All Things Beautiful

The Jury Is Out

 

I am baaack!

This may become the first time in the history of the United States Congress that it has voted to send a new commander into battle and then voted to oppose his plan that is necessary to succeed in that battle.

President Bush wryly hit the nail on the head when he was referring to Lt. Gen David Petraeus as the 'new commander'.

Only last week did the Senate unanimously confirm General Petraeus as the top U.S. commander in Iraq, full well knowing that his appointment "marks the real start of the new US strategy in Iraq, but is also seen as a last chance to turn things around".

And the new US strategy is what? Is it just more troops -- 21,500 extra U.S. troops, to be precise? Does it mean, that these extra "troops are now going to run out and look for gun battles with insurgents in back alleys", as critics immediately after the President's State of the Union address had us believe?

Of course not.

Restoring Humility To Our National Psyche In The Face Of Nihilism (Repeat)

 

Preparing for travel, hence not much time for blogging right now, I am re-posting something I wrote last year, on a subject dear to me, as relevant today as it was when I first thrashed it out on my keyboard.

Victor Davis Hanson has a fine essay out called "The Prison of the Present".

I rarely disagree with him and on his many brilliant insights, especially when put so expertly in historical context, as Hanson has again succeeded to do.

The question "..aren't choices usually between the bad and the far worse?.." leads to very relevant historical comparisons, which do not seek to "..excuse present mistakes by citing worse ones from the past--or to suggest that all wars are always the same. Much less should history's examples be used to stifle necessary contemporary criticism that alone leads to remedy."

Instead, Hanson believes that "..knowledge of the capricious nature of wars of the past can restore a little humility to our national psyche":

We need it. Ours is the first generation of Americans that thinks it can demand perfection in war. Our present leisure, wealth, and high technology fool us into thinking that we are demi-gods always be able to trump both human and natural disasters. Accordingly, we become frustrated that we cannot master every wartime obstacle, as we seem otherwise to be able to do with computers or cosmetic surgery. Then, without any benchmarks of comparison from the past, we despair that our actions are failed because they are not perfect.

The key question to me, one which is constantly on my mind these days, is the one concerning the level of the current collective "Confidence" in ourselves as a Nation and whether such confidence or the lack of it, if this is indeed the case, lies at the heart of the acrimonious divide which has beset our nation in the face of the war on terror.

The Big Push - To Take America Down A Peg Or Two

"The Survivor" by George Grosz 1944, Private Collection

 

Even award winning historians sometimes can't resist the allure of contortionist acrobatics. I am of course speaking metaphorically as I am referring to Adam Hochschild's extraordinary efforts to connect National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley's "the big push" quote to 600,000 killed soldiers with the disastrous "The Big Push" campaign during the 1916 Battle of Somme.

Rarely have we been treated to such spurious foundation, which in a nutshell depend solely on the vivid description of trenched warfare in "muddy, shell-pocketed wasteland" during WW-I and an isolated quip by retired US Army Lieutenant-General William Odom, former director of the National Security Agency, saying: "It's like finding yourself in a hole and then digging deeper."

That's it. That's all that connects the horrors of World War I with tackling the murdering Islamofascists in Iraq; an analogy in itself, conjuring up the image of trenched warfare and, voilà, we have the headline: "Why the 'big push' sounds horribly familiar".

If we needed more evidence that those surrounding US President George W Bush have a tin ear for the lessons of history, it came this month when National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley referred to increasing the number of US troops in Iraq as "the big push" that would bring victory closer.

"The Big Push" is a phrase that came into the language with another troop surge that was supposed to bring another war to victory. For months beforehand, the Big Push was how British cabinet ministers, propagandists, generals, and foot soldiers talked about the 1916 Battle of the Somme.

I am no longer surprised by the bold-faced audacity, with which the left attempts to discredit all and every efforts to defeat acknowledged evil in the form of proxy terrorists from Iran and Syria, hell-bent to bring death and destruction to our way of life; irrespective whether Democrat or Republican, to them we are all Infidel scum.

But this contortion to fabricate a connection between Hadley's "the big push" and WW-I, just to be able to deliver the opening broadside of having a 'tin ear for lessons of history', is simply pathetic.

None of that alters the fact, that the Administration is facing growing opposition against the 'surge' even from within Republican ranks -- and I hesitate a guess, the President's SOTU address in a few hours time isn't going to change that -- but, at least the arguments are perfectly transparent in so far as they are politically motivated or, as Dean Barnett @ Hugh Hewitt explains, motivated by taking the U.S. down a peg or two.

Danger And Opportunity

 

"Our two revolutions are at heart the same", Chavez said, comparing Iran's overthrow of the Shah with his self-styled socialist movement.

Such statements always intrigue me.

Could Chavez really be so ignorant and not only fail to grasp the difference, but the sheer enormity of it? Or does he so much like the sound of a catchy phrase, cheerfully continuing the every day practice of endlessly reciting socialistic slogans, in the perpetual effort to placate the mostly uneducated poor and thus condemning them to remain just so? Is it possible, that he doesn't know any better? Or does he choose to ignore the Mullahcracy's all-important emphasis on it being an Islamic revolution; that they couldn't care less about all the worldly and material promises inherent in the western ideology of 'revolutions'.

Back in the dusty streets of Tehran, critics are quick to attack the obvious:

What are our bounds with Venezuela, Nicaragua or Ecuador and Bolivia? Are we neighbors? Do we share the same faith?

Of course not. Chavez is just another Infidel; yes, one of use temporarily, but Infidel none the less. Much in the same vain as Infidel members of the MSM are temporarily praised when promoting Islamofascist propaganda. Case in point is BBC's dramatization of Thug-In-Chief's visit to South America:

"With his eyes fixed firmly on the Middle East, the last thing President Bush wants is another hostile diplomatic front opening up in his own backyard. But with the arrival of the Iranian president in the region, that is exactly what some commentators are predicting", reported the BBC’s Latin America correspondent, adding that, "The most worrying alliance for Washington is that being forged between Iran and Venezuela".

Most worrying indeed... especially as our Thug-In-Chief is most likely promising nukes to each and every one who will support his struggle against all of those nasty nations trying to stop him from fulfilling his promise of a nuclear Holocaust. What a dream scenario: the US surrounded by hostile nuclear powers, giving hell to the great Satan in the North. That ought to buy our Thug-In-Chief some time to sort things out in the Middle East - or so he hopes.

But why worry? The Haute Couture shows in Paris are the biggest ever with almost double the designers parading before overcrowded catwalks. Our love for the monarchy is alive and well, judging by Dame Helen Mirren's success at the Golden Globe awards; a success likely repeated at the Oscars.

Failure Is Not An Option

'The Crucifixion (detail)' by Matthias Grünewald ca. 1515, Musée d'Unterlinden, Colmar

 

"Failure in Iraq would be a disaster for the United States. The challenge playing out across the broader Middle East is more than a military conflict. It is the decisive ideological struggle of our time. On one side are those who believe in freedom and moderation. On the other side are extremists who kill the innocent, and have declared their intention to destroy our way of life." President Bush, Wednesday, January 10 2007.

Can you say it anymore clearly than that? No, of course you can't. But who is listening?

Nobody!

To those, who realize the need for us to remain in Iraq in order to push back at the Islamofascists, the President is preaching to the already converted. And according to the ostriches among us, he merely continues with his 'fear/war-mongering' and 'sable-rattling' so as to divert attention away from the no longer so secret agenda of turning the United States of America into a fascist dictatorship, or, depending on whether our ostrich got up on the wrong side of the bed, into a evangelical theocracy.

So, no mileage there. Period.

And period again. That's the problem. No matter the eloquence, no matter how persuasive the logic and arguments, the opposition has long abandoned any interest in reason. Were it not so, the safety of unconditional hatred would have to be abandoned, which is of course much too inconvenient, for it is tantamount to popping out the pacifier from a baby's mouth.

The alternative?

Where Was The Outrage?

'The Return of the Prodigal Son' by Rembrandt ca. 1669, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg

 

A dear friend in New York sends me this in an e-mail:

"The last few days’ news coverage in Europe of the pending and then the actual execution of Saddam Hussein has been bewildering. It has removed some of the satisfaction of justice finally being done.  It is unbelievable how the “world” now in a reinvigorated fashion is calling for the ban of the death penalty. Where were these cries when Saddam Hussein, apart from all his well documented atrocities, regularly had innocent people condemned to death and executed by his favorite method – by hanging. But Saddam hanged people publicly letting the poor victims’ bodies remain hung for hours for public display and “games”. Where was the outrage by the world? Where was the outrage of the world when 9 innocent Jews were hung in a public spectacle accused of spying for Israel and where their through the wall air condition units were deemed to be secret radio transmitters? Nothing of what was allowed Saddam Hussein, was ever afforded to his innocent victims – Christians, Jews, Kurds and Shiites.

CNN and the International Herald Tribune have actually inferred that the US may be behind the execution, the trial was unfair, the US should never have handed Saddam over, life imprisonment would have been a crueler sentence, he will be more dangerous dead than alive, he will become a celebrated martyr in the Islamic world for standing up to America, the violence in Iraq will increase dramatically, the world will be outraged and broadly condemn the execution etc., etc. Each statement is ludicrous and irresponsible. It doesn’t only show bias against the US, clumsy and cheap flirtation with the Arab world, but it demonstrates ignorance, superficiality, total lack of responsibility and no attempt to uphold the most basic standards of journalism.

Could It Be?

 

The Baker-Hamilton Plan is all the talk of course (Iraq Study Group - or ISG for short), which in a nutshell is a proposal to reverse the strategy of taking the war-on-terror to the murdering thugs' home in favor of embracing them à la, 'keep your friends close, but your enemies closer'. Instead of fighting the Islamofascists, the ISG is opting for talks.

So, what does that mean? To be blunt, talking to the Mullahcracies in Iran communicates to the rest of the world two very important messages, both of which carrying enormous consequences:

One, conceding victory to Iran over domestic control in Iraq; fuelling bloodshed on the streets of Baghdad and getting the MSM to lay the blame on our doorstep has been a spectacular success for the Islamic spin doctors and their sympathizers/appologists all round. Surrender now would not be the consequence of failure or our inability to succeed, but because democracy has proven to be as weak and feckless a system as its adversaries assume.

The jihadi's theory of victory is simple; the West can be bullied into not lifting a finger to defend itself.

Victor David Hanson puts this first message, the all-important admission of defeat, into historical perspective when he writes, "A civilization that has lost confidence in itself cannot confront the Islamists."

What would a beleaguered Socrates, a Galileo, a Descartes, or Locke believe, for example, of the moral paralysis in Europe? Was all their bold and courageous thinking — won at such a great personal cost — to allow their successors a cheap surrender to religious fanaticism and the megaphones of state-sponsored fascism?

Just imagine in our present year, 2006: plan an opera in today's Germany, and then shut it down. Again, this surrender was not done last month by the Nazis, the Communists, or kings, but by the producers themselves in simple fear of Islamic fanatics who objected to purported bad taste. Or write a novel deemed unflattering to the Prophet Mohammed. That is what did Salman Rushdie did, and for his daring, he faced years of solitude, ostracism, and death threats — and in the heart of Europe no less. Or compose a documentary film, as did the often obnoxious Theo Van Gogh, and you may well have your throat cut in "liberal" Holland. Or better yet, sketch a simple cartoon in postmodern Denmark of legendary easy tolerance, and then go into hiding to save yourself from the gruesome fate of a Van Gogh. Or quote an ancient treatise, as did Pope Benedict, and then learn that all of Christendom may come under assault, and even the magnificent stones of the Vatican may offer no refuge — although their costumed Swiss Guard would prove a better bulwark than the European police. Or write a book critical of Islam, and then go into hiding in fear of your life, as did French philosophy teacher Robert Redeker.

And we need not only speak of threats to free speech, but also the tangible rewards from a terrified West to the agents of such repression. Note the recent honorary degree given to former Iranian President, Mohammad Khatami, whose regime has killed and silenced so many, and who himself is under investigation by the Argentine government for his role in sponsoring Hezbollah killers to murder dozens of Jewish innocents in Buenos Aires.

Two, the permanence of the State of Israel is in play; it's negotiable or as Hamas unabashedly demands "the international community correct its 1947 mistake," while in the same breath affirming that this doesn't negate its readiness to first take over the 1967 territories "without preconditions" - as per the "phased solution" model (i.e. Israel's phased destruction). Caroline Glick shouts out, "Jews Wake Up!"

The Day After

 

My Blogfather Hugh Hewitt puts it like this:

Congratulations are in order to the Dems who ran a skillful campaign that kept the focus on the GOP's scandals and away from the left's agenda. The GOP couldn't recover from Foley's repulsive conduct, and the enemy was willing to kill randomly in the run-up to the vote in order to demoralize an American public.

After an eventful night hosted by CNN and surrounded by some of our finest, Ed Morrissey is calling a spade a spade:

I don't think anyone can honestly look at the results tonight and say that we saw anything less than a trip to the woodshed for the Republicans. We may hold the Senate by the barest of margins, but the House is gone in a substantial manner. Some will make comparisons between this six-year election and those past (1986, 1974, 1958) and claim a moral victory in containing the losses, but that simply won't fly.

This is a big loss, and it will hurt the GOP and the Bush administration. Even if we do hold the Senate, we will have to find compromise candidates for the federal bench, and also look forward to more taxes and regulation. Free trade is a goner. The prosecution of the war on terror will get limited by a probable repeal of the Patriot Act, or at least an attempt to do so, and I'm very sure the Democrats will move to defund the operations in Iraq by a date certain in order to force a "phased redeployment".

And that's not even counting the myriad investigations that Democrats will launch against the Bush administration. Republicans will keep it from getting out of hand, but the Democrats will want to build enough damaging allegations to win again in 2008.

Ouch!!!

The Dichotomy

'Spectre Of Stockholm' by Peter Howson 1992, Private Collection, London

 

"We expect your retaliation; it's what unites us and divides you."

This from the mouth of a common thug and murdering terrorist, who is of course glorified among far too many fellow Muslims the world over as a 'mujahideen' or 'jihadist' fighter, spreading the glory of Islam.

His response is chilling to the bone as he is being interrogated shortly after his fellow Jihadist thugs had just managed to detonate a dirty bomb in the heart of London. A brilliant fictional but chillingly realistic drama called 'Dirty War' produced by British Luke Alkin. Hundreds of thousands dead, many more dying from radiation poisoning; major parts of the City of London cordoned off for the next 30 years due to contamination; countless businesses and lives ruined; property prices in free fall with no respite anywhere near in sight.   

The sanity of his actions were questioned, citing the inevitable retaliation, causing even more suffering among those, he calls brothers and claims to avenge. "We expect your retaliation; it's what unites us and divides you", brilliantly sums up everything that has happened since 9/11. We are dangerously divided over this issue, and it will be our downfall.

It is the most succinct description of the tragic dichotomy plaguing democratic nations and free societies both East and West: In contrast to a history of millennia during which the individual was virtually powerless and exposed to often limitless physical and mental abuse, we are now experiencing an era where never before in living memory one person, or a small group, is able to inflict cataclysmic devastation and carnage on literally millions whilst at the same time enjoying equally unprecedented levels of protection against any civil rights infringement, effectively barring any form of effective interrogation or prevention; this is compounded by the fact, that individuals are allowed to make their murderous intentions crystal clear by countless and unfailingly explicit announcements without fear of repercussion. It's there for all of us to see, hear and read, if only we chose to. But most of us don't.

Playing The Board

 

"You can tell everything you need to know about a state by how it treats its women" and "We need to stop calling Iraq a war; that was over a long time ago" are powerful statements. Thomas Barnett does not stop there, but makes his case for his future vision of US foreign policy and the dual role military intervention will have to face so as to tackle three incredibly tough ironies:

1. The shorter the war, the bigger the peace effort
2. The smaller the war force, the larger the peace force
3. The easier the war, the tougher the peace

Iraq is an ongoing testimony to this new paradigm. And al-Qaeda certainly sticks to the game-plan: encourage insurgency, engender chaos and wait for withdrawal.

The biggest mistake is to believe, that the U.S. can do or say anything to pacify the Islamofascists. It's not personal, as Barnett highlights, it's not who we are, but what we represent, namely globalization. The Islamic fundamentalists want to disconnect the Islamic world from globalization's 'creeping embrace' and to reconnect it to an idealized past, they believe it offers a better alternative.

In other words, a change in American foreign policy won't make things better.

Instead, argues Barnett, we need to appreciate, that most of Islam is not at war with globalization, but much more in conflict with itself over how best to join the globalized economy.

Which brings us to Iran as the key to the Middle East. Barnett believes, that we are "looking at the equivalent of late-Brezhnevian USSR, a tired, authoritarian regime we killed with connectivity." And that we can do the same again with the Mullahcracy.

And that is where the trouble starts. Barnett has no hesitation to go after terrorists with a new set of rules, meaning essentially, men with no names (special operations forces) go after men with no states (terrorists). But what if a country is ruled by a group of terrorists, as is the case with the Mullahs's grip on power in Iran since 1979 and in Gaza since Hamas won the elections earlier this year, and Hezbollah since we discovered they rule Lebanon?

Making Iran an ally seems impossible given the deeply embedded Mullahcracy and its terror network throughout the world. And allowing Iran to go nuclear is a risk only possible to contemplate after a regime change is not only successfully completed but has also stood the test of time. One thing is for certain, our Thug-In-Chief and his fellow murdering goons are not leaving without a mighty fight. So, even if a moderate regime should establish itself, daily violence would mar Tehran in much the same way as we are witnessing today in Baghdad.

TO WATCH THE VIDEO CLICK ON THE SCREEN-SHOT. IT'S FASCINATING DON'T MISS IT.

Muslim Glory Predicates Apocalypse

 

Thug-In-Chief Ahmadinejad confirms it again:

If he ever became the supreme decision maker in his country, [Ahmadinejad] would "sacrifice half of Iran for the sake of eliminating Israel," Giora Eiland, Israel's former national security adviser, told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday. [...]

The 49-year-old Iranian president, he said, "has a religious conviction that Israel's demise is essential to the restoration of Muslim glory, that the Zionist thorn in the heart of the Islamic nations must be removed. And he will pay almost any price to right the perceived historic wrong. If he becomes the supreme leader and has a nuclear capability, that's a real threat."

Maybe Venezuela President Hugo Chavez is secretly assuring China, that he can cover any Oil supply shortfalls once Iran fulfills its promise and consequently lies in ruins following the inevitable and equally devastating retaliatory nuclear strikes. Could be one reason why Chavez is so openly supportive of our Thug-In-Chief's genocidal cause. Nah, he's just backing whoever 'opposes' his capitalist arch-enemy, the United States of America. Pathetic really, especially as in the eyes of our Thug-In-Chief, he too is nothing but an Christian infidel, who either must convert to Islam or otherwise except Dhimmitude, namely second-class status under Sharia law.

Don't you just love it; first lure Israel into a false sense of security by calling for the need of a 'robust' force of up to 15,000 in order to get 1701 passed and implemented, only to do a complete u-turn: Even though we learn today that close to 7,000 European troops will be deployed, French President Jacques Chirac tells us that a level of 15,000 troops was "excessive'' and it made "no sense'' to have such a large contingent alongside the Lebanese army in the region. Go figure...

But why worry about enemies when you have friends like the French: 

Topsy-Turvy Works

'The Fall Of The Rebellious Angels' by Frans Floris, 1554, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp

 

I am so tired of the same old tactic simply to copy, parrot and plagiarize all and any criticism word for word so as to hurl it back at the critics with total impudence. Even worse though, is to see it work, as we are forced to witness every day all around us.

The Iranian Press Service provides a great summary of Arab voices condemning Hezbollah and Hamas for representing Iran's and Syria's genocidal interest both in Lebanon, the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip. The language is clear, frank and substantiated.

Then follows the retort from Iran and Syria:

"This was a New Imperialist War [...] it is the American administration that is making the decisions in this war against Lebanon, while Israel only carries out its instructions."

"This imperialist war to which Lebanon and the [Muslim] nation are being subjected proves that these new imperialists do not respect the U.N. resolutions or the Convention on Human Rights... Their only goal is to divide our Arab region and carve it up into smaller and smaller [pieces] in order to implement their [plan for a] 'New Middle East'. [...] The disturbing question in this context is this: Will the [Muslim] nation wake up [in time] to defend its identity and honor before we all sink?..."

"[The actions of] targeting Lebanon, changing its face, and redrawing its map are merely another stage in the series of hasty, foolish and reckless actions taken by the neo-conservatives in the U.S. and by their ally Israel with the aim of suborning the region to their authority, defeating it, and breaking its will".

"It is the Bush administration that is running... this destructive and murderous war, which moves [from one country to another in the Middle East], while Olmert's government supplies the mechanism [for carrying it out]. [In light of] the failure of [the American] strategy in Iraq and its helplessness [there] after so many years... America [has decided] - in order to compensate itself and cover up [its failure]... - to expand the circle of fire and death by aiming all this criminal, blind hatred at Lebanon..."

"The war that is currently waging [in Lebanon], with its declared and undeclared goals, makes us more certain than ever that Israel and the U.S. are the forces behind the assassination of [former Lebanese prime minister] Rafiq Al-Hariri. The assassination was part of an unsuccessful attempt by the U.S. to enforce U.N. Resolution 1559. The aggression [we see] today began because Israel, as it turns out, is the only one who benefits from this resolution and from Al-Hariri's assassination.."

It's really quite pathetic, but most effective in a climate, where those, who seek to form an honest opinion based on a reasonable degree of truth and a reasonable degree of informed judgment, are few and far between.

Take the first quote for example and replace 'the American administration' with 'Iran' and 'Israel' with 'Hezbollah' and you are staring at the truth:

"This was a New Imperialist War [...] it is Iran that is making the decisions in this war against Lebanon, while Hezbollah only carries out its instructions."

A Pivotal Moment In The History Of The Middle East

"The Raft of the Medusa" by Théodore Géricault 1818-19, Musée du Louvre, Paris

 

I want to share with you today important words of pristine clarity and reason. Furthermore, I shan't link to the source as yet, for I would like you to allow these words to live and breathe free from any association. For those of you who recognize it, please weigh in and discuss the content without mentioning the source.

Civilians in Lebanon and Israel have suffered from the current violence, and we recognize that responsibility for this suffering lies with Hezbollah. It was an unprovoked attack by Hezbollah on Israel that started this conflict. Hezbollah terrorists targeted Israeli civilians with daily rocket attacks. Hezbollah terrorists used Lebanese civilians as human shields, sacrificing the innocent in an effort to protect themselves from Israeli response.

Responsibility for the suffering of the Lebanese people also lies with Hezbollah's state sponsors, Iran and Syria. The regime in Iran provides Hezbollah with financial support, weapons, and training. Iran has made clear that it seeks the destruction of Israel. We can only imagine how much more dangerous this conflict would be if Iran had the nuclear weapon it seeks.

Syria is another state sponsor of Hezbollah. Syria allows Iranian weapons to pass through its territory into Lebanon. Syria permits Hezbollah's leaders to operate out of Damascus and gives political support to Hezbollah's cause. Syria supports Hezbollah because it wants to undermine Lebanon's democratic government and regain its position of dominance in the country. That would be a great tragedy for the Lebanese people and for the cause of peace in the Middle East.

Hezbollah and its foreign sponsors also seek to undermine the prospects for peace in the Middle East. Hezbollah terrorists kidnapped two Israeli soldiers, Hamas kidnapped another Israeli soldier for a reason. Hezbollah and Hamas reject the vision of two democratic states, Israel and Palestine, living side-by-side in peace and security. [...]

The conflict in Lebanon is part of a broader struggle between freedom and terror that is unfolding across the region. [...]

Iran's Promise: 'Evolution From Life To Death'

"Blind Power" by Rudolf Schlichter 1937, Berlinische Galerie, Berlin

 

Iran commands Hezbollah, and the rest of what has now become its vast 'foreign legion', and the sooner the world realizes it the better.

All who oppose the absolute determination of the Iranian mullahcracy to spread its murderous and utterly inhumane doctrine, are fighting for the same freedom; the quicker we realize that, the better.

Iran has outsourced its war against the infidels to Hamas, to Hezbollah, to Muqtada al-Sadar in Iraq, to name but a few.

Muqtada al-Sadr was dismissed as an irrelevant aberration with little purchase on the nation’s future. The coalition and its Iraqi partners considered his behavior inconsistent, his judgment erratic, his discourse radical and his movement chaotic. Underestimating him proved costly, but dealing with that we shall leave for another day. It is just important to understand that in the grand scheme of things he enjoys a significant popular backing and a power base in the Shiite slums of Baghdad, the city of Kufa, and the governorate of Maysan; his followers, for the most part impoverished Shiites, are remarkably determined and loyal, and have caused us plenty of trouble in these last few weeks.

Iran is supplying them all with money, weapons and most damaging of all, the very doctrine, which fuels their fire. They are all very closely and dangerously interlinked.

Hezbollah for their part have managed to infiltrate every pore of the Lebanese Government, and according to the statistics 'rule' 80% of the population. By entering the Government they have managed to divide and conquer the anti-Syrian sentiment, and undermine the opposition. President Emile Lahoud is a puppet of Syria, and Syria is a puppet of Iran.

U.S interests in the Middle East region suggest, that we need to support the democratically elected Government in Lebanon. But that does not mean that the Administration can afford to ignore, that this same Government was somehow unable to block the entrance of a terrorist organization into Parliament and that Syria's puppet President Lahoud is still the Commander-In-Chief. From President Lahoud himself:

I myself built up this army following the civil war and integrated all the religious groups: Muslims, Christians and Druze. This army is there to secure internal peace, but it is not an army to fight a war. [...] Naturally the strongholds of the resistance are not known. [...] The exchange of prisoners has always worked perfectly in the past. [...] Hezbollah enjoys utmost prestige in Lebanon, because it freed our country. All over the Arab world you hear: Hezbollah maintains Arab honor, and even though it (Hezbollah) is very small, it stands up to Israel. And of course Nasrallah has my respect. [...] We have today around half a million Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, their birth rate is three times higher than the Lebanese. That is a time bomb. [...]

Rhetoric, which clearly suggests, that Lahoud would gladly serve under a future Prime Minister Hassan Nasrallah, thereby effectively handing over control of the army to Hezbollah, or Iran, for that matter.

WMD Discovered In Southern Iraq

'The Tooth Puller' by Caravaggio ca.1609

 

UPDATE: I just had an e-mail from Dave Gaubatz, and he is meeting with Congressman Michael Burgess on 15 Aug. Will keep us updated.

As you all know I have written recently about David Gaubatz, an ex-intelligence officer, and former special investigator for The Pentagon, who has been trying for three years to get the American weapons inspectors and the media to listen to his claims that no less than four sealed underground bunkers in southern Iraq are believed to contain stocks of chemical and biological weapons.

Finally now, and after three long years of fighting to get the truth out, my friend Antimedia, informs me that the U.S. have positively identified WMD at the sites, and have

...begun excavating the four sites in southern Iraq which Gaubatz identified while in Iraq. Gaubatz told me this evening that he received a phone call from Congressman Burgess today informing him that WMD had been positively identified at the sites. Congressman Burgess just returned from Iraq, along with Congressman Hoekstra, after inspecting the work being done on the sites.

Apparently Hannity interviewed Senator Santorum today and Santorum revealed the discovery. Gaubatz told me

I am sure you have heard what Sen. Santorum told Sean Hannity today. There are WMD sites never inspected in Iraq and it has been confirmed WMD is there. Hannity asked him several times why the U.S. waited so long and if they are there why hasn't the U.S. retrieved them. Santorum stumbled and could not answer.

I'm not surprised Santorum would stumble. How can anyone explain ignoring the solid reporting of a top-notch intelligence agent for three years! before someone finally listened?

This breakthrough is the result of Dave's efforts, especially a meeting he had with DIA and the FBI in June. Apparently someone finally followed up! I will continue with my series on Gaubatz and the efforts he went through trying to get these sites exploited, but his persistence has finally paid off.

"I Agree With Howard Dean" There, I Said It...

 

Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean called Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki an "anti-Semite" for failing to denounce Hezbollah for its attacks against Israel

"The Iraqi prime minister is an anti-Semite," the Democratic leader told a gathering of business leaders in Florida. "We don't need to spend $200 and $300 and $500 billion bringing democracy to Iraq to turn it over to people who believe that Israel doesn't have a right to defend itself and who refuse to condemn Hezbollah."

Well Dean is right, sorry but he is. It may be for the wrong reasons, and his agenda is less than honest, but he is nevertheless right. So why I am not happy, I start questioning my motives...until this

....leading Senate Democrats said in a sharply worded letter that Al-Maliki's "failure to condemn Hezbollah's aggression and recognize Israel's right to defend itself raises serious questions about whether Iraq under your leadership can play a constructive role in resolving the current crisis and bringing stability to the Middle East."

Then I think all is all right with the world again, therein lies the motive...But still...

The Republican National Committee rejected Dean's criticism of Al-Maliki, saying, "It is incredibly troubling that Howard Dean would seek to score cheap political points by attacking the democratically elected prime minister of Iraq."

Well he might be democratically elected, but then so was Hamas. I don't care, I still don't like al-Maliki and I don't trust him. In this instance, I agree with Dean's sentiment. There, I said it. Maliki did not denounce Hezbollah, a terrorist organization who advocate the destruction of the State of Israel, or repudiate amnesty for Iraqis who killed Americans soldiers. This is not a man who should be honored right now, and I don't care what the Administration needs to prove to the American public regarding our successes in Iraq.

As for Dean's agenda I have left that for others to ravish.

Commander-In-Chief From Hell

 

"We are redefining our relations with the world," [Iranian] Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told a television program last week. "We are managing our relations with other countries based on our national interests and the way we are treated (over the nuclear dispute)."

No surprise in this statement from the Iranian Mullahs last month when Thug-In-Chief Ahmadinejad was shoring up support from Russia and China during the Asian security summit in China.

But we better revisit such statements pre Hezbollah attack on July 12th, knowing that they knew what was coming. We'd better sharpen our awareness to the fact, that everything the terrorist thugs in Iran were saying and doing during the past 9-12 months was said and done with the full knowledge of the plan to lighten the fuse in the Middle East via their proxy Hezbollah army. This new perspective matters not only in relation to Israel but also to Iran's expansionist strategies for Iraq and the region as a whole.

In short, U.S. Secretary of Sate Condoleezza Rice's mission during her visit to the Middle East must be to diminish "the power of Hezbollah's supporters; i.e. Syria and Iran", as Aljazeera noted - it's refreshing to come across accurate reporting and analysis, with the only difference that Aljazeera is of course condemning the attempt to dismantle Hezbollah and to implement Security Council resolution 1559. Yeah right.....

If Iran failed to continue to be Hezbollah's protector and supporter, it is unlikely to preserve its current position and influence in the region, which, in the eyes of the U.S.  government, is a goal worth pursuing.

And if ever you needed proof that Israel has no other choice but to flatten Hezbollah's strongholds, which aren't army barracks or military compounds, but exclusively civilian residential areas, read this interview of what must be the most pathetic commander-in-chief in living memory, and a man who will NEVER touch Hezbollah's stronghold, Lebanese President Emile Lahoud:

I myself built up this army following the civil war and integrated all the religious groups: Muslims, Christians and Druze. This army is there to secure internal peace, but it is not an army to fight a war. [...]

Naturally the strongholds of the resistance are not known. [...]

The exchange of prisoners has always worked perfectly in the past. [...]

Hezbollah enjoys utmost prestige in Lebanon, because it freed our country. All over the Arab world you hear: Hezbollah maintains Arab honor, and even though it (Hezbollah) is very small, it stands up to Israel. And of course Nasrallah has my respect. [...]

We have today around half a million Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, their birth rate is three times higher than the Lebanese. That is a time bomb. [...]

Does The Pentagon Suffer From 'MSM's Alzheimer's'?

Cross posted @ NewsBusters

I received an important e-mail from my good friend and brilliant blogger Antimedia, with startling information only thus far printed in the New York Sun back in February, and picked up by his local Dallas CBS news yesterday. "The Times was apparently too busy working on a story revealing national secrets" says Antimedia.

David Gaubatz, an ex-intelligence officer, and former special investigator for The Pentagon, has been trying for three years to get the American weapons inspectors and the media to listen to his claims that no less than four sealed underground bunkers in southern Iraq are believed to contain stocks of chemical and biological weapons. Antimedia:

According to Gaubatz "fresh" WMD were buried under the Euphrates River near Nasiriyah, in southern Iraq. He and other federal agents (civilians) identified, with the help of some local Iraqis who are now in the US (no doubt for their protection), four separate sites where WMD were buried, and to date no one has even bothered to check them. Charles Duelfer, according to Gaubatz, did a "substandard" job running the Iraqi Survey Group, the group tasked with tracking down Iraq's WMD.

So the question is, why does the Pentagon ignore repeated requests by one of their decorated ex-intelligence officers? The answer in my mind is simple: because it has developed a case of 'MSM's Alzheimer's' in the particular department that has the most to lose from this discovery, which would not only undermine their investigations, but have the Administration's wrath for calling off the search whilst still in possession of valuable information. From The New York Sun back in February, who carried out a telephone interview with Gaubatz

Mr. Gaubatz's new disclosures shed doubt on the thoroughness of the Iraq Survey Group's search for the weapons of mass destruction that were one of the Bush administration's main reasons for the war. Two chief inspectors from the group, David Kay and Charles Duelfer, concluded that they could not find evidence of the promised stockpiles. Mr. Kay refused to be interviewed for this story and Mr. Duelfer did not return email. The CIA referred these questions to Mr. Duelfer.

The media of course is not interested, as it would not only pulverize their absolute favorite 'Bush Lied People Died' meme, but throw spotlight on a war hero, which is their least favorite of all the combinations.

The Middle Finger Salute To The 'Bush Lied People Died' Hysterics

"Testa di Medusa" by Caravaggio 1598-99, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

 

I was out yesterday evening, and unable to blog about the newly declassified information concerning chemical weapons discovered in Iraq, although my middle finger was firmly up throughout the late afternoon pointing to the left. "This is critically important information that the world community needs to know” From Sen. Rick Santorum's Press Release:

U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, today announced that a declassified Army report provides further insight into the chemical and biological weapons programs in Iraq.

"Saddam's use of chemical and biological weapons to murder thousands upon thousands of Iranians and his own people confirmed long ago that he had them and was more than willing to use them," Hoekstra said. "The question has always concerned what happened to them."

The unclassified summary report of the Army's National Ground Intelligence Center states that since 2003, coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 munitions containing mustard or sarin nerve agent. It also states that chemical munitions are assessed to still exist in Iraq.

"The unclassified report provides further insight into Saddam's WMD, but it does not complete the picture of prewar Iraq," Hoekstra said. "The report simply provides additional evidence on what the Iraq Survey Group has already concluded - that Saddam Hussein was not in compliance with numerous U.N. resolutions requiring Iraq to destroy all of its WMD."

Sen. Rick Santorum and Rep. Pete Hoekstra, Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, on Hannity & Colmes video here.

It is clear to all of us that the President had his priorities firmly planted in the right place and felt that the co-operation of Russia and China, however uncertain, was more important than the hysterical left screaming "Bush lied people died". The left have been successfully throwing egg on the President's face, which has done little to uphold the credibility of the U.S. in the eyes of the world. This confidence has to be re-established now in view of the stand the world needs to take against Iran's nuclear ambitions.

"Probably more important is why has the administration not made this public beforehand," retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Tom McInerny said of the report. "I think the fact is that the Russians moved large stocks [of WMDs] out in the fall of 2002. ... They went into three locations into Syria, in one location in the Bekaa Valley. If you get in there and if you found those weapons and found the precursors, the fingerprints would go back to Russia, China and France. Now those are the three countries that had the most conventional weapons sales to Saddam Hussein. ... I believe they were complicit. So I don't think the administration wants to trash three of the five members of the [U.N.] Security Council."

The Perfect Storm

"Le Thérapeute (the Therapist)" by René Magritte 1937, Private Collection, Switzerland

 

Where do they all go? If al-Qaeda had anything to do with it, we would all be gassed to death.

Well, most won't miss this kind of shortage. Neither will he, for someone else will do all the worrying now. Obviously his version of ahem the iPod is the killer idea that should contribute to his early retirement.

I'm glad to consider myself part of a group of "very few principled others"; especially when up against "the policewomen, [who] were even harsher than their male colleagues. One policewoman chased a man while shouting insulting words at him, words that were insulting from a man’s perspective." Dressing up in sheep's clothing won't make a difference; just return to the more artful deceit gambits until going nuclear underground; especially with him around.

Is the author talking about the President?

He must provide strong leadership under the most trying circumstances. He must exercise impeccable judgment, often at times of extreme stress.

He must inspire public confidence at the very time our enemies are trying to instil panic and fear. If he fails, the consequences for our battle with terrorism will be severe.

Evidently not. But bookmark this story (Rice for President, eh?!) and blast it into the face of the next leftie hysteric.

Ah, Father's Day tomorrow, celebrating, umh, "barely civilised savages who might not manage to wipe their own bottoms, let alone a baby's"; just the thing not to say today... but there is always worse!

Calm down, and instead, when you go to church tomorrpw do take heed of the century old rabbinical wisdom and "pray for the welfare of the government, for, without the fear of it, people will swallow one another alive":

Without this understanding, people do indeed "swallow one another alive" and - one might add in the era of suicide bombings - swallow themselves in the process. [...]

In the past half-century, Muslims have come where the Jews came earlier, and in much larger numbers. Like such Jews, they have sometimes experienced the unhappiness that comes when one's religion is misunderstood or derided. Unlike the Jews, too many of their leaders tend to teach them that such slights must be avenged, that existence as a minority is just a temporary misfortune, not a state to be lived with, and that the law of England is virtually no law at all. If that attitude continues, society is reduced to a conflict about who will swallow whom alive. To avoid that is a huge and urgent task.

Amen to that.

Only Angels Have Wings

 

The first time I watched this video, it was mesmerizing, the second time, I cried...I guess that's a "chick thing"...

Then I could not stop myself from watching it over and over again. I love the part where the pilot is reading the map 100 ft off the ground. Awesome.

The music is simply brilliant. It's "The Champions" track from "The Mass" by Era. Strap in, headphones on, turn it up loud....
 

 

 

"If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when victory will be sure and not so costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no chance of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves."  Sir Winston Churchill

Thank you to my friend David @ Third World County who posted it originally, and who must have thought it was a "guy thing", because it was my buddy Rick @ The Real Ugly American who gave me the heads up. LOL!

Haditha's First Public Account

"Standing Figure" by Graham Sutherland 1952, Private Collection

 

Cross posted @ NewsBusters

You know when the Washington Post publishes three full pages of tight fitting text on the incident in Haditha, Jack Murtha's "murdered in cold blood" story is in trouble:

A sergeant who led a squad of Marines during the incident in Haditha, Iraq, that left as many as 24 civilians dead said his unit did not intentionally target any civilians, followed military rules of engagement and never tried to cover up the shootings, his attorney said.

Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich, 26, told his attorney that several civilians were killed Nov. 19 when his squad went after insurgents who were firing at them from inside a house. The Marine said there was no vengeful massacre, but he described a house-to-house hunt that went tragically awry in the middle of a chaotic battlefield.

Don't miss carefully reading every word of Josh White's page one story, which I have tried to condense for you. Pay particular attention to the account that a fragmentation grenade was thrown into the room, and one Marine fired a series of "clearing rounds" through the dust and smoke. The time span of the incidents seems to be a matter of minutes rather than several hours as the original Times account suggested.

"It will forever be his position that everything they did that day was following their rules of engagement and to protect the lives of Marines," said Neal A. Puckett, who represents Wuterich in the ongoing investigations into the incident. "He's really upset that people believe that he and his Marines are even capable of intentionally killing innocent civilians."

Wuterich's detailed version of what happened in the Haditha neighborhood is the first public account from a Marine who was on the ground when the shootings occurred. As the leader of 1st Squad, 3rd Platoon, Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, Wuterich was in the convoy of Humvees that was hit by a roadside bomb. He entered the house from which the Marines believed enemy fire was originating and made the initial radio reports to his company headquarters about what was going on, Puckett said.[...]

The Power Vacuum

"Judith Beheading Holofernes" by Artemisia Gentileschi 1611-12, Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples

 

Yesterday's image on ATB, representing the head of the evil in Iraq, may well prove more prophetic than I initially had dared to hope. Over 40 raids carried out yesterday, many of which would have yielded yet again further intelligence leading to more raids, could end the current impunity with which these murdering thugs go about their grizzly campaign of terror.

Let me be bold and say, that we will look back at these days and say: "these were the days when the back of insurgency terror was broken in Iraq".

I think nobody has as yet realized the full extent to which these thugs have been sent packing; on their way to hell of course...; don't want them popping up anywhere else, especially not in US affiliated prisons - we've hopefully learned our lesson that it doesn't pay keeping any of them alive, only for the Bergs and Sheehans of this crazy world to drape themselves with stickers, buttons and nauseating sound-bites.

Andrew Sullivan disagrees and puts forward his trusted source who says:

You know as well as I do that Zarqawi's death will not change things dramatically here as that is seriously a micro-event. The financial incentive to keep this war going - illegal corruption in the oil sector under the cover of chaos - is a macro-event that is so much larger that it trumps any desire to end this thing. The intensity, which most think has increased has dramatically decreased against US forces and turned toward the easiest means to keep this going, which is to have the Iraqis kill each other. Zarqawi was a master at stoking those flames so it will (already has) get very interesting.

By assessing correctly that al-Zarqawi was a master at stoking the flames of sectarian violence our good soldier contradicts his opening assertion that things will not change dramatically, confirming in fact my opinion.

The future in Iraq looks brighter indeed, although for some of the learned conspiracy theorists on the left, accusing the Administration of a "psychological operations campaign run out of the Pentagon", peace of mind is far from secured. We even had the attack on the frame shot used by the U.S. military on al-Zarqawi's dead body with the usual: "chilling", "bizarre", "disturbing", "suggests a cynicism" and was nothing more than a "trophy". 

AP is scraping the bottom of the barrel today: "unidentified source claims a man looking like wounded al-Zarqawi was beaten by American troops". Oops sorry, apparently he was "pulled out of the ambulance and beaten".  CBS confirms the unsubstantiated "U.S. troops arriving on the scene wrapped the man's head in an Arab robe and began beating him." L.A. Times confirms that an Iraqi lieutenant witnessed soldiers taking him off the stretcher and in the process of attempting to question him, repeatedly stood on his chest causing him to bleed from mouth and chest.

I am shocked, shocked, at the possibility of this gross misconduct. Having dropped two 500 lb bombs in order to eliminate the terrorists in the first place, they really should have dropped to their knees and given the man immediate mouth to mouth resuscitation. In fact isn't killing a terrorist against the Geneva convention? Well if not the Geneva one, surely we can dig up some other agreement which this brutal act would contravene. Despite the setbacks “Democrats Vow to Fight On After Zarqawi Loss.”

The MSM's Doomsday Dogma

"The Head of Medusa" by Pieter Pauwel Rubens c. 1617, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

 

Cross posted @ NewsBusters

Peter Wehner, Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of the White House's Office of Strategic Initiatives, highlights what most of us keep forgetting because the MSM refuses to ever cover it:

The death of Abu Musab al Zarqawi also underscores the difficulty al Qaeda terrorists have been encountering in Iraq. Most of the media narrative about Iraq has been on the difficulties the United States faces. Those difficulties are real -- but they are far from the full story. What goes almost unnoticed is the enormous series of body blows our enemies have sustained. We have by now intercepted several key communications among terrorists in Iraq over the years -- and we keep learning about their despair at the progress of democracy and their unhappiness with the course of events.

The death of Mr. Zarqawi will add immeasurably to their troubles.

Media spin did of course take it much further:

Many in the Arab world doubted whether the Jordanian-born Zarqawi even existed. (Some reports indicate that Jordanian intelligence provided information on the location where he was killed.)

Living up to the Arab conviction in "conspiracy theories", many argued that Zarqawi was created by the Americans to justify their problems in Iraq. Whenever something went wrong, they would blame it on Zarqawi.

Don't miss my two favorites Hugh Hewitt and Mark Steyn bidding adieu to al-Zarqawi. The audio is here.

Some especially jaded champagne communists of the Left are calling the killing a stunt and make every effort to discredit the struggle for Iraq's liberation. Their doomsday dogma for Iraq remains unchanged despite the clear assessment of Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki. After all, who is he to know...

This might perhaps explain why a young Iraqi reporter and blogger @ Treasure of Baghdad, who refers to his homeland as "...a destroyed country torn between politics and violence", and who thus far has been an outspoken critic of the "US occupation", why he has changed his mind and for the first time welcomes our finest. My friend Rick @ The Ugly American alerted me to his post and I wholeheartedly share his sentiment that this is a powerful barometer. The Iraqi people may well view Zarqawi's death as far more important than we'll ever be able to fathom. After recounting some particularly gruesome memories etched into our reporter's young mind, his words of jubilation and newfound hope speak best for themselves:

Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi Is Dead...Again (UPDATED)

 

SCROLL DOWN FOR UPDATE BREAKING

Crross posted @ NewsBusters

I shall keep you posted as the news comes in throughout the day, ABC news came in first, it is still 3.00am EST, and nothing yet on the Blogs. [Oops correction, sorry Vinnie] I am dying to see what the reactions will be as the news spreads throughout the Jihadi cyberspace. Allahu Akbar indeed.

The press is all a flutter now, news agencies around the world are buzzing with the news that the the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the militant who led a bloody campaign of suicide bombings, kidnappings and hostage beheadings in Iraq, is dead...again. I say again, because his death has been a subject of flurried debate several times during the course of the last couple of years. This time he really is dead, and losing his head does not really count, nor does setting the Muslim mind on fire. Shame though, he was scheduled for martyrdom, but I guess the 72 virgins will after all prove the better option.

He has reportedly been killed in a U.S. air raid northeast of Baghdad [confirmed now], as a result of 17 raids overall

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said al-Zarqawi was killed along with seven aides Wednesday evening in a house 30 miles northeast of Baghdad in the volatile province of Diyala.

"Today, al-Zarqawi was eliminated," al-Maliki told a news conference, drawing loud applause from reporters as he was flanked by U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and U.S. Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq.

Al-Maliki said the air strike was the result of intelligence reports provided to Iraqi security forces by residents in the area, and U.S. forces acted on the information.

"Those who disrupt the course of life, like al-Zarqawi, will have a tragic end," he said.

Khalilzad added "the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is a huge success for Iraq and the international war on terror."

Andrew Cochran @ Counterterrorism Blog confirms that "facial recognition, fingerprints, and DNA testing confirmed he was killed at 6:15 pm on June 7 in Iraq".

Are these guys for real, and whose side are they on exactly. Their own, yeah that sums it up

“Where is Osama? Where are the batillions of trained Iraqis? Doesn’t matter, we got this guy, right? We wrote a 25 million check as a reward, and get a new headline to bump off Haditha.”

Everyone picking up on the news now: Michelle Malkin, one of the first as always has the best round up and a video, Pajamas Media has what is turning out to be an exhaustive round up (don't miss their podcast), Iraq The Model is on the ground and Gary Gross is fast off the mark, and so was Beth @ MRWC, Ed Morrissey @ Captain's Quarters has more, Mark in Mexico has been up all night, PoliPundit, Ed Driscoll is up, Hot Air and again the latest from Allah, who notes the Iraqis dancing in the street, Wizbang, Mary Katherine Ham @ Hugh Hewitt, Counterterrorism Blog, Rick Moran delivers the slam dunk, Outside The Beltway is hot on the case, Marc Schulman's great blog American Future, Blackfive, my friend Patrick Belton @ OxBlog, Lorie Byrd @ Wizbang has more. and so does Jim @ Gateway Pundit.

Mark Finkelstein @ NewsBusters is already onto the media spin, and Tim Graham on the MSM's Bush derangement syndrome, and the father of the beheaded Nicholas Berg who is in a typical left wing forgiving mode. Already called a stunt!

Crystal Ball Glazing

 

It's a busy day.

First the good news: We are still alive, the world has not come to an apocalyptic end. Thank God.

But then again, Victor David Hanson has Europe's days of old numbered and things don't look so good for the 56 kidnapped in broad daylight. "The roundup displayed all the signs of an unrelenting kidnapping epidemic in Baghdad. [...] Usually the hostages are held for ransom. Sometimes they are killed because of their faith or ethnicity." In general, such brazen attacks on what clearly was yet another insolent attack on the civilian population, including Sunni Arabs and Shi'ite Muslims, strengthens rather than weakens people's resolve to restore law and order, irrespective of the disparaging commentary from the MSM and certain 'specialists'.

Back home, prepare for a massive broadside  against the Administration and include me as a puzzled bystander. Tony Snow, you'd better fasten your seatbelt and prepare to defend the legal perils inherent in leaving the definition of whether humiliation is torture or not open to interpretation, especially when facing intense pressure from a hostile public opinion, as the Pentagon's reasoning for striking the Geneva Convention rules against prisoner humiliation from its basic guide to soldier conduct; it's about to get rough and this won't do, even when the President bailed you out.

Let's take heart and keep on pushing back at the growing threat that "a superpower that wallows in paranoia and glorifies self-loathing cannot endure and doesn't deserve to", and oppose those who gratuitously adulterate their self-serving criticism with the tone of righteous sententiousness. Could these strong words from an unexpected source be a sign...?  Or is it too late?

Meanwhile, Andy McCarthy takes the MSM to task over the Canadian terrorist plot, "Once the press finally summons the courage to utter that Muslims have been arrested, its primary duty is to obsess over how the “Muslim community” will react", rather than telling us that their "creed commands them to murder".

I join my friends in Israel and "stand back and watch" the evolving fall-out following the collapsed talks between Hamas and Fatah. Stay tuned for a bloody and most certainly messy wrangling for power and the count-down for Washington's strike against Iranian nuclear installations, "probably before the end of 2006", if Spengler's crystal ball is correctly tuned.

Get Me Another Marine Murder Story In Iraq And Get It Now!

 

Cross posted @ NewsBusters

"Marines to Face Charges in Iraqi's Death", trumpets The Guardian this morning.

No, this is not related to the Haditha story. This is a new development. It tells the story of an alleged murder on April 26 in Hamandiya, complete with allegations of a frame and cover up plot. And, of course there is talk of 'motive'; or the lack of it.

When the Pentagon announced it was investigating the death it provided no details about the incident other than to say that "several service members'' from the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment were suspected of involvement. The servicemen were "removed from operations'' and sent back to the U.S. pending the results of the criminal investigation, it said.

Sullivan said the eight men are being held in solitary confinement.

"There's concern about the publicity of Haditha having a detrimental impact on the case,'' he said. "My concern is the whole politics of this. There's an assumption that these guys are guilty before there's been an opportunity for a thorough, impartial investigation.''   

And then there is "US probes new Iraq massacre claim" video also fresh in this morning. Again, talk is of "rounding up and deliberately shooting 11 people in the house, including five children and four women, before blowing up the building". We also learn, that "the pictures came from a hardline Sunni group opposed to coalition forces. It has been cross-checked with other images taken at the time of events and is believed to be genuine".

I can just hear the editors the world over screaming their heads off: "GET ME ANOTHER MARINE MURDER STORY IN IRAQ. I DON'T CARE WHERE YOU GET IT, JUST GET IT."

Pride And Prejudice

"Witches in the Air" by Goya 1797-98, Museo del Prado, Madrid

 

Every Christmas and Easter, a story of sorts surfaces relating to a vicious attack on Christ or our faith in general. This year it was time to spin the Gospel of Judas again in time for Easter, preceded by the usual declaration of war on Christmas, timed perfectly to coincide with our celebrations.

True to tradition, and right on time, Memorial Day is no exception. The otherwise sombre occasion gets polluted by glimpses of human nature's uglier custom: Blatant opportunism, in the form of another anti-war push from the left with Rep. John Murtha leading the charge. It follows his outrageous Press Conference earlier this month, which we covered here, [don't miss the photo, it's priceless] announcing that U.S. Marines had killed civilians "in cold blood", marking a six month anniversary of his last spectacular political failure, when he tried to implement the cut and run policy favored by the Democrats.

So now as the nation observes Memorial Day, a time to remember the brave, and weep for the fallen U.S. soldiers, we have an all out brazen Murtha Memorial Day attack, appearing on every talk show that would have him, with his "in cold blood" mantra, claiming in advance a verdict of guilt, ahead of any court martial or even the release of formal charges. For a person holding the public office of Congressman this is an inexcusable behavior. We have a judicial process which is taking its course at this very moment, concluding in official charges and a subsequent verdict, neither of which we have had.

The anti-war brigade are right on time, with their own political agendas which have little to do with the the efforts of hundreds of thousands of American and coalition servicemen in Iraq, and everything to do with discrediting their very existence.

As one of the Marines, Ilario Pantano, exonerated from an incident last year avers:

The system is not served by such grand pronouncements of horror and guilt without the accuser even having read the investigative report.

Mr. Murtha's position is particularly suspect when he is quoted by news services as saying that the strain of deployment "has caused them [the Marines] to crack in situations like this." Not only is he certain of the Marines' guilt but he claims to know the cause, which he conveniently attributes to a policy he opposes.

Members of the U.S. military serving in Iraq need more than Mr. Murtha's pseudo-sympathy. They need leaders to stand with them even in the hardest of times. Let the courts decide if these Marines are guilty. They haven't even been charged with a crime yet, so it is premature to presume their guilt -- unless that presumption is tied to a political motive.

No Regrets

"Christ at the Sea of Galilee" by Tintoretto c. 1575/80, National Gallery of Art, Washington

BUMPED UP AND UPDATED THROUGHOUT THE DAY WITH MORE MEMORIAL DAY BLOGGING LINKS, MEANWHILE PLEASE SEND URGENT CONDOLENCES TO THE ANCHORESS WHO HAS SUFFERED A GREAT LOSS WITH THE DEATH OF HER LIFE LONG FRIEND AND BROTHER IN LAW

Victor Davis Hanson has another must read perfectly poised for this Memorial Day weekend, looking back at our accomplishments in Iraq:

"There may be a lot to regret about the past policy of the United States in the Middle East, but the removal of Saddam Hussein and the effort to birth democracy in his place is surely not one of them. And we should remember that this Memorial Day.

Whatever our righteous anger at Khomeinist Iran, it was wrong, well aside from the arms-for-hostages scandal, to provide even a modicum of aid to Saddam Hussein, the great butcher of his own, during the Iran-Iraq war.

Inviting the fascist Baathist government of Syria into the allied coalition of the first Gulf War meant that we more or less legitimized the Assad regime’s take-over of Lebanon, with disastrous results for its people.

It may have been strategically in error not to have taken out Saddam in 1991, but it was morally wrong to have then encouraged Shiites and Kurds to rise up — while watching idly as Saddam’s reprieved planes and helicopters slaughtered them in the thousands.

A decade of appeasement of Islamic terrorism, with retaliations after the serial attacks — from the first World Trade Center bombing to Khobar Towers and the USS Cole — never exceeding the occasional cruise missile or stern televised lecture, made September 11 inevitable.

A decade was wasted in subsidizing Yasser Arafat on the pretense that he was something other than a mendacious thug.

I cite these few examples of the now nostalgic past, because it is common to see Iraq written off by the architects of these past failures as the “worst” policy decision in our history, a “quagmire” and a “disaster.” Realists, more worried about Iran and the ongoing cost in our blood and treasure in Iraq, insist that toppling Saddam was a terrible waste of resources. Leftists see the Iraq war as part of an amoral imperialism; often their talking points weirdly end up rehashed in bin Laden’s communiqués and Dr. Zawahiri’s rants.

But what did 2,400 brave and now deceased Americans really sacrifice for in Iraq, along with thousands more who were wounded? And what were billions in treasure spent on? And what about the hundreds of collective years of service offered by our soldiers? What exactly did intrepid officers in the news like a Gen. Petreus, or Col. McMaster, or Lt. Col Kurilla fight for?

The Murtha Court-Martial

 

Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa), one of the Bush Administration's chief critics, and an ex-Marine himself has made a public accusation that U.S. Marines had “killed innocent civilians in cold blood” after allegedly responding to a roadside bomb ambush that killed a Marine during a patrol in Haditha, Iraq, Nov.19th.

What happened in Haditha we know not, but we can tell you that Murtha's description is false, for the simple reason that it is self-contradictory. If the Marines "overreacted," then the killings were not premeditated. They could not have killed both in the heat of the moment and in cold blood. Murtha therefore either is slandering the Marines by exaggerating their guilt or making excuses for horrific war crimes.

Why would he do such a thing? The key is that phrase "because of the pressure on them." They're depraved on account of they're deployed: Murtha seeks to maximize the evil of the alleged crimes while simultaneously deflecting blame from the actual perpetrators to those who have applied "pressure" to them--i.e., civilian leaders in the executive branch.[...]

Sound familiar? This was just what John Kerry did back in 1971, when he told tales (many of them false) of war crimes in Vietnam. Yet in his own mind, he wasn't accusing troops of anything, as he explained in a 2004 CNN interview:

I was accusing American leaders of abandoning the troops. And if you read what I said, it is very clearly an indictment of leadership. I said to the Senate, where is the leadership of our country? And it's the leaders who are responsible, not the soldiers. I never said that. I've always fought for the soldiers.

The fact that the incident is still under official investigation does not seem to bother Murtha, nor does the fact that this supposed 'brand new allegation' was already reported back in March seem to bother NBC, who are hyping this to be the hottest news story. Hardball's Chris Mathews is all ablaze at the 'revelation', video @ Political Pitbull:

MATTHEWS: Draw us a picture of what happened in Haditha.

Ahmadinejad's Lorem Ipsum

 

SCROLL DOWN FOR IMPORTANT UPDATE THURSDAY MAY 11TH

Thug-In-Chief Ahmadinejad scored quite a success with his 18-page letter to President Bush. Timing was of course carefully orchestrated to coincide with his high-profile visit to a key Muslim country, Indonesia.

Remember 'Lorem Ipsum', the standard placeholder text used in publishing and graphic design to demonstrate the graphic elements of a document or visual presentation? Well, as soon as we realize that our Thug-In-Chief might as well have used such dummy text, that the content never mattered, we understand this simple but as it turns out most effective strategy to shift the dynamic away from being in the defensive and to firmly place the ball into the opponents court. Amir Taheri puts it best:

Something interesting is happening with regard to the crisis over Iran's nuclear ambitions. Slowly the blame is shifting from the mullahs to the Bush administration as the debate is redirected to tackle the hypothetical question of U.S. military action rather than the Islamic Republic's real misdeeds. "No War on Iran" placards are already appearing where "No Nukes for Iran" would make more sense.

The attempt at fabricating another "cause" with which to bash America is backed by the claim that the mullahs are behaving badly because Washington refuses to talk to them. Some of this buzz is coming from those who for years told the U.S. to let them persuade Iran to mend its ways. They include German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and his British and French colleagues in the European Union trio that negotiated with Iran for years. Preparing to throw in the towel, they now say the U.S. should "directly engage" Iran. That would enable them to hide their failures and find a pretext for blaming future setbacks on the U.S.

The letter is of course just one building block in this effort to ultimately shift the perception of 'Mistrust' from the lying, cheating and generally contemptuous Iranian Mullahs to that of our Administration. Most of our Liberal friends are of course only too eager to support the Thug-In-Chief in his effort, as Mark Noonan @ Blogs for Bush points out:

Honestly, except for his closing mumbo-jumbo about everyone getting ready to worship his version of Allah, there isn't the slightest difference between Ahmadinejad's letter and the average speech by Al Gore, Howard Dean or Russ Feingold.

We are also little surprised to be told by Iranian political analyst Saeed Leilaz that the letter "could have been the beginning of a new process," and that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's reaction, which has of course already been labeled as a 'quick brushoff', would fuel anti-American feelings in Iran; that her response would "strengthen the suspicion (inside Iran) that the U.S. is thinking of a military option only and not a political solution" to the standoff over Iran's nuclear program.

Just what the Left wants to hear.

Meanwhile, Iran Focus confirms that 8 out of 10 foreign insurgents in Iraq come from Iran, with the remaining more or less coming from Afghanistan.

Restoring Humility To Our National Psyche In The Face Of Nihilism

 

Victor Davis Hanson has a fine essay out today called "The Prison of the Present".

I rarely disagree with him and on his many brilliant insights, especially when put so expertly in historical context, as Hanson has again succeeded to do.

The question "..aren't choices usually between the bad and the far worse?.." leads to very relevant historical comparisons, which do not seek to "..excuse present mistakes by citing worse ones from the past--or to suggest that all wars are always the same. Much less should history's examples be used to stifle necessary contemporary criticism that alone leads to remedy."

Instead, Hanson believes that "..knowledge of the capricious nature of wars of the past can restore a little humility to our national psyche":

We need it. Ours is the first generation of Americans that thinks it can demand perfection in war. Our present leisure, wealth, and high technology fool us into thinking that we are demi-gods always be able to trump both human and natural disasters. Accordingly, we become frustrated that we cannot master every wartime obstacle, as we seem otherwise to be able to do with computers or cosmetic surgery. Then, without any benchmarks of comparison from the past, we despair that our actions are failed because they are not perfect.

The key question to me, one which is constantly on my mind these days, is the one concerning the level of the current collective "Confidence" in ourselves as a Nation and whether such confidence or the lack of it, if this is indeed the case, lies at the heart of the acrimonious divide which has beset our nation in the face on the war on terror.

Hanson certainly seems to think so and believes that we as a Nation are less confident than our fathers and forefathers were decades ago under far worse circumstances and he provides very compelling arguments to support his view:

But why did a poorer, less educated, and more illiberal United States in far bloodier and more error-ridden wars of the past still have greater confidence in itself? Was it that our ancestors, who died younger and far more tragically, did not expect their homeland to be without flaws, only to be considerably better than the enemy's?

Perhaps we have forgotten such modesty because we have ignored the study of history that alone offers us guidance from our forbearers. It now competes as an orphan discipline with social science, -ologies and -isms that entice us into thinking that the more money and education of the present can at last perfect the human condition and thus consign our flawed past to irrelevance.

The result is that while sensitive young Americans seem to know what correct words and ideas they must embrace, they derive neither direction nor solace from past events. After all, very few could identify Vicksburg or Verdun, much less have any idea where or what Iwo Jima was. In such a lonely prison of the present what are historically ignorant Americans to make of a Fallujah or an Iranian madman's threat of annihilation other than such things can't or shouldn't or must not happen to us?

So, of this present war, I think our war-torn forefathers would say to us that both messy Afghanistan and Iraq are better places without their dictators even if they never will resemble Carmel or Austin.

They would add that it is not unusual to be confronted with new crises even after such apparently easy victories. And they would shrug that however scary Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Iran now appears, it poses nothing new or insurmountable to a confident and strong United States that has dealt with far more serious enemies in the past with its accustomed wisdom and resolve.

Which begs the question, how would those opposed to the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, those opposed to the use of military force to depose dictators no matter how much blood they have on their hands and those who subscribe to the notion of an 'imperialistic' America respond to such history lessons. What would their reaction be, after they'd learned about the immense heroism on both the U.S. side and that of Japan during the Iwo Jima campaign? Would it make any difference?

I fear not. I rather suspect, it would be dismissed outright and all involved derided as 'fools' and 'idiots' at best and 'war criminals' at worst.

Which leaves me in doubt as to whether the lack of 'National Confidence', if indeed found to be true, is in fact an important reason for the opposition and divide. Furthermore, I am not at all sure whether we suffer from a lack of confidence; on the contrary, I believe we suffer from acute selfaggrandizement and individualistic hyperbole, which in the final analysis is nothing but ignorant arrogance as it is both hollow and superficial in all its aspects.

All the more reason why Hanson's call for humility is absolutely key. I just don't believe, that there is anything anyone can do or say that will instill a growing sense of humility other than a growing believe in the power of faith in God the Almighty. And that isn't exactly a convincing argument is it...

In many ways, the term 'Clash of Civilizations' contains the seeds of a most comprehensive truth. I am afraid though that we will have to come to terms with the fact, that the lines will prove to be much more blurred and drawn criss-cross throughout our society. Just when we reluctantly acknowledge the reality of a long-drawn-out conflict centering around religious beliefs; just when we thought that the factions could be limited to those of Judea-Christian beliefs versus Islamic ones, must we realize, that the scope is far wider: Faith versus Skepticism with all its variations such as cynicism, pessimism, disbelief, agnosticism, atheism, and anti-Semitism. In short, the rejection of all religious and moral principles, often in the belief that life is meaningless, otherwise called Nihilism.

"Allahu Akbar" Indeed

SCROLL DOWN FOR IMPORTANT UPDATE ON THE MURDER OF ATWAR BAHJAT

Friday evening, time to party. Parents are delighted as boys and girls stay separated; no worrying there. Except, some sons and daughters have not returned home on time. Initial phone calls to friends fail to shed any further light on their whereabouts.

Then comes the phone call from the AVP. You wonder what AVP stands for? Anti Vice Police. "We have arrested your daughter. She was caught attending a mixed-sex party." Anxiously you ask to speak to her. "Not possible, she's still unconscious."

Unconscious? Why unconscious. What happened to her. But then the full extent of the offense begins to dawn on you. Of course, you think, she would have been flogged inside the offices of the Ministry of Justice. They don't wait to carry out the punishment. It's instant. After all, there is no need for a hearing of sorts, no possibility or denial. She was attending a mixed-sex party, that's an unassailable fact.

You picture her back covered in deep lacerations. The pain would have been too much for her to bear. Her beautiful soft and blemish-free skin; she was always so proud of her lovely complexion. And the shame, you begin to feel her utter shame and horrendous humiliation when they forced her to strip off her shirt and bra in front of all these men. No doubt they were cracking jokes and being rude. After all, in their eyes she was practically a prostitute, and as such fair game.

By now your agony is unbearable. You know that this night will forever change her life for the worse. You collapse onto your knees and sob uncontrollably. The shame, the shame she has brought onto your family. What will her father say....

Tehran, Iran, May 05 – Iranian authorities flogged 54 people for attending a mixed-sex party in the northern province of Mazandaran, a state-run daily reported.

The men and women were arrested by the “anti-vice police” in a park in the suburbs of the town of Babol as they were partying during the night, the daily Iran wrote on Thursday.

The report said that all 54 men and women were flogged inside the offices of the Ministry of Justice in Babol.

Co-ed parties are banned in Islamic Iran. Thousands of teenage boys and girls were arrested last year for taking part in similar parties. Some were flogged in public.

These are real people, somebody's real sons and daughters. It's hard not fall into the trap laid out for us by the dry rhetoric of the laconic reporting, if indeed there is any.

Every time this happens, we must allow the enormity of these barbaric actions carried out routinely by the Iranian government to take full effect. We must each time contrast them with our values and beliefs and with our liberties we so treasure.

Every time Iranian youths are subjected to the barbarism of 100 lashes, every time their backs are left covered in huge bloody welts, we need to repeat out loud the words of OutRage!

The Political Correctness That Strangles Debate On Islam

"St Mark Freeing a Christian Slave" by Tintoretto 1548, Accademia, Venice

 

Thank you to my dear friend Professor "Guest" who pointed out a brilliantly portrayed story from Diana West:

No one has ever adequately explained why the jihadist "insurgency" fights on in Iraq. Really. It's not enough to say these Islamic fanatics want to drive "infidel" American forces out of Iraq, or that they want to bring down the Iraqi government. It is by remaining in Iraq that the United States has built up a democratically elected but Islamic government — and an Islamic government is the goal of every good jihadist. In other words, our Islamic enemies should be at peace with the Iraqi government because its constitution makes Islamic law supreme. "No law that contradicts the established provisions of Islam may be established," says Article 2. That single line contains the blueprint for a Shariah state, and if there's one thing a jihadist likes, it's a Shariah state.

Recently, Sayyed Ayad, a liberal member of the Iraqi parliament who favors the separation of church (mosque) and state, spoke in Washington. When I asked him what could be done under Iraq's constitution to foster democracy, not Shariah, his answer was chilling. Pointing out that Iraqi voters chose this Shariah-supreme document, he said: "They have to try it for 10 or 20 years, and then change it." Maybe.

Which leads me to another point no one has adequately explained: why exactly Americantroops fight on in Iraq. Sure, the objective is to destroy the hellions of the insurgency — a killing machine more aptly and derisively described by the late journalist Steven Vincent as "paramilitary death squads." And I still believe the goal of killing jihadists "there," not "here," is entirely commendable. But even after their destruction, does an American victory lie in making Iraq safe for Shariah?

The Forgotten War

 

"While the Bush administration is on the defensive for its conduct of the war in Iraq, the real setback in the U.S. war effort is coming in Afghanistan where the Taliban is alive, well and thriving throughout the countryside and even in much of neighboring Pakistan.[...]

The news comes in part from an interview with Hamid Mir, the only journalist to conduct face-to-face interviews with Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri in the wake of 9-11.

Mir, who has just completed an extensive tour of both countries, says that Pakistanis in government vehicles are no longer permitted to enter Waziristan, Baluchistan, and other tribal areas without the permission of local Taliban commanders. Muslim men who wander into this area without beards are routinely cast into prison as apostates. Kafirs (non-Muslims) are assumed to be enemy agents; most are put to death. Women are only permitted to appear in public in full burqa. And Shariah has become the rule of the land with regular occurrences of stoning, crucifixion and decapitation.

Over 1,500 Pakistanis in recent months, according to Mir, have been publicly executed for saying something in support of the regime of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and the coalition forces. Most were beheaded. The victims, Mir says, were "not ordinary people but very prominent people."

Regarding the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan, Mir contends that Afghan police are "weak"; that the coalition forces "limited in number"; and that the Pashtun people remain fiercely dedicated to Osama bin Laden and his jihad against the West.

Mir claims he has personally visited 12 provinces of Afghanistan in the past few weeks and has received first-hand confirmation that the Taliban has regrouped, recaptured much of the country, and remains intent upon ousting the coalition forces and toppling the puppet regime of President Hamid Karzai. [...]

Support for the Taliban in the form of munitions and money is coming from Iran and Russia.

Of course. Iran wants its Oil and Gas supplied directly to China via Afghanistan and Putin wants to be the broker.

The Iranian-Taliban alliance, Mir maintains, is a new, unique and disturbing development. When the Taliban came to power in 1996, Mullah Omar and his army were decried by the Shiite mullahs in Iran for the massacre of thousands of Shiite Hazaras and Panjshiri Tajiks. Iran began to send money and arms to Ahmed Shah Massoud and his opposition army of Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazaras that became known as the "United Front" or "Northern Alliance." The Russians also came to the support Massoud's army to protect the interests of Uzbekistan.

The Northern Alliance continued to receive support from Iran and Russia until the launching of Operation Enduring Freedom (the codename for the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan) Oct. 7, 2001. Overnight, the Iranian and Russian advisers to Massoud became replaced by CIA operatives and Green Beret A team members.

A major blowback of the war on terror, according to Mir, is that Iran and Russia are now allied in Afghanistan on the side of their old enemy.

The first major indication of Iran's change of heart toward the Taliban came in the wake of the bombing of Tora Bora in December 2001, when Mullah Omar and hundreds of his soldiers and al-Qaida agents, scaled the mountains between the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, cut through the southern provinces of Afghanistan and headed west to Iran, where they found safe refuge, thanks to the intervention of Imad Mugniyah and the other leaders of Hezbollah.

For all of you, who are not immediately familiar with the name 'Imad Mugniya', don't miss reading "Tehran's Terror Master" by Patrick Devenny.

The Barque Of Truth

"The Barque of Dante" by Eugène Delacroix 1822, Musée du Louvre, Paris

 

Tom Joscelyn gives an enlightening interview to Front Page Magazine, regarding the Iraqi intelligence documents that reveal the connection between Saddam Hussein and the terrorist network of al-Qaeda:

[One document which describes Iraqi contacts with bin Laden himself, also shows that] Iraq was in contact with Dr. Muhammad al-Massari, the head of the Committee for Defense of Legitimate Rights (CDLR). The CDLR is a known al Qaeda propaganda organ based in London. The document indicates that the IIS [i.e., the Iraqi Intelligence Service] was seeking to “establish a nucleus of Saudi opposition in Iraq” and to “use our relationship with [al-Massari] to serve our intelligence goals.” The document also notes that Iraq was attempting to arrange a visit for the al Qaeda ideologue to Baghdad. Again, we can’t be certain what came of these contacts. Just recently, however, al-Massari confirmed that Saddam had joined forces with al Qaeda prior to the war. Al-Massari says that Saddam established contact with the “Arab Afghans” who fled Afghanistan to northern Iraq in 2001 and that he funded their relocation to Iraq under the condition that they would not seek to undermine his regime. Upon their arrival, these al Qaeda terrorists were put in contact with Iraqi army personnel, who armed and funded them. Obviously, this paints a very different picture of prewar Iraq than many would like to see. Interestingly enough, the existence of this document was first reported by The New York Times in the summer of 2004, several weeks after the 9-11 Commission proclaimed that there was no operational relationship between Saddam’s Iraq and al Qaeda. For some reason, the Times decided to sit on the document while splashing the 9-11 Commission’s conclusion on the front page.

Andy McCarthy provides a brilliant summary of the evidence gathered thus far, and points to the President's refusal to defend himself, despite the now insurmountable evidence proving his intelligence to be correct:

"The Bush administration evidently believes revisiting the case for toppling Saddam Hussein is a political loser. That this conclusion — which, of course, has played in the media like a tacit admission of guilt — is a terrible miscalculation becomes clearer with each passing day. As journalists, scholars, and analysts pore over more of the intelligence haul seized when U.S. forces toppled the Iraqi regime, the case for removing an America-hating terror-monger responsible for the brutal torture and murder of — literally — tens of thousands of people looks better and better. Still, the administration maddeningly refuses to go on offense in its defense.

This is at least the second occasion of this politically suicidal default. Top administration officials also gratuitously handed their critics a cudgel when, for reasons still explicable only by panic, they retracted — and, indeed, apologized for — an entirely accurate assertion in the president's 2003 State of the Union Address.[...]

Now, onto suicidal default, chapter two. The president's poll numbers are plummeting, largely due to the success the opposition has had in portraying Iraq as a misadventure — a diversion from the "real" war on terror, disintegrating into a chaotic mess of dubious nation-building. Why? Because the administration put most of its eggs in a shaky WMD basket; failed to make and sustain the case — i.e., the abundantly supportable case — that Saddam was both a committed terrorist and terrorist-abettor; and has since allowed Iraq to be etched as the test-case for its Middle East democracy project rather than as a logical phase of the war on terror.[...]

Ring A Ring A Rumsfeld

"A Pocket Full Of Poesies" by Peter Howson 1992, Private Collection, London

 

When you're President, you get lots of free advice. Some of it is well-intentioned; much of it is not. Here is why I think so many liberals are anxious for President Bush to replace Rumsfeld: they have staked a great deal on the proposition that the Iraq war has not gone well, and, in fact, has been a disaster. But they are troubled because they are not at all sure that is true. By any reasonable standard, casualties have been low and Iraq's progress toward democracy has been impressive. This doesn't mean the project couldn't still go off the rails; it clearly could. But it is also possible--likely, I think--that the Iraqis will succeed in forming a government, violence will continue to decline, our troops levels will be substantially reduced, and, in a year or two, the consensus will be that the war was pretty successful after all. This, I think, is what liberals fear most. They want President Bush to stipulate, in effect, that the war has been poorly conducted and has been a failure. That's the way in which firing Rumsfeld would rightly be interpreted. This would largely insulate liberals against the consequences if the war does, in fact, turn out to be successful. The same logic, I think, explains why liberals are always hectoring President Bush to "admit his mistakes." What they fear, deep down, is that the President's policies haven't been mistakes at all.

Having grappled with this subject for a couple of days now, I feel that my initial gut response to this has been one of very little surprise. I have been expecting the old guard of Generals to turn on Rumsfeld much earlier, in view of his drastic reforms he proposed and carried out, transforming the Department of Defense into a fast moving efficient war machine and cutting out a lot of the bureaucratic cancer which had set in during the Cold War. He was bound to step on some big corns of the old uniformed military guard, who have eventually come out in full flush to call for his resignation as Defense Secretary.

The President is steadfastly supporting his chief and "interrupted his Easter vacation yesterday to offer an unequivocal vote of confidence in Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in a move aimed at countering a growing wave of criticism from retired generals calling for the Pentagon chief to resign over his leadership of the Iraq war."

Premonition Of "The Night"

"The Night" by Max Beckmann 1918-19, Kunstsammlung Düsseldorf, Germany

 

My love for fine art caused me to stumble over a potentially tragic irony set against the historical backdrop of the period between WW-I and WW-II. Artists like Max Beckmann, George Grosz, Otto Dix, Ludwig Meidner  and Kurt Schwitters, to name a few, were all 'lefties' to put it mildly. They were all united in their early understanding and predictions of the horrors to come from Nazi Germany. Yet few listened.

Today, all is turned upside down; their ideological heirs are the ones who bury their heads in the sand and pretend Islamofascism doesn't exist, poses no threat to them or indeed to us all. Instead, conservatives are recognizing the dangers ahead of time and suffer the scorn and ridicule for it from the lefties of today. What happened?

It's a big question, and I would like to start by debunking some of the most notorious fallacies with which our Liberal friends lull themselves into a false sense of security or, at times, intellectual superiority. Victor David Hanson, one of my favorite authors, does it best as he takes on the anti-war mongers amongst us. Point by point he refutes the favorite accusations leveled against the Administration:

1. Saddam was never connected to al Qaeda, the perpetrators of 9/11.

2. There was no real threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

3. The United Nations and our allies were justifiably opposed on principle to the invasion.

4. A small cabal of neoconservative (and mostly Jewish) intellectuals bullied the administration into a war that served Israel’s interest more than our own.

5. Saddam could not be easily deposed, or at least he could not be successfully replaced with a democratic government.

6. The architects of this war and the subsequent occupation are mostly inept (“dangerously incompetent”) — and are exposed daily as clueless by a professional cadre of disinterested journalists.

7. In realist terms, the benefits to be gained from the war will never justify the costs incurred.

8. We cannot win.

Hanson doesn't beat around the bush and comes out all guns blazing, "The first six are wrong, the last two still unsettled".

First, notice how the old criticism that Saddam was not connected to al Qaeda has now morphed into a fallback position that “Saddam was not connected to September 11” — even though the latter argument was never officially advanced as a casus belli. [...]

A typical and indicative retreat from the 'Bush lied people died' camp, forever changing the goal post, forever demanding of the President and his Admininstration to admit its mistakes, however never, ever, not even once, admitting any of their own. Double standards throughout, hypocrisy pure; one big smeltering melting pot filled with arrogantly held beliefs of their own moral superiority and emotionally charged righteousness of their adopted cause--the melting pot never changes, just the label; Iraq war today, Palestine tomorrow, environment the day after...

Opponents have retreated to this position because we know that al Qaeda cadres were in Kurdistan, and that al Zarqawi fled to Baghdad, as did a mastermind of the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, Abdul Rahman Yasin. [...]

From the slowly emerging Baathist archives, we are learning that for more than a decade Saddam’s agents had some contacts with, and offered help to, al Qaeda operatives from the Sudan to the Philippines.

The documents from the Baathist archives are dismissed, whereas rumors and inuendo are held high as facts. The conspiratorial documentary "Loose Change" defines our opposition's meaning of 'facts' and 'proof'. The time is long gone, where these issues are about realities; this is about ideologies.

But, onward with the relentless effort to bring light and truth to the web of deceit and distortion:

Suspicion (FURTHER UPDATED)

"The Stool Pigeon" by Peter Howson, 1989, Michael Preston Collection

SCROLL DOWN FOR IX UPDATES

It didn't seem to be an accident, after all, that Carroll, looking hale and well, was turned over to the Iraqi Islamic Party, a Sunni political group, whose secretary general, Tariq al-Hashimi, greeted the freelance journalist for the Christian Science Monitor with gifts, including a plaque with the party's logo on it, and a boxed copy of the Koran. "What you have received today from the Iraqi Islamic Party is exactly the teachings of the Koran," said Hashimi.

In the past, al-Hashimi's group has claimed to speak for the Sunni insurgency and it still has ties to myriad groups, so his photo op with Carroll, 28, was somewhat predictable. Sunni groups are in a political knife-fight with the dominant Shi'ite groups, who have claimed that only they can provide security and, as a result, must retain control of the ministries of Interior and Defense. Al-Hashimi's public presentation of Carroll, who was kidnapped Jan. 7 in western Baghdad, seemed to be his way of saying that while Sunnis may have taken her, they were also the ones who got her freed.[...]

"I was treated very well," Carroll said in an immediate interview for the party's Baghdad television station. "They never hit me; they never even threatened to hit me. I'm just happy to be free, and I want to be with my family." Carroll's interpreter, Allan Enwiyah, was killed during her kidnapping.

Whilst watching this interview via CNN, the US hostage Jill Carroll's words seemed meaningless, as she would have been careful not to say anything that may aggravate her still precarious situation. After all she was still in Iraq, talking to a Sunni group TV station, with ties to the insurgency. She no doubt would have still been confused and extremely scared, despite her calm demeanor. Will her statement change? Let's see what happens once she feels more comfortable on her home ground, although one has to remember that like any of us, she may be got to at any time, therefore her stance may remain the same even when her protective guard goes down.

What has become somewhat of a controversy since last night, is the video I have provided for you below (courtesy of Bareknucklepolitics, via LGF), and filmed by her Mujahideen captors shortly prior to her release, which shows her obviously keen to praise her captors, hail the terrorists and their victory, and trash the President and his war policies. My initial reaction was of course that given the circumstances she would have said anything to stay alive. But then.....

Debbie Schlussel disagrees, giving evidence of Caroll's anti-American and pro-Islamic extremist views, which she feels show that the chances are her interview was not coerced.

Unfortunately, when you listen to the video, you know that parts of what she is saying, she actually believes, either that or she deserves an honorary Oscar for her convincing performance.

Here is the transcript of the video, courtesy of ABC News:

CLICK ON CONTINUE FOR THE IX UPDATES

Deep Impact

'MSM Neutrality'

 

Iraqi forces targeted a terrorist cell during an operation yesterday in a Shiite neighborhood of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, and didn't enter a mosque in the area, the U.S. military said in a statement.

"Iraqi Special Operations Forces conducted a twilight raid in the Adhamiyah neighborhood in northeast Baghdad to disrupt a terrorist cell responsible for conducting attacks on Iraqi security and coalition forces and kidnapping Iraqi civilians,'' the U.S. military said in a statement e-mailed late yesterday from Baghdad. ``No mosques were entered or damaged.''

The statement contradicts claims by an official in Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari's Dawa Party, who said 16 people killed in the operation were in the mosque, according to Agence France-Presse. U.S. and Iraqi forces were chasing a wanted man who fled into the mosque, the official said.

"This was a hostile attack looking to destroy the political process and provoke civil war,'' Jawad Maliki told the Iraqia television channel, AFP reported. "We put full responsibility on U.S. troops and U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad.''

When Iraq forces entered the area they came under fire, the U.S. statement said. They returned fire and killed 16 insurgents and detained 15 others. A man who was being held hostage by the group was also released.

U.S. forces were advising the Iraqi soldiers, the statement said. No Iraqi or U.S. soldiers were killed.

According to the U.S intelligence, the operation was conducted exclusively by the Iraqi forces, despite an absolutely rampant slander machine set in motion immediately by the MSM in the west, and the Iraqi television, both showing video footage of piles of dead bodies inside the 'prayer room' of the mosque, with reporting of a US attack on unarmed civilians to boot.

Well speaking of boots, there was one big problem, the dead bodies in the mosque were all wearing shoes. Now as any good Allah worshiping Muslim will know the praying code in the 'prayer room' requires Muslims to pray five times a day including once after the sun sets, once after dark and once in the early hours of the morning before sun rise, all of those times without their shoes on.

Dangerous Liaisons

Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli (1469–1527)

 

I remember so vividly the many reports surfacing shortly after 911, citing how Russian President Putin and others had warned the CIA and US officials of imminent terrorist attacks against key targets on American soil. A whole list is compiled here. Putin's warnings:

August 2001 (D): Russian President Putin warns the US that suicide pilots are training for attacks on US targets. [Fox News, 5/17/02]  The head of Russian intelligence also later states, "We had clearly warned them" on several occasions, but they "did not pay the necessary attention." [Agence France-Presse, 9/16/01] A Russian newspaper on September 12, 2001 claims that "Russian Intelligence agents know the organizers and executors of these terrorist attacks. More than that, Moscow warned Washington about preparation to these actions a couple of weeks before they happened." 

I wonder how that ties in with the latest revelations of Russia's betrayal of US military secrets to Saddam Hussein. What kind of game were the Russians playing? What was Putin up to, bearing in mind his deep connection with the former KGB and Russia's current secret service throughout his Presidency. Of one thing I am certain, it is highly unlikely that he did not authorize the release of these military secrets to Hussein. Nothing happens without his knowledge. Period.

WaPo reports:

Russian officials collected intelligence on U.S. troop movements and attack plans from inside the American military command leading the 2003 invasion of Iraq and passed that information to Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, according to a U.S. military study released yesterday.

The intelligence reports, which the study said were provided to Hussein through the Russian ambassador in Baghdad at the height of the U.S. assault, warned accurately that American formations intended to bypass Iraqi cities on their thrust toward Baghdad. The reports provided some specific numbers on U.S. troops, units and locations, according to Iraqi documents dated March and April 2003 and later captured by the United States.

"The information that the Russians have collected from their sources inside the American Central Command in Doha is that the United States is convinced that occupying Iraqi cities are impossible, and that they have changed their tactic," said one captured Iraqi document titled "Letter from Russian Official to Presidential Secretary Concerning American Intentions in Iraq" and dated March 25, 2003.[...]

Russia was among the nations opposed to the U.S. war with Iraq. Russian President Vladimir Putin warned on the eve of the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003 that an American attack would have grave consequences. He urged Washington to resolve its conflicts with Baghdad peacefully.[...]

"Certainly, sure, I was surprised," said Army Brig. Gen. Anthony A. Cucolo III, director of the Joint Center for Operational Analysis and Lessons Learned under the Joint Forces Command in Norfolk. He said he thinks the alleged Russian intelligence-sharing was linked to Moscow's commercial interests in Iraq. "Essentially, it's driven by economic interests," he told reporters at the Pentagon. "I don't see it as an aberration. I see it as a follow-on to economic engagement." Retired Lt. Col. Kevin M. Woods, the project director, said he has "no reason to doubt the Iraqi documents."

The 210-page study, called the Iraqi Perspectives Project, draws on declassified information from an internal U.S. military report that was based on the examination of more than half a million files of Iraqi documents and dozens of interviews with former senior Iraqi military and political leaders. Some of that information remains classified.[...]

Lost In Translation

 

It's the third anniversary of the coalition invasion of Iraq. The elected Iraqi parliament has held its first session, but is prevented from going much farther by factionalism. Iraqis are not keen on compromise, and dictatorship came to Iraq half a century ago when the generals decided to silence the squabbling and take over themselves. Iraqis wonder if they can avoid repeating past mistakes like this. The Shia Arab majority is split in several large, and many smaller, parties, that resist cooperating. The Kurds have two major factions, that are currently tolerating a truce, and dealing with growing popular unrest at the corruption at the faction (clan, actually) leadership.

The Sunni Arabs, who are now the oppressed minority, have always been the most willing group to unite and take charge. But no more. There are many factions. Some are religious extremists, some are secular (like the Baath Party Saddam ran), while others are tribal. One of the factions is al Qaeda, which is basically a group of Sunni Arab Islamic radicals. Al Qaeda is not happy that all Iraqi Sunni Arabs have not supported them. This has degenerated into war between al Qaeda and most Iraqi Sunni Arabs. But many of these same Sunni Arab factions are still hostile to the Shia Arab dominated government.

Most Iraqis understand that a clean, cohesive government is the key to future peace and prosperity. But the cooperation and compromise required to make this all happen has so far eluded Iraqis. American and European diplomats and advisors constantly hover about with suggestions and advice. The key to peace in Iraq is not a military problem, the terrorists and Sunni Arab rebels are beaten. The key to peace is political, and the ability of Iraqi factions to work together. Iraqis have paid a lot of attention to Lebanon, looking for answers. Lebanon is split by religious factions (about one third Shia, one third Sunni and one third Christian). Lebanon went through a 15 year civil war (1975-90), and since making peace, the country has prospered (without oil, just the skills of the people), despite interference from Syria. The Lebanese example gives hope, but the payoff is in the performance. The Iraqi politicians have to perform. In the next few months, we'll see if they can.

The perceived attitudes in the U.S. on the war in Iraq, have more to do with Bush hatred than with realities on the ground, among a lot of people on both left and right. As Bush's popularity seems to diminish in the eyes of poll gazers-- largely for non-war reasons -- it has pushed the war's popularity down with it.

I was listening to Former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi on the BBC earlier, saying that recent sectarian violence is a sure sign of a nation at war with itself. "We are losing each day as an average 50 to 60 people throughout the country, if not more. If this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is," he said.

Although conditions have not passed the "point of no return," he said, if that point is reached, fragile efforts to build a new government "will not only fall apart but sectarianism will spread throughout the region, and even Europe and the U.S. will not be spared the violence that results."

In recent months, killings apparently based on the victims' religion have fueled fears of civil war. Attacks on Sunnis and Shiites have sparked reprisal killings, and after the February 22 bombing of a revered Shiite shrine, violence seemed to escalate.

The Bush administration says Iraq is not in a civil war, but that terrorists are desperate to foster one, desperate to foment a civil war which would conveniently propel them into the spotlight.

The Muslim Brotherhood And The First Strike War Doctrine

 

Let's just recap. What actually happened yesterday:

The insurgent strongholds north of Baghdad were and are still being smoked out by a massive air and ground coalition assault, the largest since three years, very likely targeting al-Zarqawi and his cohorts of terrorist thugs.

The Administration reiterates in no uncertain terms its stance on the War on Terror: Zero Tolerance. This is the unequivocal message in the national security report, released, ahem, the same day.

On the same day. we are being told that "The level of “chatter” by al Qaeda operatives is currently as high or higher than in the months prior to 9-11, and the question in many parts of the U.S. and European intelligence communities is not if al Qaeda will strike again, but when."

Simultaneously, the Iraqi Intelligence Service documents are released giving undeniable proof that the "Bush lied people died" liberal doctrine is DEAD, and that their adopted 'holy man' Saddam Hussein was indeed guilty as charged. The word WMD becomes redundant. Liberals declare another Day of Mourning.

Among the enduring myths of those who oppose the war is that Saddam, though murderous when it came to his own people, had no weapons of mass destruction and no terrorist designs outside his own country. Both claims now lie in tatters. Suddenly the MSM stays conspicuously silent, too lazy or not interested in reviewing the evidence. If it no longer has 'Bush bashing appeal', it becomes utterly irrelevant.

Everyone turns towards each other and says: "Iran is next".

And then, this is probably the most revealing of all, Iran announces that it would like to hold face to face talks with the Great Satan about Iraq. Think about it for a moment. Take into consideration all the rhetoric and blustering over the past many months. One great big f... you. And suddenly, on this very day, Iran wants to talk about Iraq. Ask yourself, why? Could it be that Iran has realized that it has overplayed its hand? That it has just needled the Great Satan one too many times by blowing up the shrine and hoping to throw Iraq into civil war? We don't know, but we do know, that something major is up and that Iran knows it.

The apologists are cringing in the corner, and I am saying "It's about time".

The scene is set for the last piece in the First Strike Doctrine: Do you want to know what the House of Representatives International Relations Subcommittee on International Terrorism and Nonproliferation and their leadership were told the same day in relation to Hamas' strategy after the Palestinian elections? What they were told yesterday about this strategy and its limitations, and what policy recommendations were put forward? What they were told in relation to the War On Terror in the wider region and context?

Thanks to Memri's President Yigal Carmon, we get front row seats during yesterday's Capitol Hill briefing, joining the leadership of the committee, Chairman Ed Royce (R-CA) and Ranking Member Brad Sherman (D-CA) and Rep. Steven Rothman (D-NJ), the Chair of the Middle East and Central Asia Subcommittee Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla) and Ranking Member Gary Ackerman (D - NY).

Let me cut to the chase. They were told:

"Operation Swarmer" And The First Strike War Doctrine

Salvador DALI "Prémonition de la guerre civile" [Premonition of Civil War ], 1936, Musée d'Art de Philadelphie

 

TO BE UPDATED WITH LINKS THROUGHOUT THE DAY, WATCH THIS SPACE AND SCROLL DOWN TO VII UPDATES

I posted late this morning as I have been watching the Breaking News, just in:

Baghdad, Iraq - The United States on Thursday launched what was termed the largest air assault since the U.S.-led invasion, targeting insurgent strongholds north of the capital, the military said. The U.S. military said Iraqi troops also were involved in the operation aimed at clearing a "suspected insurgent operating area northeast of Samarra."

Coalition forces have dubbed the assault "Operation Swarmer," which is an operation consisting of about 1,500 soldiers in all, including the Iraqi Army's 1st Brigade, 4th Division, the 101st Airborne Division's 3rd Brigade Combat Team and the 101st Combat Aviation Brigade. The assault is a combination of air and ground operations involving more than 200 tactical vehicles and more than 50 aircraft also participated in the operation.

According to the Coalition Press Information Center, initial reports indicate that a number of enemy weapons caches have been captured, containing artillery shells, explosives, IED-making materials, and military uniforms. A show of strength was a very much needed move by the coalition forces at this time:

Adnan Pachachi, the senior politician who administered the oath to Iraqi legislators in the absence of a speaker, spoke of a country in crisis.

"We have to prove to the world that a civil war is not and will not take place among our people," Pachachi told lawmakers. "The danger is still looming and the enemies are ready for us because they do not like to see a united, strong, stable Iraq." ⋯

Somehow I think the President is trying to tell us something, launching the largest air attack on Iraq in three years, on the same day and almost simultaneously giving the zero tolerance message in the national security report, following along the lines of Israel, against terrorism. Obviously undaunted by the difficult war in Iraq, he reaffirmed today his strike-first policy against terrorists and enemy nations saying that Iran may pose the biggest challenge for America.

In a 49-page national security report, the first in three years, the President said diplomacy is the U.S. preference in halting the spread of nuclear and other heinous weapons.

"If necessary, however, under long-standing principles of self defense, we do not rule out the use of force before attacks occur -- even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy's attack," Bush wrote.
The report also says:

"We may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran. For almost 20 years, the Iranian regime hid many of its key nuclear efforts from the international community. Yet the regime continues to claim that it does not seek to develop nuclear weapons. The Iranian regime's true intentions are clearly revealed by the regime's refusal to negotiate in good faith; its refusal to come into compliance with its international obligations by providing the [International Atomic Energy Agency] access to nuclear sites and resolving troubling questions; and the aggressive statements of its President calling for Israel to 'be wiped off the face of the earth.'

"The United States has joined with our EU partners and Russia to pressure Iran to meet its international obligations and provide objective guarantees that its nuclear program is only for peaceful purposes. This diplomatic effort must succeed if confrontation is to be avoided."

Titled "National Security Strategy," the report summarizes Bush's plan for protecting America and directing U.S. relations with other nations. It is an updated version of a report Bush issued in 2002.

Here is the PDF of the entire document, as I would not have too much trust in the MSM to tell you accurately the contents of it.

My liberal friend Michael van der Galien is not happy with the first strike doctrine, and agrees with the theory held by some like Helen Thomas, that it is in violation of international law. Well I am sure as far as the left is concerned it will be simply an extension of the President's "breaking the domestic law" pattern expected of a dictator in his position. Ahem.

SCROLL DOWN TO VII IMPORTANT UPDATES BY CLICKING BELOW

Tom Fox's Natural Born Killers

Tom Fox, the only American hostage who was among four Christian activists kidnapped last year in Iraq by the previously unknown Swords of Righteousness Brigades, has been killed. Tortured, shot and dumped on the side of the railway track in western Baghdad. More @ Michelle Malkin.

Al-Jazeera television aired footage of the three other activists this week, purportedly appealing to their governments to secure their release. The hostages seen in the brief video dated 28 February were Canadians James Loney, 41, and Harmeet Singh Sooden, 32; and Briton Norman Kember, 74, who I have written about here.

Christian Peacemaker co-directors Doug Pritchard and Carol Rose issued a statement:

[...]We morn the loss of Tom Fox who combined a lightness of spirit, a firm opposition to all oppression, and the recognition of God in everyone.[...]
In response to Tom's passing, we ask that everyone set aside inclinations to vilify or demonize others, no matter what they have done.

Eh? I don't think we can be talking about the same God. Media Lies agrees:

I sympathize with Mr. Fox's family. They must be in incredible pain right now. But the stupidity of pacifists amazes me. If you recognize God in the people who killed Mr. Fox, for no more reason than he's an American, then I categorically reject the God you worship and I guarantee you that God is not the God of Christianity.

The organization's teams host human rights conferences in conflict zones, promoting peaceful solutions, and Tom Fox in particular worked on three major projects: helping families of incarcerated Iraqis, escorting shipments of medicine to clinics and hospitals in Fallujah and helping form Islamic Peacemaker Teams. This is the thanks he received.

As for the inclinations to vilify and demonize, we need to remember that the reason the Christian Peacemakers organization were there since 2002, was  to investigate allegations that U.S. and Iraqi forces had abused detainees. It seems however that the organization is more prepared to forgive the murderers, than to give the benefit of the doubt to the US Government.

During a news conference, the Rev. Carol Rose, a Christian Peacemaker Teams co-director, said she forgives Fox's kidnappers...

D Stands For Denial

Getty Images

 

Michael Barone has an excellent article today, dealing with the denial of the Democrats that al-Qaeda had any connections to Saddam Hussein, and that inherently America had no right to insist on dethroning the dictator, who has suddenly become an angel like figure who should have been left to carry on torturing his country's inhabitants. Simply to deligitimize our war effort

Why, for two distinct groups of Americans, has it become a matter of conviction held with religious intensity that there cannot have been any relationship between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq?

The Minnesota Democratic Party recently protested as "un-American" an ad showing military veterans and their families supporting the president's policies for saying, "Our enemy in Iraq is al-Qaida -- the same terrorists who killed 3,000 Americans on 9-11, the same terrorists from the first World Trade Center bombing, the USS Cole, Madrid, London and many more."

The Democrats, unfactually, say that these words "make a connection between Iraq and the 9-11 terrorists attacks and suggest that the war in Iraq will prevent an attack by al-Qaida in America." But of course, the ad is factually correct -- al-Qaida is attacking Americans in Iraq -- and the Minnesota Democratic Party is in no position to guarantee that al-Qaida will not attack America.

The other group consists of intelligence and other career government professionals, many of them Arabists. Case in point: Paul Pillar, CIA national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005, now retired, writing in the most recent Foreign Affairs magazine. The "greatest discrepancy between the administration's public statements and the intelligence community's judgments concerned not WMD (there was indeed a broad consensus that such programs existed), but the relationship between Saddam and al-Qaida. The enormous attention devoted to this subject did not reflect any judgment by intelligence officials that there was or was likely to be anything like the 'alliance' the administration said existed." But the Senate Intelligence Committee report showed that the CIA did obtain evidence of an al-Qaida-Saddam relationship from foreign intelligence and open sources.

So why do these Democrats and these government professionals seem to have such a conviction that there must have been no collaboration between al-Qaida and Saddam?
[...]
Light on the Saddam regime's collaboration with terrorists will almost certainly be shed by analysis of some 2 million documents captured in Iraq. But, as the intrepid Stephen Hayes of The Weekly Standard has pointed out, almost none of those documents has been translated or released either to the public or to the congressional intelligence committees. It appears that career professionals and, perhaps, political appointees have been blocking release of these documents.

Why do their superiors not order them released? Many Americans cling with religious intensity to the notion that somehow Saddam had no terrorist ties -- a notion used to delegitimize our war effort. We should bring the truth, or as much of it as is available, out into the open.

The latest on the documents.

God Will Be My Judge

Daily Kos 'The Evil Puppeteer'

 

What are we supposed to do when we hear Daily Kos sullying Tony Blair when completing the distortion begun in this article published by The Independent today, which reports that:

Tony Blair has proclaimed that God will judge whether he was right to send British troops to Iraq, echoing statements from his ally George Bush.

Contradicting warnings from advisers not to mix politics and religion, the Prime Minister said that his interest in politics sprang from his Christianity and its "values and philosophy" had guided him in public life.

And what does the chief marketing officer of John Kerry's campaign have to say, linking to the identical article?

Tony Blair proclaims God led him to invade Iraq.

Is it my turn now to say: "Lies, lies, lies"? Finally it turns into "blasphemy"

The Daily Kos carries on with the mud slinging, taking a wider shot:

Too much wingnuttery for one day. Via Atrios, we learn Missouri is considering a bill making Christianity the state's official religion. Mississippi is set to follow in South Dakota's footsteps and ban almost all abortions.
[The abovementioned Tony Blair comment]
In Kentucky, state legislators are asked to go on record as to whether they've "accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior."  Separation of church and what again?

You are a poor excuse for a blogger Markos, and should be joining the ranks of The New York and LA Times, as a prime story spinner.

Some good blogging from my friend Tom Maguire: "God Lied, People Died", quoting amongst others the NYT who take the Blair criticism to a higher level.

Michelle Malkin notices our deconstruction of the new demagoguery.

The BBC have a transcript from the Blair - Parkinson interview. scheduled to be aired tonight.

Ann Althouse as usual cuts to the chase: "Worrying about Blair's slight reference to religious belief shows either an aversion to religion or the usual pointless grasping for political arguments."

As I have said before the left hates the President more than it fears al-Qaeda, or loves liberty, and when it comes to the UK's Prime Minister Tony Blair, he may be Labour, but supporting President Bush makes him an immediate enemy.

FromThe Daily Kos:

The fact that the Republicans, like All Things Beautiful, have gotten to the point where they get hysterical at the slightest sign of dissent shows how desperate they have become. The fact that Tony Blair claims that he has a hotline to God shows how desperate and insecure he and the rest of the Bush apologists have become as the failure of the War in Iraq is becoming more and more obvious to all.

The above was also cross posted at TPM Cafe.

Storm The White House

 

I just have one thing to say: Hahahahahahaha:

Multi-Day Event, Beginning March 15, come when you can and stay as long as you can - we are taking over the White House until they leave. Torture, Occupation, Genocide - Must End Now.
Wednesday, March 15th 2006 12:00 AM
Washington, DC USA

TAKE THE WHITE HOUSE BY STORM - Stop Genocide, Torture and Occupation

U.N. SOS - We need your help to end the reign of international criminals.

It is our duty and the duty of the United Nations to rescue the people of the world from the U.S. dictators. Murder for occupation and theft of land is illegal. Murder of journalists is criminal. Remove the traitors who have stolen the U.S. budget and used it to commit international crimes against humanity.

If we were being bombed and our journalists were being murdered here in the U.S. by a foreign country's military, we would hope that the people of that country would stop what they are doing and go to their president's office and demand that it was stopped. If we were the ones burying thousands and thousands of our family members and watching the destruction of the homes, schools, churches and offices that we had worked for decades to build, we would hope that someone, somewhere would care enough to do something for us. We must stop the criminals in our government NOW. There is no meeting with Congress that is going to change what they are doing. We must put the power of the people into action and stay there until they leave!

Inviting everyone to the White House for a protest rally to show that we do not accept the criminal government, illegal wars and the permanent occupation planned for Iraq and Afghanistan. For Nat Turner, For Martin and Coretta, For all the Torture and Assassination in Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti and many others - We will not allow the Slave Holders that Still Prevail in this Country to Rule us any longer. Imprisonment and torture based on race, religion, resources or region is no different than the slavery we sought to abolish years ago. The Administration is Criminal and if they will not step down, we must storm in, show them how many of us do not accept a criminal government. How can we stand by and watch them kill our brothers, sisters, journalists and friends for their dollars?

...Location:
White House, Washington DC Starting March 15th, come for as long as you can and bring signs that say U.N. SOS and "Leave Now" or whatever you would like to say. Ride Share and Room Share Plans can be made here: http://www.citysites.com/travel/tiki-view_tracker.php?trackerId=3 1600 Pennsylvania Ave Washington DC 20500

Contact:
Darrow Boggiano
admin@politicalcooperative.org
415.409.2611

Sponsored By:
We are requesting participation from all members of the United Nations, PFAW, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Code Pink, police, soldiers, ACLU, CIA, NSA and International Courts of Justice/World Court. http://www.PoliticalCooperative.Org

Londonistan

 

By the talented Amir Taheri

The British media had a field day with this month's trial of Abu Hamza al-Masri, an Egyptian-born
self-styled Islamic "scholar." Charged with a number of violent crimes, he was sentenced to five years imprisonment; he could be out in 21/2 years.

Dubbed "The Hook" by the press (he lost his hands in a Afghan minefield decades ago), Abu Hamza is sure to feel sore at the way he has been treated in his adopted homeland.

And he may well be right.

To start with: If Abu Hamza, regarded by many as a buffoon, is such a deadly threat, why is he getting away with such a light sentence?

It is hard to guess what might be passing through a confused mind like Abu Hamza's. But if he were to replay the film of his life in Britain in his mind, he might come up with a few questions.

He fled Egypt and arrived in Britain on a tourist visa at the age of 22. The first question he might ask is: How come they gave me a visa when they knew I had a criminal record in Egypt?

His visa allowed a three-month stay. Those months came and went without anybody asking him to leave. Instead, he became a bouncer in a cabaret . . . without documents such as a work permit. Again he might ask: Why did no one bother to remind him he was breaking the law?

Next, his buddies advised him that he had to marry a British citizen if he wanted to stay in Britain permanently. This he duly did by wooing a naturalized Briton in whom he of course had no interest. Again, no one told him that arranging a fake marriage to obtain British documents was breaking the law.

Soon, he was granted his British passport — a document denied to millions of people who used to be citizens of the empire. Abu Hamza might have wondered why he could get a British passport while his fellow Egyptian Muhammad Fayed, the owner of the luxury shop Harrods, couldn't.

Now a subject of Her Britannic Majesty, Abu Hamza suddenly discovered a passion for the most radical version of Islamism. And in those days, for anyone who wanted to build a career as a "Holy Warrior," Afghanistan was the place to be.