WMD threat, and they have not apologized for that or retracted the war.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Give it a rest already.

Worse, the White House, the Pentagon, the Republicans in Congress are enthusiastically taking advantage of Newsweek's mistakes to weaken a mainstream media that already does not challenge the administration sufficiently.

If Bush were publicly skinned alive it still wouldn't be enough for these people.

But those who yearn for an assertive and independent media ought to fret more about the ongoing campaign to exploit this matter than Isikoff's past, checkered or otherwise.

Translation: We are the real victims here; not the needless hit America's reputation just took, not the military and other overseas personnel who live and work in the lion's den, and certainly not the dead protesters. The media is the victim.

And then they wonder why the journalism profession is losing so much respect.

No One Likes The French

2005-05-17T09:03:00.000-04:00

Hilarious article in the Telegraph about a survey of European attitudes towards the French.

Typically, the French refuse to accept what arrogant, overbearing monsters they are.

But now after the publication of a survey of their neighbours' opinions of them at least they no longer have any excuse for not knowing how unpopular they are.

Well, what did the respondents say?

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Britons described them as "chauvinists, stubborn, nannied and humourless". However, the French may be more shocked by the views of other nations.

For the Germans, the French are "pretentious, offhand and frivolous". The Dutch describe them as "agitated, talkative and shallow." The Spanish see them as "cold, distant, vain and impolite" and the Portuguese as "preaching". In Italy they comes across as "snobs, arrogant, flesh-loving, righteous and self-obsessed" and the Greeks find them "not very with it, egocentric bons vivants".

Interestingly, the Swedes consider them "disobedient, immoral, disorganised, neo-colonialist and dirty".

Were the questions loaded or misleading?

But the knockout punch to French pride came in the way the poll was conducted. People were not asked what they hated in the French, just what they thought of them.

"Interviewees were simply asked an open question - what five adjectives sum up the French," said Olivier Clodong, one of the study's two authors and a professor of social and political communication at the Ecole Superieur de Commerce, in Paris. "The answers were overwhelmingly negative."

Nope. Doesn't appear to be.

This looks like fun. But only five adjectives? It is difficult to limit myself to only five, but let me try anyway. How about sneering, condescending, ungrateful, backstabbing assholes?

More on Newsweek

2005-05-17T08:21:00.000-04:00

This is absolutely on target:

And now a word about the rioters. They have desecrated their religion and their holy text far more than the alleged flushers of Koranic pages.

Did any Buddhists riot and murder when the Taliban Muslims blew up the irreplaceable giant Buddhist statues in Afghanistan?

Did any Christians riot and murder when an "artist" produced "Piss Christ" -- a crucifix immersed in a jar of the "artist's" urine? When all Christian services and even the wearing of a cross were banned in Saudi Arabia? When Christians are murdered while at prayer in churches by Muslims in Pakistan?

Have any Jews rioted in all the years since it was revealed that Jordanian Muslims used Jewish tombstones in Old Jerusalem as latrines? Or after Palestinians destroyed Joseph's Tomb in 2000 and set fire to the rebuilt tomb in 2003?

It is quite remarkable that many Muslims believe that an American interrogator flushing pages of the Koran is worthy of rioting, but all the torture, slaughter, terror and mass murder done by Muslims in the name of the Koran are unworthy of even a peaceful protest.

Nevertheless, one will have to search extensively for any editorials condemning these primitives in the Western press, let alone in the Muslim press. This is because moral expectations of Muslims are lower than those of other religious groups. Behavior that would be held in contempt if engaged in by Christians or Jews is not only not condemned, it is frequently "understood" when done by Muslims.

That, not phony reports about an American desecrating Koranic pages, should really upset Muslims. It won't. Just as the CBS and Newsweek debacles won't upset the American news media.

The lowest of the Muslim world and the elite of the Western world: Anti-Americanism makes strange bedfellows.

Nuclear Vs. Right To Vote

2005-05-17T06:03:00.000-04:00

Charles Krauthammer recently wrote a fairly standard opinion piece about the judicial filibuster issue. What I found interesting was this tidbit:

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist seems intent on passing a procedural ruling to prevent judicial filibusters. Democrats have won the semantic war by getting this branded ``the nuclear option,'' a colorful and deliberately inflammatory term (although Republican Trent Lott, ever helpful, appears to have originated the term). The semantic device reminds me of the slogan of the nuclear freeze campaign of the early 1980s: ``Because nobody wants a nuclear war.'' (Except Reagan, of course.)

I've been thinking the same thing. Even though the Democrats have a very weak hand in this debate, they nonetheless won the PR war through colorful language and mindless repetition from their media allies. Republicans never seem to win these sorts of word battles partially because there's an inherent victim mentality that influences pretty much every word uttered by the left. I can hear it now "We must be strong about the filibuster, fellow Democrats, otherwise the big, bad Republicans will go NUCLEAR!!!" It conjures up images of mushroom clouds and some wild eyed maniac laughing demonically as he pushes the button. It’s quite effective.

The Republicans need help. And I’m volunteering to help them. As a reformed Democrat, I’m familiar with victim think. Let’s start by running down the Republican attempts in the PR war to date.

“It’s not the Nuclear option, it’s the Constitutional option”. This is pretty weak. There is no imagery and it’s too wordy. Moreover, few will understand the legal or constitutional aspects of this issue. No one will repeat this and it won’t sway public opinion.

“It’s not the Nuclear option, it’s the Byrd option”. This is again weak, and for the same reasons. There is no imagery and few will understand the history of Robert Byrd and the filibuster. This also will not sway public opinion.

“All nominees deserve an up or down vote”. Close, but not quite. It’s too wordy and generates little imagery. I suppose it could conjure up some faint ideas of fairness, but overall it’s ineffective.

But let’s build on the last one. Think for a second. What would a victim say? “Those big mean Democrats are taking away my right to vote!! I have a right to vote on the President’s nominees, and the Democrats are taking it away!”

"Right to Vote"! Perfect. It’s three syllables, rolls off the tongue, everyone knows what it means and has great imagery. It conjures up images of citizens being deprived their fundamental rights, an idea which is always in the public’s mind because the Democrats constantly make these bogus accusations- complete with inflammatory commercials- every election cycle.

And then one has to do what a professional victim/Democrat would do; which is to mindlessly repeat the phrase at every opportunity. Here’s a hypothetical:

Democrat: The judicial nominees are crazed theocrats and unfit for the court.

Republican: Then vote against them. If the nominees are as bad as you say, then it should be a simple matter to make your case against them. But I have a right to vote on these nominees.

D: But these nominees shouldn’t even come up for a vote, they are unqualified.
R: They have received the highest ratings and I have a right to vote on them.

D: So that means you will vote in favor of the nominees?
R: Whether or not I will vote in favor of them is irrelevant. I have a right to use my judgment and vote on them.

D: But they have majority support! They will win confirmation!
R: And the problem with that is what, exactly? I have a right to vote and I intend to use it.

D: I will read the entire contents of War and Peace on the Senate floor to prevent a vote.
R: And I will put together a coalition to ensure that I have a right to vote on the nominees.

D: You would go nuclear! (cue the mock outrage)
R: No, I would protect my right to vote. Your actions are denying me my rights.

As an aside, whether or not it is a “right” is irrelevant. Remember, you are playing a victim. Victims in our society get to invent all sorts of rights.

D: You are trying to prevent my right to filibuster!
R: There is no right for the minority to thwart the will of the majority. That only happens by brute force. Advocating minority rule by force makes you the moral equivalent of white South Africans during apartheid.

The above statement isn’t true, of course. But that doesn’t matter. Professional victims often just make stuff up.

And don’t forget about moral equivalence. It’s a valuable tool of lefties/professional victims/Democrats. Use it liberally. No pun intended.

D: You wouldn’t dare invoke the nuclear option.
R: I have a right to vote and will do what’s necessary to preserve it. I will not allow you to deny me my rights.

D: Nuclear!
R: Right to Vote!

Then the Republicans need to send representatives to every media outlet and work the words "right to vote" into every sentence. It will eventually find its way into public consciousness.

The Republicans should win with this approach. At worst, they will achieve a stalemate in the PR war, which will allow more substantive arguments to emerge. Either way, the Republicans win.

Newsweek

2005-05-16T22:23:00.000-04:00

Random thoughts about Newsweek and the alleged flushing of the Koran:

• I don’t know, and neither do you, if in fact a US official did flush the Koran as part of an interrogation. It’s entirely possible it happened. Newsweek is seething right now because it was forced to retract this story. Nothing would please the Newsweek editors more than confirming this allegation and feeling vindicated. If in fact this story is true, bet the farm on it coming out and the news coverage being over the top in the same manner as Abu Ghraib. The increased risk to our military will be a secondary consideration at best. The goal is to embarrass the administration and confirm that America is evil.

• I couldn’t care less if the story is true. After seeing the US flag being burned pretty much every day at a protest somewhere in the world, it’s a little difficult for me to get worked up if another culture’s sensibilities are offended. No one seems to care about ours.

• If in fact ripping up a Koran and flushing it gets captured terrorists to talk, then I’m all for it. And for all of you relativists and equivocators out there, just try for once to understand something. This is not torture. There really is a difference between, oh say, chopping off someone’s head and disemboweling them on camera and ripping apart a holy book or a naked prisoner piles. If you can’t understand this, you shouldn’t walk around unattended.

• Newsweek- and the rest of the MSM for that matter- would be wise to at least try to hide its leftist, hate America bias. Here’s an idea. Instead of believing every charge a captured terrorist makes against America and reflexively disbelieving every word that comes out of the administration, maybe they should try the opposite for once? You know, be a little skeptical of the head choppers and give the benefit of the doubt once in a while to our guys? Crazy, I know.

• This story has absolutely, positively no news value whatsoever. The sole intention was to embarrass the administration and to confirm the weird, self loathing impulse of all things Western that seems to reside in most lefties. The only possible reaction was a bad one.

• It should not have been reported even if true. There was no overriding public interest here. We are at war. Things get messy sometimes. For that reason, not everything needs to be reported, particularly if the only possible outcome is to damage us. Is it too much to ask that the MSM stop acting like it’s the adversary? Or an arm of the enemy propaganda machine?

• Newsweek has reinforced everything I hate about the liberal media. F**k you, Newsweek.

More Corruption At The UN

2005-05-16T19:58:00.000-04:00

John Hinderaker brings us up to speed on the latest UN thievery. Apparently the organization wants to renovate its New York headquarters. The evil US will pay for it, of course, through a low interest loan. If this loan is repaid, a good chunk of the funds will come from our outsized contributions to the UN budget. Essentially, we are loaning money to ourselves to benefit an organization that detests our very existence. Seems kind of stupid to me.

But the bigger problem is the cost of the project is more than double what New York commercial real estate experts say it should cost. From the Feb 4th New York Sun:

The United Nations has said its plans to renovate its headquarters at Turtle Bay will cost $1.2 billion.

That strikes Donald Trump as far too much. "The United Nations is a mess," the developer said yesterday, "and they're spending hundreds of millions of dollars unnecessarily on this project."

And he's not the only one. Several Manhattan real-estate experts told The New York Sun this week that renovating premium office space should cost a fraction, on a per-square-foot basis, of what U.N. officials expect to pay.

An executive managing director at the commercial real-estate firm Julien J. Studley Inc., Woody Heller, said a thorough renovation of an office building would probably cost between $85 and $160 per square foot.

An executive vice president at Newmark, Scott Panzer, said renovation prices could range between $120 and $200 per square foot. Mr. Panzer, who works with many corporations to redevelop their buildings for future efficiency and energy cost savings, put a price of $70 to $100 per square foot on infrastructure upgrades. Those would include heating; ventilation; air conditioning; replacing the central plant; fenestration (specifically, switching from single-pane to thermal-pane windows); upgrading elevator switch gears, mechanicals, and vertical transportation; improving air quality, and making security upgrades. On top of that amount, another $50 to $100 per square foot would take care of the inside office improvements.

The chairman of global brokerage at commercial real-estate firm CB Richard Ellis, Stephen Siegel, said high-end commercial renovation usually runs $50 to $100 per square foot. For a renovation that does not include new furniture--according to the 2002 Capital Master Plan, the United Nations' will not--but does provide for improved heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning equipment, as well as work on the building exterior, the cost would be closer to the $100 end of the range, Mr. Siegel said. Even accounting generously for upgrades that might be peculiar to the United Nations, Mr. Siegel added, he would set $250 per square foot as the absolute maximum.

Hmmm. Seems as if some people at the UN expect to line their pockets. Yeah, I know. Something new and different.

Women Tired Of Metrosexuals- Er, I mean- Democrats

2005-04-16T10:34:00.000-04:00

I love this column.

According to a recent Washington Times report, American women are pig sick of the oversold and dandy metrosexual male imago. It seems as if the ladies are tired of dating, mating and watching these candy asses and, once again, are looking for a man whose masculinity is not in question.

It's about time.

God bless the women who are doing the Sadie Hawkins for guys who are low maintenance and easy going. Yeah … fine American lasses are righteously refusing the low yield, reflexively irate fops Hollywood has tried to cram down our culture’s collective throat. The girls have spoken and have said, No thanks, to the eye-brow- tweaked man. They have sent the metrosexual male back to Europe where he belongs, and, predictably, they have embraced the Marlboro Man.

Isn't it nice that someone is finally saying these things out loud?

Now, for all you Backstreet Boys who are wondering if, if, you are one of these metrosexual males from whom women, men and small animals are running, I’ve concocted a little test to help you shed your proclivities toward abnormality and begin to saddle up and ride in a more masculine direction. Are you ready? If you start to hyper-ventilate, just take a break and control your breathing. Here we go.

You might be a metrosexual if …
• You use more than three words when ordering your Starbuck’s,
• You’re still into rollerblading,
• You put on cologne to go to the gym,
• You have an Armani Exchange or Banana Republic credit card,
• You Tivo Sex in the City and/or Will and Grace,
• You watch Friends with a note pad,
• You have panic attacks (look, either have a real heart attack or cut the crap. That feeling you’re feeling is not death; it’s called responsibility and most everybody feels it. So … suck it up, drink a Guinness and get a life),
• You shave any part of your body except your face or skull,
• You buy your shampoo at a salon instead of a grocery store,
• You take more than two, that’s two, minutes to fix your hair,
• You think Ben Affleck, Colin Farrell, and Orlando Bloom are really, really good actors,
• You think you have a feminine side to get in touch with, and/or
• You must have Evian and only Evian for hydration (Hey, thongmeister. What’s Evian spelled backwards? That’s what you are).

When you think about it, this explains how Bush materially closed the gender gap in the last election. Most women want men, not wimps. Democrats have become the party of wussy metrosexuals, and for some reason, are proud of it.

Just take a look at this manly picture of John Kerry in a bunny suit. Or check out the studly John Edwards combing his hair for an hour. Contrast those displays of testosterone with this picture of Bush or this one of Cheney.

Is it any wonder women are turning to Republicans? Men wearning bunny suits don't inspire confidence when the country is at war.

The Mother Of All Media Bias Posts

2005-04-05T12:40:00.000-04:00

This is awesome. I'll never put this much energy into a post. Thankfully, other people do:

Bias in the MSM/DNC takes many forms. I am forced to compare these forms each time I catalogue another "lie" for the 2005 list. Much of the MSM/DNC behavior constitutes mere spin or bias, slanted headlines or failure to report opposing points of view. Those items, while reprehensible, do not constitute "lies." For the sake of clarity and so that we can more easily discuss the tactics of the MSM/DNC, I have categorized here some of those MSM/DNC tactics:

Read the whole thing.

(Thanks, Polipundit)

Lefty Academics

2005-04-05T08:00:00.000-04:00

This doesn't surprise me:

College faculties, long assumed to be a liberal bastion, lean further to the left than even the most conspiratorial conservatives might have imagined, a new study says.

By their own description, 72 percent of those teaching at American universities and colleges are liberal and 15 percent are conservative, says the study being published this week. The imbalance is almost as striking in partisan terms, with 50 percent of the faculty members surveyed identifying themselves as Democrats and 11 percent as Republicans.

The disparity is even more pronounced at the most elite schools, where, according to the study, 87 percent of faculty are liberal and 13 percent are conservative.

This study was based on 1999 data. If another survey was taken today, the results would almost certainly be less pronounced. Not because the professor's beliefs are different. If anything, they are probably more left today than in 1999. It's because a lack of intellectual diversity on college campuses is becoming an issue, and faculties are sensitive to that. Fewer will want to identify themselves as liberal so as to escape criticism.

When asked about the findings, Jonathan Knight, director of academic freedom and tenure for the American Association of University Professors, said, "The question is how this translates into what happens within the academic community on such issues as curriculum, admission of students, evaluation of students, evaluation of faculty for salary and promotion." Knight said he isn't aware of "any good evidence" that personal views are having an impact on campus policies.

"It's hard to see that these liberal views cut very deeply into the education of students. In fact, a number of studies show the core values that students bring into the university are not very much altered by being in college."

Where have we heard this argument before, boys and girls? Why, it's the standard response given by journalists defending liberal media! Journalists want you to believe that, even though they are statistically far to the left of the US as a whole politically, that their thoughts, opinions and attitudes are never ever reflected in their news presentation. Similarly, liberal academics want you to believe that even though they are Trotskyites at heart, these opinions never, ever make it into the classroom. Few believe this journalist claim- hence the popularity of Fox news-, and few will believe academics.

How to change the academic environment? Why not use a tried and true lefty tactic against them and sue? Let's have an affirmative action program for non-socialist professors on campus. I'm not sure what all the legal hurdles are, but over time I'm confident they can be overcome. The lack of intellectual diversity is clear discrimination, and documenting it can't be too hard. Also, I can't imagine it would be that difficult to find an activist judge willing to create a law out of thin air on this issue. Why not? It might be the only way to end this nonsense.

Answer Is Obvious, But Dems Won't Do It

2005-04-05T06:19:00.000-04:00

Polidata is a firm that collects precinct level election data and publishes it. Surprisingly, they seem to be the only firm that does this nationwide. Anyway, it doesn't look good for the Democrats. Here's the key quote from an article in the Opinion Journal:

It's no accident that Mrs. Clinton, who will be running for re-election in New York next year before she launches her presidential campaign, is talking about the importance of religious faith and reaching out to moderate voters. "She pores over political data as carefully as Bill Clinton ever did," says New York Democratic strategist Hank Sheinkopf. A close look at the Congressional district results from last year is convincing many Democrats that a move to the middle may be more than a smart media strategy. It may be a matter of political survival.

After reading the article, it will be obvious that the Democrats need to move to the middle. Unfortunately for the party, and for the nation, they won't. If Democratic politicians move to the middle where we normal humans reside, they will lose their hysterical, screeching, socialist base, which is a considerable portion of the party. There is no way the Democratic Underground, Moveon.org, Hollywood lefties and their ilk will let this happen. A party that hates the likes of Zell Miller and Joe Lieberman is not concerned with those of us in the middle.

Here's another article worth reading. It's a review of a book titled "The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy".

It was several months before Election Day. George W. Bush and John Kerry had pulled to a statistical dead heat, and the pundits were poring over the polls in an effort to divine the reasons for the latest shift in public opinion. But MoveOn.org had more pressing concerns. It was moved to ask its network of true believers: "Why aren't we talking about a landslide in November?"

Such groundless conviction "was not at all unusual in the world of MoveOn," writes Byron York in "The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy." The triumphalism flowed, he notes, from a deceptively simple rationale. Feeling a passionate contempt for the president and his policies, the MoveOn rank-and-file labored under the illusion that they represented the majority of the American people.

Sandy Berger Gets Away With Crime...

2005-04-02T09:26:00.000-05:00

..more of less, anyway. For those who don't know the story, of which there are many because of the liberal media blackout, Sandy Berger stole a bunch of highly classified documents from the National Archive and destroyed most of them. Reportedly, he stuffed many of the documents in his socks. When confronted with the crime, he lied and claimed the theft and destruction was all a big misunderstanding. Oh, one more thing, the documents were all related to Clinton era efforts to combat terrorism.

The document, written by former National Security Council terrorism expert Richard A. Clarke, was an "after-action review" prepared in early 2000 detailing the administration's actions to thwart terrorist attacks during the millennium celebration. It contained considerable discussion about the administration's awareness of the rising threat of attacks on U.S. soil.

Archives officials have said previously that Berger had copies only, and that no original documents were lost. It remains unclear whether Berger knew that, or why he destroyed three versions of a document but left two other versions intact. Officials have said the five versions were largely similar, but contained slight variations as the after-action report moved around different agencies of the executive branch.

So what was the punishment?

Under terms negotiated by Berger's attorneys and the Justice Department, he has agreed to pay a $10,000 fine and accept a three-year suspension of his national security clearance. These terms must be accepted by a judge before they are final, but Berger's associates said yesterday he believes that closure is near on what has been an embarrassing episode during which he repeatedly misled people about what happened during two visits to the National Archives in September and October 2003.

Okay, let's run through this again. Lest we forget, 2003-04 was one of the most insane, partisan atmospheres I've ever seen. The administration was getting beaten up on a daily basis by things like the "I Hate George Bush" book of the week club; the silly, partisan, theatrical 9/11 hearings; blame coming from every corner of the liberal establishment that somehow Bush was personally responsible for the 9/11 attacks; accusations were flying about how the administration "outed" a CIA agent (Wilson/Plame scandal); fat filmakers were making farcical "documentaries" to discredit the administration; accusations that Bush lied about WMDs; Iraq was a failure; Bush is the anti-christ, etc.

It was at this time that Sock Stuffin' Sandy stole documents related to Clinton anti terrorism efforts and destroyed most of them. And there was nary a word from the media. Can you imagine the primal screams of outrage from the media and Democrats if a Republican had done this?

And all SSS gets is a nominal fine and loses his security clearance for three years? Apparently his crime was so well done that the Justice Department figures this is the best they can do. Amazing.

SSS is getting a mild slap on the wrist for a serious, serious crime. Remember this the next time the Democrats are screaming for an investigation of an alleged Republican wrongdoing.

Trivia: The five wealthiest senators are.....

2005-03-30T21:11:00.000-05:00

Choose one:
a) all republicans
b) republicans and democrats
c) all democrats

Pick a or b? Sorry... the correct answer is c) all democrats.
Can this be right? But aren't the republicans the ones usually associated with wealth, big business, corporate greed, etc? What is going on here??

All senators make public filings that have a low and high estimate of their total assets. Liabilities are not included, so we're only seeing one side of balance sheet; hence this is not actually a measure of wealth, but it's enlightening anyway. To arrive at these rankings I averaged the low and high number. Actually the top 6 are all democrats, as are 7 of the top 10.

The list is obviously headed by John Kerry, who is by far the wealthiest person in the history of the senate. His low and high asset numbers were 194 and 777 million dollars, respectively. His former running mate and personal injury lawyer, John Edwards, tips the scales at 19 million and 44 million. Adding the high numbers for Mr. Kerry and Mr. Edwards give you a number that could be the GDP of a small island nation.

In fact, John Kerry's assets exceed the total assets of all 51 republican senators combined by a very significant margin (35%). Repeat...all 51 republican Senators combined.

And how about the totals? 51 republicans weigh in with a total of $318 million in assets, or an average of $6.2 million per senator. 48 democrats list $1.19 billion in assets, or $24.8 million per senator. And it isn't all Kerry. (Note, 48+51 = 99, plus 1 Independent) If you take Kerry out entirely, you still have an average of $14.1 million per democrat, more than twice the republican average.

Meanwhile democrats love to portray themselves as simple common folk. Just plain people, working for a better America.

Hmmm... maybe not.

Civil War In Venezuela?

2005-03-30T17:23:00.000-05:00

From Instapundit I found this news out of Venezuela:

Venezuela is having problems with the loyalty of its armed forces. The current government is run by a former army officer Hugo Chavez. Normally, that would not be a problem. But Chavez sees himself as another Fidel Castro. That is, the rebel Castro before he proclaimed himself a hard core communist. Chavez wants social revolution in Venezuela, but many, perhaps a majority, of Venezuelans don’t want to be another Cuba. While Venezuela's oil wealth has not been distributed equally, it has created a large middle class. This includes the military. Many of the troops are nervous about Chavez, and his social programs. Even some of Chavez’s military decisions have caused unease among officers and troops. For example, Chavez is now buying military equipment from Russia. This includes helicopters (nine Mi-17s and one Mi-26) for the navy. The navy considers these helicopters unsuitable for naval use. The sailors are correct, but the price is cheap, and Chavez wants to make a political point.

The army is unhappy about the cozy relationship between Chavez and leftist rebel groups in neighboring Colombia. Venezuelan troops have been operating more aggressively along the Colombian border. This is officially a crackdown on the smugglers who always have operated there. But the Venezuelan troops are accused to really going after the Colombian rebels, or supporting them. Take your pick. No one is sure exactly what is going on.

To top it all off, Chavez is now organizing a new army, one loyal to him personally. This is part of his plan create "Bolivarian Circles of Venezuela Frontline Defense for National Democratic Revolution." These are political clubs all over the country, particularly in poor areas, where Chavez has the most support. Chavez expects to have 2.2 million members, who will be the backbone of the “democratic revolution unfolding in Venezuela." What upsets the armed forces is Chavezs decision to pass out infantry weapons to these political clubs, so that his new political clubs can use force to “defend the revolution.” There are believed to be Cuban advisors involved in this effort. This sort of mass organization has been used before in Latin America, by both leftist and rightist dictators (pro-fascist Juan Peron of Argentina, and communist Fidel Castro of Cuba.) But by passing out guns to his most dedicated followers, Chavez is angering the military, making the middle class even more nervous, and setting the stage for a bloody civil war.

I think this is good news. Glenn isn't so sure. But Chavez has got to go, by any means necessary. He will single handedly destabilize most of South America if he isn't stopped. And he would have been out of power legally had it not been for that fool of an ex-President of ours, Jimmy Carter. Jimmy Carter seems to have a weird, unnatural love of dictators that is hard to understand, and he has single handedly complicated US foreign policy efforts pretty much every time he has intervened in his post Presidential career.

For more on Carter and the Venezuela elections, read this and this.

New Twist With Wilson/Plame

2005-03-26T21:24:00.000-05:00

You cannot be serious:

A federal court should first determine whether a crime has been committed in the disclosure of an undercover CIA operative's name before prosecutors are allowed to continue seeking testimony from journalists about their confidential sources, the nation's largest news organizations and journalism groups asserted in a court filing yesterday.

The 40-page brief, filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, argues that there is "ample evidence . . . to doubt that a crime has been committed" in the case, which centers on the question of whether Bush administration officials knowingly revealed the identity of undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame in the summer of 2003. Plame's name was published first by syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak and later by other publications.

The friend-of-the-court brief was filed by 36 news organizations, including The Washington Post and major broadcast and cable television news networks, in support of reporters at the New York Times and Time magazine who face possible jail time for refusing to cooperate with a grand jury investigating the allegations. Those two organizations filed a petition Tuesday asking the full appeals court to review the case.

Let me see if I have this straight. Journalists, in yet another attempt to bring down the Bush administration, started a feeding frenzy over the Valerie Plame situation. Desperately hoping this could be another Watergate or Iran Contra, liberal journalists countrywide demanded a special prosecutor be appointed to investigate this supposed heinous crime. It didn't matter one iota that the only place a crime had taken place was in their fantasies. They sensed a chance to hurt Bush and dammit, they were going to take it.

Now that the situation has boomeranged perfectly, the very same people who were demanding the investigation suddenly agree with those of us who said all along no crime had been committed. No one ever said journalists lacked balls.

You know what I find most amazing about this story? It's not the overzealousness of the media in pursuing this story, the ridiculous demands for a special prosecutor or the about face now that journalists themselves are in the crosshairs. All of these things are incredible, but none are what amaze me the most. So what is it?

It's that liberal journalists are doing all of this with a straight face.

UPDATE: The Opinion Journal has more. Go read it.

Insurgents? I don't think so

2005-03-25T20:51:00.000-05:00

Mainstream media glommed on to the term "insurgents" back at the start of the war in Iraq and refuses to let it go, even as their continued use of the word exposes their extreme bias. Let's look at some definitions of the word taken from various dictionaries and encyclopedia entries available on the internet (italics mine):

1. one who uses armed force to rebel against one's own government.
2. someone who is fighting against the government in their own country.
3. a person who takes part in a rebellion in the hope of improving conditions.
4. insurgent, insurrectionist, freedom fighter, rebel -- (a person who takes part in an armed rebellion against the constituted authority (especially in the hope of improving conditions)).
5. Wikipedia: An insurgency is an armed rebellion against a constituted authority, by any irregular armed force that rises up against an enforced or established authority, government, or administration. Those carrying out an insurgency are "insurgents." Insurgents conduct sabotage and harassment. Insurgents usually are in opposition to a civil authority or government primarily in the hope of improving their condition.

Notice that many, though not all, definitions include that a) insurgents are rebelling against their own government, or b) they are rebelling in the hope of improving their condition. How does this word describe the terrorists currently operating in Iraq?

Does al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian who videotapes himself beheading non-Iraqi civilians, qualify as an insurgent? Is he fighting against the government of his own country? Or perhaps he is trying to improve his condition? Do the Algerian, Sudanese, Morrocan and Phillipino fighters killed in the recent raid on the terrorist training camp near Samarra qualify? When ordinary Iraqi civilians attack and kill a group of armed people that are about to attack them, do the dead fighters qualify as "insurgents" under these (or any) definitions?

So, let's look at the obvious alternative to describe these people, namely - "terrorists". The definition of terrorist is one who engages in terrorism, which is defined as:

The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.

WHAT AM I MISSING? The term "terrorist" fits these dirtbags like a glove. But you have to turn the word "insurgent" inside out and stand it on its head to make it fit. But the extreme liberal bias of the mainstream media encourages the use of poetic license in their description of these people. They intentionally shape people's perceptions by the use of specific language designed to make the actions of these despicable murderers more palatable.

Insurgents my ass.

Nazi Comparison Wearing Thin?

2005-03-25T19:43:00.000-05:00

Due to overuse, the Bush/America = Hitler/Nazi Germany comparison seems to be losing its effectiveness. Desperately searching for another absurd way to compare Republicans to something evil, Jon Corzine unveiled this gem:

As a sign of how politically charged the issue has become, Sen. Jon Corzine, D-N.J., a leading opponent of Bush's plan, told reporters Monday that Cheney had "a virtual career of disdain for Social Security" and compared his appearances to sending Saddam Hussein to campaign for democracy in Iraq.

I'm kind of surprised that Corzine used Hussein. He's not that evil in the eyes of your average leftie. After all, leftists have spent most of the last few years defending Hussein; saying he wasn't a threat, ignoring is mass murdering tendencies, his ties to terrorists, etc. And, considering the incredible amount of hate the left directs towards this administration, a comparison to Hussein is actually an improvement. Maybe leftists are warming up to them?

Unfortunately, making inane comparisons to your political opponents isn't a game the supporters of this administration can play. It simply won't work. Don't believe me? Just try and compare a leftie to Castro. They are more likely to say thank you than take offense. Stalin? In the world of a leftie, maybe Stalin went a little overboard by killing 20 million people, but the goal of communism was noble. And so forth.

See what I mean?

VDH Explains Bush Policy

2005-03-25T19:23:00.000-05:00

In a recent article, Victor Davis Hanson explained why democracy is the new realist foreign policy. But first, he takes a shot at those who oppose spreading democracy:

The foreign policy Realists want nothing to do with George Bush's idealism. They rely exclusively on deterrence and balance of power to adjudicate relations abroad: We must deal with the world as it is, they say, rather than as we think it should be. Isolationists likewise bristle at the idea of expending blood or treasure in an open-ended commitment to spread our values. And don't expect liberals to applaud the new idealism, as if their 1960s vision of an ethical foreign policy has at last arrived. The Left's attachment to "multiculturalism" long ago ended the idea that the U.S. had any right to place Western ideas of politics over indigenous practices. Other "progressives" are de facto pacifists; for them, any use of U.S. force is a betrayal of global diplomacy.

So true. This is why few trust the left on foreign policy matters. They just aren't serious.

But here he explains what is obvious to pretty much everyone who isn't a liberal:

And while promoting democracy is idealistic, it does not necessarily follow that it is naive. What, after all, prevents wars? Hardly the U.N.; and not just aircraft carriers either. The last half-century of peace in Europe and Japan, and the end of our old enmity of Russia, attest that the widest spread of democratic rule is the best guarantee against international aggression. Ballots substitute for bullets in venting internal frustrations.

And in today's Middle East, our new insistence on democracy is not our first but rather our last resort. We have already tried averting our eyes, subsidies, passive-aggressive lectures, outright hostility, everything but principled and consistent promotion of constitutional government. Despite varying degrees of American appeasement, monarchy, Baathism, Nasserism, pan-Arabism, and Islamic fundamentalism have all turned out to have intolerable spillover effects on the U.S. In contrast, the Muslims of democratic Indonesia, India, and Turkey do not threaten us.

Far from being impractical, naive, or dangerous, explaining to the world that America will from now on always encourage democratic rule is sober and in our own vital interest. With patience and persistence, it will turn out to be both the right and the smart thing to do.

Bad Day For The Terrorists

2005-03-23T09:51:00.000-05:00

Chrenkoff has a post up about a terrorist attack- sorry, I mean insurgent attack- on coalition forces that went horribly wrong, for the insurgents. He has six links in his post that I'm too lazy to add myself. Check his story for links.

Two days ago I wrote about a story from Agence France-Presse which breathlessly proclaimed "45 people killed in insurgent attacks" only to explain later that 29 out of those 45 people were insurgents themselves.

A major component of that casualty tally was an ambush that went badly wrong for the insurgents, seven miles southeast of Baghdad. Here's the story of how three squads of the Kentucky-based 617th Military Police Company killed 27 insurgents (three more than the original reports indicated) while suffering three Guards wounded. Says Sgt. 1st Class Marshall Ware, platoon sergeant for the squads involved: "From Day 1, there was an emphasis on training. We trained and trained and trained... The Guard is not the same Guard it was two years ago. They're as good as any active duty unit." Hence, Exhibit 1.

Here's also the ABC news story of the ambush.

As it usually happens, the ambush was video-taped by one of the insurgents. Our special correspondent Dan Foty reports that ABC played more or less the whole tape, which ends with the cameraman being himself shot, chanting "Allah u Akbar" a few times and toppling to the ground.

Here's the CBS news segment which contains some - but not all - of that footage. In fact, towards the end I can hear the invocation of Allah, but the last few moments aren't shown.

Update: Reader Patrick Chester asks: "Would this count as a 'deliberately-targeted' journalist?"

Eason Jordan, you are now vindicated.

Snicker. I have another question. Will Al Jazeera show this video? After all, Al Jazeera has shown practically every other terrorist video of which they have gained possession. Why not this one? I'm sure the Pentagon will make it available.

Larry Summers

2005-03-22T12:38:00.000-05:00

The National Review Online has an interesting article up on the background of some of the more strident Lawrence Sommers critics.

The Harvard faculty of arts and science just last week passed a motion expressing a lack of confidence in the leadership of President Lawrence Summers. Such censure is unprecedented in Harvard's near 400-year-history. Summers unwittingly stepped on the third rail of university politics when he speculated that innate differences between the sexes might be one reason there are fewer women than men at the highest echelons of math and science. To understand the hornets' nest Summers has stirred up, one needs to have a close look at the main hornets.

Be sure to read the whole article, it's interesting.

Before I start, let me say this. I fully believe in the equality between men and women, as well as between the various races. I also believe socialization accounts for a good chunk of the differences we see between the various groups. That said, I have a couple of thoughts on this topic.

1. Men and women are equal, not identical. There is a difference.

2. There is a large body of research that suggests that men's and women's brains work differently. No serious inquiry into the topic of differences in achievement in math and sciences can exclude this angle and still be intellectually honest.

3. Liberalism is showing itself to be a very weak ideology if it cannot withstand even a modicum of scrutiny of one of its core beliefs.

4. This is tangentially related, but interesting nonetheless. There is much more coverage of Summers’ "offensive" off the record remarks than of Eason Jordan's "offensive" off the record remarks. Looks to me as if questioning liberalism invites a vicious backlash with lots of media coverage while questioning whether the military is committing war crimes by murdering journalists is largely met with silent approval by the same people. Hmmm. And then the media wonders why people are convinced of liberal media bias.

VDH & Nazi References

2005-03-22T08:24:00.000-05:00

Victor Davis Hanson does a nice job of deconstructing one of the favorite phrases of the knee jerk, drooling simpleton antiwar crowd; and that is the Bush/America is Hitler/Nazi Germany reference. No, that does not include everyone who was against the war. There were some good arguments against the war and many reasonable people made them. This just refers to those who believe that by mindlessly repeating this idiotic phrase as often as possible they are making an important point. But, by virtue of writing an essay like this, it shows that VDH believes- correctly, in my opinion- that this mindset has infected a significant portion of the left and needs to be addressed. Here are some highlights:

Immediately after September 11, Ward Churchill compared the victims in the Twin Tower to “little Eichmanns.” Sen. Robert Byrd (D., W.Va.) more recently likened President George W. Bush’s political methodology to what transpired in Nazi Germany. Earlier during the run-up to the Iraqi war, German Justice Minister Herta Daeubler-Gmelin smeared Bush with a similar Hitlerian analogy.

In fact, what do Linda Ronstadt, Harold Pinter, Scott Ritter, Ted Rall, and George Soros all have in common? The same thing that unites Fidel Castro, the European street, the Iranians, and North Koreans: an evocation of some aspects of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany to deprecate President Bush in connection with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan...

So what gives with this crazy popular analogy — one that on a typical Internet Google search of “Bush” + “Hitler” yields about 1,350,000 matches?

One explanation is simply the ignorance of the icons of our popular culture. A Linda Ronstadt, Garrison Keillor, or Harold Pinter knows nothing much of the encompassing evil of Hitler’s regime, its execution of the mentally ill and disabled, the systematic cleansing of the non-Aryans from Europe, or mass executions and starvation of Soviet prisoners. Like Prince Harry parading around in his ridiculous Nazi costume, quarter-educated celebrities who have some talent for song or verse know only that name-dropping “Hitler” or his associates gets them some shock value that their pedestrian rants otherwise would not warrant...

On occasion, those who are tainted, sometimes unfairly, with past charges of rightist extremism, find some psychic release in calling an American democratic president or his conduct Nazi-like. Thus, a German politician, who de facto unfortunately operates under the suspicions of the post-Nazi world, gains the moral high ground and moral fides by gratuitously deflecting attention to an American — not as the descendant of the liberators of the Europe, but as the true inheritor of the German Hitlerian mantel.

George Soros can nearly destroy the Bank of England in his hyper-capitalist financial speculations but somehow find spiritual cover among the leftists of Moveon.org, which he subsidized and which ran ads comparing the president to Hitler. Sen. Byrd, who suffers from the odium of an early membership with the racist Ku Klux Klan, perhaps finds it ameliorative to associate others with the tactics of the 20th century’s premier racist.

Entire continents can play this game. If Europe is awash in anti-Semitism, then one mechanism to either ignore or excuse it is to allege that the United States — the one country that is the most hospitable to Jews — is governed by a Hitler-like killer. Americans, who freed Europe from the Nazis, are supposed to recoil from such slander rather than cry shame on its promulgators, whose grandfathers either capitulated to the Nazis or collaborated — or were Nazis themselves.

If the sick analogy to Hitler is intended to conjure up a mass murderer, then the 20th century’s two greatest killers, Mao and Stalin, who slaughtered or starved somewhere around 80 million between them, are less regularly evoked. Perhaps that omission is because so many of the mass demonstrators, who bore placards of Bush’s portrait defaced with Hitler’s moustache, are overtly leftist and so often excuse extremist violence — whether in present-day Cuba or Zimbabwe — if it is decorated with the rhetoric of radical enforced equality...

Whenever I hear someone make a reference like this, I automatically tune them out. I don't care what your credentials are, if you say something this stupid and mean it, I know that you have nothing serious to say about politics, national security or foreign policy and don't merit my attention.

UN Whistleblower

2005-03-21T20:23:00.000-05:00

Here's one that will be ignored by lefty UN-philes. A UN worker attempted to blow the whistle on the Oil For Food fraud and the UN was, shall we say, less than receptive.

Mullick told the subcommittee that he repeatedly alerted U.N. officials of problems he observed but was rebuffed.

"Each suggestion resulted in my supervisors reducing my job responsibilities," Mullick said. "This continued to occur until my only job was to run the slide projector at staff meetings."

Mullick said he eventually submitted a 10-page report to U.N. headquarters in 2002 reporting that 22 percent of supplies imported under the program never reached Iraq's 27 million people.

"I heard nothing," Mullick said. "Finally I was contacted and told my contract was not being renewed."

Where's the outrage? Isn't the left big on workers rights? Don't they demand investigations of allegations of retribution against whistleblowers, like they did for Joe Wilson? Why, one might think that the left is being intellectually dishonest or, worse yet, hypocritical by appearing to only care about pursuing these issues if they are caused by their sworn enemy- Bush- as opposed their favorite organization, the UN? Perish the thought.

(Thanks, Captains Quarters)

Democrats Need To Re-Brand?

2005-03-20T11:25:00.000-05:00

Here is an interesting article in the New Yorker. The title tells you all you need to know.

THE UNBRANDING
by JEFFREY GOLDBERG
Can the Democrats make themselves look tough?

And a later paragraph reinforces this view.

Kerry considers himself to be a national-security-oriented Democrat—Holbrooke, too, puts him in that camp—and appeared to take no particular offense at Biden’s criticisms. “I’m not going to dissect the campaign,” he said. But he seemed displeased when I asked whether the Democrats had a credibility problem on defense issues, and he finally said, “Look, the answer is, we have to do an unbranding.” By this he meant that the Democrats had to do a better job of selling to the American people what he believes is already true—that the Democrats are every bit as serious on the issue as Republicans. “We have to brand more effectively. It’s marketing.”

It's not branding, guys. A large portion of the Democratic party is hostile to the military and a strong American presence in the world. And until that mindset changes few will trust the party on national security matters. But maybe Holbrooke realizes that already:

Richard Holbrooke suggests that the Republicans have boxed in the Democrats, by stealing their ideas. “The Republicans, who always favored bigger defense budgets—we were the soft-power people, the freedom-and-democracy people—now seek to own both the defense side and the values side of the debate,” Holbrooke said. He believes that if the Iraq war actually does bring about the hoped-for results it might help the Democrats. “We’d be better off as a country and better off as a party if Iraq is a success and we get it behind us. The Democrats can then talk about their traditional strengths, domestically and internationally.”

Mind you, this is one of the "tough guys" of the party talking.

Hoping the grown ups will solve the major problems so you won't have to address them is pathetic. Unless and until the Democrats go back to their roots and become strong on national security, they will lose elections. And deservedly so.

Swiftvet Interview

2005-03-20T10:58:00.000-05:00

Paul O'Neil, the most recognizable figure from the SwiftVets, recently gave an interview to The American Enterprise Online. Here's a key passage:

TAE: At the Swift Boat veterans' May 4 press conference you had an open letter calling Kerry unfit to be Commander in Chief. It was signed by virtually all of John Kerry's commanders in Vietnam. Yet the story fell flat. The media ignored it. How did your group react to the media blackout?

O'NEILL: We were shocked. We couldn't believe it. I haven't been involved in politics or media relations, and I thought the job of the media was primarily to report the facts. It was obvious to me that many hundreds of his former comrades coming forward to say that he lied about his record in Vietnam and that he was unfit to be President would be important information for Americans. I only then became aware of the bias of the media.

TAE: How do you explain the media's response?

O'NEILL: The establishment media was very pro-Kerry. They were opposed to any story that was critical of Kerry, and I believe that they were captured by their own bias. We met with one reporter around that time. We told a story to him relating to Kerry's service. He acknowledged it was true and terribly important. And he told us he would not print it because it would help George Bush. That's when we began to realize we had a real problem on our hands.

Why am I not surprised?

(Thanks, Polipundit)

George Will's Take On Filibustering Judges

2005-03-20T09:51:00.000-05:00

George Will brings up some interesting points about the "nuclear option" for ending judicial filibusters:

The future will bring Democratic presidents and Senate majorities. How would you react were such a majority about to change Senate rules to prevent you from filibustering to block a nominee likely to construe the equal protection clause as creating a constitutional right to same-sex marriage?

And pruning the filibuster in the name of majority rule would sharpen a scythe that one day will be used to prune it further. If filibusters of judicial nominations are impermissible, why not those of all nominations -- and of treaties, too? Have conservatives forgotten how intensely they once opposed some treaties pertaining to arms control and to the Panama Canal?

Exempting judicial nominations from filibusters will enlarge presidential power. There has been much enlargement related to national security -- presidential war-making power is now unfettered, Congress' responsibility to declare war having become a nullity. Are conservatives, who once had a healthy wariness of presidential power, sure they want to further expand that power in domestic affairs?

The Senate's institutional paralysis over judicial confirmations is a political problem for which there is a political solution: 60 Republican senators. The president believes that Democratic obstruction of judicial nominees contributed to Republican gains in 2002 and 2004. In 2006, 17 of the Democrats' seats and that of Sen. James Jeffords of Vermont, their collaborator, are up, five of them in states the president carried in 2004.

It has been 98 years since Republicans have had 60 senators. But in the last 50 years, there were more than 60 Democratic senators after seven elections: 1958 (64), 1960 (64), 1962 (67), 1964 (68), 1966 (64), 1974 (61), 1976 (62). Republicans might reach 60 if the president devoted as much energy to denouncing obstruction of judicial nominations as he is devoting to explaining Social Security's problems. Solving those problems is important, but not as important as achieving a judiciary respectful of the Constitution.

No Democratic filibuster can stop the 2006 elections. Those elections, however, might stop the Democrats' filibusters.

I am leery that Democrats might try to change filibuster rules for their agenda in the future, the same way they broke precedent and forever politicized judicial nominations by their opposition to Bork. At the time, I wasn't fond of the Bork nomination either. But I also thought the opposition to Bork was ridiculous, dangerous and full of unforeseen consequences. Now look where we are. The same potential exists for changing the filibuster.

That said, I don't agree with George Will that the best solution is to try to win a filibuster proof majority in the Senate. First, I think it's unlikely that the Republicans will get sixty seats next time. Second, the Democrats aren't cooperating on anything anyway. I'm not sure how much more obstructionist they can be. It's a point of pride to the party to be against anything Bush is for. Third, I don't like the idea of two years of nonstop posturing just for the sake of trying to blame the opposition for a lack of accomplishments during the last congressional session. If the Democrats are going to mindlessly oppose every single Republican idea, which they are intent on doing, the Senate may as well accomplish what it can, which is staffing the judiciary.

Airbus Planes Need Work

2005-03-19T10:26:00.000-05:00

This is not getting enough attention:

At 35 000 feet above the Caribbean, Air Transat flight 961 was heading home to Quebec with 270 passengers and crew. At 3.45pm last Sunday, the pilot noticed something very unusual. His Airbus A310's rudder -- a structure over 8m high -- had fallen off and tumbled into the sea. In the world of aviation, the shock waves have yet to subside....

He and his colleagues also believe that what happened may shed new light on a previous disaster. In November 2001, 265 people died when American Airlines flight 587, an Airbus A300 model which is almost identical to the A310, crashed shortly after take-off from JFK airport in New York. According to the official report into the crash, the immediate cause was the loss of the plane's rudder and tailfin, though this was blamed on an error by the pilots....

The separation of the rudder may have further implications for the cause of the 587 crash. In its report, the NTSB said the tail and rudder failed because they were subjected to stresses "beyond ultimate load", imposed because the co-pilot, Sten Molin, overreacted to minor turbulence and made five violent side-to-side "rudder reversals". The report said the design of the A300 controls was flawed because it allowed this to happen.

However, the NTSB investigation has been criticised by many insiders. Ellen Connors, the NTSB chair, told reporters last January that the report was delayed because of "inappropriate" and "intense" lobbying by Airbus over its contents, adding: "The potential for contaminating the investigation exists." In America, the NTSB staff is small and manufacturers provide many of the staff employed on air-crash investigations into their own products.

Airbus planes falling apart in mid-flight strikes me as a bad thing. One would think this would generate a bit of media attention.

(Instapundit, again)

Supermajority Vote For Judges?

2005-03-19T09:36:00.000-05:00

From Radioblogger, I found another example of the Democratic strategy, wonderfully articulated by Barbara Boxer.

Why would we give lifetime appointments to people who earn up to $200,000 a year, with absolutely a great retirement system, and all the things all Americans wish for, with absolutely no check and balance except that one confirmation vote. So we're saying we think you ought to get nine votes over the 51 required. That isn't too much to ask for such a super important position. There ought to be a super vote. Don't you think so? It's the only check and balance on these people. They're in for life. They don't stand for election like we do, which is scary.

Again you see the Democrats have neither the interest in re-assessing their ideas and beliefs nor the desire to convince the citizens of our country that their current ideas are sound. Instead they want to encode their ideas into law via judicial fiat, which is endangered by the Republican control of the Presidency and Senate. That's why you see the Democrats filibustering judges and their hysterics with regard to potential Republican tactics to counter it. The "nuclear option" is really nothing more than an attempt to move the process back in line with historical precedent and with what the founding fathers originally intended. But with this last pillar of power removed, the Democrats will eventually have to rejoin the political process and implement their vision the old fashioned way, by winning elections. And when the Democrats finally face up to reality, it will be a much healthier process and the entire country will benefit.

By the way, the far left seems infatuated by Barbara Boxer. Please, please, please nominate her for the Presidency in '08. As a registered Democrat, I hereby promise right now to vote for her in the primary. Nominating a nutjob like Boxer will result in an electoral defeat on a biblical scale for the Democrats. It will only hasten the meltdown the party needs to have before it can be reborn. Sort of like the phoenix rising from its own ashes.

(Thanks, Instapundit)

EU Arms Sales To China

2005-03-19T08:01:00.000-05:00

Spiegel online has a good article on the EU's eagerness to sell arms to China. Here's the key paragraph:

"For Europe, there aren't many strategic issues," Wezeman says. "The United States is the biggest challenger to China's desire to become a regional superpower, but I don't think the Europeans really care if China becomes one." Still, he says, sales of European military equipment to China are helping it get closer to something it couldn't do in the past -- and that is the ability to invade Taiwan.

Once again our moral superiors are being reckless with weapons technology. Europe has done this repeatedly. For example, it was instrumental in helping AQ Kahn develop a nuke, and helped Saddam with his WMD programs. But please, keep in mind that Americans are the bad guys. Oh, how I love to be lectured by Europeans.

Can we assign blame for this ridiculous situation? Yes we can. It's America's fault, which, ironically, is music to the ears of every leftist worldwide that likes to blame the world's ills on us. But in this case, it happens to be true. The reason Europe feels free to spread weapons technology is because it has virtually no global responsibilities. Europe believes, correctly, that when the sh*t hits the fan, the US will either be the one in the crosshairs or the one to clean up the mess Europe created, like what America is now doing in the Middle East. And this situation developed because the US has subsidized Europe's defense for the last 60 years. The resulting European weakness has forced the US to be the world's policemen because no other country would or could do the job. Again, this is our own fault. Europe would be much more concerned with issues like spreading weapons technology if it were their blood and treasure on the line to clean up any potential messes.

There is only one way to correct this situation. Turn Europe loose. Rescind the security guarantee. Force Europe to deal with reality. Forcing Europe to live in the real world will do wonders for them, and us.

Attitudes Changing In Middle East?

2005-03-16T07:25:00.000-05:00

Great article at Watching America where author Fathi Hamed tries to educate the Middle Eastern public:

The classification of America as an imperialist state is a mistake. Its own view of European colonization as a mistake shows that America is not England or France.

This error arose because America began its role as an international power as European colonization receded. It was the speed of this transition that blurred the differences and that has caused confusion in the mind's of America critics. This is why Arabs have failed to differentiate between the Americans and Europeans.

This is another sign that attitudes are changing in the Middle East. And its nice to see the blame for the mess in the Middle East finally being put where it belongs, in Europe's lap. They are the ones who colonized the region, not the US. They are the ones who artificially cut the region up into states and installed monarchies, not the US. Unfortunately the Cold War forced us to make deals with or otherwise tolerate dictators in the region, but at least America- well, 52% of it anyway- is now promoting democracy in the region while Europe squawks in the background and roots for our failure.

Here's a short video interview with a Kuwaiti ex-minister.

It's instructive that these gentlemen lack the "Blame America First" mentality that infests most of the Democrats these days.

The Very Generous French Contribution To Iraq

2005-03-14T09:29:00.000-05:00

Even the LA Times editorial page, which is generally not friendly to anyone to the right of Trotsky, finds the French contribution to Iraq pathetic:

President Jacques Chirac said to NATO leaders in late February that "France wants to contribute to stability" in Iraq. The contribution? Some $660,000 to a NATO fund for military and police training in Iraq and one French mid-level officer who's being assigned to the training mission at NATO headquarters in Brussels. Not 1,000 officers. Not 100. Just one.

So why did France contribute just one soldier and a few thousand bucks? A couple of thoughts come to mind.

They want to really make the point that they are assholes.

Have you ever been in a restaurant and been very dissatisfied with the service and want to reflect your dissatisfaction in the tip? So which is worse, leaving no tip or leaving a tip of one penny? I would argue that leaving a one penny tip is worse because its clear that you have thought about the tip amount and feel that one penny is appropriate. With no tip, the server could try to rationalize it that somehow the customer forgot. With one penny, the contempt is clear. The same thing applies here.

One soldier and $660,000 is all its military and economy can spare.

With GDP growth of 0.5%, 10% unemployment and a complete and utter joke of a military, maybe this is genuinely all the French can afford. If that's the case, I want to extend my intellectual and moral superiors a hearty thank you.

Maybe they want to marginally get on the right side of history.

If things turn out well in Iraq, France will want its share of the credit. The actual contribution of one soldier and $660,000 won't matter. All that matters is that France did something. 50 years from now I'm sure its contribution will have grown to 30 divisions and $100 billion in French history books. Sort of like the French resistance in WWII growing to mythic proportions today.

WMDs?

2005-03-14T09:28:00.000-05:00

Things that make you go "hmmm":

In the weeks after Baghdad fell in April 2003, looters systematically dismantled and removed tons of machinery from Saddam Hussein's most important weapons installations, including some with high-precision equipment capable of making parts for nuclear arms, a senior Iraqi official said this week in the government's first extensive comments on the looting.

Is This The New Lefty Cause?

2005-03-12T13:32:00.000-05:00

Liberal Congressman Ed Markey (D-MA) is promoting what could be the new leftist chant:

US must stop 'outsourcing' torture

My guess is that the "US must" part will be dropped as it is a bit cumbersome. "Stop outsourcing torture" is short and has a nice rhythm to it. It also has the advantage of issuing a blanket condemnation of the US while easily fitting on protest signs, and being simplistic enough to be understood by your average campus radical. It's sort of like "No Blood For Oil" or "Not In My Name" in that regard.

Anyway, what's this all about?

AN UNMARKED PLANE arrives in the middle of the night carrying men who aren't wearing uniforms but have on black hoods. The men grab prisoners out of the hands of government officials, cut off their clothes, drug them on the spot, shackle them, force the prisoners onto the plane and take off into the night. When the ''torture" plane disappears, no one knows where and when the captives will appear and what will happen to them: electrocution, beatings, sexual abuse?

Oohh. Sounds ominous. It's the "torture plane". Let's continue.

At first guess, you might imagine that this terrible operation is the work of a drug cartel or a rogue member of the ''axis of evil," but the scene described involves US officials in a routine part of the Bush administration's practice of ''outsourcing torture."

There's that phrase again. What is "outsourcing torture"?

Recently, light has been shed on these dark practices, challenging us to reaffirm the principles on which our country was founded: justice, liberty, and the rule of law. The practice of sending prisoners into the hands of known human rights violators mocks the core values that define who we are and threatens our own soldiers who risk their lives in combat and could face terrible consequences as prisoners of war.

What he doesn't tell you is that these prisoners are usually sent to their home countries. It just so happens that most terrorists are from Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, etc. that happen to be friendly to the US and dislike Islamist fascists as much as we do. Instead the Congressman will highlight an exception rather than the rule.

This extraordinary rendition first gained national attention in September 2002, when Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen, was seized by the US government while on US soil, but then was whisked away to Jordan and later Syria at the request of the CIA.

It may have been highlighted then, but the practice was started under Clinton. Here's the Opinion Journal with a quote from Sandy Berger:

It happens that in the spring of 1996, the government of Sudan offered to deliver Osama bin Laden (then living in Khartoum) into U.S. custody. The Clinton Administration was aware of the threat bin Laden posed, but it worried it didn't yet have sufficient information to indict him on terrorism charges in court. Instead, the U.S. sought to have the Saudis take bin Laden and behead him.

"In the United States, we have this thing called the Constitution, so to bring him here is to bring him into the justice system," Mr. Berger told the Washington Post in October 2001. "I don't think that was our first choice. Our first choice was to send him someplace where justice is more 'streamlined.' " In the event, the Saudis were in no mood to take bin Laden, Mr. Berger did not press the matter, and bin Laden left for Afghanistan on a chartered plane.

In other words, the Clinton Administration used the rendering practice with the avowed expectation that suspects would be tortured, or worse. The Bush Administration says it uses it only on condition of humane treatment and assigns personnel to "monitor compliance." If this is a torture scandal, it didn't start on September 12, 2001.

Don't expect to hear this from the left. No criticism is allowed of the patron saint of the party. Let's continue:

In 2002, then-CIA director George Tenet testified to the 9/11 Commission that over 70 people had been subjected to renditions prior to Sept. 11, 2001. CIA operatives interviewed by The New Yorker magazine stated that the once limited practice of rendition has mushroomed into a worldwide operation of detaining and transferring prisoners outside of any legal structure. One former government official said that over 150 renditions have been conducted since 9/11.

Is that all? 150? I would have expected, and hoped for, a multiple of this. We haven't caught as many terrorists as I would have thought.

Last spring, photographs of abuse conducted by American soldiers in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq shocked the world.

No. What was shocking was the hysterical overreaction to naked prisoner piles and men forced to wear panties on their head. All of which was done in the hopes of damaging America and/or this administration. I just can't get worked up over humiliating terrorists.

If we believe these detainees are terrorists who have intelligence information vital to protecting our country, we should hold and question them ourselves.

Okay, this is the line that just sends me up the wall. How are we supposed to do this? Where has this guy been? The hysterically screeching left and their media allies have done their level best to hinder the war on terror at every freaking turn. If we capture a terrorist, we can't take them to Guantanamo because some ACLU lawyer or its equivalent will be filing a lawsuit within a nanosecond to get him access to an American court room with its standards of evidence. As if a terrorist caught in a cave in Afghanistan will have wiretaps or videotape evidence against them.

And wherever we hold them, any coercive interrogation techniques will be labeled "torture" regardless of what is actually done to the terrorist. The resulting media feeding frenzy and pressure on the government makes it impossible to actually interrogate these people ourselves. Because, as the Opinion Journal points out:

Keep in mind that al Qaeda detainees enter U.S. custody trained to deal with U.S. interrogators, and well aware of our legal limitations. U.S. forces have found al Qaeda training manuals that explain in detail what they can expect. This removes the most powerful tool any interrogator can have in dealing with detainees, which is the anxiety that comes with uncertainty. The prospect of rendition creates that uncertainty...

...there would be no need to render suspects in the first place if American interrogators were not already, and increasingly, constrained.

Constrained? We couldn't even try to capture these people during the Clinton administration without jumping through some ridiculous hoops. Read this:

Scheuer recalled that on one occasion, when a plan had been put together to capture bin Laden, U.S. lawyers demanded that an ergonomic chair -- with oxygen and medical supplies -- be built for him so he would be comfortable. They also reviewed the type of tape that would be used to gag the al-Qaida leader.

An ergonomic chair? The possibility of catching Bin Laden was held up because some lefty lawyers demanded he have an ergonomic chair? Are you freaking kidding me?

So let's sum up. If we capture terrorists, we can't bring them to US territory because the ACLU or its equivalent will spare no resource in trying to free them. Wherever we do hold them, the far left and their media allies will create a feeding frenzy and make it impossible to interrogate them. And we are expected to release them to the custody of their home countries, but only if it is a country like Britain or Australia, where the terrorist is unlikely to face a strong interrogation. If we send them to a country like Egypt or Jordan, the howling begins again, even if it's the terrorists' home country. How we are supposed to get information from the terrorists the left never says. Nor do I think they care. The left acts as if the US is a greater danger than Osama Bin Laden.

In the war on terror, the left has offered only obstacles, not solutions. And then they wonder why no one takes them seriously on national security or foreign policy issues.

Cut Europe Loose

2005-03-12T11:23:00.000-05:00

Excellent comments at New Sisyphus regarding the Italian Journalist nonsense:

You would think that the number of Americans buried in Europe and Africa killed by Italian Fascists would lead the average Italian to approach the accidental death of an Italian patriot by American forces with some caution. But the time has long since passed since we Americans expect tact, grace or thoughtfulness from Europeans, even those who are our nominal allies.

We had thought to refrain from commenting on the Abu-Ghraib-du-jour that is the Guiliana Sgrena story. When we saw the item come across the wire our instincts told us that it would be the lead story in the European press in about 3 nano-seconds, and, further, that it would be the focus of that press for days. We guess we can take some cold comfort in knowing our instincts are still working properly.

But the recent absurd heights to which the story has risen has forced our hand. Really, we're not sure which is funnier: that an Italian Communist would think that she is significant enough to warrant our attention, let alone an assassination order, or the spectacle of a full state funeral for a fallen state security officer.

We mean no disrespect to the dead, but, somehow, we get the feeling the poor man's funeral would have been a bit less grand had he merely been beheaded by the usual suspects.

The incident shows the depths of the pathology that is Western anti-Americanism and offers, yet again, another cautionary and exemplary tale for Americans: until and unless we begin to decline to act as the world's superpower, the world's economic engine, the world's policeman, the world's lender of last resort in all instances, the Western pathology will grow. Like the over-spoiled adolescents of Orange County we grew up with, the nations of Europe and the wider West will continue with infantile temper tantrums and faux-rebellious posing, in one long hissy fit against "Daddy," putting at risk all that is of value in our Western Civilization.

The last paragraph is key. I've been arguing this for a while. Our welfare for the world, like any entitlement program, saps initiative and fosters dependency and resentment. The single best thing we could do for the world, and ourselves, is to cut Europe loose. We start by making it clear that Europe no longer enjoys a security guarantee from the US. Then the continent can either sink or swim on its own. In the end, either the US gains an actual ally, or loses a dead weight that slows us down. Either way America benefits.

UN Peacekeepers Vs. Abu Ghraib

2005-03-12T10:03:00.000-05:00

It's been almost three weeks since I compared the amount of attention generated by the rapes of Congolese women by UN peacekeepers versus the naked prisoner piles at Abu Ghraib via a Google search. As you may remember, it is my contention that the world does not care about abuse and torture unless it is somehow caused by Americans. Please read the original post for caveats. With that, let's get an update.

Iraq Prison Abuse = 1,150,000 hits. +120,000 more hits than on Feb. 21
America Prison Abuse Iraq = 989,000 hits. +53,000
America Soldier Prison Abuse = 424,000. +1,000
Abu Ghraib Prison Abuse = 392,000. +4,000

Now, let's compare that to...

UN Peacekeeper Congo Rape = 71,100. +7,200
UN Peacekeeper Sex Scandal = 42,300. +4,600
UN Peacekeeper Rape = 10,700. +4,490.

Hmmm. Let's just say I'm less than impressed by media fairness so far. But there's still time to prove me wrong. I'll update this again in a few weeks.

Liberal Road Rage

2005-03-12T09:35:00.000-05:00

Right Intention reader Misti passed on a story about liberal road rage:

This week, though, a Tampa woman learned that simple Bush-Cheney bumper sticker can bring trouble, if not danger, from a total stranger.

Police say Michelle Fernandez, 35, was chased for miles Tuesday by an irate 31-year-old Tampa man who cursed at her as he held up an anti-Bush sign and tried to run her off the road.

Gotta love yet another example of today's peaceful, diversity loving, respectful of different opinions liberal.

His sign, about the size of a business letter, read:

Never Forget Bush's Illegal Oil War Murdered Thousands in Iraq.

Hoo boy. Do these people ever have anything to say that didn't come from a Michael Moore / Democratic Underground talking points memo?

Police arrested Nathan Alan Winkler at his home on N Cleveland Street near Hyde Park within an hour of the incident.

After finding the antiwar sign in his car, they booked him into the county jail on one count of aggravated stalking, a third-degree felony punishable by up to five years in prison, Durkin said.

Good. Give 'em the max. Get a psycho off the street and force him to miss the next two elections. Maybe he will move to Canada when he gets out.

There's more. Go read it.

More On The Italian Journalist

2005-03-09T12:46:00.000-05:00

Here's a can't miss update to the Italian Journalist saga at Chrenkoff. He has pictures of the bullet ridden car as well as a translated article from a Dutch journalist who just happened to be sitting next to Sgrena on the flight she took to Baghdad just before getting kidnapped.

Two things. First, forget being shot with 300-400 bullets as she claims. If you can find ten bullet holes I'll be shocked. Second, this woman is an idiot on a monumental scale.

The Real Issue With The Italian Journalist Hostage Situation

2005-03-09T11:15:00.000-05:00

Michelle Malkin tells it like it is about the Italian journalist:

International furor over Giuliana Sgrena, an Italian communist writer who claims American troops in Iraq may have deliberately shot at her car after she was released by kidnappers, misses the bigger scandal.

The scandal is not that an anti-war propagandist has accused the U.S. of targeting journalists. That's par for the course. (Yes, hello again, Eason Jordan.)

The scandal is not that mainstream media sympathizers are blaming our military and dredging up every last shooting accident along the treacherous routes to Baghdad Airport. Again, no surprise here.

The scandal is that Italy -- our reputed ally in the global War on Terror -- negotiated with Sgrena's Islamist kidnappers and may have forked over a massive ransom to cutthroats for Sgrena's release.

Murdering Journalists, Again

2005-03-08T14:33:00.000-05:00

Here's yet another journalist with an exagerated sense of self importance who believes that the US Army so fears the mighty wordsmiths that it is rubbing them out:

...Now, just weeks later, the left-wing, anti-war Italian reporter Giuliana Sgrena who was shot at and wounded by American forces in Iraq shortly after being released by her kidnappers, is echoing Jordan's assertion.

She claims US troops may have deliberately opened fire not only because of her anti-invasion, anti-occupation sentiments, but also because of the US administration's opposition to negotiating with "terrorists".

Further, she says, her captors warned her of America's malevolent intent, a statement she dismissed at the time as ideological nonsense.

Yeah, sure. Are we really to believe that this person, who detests all that America stands for, dismissed some (fictitious) warning that the devil Americans had some evil plan? Or maybe she's just trying to make herself look good? Nah.

Reporters Without Borders are also suspicious of the tragedy, referred to by Italy's Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini as simply "a macabre mockery of fate". It wants to see UN intervention.

The UN to the rescue! But make sure to lock up your underage daughters when the team comes to investigate.

"It is clear that this enquiry cannot be conducted just by the US army, which, in the past, especially in the case of the Palestine Hotel shooting that killed two journalists, produced reports aimed solely at exonerating the military," he added.

Evil, lying, bastard Americans!

It goes on from here, but the piece just gets more and more ridiculous. It's hard to take these people seriously.

(From Captain's Quarters)

Democrats Court The Felon Vote

2005-03-07T22:55:00.000-05:00

More shenanigans from the left:

The Constitution grants states the authority to determine "the Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections," but Hillary Clinton and John Kerry are pushing a Count Every Vote Act that would, among other things, force states to allow voters to register at the polls and declaring Election Day a federal holiday. And then they want to force every state to let felons vote--even though the 14th Amendment specifically permits states to disfranchise citizens convicted of "participation in rebellion, or other crime."

Forty-eight states deny the vote to at least some felons; only Vermont and Maine let jailbirds vote. Thirty-three states withhold the right to vote from those on parole. Eight deny felons the vote for life, unless they petition to have their rights restored, and the Clinton-Kerry proposal would force them to enfranchise felons (or "ex-felons," as Mrs. Clinton misleadingly calls them) once they've completed parole.

Mrs. Clinton says she is pushing her bill because she is opposed to "disenfranchisement of legitimate American voters." But it's hard not to suspect partisan motives. In a 2003 study, sociologists Chistopher Uggen and Jeff Manza found that roughly 4.2 million had been disfranchised nationwide, a third of whom had completed their prison time or parole. Taking into account the lower voter turnout of felons, they concluded that about one-third of them would vote in presidential races, and that would have overwhelmingly supported Democratic candidates. Participation by felons, Messrs. Uggen and Manza estimated, also would have allowed Democrats to win a series of key U.S. Senate elections, thus allowing the party to control the Senate continuously from 1986 until at least this January.

Here's my take. The Democrats are once again showing they have little interest in either fundamentally reassessing their ideas or trying to convince the electorate their current ideas are sound. Instead they are trying to create another victim class voting block by superseding state law and simultaneously telling felons they are being "disenfranchised". Simply amazing.

Lebanon Protests In Pictures

2005-03-06T15:01:00.000-05:00

Female Lebanese protestors are really pretty.

Can we foment a rebellion in Sweden next?

(Inspired by Jim Geraghty)

Thomas Friedman Column

2005-03-06T12:36:00.000-05:00

I generally disagree with Thomas Friedman more than I agree with him. But today he nailed it:

For the life of me, I simply do not understand why President Bush is objecting to the European Union's selling arms to China, ending a 16-year embargo. I mean, what's the problem?

There is an obvious compromise that Mr. Bush could put on the table that would defuse this whole issue. Mr. Bush should simply say to France, Germany and their E.U. partners that America has absolutely no objection to Europeans' selling arms to China - on one condition: that they sell arms to themselves first. That's right, the U.S. should support the export to China of any defense system that the Europeans buy for their own armies first. Buy one, sell one.

But what the U.S. should not countenance is that at a time when the Europeans are spending peanuts on their own defense, making themselves into paper tigers and free riders on America for global policing, that they start exporting arms to a growing tiger - China...

But what really concerns me is Europe. Europe's armies were designed for static defense against the Soviet Union. But the primary security challenges to Europe today come from the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa. If you put all the E.U. armies together, they total around two million soldiers in uniform - almost the same size as the U.S. armed forces. But there is one huge difference - only about 5 percent of the European troops have the training, weaponry, logistical and intelligence support and airlift capability to fight a modern, hot war outside of Europe. (In the U.S. it is 70 percent in crucial units.)

The rest of the European troops - some of whom are unionized! - do not have the training or tools to fight alongside America in a hot war. They might be good for peacekeeping, but not for winning a war against a conventional foe. God save the Europeans if they ever felt the need to confront a nuclear-armed Iran. U.S. defense spending will be over $400 billion in 2005. I wish it could be less, but one reason it can't is that the United States of Europe is spending less than half of what we are. And the U.S. and E.U. really are the pillars of global stability.

The U.S. is building 180 C-17 long-range lift aircraft to transport troops and tanks anywhere in the world, and 112 C-5's, to replace the aging C-141's. The European NATO members have exactly four C-17's. They all belong to Britain and even those are leased from Boeing. The Europeans are so short of long-range lift aircraft that they basically have to depend on leased Russian and Ukrainian Antonov transports to get to the battlefield. George Robertson, the former NATO secretary general, used to ask them what they would do if a war broke out during the Christmas season, when most of the Antonovs are leased to toy companies shipping electronic games around the world. Ride, mister?...

If Europe wants to go pacifist, that's fine. But there is nothing worse than a pacifist that sells arms - especially in a way that increases the burden on its U.S. ally and protector.

An Interview With Dr. No

2005-03-06T12:08:00.000-05:00

If the MSM spoke with one voice:

Dr. No, you have achieved superstar status in a very competitive field--negativity and pessimism. How have you achieved that, Doctor?

The way I see it, every silver lining contains a new cloud. You just have to look for it. Maybe you noticed that right after the Iraqi elections, when most people were euphoric, half the reporters in New York and Washington started waving around a 1967 news clipping, headlined "U.S. Encouraged by Vietnam Vote, Officials Cite 83 pct. Turnout Despite Vietcong Terror." It was all over the Internet, too. That was me. It was a twofer--deflating optimism and comparing Iraq to Vietnam, always a trump card in my profession. I also got Teddy Kennedy to demand an exit strategy right on the eve of the voting. When optimism threatens to break out, I usually look for Ted.

(Thanks, Powerline)

North Korea

2005-03-06T09:40:00.000-05:00

I found an interesting op ed in the Washington Times on the North Korean situation. First the authors blame the entire situation on the Bush administration. Here's a sample:

The Bush neoconservatives have been convinced the only thing the North Korean leadership understands is power, pure and simple. They think negotiating with Pyongyang is not doable and trying to equals "appeasement" and "giving in to blackmail." The net result is the continuing nuclear crisis facing the major actors in Northeast Asia.

North Korea has no culpability whatsoever. At least if the authors believe so, they don't mention one word to that effect.

Another theme in the op ed is that the any legitimate opinion on the situation does not belong to the US.

It should be easy to accept the proposition that South Koreans understand North Koreans better than Americans do. Not so for the Bush administration which, almost four years ago, rejected the "Sunshine" policy of South Korea's President Kim Dae-jung and has not supported the "Peace and Prosperity" policy of the current President Roh Moo-hyun, aimed at reconciliation and eventual unification with the North.

The authors then go on to say:

The optimum Six-Party Talks strategy is to follow South Korea's lead, which seeks reconciliation and eventual Korean unification. This is not appeasement or surrender to blackmail.

Okay, sounds promising. Let's see their ideas.

1. Declare the U.S. has no hostile intent toward North Korea and is ready to co-exist peacefully with its present government.
2.Remove North Korea from the U.S. State Department's list of terrorist states. North Korea has not been involved in an act of terror since 1987.
3.Declare the U.S. ready to normalize relations, end economic sanctions, and help Pyongyang obtain World Bank and Asian Development Ban loans, despite its past loan defaults.
4.State the U.S. will work toward a regional nonaggression arrangement with North Korea, as well as establishment of a broad regional Northeast Asia security organization.
5.Commit the U.S. to work with Six-Party members and international organizations to help North Korea develop peaceful energy and agricultural capabilities.

Nope. No appeasement there.

What's expected of North Korea?

1. Return to the Six-Party Talks.
2. Disavow and dismantle nuclear weapons programs.
3. Rejoin the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, readmit International Atomic Energy Agency specialists and discuss special inspections by Six-Party teams.
4. Declare the intention to maintain normal relations with all members of the Six-Party Talks.
5. Release American, Korean and Japanese abductees.

Well, at least the authors put dismantling the programs in there. But discuss special inspections? That shouldn't be a discussion; that should be non-negotiable. No discussion of human rights for North Korean citizens? No discussion of penalties when- not if, when- North Korea violates the agreements? In other words, its the tried and true formula of the US being expected to deliver a bunch of things for the hope that our enemies keep their end of the bargain. We've been down this road before.

So here you see a rather textbook example of why its difficult to take the left seriously in matters involving national security and foreign policy. The template is as follows

1. The US is always wrong.
2. Everyone else is always right.
3. Appease the enemy, don't confront them.
4. The US is expected to make most of the concessions.
5. There are no penalties when the other side doesn't live up to its obligations.
6. When the situation deteriorates in the future, repeat steps 1-5.

Counterintelligence

2005-03-06T09:28:00.000-05:00

I'm no expert, but I would have thought we were doing this already.

The Bush administration has adopted a new counterintelligence strategy that calls for "attacking" foreign spy services and the spy components of terrorist groups before they can strike, a senior U.S. intelligence official said yesterday.

National Counterintelligence Executive Michelle Van Cleave said in a speech here that the past policy of waiting for intelligence threats to emerge "ceded the initiative to the adversary."

"No longer will we wait until taking action," Miss Van Cleave said during a conference hosted by the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University. "To meet the threat, U.S. counterintelligence needs to go on the offensive, which will require major but achievable changes in the way we do business."

US troops killing journalists?

2005-03-05T23:22:00.000-05:00

I just saw Richard Engel, NBC correspondent in Iraq, relate the following story to Tim Russert on his show. I'll retell it as best as I can.

Engel was traveling with a US unit in a Striker vehicle near Mosul recently when a car full of Iraqi troops was fired upon and burst into flames. The US soldiers immediately went to try and pull wounded Iraqi soldiers from the vehicle. Engel went with them, bringing a blanket impregnated with a special fire-retardant foam. As they were rescuing the wounded Iraqi soldiers, the ammunition stored inside the Iraqi vehicle began exploding, and simultaneously, another group began firing on them. Engel and the US soldiers were now outside their vehicle, on open, unprotected terrain, completely exposed to the incoming fire. As soon as the firefight started, a US soldier came over to Engel and purposely stood between him and the incoming fire, while firing on the enemy. He didn't drop to the ground to make a lower profile or hightail it back to the vehicle. He stood his ground in front of a reporter. According to Engel, the soldiers and units that he travels with routinely behave like this.

Hey Eason, are you listening? Are these the same guys targeting journalists? And this isn't FOX telling the tale, it's NBC.

Liberal Media & The Intifada

2005-03-05T19:25:00.000-05:00

Powerline finds a Clifford May article on the killing of Mohammed al-Durra, a 12 year old Palestinian boy.

The image is as disturbing and iconic as any seen during the many decades of the Arab-Israeli conflict: Mohammed al-Durra, just 12 years old, caught in a cross-fire in Gaza, trembling against a wall, his father desperately attempting to shield him. And then, heartbreakingly, Mohammed al-Durra, shot and killed by Israeli gunfire.

His death, in September 2000, inspired poems -- and suicide bombings. According to the 2001 Mitchell report it was one of the events that set off the intifada.

A poster of Mohammed al-Durra is in the background of the video of the butchering of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. Osama bin Laden used the boy's image in recruitment tapes and began a list of indictments against America by saying that President Bush “must not forget the image of Mohammed al-Durra and his fellow Muslims in Palestine and Iraq.”

But there is something most people don't know about this story: It didn't happen the way I described it above. It may not have happened at all.

Clifford May then goes on to describe how it is highly likely that this event was staged, as several investigations into the incident conclude. Here's some more info on the reporter:

The France 2 reporter on the story, Charles Enderlin, was not at the scene. The information for his voiceover came exclusively from Rahma.

At this point, at least, Enderlin does not claim to be sure of his facts. Instead, he says that his assertion that Israelis killed al-Durra “corresponded to the reality of the situation, not only in Gaza but in the West Bank.”

Powerline puts it better than I can:

Did French state-owned television stage an event that helped trigger the intifada, including suicide bombings undertaken in the name of avenging al-Durra? We don't know. Did French state-owned television falsely blame Israel for the death (or non-death) of al-Durra based on the uncorroborated word of a Palestinian and the prejudices of its own reporter? The answer seems clearly to be yes.

I'm getting a feeling of deja vu here: the French report "corresponded to the reality of the situation not only in Gaza, but in the West Bank." In other words, it was "fake, but accurate." How many other mainstream media outlets are there that view this as the appropriate standard for judging evidence?

People have died because of the belief that Israel killed this child; which is likely nothing more than a figment of the liberal media's imagination. Sickening.

More Trouble For Europe

2005-03-05T18:54:00.000-05:00

This is not good:

Islamic terror groups are becoming increasingly active in Germany and coordinating with militants across Europe to recruit fighters to join the insurgency in Iraq, equipping them with fake passports, money and medical supplies, security officials say.

European citizens have undoubtedly killed US soldiers in Iraq. Some would argue that its our own fault for being in Iraq in the first place. I would say that Europe's inability to assimilate its own population is more to blame.

But put aside the death wish of certain European citizens for the moment. As the next item suggests, Europe has a bigger problem.

There's only sketchy evidence that any of the recruited radicals have returned to Europe from fighting in Iraq, but that remains a top fear, Tophoven said.

"The big threat is that they will eventually come back to European countries and they will come back with an image, with a reputation as heroes who fought the unbelievers, as it was in the war against the former Soviet Union in Afghanistan," he said.

"If they do, they come back from Iraq trained, they know how to fight, they know how to do an ambush, how to make a bomb, and so on, and intelligence is afraid of these developments."

Bingo. Welcome to the terror war, Europe. Again, many will affix blame to the US. But that is false. The danger to Europe was very real long before we liberated Iraq.

Iranian Street

2005-03-05T13:35:00.000-05:00

Some more thoughts on Iran at the Weekly Standard:

DURING HIS RECENT TRIP TO Europe, President Bush sent mixed signals about U.S. policy with regard to Iran's development of nuclear weapons. At one point he dismissed the prospect of military action as ridiculous; immediately after, he emphasized all options were on the table; then at another point he suggested there might be "convergence" between U.S. and European views on how to address the problem. If the president seemed to be all over the lot, that may be because the policy choices with respect to Iran are complex, and none is without its drawbacks.

The author then goes on to describe four options on how to deal with Iran, the last of which is a military strike. The author believes this is the best option since the other three choices as he sees them deals with the Europeans to some extent and will likely fail mostly because of European involvement. But the military strike option has a big drawback.

A military strike could also alienate a great swath of moderate, and especially younger, Iranians who are inclined to be friendly toward the United States and in whom we repose hope for the creation one day of a more decent, secular regime in Iran. Moderate Iranians may oppose clerical rule, but they do not necessarily oppose an Iran with nuclear capabilities. Losing the natural affection of these people would be a genuine setback.

This is the prevailing wisdom. Pro American Iranians will become our enemies if we try to take out their nuclear capability via military strike. It's mentioned by almost everyone who writes about the Iranian situation.

But is this true? I'm no expert, but hearing this line repeatedly is starting to sound a whole lot like the vaunted "Arab Street" that was supposed to rise up against us at every step during the terror war. As we now know, the only uprising we've seen, and are likely to see, is the one demanding democracy from their governments, mostly due to our actions in Iraq.

But let's say for a moment that the conventional wisdom is correct. So what? Maybe they will hate us. But does that mean the population will like the mullahs more than they did before? I doubt it. After all, they are still executing 16 year old girls for having sex. I wouldn't be surprised if this society is so sick that it won't be cured by the temporary solidarity of acquiring nukes. My guess is that they may or may not hate the US, but they will definitely hate the mullahs, and still want out from under their collective boots.

Bottom line, I think the downside risk of a military strike is less than the conventional wisdom suggests. Maybe I'm wrong, but I have a feeling we'll find out soon enough.

German Anti Americanism

2005-03-05T12:03:00.000-05:00

Davids Medienkritik has a nice piece up about German anti Americanism:

On February 22, 2005, just one day before President Bush visited Mainz, Germany on his tour of Europe, this highly interesting interview was published in "Die Welt" on anti-Americanism in the German and European media. Here, now, is a full English translation:

Go read it already.

Victor Davis Hanson

2005-03-05T11:34:00.000-05:00

VDH has another brilliant column up. This one points out the rather schizophrenic nature of Europe's commentary towards the US:

Don't dare divide us into old and new! We speak with one voice from Warsaw to Lisbon. We aim to be as united as your states are in America — BUT help us to ensure that Europe has separate U.N. Security Council seats for Britain, France, and, we hope, Germany as well.

Stop using force to solve problems! Listen to our diplomats. Promote international courts. The world no longer works according to your silly laws of military power and deterrence — BUT don't dare take any more American troops out of Germany.

Stay in NATO! You are pledged to the collective defense of Europe — BUT get used to the fact that we will soon have a new and rival independent EU military force.

Pay attention to the Muslim world! Hear us who have more experience with the Middle East. Try to incorporate, rather than isolate, the "other" — BUT stop telling us that we have to let Turkey into the EU.

Cease militarizing the globe! See instead the world as an interconnected family of liberal societies that is trying to settle differences by reason — BUT stop trying to prevent us from selling hi-tech arms to big Communist China to threaten tiny democratic Taiwan.

Learn from our more humane culture! See how our short work week, cradle-to-grave entitlements, and pacifism promote well-being — BUT how exactly do you rich and powerful Americans do all that you do?

Remember that we are your critical partners in the war against terrorism! Appreciate our unheralded work that goes unnoticed amid the loud bombs and tanks of you rowdy Americans — BUT Hezbollah is not a terrorist organization and cannot be labeled as such (and Hamas isn't either and needs our financial support).

Sign Kyoto! Start acting like good global citizens! BUT quit suggesting we had a hand in the Rwanda mess, the Balkans mess, the Oil-for-Food Mess, the Saddam-reactor mess, the Hezbollah/Hamas mess, the Arafat mess...

Quit proceeding unilaterally! Refer events that affect the world to the U.N. Don't just act on your own as if your deeds don't affect others — BUT don't remember the Falklands, the Ivory Coast, the unification of Germany, or the oil deals with Saddam.

Don't tamper in the Middle East! Do you cowboys realize what madness you are unleashing? BUT if you succeed we might just stop our caricatures — IF democracy follows and we can take credit for and profit from it.

Al Qaqaa

2005-03-05T09:36:00.000-05:00

Johah Goldberg asks about the infamous Al Qaqaa explosives:

Remember al-Qaqaa? This was the massive cache of explosives that American forces failed to secure after the fall of Saddam. In the final week of the presidential campaign it was The Most Important Story on Earth.

The New York Times splashed the news on its front page and didn't stop splashing it for a week. In all, the Times ran 16 stories and columns about al-Qaqaa, plus seven anti-Bush letters to the editor on the subject over an eight-day period. Editorial boards across the country hammered the "outrage" for days. It led all the news broadcasts. It became the central talking point of the Kerry campaign, with John Kerry bellowing his indignation at the administration's incompetence at every stump stop. Maureen Dowd wrote a column about it, titled "White House of Horrors."

As we all now know, the story was bogus. So why the sudden intense interest? Liberal media bias was clearly a major factor in publicizing this non-story. But was there another angle?

There's also another news angle that might have been worth investigating. As Times columnist William Safire and Cliff May, a former Times reporter and contributor to National Review Online, have suggested, the whole al-Qaqaa story might have been orchestrated by Mohammed el-Baradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in order to influence the American presidential election. The Bush White House dislikes Baradei, and reportedly the feelings are mutual (largely because the White House wouldn't support Baradei's bid for another term as the head of the IAEA). According to the Wall Street Journal, Baradei triggered the process which resulted in the al-Qaqaa story getting leaked to the Times and CBS News.

If his intent was to influence the election, it would amount to a major scandal, in that foreign agencies aren't supposed to be trying to influence American elections by dropping distorted bombshells in the last week of a presidential campaign. At least, I don't think they are.

I'd be surprised if this wasn't the case. And the reason few will follow up is because of the weird, unnatural love liberals have for trans-national organizations. Sounds like a job for the blogsphere.

Jimmy Carter

2005-03-05T04:02:00.000-05:00

It's not true, but it would be appropriate if it were:

Just days after the Navy announced that it will commission its newest nuclear-powered attack submarine The Jimmy Carter, North Korea proclaimed that it is naming its entire nuclear weapons program after the same ex-U.S. President who made it all possible.

The move is seen by experts as a show of one-upmanship against the U.S. in world news headlines, and at the same time being a pseudo-bribe to entice the Bush administration into unilateral negotiations.

Amir Taheri Vs. Bill Clinton

2005-03-05T03:08:00.000-05:00

What little respect I had for Bill Clinton is officially gone. Amir Taheri takes him to task over some mind boggingly stupid comments he made regarding Iran:

Here is what Clinton said at a meeting on the margins of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, just a few weeks ago: “Iran today is, in a sense, the only country where progressive ideas enjoy a vast constituency. It is there that the ideas that I subscribe to are defended by a majority.”

Oh really? Ask this person. Or this one.

“Iran is the only country in the world that has now had six elections since the first election of President Khatami (in 1997). (It is) the only one with elections, including the United States, including Israel, including you name it, where the liberals, or the progressives, have won two-thirds to 70 percent of the vote in six elections: Two for president; two for the Parliament, the Majlis; two for the mayoralties. In every single election, the guys I identify with got two-thirds to 70 percent of the vote. There is no other country in the world I can say that about, certainly not my own.”

So, while millions of Iranians, especially the young, look to the United States as a mode of progress and democracy, a former president of the US looks to the Islamic Republic as his ideological homeland.

What?!!! But don't worry, Amir explains what everyone but apparently Clinton knows about the reformers.

But who are “the guys” Clinton identifies with?

There is, of course, President Muhammad Khatami who, speaking at a conference of provincial governors last week, called for the whole world to convert to Islam.

“Human beings understand different affairs within the global framework that they live in,” he said. “But when we say that Islam belongs to all times and places, it is implied that the very essence of Islam is such that despite changes (in time and place) it is always valid.”

There is also Khatami’s brother, Muhammad-Reza, the man who, in 1979, led the “students” who seized the US Embassy in Tehran and held its diplomats hostage for 444 days. There is Massumeh Ebtekar, a poor man’s pasionaria who was spokesperson for the hostage-holders in Tehran. There is also the late Ayatollah Sadeq Khalkhali, known to Iranians as “Judge Blood”.

Next, Clinton gives aid and comfort to the enemy, just like another former president.

Not surprisingly, Clinton’s utterances have been seized upon by the state-controlled media in Tehran as a means of countering President George W. Bush’s claim that the Islamic Republic is a tyranny that oppresses the Iranians and threatens the stability of the region.

Clinton demonstrates his ignorance of the true nature of Iranian elections:

Didn’t anyone tell Clinton, when he was in the White House, that elections in the Islamic Republic were as meaningless as those held in the Soviet Union? Did he not know that all candidates had to be approved by the “Supreme Guide”, and that no one from opposition is allowed to stand? Did he not know that all parties are banned in the Islamic Republic, and that such terms as “progressive” and “liberal” are used by the mullas as synonyms for “apostate”, a charge that carries a death sentence?

What's next is truly sickening:

Clinton told his audience in Davos, as well as Charlie Rose, that during his presidency he had “formally apologized on behalf of the United States” for what he termed “American crimes against Iran.”

He did what??!!! This is yet another example of self loathing, guilt ridden, western liberalism run amuck.

It goes on from here, but I can't take any more.

UPDATE: Further thoughts at PBS watch.

Iran

2005-03-05T02:28:00.000-05:00

Instapundit found some deep thoughts on Iran:

Rolling back Iranian influence in the Horn of Africa is good, and seizing an island would certainly wake up the mullahs. But would these moves really be enough pressure to give a "slight push" to the "freedom-loving people of Iran"? How effective at mobilizing an opposition can US Special Forces or clandestine operatives be in Iran? Is there any organized opposition in Iran that can be trained or coordinated? Starting riots, protests, and other types of demonstrations is the bread and butter (or used to be) or the CIA and possibly even Delta Force . . . seizing one island while simultaneously fomenting riots makes for a partial campaign . . . especially if the Iranian offensive capabilities are concentrated on the island. But it seems that this is still missing some crucial elements. What is to become of the old guard? Are they corrupt? Where will they go? Will they melt away or form an insurgency against a new Iranian government a la Iraq? Will they actually go to Iraq and join the insurgency?

Al Qaeda Ready To Strike?

2005-03-04T12:48:00.000-05:00

The Word Unheard has an excellent post about a frightening possibility:

The Word Unheard out of Washington, DC today comes from The Jamestown Foundation, where Michael Scheuer considers a very plausible probability:

Al Qaida has completed the required warning cycle demanded by Islamist scholars and may now not only have the green light, but be armed and prepared to execute an attack on the Continental United States on a scale that could dwarf 9/11.

Michael Scheuer's reasoning is straight forward and logical, and he dots all of the I's and crosses all of the T's.

Realist Foreign Policy

2005-03-04T09:57:00.000-05:00

Charles Krauthammer takes a look at the recent events in the Middle East. But I like this key section best:

Revolution is in the air. What to do? We are already hearing voices for restraint about liberating Lebanon. Flynt Leverett, your usual Middle East expert, takes to The New York Times to oppose immediate withdrawal of Syria's occupation of Lebanon. Instead, we should be trying to ``engage and empower'' the tyranny in Damascus.

These people never learn. Here we are on the threshold of what Arabs in the region are calling the fall of their own Berlin Wall, and our ``realists'' want us to go back to making deals with dictators. It would be not just a blunder but a tragedy to try to rein in the revolution in Lebanon. It would betray our principles. And it would betray the people in Lebanon who have been encouraged by our proclamation of those principles.

I've never understood the "realist" camp, particularly since the end of the Cold War. There was a good argument to be made for "realism" during the Cold War, although I was never comfortable with it. But after the collapse of the Soviet Union, I saw no reason for it. There were foreign policy reasons to discard the "realist" ideology, but I opposed it for a simpler reason. It was wrong to support dictators that oppress their own citizens just because we didn't want to deal with the after effects of seeing democracies take root. It always struck me as selfish.

Democrats & Black Vote

2005-03-04T09:09:00.000-05:00

Mona Charen takes a look at the Black vote and the Democrats need to keep it:

It is a plain fact of American political life today that Democrats are completely dependent on black votes. The day African-Americans stop casting 80 percent to 95 percent of their votes for Democrats is the day Democrats stop winning elections. ... In the year 2000, George W. Bush won 54 percent of the white vote and 31 percent of the Hispanic vote. But Al Gore won 90 percent of the black vote and thus topped Bush in the total popular vote." Democrats at the national level consistently win fewer than 50 percent of white votes.

And she has noticed what I have noticed. Which is Democrats try to play up racial issues in order to keep Blacks voting for them.

Brazile herself contributed to this myth-making when she declared that the results of the 2000 election in Florida represented "a systematic disenfranchisement of people of color and poor people," adding that "in disproportionately black areas, people faced dogs, guns, and were required to have three forms of ID."

This is pure fiction. So were Democrats' claims that George W. Bush somehow condoned the dragging murder of James Byrd in Texas, or that Judge Charles Pickering was soft on the KKK, or that black churches in the South were targets of a racist arson conspiracy.

Democrats have been hoping to prevent Republicans from speaking to African-Americans by creating the equivalent of radio jamming. They've spewed so much falsehood and emotion into the air that they hope Republicans cannot be heard over the din.

I really hate it when Democrats condescend this way. Let's discuss real issues, not create racial divisions where none exists.

But we Blacks are catching on. The Democrats are going to have to work very, very hard to keep our vote in the type of numbers they are accustomed to. I predict they will fail.

Steyn Again

2005-03-04T07:59:00.000-05:00

I love his stuff. A little early on the victory lap, I think, but I love it nonetheless.

By the way, when’s the next Not In Our Name rally? How about this Saturday? Millions of Nionists can flood into Trafalgar Square to proclaim to folks in Iraq and Lebanon and Egypt and Jordan and Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian Authority that all the changes under way in the region are most certainly Not In Their Name. Among the celebrity Nionists, Harold Pinter should be available to denounce Blair as a ‘war criminal’ and a ‘hired Christian thug’ one mo’ time. For as the Guardian reported this week, the great man announced that ‘he has decided to abandon his career as a playwright in order to concentrate exclusively on politics’.

I would love to see another anti-war rally. If it was near me I'd even go and watch. Sort of like going to a zoo.

But I doubt their hearts would be in it. Wouldn't have the same verve, I expect.

A couple of years back, I went to hear Paul Wolfowitz. I knew him only by reputation — the most sinister of all the neocons, the big bad Wolfowitz, the man whose name started with a scary animal and ended Jewishly. In fact, he was a very soft-spoken chap, who compared the challenges of the Middle East with America’s experiments in democracy-spreading after the second world war. He said he thought it would take less time than Japan, and maybe something closer to the 1989 revolutions in Eastern Europe. I would have scoffed, but he knew so many Iraqis by name — not just Ahmed Chalabi, but a ton of others.

Around the same time, I bumped into Dominique de Villepin, the French foreign minister and man of letters. He was just back from Egypt, where he’d been profoundly moved when he’d been asked to convey the gratitude of the Arab people to President Chirac for working so tirelessly to prevent a tragic war between Christianity and Islam. You don’t say, I said. And, just as a matter of interest, who asked you to convey that? He hemmed and hawed and eventually said it was President Mubarak. Being a polite sort, I rolled my eyes only metaphorically, but decided as a long-term proposition I’d bet Wolfowitz’s address book of real people against Villepin’s hotline to over-the-hill dictators. The lesson of these last weeks is that it turns out Washington’s Zionists know the Arab people a lot better than Europe’s Arabists.

Man, he's good. And I'm not sure how one can argue the bolded point. Either the Arabists were completely wrong or, in my opinion, they were lying because they valued stability (read business connections) more than freedom for the masses. Neither alternative is attractive.

The other day I found myself, for the umpteenth time, driving in Vermont behind a Kerry/Edwards supporter whose vehicle also bore the slogan ‘FREE TIBET’. It must be great to be the guy with the printing contract for the ‘FREE TIBET’ stickers. Not so good to be the guy back in Tibet wondering when the freeing thereof will actually get under way. For a while, my otherwise not terribly political wife got extremely irritated by these stickers, demanding to know at a pancake breakfast at the local church what precisely some harmless hippy-dippy old neighbour of ours meant by the slogan he’d been proudly displaying decade in, decade out: ‘But what exactly are you doing to free Tibet?’ she demanded. ‘You’re not doing anything, are you?’ ‘Give the guy a break,’ I said back home. ‘He’s advertising his moral virtue, not calling for action. If Rumsfeld were to say, “Free Tibet? Jiminy, what a swell idea! The Third Infantry Division go in on Thursday”, the bumper-sticker crowd would be aghast.’

But for those of us on the arrogant unilateralist side of things, that’s not how it works. ‘FREE AFGHANISTAN’. Done. ‘FREE IRAQ’. Done. Given the paintwork I pull off every time I have to change the sticker, it might be easier for the remainder of the Bush presidency just to go around with ‘FREE [INSERT YOUR FETID TOTALITARIAN BASKET-CASE HERE]’. Not in your name? Don’t worry, it’s not.

How true. And the vaunted Arab Street will know, too.

(Thanks, Chrenkoff)

Someone Appreciates America

2005-03-04T01:26:00.000-05:00

It's so nice to see someone who actually appreciates what America does:

“All right, all right. But apart from liberating 50 million people in Iraq and Afghanistan, undermining dictatorships throughout the Arab world, spreading freedom and self-determination in the broader Middle East and moving the Palestinians and the Israelis towards a real chance of ending their centuries-long war, what have the Americans ever done for us?”

(Thanks, Instapundit)

Anti-UN Activity Gathering Steam

2005-03-03T14:48:00.000-05:00

Joel Mowbray explains that the UN is finally in the crosshairs of CPAC- the Conservative Political Action Conference:

What seems to have turned the tide is the oil-for-food scandal. Though largely ignored by the mainstream media—despite appearing to be the largest accounting scam and outright theft in recorded history—oil-for-food has finally gotten conservatives to consider the UN as one of the most important issues, behind taxes, spending, and guns.

And now that oil-for-food has put the UN firmly in conservatives’ crosshairs, all its other transgressions have become fair game as well.

As Mr. Burns would say, "Ehh-xcellent"!

Ann Coulter

2005-03-03T08:21:00.000-05:00

Ann Coulter has her usual shrill, but entertaining column out today. It deals with the left outing the gay relatives of conservatives. Here is the best line:

Outing relatives of conservatives is nothing but ruthless intimidation: Stop opposing our agenda – or your kids will get it. This is a behavioral trope of all totalitarians: Force children to testify against their parents to gain control by fear.

This description is spot on.

Hopefully Europe Is Next

2005-03-02T18:21:00.000-05:00

The Word Unheard has a great post about Canada refusing to participate in missle defense. It looks like they won't be a free rider after all:

The Canadian government was informed in 2003 that a decision against participating in the U.S. missile defense system would mean that Washington would not protect the country in the event of a missile attack, the CanWest News Service reported Saturday.

Excellent. Now we need to tell the Europeans the same thing.

Democrats Root For Failure

2005-03-02T17:11:00.000-05:00

This quote tells you all you need to know about the Democratic party. Nancy Soderberg, former Clinton aide and author of "The Superpower Myth: The Use and Misuse of American Might" was a guest on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. They were discussing how the recent events in the Middle East would impact the Democratic party. Here is the key exchange:

Stewart: He's gonna be a great--pretty soon, Republicans are gonna be like, "Reagan was nothing compared to this guy." Like, my kid's gonna go to a high school named after him, I just know it.

Soderberg: Well, there's still Iran and North Korea, don't forget. There's hope for the rest of us.

Stewart: [crossing fingers] Iran and North Korea, that's true, that is true [audience laughter]. No, it's--it is--I absolutely agree with you, this is--this is the most difficult thing for me to--because, I think, I don't care for the tactics, I don't care for this, the weird arrogance, the setting up. But I gotta say, I haven't seen results like this ever in that region.

Soderberg: Well wait. It hasn't actually gotten very far. I mean, we've had--

Stewart: Oh, I'm shallow! I'm very shallow!

Soderberg: There's always hope that this might not work. No, but I think, um, it's--you know, you have changes going on in Egypt; Saudi Arabia finally had a few votes, although women couldn't participate. What's going on here in--you know, Syria's been living in the 1960s since the 1960s--it's, part of this is--

And please don't try to argue this feeling isn't widespread. She just let it slip out.

Rwanda

2005-03-01T09:16:00.000-05:00

I saw the movie Hotel Rwanda over the weekend. What a tough movie to watch. But the movie didn't delve nearly enough into the role the UN played in the disaster. But Dore Gold did, in his new book Tower of Babble. Joel Mowbray sheds some light:

Gold’s heavily researched and copiously footnoted book is solid throughout, but by far the best chapter is “Impartial to Genocide,” which serves as a damning indictment of Kofi Annan. The most startling revelation: Despite having credible advance warning that a genocide was imminent, Kofi was the man who spearheaded the UN’s unconscionable position of “neutrality” as Hutu militias murdered thousands of Tutsis per day.

On January 11, 1994—three months before the genocide began—Major General Romeo Dallaire, head of the original UN peacekeeping unit in Rwanda, sent a secret cable to UN officials in New York warning that a “very, very important government politician” had put him in touch with a Hutu informant who warned that Hutu malitias were planning the “extermination” of minority Tutsis.

No alarm bells went off at the UN, even though, as Gold writes, “Warning signs of an impending massacre were everywhere.” The man running the relevant division at the time, the Department of Peacekeeping Missions, was Kofi Annan.

Actually, alarm bells didn’t necessarily have to go off, as Gen. Dallaire offered a silver lining: He knew the location of the Hutus’ weapons cache, and he was planning to seize it and stop the slaughter before it started. But his plan to save hundreds of thousands of lives was short-circuited by Kofi Annan, who didn’t want to upset the sitting Hutu government or in any way appear to be taking sides.

Not only did Kofi not do anything to prevent genocide, but his actions almost assured that the Security Council wouldn’t either. According to various accounts cited by Gold, including the UN’s own post-debacle report, Security Council members complained that Kofi’s department kept them in the dark, not revealing the true nature and full extent of the genocide.

Kofi’s caution could not be chalked up to doubts about the accuracy of the warning. The UN secretary general’s personal representative investigated the matter. Despite his well-documented pro-Hutu leanings, he wrote back to the UN that he had “total, repeat total confidence in the veracity and true ambitions of the informant.”

In other words, not only did Kofi and the UN have a Hutu informant who gave them advance notice of the genocide, but they were able to verify the veracity of that informant. Still Kofi insisted on doing nothing.

Once the slaughter started and tens of thousands had been murdered, Kofi acted—just not the right way. To make sure that Gen. Dallaire’s men were not trying to stop the genocide, he instructed the commander in Rwanda to “make every effort not to compromise your impartiality or to act beyond your mandate.” Kofi’s advocacy for “impartiality” no doubt helped lead the Security Council to slash the already small peacekeeping contingent almost 90%.

Sickening. The UN is utterly worthless.

Media Being Called Out

2005-02-27T21:53:00.000-05:00

Jack Kelly is calling out the media over poor Iraq reporting:

Those who get their news from the "mainstream" media are surprised by developments in Iraq, as they were surprised by our swift victory in Afghanistan, the sudden fall of Saddam Hussein, the success of the Afghan election and the success of the Iraqi election.

Journalists demand accountability from political leaders for "quagmires" which exist chiefly in the imagination of journalists. But when will journalists be held to account for getting every major development in the war on terror wrong?

Syria Feeling The Pressure

2005-02-27T21:18:00.000-05:00

This has been a horrible week for those rooting for a US defeat- that means you, leftists & media- in the Middle East.

Iraqi officials said Sunday that Syria captured and handed over Saddam Hussein's half brother, one of the blood-soaked insurgency's most wanted leaders, ending months of Syrian denials that it was harboring fugitives from the ousted Saddam regime.

Iraqi authorities said Damascus acted in a gesture of goodwill.

Sab'awi Ibrahim al-Hasan, who shared a mother with Saddam, was nabbed along with 29 other fugitive members of the former dictator's Baath Party in Hasakah in northeastern Syria, 50 kilometers (30 miles) from the Iraqi border, the officials said on condition of anonymity.

The leftist worldview is being crushed. They are banging their heads against the wall. Buy stocks of aspirin manufacturers. You'll make a fortune.

Canada = Europe

2005-02-27T19:24:00.000-05:00

Typical.

Prime Minister Paul Martin said Thursday that Canada would opt out of the contentious U.S. missile defense program, a move that will further strain brittle relations between the neighbors but please Canadians who fear it could lead to an international arms race.

What no one wants to say out loud is that the reason Canada feels free to not pitch in is because they know at the end of the day the US will work on this problem and give Canada protection anyway. This is known in economics as being a free rider.

So Canada and Europe are becoming more similar by the day. First, both Canada and Europe tilt severely to the left politically. Second, they both feel free to mooch off the generousity of the US. Third, their mooching allows them to fund overly generous social programs at the expense of a functioning military.

Talking to reporters several minutes after his foreign minister first announced the move in the House of Commons, Martin said Canada would instead focus on strengthening its own military and defense in proposals laid out Wednesday in the federal budget.

"Canada recognizes the enormous burden that the United States shoulders, when it comes to international peace and security," Martin said. "The substantial increases made yesterday to our defense budget are a tangible indication that Canada intends to carry its full share of that responsibility."

Canada wants to pitch in? Great!

The federal budget presented to the House of Commons calls for $10.5 billion in the next five years to increase the country's beleaguered armed forces -- including an additional 5,000 soldiers and 3,000 reservists -- the largest commitment to defense in two decades. It also called for another $807,950 to improve Canada's anti-terrorism efforts and security along the unarmed, 4,000-mile border with the United States.

$10.5 billion over five years? 5,000 soldiers? Whoop-de-freaking-do. Is this the same country that had responsibility for Juno Beach on D-Day? What happened to these people?

And less than $1 million for anti terror efforts? Why bother? To present the illusion you are chipping in? Spare me.

But U.S. Ambassador Paul Cellucci told reporters Wednesday that he was perplexed over Canada's apparent decision to allow Washington to make the decision if a missile was headed toward its territory.

"Why would you want to give up sovereignty?" he said. "We don't get it. We think Canada would want to be in the room deciding what to do about an incoming missile that might be heading toward Canada."

Here's the decision: don't do anything if a missile is heading towards Canada. If Canada doesn't want in on missile defense, then so be it. Every country can have its own level of relationship with the US. We can cooperate or not cooperate on any issue. But what I would love to see the US do is for once put its foot down and tell our "allies" that if they don't want to chip in on security issues, don't expect the US to do it for them and don't expect to reap the benefits of our work. No more free riders.

Europe Bashing

2005-02-27T18:16:00.000-05:00

I always enjoy a good Europe bashing column. Mark Steyn doesn't disappoint:

But either way the notion that it's a superpower in the making is preposterous. Most administration officials subscribe to one of two views: a) Europe is a smugly irritating but irrelevant backwater; or b) Europe is a smugly irritating but irrelevant backwater where the whole powder keg's about to go up.

For what it's worth, I incline to the latter position. Europe's problems -- its unaffordable social programs, its deathbed demographics, its dependence on immigration numbers that no stable nation (not even America in the Ellis Island era) has ever successfully absorbed -- are all of Europe's making. By some projections, the EU's population will be 40 percent Muslim by 2025. Already, more people each week attend Friday prayers at British mosques than Sunday service at Christian churches -- and in a country where Anglican bishops have permanent seats in the national legislature.

I rarely quibble with anything Mark Steyn writes, but I will here. Europe's problems are partially the fault of America. No, I didn't just join the club of "Blame America First Democrats". I'm liberal, but not of the self loathing variety. But America does have some responsibility. And that is because we made Europe dependent on us for the last 60+ years through generous military protection. In any entitlement program, a certain percentage of the recipients lose their incentive to improve their lot and simply come to rely on the entitlement. Resources and efforts will not be spent duplicating what the recipient gets for free. In the case of Europe, they no longer understand the cost of having a free, safe society because the US heavily subsidizes it. Scarce resources that should be spent on defense are instead spent on trying to create their version of utopia through overly generous social programs. If Europe had to provide for its own defense, they would be forced to cut the social programs, which would liberalize the economy. If Europe wanted to keep the social programs, they would still have to liberalize the economy to generate enough resources for both. Either way Europe benefits. No matter how you slice it, the single best thing America could do for Europe is to cut her loose and force it to defend itself.

Buy Stocks Of Aspirin Manufacturers

2005-02-26T12:54:00.000-05:00

Another event that will cause lefties to bang their heads against the wall:

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak ordered the constitution changed to allow multi-candidate presidential elections in September, making a surprise reversal Saturday that could mean he will face a challenger for the first time since taking power in 1981.

It was the first significant move toward political reform in decades in Egypt, a powerhouse in the Arab world that has had one-party rule for more than half a century.

The announcement came amid increasing calls for political reform from the domestic opposition and from the United States and after historic Iraqi and Palestinian elections that brought a taste of democracy to the region.

Opposition figures and reform advocates welcomed Mubarak's announcement, but some feared it may only be a superficial change to appease pressure at home and abroad. The step came as a dispute sharpened with the United States over Egypt's arrest of one of the strongest proponents of multi-candidate elections.

Buy stocks of aspirin manufacturers. Lefties around the world will need to relieve their headaches as Bush continues to smash their worldview. You'll make a fortune.

The Making Of A 9/11 Republican

2005-02-25T08:13:00.000-05:00

From Chrenkoff, I found one of the best columns I have ever read about how a liberal became a Bush supporter.

So, what happened to change all that? In a nutshell, 9/11. The terrorist attacks on this country were not only an act of war but also a crime against humanity. It seemed glaringly obvious to me at the time, and it still does today. But the reaction of my former comrades on the left bespoke a different perspective. The day after the attacks, I dragged myself into work, still in a state of shock, and the first thing I heard was one of my co-workers bellowing triumphantly, "Bush got his war!" There was little sympathy for the victims of this horrific attack, only an irrational hatred for their own country.

As I spent months grieving the losses, others around me wrapped themselves in the comfortable shell of cynicism and acted as if nothing had changed. I soon began to recognize in them an inability to view America or its people as victims, born of years of indoctrination in which we were always presented as the bad guys.

Sound familiar? I imagine that many of us Bush supporters went through the same transformation.

Taking Estrich to Task

2005-02-24T17:08:00.000-05:00

This is an excellent commentary on some of the more recent flare ups in the political correctness/ forced equality wars. Here is a great quote:

Gee thanks, Susan. Political pundit Susan Estrich has launched a venomous campaign against the Los Angeles Times’s op-ed editor, Michael Kinsley, for alleged discrimination against female writers. As it happens, I have published in the Los Angeles Times op-ed pages over the years, without worrying too much about whether I was merely filling a gender quota. Now, however, if I appear in the Times again, I will assume that my sex characteristics, rather than my ideas, got me accepted.

The author gives a good summary of the controversies and then goes on to skewer them. But to me, this is the key quote. There is an unintended consequence of assuming that everyone is exactly the same and allowing no discussion of the topic whatsoever. And that is eventually those who you purport to help will suffer from something quite different than discrimination. And that is an unspoken, but very real, lack of respect. People start to assume that what you have you didn't earn, and it was simply given to you because its easier than listening to the PC police or being taken to court. It's damaging.

Zapatero

2005-02-24T16:04:00.000-05:00

Barcepundit has a rather funny roundup of Zapatero's attempts to get Bush to pay attention to him. Here's one:

Zapatero said he was anti-Bush, the complete opposite of former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar. But ever since his election, Zapatero has spent much of his time shadowing Bush and attempting to shake his hand. On Wednesday, he was waiting in the shadows, and made his move when Bush was talking to Tony Blair. Bush, who I suspect didn't really know who Zapatero was said “hola amigo” and continued talking to Blair. Meanwhile, Zapatero walked off smiling away like a child with a new pair of shoes. The exchange was so brief Spanish newspapers had a nightmare trying to find a photograph of the “great meeting.” To make matters worse a Spanish government spokesperson said that Bush and Zapatero had a “cordial exchange.” (They forget to mention it lasted about two seconds.) Even more laughable was the “meeting” Spanish Foreign Secretary Moratinos had with U.S. Secretary of State Rice. He literally rushed over to her in a passageway and then later claimed he had a summit meeting.

[...] If Zapatero got an invitation to the White House, he would probably frame the invitation card!

It occurs to me that Zapatero has a few too many letters in his last name. Removing letters two through five would present a more accurate picture.

Non-negative Commentary From German Newspaper

2005-02-24T09:54:00.000-05:00

How did this make it past Der Spiegel's editorial board?

Germany loves to criticize US President George W. Bush's Middle East policies -- just like Germany loved to criticize former President Ronald Reagan. But Reagan, when he demanded that Gorbachev remove the Berlin Wall, turned out to be right. Could history repeat itself?

Did I read that right?

It was difficult not to cringe during Reagan's speech in 1987. He didn't leave a single Berlin cliché out of his script. At the end of it, most experts agreed that his demand for the removal of the Wall was inopportune, utopian and crazy.

Yet three years later, East Germany had disappeared from the map. Gorbachev had a lot to do with it, but it was the East Germans who played the larger role. When analysts are confronted by real people, amazing things can happen. And maybe history can repeat itself. Maybe the people of Syria, Iran or Jordan will get the idea in their heads to free themselves from their oppressive regimes just as the East Germans did. When the voter turnout in Iraq recently exceeded that of many Western nations, the chorus of critique from Iraq alarmists was, at least for a couple of days, quieted. Just as quiet as the chorus of Germany experts on the night of Nov. 9, 1989 when the Wall fell.

Just a thought for Old Europe to chew on: Bush might be right, just like Reagan was then.

I'm stunned.

(Thanks, Chrenkoff)

Bush Middle East Plan Working

2005-02-24T09:40:00.000-05:00

Let the liberal teeth gnashing begin:

I dined Monday night with Jumblatt in his mountain fortress in Moukhtara, southeast of Beirut. He moved there for safety last weekend because of worries that he would be the next target of whoever killed Hariri. We sat under a portrait of Jumblatt's father, Kamal, who was assassinated in 1976 after he opposed the initial entry of Syrian troops into Lebanon. With me was Jamil Mroue, a Lebanese Shiite journalist whose own father was assassinated by Arab radicals in the 1960s. It was an evening when the ghosts of the past mingled with hopes for the future.

Jumblatt dresses like an ex-hippie, in jeans and loafers, but he maintains the exquisite manners of a Lebanese aristocrat. Over the years, I've often heard him denouncing the United States and Israel, but these days, in the aftermath of Hariri's death, he's sounding almost like a neoconservative. He says he's determined to defy the Syrians until their troops leave Lebanon and the Lahoud government is replaced.

"It's strange for me to say it, but this process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq," explains Jumblatt. "I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, 8 million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world." Jumblatt says this spark of democratic revolt is spreading. "The Syrian people, the Egyptian people, all say that something is changing. The Berlin Wall has fallen. We can see it."

That sound you hear is lefties all around the world banging their collective heads against the wall. The more investment minded of you may want to buy the stocks of aspirin makers. If Bush keeps this up, sales will skyrocket.

Jeff Gannon/James Guckert

2005-02-24T09:08:00.000-05:00

Ann Coulter takes leftists to task over the Jeff Gannon/James Guckert controversy:

The heretofore-unknown Jeff Gannon of the heretofore-unknown "Talon News" service was caught red-handed asking friendly questions at a White House press briefing. Now the media is hot on the trail of a gay escort service that Gannon may have run some years ago. Are we supposed to like gay people now, or hate them? Is there a website where I can go to and find out how the Democrats want me to feel about gay people on a moment-to-moment basis?

It is truly amazing how the party of tolerance can be just as bigoted as a Klansman when it suits them. The only good minorities and gays are liberal ones, evidently.

On the op-ed page of the New York Times, Maureen Dowd openly lied about the press pass, saying: "I was rejected for a White House press pass at the start of the Bush administration, but someone with an alias, a tax evasion problem and Internet pictures where he posed like the 'Barberini Faun' is credentialed?"

Press passes can't be that hard to come by if the White House allows that dyspeptic, old Helen Thomas to sit within yards of the president. Still, it would be suspicious if Dowd were denied a press pass while someone from "Talon News" got one, even if he is a better reporter.

But Dowd was talking about two different passes without telling her readers (a process now known in journalism schools as "Dowdification"). Gannon didn't have a permanent pass; he had only a daily pass. Almost anyone can get a daily pass – even famed Times fantasist Maureen Dowd could have gotten one of those. A daily pass and a permanent pass are altogether different animals. The entire linchpin of Dowd's column was a lie. (And I'm sure the Times' public editor will get right on Dowd's deception.)

Resorting to deception and half truths? Dowd? Say it isn't so.

Any day now, Matthews will devote entire shows to exposing Larry Zeigler, Gerald Riviera and Michael Weiner – aka Larry King, Geraldo Rivera and Matthews' former MSNBC colleague Michael Savage. As a newspaper reporter, Wolf Blitzer has written under the names Ze'ev Blitzer and Ze'ev Barak. The greatest essayist of modern times was Eric Blair, aka George Orwell. The worst essayist of modern times is "TRB" of The New Republic.

Air America radio host and "Nanny" impersonator "Randi Rhodes" goes by a fake name, and she won't even tell people what her real last name is. (She says for "privacy reasons." That name must be a real doozy.) As Insideradio.com describes Rhodes, she refuses "to withhold anything from her listeners" and says conservatives "are less likely to share such things." How about sharing your name, Randi? We promise not to laugh.

Hypocrisy is unfortunately par for the course for Democrats these days.

Democrats in Congress actually demanded that an independent prosecutor investigate how Gannon got into White House press conferences while writing under an invented name. How did Gary Hartpence, Billy Blythe and John Kohn (Gary Hart, Bill Clinton and John Kerry) run for president under invented names? Admittedly, these men were not reporters for the prestigious "Talon News" service; they were merely Democrats running for president.

How can anyone take this party seriously anymore? Between crackpot conspiracy theories and ridiculous posturing, the Democratic party is a complete and utter joke.

Liberals keep telling us the media isn't liberal, but in order to retaliate for the decimation of major news organizations like the New York Times, CBS News and CNN, all they can do is produce the scalp of an obscure writer for an unknown conservative Web page. And unlike Raines, Rather and Jordan, they can't even get Gannon for incompetence on the job. (Also unlike Raines, Rather and Jordan, Gannon has appeared on television and given a series of creditable interviews in his own defense, proving our gays are more macho than their straights.)

How true.

Deep Throat

2005-02-23T08:48:00.000-05:00

Jonah Goldberg is skeptical of the existence of Deep Throat. A number of the suspects are getting up in years, and won't be able to defend themselves of whatever accusations are hurled at them after they die. Here's Jonah's solution:

Presumably, if Deep Throat exists he is aware that he will be named when he dies. So, gentlemen, why not get your side of the story on paper - or video - now? If you suspect you might be fingered for doing something you didn't, you have even more reason to get your version squared away.

But here's the part I like best:

Watergate prompted a generation of preening journalists to lecture America from a pedestal. The least Deep Throat can do - or, the least the leading Deep Throat suspects can do - is to let us know if the journalists belonged on that pedestal in the first place.

I agree with Jonah. If Deep Throat is a figment of Woodward and Bernstein's imagination, the irony would be too much, considering bringing down Nixon is a key reason why journalists have a hugely exaggerated sense of self importance.

More Fruits Of A Lefty Education

2005-02-22T08:55:00.000-05:00

This is disgusting.

SOLDIER STUNNED BY LETTER KIDS' RANTS
By DAVID ANDREATTA

An American soldier overseas is fuming over letters he received from Brooklyn middle-school children accusing GIs of destroying mosques and killing civilians in Iraq.

Pfc. Rob Jacobs of New Jersey said he was initially ecstatic to get a package of letters from sixth-graders at JHS 51 in Park Slope last month at his base 10 miles from the North Korea border.

That changed when he opened the envelope and found missives strewn with politically charged rhetoric, vicious accusations and demoralizing predictions that only a handful of soldiers would leave the Iraq war alive.

"It's hard enough for soldiers to deal with being away from their families, they don't need to be getting letters like this," Jacobs, 20, said in a phone interview from his base at Camp Casey.

"If they don't have anything nice to say, they might as well not say anything at all."

One Muslim boy wrote: "Even thoe [sic] you are risking your life for our country, have you seen how many civilians you or some other soldier killed?"

His letter, which was stamped with a smiley face, went on: "I know your [sic] trying to save our country and kill the terrorists but you are also destroying holy places like Mosques."

Most of the 21 letters Jacobs provided to The Post mentioned some support for the armed forces, if not the Iraq war, and thanked him for his service. But nine of the students made clear their distaste for the president or the war.

The letters were written as a social-studies assignment.

The JHS 51 teacher, Alex Kunhardt, did not return phone calls, but the school principal, Xavier Costello, responded with a statement:

"While we would never censor anything that our children write, we sincerely apologize for forwarding letters that were in any way inappropriate to Pfc. Jacobs. This assignment was not intended to be insensitive, but to be supportive of the men and women in service to our nation."

New British Reality Show

2005-02-22T07:50:00.000-05:00

Chrenkoff found an interesting experiment being conducted by Channel 4 in Britain.

A group of volunteers has been locked up in cages and sexually humiliated in a British reality show that seeks to explore the use of torture by recreating conditions inside the Guantanamo Bay detention center.

The four-part series on Channel 4 asks whether torture methods applied at the notorious U.S. Navy base in Cuba and other prisons in places such as Iraq and the United States can be justified in efforts to combat terrorism, a spokesman for the station said.

"The information gained through torture has been justified as the center of the war against terrorism," said the spokesman, who asked to remain anonymous.

"We want the viewers to watch techniques that we know are used at Guantanamo and to really raise questions about whether torture is justified and if it works and what does it say about our values as a Western society," he told AFP Tuesday.

I have an idea. Why don't we gather up a bunch of European leftists and put them on "Survivor: 9/11"? Let's put them in a towering inferno to see who makes it out alive. To make it more realistic, let's send them to the memorial services (no bodies for funerals) of friends and loved ones who died. Then our special terrorist guest contestant makes it clear that it is his ambition to destroy you, your loved ones and your country through any means possible. At the end of the show, we conduct interviews with the surviving contestants to see if using loud music, sleep deprivation and wearing women's panties on your head is still impermissible in the interrogation of terrorists.

But it probably wouldn't work. Liberal self loathing is so great that the contestants will likely think they deserved what happened to them and beg the terrorist for forgiveness. Aggressive questioning of terrorists in an effort to prevent future attacks would still be out of the question in their minds.

UN Rapists vs. Abu Ghraib

2005-02-21T20:34:00.000-05:00

I finally saw the first serious report on television regarding the rapist UN peacekeepers in Congo. It's probably not the first time a report has been on television, it's just the first I've seen. Anyway, I thought I'd do a little experiment.

It has been my contention that the world doesn't really care about abuse and torture unless it is in some way caused by Americans. Well, let's put that theory to the test. I did a simple Google search using the following keywords:

Iraq Prison Abuse = 1,030,000

America Prison Abuse Iraq = 936,000 entries

America Soldier Prison Abuse = 423,000

Abu Ghraib Prison Abuse = 388,000 entries

UN Peacekeeper Congo Rape = 63,900

UN Peacekeeper Sex Scandal = 37,700

UN Peacekeeper Rape = 6,210

Now there are a couple of problems with this comparison, one objective and one subjective. The first is that Abu Ghraib hit its height about a year ago and has had all that time to accumulate stories. And even though those of us who frequent blogs have known about the rapist peacekeepers in Congo for a few months now, it is only now getting any real MSM attention. Therefore what I'll do is re-run the Google search from time to time to see if the Congo search is closing the gap in a meaningful way.

The subjective problem is that I think systematically raping 12 year old girls is much worse than forcing a terrorist to wear panties on his head. Therefore I think that coverage of the rapist peacekeepers should generate substantially more attention and press coverage, particularly given the high esteem in which the world in general, and the media in particular, hold the UN. In other words, there will have to be significantly more coverage of the rapist peacekeepers before I'm convinced I'm wrong about my thesis.

Democrats Are A Joke

2005-02-20T18:39:00.000-05:00

You have to hear this to believe it. LGF found a recording of Congressman Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) accusing the Bush administration of supplying the forged Nat'l Guard documents to CBS. The Congressman freely admits he has no proof. Just made the accusation. And no, he doesn't answer the obvious question of even if the White House did this, why did CBS ignore their own hired experts who told them the documents were forged?

Unfortunately, this is par for the course with the Democrats over the last few years. Here are a couple of examples: Howard Dean said the idea that Bush had advance knowledge of 9/11 was credible, Madeline Albright claimed we had already caught OBL and Bush was just waiting for a politically advantageous time to reveal it, and Jim McDermott (D-WA) claimed that Saddam's capture was staged. There are more, but you get the idea.

The Democratic party is a joke. With representatives like this, they do not deserve to be taken seriously.

William Pfaff

2005-02-20T12:01:00.000-05:00

William Pfaff is one of the more annoying anti Americans I have read. I generally avoid reading his drivel, but for some reason today I felt masochistic. Here it is:

First is the definition of the crisis. Few Europeans believe either in the global 'war on terror' or the 'war against tyranny', as Washington describes them.

American claims about the threat of terrorism seem grossly exaggerated, and the American reaction disproportionate and even hysterical. Three thousand were killed in the Twin Towers, but most advanced societies have already had, or still have, their own wars with 'terrorism' sustaining losses proportionately as severe: the British with the IRA, Italians and Germans with their Red Brigades, the Spanish with the Basque separatist Eta, and so on. It has been a condition of modern political existence.

Translation: 9/11 was no big deal. What are the Americans bitching about? It's only 3,000 dead. Most important, it didn't happen to Europe, so why should Europe care? This is a far more common opinion in Europe than anyone wants to admit. At least Pfaff says it out loud.

There is one critical difference between the other terrorist movements and what happened on 9/11 that Pfaff either cannot or will not acknowledge. The other examples he cited were all homegrown movements of a sort. We are reacting to an external threat. Therefore we have to act externally to a large extent. Had 9/11 been committed by the Michigan militia, I doubt we'd be in the Middle East trying to transform the region. After all, the US didn't go to war in the Middle East after the Oklahoma City bombing.

The American-led invasion of Iraq is widely regarded in Europe as irrelevant to the reality of terrorism, overwrought in scale and destruction, and perverse in effect, vastly deepening hostility between the Western powers and Muslim society.

Let's leave aside the Left's clinical example of cognitive dissonance with respect to Saddam's well documented ties to terrorism. The terrorists, including OBL, believe Iraq is the central front in the terror war. Therefore, Iraq is the central front in the terror war. It's that simple. No nuance necessary.

It's also interesting how Pfaff chooses to ignore the desperation of the terrorists to prevent democracy from springing up in the region. Here's a news flash, Bill. That means the terrorists find democracy threatening to their existence, which probably means we should help the Middle East achieve it. The Iraqis know who liberated them. The Afghans know who liberated them. It's the US that the Iranian students look up to, not France. And at the end of the day, hostility of the vaunted Muslim street will be towards those who actively tried to prevent democracy, not to those who promoted it. That means your beloved Europe, Bill.

To most Democrats as well as Republicans, 11 September was the defining event of the age, after which 'nothing could be the same'. Their imperviousness to any notion that this might not be so astonishes many abroad. Many European believe it is not the world that has changed, but the United States.

I actually agree with Pfaff on this one. Some things are constant, post 9/11. Some examples are European cravenness in the face of threats; anti Americanism, whose flames are fanned constantly by the likes of Pfaff; and a liberal self loathing so great that it threatens Western Civilization itself. Other things have changed, such as Afghanistan, Iraq, and better cooperation on WMD proliferation. What has changed the most is that America is now paying better attention, and is unwilling to stand idly by as threats gather. I'm sorry if our insistence on defending ourselves bothers you, Bill. But we're unwilling to die to satisfy your anti American impulses.

The second cause of transatlantic disagreement is the American claim to global domination, and its hostility to Europe's acquiring political or military power commensurate with European economic power.

Yes, yes, we are quaking in our boots about the unstoppable European economic machine. That would be why the entire European continent revolves around US consumer spending. Here's another news flash, Bill. The US would actually like it if Europe could stimulate domestic demand and not just depend on export driven growth to the US. We are a little tired of being the main engine for world economic growth. If the US doesn't grow, no one does. We actually want Europe to do its fair share. You're big talkers. Do it already.

The same goes for the military. We want Europe to develop real capabilities. We Americans don't want to be the sole global policeman. But that would mean Europe giving up its overly generous socialist programs, the resources for which are made possible by the very American military Europe hates so much, but yet offers free protection to Europe, which allows Europe to forgo guns entirely for butter. Funny how anti Americans don't want to acknowledge this fact.

The third basic disagreement is that the US has repudiated the system of absolute state sovereignty that has governed international society since 1648, and is the basis of modern international law.

This was an early casualty of the Bush administration's National Security Strategy, announced in 2002, which declared that preemptive attack had become an American policy option in the war against terror.

Yes, we Americans have a weird desire to defend ourselves. Pfaff evidently believes we should wait until the nuclear blast hits before we try to do something about it.

The US then renounced, 'de-ratified', or simply abandoned a series of treaty commitments. These included Geneva standards on the treatment of prisoners and the prohibition of torture.

And Kyoto, and the ICC, and the ABM and....

What's tiresome about people like Pfaff is that they are most frustrated that America has a different point of view. America does not want to be bound by the ICC, Kyoto, and whatever else. So that makes America bad in their view. America does take external threats more seriously now and is committed to aggressively defending itself. Europe instinctively is an appeaser so that makes America bad again. We forced Iraq to live up to its UN obligations. One might expect a thank you for trying to make the UN relevant, but apparently people like Pfaff have a different expectation for the UN. So again the US is bad. And in his zeal to criticize all things American; he dumbs down the definition of torture to include naked prisoner piles, all the while ignoring the barbarity of head chopping, disemboweling terrorists.

But throughout history nations and other political forces have been disposed to challenge claims to universal power. This is the source of current tensions. It is the closest thing to a natural law that history can offer. 'Stuff happens', whether intended or not, to use Donald Rumsfeld's language. Uneasy lies the crown, even for republics.

It is undoubtedly a dream of Pfaff's to see the US knocked down a peg or two. I'd love to give people like him a little preview of their lives if that were to ever happen. Let's disengage from Europe. No more free defense. Have fun the next time there is a conflict on the continent. See what it's like to be a grown up and have to handle your own business. Enjoy.

State of the Democratic Party

2005-02-19T01:09:00.000-05:00

Polipundit found a nice piece on the state of the Democratic party:

Not-so-slowly, but surely, Karl Rove's vision of a vanquished Democratic Party is being realized. The Democrats, meanwhile, do not seem to know what has hit them. Like stoners searching for their cars, they are dazed and confused by the realities of Twenty-First Century politics.

In my opinion, anyone who has fond memories of the Democratic party or likes a functioning two party system should be rooting for a total meltdown of the Democrats. After all, a phoenix can only rise from the ashes of its own destruction.

That's why the MSM being so over the top for the Democrats this past election was not beneficial for the party. I don't really think there is any debate that Kerry's vote totals were artificially inflated by a few points because of over the top media bias. And because of that, the Democrats haven't realized the full extent of their loss. If they better understood the losing hand they hold, you would see an active purging of the psycho wing of the party, and a fundamental reassessment of policies and positions. There are a few lonely voices out there calling for just that, but just a few. After all, its hard to believe that a serious party would select Nancy Pelosi, Ted Kennedy, Barbara Boxer and Howard Dean as its leaders.

Greenpeace Learns A Lesson

2005-02-18T15:08:00.000-05:00

Give 'em one for me:

WHEN 35 Greenpeace protesters stormed the International Petroleum Exchange (IPE) yesterday they had planned the operation in great detail.
What they were not prepared for was the post-prandial aggression of oil traders who kicked and punched them back on to the pavement.

“We bit off more than we could chew. They were just Cockney barrow boy spivs. Total thugs,” one protester said, rubbing his bruised skull. “I’ve never seen anyone less amenable to listening to our point of view.”

Another said: “I took on a Texan Swat team at Esso last year and they were angels compared with this lot.” Behind him, on the balcony of the pub opposite the IPE, a bleary-eyed trader, pint in hand, yelled: “Sod off, Swampy.”

Americans Losing Respect For UN

2005-02-18T11:46:00.000-05:00

Instapundit has found a poll about the UN at Rasmussen:

Thirty-seven-percent (37%) of Americans have a favorable opinion of the United Nations. That's down from 44% in a November survey.

Thirty-seven percent (37%) of Americans also believe UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan should resign. A Rasmussen Reports survey of 1,000 adults finds that 26% disagree and say he should not resign. Another 37% are undecided.

Just 54% of Americans are following news coverage of this story "very" or "somewhat" closely.

Among those following the story very closely, 63% believe Annan should resign. Twenty-eight percent (28%) say he should not.

The oil-for-food scandal is taking its toll on the international institution. Forty-two percent (42%) believe Saddam Hussein used the program to bribe nations such as France and Russia. Just 12% think he did not use it for bribery.

Thirty-nine percent (39%) believe some nations opposed the invasion of Iraq because they were bribed by Hussein. Just 23% say that did not happen.

Among those following the story very closely, 72% believed that Hussein used the program to bribe other countries. Sixty-eight percent (68%) of that same group believe that some nations opposed the U.S. invasion because they were bribed.

Excellent. The UN is worthless and others are catching on. Here are a couple more questions that Rasmussen could ask:

1. Should the UN be reformed?
2. Should the UN be disbanded?
3. Should the US leave the UN if it is not reformed and/or not disbanded?
4 Would an organization comprised solely of democracies work better?

You get the idea.

Oh, The Irony

2005-02-18T08:12:00.000-05:00

What goes around comes around. The latest on the Joe Wilson/Valerie Plame investigation:

Miller and Cooper, who are refusing to reveal their sources in a federal investigation, have hit the talk-show circuit as anguished defenders of the First Amendment and of the media's watchdog role. They are quite sincere about that. But they would actually be going to jail partly to provide after-the-fact vindication for an absurd media feeding frenzy about a non-crime that journalists relentlessly hyped to hurt the Bush administration.

Journalists want sympathy for something they've done to themselves. You're breakin' my heart. Boo Hoo.

I love this next part:

Cue the caterwauling. The media and Democrats were wracked by spasms of outrage. The Bush administration was punishing Wilson by outing his wife and putting her life at risk! It had violated a law against exposing covert agents! The scandal was Watergate, Iran-Contra and every other -gate wrapped up into one (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution said the administration's conduct came "perilously close to treason")! The administration must, must appoint a special prosecutor to investigate! Now!

Well, the press and President Bush critics got what they wanted -- good and hard. The special prosecutor in the case, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, has done what special prosecutors usually do, namely trample all over any sense of proportion. He has subpoenaed various journalists, including Miller and Cooper, who have refused to reveal their sources. They are now in contempt of court.

Tears are streaming down my face. From laughter.

A much simpler, more obvious argument is available to the defense -- that the Intelligence Identities Protection Act that was supposedly violated in this case wasn't. The act establishes an extremely high standard for a criminal violation -- the agent in question has to be undercover (Plame wasn't), and the leaker has to know she was undercover and be intentionally trying to undermine U.S. intelligence (very, very unlikely).

But the Miller/Cooper defense hasn't made this argument, probably because it would be so embarrassing. You mean to say, after months of chest-beating, the Bush administration's crime of the century wasn't even a crime? It was just a Washington flap played for all it was worth by the same news organizations now about to watch their employees go to prison over it? That's the truth that the media will go to any length to avoid.

It's not every day that one can witness such a perfect example of irony. I have zero- and I mean zero- sympathy. Don't drop the soap in the shower, guys.

This Seems Appropriate

2005-02-17T13:24:00.000-05:00

More Scrappleface

Jimmy Carter Attack Sub Armed with Nerf Missiles
by Scott Ott

(2005-02-16) -- The U.S. Navy on Saturday will commission its newest nuclear-powered attack submarine, the Jimmy Carter, with many new features, including multiple-warhead Nerf missiles.

President Carter, who brought peace to the middle east, vigorously defended America's right to give away the Panama Canal and, in 1994, convinced North Korea to abandon talking about its nuclear weapons, said he's honored to have his name on "one of the most powerful peacemaking devices on earth."

Jimmy Carter is the first of the American Seahare-class subs, featuring a high-tech sonar system which alerts enemy forces to its presence and a safety device on the Nerf missiles which allows firing only after an enemy missile impact.

"This new generation of nuclear submarines is designed to use trust in our enemies as our first line of defense," said an unnamed Navy spokesman.

President Carter has invited leaders from North Korea and Iran to the commissioning ceremony, during which former First Lady Rosalyn Carter, in a time-honored Navy tradition, will give the first order to "man our ship, bring her to life then park her over there by the dock!"