From A to B to G

I’ve always been intrigued by the Left’s view of America’s actions toward North Korea, especially during Bush’s regime. They seem to lay the sole blame of NK’s nuclear development at the feet of Bush. I find that extremely disingenuous (aka a lie!!) What in the hell do they think their ‘Savoir’ Bill Clinton did for eight years? Keep them in “developmental lock-down”? A Pandora’s Box just waiting for an incompetent boob to unleash to the world? Please….

A nuclear program just doesn’t pop up over night. So this tells the world NK was playing the Clinton Admin as fools, while stringing them along. But don’t try to tell that to the Left. They feel the whole NK development program is the fault of the Bush Admin.

Make no mistake; I’ve never disparaged the Clinton Admin in any of my rants. I thought he was a rather decent President. I didn’t agree with some of his plans, but I thought he was better than Bush I and Carter combined.

So, it was something to stumble upon this article by Sue Raging Roz during my Daou feed this evening. The title was US Backing off on North Korea. And her lead before the NY Times/International Herald Tribune article was:

Are there other fish to fry or is the Bush administration finally clueing in to the complexities of the situation over there?

Yet, the entire block is such a harsh break from the standard US policy (/sarcasm):

BEIJING The six-nation talks on the North Korean nuclear crisis opened here Tuesday with the top American negotiator stating that the United States recognized the sovereignty of the North Korean government as a "matter of fact" and had "absolutely no intention" of launching a military attack against the Stalinist regime.

The American envoy, Christopher Hill, also appeared to suggest that the United States would be amenable to a step-by-step process under which North Korean concessions would be met by rewards from the United States and other participants in the talks.

He described the approach as "words for words and actions for actions" - language that seemed to signal a softer line compared with earlier days, when the Bush administration demanded that North Korea must first dismantle its nuclear program before the United States would offer any direct aid or other benefits. Washington has already said it would send 50,000 tons of food aid to North Korea through the United Nations.

So, let me get this straight…. If we play extreme hard ball, we are thought of as evil villains who are unyielding in our own ‘principles’, yet if we show negotiating skills we are thought of as going “soft” on the issue.

Can you say “political pettiness” five times quickly?

Roberts / Scalia / Morality

What a Trinity!?!?!?
I was doing my daily Daou Report feed this evening. Most of the gak I just skimmed and deleted; far more Left Wing drivel than ususal today. However...I came across an intriguing article which I always find appealing.

Ann Althouse has an article I had to spend half the time reading out loud. It also reminded me why I could only stomach on semester of pre-law.

It seems Jonathan Turley wrote an article which Ann refers to in which Sen. Durbin asked an ambiguous question on how Roberts would react "if the law required a ruling that his church considers immoral":

Roberts appeared nonplused and, according to sources in the meeting, answered after a long pause that he would probably have to recuse himself...

Roberts could now face difficult questions of fitness raised not only by the Senate but by his possible colleague, Justice Antonin Scalia, one of the most conservative members of the court (and a devout Catholic). Last year, Scalia chastised Catholic judges who balk at imposing the death penalty — another immoral act according to the church: "The choice for a judge who believes the death penalty to be immoral is resignation, rather than simply ignoring duly enacted constitutional laws and sabotaging the death penalty."

As mentioned in previous entries, I'm a practicing, not ncecessarily Christian non-Catholic...meaning I attend Catholic chruch every Sunday yet am unable to partake in Communion. Yet I find it fascinating when devout Christians (or any other faith for that matter) choose when to play the faith card against when the Govt or State rules. After all didn't Christ state, 'render unto Ceasar that which is Ceasar's, and unto God that which is God's'.

Yet, here's Scalia's argument on why it's ok to support State rights (yet over turn Federal law) on Choice (vis a vie abortion), yet uphold State execution...How do these jive with his staunch Catholic beliefs???

Capital cases are much different from the other life-and-death issues that my Court sometimes faces: abortion, for example, or legalized suicide. There it is not the state of which I am, in a sense, the last instrument that is decreeing death, but rather private individuals whom the state has decided not to restrain.

One may argue, as many do, that the society has a moral obligation to restrain them. That moral obligation may weigh heavily upon the voter and upon the legislator who enacts the laws, but a judge, I think, bears no moral guilt for the laws society has failed to enact.

My difficulty with Roe v. Wade is a legal rather than a moral one. I do not believe – and no one believed for 200 years – that the Constitution contains a right to abortion. And if a state were to permit abortion on demand, I would and could in good conscience vote against an attempt to invalidate that law, for the same reason that I vote against invalidation of laws that contradict Roe v. Wade; namely, simply because the Constitution gives the federal government and, hence, me no power over the matter.

With the death penalty, on the other hand, I am part of the criminal law machinery that imposes death, which extends from the indictment to the jury conviction to rejection of the last appeal. I am aware of the ethical principle that one can give material cooperation to the immoral act of another when the evil that would attend failure to cooperate is even greater: for example, helping a burglar to tie up a householder where the alternative is that the burglar will kill the householder.

I doubt whether that doctrine is even applicable to the trial judges and jurors, who must themselves determine that the death sentence will be imposed. It seems to me those individuals are not merely engaged in material cooperation with someone elseÂ’s action, but are themselves decreeing, on behalf of the state, death.

The same is true of appellate judges. In those states where they are charged with re-weighing the mitigating and aggravating factors and determining de novo whether the death penalty should be imposed, they are themselves decreeing death, whereas in the case of the federal system, the appellate judge merely determines that the sentence pronounced by the trial court is in accordance with law, perhaps the principle of material cooperation could be applied. But as I have said, that principle demands that the good deriving from the cooperation exceed the evil which is assisted. I find it hard to see how any appellate judge could find this condition to be met unless he believes retaining his seat on the bench, rather than resigning, is somehow essential to preservation of the society, which is of course absurd. As Charles de Gaulle is reported to have remarked when his aides told him he could not resign as president of France because he was the indispensable man: “Mon ami, the cemeteries are full of indispensable men.”

I pause at this point to call attention to the fact that, in my view, the choice for the judge who believes the death penalty to be immoral is resignation rather than simply ignoring duly enacted constitutional laws and sabotaging the death penalty. He has, after all, taken an oath to apply those laws, and has been given no power to supplant them with rules of his own. Of course, if he feels strongly enough, he can go beyond mere resignation and lead a political campaign to abolish the death penalty, and if that fails, lead a revolution. But rewrite the laws he cannot do....

This dilemma, of course, need not be faced by proponents of the living Constitution who believe that it means what it ought to mean. If the death penalty is immoral, then it is surely unconstitutional, and one can continue to sit while nullifying the death penalty. You can see why the living Constitution has such attraction for us judges.

It is a matter of great consequence to me, therefore, whether the death penalty is morally acceptable, and I want to say a few words about why I believe it is....

The Day the Earth Stood Still

All I can say is OMG!!!

The Seattle Times, a bastion of Liberalism, has seen a great injustice wrought upon the citizens of Washington. An injustice brought upon us by the friends and allies of the Times, yet the Times is willing to call them out...and call them out they did!!!!

In failing to police the Legislature's promiscuous declarations of emergency, the Washington Supreme Court has failed to protect the rights of the people.

[...]

The state constitution gives voters the right of referendum on any new law except for "such laws as may be necessary for the immediate preservation of the public peace, health or safety, support of the state government and its existing public institutions."

[...]

The purpose of the referendum power is to limit the power of legislators to pass unpopular laws. The emergency clause should allow for a handful of exceptions only. When the Legislature declares emergencies dozens of times in every session — 98 times this past spring — it is limiting the people's right to challenge its decisions.

What the state needed from the court was a statement of its own responsibility and a standard for sorting the fake emergencies from the real ones. What we got was a statement that pretty much anything can be an emergency if the Legislature says it is.

Perhaps the people need a constitutional amendment to clarify what is an emergency or require that all declarations of emergency have a two-thirds vote.

This last paragraph is just amazing coming from the likes of the Seattle Times!!

(tip: Orbusmax)

bin Laden and Iraq date to 1998 and VDH Post

I've never been one of those who was wed to the bin Laden/Saddam threat. I felt while Saddam was a 'threat', it was a contrived association. I had no doubt Saddam harbored and supported terrorism, from Abu Nidal and Abu Abbas to paying blood money for Palestinian suicide bombers. Thanks to Power Line, there's video from ABC News dating back to 1998 which showed a direct link btwn bin Laden and Saddam!! Yet, there's not been a peep about this from ABC or any other 'credible' news site much less the wingnut sites of the Left.

UPDATE: Michael Totten blogs an exact entry!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Another fine bit of work from Victor Davis Hanson.

Ever since September 11, there has been an alternative narrative about this war embraced by the Left. In this mythology, the attack on September 11 had in some vague way something to do with American culpability.

Either we were unfairly tilting toward Israel, or had been unkind to Muslims. Perhaps, as Sen. Patty Murray intoned, we needed to match the good works of bin Laden to capture the hearts and minds of Muslim peoples.

The fable continues that the United States itself was united after the attack even during its preparations to retaliate in Afghanistan. But then George Bush took his eye off the ball. He let bin Laden escape, and worst of all, unilaterally and preemptively, went into secular Iraq — an unnecessary war for oil, hegemony, Israel, or Halliburton, something in Ted Kennedy’s words “cooked up in Texas.”

In any case, there was no connection between al Qaeda and Saddam, and thus terrorists only arrived in Iraq after we did.

That tale goes on. The Iraqi fiasco is now a hopeless quagmire. The terrorists are paying us back for it in places like London and Madrid.

Being in the Puget Sound, I remember the outrage Sen. Murray expressed at the airing of her bit on how bin Laden has done so much for Muslims. There was no 'out of context' possiblitiy since the entire episode was aired. Yet, she cried foul and blamed the 'Right' for trying to 'twist' her words.

Prior to 9/11, the United States had given an aggregate of over $50 billion to Egypt, and had allotted about the same amount of aid to Israel as to its frontline enemies. We had helped to save Muslims in Bosnia, Kosovo, Somalia, Kuwait, and Afghanistan, and received little if any thanks for bombing Christian Europeans to finish in a matter of weeks what all the crack-pot jihadists had not done by flocking to the Balkans in a decade.

Long before Afghanistan and Iraq, bin Laden declared war on America in 1998, citing the U.N. embargo of Iraq and troops in Saudi Arabia; when those were no longer issues, he did not cease, but continued his murdering. He harbored a deep-seated contempt for Western values, even though he was eaten within by uncontrolled envy and felt empowered by years of appeasement after a series of attacks on our embassies, bases, ships, and buildings, both here and abroad.

And to think we still give so much to so many ungreatful...

Neither bin Laden nor his lieutenants are poor, but like the Hamas suicide bombers, Mohammed Atta, or the murderer of Daniel Pearl they are usually middle class and educated — and are more likely to hate the West, it seems, the more they wanted to be part of it. The profile of the London bombers, when known, will prove the same.

The poor in South America or Africa are not murdering civilians in North America or Europe. The jihadists are not bombing Chinese for either their godless secularism or suppression of Muslim minorities. Indeed, bin Laden harbored more hatred for an America that stopped the Balkan holocaust of Muslims than for Slobodan Milosevic who started it.

VDH talks about the Western Liberals need for appeasement almost as a guilt complex. Guilt at our own success and affluence.

Our first hindrance is moral equivalence. For the hard Left there is no absolute right and wrong since amorality is defined arbitrarily and only by those in power.

Taking back Fallujah from beheaders and terrorists is no different from bombing the London subway since civilians may die in either case. The deliberate rather than accidental targeting of noncombatants makes little difference, especially since the underdog in Fallujah is not to be judged by the same standard as the overdogs in London and New York. A half-dozen roughed up prisoners in Guantanamo are the same as the Nazi death camps or the Gulag.

Our second shackle is utopian pacifism — ‘war never solved anything’ and ‘violence only begets violence.’ Thus it makes no sense to resort to violence, since reason and conflict resolution can convince even a bin Laden to come to the table. That most evil has ended tragically and most good has resumed through armed struggle — whether in Germany, Japan, and Italy or Panama, Belgrade, and Kabul — is irrelevant. Apparently on some past day, sophisticated Westerners, in their infinite wisdom and morality, transcended age-old human nature, and as a reward were given a pass from the smelly, dirty old world of the past six millennia.

The third restraint is multiculturalism, or the idea that all social practices are of equal merit. Who are we to generalize that the regimes and fundamentalist sects of the Middle East result in economic backwardness, intolerance of religious and ethnic minorities, gender apartheid, racism, homophobia, and patriarchy? Being different from the West is never being worse.

These tenets in various forms are not merely found in the womb of the universities, but filter down into our popular culture, grade schools, and national political discourse — and make it hard to fight a war against stealthy enemies who proclaim constant and shifting grievances. If at times these doctrines are proven bankrupt by the evidence it matters little, because such beliefs are near religious in nature — a secular creed that will brook no empirical challenge.

I still have a Libertairian view on govt and life, but make no mistake - evil is evil in any culture, whether it's West or Muslim. Until the vast majority of decent Muslims take back control of their religion, they do not warrent our pity but should be ashamed.

London Bombings

I've withheld my thughts on the London Bombings until now...

I was appalled at the MSM incesent carping of 'no arrests yet'. Is it the US media approach to have immediate results or what?? I guess this is the price we pay for entertainment.

But Scotland Yard has done their due dilegence with identifiying the lost souls.

But the most telling line was from the Times of London:

The four were captured on CCTV cameras at King’s Cross Thameslink station, laughing together and carrying rucksacks, minutes before they set off for their targets at 8.30am on July 7.

So much for the innocent young boys who didn't know what they were doing!

Wretchard the Cat

My favorite web site is The Belmont Club. It is THE most insightful blog I've come across on both sides of the isle. The knowledge and vision is unsurpassed.

Today, Wretchard outed himself. I hope this was the correct decision. I feel his anonymity allowed him to truly speak the truth. I hope this will not affect his muses.

Another Episode in the War between Christendom and Islam

Bruce Thorton pens an insightful article at Victor Hansen's site on what we perceive of the Islamofacists' jihad.

Indeed, what we call Islamic radicals are in fact Islamic traditionalists; it is the so-called "“moderates", those wanting to compromise Islam so it can coexist with Western ideas such as secular government, separation of church and state, and human rights, who are the radicals and innovators. The terrorists are simply fulfilling the traditional and orthodox command of their religion to battle the infidels who resist the revelation of Mohammed and the global socio-political order mandated by Islam.

[...]

Yet listen to a respected historian in a conservative magazine: “Muslim holy wars (“jihads”), as taught in the Koran, were first and foremost a personal inner struggle for moral purity” and only secondarily a war against infidels. So all those Muslim armies that conquered the Christian Near East, North Africa, Egypt, Spain, Sicily, the Balkans, all that plunder, slaughter, rape, enslavement, kidnapping, and destruction were only the '“secondary'” jihad. How could such blindness to the obvious, masquerading as sophisticated '“tolerance',not arouse contempt in the minds of our adversaries? They tell us over and over that they are waging jihad in order to establish the global hegemony of Islam, and we tell ourselves that these Muslims don't understand their own religion. Millions and millions of Muslims all over the world cheer for the jihadists and support them materially and psychologically, millions idolize bin Laden and celebrate the murder of Westerners, but we tell ourselves that they are a minority of confused souls whose minds have been addled by poverty or autocracy or anger over the Palestinians.

[...]

The murderers we call terrorists are traditional jihadists, as much as were the first Islamic armies that swept away the Judeo-Christian and Greco-Roman civilizations of the Mediterranean. They are not going to be bought off with votes, a free press, more cable channels, Wal-Mart, or any other material good that to us constitutes the good life. They are fighting for a spiritual cause, the establishment of Islam as a global order in fulfillment of the will of Allah, and the reduction of all those who will not become Muslims to dhimmi, inferiors who acknowledge the superiority of Islam and the rightness of their subjection to it.

I really can't disagree with this train of thought. We in the West like to think others have the same thought process as us. We fail to understand all people are not Western-centric and do not have the same values. I draw a loose parallel to language. It's like trying to compare character based Eastern languages (Korean) to alpha based languages in the West. They require different regions of the brain. Thus our values may reside outside of what the Islamofacists will find acceptable to exist on planet Earth... It is OUR choice to live.

Latest Musings

Wow...That's all I can say for the past week, wow.

First, I was so happy for London to shaft Paris by being awarded the 2012 Olympic Game.

But that was tempered of course by the tragedy in London on July 7th. All I can say is the Islamofacists picked the wrong country this time...this isn't Spain.

But I did see a great article from the Sun documenting the acts of Terror since 1993. The only things missing are the acts of Terror against Israel and India.... What, those acts don't count???

Female Bombers

I don't know if you've seen the vid of 21-year-old, Wafa Samir al-Biss' failed homicide bombing attempt. I saw a couple of stills, but can't remember the site. But here is an outstanding article by Manuela Dviri on the women who have failed to murder Israelis. She's an amazing author who is a peace activist with street cred. Her son was murdered by Hizbollah rocket in 1998.

It was about midday when a young Palestinian woman from the refugee camp of Jabalya in Gaza approached an Israeli checkpoint clutching a special permit to visit a doctor on the other side of the border.The girl had big, brown eyes and her black hair was tied in a ponytail, but it was the strangeness of her gait that attracted the attention of the security officials at the Erez crossing, the main transit point between Israel and the Gaza Strip.

When a soldier asked her to remove her long, dark cloak, she turned to face him. All her movements were taped by the military surveillance camera at the checkpoint: calmly, deliberately, she took off her clothing, item by item, until she looked like any normal young woman in T-shirt and jeans. It was then that she tried to set off the belt containing 20lb of explosives hidden beneath her trousers. To her horror, she did not succeed. Desperate, she clawed at her face, screaming. She was still alive, she realised. She had failed her martyrdom mission.

What gets me is this chick was willing to blow up the hospital which treated and healed her, but even more disgusting was her desire to kill the innocent:

"My dream was to be a martyr. I believe in death," she said. "Today I wanted to blow myself up in a hospital, maybe even in the one in which I was treated. But since lots of Arabs come to be treated there, I decided I would go to another, maybe the Tel Hashomer, near Tel Aviv. I wanted to kill 20, 50 Jews …''

[...]

And what about babies? Would you have killed babies and children? she was asked. "Yes, even babies and children. You, too, kill our babies. Do you remember the Doura child?"

There are about 30 of these women whose homicide attempts were foiled, aborted or just given up.

Some of them did it to make amends for a relative who was a collaborator, others to escape becoming victims of honour killings, and for the psychologically frail or depressed it was a good way to commit suicide and at the same time become 'heroines'.

Her belief in the 'culture of death' is validated by this last statement - make amends for a collaborator and escape honor killings. I'm still, to this very day, absolutely amazed at their disregard for life...

But wait...

According to the Koran, male martyrs are welcomed to Paradise by 72 beautiful virgins. Ayat, as with many of the women she is incarcerated with, believes that a woman martyr "will be the chief of the 72 virgins, the fairest of the fair".

So, once again in a misogynistic egotism, the women will be the 'chief' whore for the men. I guess having 72 men service on woman would be more like rape. Oh wait, that happens here on earth.

I just don't get it. What kind of religion is this??? A religion of death...

Freedom and Liberty

My favorite blog site, The Belmont Club, by Wretchard has, as always, an interesting entry on Republican's usurping Jeffersonian freedom from the idealistic Democrats. He references an article by Michael Ignatieff in the New York Times .

Although Ignatieff plainly wants to see freedom spread, one of the sources of his unease is the role of God, or something like it, in the missionary endeavor. How much better it would be, he seems to ask, if any claims to universality or transcendence could be kept out it. Then we could bring the Europeans and the Canadians in on it.

This is where I personally have a problem with the Conservative wing of the Republican party. I'm not religious by any means, in fact I would describe myself (as in previous posts) as more of a spiritual philosopher attuned to Zen Buddhism. So when I hear the politicos talking about religion, I'm VERY concerned. Don't get me wrong. I don't give a sh*t about the Ten Commandments or even pray. Hell, I send my children to parochial school for goodness sakes!! But I do balk at the Righteousness of the Evangelical Right. I've known too many hypocritical pious jerks to swallow their crap without at first fighting my gag reflex.

Political Potpourri

Miss me? Sorry for the lack of posting, but the better half has pulled a yeoman's duty in assisting her mother in moving from her home of 25 yrs. So, while she's been doing her daughterly duty, I've kept the home front with the progeny.

So to get back up to speed, we'll keep it short and sweet:

>Dick Durbin is an absolute fool - I'm sorry. but to bring up the skeletons of Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot even in the SAME BREATH as Gitmo shows NOTHING but partisanship. It is disgusting pure and simple. I may not agree with 40% of what the Bush admin does, but I will never vote again for the Dems if they continue to spew such vitriol.

>Rove's Rant - I'm sorry but did I miss something??? Didn't a large group of 'liberal' Democrats express just the sentiments Rove outlined? Didn't Atrios, Kos and others espouse just that?!?!? What about the wunder candate - Kerry? Please, just because your number two in the Senate, Durbin, makes an Ass of him self, don't think you once again have the moral equivalence....

>Supreme Court... Be afraid, be very afraid....

>So let me get this right. The Govt of 'State's Rights' re: Repubs, is flat out against State's Rights when it doesn't' meet their litmus test. Yet, the SCOTUS somehow, someway deigned in their wisdom to contrive a commercial product of something illegal in all but the most extreme circumstances...Medical Marijuana is a commercial product!?!?? So therefore can be regulated by the Federal Govt. Lord help us if and/or when abortion is overturned and sent back to the states. My guess is fetal material (Stem cells, DNA or hell, placentas) will be considered commercial material, thus regulated by Right-wingnuts.

>But wait, don't think the Right has a lock on the absurd. This next one is brought to us by the Left . . . The Kelo v. New London ruling left me absolutely speechless. . . . So, let's review. If a local govt deems a bit of property best suited for improvement for 'the better good of the local tax base', it can confiscate the property and basically give it to another PRIVATE entity for the purpose of increasing the revenue generated by that property. Does this raise alarms with anyone else? It better, this is one of our Constitutional foundations and it's been decimated by the Courts. This is not like freedom of Choice which is implied; this is a pillar of our Govt which has been ripped out!! I WILL take the extreme example and picture a local govt taking the waterfront/riverfront property and giving them pennies on the dollar, yet how do you compensate the view, the life of these people??

> And finally, SCOTUS decides file sharing is bad, cable sharing is bad but source sharing is required . . . and may women who file restraining orders be double afraid . . . jeez, this is all so frightening.

>But wait, there's more. From the Daou report, I linked to this from the Carpetbagger Report. This last year validates his supposition that Repubs are great at campaigning while the Dems are better at governing. Repubs are better in the Minority while the Dems do a better job in the majority. . . . Sorry, but I'm in agreement. Give me a Dem President and a Repub Congress ANY DAY! ! ! ! !

Iraq’s Jihad: Past as Prologue

We are now in the middle of a full-blown Jihad, that is to say we have against us the fiercest prejudices of a people in a primeval state of civilization.
Gertrude Bell, Baghdad, Iraq, September 5, 1920

OK, so today is not an original, but pls check out the fascinating reading Gertrude Bell edited by Andrew Bostom. What's that French saying 'the more things change, the more they stay the same...' I don't remember, but it was in a Rush song.

And Yes, I do believe a society of martyrs is primeval. But this does not bode well for the West.

The Horror of Bosnia

I can not express my disgust with the video I saw of some Serb punks toying with young Bosnians. I've seen many vids that are hard to watch, but not many compare with the gut-wrenching scenes of the impending executions. This almost made me physically ill. . . the anticipation . . . I hope they hang the animals who did this. THIS is what perpetuates the cycle of hate.

I hope they meet the same 'virgins' as the Islamofascits'.

Newscaster vs. Sportscaster

Keith Olberman was one of my favorite talkin' heads at ESPN until he thought he was bigger than all that. I've tried to watch his Countdown show a couple of times but thought it a bit much.

So, I've not given Olberman much of my time. Until now...

In surfin' today, there was much ado about the Newsweek fiasco. But what caught my eye was the dressing down of Scott McClellan by the media pool during today's briefing. I love the belligerence:

Q With respect, who made you the editor of Newsweek? Do you think it's appropriate for you, at that podium, speaking with the authority of the President of the United States, to tell an American magazine what they should print?

I saw a bit of feed on PBS and just couldn't believe the tone, that was until I read Keith O's blog this evening.

Whenever I hear Scott McClellan talking about ‘media credibility,’ I strain to remember who it was who admitted Jeff Gannon to the White House press room and called on him all those times.

[...]

Whatever I smell comes from this odd sequence of events: Newsweek gets blasted by the White House, apologizes over the weekend but doesn't retract its story. Then McClellan offers his Journalism 101 outdoor seminar and blasts the magazine further. Finally, just before 5 p.m. Monday, the Dan Rather drama replaying itself in its collective corporate mind, Newsweek retracts.

I’m always warning about the logical fallacy — the illusion that just because one event follows another, the latter must have necessarily caused the former. But when I wondered tonight on Countdown if it applied here, Craig Crawford reassured me. “The dots connect.”

[...]

One of the most under-publicized analyses of 9/11 concludes that Osama Bin Laden assumed that the attacks on the U.S. would galvanize Islamic anger towards this country, and they'd overthrow their secular governments and woo-hoo we've got an international religious war. Obviously it didn't happen. It didn't even happen when the West went into Iraq. But if stuff like the Newsweek version of a now two-year-old tale about toilets and Qu’rans is enough to set off rioting in the streets of countries whose nationals were not even the supposed recipients of the ‘abuse’, then weren’t those members of the military or the government with whom Newsweek vetted the plausibility of its item, honor-bound to say “you can’t print this”?

Or would somebody rather play politics with this? The way Craig Crawford reconstructed it, this one went similarly to the way the Killian Memos story evolved at the White House. The news organization turns to the administration for a denial. The administration says nothing. The news organization runs the story. The administration jumps on the necks of the news organization with both feet — or has its proxies do it for them.

That’s beyond shameful. It’s treasonous.

Sorry, but what ever cred the big O had just went poof . . . and lastly, as proof, Keith goes after NeoCon windmills with this:

Firstly, the principal reporter on the Gitmo story was Michael Isikoff — “Spikey” in a different lifetime; Linda Tripp’s favorite journalist, and one of the ten people most responsible (intentionally or otherwise) for the impeachment of Bill Clinton. Spikey isn’t just a hero to the Right — the Right owes him.

And larger still, in terms of politics, this isn't well-defined, is it? I mean Conservatives might parrot McClellan and say ‘Newsweek put this country in a bad light.’ But they could just as easily thump their chests and say ‘See, this is what we do to those prisoners at Gitmo! You guys better watch your asses!’

Islamic Reaction - a bit much, eh?

Miss me? Sorry it's been a while, but apathy reigns supreme with today's politics. From DeLay to Reid, I just don't give a rip.

Yet, I couldn't let the latest MSM flap go without comment. I'm not going to spend too much time on this since the fall out has yet to reach its climax. Suffice it to say Newsweek has entered that black hole from which few return. This saddens me since I happen to think Jon Meacham, some type of managing editor at Newsweek, is top notch with history.

So Newsweek acted foolishly by running with a blurb using only a single source, this is not the same as running something in the local rag implicating Uncle Steve with a drunken night of debauchery only to recant with a one liner saying 'oops, Uncle Steve was just cavorting with Aunt Betty in the back seat of the sedan. Sorry." The magnitude is not on the same level. Pls don't get me wrong. I'm not one of those espousing the WOT at every turn. In fact, I question the need to call it the War on Terrorism since we've had the War on Poverty, War of Drugs, et al and ad nausium, for the past 25 yrs. It just diminishes the importance. The WOT is more of a paradigm shift in attitude, one which Newsweek evidently hasn't caught on to.

It's one thing to disagree with whatever party is in power. It's another to willfully offer specious 'evidence' of an act which is inciteful. Yet, the mantel of 'fake but accurate' which we heard resonating from the CBS debacle, seems to be trying to take hold. The Raw Story is citing several detainees as implicating the US in the debasement of the Koran. Yet nothing can be substantiated. I'm sorry, but I don't trust a word those people say (then again I don't trust the govt, so I'm screwed, eh...)

For all the feigned anger emanating from the ME, I say 'screw `em!!'. Where was the outrage at Muslim desecration of the Church of the Nativity in April of 2002? ? ? ? Oh, wait... I think I hear it now. "It wasn't a true Muslim, it was just some fringe people." Please!!!

That same day, "More than 100 Palestinian gunmen...[including] soldiers and policemen, entered the Church of the Nativity on Tuesday, as Israeli troops swept into Bethlehem in an attempt to quell violence by Palestinian suicide bombers and militias."³⁴ The actual number of terrorists was between 150 and 180, among them prominent members of the Fatah Tanzim. As the New York Times put it, "Palestinian gunmen have frequently used the area around the church as a refuge, with the expectation that Israel would try to avoid fighting near the shrine" [emphasis added].³⁵

And in fact this was the case. The commander of the Israeli forces in the area asserted that the IDF would not break into the church itself and would not harm this site holy to Christianity. Israel also deployed more mature and more reserved reserve-duty soldiers in this sensitive situation that militarily called for more agile, standing-army soldiers.³⁶

On the other hand, the Palestinians did not treat it the same way. Not only did they take their weapons with them into the Church of the Nativity and fire, on occasion, from the church, but also reportedly booby-trapped the entrance to the church.³⁷

On April 7, "one of the few priests evacuated from the church told Israeli television yesterday that gunmen had shot their way in, and that the priests, monks and nuns were essentially hostages....The priest declined to call the clergy 'hostages,' but repeatedly said in fluent English: 'We have absolutely no choice. They have guns, we do not.'"³⁸

Christians clearly saw the takeover as a violation of the sanctity of the church. In an interview with CWNews, Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran, the Vatican's Undersecretary of State and the top foreign-policy official, asserted that "The Palestinians have entered into bilateral agreements [with the Holy See] in which they undertake to maintain and respect the status quo regarding the Christian holy places and the rights of Christian communities. To explain the gravity of the current situation, let me begin with the fact that the occupation of the holy places by armed men is a violation of a long tradition of law that dates back to the Ottoman era. Never before have they been occupied - for such a lengthy time - by armed men."³⁹ On April 14, he reiterated his position in an interview on Vatican Radio.⁴⁰

On April 24, the Jerusalem Post reported on the damage that the PA forces were causing:

Three Armenian monks, who had been held hostage by the Palestinian gunmen inside Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity, managed to flee the church area via a side gate yesterday morning. They immediately thanked the soldiers for rescuing them.
They told army officers the gunmen had stolen gold and other property, including crucifixes and prayer books, and had caused damage....
One of the monks, Narkiss Korasian, later told reporters: "They stole everything, they opened the doors one by one and stole everything....They stole our prayer books and four crosses...they didn't leave anything. Thank you for your help, we will never forget it."
Israeli officials said the monks said the gunmen had also begun beating and attacking clergymen.⁴¹

When the siege finally ended, the PA soldiers left the church in terrible condition:

The Palestinian gunmen holed up in the Church of the Nativity seized church stockpiles of food and "ate like greedy monsters" until the food ran out, while more than 150 civilians went hungry. They also guzzled beer, wine, and Johnnie Walker scotch that they found in priests' quarters, undeterred by the Islamic ban on drinking alcohol. The indulgence lasted for about two weeks into the 39-day siege, when the food and drink ran out, according to an account by four Greek Orthodox priests who were trapped inside for the entire ordeal....
The Orthodox priests and a number of civilians have said the gunmen created a regime of fear.
Even in the Roman Catholic areas of the complex there was evidence of disregard for religious norms. Catholic priests said that some Bibles were torn up for toilet paper, and many valuable sacramental objects were removed. "Palestinians took candelabra, icons and anything that looked like gold," said a Franciscan, the Rev. Nicholas Marquez from Mexico.⁴²

Now, I'm a firm believer in 'two wrongs don't make a right'. But let's get real. We have the word of some 'detainees' versus documented facts. Oh, let's not forget what those Taliban bastards did to the Buddhas in March of 2001!!

So I don't want to hear from the "Muslims in the street" on this one. Newsweek should be held liable for the deaths and suffer the consequenses. It's a shame, but when 'truth' is fabricated for the purpose of making the Administration of the day look bad, MSM and all of us are ill served.
(tips: Daou and LGF)

Sunni Apologist

Ya know, it never fails.... I'm in a funk and while perusing the blogsphere, come upon some major bullshit.

One of my favorite Sunni apologists, Juan Cole, has a protege, Baghdad Burning, who is quite amazing. She laments her poor life in post-Saddam all the while fretting the life in her view of a 'free Iraq'. It is a view of denial...one were the only perps are the evil Shia. Yet her blindness is enlightening with this piece of work. Where to start in this article? Let's start at the beginning, eh?

The Hostage Crisis...
I'm sure many people have been following the story of the moment in Iraq: Dozens of Shia hostages taken by Sunni insurgents in a town called Medain?

The first time we heard about it was a couple of days ago. I was watching the news subtitles on Arabiya but the subtitle was vague. It went something like this, "Sunni guerrillas capture 60 hostages in Iraqi town and will kill them if all Shia do not leave the town." It said nothing about which town it was, who the guerrillas claimed to be representing and just how the whole incident happened.

But I like the absolute denial:

The whole concept of a large number of Sunni guerrillas raiding the town and taking 60 – 150 of its members (including women and children) was bizarre, frightening and by the second day of the rumor, a little bit suspicious.

People in Baghdad didn't believe it. Most of them waved a hand dismissing the report and said, "They just want to raid Medain." It's a town that has been giving the Americans quite a bit of trouble this last year, a part of the Sunni Triangle . Many attacks were reported to have come from the area, but at the same time, it's not like Falloojeh, Samarra, or Mosul- it's half Shia. It wouldn't be as easy or politically correct to raid. [ed. emphasis!]

OK, here's the rest:

Yesterday, there were actually Shia demonstrators from the town claiming that the rumors were false and the town was peaceful and there was no need for a raid or for door-to-door checks.

The last few days, Iraqi officials have been on television claiming that the whole hostage situation was "under control" and things were going to be sorted out, except that apparently, there's nothing to sort out. There have been no reports of hostages, even from the majority of Shia residents themselves. Someone mentioned that it was possible a couple of people had been abducted, but it had nothing to do with Sunni guerrillas chasing out Shia.

Now, Associated Press is claiming,

"The confusion over Madain illustrated how quickly rumors spread in a country of deep ethnic and sectarian divides, where the threat of violence is all too real."

Uhm, no. Not really. See, this whole thing didn't start out as a rumor. Rumors come to you through actual people- the guy who brings you kerosene spreads rumors, that neighbor next door brings you rumors, the man you get your rations from spreads rumors. This came to us, very decidedly, from a news source. It first made its debut as breaking news and came from an "Iraqi Shia official who wished to remain unnamed". The official should have to answer to the rumor he handed over to the press.

And now…

Shiite leaders and government officials had earlier estimated 35 to 100 people were taken hostage, but residents disputed the claim, with some saying they had seen no evidence any hostages were taken.

We know a lot of our new officials and spokespeople are blatantly lying and it's fine to lie about security, reconstruction and democracy- we've gotten used to it. In fact, we tell jokes about it and laugh about it at family gatherings or over the telephone. To lie about something as serious as Sunni-Shia hostage taking is another story altogether. It's unacceptable and while Sunnis and Shia were hardly going to take up arms against each other over this latest debacle, but it was still extremely worrisome and for people who wish to fuel sectarian violence, it was a perfect opportunity.

We have an Iraqi government that bans news channels and newspapers because they *insist* on reporting about such routine things as civilian casualties and raids, yet the Puppets barely flinch over media sources spreading a rumor as dangerous and provocative as this one.

AND NOW THE TRUTH ABOUT THE BODIES FROM MADIAN:

Iraq's interim president announced Wednesday the recovery of more than 50 bodies from the Tigris River, saying the grisly discovery was proof of claims that dozens were abducted from an area south of the capital despite a fruitless search by Iraqi forces.

[....]

Terrorists committed crimes there. It is not true to say there were no hostages. There were. They were killed, and they threw the bodies into the Tigris," Talabani told reporters. "We have the full names of those who were killed and those criminals who committed these crimes."

Shiite leaders and government officials claimed last week that Sunni militants had abducted as many as 100 Shiites from the Madain area, 14 miles southeast of Baghdad. But when Iraqi forces moved into the town of 1,000 families, they found no captives, and residents said they had seen no evidence anyone had been seized.

Funk

Man, the funk continues . . .
I thought after writing the Dowd piece and seeing the POTUS' speach plus the gak on Bolton and DelLay, I would find the fire to pen (tap the keys, I guess now) a few words. No, the malaise runs deep. It is affecting more than the Blog...but I'm trying...man, it hurts.

Apathy

It is painful.

Dotty Dowd

Ok so I couldn't stay away for that long . . . espcially after reading the esteem able Maureen Dowd's mid-week disjointed rantings. This one is particularly fractured. She starts with network anchors:

In the free fall of TV news, ABC's attempt to create a successor for Ted Koppel's "Nightline" will go down as one of the most hilariously embarrassing moments.

One show tested recently, according to reports, was set in a nightclub. It had white tablecloths, candles, a jazz quintet, a live audience at little tables and - this is not a joke - faux fog.

We've gone from the fog of war to the fog of news.

Then moves on to her habitual Rupert reflection:

In Washington last week, Rupert Murdoch echoed Mr. Moonves in giving the American Society of Newspaper Editors some bad news about young people in the age of the Internet, blogging and cable news:

"They don't want to rely on the morning paper for their up-to-date information. They don't want to rely on a god-like figure from above to tell them what's important. ... They certainly don't want news presented as gospel."

She has special antipathy for the new Pope. I'm particularly amazed (OK, not really) at her reaction and those on the editorial staffs of the major newspapers. They've already passed judgment. Talk about Christian . . .

The white smoke yesterday signaled that the Vatican thinks what it needs to bring it into modernity is the oldest pope since the 18th century: Joseph Ratzinger, a 78-year-old hidebound archconservative who ran the office that used to be called the Inquisition and who once belonged to Hitler Youth. For American Catholics - especially women and Democratic pro-choice Catholic pols - the cafeteria is officially closed. After all, Cardinal Ratzinger, nicknamed "God's Rottweiler" and "the Enforcer," helped deny Communion rights to John Kerry and other Catholic politicians in the 2004 election.

The only other job this pope would be qualified for is "60 Minutes" anchor.

OK, let's take a look at this last bit. She first takes a swipe at the cardinals by slammin' them for voting for "the oldest pope since the 18th century". Just like a Lib to use agism to make her point. But she's not done, the Spanish Inquistion was abolished in the early 19th century: "In 1965, the P.R.-sensitive Pope Paul VI rebranded the Inquisition as the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith...Paul VI even revoked its ability to ban books, leaving the Inquisition toothless and largely irrelevant going into the 21st century." This doesn't stop her from implying something evil.

I think she especially guilt of the sin of omission when she invokes the Hitler Youth card. She should continued... all youths in Bavaria were required to join the Hitler Youth and of course she omits the fact Ratzinger deserted Hitler's army! But I guess the specifics can be omitted if it's necessary to make a point...

Finally, I don't seem to remember Sen. Kerry being denied communion, so I don't know how "the Rottweiler" could be condemned for this. I've more to say on this, but I'll need to file that in another post.

What would be a Dowd post with out the obligatory Bush-bash:

President Bush has also long acted as if he channeled the voice of God...Mr. Bush's more subtle obeisance to the evangelical right is no longer enough. Puffed up with its electoral clout, the Christian right now wants politicians to genuflect openly.

Just when I think 'what the hell' when it comes to the Media, I stumble across a work of art such as this...

The Light is Dim

I seem to have lost the light... so posting will be thin until I can rekindle it. Sorry.

Nepotism

I know Dave suggested I go Global in my pursuing of life, but I just can't let go of the DeLay mess. SFGate.com has done some research on paying family members as employees of behalf of congressional members.

_ House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas: Wife and daughter were paid more than $500,000 since 2001 for working for DeLay's campaign and political action committees.

_Connecticut Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman: Son Matthew received about $34,000 and daughter Rebecca about $36,000 for working on the senator's 2004 presidential campaign.

_ Rep. Dave Reichert, R-Wash.: Nephew Todd Reichert was paid $3,000 last year, plus several hundred dollars for mileage, for serving as driver.

_ California Democratic Rep. Fortney "Pete" Stark: Wife Deborah earns $2,400 a month for serving as campaign consultant.

_ Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Calif.: Wife Arlene Willis serves as congressional chief of staff at a salary of nearly $111,000.

_ Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich.: Wife Laurie Stupak earned about $36,000 annually the past two years as the finance director for her husband's campaign.

_ Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio: Wife Elizabeth was paid about $1,730 a month during his 2004 campaign. She has worked as a campaign consultant for him since the 2001 election cycle.

_ Rep. Jim Costa, D-Calif.: Cousin Ken Costa made about $45,000 for serving as a co-campaign manager last year.

_ Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah: Three college-age children worked on his campaign last year. Emily was paid $5,425, Jane $9,508 and Laura $17,766.

_ Rep. Lincoln Davis, D-Tenn.: Sister-in-law Sharon Davis has been his campaign treasurer since 1994,and daughter Libby Davis was his campaign coordinator in the last half of 2004. Libby Davis was paid about $2,334 a month; Sharon Davis was paid about $1,000 a month for bookkeeping last year.

_ Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, employs his wife, Kathy, as his campaign manager. She was paid $21,791 over four months, including a $7,500 bonus last November.

_ New York Democratic Rep. Tim Bishop: Daughter Molly was paid $46,995 as his 2004 campaign's finance director.

_ California Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher: Wife Rhonda Carmony makes $40,000 a year as his campaign manager.

Now there are examples here of spouses performing legitimate functions, but man it still smells so bad. Just because it's legal doesn't me it's right. How is nepotism handled in the Corporate world? It's not tolerated. Why should it be acceptable in our legislature?