Judicious Asininity

This is the Archive Page. Click Here for Main Page

Fri May 27, 2005

FILI-BLUSTER POP QUIZ!!!

Why compromise is not a virtue

From Chuck Muth:

A burglar breaks into your house and steals $500. Outraged, you
declare, "I am going to put new locks on the doors, install an alarm, and sue
that burglar to get my money back!"

The burglar, who happens to be your next door neighbor, asks, "Don't
you think that's a little extreme?"

You hesitate, "Well...uh...I don't know...."

The burglar proposes: "How about this? I'll give you back $300. You
promise not to change the locks or install an alarm, and don't go to the
cops with this. In return, I promise that I won't break into your house
and steal from you anymore unless I really, really need the money."

If that sounds like a good deal to you, you may be qualified to be a
Republican member of the Senate.

- by Owen Courreges at www.lonestartimes.com

Thu May 26, 2005

No blogging for 10 days

Going to England for business and pleasure

I won't be making a side trip to France, but it will be interesting to see the European reaction if France votes Non on the EU constitution.

Charges against Lt. Pantano dropped

Great news, indeed

Fox News has the story.

In-sourcing generates jobs in America

South Korean manufacturer Hyundai opens new plant in Alabama

A decade ago, Hyundai stood for cheap and shoddy cars. They sold but only because they were cheap. Over the years, Hyundai has turned around that perception and now builds cars that are competitive with the Japanese brands. According to Edmunds:

The 2006 Sonata may be the first Hyundai we can recommend without qualifiers like "for the price." Sub-$20,000 pricing (GL only) and 100,000-mile warranties will only get you so far. With the Sonata's excellent attention to detail and generous standard features, the price is just icing on the cake. It may sound like blasphemy but Camry and Accord shoppers now have one more stop to make at the local auto mall before deciding on a midsize sedan.

Would that they could say the same thing about the big three's mid-size offerings.

Following the successful strategy of Japanese and German car makers, Hyundai has opened a new plant in Montgomery, Alabama to build its Sonata mid-size car and Santa Fe SUV. when the plant hits full capacity in 2007 it will employ 2000 people.

Those who bemoan the loss of low-paying jobs to other countries forget the high-paying jobs that other countries create in the US. Who would have thought that a car manufacturer relying on cheap Asian labor would out-source their jobs to the US. But that's what happened.

Tue May 24, 2005

Now 14 senators control the Senate

Not the majority party; not even the minority party

That's why the super-majority required to defeat a filibuster is a danger to democracy.

Mon May 23, 2005

Newsweek screws up yet again

Koran flushing retraction omitted from their Arabic edition

Cheat Seeking Missiles has the scoop.

This follows the Japanese flag trashing cover.

Suckers

GOP "moderates" give the Democrats leverage they didn't earn at the ballot box

Beldar Blog and Powerline are disgusted. So am I. Making a deal with the party of Robert KKK Byrd is insane.

These are the culprits: Senators John McCain (R-AZ), Mike DeWine (R-OH), Olympia Snowe (R-ME), John Warner (R-VA), Lindsey Graham (R-NC), Susan Collins (R-ME), and Lincoln Chafee (R-RI).

Bush ignores criticsm?

To the contrary, he seems to revel in it and learn from it

Seeker Blog has posted a speech by Yale historian John Lewis Gaddis discussing Bush's grand strategy. It is very worthwhile reading. I was struck by Gaddis' account of his invitation to meet with Condoleeza Rice and the NSC staff:

The story begins with the publication of my book, Surprise, Security, and the American Experience, which appeared a year ago last March.

Late in June, I had a cryptic e-mail from a former student, now working in the White House speech-writing shop: “the boss has read your book, and has told all of us to read it.”

I wasn’t quite sure which boss he meant, but soon there was a call from Condi Rice which cleared things up: “The President has read your book, and has told all of us to read it. Could you come down and brief the National Security Council staff?”

I of course said yes, but then started quickly flipping through the book to review what I’d actually said about the President and his policies. Here are some sample quotes:

I said that he had “failed miserably” in getting United Nations support for the invasion of Iraq.

I said that his solutions to complex problems tended to be “breathtakingly simple.”

I said that the phrase “axis of evil” originated “in overzealous speechwriting rather than careful thought.”

I said that the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq had “diminished, in advance, the credibility of whatever future intelligence claims Bush and Blair might make.”

I said that the so-called “coalition of the willing” there had been “more of a joke than a reality.”

I said that, “within a little more than a year and a half, the United States had exchanged its long-established reputation as the principal stabilizer of the international system for one as its chief destabilizer.”

And I said that although great grand strategists know the uses of “shock and awe,” they also know when to stop. Here I cited the example of Otto von Bismarck, who had shattered the post-1815 European state system in order to make possible the unification of Germany in 1871, but then had “replaced his destabilizing strategy with a new one aimed at consolidation and reassurance – at persuading his defeated enemies as well as nervous allies and alarmed bystanders that they would be better off living within the new system he had imposed on them than by continuing to fight or fear it.”

So I was not too sure how all of this was going to go over at the White House.

I did indeed meet with Condi and the NSC staff in mid-July for a lively discussion of points made in the book and possible future directions for the administration’s grand strategy.

At the end of it, she casually asked: “Could you spare a few minutes for the President?”

I allowed as how maybe I could, and so she took me into the Oval Office where the President and the Vice President were waiting.

I expected, at best, a handshake and photo op.

But the President said: “Sit down. Loved your book. Tell me more about Bismarck.”

There followed a twenty minute conversation with Bush asking all the questions. After which we found, cooling their heels outside, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, Under-Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Myers. “This is Professor Gaddis,” the President said, waving the book at them. “I want you all to read his book.”

Well, I don’t know how you would have responded in such a situation, but I was somewhat surprised.

I’d been told, first of all, that the President never read anything beyond his daily press and intelligence digests. So it was certainly a surprise to find that he had read my book, and that he had done so ahead of his own staff. We’ve since learned, of course, that the President has a pretty eclectic reading list, ranging from Nathan Sharansky and Ron Chernow to Tom Wolfe.

I’d been told, second, that this was an administration that could not take criticism – that it listened only to people who agreed with it. But the criticisms I’d made didn’t seem to bother anyone.

And I’d been told that this was an administration that was incapable of changing direction, of learning from mistakes, of assessing its own performance. But the whole tone of the discussions was one of acknowledging that, while the overall direction of policy was right, much had gone wrong along the way, and that in the second term – if the voters were to grant one – there would have to be certain changes.

Sat May 21, 2005

If Guantánamo Comes to Define U.S. to Muslims

Then imagine what defines Muslims to the U.S.

The NYT, in its usual post 9/11 style, publishes a piece entitled Guantánamo Comes to Define U.S. to Muslims. Naturally, it neglects to mention the enormous and unwarranted respect U.S. authorities at Guantánamo give to Islamic terrorists of the ilk that perpetrated 9/11. Here's how each prisoner is treated:

They get a toothbrush, mint-flavored toothpaste, a bottle of "Lively Salon" antidandruff shampoo, soap, flip flops, a foam sleeping mat, two buckets, a washcloth, a canteen, a prayer cap, two blankets, a sheet, a Koran and two towels, one for praying.

And, strangely, they get to write home. It's not that the U.S. military has a soft spot for the mothers of the Taliban or al-Qaida. Instead, base officials try to glean the prisoners' real names from the letters, as many tend to give multiple aliases during interrogations.

When they're done, they're assigned to the cells in which they will begin their new lives. These are 8-feet-square, with chain-link sides and tin roofs. The Halogen lights stay on all night.

The next day starts with prayer call about 5 a.m. A sign on a pole at the edge of the camp points the direction to Mecca. The prisoners come from 31 countries, including Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Pakistan, Algeria, England, Egypt, Australia, France, Russia, Belgium and Sweden. Base officials say there are Christian prisoners as well as Muslims.

After prayer, the detainees' day goes like this: breakfast, a shower (every other day), sick call, noon prayer, lunch, recreation (15 minutes a couple of times a week), mail call, sunset prayer, dinner, evening prayer and bedtime around 9 p.m.

Each meal the detainees get is considered halal, or religiously appropriate for Muslims. A typical breakfast includes oatmeal, an orange, fresh bread and a bottle of water. For lunch, it's pasta or vegetable stew, dry cereal including Froot Loops, a box of raisins, two granola bars, a bag of chips, and bag of peanuts and water.

For dinner they get white rice, red beans, a banana and water.

To my simplistic mind, it seems to me that the reason they are in Guantánamo Bay is because they are devout 7th Century Muslims. Pandering to their beliefs just reinforces their belief system. Ali Hamas Wahhabbi must think "Allah is truly great because He makes the great Satan give us Korans and time to pray. If we had those Americans as prisoners, we'd have shouted Allah Akbar and cut off their heads."

I like to refer to WW2 to see what makes sense in this time of war. I'm quite certain that the allies did not give German prisoners personal copies of Mein Kampf, Swastika arm bands to wear, regular broadcasts of Goebbels speeches, and time to stage a mini Nuremberg rally each evening. Yet that is analogous to what the U.S. is doing for the unlawful combatants it has detained in this war.

It is past time for the U.S. to remind Muslims of how we might perceive them. We have sent them trillions of dollars in exchange for oil pumped out of the ground using our technology and expertise. Yet, despite that vast transfer of wealth, the Muslim world remains as backward as ever. They can't build the factories to build cars, but they can build car bombs. They can't build jet airliners but they can hijack them and use them as bombs to murder thousands of civilians. They can't assemble uniformed forces that fight according to the Geneva conventions, but they can send suicide bombers into schools, mosques and police stations to blow up civilians. They can't design electronic equipment but they can use cell phones to detonate bombs. They can't build video cameras can but they can video-tape beheadings.

One might say I'm being unfair just to focus on the actions of Islamic terrorists. But, since I don't see any outrage in the Muslim world at these atrocities, I'm forced to conclude that the silent majority of Muslims approve of the actions of their terrorists.

BTW, please read Santuary, Bill Whittle's latest opus.

Thu May 19, 2005

Radical Islam hijacks more than aircraft

Terrorists also hijack Western institutions and Technology

Take religious freedom. We take it for granted in the West and we have granted Muslim immigrants absolute freedom to practice their religion. But a large number of Mosques in the West have been taken over by Islamic radicals. Instead of being places where devout Muslims can practice their religion in peace, the Mosques have become recruiting grounds for terrorists. The 9/11 hijackers did their plotting in Hamburg Mosques, as this account shows:

The evidence presents a new view of the Hamburg cell. So public were the beliefs of the hijackers and their associates that the often stated notion that they were a cell of secret "sleeper agents" of the Al Qaeda terrorist network seems almost opposite the truth.

The group was far larger than previously described, including at least several dozen men. Almost everyone who had significant contact with them knew that the men professed a personal commitment to holy war and spent years trying to determine how best to wage it. Casual acquaintances were sometimes frightened by the group's beliefs. A member of the congregation at the Al Quds mosque in Hamburg brought his father to a worship service, and the older man was so unnerved by what was a routine day at the mosque that he warned his son never to return. Others fled town to avoid the group.

Members of the group hectored acquaintances to join the cause, at one point physically beating one man because they declared him insufficiently devout. They pressured other men to grow beards, to dress in a prescribed manner and to make their wives convert to Islam.

God forbid that Western intelligence services monitor what happens inside these radicalized Mosques. Muslim pressure groups scream blue murder about their religious freedom being abused. Of course they have nothing to say about the lack of religious freedom for non-Muslims in Islamic countries.

The average westerner assumes that Muslim charities are similar to organizations like the Salvation Army. Unfortunately, Islamic charities have too often turned out to be fronts raising money to support terrorism. This article, HOW TERRORISTS HAVE INFILTRATED AMERICA by Steven Emerson, describes how these fronts operate.

[t]he Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development has been suspected of funneling millions per year to Hamas activists...By far the most important tactic utilized by terrorist groups in America has been to use nonprofit organizations to establish a zone of legitimacy within which fund-raising, recruitment, and even outright planning can occur. The use of charitable organizations by jihad warriors and their supporters is a complicated subject. Often, the organizations are perfectly legitimate, but they unwittingly provide a forum for evil. Many of these organizations react strongly when accused of collaborating with or facilitating the work of terrorists, for understandable reasons. If their official policy is to oppose and denounce terrorism, how much responsibility must they bear for the contrary behaviors of individual members or guest speakers?

The internet has become a critical resource for Islamic Terrorist organizations. Acts of barbaric cruelty are filmed and posted on Islamic web sites to aid in their recruitment. Free and anonymous Email provides a secure communications network a WW2 spymaster would have killed for. Cell phones are used for staying in touch and triggering roadside bombs.

Western media, subscribing to some weird notion of giving equal time to both sides, spread terrorist propaganda as if it's the Gospel truth. One could not imagine WW2 era media giving equal time to Josef Goebbels so he could respond to Winston Churchill, like this:

Mr. Churchill is not such an idealist. He represents a rotten and corrupt world. He is a man of the 18th century who drapes himself with the symbols of the 19th century, hoping thereby to win the battles of the 20th century. This is a world of unlimited individual profiteering at the cost of other people and nations. It has been replaced in Europe by new ways of building nations. The future is theirs. A believing, sacrificing youth is gathered under its banners. This youth will win not only because it is well armed; it will win because it is young, because it represents a revolution, because it has mobilized powerful and dynamic forces that can no longer be resisted. The wheel of history can not be held back, not even by Mr. Churchill. In his more rational moments, he probably realizes that he is fighting for a lost cause, that his time is past, that he has no hope of catching up.

The welfare state has proven ripe for the plucking, especially in Western Europe. Muslim immigrants and their offspring take full advantage of the benefits provided by the welfare state. What better way to finance a demographic time-bomb, that will, in a generation or two, subvert Democracy and replace it with Sharia law?

Bye Bye NEWSWEAK

You just lost this subscriber

We took a certain amount of pleasure writing "CANCEL - No credibility" on the renewal notice and sending it back.

Tue May 17, 2005

Pandering to Islam

Dr. Rice shouldn't have been so contrite

The London Times reports that:

As unrest gathered pace, Dr Rice issued an appeal: “I want to speak directly to Muslims in America and throughout the world. Disrespect for the Holy Koran is not now, nor has it ever been, nor will it ever be, tolerated by the United States. Disrespect for the Holy Koran is abhorrent to us all.

She should have added that disrespect for the Holy Bible, the Torah, and the American flag are also abhorrent.

Mon May 16, 2005

Dresden and the War on Terror

There should be a connection

Donald Sensing has an interesting post on the rationale for the WW2 bombing campaign against Germany and Japan. In discussing whether the destruction of Dresden was justified, he gives us this quote from Democrat President Roosevelt:

It is of utmost importance that every person in Germany should realize that this time Germany is a defeated nation. . . . The fact that they are a defeated nation, collectively and individually, must be so impressed upon them that they will hesitate to start any new war.

We'll have won the war on radical Islam when we can say that about Dar Al-Harb and every Muslim knows it.

Name the source, NEWSWEEK

The anonymous source burned you and harmed this country

NEWSWEEK now has a responsibility to name the source of the Koran flushing lie. The source lost any protection when it passed off lies told by Islamic terrorists as the Gospel truth.

How credible is Erik Saar?

A commenter at Balloon Juice is skeptical

Read the full comment here. He questions whether Saar has the Arabic skills he claims:

There's something 'not quite right' with Sgt/Spec Saar's account.

I say this as a graduate of the 'prestigious' language school at Presidio (DLI-FLC) having spent all my time except for basic as a cryptographic linguist (Korean/USAF/2 tours Korea, 1 NSA). Here's an excerpt from the Amazon biography of his book:

Saar couldn't have been more eager to get to Gitmo. After two years in the army learning Arabic, becoming a military intelligence linguist, he pounced on the chance to apply his new skills to extracting crucial intel from the terrorists.

The problem here is twofold - the level of language proficiency for Humint work isn't that great coming out of DLI and the follow on technical training.

https://www.hrc.army.mil/SITE/ACTIVE/epmpmilang/lang/languageteam.htm

Saar's refered to as either a cryptologic linguist, which is a 98G code - interrogator is a 97E. Different language standards, different security backgrounds) ... which isn't to say that Saar didn't cross train or pick up something 'more'.

Go read the rest.

Sun May 15, 2005

Newsweek apologizes for getting Koran flushing story wrong

Another massive MSM failure

Newsweek admits the story is bogus. In its eagerness to smear the US military and undermine the President, Newsweek used an anonymous source to make a highly inflammatory charge. The damage has been enormous. The "story" fed straight into the propaganda machine of Radical Islam and caused widespread rioting and many fatalities. It severely damaged US efforts to win hearts and minds in the Muslim world. The only good news is that credibility of the MSM has taken another major hit.

If the editors at Newsweek had any understanding of Islam, they would have understood that the Muslims believe that the Koran is the literal word of Allah. Desecrating the Koran is just about the worst thing you could do, as this unfortunate Pakistani found out.

I'm sticking by my theory that Newsweek's source was Erik Saar.

Fri May 13, 2005

Reid just went nuclear

Time for a response from Frist

Harry Reid, Senate Minority Leader, used confidential information contained in the FBI report on judicial candidate Henry Saad. Quoting from a quote at Captain's Quarters:

"Henry Saad would have been filibustered anyway," Mr. Reid said on the floor yesterday, about the Michigan Appeals Court judge who is nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit.

"All you need to do is have a member go upstairs and look at his confidential report from the FBI, and I think we would all agree that there is a problem there," Mr. Reid continued.

Captain Ed explains how low Reid sank:

None of the Senators have access to the file except those on the Senate Judiciary Committee or Saad's homestate senators (both Democrats) -- which excludes Harry Reid! Reid should never have been given access to that information, and if he has accessed the file, he would be guilty of a breach of Senate rules. Furthermore, by publicly characterizing the data in Saad's file, he has breached its confidentiality.

Worse than that, he has now floated a non-specific charge of malfeasance against Henry Saad against which Saad cannot defend. Saad himself cannot review his file, which contains anything anyone ever said about him to the FBI during his background check, regardless of whether it was true or not. Even those few Republicans who have defended judicial nominees against Reid's normal smears of "extremism" cannot offer defenses based on the FBI file, because to do so would be to break the same security clearance regulations Reid did in making this statement.

The only fit response for the Republican Party is to change the Senate rules so that every judicial candidate who passes out of the Judicial Committee process gets an up-or-down vote on the Senate floor, as has been the practice in the Senate for generations. That way, the Democrats cannot smear candidates and then use the smear as "justification" for filibustering the candidate. That's exactly what Reid is doing. He needs to pay a price and a nuclear response is appropriate for such an unjustified and low attack on one of the President's nominees.

Wed May 11, 2005

Was Erik Saar responsible for the deadly riot in Afghanistan?

Perhaps he was Newsweek's anonymous source for the Koran flushing story

Roger Simon points out that the source was anonymous. Further on, the Newsweek article notes that:

New details of sexual abuse—including an instance in which a female interrogator allegedly wiped her red-stained hand on a detainee's face, telling him it was her menstrual blood—are also in a new book to be published this week by a former Gitmo translator

Could Inside The Wire be the book in question? The books credibility is already under fire by Amazon reviewers, one of whom notes that the publisher has had to correct a major error:

Penguin Press, the book's publisher, has publicly acknowledged that the book includes an erroneous statement about CACI in connection with interrogation activities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba

Seems like it's time for Erik Saar (nor Eric Saar) to be interrogated about his book, whether or not he was the anonymous source.

Even more reasons to confirm Bolton

And ignore Colin Powell's treachery

According to this piece in the GOPUSA news update (via CNS News), Powell has been working behind the scenes to undermine Bolton. That puts Powell somwhere between a filibustering Democrat and a maggot in my humble opinion. But I found this passage illuminating:

One example of the "tension" caused by Bolton was what Wilkerson called "his moves and gyrations" aimed at preventing Mohamed ElBaradei from being reappointed as the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations' nuclear monitoring body.

"Now, what do I mean by that?" Wilkerson said. "I mean, going out of his way to bad-mouth him, to make sure that everybody knew that the maximum power of the United States would be brought to bear against them if he were brought back in," he said of Bolton's approach to ElBaradei.

Let's check the scorecard here. Bolton was the brains behind the Proliferation Security Initiative which exposed the Khan nuclear technology smuggling ring and Libya's hitherto unknown nuclear weapons program. Meanwhile, Mohamed ElBaradei's IAEA has let North Korea develop nukes and done nothing to stop Iran's march to nuclear weapons. Why in God's name would the United States want the head of such a useless organization to stay in place?

It gets worse. ElBaradei has been trying to increase international pressure on Israel to get rid of its nuclear weapons. That's rich. An Egyptian named Mohamed wants the sole democracy in the Middle East, the victim of three wars launched against it by it's Muslim Arab neighbors, to abandon the means to deter or defend itself from a WMD attack.

Perhaps Elbaradei agrees with Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani, Iran's former president, who said that on the day the Muslim world gets nuclear weapons the Israeli question will be settled forever "since a single atomic bomb has the power to completely destroy Israel, while an Israeli counter-strike can only cause partial damage to the Islamic world." Rafsanjani is apparently going to run for President in Iran's next "election".

It's idiots like Wilkerson who pose the greatest danger to US interests. Muslims have tried to destroy Israel by conventional warfare three times and by terrorism in two intifada's launched by the late Yassir Arafat. If they try again, and they wish they could, it will be with WMD. If ElBaradei had his way, Israel would be left defenceless.

Tue May 10, 2005

The bloody borders of Islam are likely to get bloodier

Not everyone wants to be converted

The years since the fall of the Soviet Empire have seen a surge in violence on the borders of Islam. The defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan was viewed by the Islamic world as a great victory. The Jihadist elements reasoned that if one super power could be defeated by the Mujahadeen then it would not take much more effort to defeat the other. Moreover, if the Soviet Union could not stop Jihad warriors from taking control of Afghanistan, the United States would do little to stop them from taking control of Muslim countries and neighboring states.

To a large extent their reasoning has proven correct. In Africa, Islam is expanding. According to this Washington Times report:

But the ancient battle has exploded across an invisible border that separates not just religions but also cultures and major ethnic groups and ancient divisions between herders and settled farmers.
The 21-year civil war that recently ended in Sudan erupted when the Arab government imposed strict Islamic law opposed by blacks in the south, where more than 4 million Catholics make up 13 percent of the population. That war is blamed for more than 2 million deaths.
Tens of thousand of others have been killed across religious fault lines during conflicts in Liberia, Ivory Coast and Nigeria, whose estimated 20 million Catholics are outnumbered on the continent only by Congo's 28-million-plus co-religionists.
...
The decision by British colonizers to rule northern Nigeria through Muslim emirs while Irish Catholic missionaries proselytized in the south has produced a nation where tribal divisions are transcended only by religion. The nation of 126 million people is roughly evenly split between Christians and Muslims.
Across Africa, Islam and Christianity are both estimated to have about 400 million followers, with animists making up most of the remainder.
In Nigeria, riots erupted in 2000 when mainly Muslim northern states instituted Islamic law, including punishments of amputation and death by stoning. In 2002, more than 200 people died in Christian-Muslim riots triggered by opposition to holding the Miss World competition in Nigeria.
...
This month, Nigerian newspapers have been full of reports that Islamic leaders are preparing a jihad, which they deny. Islamic leaders, meanwhile, complain that Muslims are being marginalized under a southern Christian president who ended 20 years of northern rule.

In Asia, Islam is on the march. While the MSM did not emphasize it, the fighting over East Timor pitched Indonesian Muslims against Catholic Timorese. The Indonesian troops massacred hundreds of Christian civilians and the world stood by. But the Indonesians went too far and, under world pressure, were forced to restore East Timor to independence. The Bali bombing targeted Westerners but it was also intended to intimidate the largely Hindu population of Bali:

Bali’s hotel occupancy rate had dropped from over 70 % before the attack to just 5 % by 29 October. This shows that that the main losers in the attack on Bali, apart from the victims themselves and their families, are the island’s residents, irrespective of whether or not they are ethnically Balinese. The Hindu Balinese majority seem to have realised this and, until now, have shown restraint by not lashing out at Muslim immigrants in their midst.

The Philippines has long hosted a Muslim insurgency that threatens the stability of the country. Needless to say, Muslim radicals have flocked to the Philippines. A plot to use passenger aircraft as flying bombs was discovered in Manila. The implications did not become fully apparent until 9/11. No one appreciated that Thailand had a significant Muslim majority in its southern province until the eruption of violence in the past year put that region into the headlines. China is having to contend with Muslim rebellion.

Islam is a religion of conquest. From its beginnings in the Arabian peninsula it spread across the Middle East into Asia and Europe. Its progress was stopped by superior European technology and military prowess in the west and by the resistance of Hindus, Buddhists and Confucians in the East. For most of the 20th century, Islam's expansionist tendencies were held in check. But it has been gathering strength and is attacking the rest of the world through terrorism and by fomenting rebellion in border states. The fight has just begun and it can only be won by inflicting military defeat on Jihadists wherever they concentrate, and by undermining radical Islam from within by giving ordinary Muslims the taste for freedom and control over their own lives.

Sun May 08, 2005

Conservatives are not all evangelical Christians or hard right Catholics

But conservative non-religious people are on their side on political and social issues

James Taranto recently outed himself as not being religious. Those reading his "Best of the Web" series in the WSJ might have thought he was a rabid Catholic or an evangelical Christian because of his concern for the status of unborn human beings as babies rather than fetuses. But no, Taranto is about as religious as the average liberal.

When I was at high school, one of the smartest kids in a very smart class described himself as a "Jewish Agnostic". I know what he meant. Call me a "Christian Agnostic". In the face of the very real threat posed by radical Islam, non-religious people recognize that Christianity and Judaism are critical to winning this war. Christians and Jews are concerned about their movement through a moral universe and how it is seen by a benevolent but just God. From my Den Bestian agnosticsm, I'm concerned about how my morality would be seen, if there was a just and benevolent supreme being. But that perspective is informed by thousands of years of Jewish and Christian thought. My imaginary God would not allow me slaughter people if they did not agree to convert to my point of view. Nor would He let me treat women as chattel. Nor would He permit me to engage in perpetual warfare (aka Jihad) to convert people to my beliefs.

It is rather hard to imagine a professed "Islamic Agnostic". The punishment prescribed for such a heretic is not continued social intercourse, but death. They do exist, thankfully.

Sat May 07, 2005

Torture versus humiliation

Someone needs to tell moronic artists the difference

The venerable New York Times devotes space to "artist" Fernando Botero's:

Now, Mr. Botero, 73, who lives in Paris and New York, has taken on an even more explosive topic: the torture of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

Torture? A few rogue guards humilated a few Iraqi prisoners over a short period of time and are now paying the price as they face justice. But Botero doesn't see it that way. He produced:

Forty-eight paintings and sketches - of naked prisoners attacked by dogs, dangling from ropes, beaten by guards, in a mangled heap of bodies - will be exhibited in Rome at the Palazzo Venezia museum on June 16.

Mr. Botero did not see fit to portray the shooting of women and children, or their bodies toppling into mass graves. He did not see fit to show enemies of Saddam torn apart by dogs and wild beasts. He did not see fit to show thousands of Kurds writhing in agony as poisonous gases snuff out their lives. He did not see fit to show people being fed through industrial shredders. He did not see fit to show suicide bombers blowing up civilians, including utterly innocent children.

We know where Botero and the NYT are coming from. America's indiscretions are inexcusable and must be publicized far and wide. Actual atrocities are to be forgotten.

Thu May 05, 2005

UK Election results

Joe Trippi provides insight that shows why Blair just squeaked in, and Bush should be careful

Just saw Joe Trippi on Hardball commenting on the UK Election. He said that immigration was the biggest issue, not Iraq. That's why the Tories did well but the Liberal Democrats did not. Had the issue been Iraq, the Liberal Democrats would have made big gains.

Are you listening, Mr. Rove? Immigration is a big issue. If the Democrats get their act together and return to their working class roots, they could make illegal immigration a potent issue. Organized labor doesn't like illegal immigration. The African-American community could be brought on board to oppose illegals stealing their jobs. We already have Maxine Waters recognizing that the Mexican Mafia run the California Prison system. The issue is approaching a tipping point for the Democrats. Tie a tough stance on illegal immigration with the war on terror and the Democrats could move to the right of Bush.

I bet Hillary is going to figure this out real soon now.

Wed May 04, 2005

Michael Moore's Minutemen are sick beyond belief

But they are still fighting for Iraq's freedom according to the anti-war left

LGF quotes a MEMRI transcript of an Al-Iraqiya TV interview with a suspected insurgent. After torturing and killing a captured Iraqi policeman, one of the insurgents planted a bomb inside the body. Then:

'Adnan Elias: 15 to 30 minutes later they told his family to come and get their son. His father came with two policemen. They picked up the body and made no more than two steps – we were standing far away – Ahmad Sinjar pressed the button.

Interviewer: By remote control.

'Adnan Elias: The body exploded on them, and they died.

Interviewer: So his father and the two policemen died.

But according to Michael Moore:

The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not "insurgents" or "terrorists" or "The Enemy." They are the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow -- and they will win.

It's sort of comforting to know that Michael Moore is on the side of these psychopaths.

The bad news is that this interview will be ignored by the MSM. Michael Jackson, the runaway bride and Lyndie England are far more important. The good news is that the Iraqi people saw this interview and many more like it.

Tue May 03, 2005

NAMBY Pambys

Not in My Back Yard or Yours Either

Nothing seems to satisfy some people:

Environmentalists filed a challenge with the NAFTA Commission for Environmental Cooperation on Tuesday against a U.S. liquefied natural gas import terminal planned off Mexico's Pacific coast, within sight of San Diego.

Greenpeace Mexico and six other U.S. and Mexican organizations accused Mexico of failing to fully evaluate the possible impact of the plant near Baja California's Coronado Island on an endangered seabird known as Xantus' murrelet.

They want clean fuel, but no plants or pipelines to handle it. They want abundant electrical power, but don't want any new power plants built, especially the cleanest ones, nukes. Left to these people there would be no drilling, no LNG, no pipelines, and no refineries. It would seem that some of these 'environmentalists want nothing less than a return to the stone age, including the severe reduction in population that that would entail. Do ya think?
Well, you know what? Screw the Xantus' murrelet and the enviros too. The birds will either make it or they won't and a LNG plant will have no effect on it either way. As for the rest of us, that depends on whether or not we listen to the enviros and take a trip back in time.

Mon May 02, 2005

Another angle on the immigration scandal

Follow the money

BummerDietz at Scylla & Charybdisl has looked into what happens to the money illegal Mexican imigrants earn in America:

We have 10 million to 20 million illegal aliens in the US. In theory, they earn money in the cash underground economy. The persons who pay them should withhold payroll taxes, but they don't.

In theory, those illegals travel back to Mexico and give the money to their Mexican families or the like. These folks shuttle back and forth across the border.

But a problem has arisen. In that past few years, clever financial services companies have decided that they can earn big fees from facilitating the "wiring" of monies by illegal aliens to Mexico or the like. In other words, the illegal alien no longer has to travel back to Mexico; instead, he can "Western Union" the money back to Mexico.

So, we have upwards of 10 million people and their employers who are avoiding US taxes. That should be easy to attack. Heck, that's how the Feds finally got Al Capone. Can't be done because of Catch 1.1441-4(b)(iii). Go read the whole blog entry to find out why this massive fraud on the US taxpayer can't be stopped.

Inside the Wire by Erik R. Saar and Viveca Novak

Treacherous nonsense

Mr. Saar has written Inside the Wire, a book about Gitmo. According to the Editorial Review at Amazon:

When Saar takes over as a cosupervisor of the linguists translating for interrogations and gains access to the detainees' intelligence files, he must contend with the extent of the deceptions and the harsh reality of just how illconceived and counterproductive an operation in the war on terror, and in the history of American military engagement, the Guantanamo detention center is.

I just saw Mr. Saar being interviewed on O'Reilly. Saar claimed most of the prisoners at Gitmo were conscripts and not dangerous. He couldn't answer O'reilly's point that some of the prisoners released from Gimo, presumably deemed harmless, went straight back to killing people, including Americans. Saar's claim that many were conscripts is equally ludicrous. He gave the game away when he referred to Afghanis and Pakistanis in the same breath. If they were not from Afghanistan then they could not be conscripts. Al Qaeda recruits but it does not conscript.

The three reader reviews at Amazon came from people claiming to have worked at Gitmo when Saar was there. They are not impressed:

#1
As a former U.S. Army Interrogator (who served at GTMO with author Eric Saar) this is yet another appalling, anti-U.S. book, told by someone who was neither a subject matter expert nor a real Interrogator.
Former SGT Saar leaves out many fine details in his representation of what real life was like at that time and place. Instead of coming out in the form of a tell-all factual presentation, this book operates on the first person premise, where the author continually finds himself in moral dilemmas, but time and time again does nothing to overcome them.

#2
I was an MP for one year in Guantanamo Bay. I have anxiously been waiting for this book to come out, not because I thought it was going to be an enlightening piece of literature, but because I wanted to read the words of yet another war profiteer, which is the popular opinion of many soldiers who served with Saar and who continue to serve our country.

I remember 'Mr Saar' quite well. I especially remember all the griping and complaining he did the whole six months he was there and all the trouble he was having with his chain of command.
I find his work to be a biased book that leaves a lot to the imagination. Erick Saar fails to portray the way the detainees treated not only the MPs but all the interrogators, especially the females. Saar also fails to describe the many times interrogators and MPs had to leave the cell blocks to disinfect themselves because the detainees would throw bodily fluids at soldiers walking by.

#3
I was also an interrogator at GTMO while Saar was there and am disgusted that he would write this book simply to make a buck off of controversy. He has no first hand knowledge of the interrogation operation as a whole. I know Saar rarely even worked with interrogators while he was at GTMO, but worked behind closed doors as a tech guy.

Personally, I think the US has been far too nice to the terrorists it has captured. Since they are not lawful combatants they do not have the protection of the Geneva conventions. I'd say extract as much information as possible from them, using whatever means prove effective, and then ship them back to their home country with the understanding that they never see daylight again.

Sun May 01, 2005

If the government makes the rules

Companies that follow the rules shouldn't become lawsuit bait

The Energy bill contains a provision to protect oil companies and MTBE manufacturers from lawsuits relared to MTBE contamination and clean-up. MTBE is an oxygenate that is added to gasoline to make it burn better and cleaner. The use of oxygenates was mandated by the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990. Oil companies may use ethanol instead, but that is a more expensive solution. Unlike MTBE, ethanol can't be pumped through existing pipelines, and its volatility is higher, making it harder to meet the emission standards.

But MTBE has a nasty downside. The EPA explains the problem:

Because MTBE dissolves easily in water and does not "cling" to soil very well, it migrates faster and farther in the ground than other gasoline components, thus making it more likely to contaminate public water systems and private drinking water wells. MTBE does not degrade (breakdown) easily and is difficult and costly to remove from ground water.

Once it gets into drinking water, even in very low concentrations, it causes the water to taste bad. The EPA, again:

It is possible your water would taste and/or smell like turpentine if MTBE is present at levels around or above 20-40 ppb [parts per billion] (some people may detect it at even lower levels).

Naturally, this is lawsuit territory. The combination of deep pockets, a widespread problem and costly clean-ups has attracted lawyers like chum attracts sharks. Just googling "MTBE lawsuit oil companies" turns up more than 30,000 hits, many of them law firms trolling for MTBE class action lawsuits. Here's one example.

The President's Energy bill contains a provision to protect oil companies from the flood of lawsuits, as this report notes:

Powerful House Republicans, including Majority Leader Tom DeLay and Rep. Joe Barton of Texas, want to revive the energy bill this month, including a provision to protect oil companies and other MTBE makers from defective product lawsuits, meaning they could not be sued simply for manufacturing MTBE.

They contend that the Clean Air Act required refiners to use additives like MTBE to reduce ozone, and refiners should not be punished for following the law.

Moderate Republicans and many Democrats in the Senate [read "bought by the trial lawyers"] vehemently oppose the liability shield as a get-out-of-jail free card that would allow companies like ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips and Lyondell Chemical Co. to duck liability and stick communities with the cleanup bill.

The government's record on protecting companies that get sued after following government rules and regulations is not good.

The government used to mandate the use of asbestos in applications such as insulating the boilers of navy ships. Did the navy get sued? No, but companies following the mandate sure did.

Drug companies spend countless millions getting new drugs approved by the FDA. But if the FDA screws up, and a drug turns out to be less safe than the FDA expected, it's the drug companies (and their customers) that pay.

So, here's hoping the Republicans can hold the line on MTBE. Otherwise, we'll all be paying a lot more for gas and trial lawyers will be getting a large slice of that money.

Go to Main Page

Judicious Search

Asinine Stats

Most Popular Entries

Archives

Syndicate RSS

News Links

Contact Form

Your Email

Subject

Message