Judicious Asininity

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Thu Jun 29, 2006

What the liberal Supremes forgot

The safety of civilian judges, lawyers, jurors and witnesses

Bradford Berenson, former Associate White House Counsel, is on C-Span (Friday evening 3/23), explaining why military tribunals are appropriate for terrorists. He noted that U.S. District Judge Kevin Duffy, the judge who tried the perpetrators of the 1993 World Trade Center attack, has a 24-hour guard to protect him from revenge attacks by Muslim terrorists. That is a huge burden for a public servant and the public purse to bear.

A little googling confirmed that the judge is indeed under such protection:

Michael Bounds, 47, Jackson, deputy U.S. marshal:

Terrorists had been on his mind hours before two airliners smashed into the World Trade Center.

That's because Bounds was in New York City on a special detail, helping to protect U.S. District Judge Kevin Duffy, who presided over the trial involving the 1993 terrorist bombing of the center. "He has a lifetime detail protection based on the threats against him."

When the terrorist strike took place on Sept. 11, Bounds helped rush Duffy to a secure location.

Suppose we capture Osama bin Ladin and he is tried in a civilian court in New York. Suppose you are asked to serve on the jury. Suppose you receive threats against your life from Osama's supporters. Would you still serve? Suppose jurors at a previous terrorist trial had been decapitated by Muslim terrorists. Still willing to serve? Duffy received threats so serious that he has lifetime protection. Would civilian jurors get the same level of protection? Your call.

If Osama is ever again able to mount a major attack on US soil, I doubt he'll target the Supreme Court or the NYT headquarters. Just a guess.

The enemy has been given a new weapon by the Supremes

The Geneva Conventions

Instapundit links to Marty Lederman at Scotus Blog who writes:

Even more importantly for present purposes, the Court held that Common Article 3 of Geneva aplies [sic] as a matter of treaty obligation to the conflict against Al Qaeda. That is the HUGE part of today's ruling.

If we are going to win this War on Radical Islam we need to neutralize every weapon in the enemy's arsenal. Given the Supreme Court's ruling it would seem prudent for the United States to withdraw from the Geneva Conventions. God knows, the enemy sure doesn't abide by the Geneva conventions.

Osama had two great victories this week

Too bad they were own goals

In 9/11 City, the paper of record decided to explain to Osama how not to move money around the globe. They also put the Europeans on the spot and likely closed off importants sources of intelligence on terrorist.

Then the United States Supreme Court, in an act of supreme folly, ruled that terrorists deserve a fair trial in US courts with all the rights and protections afforded US citizens and legal residents.

Justice Thomas slams the plurality:

Today a plurality of this Court would hold that conspiracy to massacre innocent civilians does not violate the laws of war. This determination is unsustainable. The judgment of the political branches that Hamdan, and others like him, must be held accountable before military commissions for their involvement with and membershipin an unlawful organization dedicated to inflicting massive civilian casualties is supported by virtually every relevant authority, including all of the authorities invoked by the plurality today. It is also supported by the nature of the present conflict. We are not engaged in a traditional battle with a nation-state, but with a worldwide, hydra-headed enemy, who lurks in the shadows conspiring toreproduce the atrocities of September 11, 2001, and who has boasted of sending suicide bombers into civilian gatherings, has proudly distributed videotapes of beheadings of civilian workers, and has tortured and dismembered captured American soldiers. But according to the plurality, when our Armed Forces capture those who are plottingterrorist atrocities like the bombing of the Khobar Towers, the bombing of the U. S. S. Cole, and the attacks of September 11—even if their plots are advanced to the verybrink of fulfillment—our military cannot charge those criminals with any offense against the laws of war. Instead, our troops must catch the terrorists “redhanded,” ante, at 48, in the midst of the attack itself, in order to bring them to justice. Not only is this conclusion fundamentally inconsistent with the cardinal principal of thelaw of war, namely protecting non-combatants, but itwould sorely hamper the President’s ability to confrontand defeat a new and deadly enemy.

I'd say the plurality has caught a severe case of BDS. Let us pray it is not fatal to the nation.

Why Cannon won

Chuck Muth has the Truth

It was not a win for the pro-illegal immigration lobby. Chuck Muth explains why:

Cannon successfully re-invented himself over the past few months. While once an outspoken advocate of lax immigration policies - telling a Hispanic audience at one point that he didn’t make much of a distinction between legal and illegal immigration - Cannon all but became a born-again Tom Tancredo, the outspoken anti-illegal immigration congressman from Colorado, in his campaign rhetoric the days and weeks leading up to the election.

So Cannon had to swim with the anti-illegal imigrant tide to win. Then Cannon's opponent, John Jacob, starting shooting himself in the foot. Repeatedly. That'll hobble a campaign. Muth again:

However, just days before the election, stories appeared which set off alarm bells for seasoned political professionals. The first was when Jacob announced he couldn’t afford to go up on TV the full two weeks leading up to Game Day. The second was that the Jacob campaign hadn’t devoted any serious time or attention to wooing early and absentee ballot voters - voters which can, and often do, make or break a close election
...
First came the reports that Jacob may have unlawfully funneled money to an immigrant family. It was an involved and detailed story, but in our sound-bite age all the public heard was that Jacob was a personal hypocrite on the immigration issue. Right or wrong, that’s how the story was perceived by the electorate.

Then Jacob was forced to admit, in no particular order, that he: (a) had a gambling “problem,” (b) had his figures all wrong regarding the number of illegal aliens being housed in a Utah jail, (c) had not one, but two bankruptcies and other business failures, and (d) had a “path to citizenship” proposal of his own based on a practice at Disneyland called FastPass which allows certain people to jump to the front of the line. In other words, “amnesty” by another name.

However, the final nail in the coffin came just five days before the election, at a time when Jacob was, despite all his other problems, still in a statistical dead heat with the incumbent.

First at a campaign event, and then in front of editors from the state’s largest newspaper, Jacob blamed his struggles in challenging Cannon on...the devil. According to the Salt Lake Tribune, Jacob said that “since he decided to run for Congress, Satan (had) disrupted his business deals, preventing him from putting as much money into the race as he had hoped.”

Blaming Satan? No wonder the voters ditched him.

Tue Jun 27, 2006

Thailand - Another front in the War on Terror

The MSM don't mention it much but Thailand is a major battlefield

The BBC reports on ongoing violence by Muslim terrorists in southern Thailand. Just another front in the war on everybody but us being waged by radical Islam. The International Herald Tribune reports on the situation:

Thailand has become somewhat inured to the daily violence that has claimed more than 1,300 lives over the past two years, a startling death toll in a country that is still much better known for its beaches and massage parlors than its homegrown terrorism.

But the beating of Jooling Pangamoon, who taught art at the elementary school, shocked the country, both because of its brutality and because witnesses say the group that abducted Jooling was led by women.

The beating confirmed a disturbing trend: Whereas the victims of the insurgency three years ago were almost exclusively soldiers and police officers, they nowadays are including more and more civilians - Buddhist monks, bystanders, teachers and government officials - according to Srisompob Jitpiromsri, a political science professor at Prince Songkla University in the southern city of Pattani. He counts a total of 3,546 violent incidents in 2004 and 2005.

Thawach Saehum, head of a teachers' association, says 46 teachers have been killed and 28 wounded since 2004, when violence flared dramatically. He and many teachers now carry handguns to protect themselves, he said.

"The teachers are the last symbol of the government's presence in the villages," Thawach said, adding that most other government officers were too afraid to set foot outside of the main towns, especially at night.

Looks like the ROP doesn't like Bhuddists either.

The Judith Miller precedent

Time to use it

The NYT was strongly in favor the appointment of a Special Prosecutor to investigate the trivial matter of the leaking of an undercover CIA employee's name. The Special Prosecutor sent Judith Miller to jail for refusing to disclose her source(s). Since then the NYT has printed numerous stories based on unauthorized leaks of important national security secrets. Strangely, the paper hasn't called for any investigation of those leaks. It would be poetic justice if the reporters and editors involved in those stories had a little jail time to decide whether or not to cough up the names of their sources. As long as it takes, guys.

Memo to Alberto Gonzales - Just Do It!

Post added to the Beltway traffic Jam.

A US Marine explains what this war is about

Excellent post

Rule 308 explains what this war is about. I find myself in complete agreement with everything he wrote.

1. That there is no “war in Iraq” and “war in Afghanistan.” There is only The War. Iraq and Afghanistan are two of its campaigns; at present the most active overt ones. There are others: the Horn of Africa, the Philippines, and naval operations in foreign waters. Still others are being fought in ways and places that will remain secret for any years.

2. That the War did not begin on 11 September 2001. It began, in its immediate form at least, in February 1993 with the first bombing of the World Trade Center (and arguably years before). While we treated that and other subsequent incidents—Khobar Towers, the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the USS Cole—as criminal matters, we failed to see them as acts of war. Our responses not only did not punish those responsible, but by their inadequacy actually encouraged further attacks. Also, we did not ask for this War; it sought us out.

3. That the War in its present form is but the latest manifestation in the age-old struggle between the West (formerly European Christendom) and the Middle Eastern, Muslim world. Various powers have carried the standard for each side; it is now the turn of the U.S. to act for the West. It is a struggle between our civilization and an astonishingly retrogressive ideology which combines the most objectionable features of an aggressive proselytizing religion with the social and economic features of modern totalitarianism.

4. That the War is absolutely worth fighting. Our opponents are implacably hostile to us, and would convert, enslave or kill us they see fit. They allow no sort of let’s-agree-to-disagree co-existence. If we do not fight today in Baghdad it does not mean that we will fight next week in Boston, but it does mean that we will take a step backwards and give our enemies breathing room. We should be engaging the Muslim world in all quarters, by diplomatic, economic and cultural means when possible, but by military means when necessary. Nowhere should the extremists go unchallenged, from al-Anbar to Zamboanga. Don’t like oil at $70 a barrel? Imagine it at twice that; imagine U.S. and allied merchant shipping unable to ply the seas without fear of attack; imagine American tourists unable to go to Europe because militant Muslim populations have made it unsafe to do so and have cowed the governments of the countries where they live.

5. That in failing to find distinctly labeled stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, we also found, almost by accident, the real weapon of mass destruction: the seething body of discontented, mis-educated, unemployed males, whose sole outlet for dissent is in voluntary destructive acts, and who are preyed upon and exploited by wily, conniving clerics and politicians. They exist in a dysfunctional society, the roots of which go back centuries. To win the battle against those forces will be to score a lasting victory for the human race and protect our own security and prosperity. To quote General McCaffrey, “Our aim must be to create a viable federal state under the rule of law which does not: enslave its own people, threaten its neighbors, or produce weapons of mass destruction.”

6. That the War effort ought to engage and involve the entire U.S. population. Right now, the military and the intelligence community are the ones doing the fighting. Every arm of the federal government should be involved, spearheaded by the State Department. Citizens need to be told and shown that the danger is real, it is potent, and it is the job of everyone to do his or her part. Those who are not in the armed forces have many options open to them, from local first-response units to volunteer organizations dedicated to disaster preparedness and relief. They can also vote. There needs to be a strong national consensus on the War, how to fight it, and why it must be won. It seems to me now that there is too much talk on if to fight the War, and why.

Let's make damn sure we win this war.

Take the Global Warming test

And ask your Greenie friends to take it too

I scored 100% on this Global warming Test. I hope the Supremes take this test before they pass judgement on whether or not the EPA can regulate CO₂ emissions.

Mon Jun 26, 2006

The NYT God complex

They know what we should or shouldn't know

Back in the 30's, when good, old Uncle Joe was commiting genocide by starvation, Pullet Surprise winning reporter Walter Duranty was on the case:

We will never know whether Walter Duranty, the principal New York Times correspondent in the U.S.S.R., ever visited Fediivka. Almost certainly not. What we do know is that, in March 1933, while telling his readers that there had indeed been "serious food shortages" in the Ukraine, he was quick to reassure them that "there [was] no actual starvation." There had been no "deaths from starvation," he soothed, merely "widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition." So that was all right then.

Duranty didn't want to reveal the truth about a mortal enemy. Two generations later, the NYT thinks it has the right to reveal US National Security secrets to Al Qaeda, a mortal enemy. The NYT will do anything for a Pullet Surprise.

I reckon Keller and Pinch deserve a Bullet Surprise for their treason.

The New York Times has gone too far in printing the Swift story

John Snow catches Keller being deceitful

Captain's Quarters writes:

While Keller described efforts by the government to hold back publication of the story as "half-hearted", Snow reveals that Keller's association with the truth is half-assed

Go read what Snow said. The Captain nails Keller's lame excuse to the wall:

The inclusion of the co-chairs of the 9/11 Commission is particularly telling. The Times urged the Bush administration to adopt the Commision recommendations in toto, parroting the Kerry campaign's demands after the publication of the Commission's final report. They considered the Commission's findings determinative, and brooked little dissent from the Bush administration when it hesitated to implement the entire set of recommendations. Now, however, Keller and Pinch Sulzberger finds them less than expert on matters of national security, and their efforts "half-hearted".

I doubt we'll see this analysis in the MSM. Heck, did they even report what Snow said? Googling "Snow Kean Hamilton Keller" in the News feed got two minor hits as of 10:00 pm on June 26th.

Sun Jun 25, 2006

Murtha jumps the Shark

The gift that keeps on giving to the Republicans

Murtha says U.S. poses top threat to world peace. The South Florida Sun-Sentine reports:

American presence in Iraq is more dangerous to world peace than nuclear threats from North Korea or Iran, Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., said to an audience of more than 200 in North Miami Saturday afternoon.

I hope the Democrats stick with Murtha as their leading expert on "defense". Maybe they haven't realized the guy is as close to senile as you can get and still stay in Congress. Okinawa anyone?

Sat Jun 24, 2006

The NYT has usurped Presidential power

Who voted to give the NYT the right to declassify national security secrets?

The President has the right to declassify national security secrets as he sees fit, despite what the New York Times says. The New York Times does not have that right and has clearly broken the law in revealing national security secrets. If publisher Arthur Sulzberger, editor Bill Keller, or reporters James Risen, Eric Lichtblau, Dan Bilefsky, Scott Shane, Stephen Grey and Margot Williams want that right they should run for President. Otherwise, they belong in prison. It is way past time to prosecute the publisher, editor and the reporters involved.

Bill Keller's excuse:

We have listened closely to the administration’s arguments for withholding this information, and given them the most serious and respectful consideration. We remain convinced that the administration’s extraordinary access to this vast repository of international financial data, however carefully targeted use of it may be, is a matter of public interest.

doesn't cut it. It is a treacherous usurption of the President's constitutional and war-time powers.

The New York Times

Delivering all the secrets that Al Qaeda needs to know

It is now beyond doubt that Al Qaeda's most powerfull ally is the New York Times. The leading newspaper in the city most devastated by the attacks of 9/11 is doing everything in its power to undermine America's ability to fight radical Islam in all its noxious incarnations.

Heather MacDonald has similar thoughts:

The New York Times is a national security threat. So drunk is it on its own power and so antagonistic to the Bush administration that it will expose every classified antiterror program it finds out about, no matter how legal the program, how carefully crafted to safeguard civil liberties, or how vital to protecting American lives.

Let's check the record.

The NYT printed Abu Ghraib stories on its front page -- once the most important real estate in the news business -- on 32 consecutive days. Their coverage of rogue behaviour by a few low level soldiers attempted to spread the lie that the US military routinely abused prisoners. That has now become the general belief amongst leftists and Europeans.

Then the NYT revealed that since 9/11, the Bush administration has "secretly" engaged in warrantless eavesdropping on U.S.-based international phone calls and e-mails.

It exposed the fact that the CIA uses its own airline service, posing as a private charter company, to transport terrorist captives.

It followed up with revelations about a supposed network of secret CIA prisons in Europe.

Now it's telling the world how the dreaded Bush administration is using financial records to track terrorists.

If we are to win this war we need to destroy the NYT's ability to reveal National Security secrets. A good start would be to enforce existing laws, including those covering treason, and prosecute the leakers and those who print the leaks. I could think of no better place for these traitors than the cells adjacent to Zacarias Moussaoui's cell. May they all rot in Hell.

Thu Jun 22, 2006

Where GM and Ford screwed up big time

Minivans

Yep, that's where they missed the boat. The Car Connection has the sad story. Here are the sales figures for the first 5 months of 2006:
Chrysler 172,819
Honda Odyssey 72,941
Toyota Sienna 67,404
General Motors 44,290
Ford 30,445
Kia Sedona 26,215
Nissan Quest 12,186
Chrysler has kept its focus on the market segment it created and the results show the pay-off. Honda tried to enter the Minivan market with an Accord based vehicle that bombed. They came back with a winner and have been selling it at close to MSRP ever since. Toyota tried out a high-tech entrant that starred in "City Slickers" but not the market. They came back with a Chrysler clone and rode their reputation to the #3 slot. What did GM and Ford do? Me too late.

The latest range of GM Minivans look like SUVs up front. They're going to win Soccer Moms and Dads by looking like a SUV? Ford tries with the Freestar but it's another me-too SUV. The Freestyle tries to create a cross-over segment. Maybe if they'd given it a Honda drive-train they might have succeeded.

But it is obvious that the big two, the only American car companies, could care less about Soccer Moms.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer hits a new low

Publishes cartoon mocking the US military over the brutal murder of Privates Menchaca and Tucker

Here's the offending cartoon:

You can also find it here. The two coffins are labelled "Kidnapped Soldiers". The first soldier is saying "HEARD THE ARMY'S ISSUING NEW UNIFORMS". The second responds "THEY CAN ORDER TWO LESS".

Naturally, the PD refused to publish the Danish cartoons that satirized the religion of the perpetrators. I suppose we can't expect any better from a newspaper that mostly recycles NYT stories and columns.

Wed Jun 21, 2006

Why is there "scientific consensus" on global warming?

Because scientists probably favor evidence that supports their political views

While reading the book Stumbling On Happiness, by Daniel Gilbert,Stuart Buck came across a citation to this study:

C. G. Lord, L. Ross, and M. R. Leper, "Biased Assimilation and Attitude Polarization: The Effects of Prior Theories on Subsequently Considered Evidence," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37:2098-109 (1979).

The authors studied how two groups reacted to two different studies on capital punishment. They found:

The results showed that volunteers favored whichever technique produced the conclusion that verified their own personal political ideologies.

In an end-note, Glilbert writes:

It is no consolation that in subsequent studies, both established scientists and scientists in training showed the same tendency to favor techniques that produced favored conclusions. See J. J. Koehler, 'The Influence of Prior Beliefs on Scientific Judgments of Evidence Quality,' Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 56: 28-55 (1993).

That tendency is evident in the debate on global warming. Scientists ignore any evidence that suggests the current warming trend is not unusual in climate history (c.f. the Medieval Warm Period) yet pounce on any evidence that conforms to their political belief that human activity is warming the atmosphere.

Here's how one group of scientists views the Medieval Warm Period:

Period of relative warmth in some regions of the Northern Hemisphere in comparison with the subsequent several centuries. Also referred to as the Medieval Warm Epoch (MWE). As with the 'Little Ice Age'(LIA) no well-defined precise date range exists. The dates A.D. 900–1300 cover most ranges generally used in the literature. Origin is difficult to track down, but it is believed to have been first used in the 1960s (probably by Lamb in 1965). As with the LIA, the attribution of the term at regional scales is complicated by significant regional variations in temperature changes, and the utility of the term in describing regional climate changes in past centuries has been questioned in the literature. As with the LIA, numerous myths can still be found in the literature with regard to the details of this climate period. These include the citation of the cultivation of vines in Medieval England, and the settlement of Iceland and southwestern Greenland about 1000 years ago, as evidence of unusual warmth at this time. As noted by Jones and Mann (2004) [Jones, P.D., Mann, M.E., Climate Over Past Millennia, Reviews of Geophysics, 42, RG2002, doi: 10.1029/2003RG000143, 2004], arguments that such evidence supports anomalous global warmth during this time period is based on faulty logic and/or misinterpretations of the available evidence.

Well, they would say that wouldn't they? If the Earth was warmer then than it is now, they would have to explain how the forces that warmed the Earth then differ from the forces warming the Earth now.

Here's the contrary view:

Recent news coverage portrays the twentieth century as the meanest, baddest, hottest century of the last 1,000 years--all because of a human-induced rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide. But is it so? By 1965, the great British climatologist Hubert H. Lamb had synthesized indications of past warm and cold periods spread over the world:

. . . [M]ultifarious evidence of a meteorological nature from historical records, as well as archaeological, botanical, and glaciological evidence in various parts of the world from the Arctic to New Zealand . . . has been found to suggest a warmer epoch lasting several centuries between about A.D. 900 or 1000 and about 1200 or 1300. . . . Both the "Little Optimum" in the early Middle Ages and the cold epochs [i.e., "Little Ice Age" --Editors], now known to have reached its culminating stages between 1550 and 1700, can today be substantiated by enough data to repay meteorological investigation. . . .

In more than three decades of attentive research Lamb's optimism has blossomed into facts about the last 1,000 years' climate change. With better tools and techniques, researchers have gathered comprehensive information about past climate change from proxies such as tree rings, pollen, coral, glaciers, boreholes, and sea sediments sampled worldwide.

According to the reconstructed records, people in many parts of the world experienced a relative warmth early in the millennium, called the Little Optimum (LO), and a cool period a few centuries later, labeled the Little Ice Age (LIA).

Examples are geographically widespread and numerous.

How does an unbiased observer reconcile this claim:

arguments that such evidence supports anomalous global warmth during this time period is based on faulty logic and/or misinterpretations of the available evidence

with the contray claim:

In more than three decades of attentive research Lamb's optimism has blossomed into facts about the last 1,000 years' climate change. With better tools and techniques, researchers have gathered comprehensive information about past climate change from proxies such as tree rings, pollen, coral, glaciers, boreholes, and sea sediments sampled worldwide.

from the sceptical side? Since the two sides make contradictory claims we need to look at the evidence each side uses. We also have to make certain that neither side is cherry-picking evidence that supports their view.

Tue Jun 20, 2006

Time to stop pussy-footing around in Iraq

The treatment of two US soldiers proves our enemy deserves nothing but death

They:

o Capture, torture, kill, and booby-trap our lawful combatants

o Fight from behind civilians.

o Shelter in mosques and snipe from minarets.

o Blow up civilians with car bombs and suicide bombers.

They are not soldiers. They are not lawful combatants. They are not warriors. They are cowards without honor. Their religion is a death cult with no redeeming merit.

It's a pity the MSM doesn't tell us the truth about the enemy. Oops, I forgot. The MSM is on their side. Why else would the MSM reveal our secrets?

Oh, and it would be really good if the US military stopped giving credence to enemy claims of US atrocities. Especially since we know the enemy thinks nothing of killing their own and blaming us.

In my mind, the enemy encompasses Hamas, Hezbollah, Fatah, Al Qaeda, Iran, Syria, the two-timing Saudis, the two-timing Pakistanis, assorted terrorist groups in Thailand, Algeria, Somalia, the Phillipines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Chechyna, Bosnia, etc. etc., and terrorist cells in Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Australia, USA, etc. etc. They are all united by Islam. We lose if we fail to recognize that Islam is the enemy.

Mon Jun 19, 2006

Why Kyoto won't work

China

Jim Miller get's to the point:

One of China's lesser-known exports is a dangerous brew of soot, toxic chemicals and climate-changing gases from the smokestacks of coal-burning power plants.
. . .
Unless China finds a way to clean up its coal plants and the thousands of factories that burn coal, pollution will soar both at home and abroad. The increase in global-warming gases from China's coal use will probably exceed that for all industrialized countries combined over the next 25 years, surpassing by five times the reduction in such emissions that the Kyoto Protocol seeks.
Which makes the Kyoto Agreement almost pointless, wouldn't you say?

I don't much worry about CO₂ emissions, per se. What came from the air can go back to the air and make plants happy. It's the pollution that goes with CO₂ emissions in under-developed and developing countries that is a much greater cause for concern. The Asian Brown Cloud is a major environmental disaster that greenies ignore. They also ignore China's wanton pollution of the atmosphere.

There's a price to be paid for cheap Chinese goods: massive, accelerating, atmospheric pollution.

Sat Jun 17, 2006

Why would a test pilot wear a Gorilla mask, a derby hat and smoke a cigar?

While testing America's first jet fighter, the P59

Answer at The Braden Files.

Rep Murtha deserves a new title

Osama's Handmaiden

The NRO Media Blog reports that Murtha said:

And I said over and over in debate, if you listen to any of it, in Beirut President Reagan changed direction, in Somalia President Clinton changed direction, and yet here, with the troops out there every day, suffering from these explosive devices, and being looked at as occupiers

The blog entry recalls Osama's response:

After leaving Afghanistan, the Muslim fighters headed for Somalia and prepared for a long battle, thinking that the Americans were like the Russians," bin Laden said. "The youth were surprised at the low morale of the American soldiers and realized more than before that the American soldier was a paper tiger and after a few blows ran in defeat. And America forgot all the hoopla and media propaganda ... about being the world leader and the leader of the New World Order, and after a few blows they forgot about this title and left, dragging their corpses and their shameful defeat.

That retreat led Osama to believe that America could be driven out of the Middle East with a few more blows. 9/11 was meant to be the coup de grâce. If Murtha has his way, Iraq will prove the coup de grâce.

Thu Jun 15, 2006

Why the Left is sick

The root cause is envy which leads to Political Correctness run amok

These two essays go a long way towards explaining why the Left thinks the way it does and the root cause of their pathology. Jack Wheeler explains how the primitive emotion of envy is the driving force behind the evil ideologies of Nazism and Communism that we confronted last century and resurgent Islam that we face in the twenty first:

Pandering to the envious, and intimidating those who are afraid of them, has been the path to power of all modern demagogues, from Lenin and Hitler to Yassir Arafat and Osama bin Laden.

The three great political pathologies of the 20th century are all religions of envy: Nazism, preaching race envy toward "rich, exploitative Jews"; Communism, preaching class envy toward the "rich, exploitative bourgeoisie"; and Moslem terrorism, preaching culture envy toward the "rich, exploitative West."

Envy-mongering has always been and continues to be the underlying strategy of all variants of the political Left, such as the Democratic Party. What a Yanomamo woman calls "black magic" and a Marxist professor at Harvard calls "exploitation," Tom Daschle calls "tax break for the rich."

So here we discover the secret fear at the source of the suicidal liberal mind. It is envy that makes a Nazi, a Communist or a terrorist. It is the fear of being envied that makes a liberal and is the source of "liberal guilt."

This is most easily seen in the children of wealthy parents. Successful businessmen, for example, who have made it on their own normally have a respect for the effort and the economic system that makes success possible.

Their children, who have not had to work for it, are easier targets for guilt-mongering by the envious. So they assume a posture of liberal compassion as an envy-deflection device: "Please don't envy me for my father's money -- look at all the liberal causes and government social programs I advocate!"

Teddy Kennedy is the archetype of this phenomenon.

The Fjordman, posting at Gates of Vienna, explains how Marxism, rather than being defeated, has metasticized into a virulently anti-Western, pro-Muslim ideology thay has taken over the Left. It goes by the seemingly innocuous epithet "Political Correctness". Fjordman concludes:

Political Correctness is Marxism with a nose job. Multiculturalism is not about tolerance or diversity, it is an anti-Western hate ideology designed to dismantle Western civilization. If we can demonstrate this, an important part of the battle has already been won.

These essays are long reads but well worth the effort.

Mon Jun 12, 2006

How badly did Zarqawi's death hurt Al Qaeda?

Let's put a price on it

Zarqawi had a price of $25,000,000 on his head. His successor?

The U.S. military has said the mostly likely successor is an Egyptian associate of al-Zarqawi named Abu Ayyub al-Masri, who has a $50,000 (U.S.) reward on his head.

That's gotta hurt the new guy's ego. It's like a company firing a $25,000,000 p.a. CEO and replacing him with a low-level accountant making $50K. What happened to all the guys in between? Dead, maybe? You can't kill people when you're dead, can you?

Kill the lion, hire a chipmunk. That's gotta impress the troops.

Murtha probably made a huge mistake on Haditha

Now that we are getting more information, it looks like Haditha was a fake but accurate massacre

Here's what Murtha was telling the media:

The shootings last November at Haditha, a city in the Anbar province of western Iraq that has been plagued by insurgents, were covered up, said Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa.

"Who covered it up, why did they cover it up, why did they wait so long?" Murtha said on "This Week" on ABC. "We don't know how far it goes. It goes right up the chain of command."

A bomb rocked a military convoy on Nov. 19, killing a Marine. Marines then shot and killed unarmed civilians in a taxi at the scene and went into two homes and shot other people, according to Murtha, who has been briefed by officials.

Murtha said high-level reports he received indicated that no one fired upon the Marines or that there was any military action against the U.S. forces after the initial explosion. Yet the deaths were not seriously investigated until March because an early probe was stifled within days of the incident, he said.

"I will not excuse murder, and this is what happened," Murtha said. "This investigation should have been over two or three weeks afterward and it should have been made public and people should have been held responsible for it."

Murtha's claims directly contradict what his "fellow" Marines who were there have been saying. The WPO reports:

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 [after an IED had killed a Marine and wounded others]. 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.

"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."

But Murtha is making that exact claim; that Marines deliberately killed innocent civilians. Either Murtha is right or Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich is telling the truth. I'm betting that Wuterich is telling the truth. From reading Sweetness & Lights posts on the subject I learned more about the sources of the Haditha massacre story that Time magazine broke:

Still, look at the sources [Time reporter] Mr. McGirk courageously "interviewed" by email:

In the ensuing weeks, McGirk and TIME’s Baghdad staff members interviewed more than a dozen Haditha locals by e-mail (travel between Baghdad and Haditha is exceedingly dangerous for Iraqis, let alone foreign journalists), including the mayor, the morgue doctor and a local lawyer who negotiated a settlement between the Marines and the families…

The "mayor" is the mayor of the Sunni insurgent stronghold where only 150 people out of 90,000 dared to vote in the Oct. 15 constitutional referendum. The mayor holds his job solely at the pleasure of the terrorists who are in total control of Haditha.

The "morgue doctor," Dr. Walid Abdul-Khaleq al-Obeidi, claims to have been arrested, held prisoner for a week and brutally beaten by US troops. From his remarks in interviews it is clear he hates the US. And of course he too only holds his job as the head of the Haditha hospital at the sufferance of the Sunni "insurgents."

The "local lawyer," Khaled Salem Rsayef, claims to have had several relatives murdered by the Marines. He also wants further compensation for himself and his clients. Which he will surely get if the Marines are found guilty.

These are the kind of sources Time trusted for such an important story. But for some reason they didn’t tell us about their backgrounds.

Sweetness and Light has much more to say that further undermines Time's reporting. Here are some of the key points:

1. Time misrepresented the source of the story and admitted that "Human Rights Watch has no ties or association with the Hammurabi Human Rights Group".

2. Hammurabi Human Rights Group has only two members. Time's source, Thaer Thabit al-Hadithi, who founded the group 18 months ago, is one of them.

3. Time described him as a "Haditha journalism student". He isn't. He's a 43 year old man who previously worked for the head of Haditha’s hospital, Dr. Walid al-Obeidi. The Doctor "pronounced that all the victims had been shot at close range", but now the bodies can't be exhumed to verify that claim.

4. The cameraman working for Reuters in Haditha, who claims bodies had been left lying in the street for hours after the attack, had just been released from a year in detention by the US and Iraqi government for his ties to the insurgency. He hasn't provided any photos and his claim contradicts the claim that the victims had been shot inside their homes.

5. Lance Cpl. Roel Briones, the Marine who claimed to have followed orders to photograph corpses after an alleged massacre by U.S. forces, came up with the claim long after tthe event but just after he was charged with felony auto theft, hit-and-run and drunken driving. Needless to say, the photos he claimed he was ordered to take no longer exist.

Pretty obviously, if Marines are attacked, especially after an IED ambush, they will defend themselves. If they are fired on from a house, they will clear the house. They must assume that everyone in that house is a threat. If civilians die then the responsibility lies with the cowards who use civilians as shields, not the Marines. Murtha has cast his lot with the cowardly terrorists. Some Marine, huh?

Sun Jun 11, 2006

Memo to Western reporters

You are Infidels

That means that Muslims are under no obligation to tell you the truth. In fact, they are under a religious obligation to lie to you, to deceive you, to mislead you, to kidnap you, or behead you if that will advance Islam.

Bearing that in mind, you should treat anything a Muslim tells you as balderdash until it has been independently verified by a pro-Western source. That excludes Reuters, AP, NYT, CBS, MSNBC, BBC, ANC, NBC, MSNBC and any other media outlet that uses any of the aforementioned outlets as a source.

Solomonia links to a column in the Jerusalem Post by Herb Keinon that lists some of the deceptions that Muslims have perpetrated on gullible Western reporters:

Israelis are doing themselves a gross disservice, and playing into the hands of the Palestinians, by presuming that an Israeli shell caused the deaths of seven Palestinian civilians Friday in Gaza, Prime Minster Ehud Olmert's Foreign media advisor Ra'anan Gissin said Sunday.

"We are repeating the same mistakes of the past in taking responsibility when there are other possibilities about who is responsible," Gissin said.

He said that Friday's tragedy on the Gaza beach may indeed be similar to the shooting of Mohammed al-Dura in 2000, the "Jenin Massacre" in 2002, and the killing of 21 people at the Jabaliya refugee camp last September. While the Palestinians originally pinned the blame for all these incidents on Israel, it has since turned out that al-Dura may have been killed by Palestinians, that there was no "Jenin massacre," and that the deaths in Jabaliya were caused when Hamas activists "mishandled" explosives at a mass rally.

The slime we are fighting will happily kill their own to score a propaganda victory over the Infidels.

I temporarily excluded the WPO from the list above because they actually presented a contrary view on Haditha, provided by people sworn to defend the United States of America, i.e. Marines who were there. You can read about it at Sweetness and Light.

Oh, I hereby apologize to slime. It is harmless and an inappropriate comparative for the enemy we face. Nazi is likely more appropriate because every stinking one of our enemies publicly and shamelessly proclaims their intention to finish off what Hitler started.

Don't believe me, oh Western reporter? Just ask your fellow reporter, the late Daniel Pearl. He had the courage to go out and do original reporting. But he was a Jew so he had to die.

Is that why the MSM is supporting the enemy with every word they write, every lie they tell? Because they are afraid to follow Daniel Pearl? Better to slander a Marine than report the truth. That way, you keep your head. That explains a lot.

Sat Jun 10, 2006

Princess Diana and Zarqawi

What they had in common in death

Time reported that:

When the first emergency medical workers reached Diana in the Pont de l'Alma traffic tunnel, she appeared to have suffered only relatively minor injuries and her face was untouched, says an unidentified doctor who treated Diana at the scene. His account appears in Wednesday's edition of the French tabloid Le Parisien. "She was very agitated, half-knocked out but conscious," said the doctor. Diana repeatedly murmured "Oh my God" as doctors and paramedics began to treat her injuries, firefighters sought to free her from the car and police pushed back the photographers who had been "taking pictures just a few centimeters from her face," the paper quoted the doctor as saying. "Leave me alone, leave me alone," Diana said, just before the oxygen mask was placed over her face and she lost consciousness, the doctor told Le Parisien. According to the paper, the ambulance taking her to Pitie-Salpetriere hospital traveled at only 25 mph on the orders of doctors who said it was imperative Diana not be jostled. The daily claimed the trip from the accident scene to the hospital took an hour.

Unfortunately for Diana, when the car came to a dead halt, her internal organs continued forward until they too hit a barrier. She survived a short time but the damage to her internal organs was so great that nothing could save her.

Zarqawi did not suffer the direct impact of the bomb. His body was not torn asunder by shrapnel. What killed him was overpressure from the blast. Redstate explains:

One of the least understood phenomena of a bomb blast is overpressure. Everything in the blast perimeter is subject to a sudden and profound increase in air pressure. This wave of blast overpressure declines rapidly the further it travels. A person 10 feet from a bomb blast will experience nine times the overpressure of a person 20 feet away. But it gets messy and unpredictable. A person who happens to be standing between the bomb and a strong wall is subjected to more blast effect because solid surfaces reflect the blast wave.

You, as you read this, are subjected to normal air pressure of 15 pounds per square inch, depending on how close you are to sea level. The rapidly expanding gases of the bomb push the air out of the way generating air pressures of as much as 700 tons per square inch in the immediate area. But even on the outer perimeters of the blast area overpressures can be deadly.

The human body contains two principal air-filled spaces -- the lungs and the nasal cavity and attached sinuses. A human subjected to a bomb blast wave instantly has hundreds and perhaps thousands psi of pressure pushing on these cavities. A mere 15 psi above normal is considered the threshold for possible lung injury, so imagine what happens to those near the epicenter of a bomb blast.

The chest caves in. The lungs inside it are compressed violently in on themselves -- so violently that the entire network of pulmonary vessels connecting them to the heart and the rest of the body are sheared off.

When the instant of blast overpressure passes, the lungs suddenly re-expand, like a crushed rubber ball rebounding in the hand of a strong man. But now they are filled with a huge volume of blood, blood that should be flowing to the heart and other parts of the body.

Blood that would normally return to the heart through the left ventricle has now overwhelmed the lungs. No blood in the left ventricle equals no blood in the heart equals no pulmonary output to the body. Blood pressure -- zero. The body is instantly starved.

Up above, in the skull, at the same instant, the overpressure works in another way. The nasal and sinus cavities implode. That part of the skull called the cribiform plate ruptures, snaps and may be thrust upward into the base of the brain.

Zarqawi was in the danger zone of the bomb's overpressure. It crippled his internal organs while leaving his outer body looking (relatively) intact. He had enough time to appreciate his deserved fate. That was truly good.

Princess Diana had enough time to appreciate her undeserved fate. That was not good.

Not knowing how violent death occurs breeds conspiracy theories.

Thu Jun 08, 2006

The truest joke I've ever read

Touché, touché

Stolen from The Braden Files

John Kerry is a saint

On a Saturday afternoon, in Washington, D.C., Senator John Kerry's campaign manager visited the Cardinal of the Catholic cathedral. He told the Cardinal that John Kerry would be attending the next day's sermon, and he asked if the Cardinal would kindly point out Kerry to the congregation and say a few words that would include calling Kerry a saint.

The Cardinal replied, "No, I don't really like the man, and there are issues of conflict with the Catholic Church over certain of Kerry's views."

Kerry's manager then said, "Look, I'll write a check here and now for a donation of $100,000 to your church, if you'll just tell the congregation you see Kerry as a saint"

The Cardinal thought about it and said, "Well, the church can use the money, so I'll work your request into tomorrow's sermon."

As Kerry's manager promised, Senator Kerry appeared for the Sunday sermon and seated himself prominently at the edge of the main aisle. And, during the sermon, as promised, the Cardinal pointed out that Senator Kerry was present.

Then the Cardinal went on to explain to the congregation, "While Senator Kerry's presence is probably an honor to some, he is not my favorite person. Some of his views are contrary to those of the church, and he tends to flip-flop on many other views. John Kerry is a petty, self absorbed hypocrite and a nit-wit. John Kerry is a liar, a cheat, and a thief. John Kerry is the worst example of a Catholic I've ever personally witnessed. He turned on his buddies in Viet Nam. He wrote a book and portrayed himself in the best light when he was a traitor to his fellow servicemen. He has lied about his military record and had the gall to put himself in for a medal. He married for money and is using it to lie to the American people. He also has a reputation for shirking his senatorial obligations both here, in Washington, and in Massachusetts. He simply isn't to be trusted."

The Cardinal completed his view of Kerry with, "But, when compared to Senator Ted Kennedy, Senator Kerry is a saint."

So true, so true.

Al-Zarqawi dispatched to hell

Along with his spiritual advisor

Centcom announced that:

“Ladies and Gentlemen, Coalition Forces killed al-Qaida terrorist leader Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi and one of his key lieutenants, spiritual advisor Sheik Abd-Al-Rahman, yesterday, June 7, at 6:15 p.m. in an air strike against an identified, isolated safe house.
“Tips and intelligence from Iraqi senior leaders from his network led forces to al-Zarqawi and some of his associates who were conducting a meeting approximately eight kilometers north of Baqubah when the air strike was launched.
“Iraqi police were first on the scene after the air strike, and elements of Multi-National Division North, arrived shortly thereafter. Coalition Forces were able to identify al-Zarqawi by fingerprint verification, facial recognition and known scars.
Al-Zarqawi and al-Qaida in Iraq have conducted terrorist activities against the Iraqi people for years in attempts to undermine the Iraqi national government and Coalition efforts to rebuild and stabilize Iraq. He is known to be responsible for the deaths of thousands of Iraqis. Al-Zarqawi’s death is a significant blow to al-Qaida and another step toward defeating terrorism in Iraq.
“Although the designated leader of al-Qaida in Iraq is now dead, the terrorist organization still poses a threat as its members will continue to try to terrorize the Iraqi people and destabilize their government as it moves toward stability and prosperity. Iraqi forces, supported by the Coalition, will continue to hunt terrorists that threaten the Iraqi people until terrorism is eradicated in Iraq.”

No reaction yet from Osama.

The spiritual advisor was deeply religious, as this sample of his writing shows:

Writing in Al-Qa'ida-related journal under the heading "O Sheikh of the Slaughterers, Abu Mus'ab Al-Zarqawi, Go Forth in the Straight Path, Guided by Allah," Abd Al-Rahman ibn Salem Al-Shammari praised the beheading of an Egyptian citizen in Iraq. He emphasized that a Muslim is obligated to be loyal to his religion only, and not to his national identity or his country. Therefore, all non-believers are the same, even if they are Arabs. The author went on to glorify the act of beheading in the name of Allah:

"A spy has been slain…and the Jihad fighter [who slew him] has come closer to Allah by way of [the spy's] blood. Yet what is unique in this lowly spy whose slaying we have seen these very days? What is unique, and we ask of Allah that there be more [like him], is that a spy has been slain, and this spy looked like an Arab, had an Arab name, and spoke Arabic! The uniqueness lies in the triumph of the faith in the one God and in the raising of the banner of 'There is no God but Allah' over and above all other allegiances, be they of ethnicity, language, identity, or nationality." [28]

After condemning "the apostate tyrant Saddam Hussein," and "the wicked rulers of the Arabian peninsula," the author, identifying his location as Saudi Arabia, went on to extol Al-Zarqawi's feast of beheadings:

"O sheikh of the slaughterers, Abu Mus'ab, go forth in the straight path with Allah's help, guided by Allah, fight together with the monotheists against the idol-worshippers, together with the warriors of Jihad against the collaborators, the hypocrites and the rebellious. We are awaiting the beheading of a Saudi apostate and this is the will and testament of all the monotheists in the land of Al-Haramain [i.e., the two holy places of Mecca and Medina]."

Sheik Abd-Al-Rahman is a spiritual advisor who extols beheadings done in the name of his religion. What an evil religion he preached.

Wed Jun 07, 2006

Are 10 million Mexican peasants the solution?

Or the problem?

If one was creating an imigration system to meet America's current and future workforce requirements I somehow doubt that the answer would be "10 million Mexican peasants". I'm not insulting the Mexicans who come here illegally. If I was in their position I'd likely do the same. But the fact of the matter is that these people are poorly educated and only qualified to do menial tasks. It is not as if they free up better educated Americans to work at higher paying jobs. All they end up doing is pushing poorly educated Americans from low-paying jobs to welfare.

America faces major economic competition in the future as India and China start to fulfil their potential. To stay ahead we need more engineers, technicians, managers and entrepreneurs. It is unlikely that many of these peole will come from the ranks of the 10 million Mexican peasants who came here illegaly. They could and probably would come from the ranks of the millions of people waiting patiently to line to emigrate to America legally.

How do we move from the wrong immigration outcome to one better suited to America's economic interests (as opposed to Mexico's). A good first step is to correct the current problem of dealing with the 10 million Mexican peasants.

Newt Gingrich, in an email newsletter, promoted a bill that would go a long way towards that first step:

One positive addition to the border-security and immigration debate is Rep. Mike Pence's (R-Ind.) bill, the Border Integrity and Immigration Reform Act. This bill is as close to the right solution as I have seen. It sets up a four-step process starting with what is needed and universally agreed upon -- border security. Second, it does not provide amnesty for people in the United States illegally. It requires them to go home. Next, it sets up a work-visa program using electronic bio-metric security based on conservative market principles. After an American employer can, in good faith, show that no American worker will fill a job offer, a work-visa holder may be hired. The key feature is that, in order for people who are here illegally to get a work visa, they must go home, because work visas will only be issued outside of the United States. Fourth, once the program is set up, companies that continue to ignore the law will be sanctioned severely.

As always, it comes down to incentives. Remove the incentive to come here illegally, make it hard to stay, and over time, the Mexicans will drift home.

Why is Bush still such a target for Democratic wrath?

He won't be running in 2008

In 2003 he was a valid target for his political oppenents. He was the man to beat. But he isn't running for office ever again. So why are the Democrats wasting all their ammunition on W? They act as if he is the guy to beat in 2008. But W isn't FDR. He can't run again.

So they must be attacking him as a surrogate for the GOP. But any 2008 GOP candidate can easily position themselves as not W. The MSM has already positioned McCain as a Bush enemy. Guiliani is as not W as you can get. Any other contender is not W.

It's going to backfire on the Dems. Because attacking W 24/7 on Iraq will be seen as something akin to treason while we have troops in harm's way. It won't show up in the polls; it will in the polling booths.

6/6/6

How about the square root of 44444444444444444444444444444444?

It comes out to 6666666666666666.6666666666666666. Well, if you believe the Microsoft Windows calculator, it does.

Actually, this is my standard test of a calculator. I punch in as many 4s as I can and hit Sqrt.

(Hint: odd numbers of 4s don't work so good)

Tue Jun 06, 2006

A D-Day story

From an LCT Lieutenant

My Father-in-law skippered an LCT (Landing Craft, Tank) into Utah beach on D-Day. He had a lot of stories about that day. As they were standing off-shore they watched German 88mm guns in hidden pillboxes create havoc on the landing beach. An allied anti-aircraft battery opened fire on the pilboxes. Although they weren't supposed to, they used tracer bullets. It was a futile response but the tracer bullets caught the attention of allied battleships off shore. They dumped a few shells where the tracers were landing and silenced the dreaded 88's.

Against regulations, Father-in-law kept his D-Day landing map. He figured that after D-Day the Germans would know where the invasion would take place. He was able to donate it, along with other memoribilia, to the D-Day museum in New Orleans.

Thanks to all those brave men that fought for our freedom in WW2 and on D-Day.

Why Iraq will resist modernization

Think Hatfield, McCoy and Mafia families

Parapundit is not hopeful that the US can succeed in making Iraq a modern democracy. He sees Arab social structure as a major obstacle. He links to a NY Times article by John Tierney that describes how intermarriage within clans imposes loyalties that transcend tribe, let alone country:

Iraqis frequently describe nepotism not as a civic problem but as a moral duty. The notion that Iraq's next leader would put public service ahead of family obligations drew a smile from Iqbal's uncle and father-in-law, Sheik Yousif Sayel, the patriarch in charge of the clan's farm on the Tigris River south of Baghdad.

"In this country, whoever is in power will bring his relatives in from the village and give them important positions," Sheik Yousif said, sitting in the garden surrounded by some of his 21 children and 83 grandchildren.
...
Next to the family, the sons' social priority is the tribe, Sadah, which has several thousand members in the area and is led by Sheik Yousif. He and his children see their neighbors when praying at Sunni mosques, but none of them belong to the kind of civic groups or professional associations that are so common in America, the pillars of civil society that observers since de Tocqueville have been crediting for the promotion of democracy.

"I told my children not to participate in any outside groups or clubs," Sheik Yousif said. "We don't want distractions. We have a dynasty to preserve." To demonstrate his point, he ordered his sons to unroll the family tree. It was on a scroll 70 feet long, with lots of cousins intertwined in the branches.

Cousin marriage was once the norm throughout the world, but it became taboo in Europe after a long campaign by the Roman Catholic Church. Theologians like St. Augustine and St. Thomas argued that the practice promoted family loyalties at the expense of universal love and social harmony. Eliminating it was seen as a way to reduce clan warfare and promote loyalty to larger social institutions — like the church.

The practice became rare in the West, especially after evidence emerged of genetic risks to offspring, but it has persisted in some places, notably the Middle East, which is exceptional because of both the high prevalence and the restrictive form it takes.

In other societies, a woman typically weds a cousin outside her social group, like a maternal cousin living in a clan led by a different patriarch. But in Iraq the ideal is for the woman to remain within the clan by marrying the son of her father's brother, as Iqbal did.

The families resulting from these marriages have made nation-building a notoriously frustrating process in the Middle East, as King Faisal and T. E. Lawrence both complained after their effort to unite Arab tribes last century.

Saddam's clan fought its way to the top of the heap in Iraq. Now that Saddam has gone, we see individual clans, tribes and sects fighting over the spoils. Add in de-stabilizing elements like Al Qaeda franchises and Iranian backed militias and you get a recipe for disaster.

All is not lost, however. Tierney does note that:

The more educated and urbanized Iraqis have become, Dr. Hassan said, the more they are likely to marry outsiders and adopt Western values. But the clan traditions have hardly disappeared in the cities, as is evident by the just-married cousins who parade Thursday evenings into the Babylon Hotel in Baghdad. Surveys in Baghdad and other Arab cities in the past two decades have found that close to half of marriages are between first or second cousins.

The key is education and urbanization. The leadership of Iraq will have to come from the urban elite if the country is not to descend into anarchy. The challenge is to give that elite time to establish control and start improving the lives of every Iraqi.

If the leadership fails, Iraq will fall into chaos. The US task is to ensure the leadership succeeds.

Mon Jun 05, 2006

The Talibanization of Iraq

We freed Iraq from Saddam and gave it to radical Islam?

Sweetness and Light links to a daily Telegraph story that describes how armed thugs are imposing Taliban rules in Bhaghdad.

In a bizarre example of Iraq’s creeping "Talibanisation", militants visited falafel vendors a fortnight ago, telling them to pack up their stalls by today or be killed.

The ultimatum seemed so odd that, at first, most laughed it off - until two of them were shot dead as they plied their trade.

"They came telling us, ‘You have 14 days to end this job’ and I asked them what was the problem," said Abu Zeinab, 32, who was packing up his stall for good yesterday in the suburb of al Dora, a hardline Sunni neighbourhood.

"I said I was just feeding the people, but they said there were no falafels in Mohammed the prophet’s time, so we shouldn’t have them either.

"I felt like telling them there were no Kalashnikovs in Mohammed’s time either, but I wanted to keep my life."

Why Baghdad’s falafel vendors should be blacklisted while their colleagues are allowed to continue selling kebabs or Western-style pizzas and burgers remains a mystery.

Some suspect it is because a taste for falafels is one of the few things that unites Jewish and Arab communities in Israel.

It is, however, just one of many Islamic edicts to hit Baghdad in recent weeks, prohibiting everything from the growing of goatee beards to the sale of mayonnaise - because it is allegedly made in Israel.

Even the Arab addiction to cigarettes is being challenged, with insurgents declaring smoking bans in at least one Sunni district.

My bold. A humble falafel vendor identifies the irrational hypocrisy of radical Islam. If the standard is what was around in Mohammed's time, let them give up any technology developed by Infidels. That includes AK47s, high explosives and 767s laden with fuel.

The problem with the War on Terror is that it constantly cedes ground to the enemy. We capture terrorists who believe they are following the Koran, the literal word of Allah, put them in a humane prison and treat their "religion" with a million times more respect than they treat any of our faiths. Did we give captured Nazis copies of Mein Kampf? Of course not. We should be deprogramming captured Islamic terrorists from the mind-control that Islam imposes.

We drive the Taliban out of Iraq and the people we "freed" want to kill a convert to Christianity. We free Iraq from Saddam so that Islamic militias can run around imposing their sixth century "morality" on all and sundry. That is exchanging one form of fascism for another. These problems come about because our leaders do not acknowledge that the root cause of Islamic terrorism is Islam.

Sat Jun 03, 2006

If you'd been reading blogs instead of the MSM...

You'd know what Radical Islam is trying to do.

If you'd been reading the blogs and their resources, you'd read this secret Canadian report linked by LGF and say, so what else is new?

Jeez, we know they've been recruiting in the West. Al Qaeda probably has more active sympathizers/recruits living outside of the Middle East than in it. The Muslims living in the West have a problem. On the one hand, they see that the West is far more advanced than the Islamic world, yet their holy text tells them they have the most advanced religion and the Westerners are infidels who should be inferior to any Muslim.

Many Muslims, like any rational person, adapt to reality, put their religion into a spiritual plane that does not impact their normal lives, and adapt to the West. Too many don't. They live lives of seething resentment and become ready recruits for the radicals.

The West is tolerant of a multitude of cultures and religious beliefs. We can even tolerate jihad-free Islam, but there is a limit. That is Jihadist Islam plotting to kill and destroy us.

Muslim Terrorists arrested in Canada

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