Sigh. The mainstream media doesn’t appear to be learning much.

• Maybe that should be C-BS? They’re caught, again, producing a “news” segment involving bogus documents, little to no fact-chacking, and the deliberate misrepresentation of an activist’s affiliations. CBS has now admitted as much re: the activist. This cartoon about sums up the issue.

• INDC has a couple of interviews with CBS personnel about the latest scandal.

• The Justice Department has charged that a veteran New York Times foreign correspondent warned an alleged terror-funding Islamic charity that the FBI was about to raid its office - potentially endangering the lives of federal agents. Ace of Spades also links to some background re: this reporter. Note that the Times denies the charges. We’ll see.

• There seems to be one expert on the other side in the Rathergate expert scorecard now. Joseph M. Newcomer, one of the pioneers of electric typesetting, has what’s generally considered to be the definitive analysis but David E. Hailey, Jr., Ph.D says no, this can be produced on a typewriter. AllahPundit has more re: the latter. I’d like to see Hailey and Newcomer go head to head, myself… but I suspect he’ll hear from the blogosphere’s experts first.

Read The Rest…

I hope the feces are going to hit the air ventilation systems over this one. The Spanish parliament yesterday decided to consider José Couso, a Spanish camera man for TeleCinco, a victim of terrorism.

Couso was killed by American fire while filming from his balcony in the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad on April 8, during the American liberation of that city. There was an investigation by the US Army, which concluded that the tank commander acted correctly. There were snipers in the area, and the lense of a camera flickering in the sun can be similar to that of a sniper’s scope or a spotter’s binoculars. The U.S. Army did apologize for the matter to Spain’s —then— Aznar government, which considered the matter closed.

Not so for the Socialists, and in their all-consuming hate for everything Aznar has done for this country, the prime directive for Zapatero’s government seems to be to revise history wherever possible. Add to this the virulent anti-Americanism present in his government, and Prime Minister Zapatero’s stance of actively undermining US foreign policy and thereby indirectly putting American GIs as well as the Iraqi population under increased threat, as well as seeking alignment with Arab dictatorships, the next low for the Spanish socialists had to be to accuse the Americans of terrorism.

The Communist left (IU) together with a regional ecological party have introduced a bill in parliament, which would consider José Couso’s death an act of ‘international terrorism’. Zapatero’s Socialists have said to support the bill, focusing for their part on the state benefits his family will receive because of this, the intention of the bill is clear: The U.S. Army are terrorists.

If they want to pay his family benefits, there’s a million different ways to do so in this Keynesian wet dream of a country.

Former Prime Minister Aznar’s Partido Popular party is against it, logically one would want to think, but in this country I sometimes get the impression that everything has been put upside down since Al Qaeda chased them out of Iraq.

I sincerely hope the United States lodge a formal complaint with the Spanish government on this.

first published at Southern Watch.

Despite the inordinate amount of time that has been spent debating foreign affairs during this election season, particularly the situation in Iraq, there is a crucial issue that hasn’t yet received the attention that it deserves. The ignored point in question is how John Kerry’s over-the-top campaign rhetoric would make it almost impossible for him to successfully deal with Iraq.

While Kerry’s position on Iraq has wildly shifted to and fro over the last couple of years, his most recent comments have been particularly outlandish and irresponsible.

Kerry has called Iraq “a profound diversion from (the war on terrorism)”, opined that the US shouldn’t have invaded in the first place, and has called it “the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time”.

Also, we must keep in mind that Kerry has said he is “proud” to have voted against funding the war and has made it clear that he’s not committed to Democracy in Iraq by saying,

“With respect to getting our troops out, the measure is the stability of Iraq. [Democracy] shouldn’t be the measure of when you leave. I have always said from day one that the goal here…is a stable Iraq, not whether or not that’s a full democracy.”

So in John Kerry, we would have a vacillating Commander-In-Chief who believes the invasion was a mistake, didn’t want to fund the war afterwards, and has made it plain that he’s willing to settle for less than Democracy in Iraq.

In other words, unlike George Bush, John Kerry has no stake in Iraq and he might decide to cut and run at any time. He even has a ready made excuse; he can blame it all on George Bush! You can almost hear the speech John Kerry would make as he orders our troops out,

“Pulling out of Iraq and letting it collapse into Civil War was the toughest decision I ever made in my life. However, after thinking back to my time in Vietnam, I knew what I had to do. After all, how could I look one of our soldiers in the eye and ask him to be the last man to die for George Bush’s mistake?”

Now, how do you think having someone with that attitude in the White House would affect the morale of the troops? Do you think they’d really want to risk their lives for a cause their own Commander-in-Chief doesn’t believe in and might give up on at any time?

Would the Iraqi people trust a man like John Kerry who is now in effect saying that if he had his way, Saddam would still be in power? As if that weren’t bad enough, when Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi came to the US to give a speech to a Joint Session of Congress, John Kerry in essence called him a liar, made it clear that he doesn’t think elections will go forward in January of next year, and sent his senior adviser Joe Lockhart out to gratuitously insult Allawi by calling him a “puppet of the United States”. Were John Kerry to become President, the Iraqi people could very well become panicky and lose all confidence that the United States still intends to help them become a Democracy.

And what about the “insurgents” and their terrorist allies in Iraq? What do you think is going to give them more inspiration to keep fighting — four more years of George Bush, who has been the greatest foe of terrorism the world has ever seen — or John Kerry, a skittish candidate who might pull the troops out at any time?

Then there are our allies in the Coalition, nations like Britain, Poland, Australia, Italy, South Korea, and Japan. Many of these countries sent troops to Iraq despite tough political opposition at home and have hung in there with us through tough times, even though they’ve lost soldiers and civilians in Iraq. Are they going to be willing to stay in Iraq and fight what the new President of the United States thinks is, “the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time”? How many nations that are with us in Iraq today would continue to stick in there if a man who has mockingly referred to them as part of a, “trumped-up, so-called coalition of the bribed, the coerced, the bought and the extorted” becomes President? John Kerry claims he can bring new allies into the Coalition, but it’s entirely possible that he would instead cost us many of the allies we already have in this crucial endeavor.

As John Kerry said during one of his pro-war phases, Iraq is, “critical to the outcome of the war on terror”. Getting rid of Saddam was a blow against terrorism and helping Iraq become a Democracy is vitally important to improving our image in the Middle-East, helping freedom spread across the region, & winning the war on terrorism.

That’s why it’s so encouraging to see that we are making a lot of progress in Iraq. As Iraqi Prime Minister Allawi said, “2500 schools…have been renovated”, they are working on “150 new health care centers”, National elections are scheduled for January, and the Iraqis are rapidly moving towards a day when they can handle their own security without American soldiers having to be put at risk,

“The Iraqi government now commands almost 50,000 armed and combat - ready Iraqis. By January it will be some 145,000. And by the end of next year, some 250,000 Iraqis.”

In Iraq, certainly there have been mistakes made, unexpected difficulties, and tough times, but we are going in the right direction and if we give George Bush another term, he has shown that he has what it takes to get the job done. The same can’t be said of John Kerry. To the contrary, a vote for John Kerry is likely to be a vote for failure in Iraq, which would be a huge setback in the war on terrorism, a betrayal of the soldiers who gave their lives fighting there, and the breaking of America’s pledge to help the Iraqis become a free people.

So make a wise choice in November because whether we succeed or fail in Iraq will likely depend on the outcome of the election.

(NOTE: This was originally posted on Dean’s World this weekend, when Joe Gandelman was Guest Blogger)

Has there been a quiet foreshadowing of the next conflict to come — a foreshadowing lost or downplayed by the single-focus American media as it covers the contentious Presidential campaign?

It looks that way. The issue is Iran which is emitting increasing rumblings amid a generally aggressive tone towards the United States that it intends to go full-speed ahead on its nuclear program — and develop long range missles. Note this item in World Net Daily:

Iran said today it has successfully test-fired a long-range “strategic missile” and delivered it to its armed forces, saying it is now prepared to deal with any regional threats and even the “big powers.”

Iran’s new missiles can reach London, Paris, Berlin and southern Russia, according to weapons and intelligence analysts.

This essentially would mean it is on the verge of being a major power. More:

“This strategic missile was successfully test-fired during (the recent) military exercises by the Revolutionary Guards and delivered to the armed forces,” Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani was quoted by the state-run radio as saying.

The missile is believed by intelligence analysts to be an updated version of the Shihab-3, improved with the help of the North Koreans.

So “the enemy of your enemy is my friend” is in play here…

The news comes shortly after Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards staged military maneuvers near the border with Iraq, seen as a signal to Washington Tehran is prepared to fight back against any attempts to prevent the development of a nuclear reactor that could be used to make weapons-grade plutonium.

There has been talk the U.S. could want to find some way to stop that reactor from being either built or completed. And some of the speculation has centered on perhaps the Israeli taking care of this pesky problem for Washington for two reasons: in Israel’s own interest and as a de factor U.S. surrogate. The Iranians are well aware of U.S. and Israeli desires to nip their program in the bud:

The radio said Shamkhani refused to give details about the missile for “security reasons,” but said Iran was “ready to confront all regional and extra-regional threats.”

Shamkhani last month said Iran was working on improvements to the range and accuracy of the Shihab-3 in response to Israel’s moves to boost its anti-missile capability.

Today’s announcement came days after Israel said it was buying from the United States about 5,000 smart bombs, including 500 one-ton bunker-busters that can destroy 6-feet-thick concrete walls.

Analysts say such bombs could be used to destroy Iran’s nuclear reactor before it goes online. In 1981, Israel bombed Iraq’s nuclear reactor before it went “hot.” Iran may be only weeks or months away from activating the reactor.

The 2,000 pound “bunker-buster” bombs are part of one of the largest weapons deals between Israel and the U.S. in years. The bombs include airborne versions, guidance units, training bombs and detonators. They are guided by an existing Israeli satellite used by the military.

In addition to the 500 one-ton bunker-busters, the purchase includes 2,500 other one-ton bombs, 1,000 half-ton bombs and 500 quarter-ton bombs. Funding will come from U.S. military aid to Israel.

On Tuesday, Iran defied the International Atomic Energy Agency by announcing it is producing uranium hexafluoride, the material for centrifuge enrichment.

Kurtis Cooper, a U.S. State Department spokesman, declared: “Although Iran has repeatedly asserted that its nuclear program is exclusively for peaceful purposes and its pursuit of uranium enrichment technologies are to fuel a planned civilian power program, Iran will have no peaceful use for enriched uranium for many, many years. … The rush to convert 37 tons of yellowcake into feed-stock for centrifuge enrichment has no peaceful justification. … Thirty-seven tons of yellowcake is not a test. It is a production run.”

Iran and North Korea are going to be major challenges to the next administration. The challenge Iran poses to U.S. policy makers is not simply because of test firing missles that can terrorize Europe (and the realization that if they can develop these they can develop missles that have an even longer range…that can perhaps go as far as New York or Washington DC.). It’s spills into other troublesome areas as well, plus it reflects an overall problem the U.S. has faced in dealing with this militaryily strong and sophisticated country since the fall of the Shah of Iran.

Also consider:
—A New York Times report citing classified intelligence reports in January 2002 that Iran purchased US-built Stinger anti-aircraft missiles and turned them over to a Lebanese-based terrorist organization.
—Iran last month virtually daring the U.S. or Israel to try and interfere with its programL:

TEHRAN (Reuters) - A senior Iranian military official said Sunday Israel and the United States would not dare attack Iran since it could strike back anywhere in Israel with its latest missiles, news agencies reported.

Iranian officials have made a point of highlighting the Islamic state’s military capabilities in recent weeks in response to some media reports that Israeli or U.S. warplanes could try to destroy Iranian nuclear facilities in air strikes.

Iran last week said it carried out a successful test firing of an upgraded version of its Shahab-3 medium-range ballistic missile. Military experts said the unmodified Shahab-3 was already capable of striking Israel or U.S. bases in the Gulf.

“The entire Zionist territory, including its nuclear facilities and atomic arsenal, are currently within range of Iran’s advanced missiles,” the ISNA students news agency quoted Yadollah Javani, head of the Revolutionary Guards political bureau, as saying.

“Therefore, neither the Zionist regime nor America will carry out its threats” against Iran, he said.

An attack on Iran “could only be carried out by angry or stupid people. For that reason, officials of the Islamic Republic must always be prepared to counter possible military threats,” Javani said in a statement, ISNA reported

—This analysis by Steven Weisman in the New York Times which reads in part (and is worth reading in its entirety):

With a violent insurgency mounting in Iraq, the Bush administration hardly has time for another crisis overseas. Yet a barrage of warnings from Washington about Iran seems likely to erupt into a confrontation with the Tehran government, perhaps before the end of the year.

American anxiety is focused not simply on Iran’s apparent efforts to develop a nuclear bomb. There are also signs, administration officials have said, of support by Iran for the insurgency in Iraq, which officials fear could grow if the Tehran government is pressed too hard on its nuclear program.

A parallel concern in Washington is Iran’s continued backing of Hezbollah, which the administration and the Israeli government say is channeling aid to Hamas and other groups responsible for attacks on Israeli civilians.

Israel also warns that Iran’s nuclear program by next year will reach a “point of no return,” after which it will be able to make a bomb without any outside assistance.

Complicating the American response to all these concerns, the Bush administration is in considerable disagreement with its allies over how to handle the situation without making things worse.

Britain, France and Germany are warning that a confrontation could backfire, and that positive incentives as well as punishments need to be presented to Tehran, at least at some point down the road. Threatening sanctions, such as a cutoff in oil purchases, for example, is not viewed as credible or likely to get much support, European officials say.

European views cannot be dismissed, especially after the trans-Atlantic discord on Iraq, administration officials say….

So once again a threat perceived by the United States and Israel may face demands by European allies to go slow, wait, and negotiate. Given Iran’s accelerated testing schedule,threatening pronouncements and growing threat, it’s unlikely that after the November elections any U.S. administration or Irsael will feel it has the luxury to go so slow.

PREFACE: Wait! Don’t accuse me of being a Nazi by that headline. My name is G-a-n-d-e-l-m-a-n…so you know I’m Italian.

This email is going around and was sent to me by a friend in Florida, a Jewish friend (some of my best friends — and relatives — are Jews).

I’m posting it because a)it was interesting, b)I’m interested to see if some of our sharp readers (although I am well-educated, and spent the best 20 years of my life in elementary school) can let us know if the last line about George Bush is ACCURATE. Be sure to read my comments at the end of this. Here is what is being emailed across the country:

US Presidents and the Jews

—GEORGE WASHINGTON was the first President to write to a Synagogue. In 1790 he addressed separate letters to the Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, and to Mikve Israel Congregation in Savannah, Georgia, and a joint letter to Congregation Beth Shalom, Richmond, Virginia, Mikve Israel, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Beth Elohim Synagogue, Charleston, South Carolina and to Shearith Israel, New York.

—THOMAS JEFFERSON was the first President to appoint a Jew to a Federal post. In 1801 he named Reuben Getting of Baltimore as US Marshall for Maryland.

—JAMES MADISON was the first President to appoint a Jew to a diplomatic post. He sent Mordecai M. Noah to Tunis from 1813 to 1816.

-MARTIN VAN BUREN was the first President to order an American Consul to intervene on behalf of Jews abroad. In 1840 he instructed the U.S. Consul in Alexandria, Egypt to use his good offices to protect
the Jews of Damascus, Syria, who were under attack because of a false blood ritual accusation.

-JOHN TYLER was the first President to nominate a U.S. Consul to Palestine. Warder Cresson, a Quaker convert to Judaism, who established a pioneer Zionist colony, received the appointment in 1844.

-FRANKLIN PIERCE was the first and probably the only President whose name appears on the charter of a Synagogue. Pierce signed the Act of Congress n 1857 that amended the laws of the District of Columbia to enable the incorporation of the city’s first Synagogue, the Washington Hebrew Congregation.

-ABRAHAM LINCOLN was the first President to make it possible for Rabbis to serve as military chaplains. He did this by signing the 1862 Act of Congress which changed the law that had previously barred all but Christian clergymen from the chaplaincy. Lincoln was also the first, and happily the only President who was called upon to revoke an official act of Anti-Semitism by the U.S. Government. It was Lincoln who cancelled General Ulysses S. Grant’s “Order No. 11” expelling all Jews from Tennessee from the District controlled by his armies during the Civil War.

-ULYSSES S. GRANT was the first President to attend a Synagogue service while in office. When Adas Israel Congregation in Washington D.C. was dedicated in 1876, Grant and all members of his Cabinet were present.

-RUTHERFORD B. HAYES was the first President to designate a Jewish Ambassador for the stated purpose of fighting Anti-Semitism. In 1870, he named Benjamin Peyote Consul-General to Rumania. Hays also was the first President to assure a civil service employee her right to work for the Federal Government and yet observe the Sabbath. He ordered the employment of a Jewish woman who had been denied a position in the Department of the Interior because of her refusal to work on Saturday.

—THEODORE ROOSEVELT was the first President to appoint a Jew to a presidential cabinet. In 1906 he named Oscar S. Straus Secretary of Commerce and Labor. Theodore Roosevelt was also the first President to contribute his own funds to a Jewish cause. In 1919, when he received the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts while President to settle the Russo-Japanese War, Roosevelt contributed part of his prize to the National Jewish Welfare Board.

—WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT was the first President to attend a Seder while in office. In 1912, when he visited Providence, Rhode Island, he participated in the family Seder of Colonel Harry Cutler, first president of the National Jewish Welfare Board.

—WOODROW WILSON was the first President to nominate a Jew, Louis Dembitz Brandeis, to the United States Supreme Court. Standing firm against great pressure to withdraw the nomination. Confirmation was finally voted by the Senate on June 1, 1916. Wilson was also the first President to publicly
endorse a national Jewish philanthropic campaign. In a letter to Jacob Schiff, on November 22, 1917, Wilson called for wide support of the United Jewish Relief Campaign which was raising funds for European War relief.

—WARREN HARDING was the first President to sign a Joint Congressional Resolution endorsing the Balfour Declaration and the Palestine Mandate supporting the establishment in Palestine of a national Jewish home for the Jewish people.

—CALVIN COOLIDGE was the first President to participate in the edication of a Jewish community institution that was not a house of worship. On May 3, 1925, he helped dedicate the cornerstone of the Washington, D.C. Jewish Community Center.

—HARRY S. TRUMAN, on May 14, 1948, just eleven minutes after Israel’s proclamation of independence, was the first Head of a Government to announce to the press that “the United Stated recognizes the provisional Government as the de facto authority of the new State of Israel.” Truman was also the first U.S. President to receive a President of Israel at the White House, Chaim Weisman, in 1948 and an Ambassador from Israel - Eliahu Elath in 1948. With Israel staggering under the burdens of mass immigration in 1951-1952, President Truman obtained from Congress close to $140 million in loans and grants.

—DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER was the first President to participate in a coast-to-coast TV program sponsored by a Jewish organization. It was a network show in 1954 celebrating the 300th anniversary of the American Jewish community. On this occasion he said that it was one of the enduring satisfactions of his life that he was privileged to lead the forces of the free world which finally crushed the brutal regime in Germany, freeing the remnant of Jews for a new life and hope in Israel.

—JOHN F. KENNEDY named two Jews to his cabinet - Abraham Ribicoff as Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, and Arthur Goldberg as Secretary of Labor. Kennedy was the only President for whom a national Jewish Award was named. The annual peace award of the Synagogue Council of America was re-named the John F. Kennedy Peace Award after his assassination in 1963.

—JIMMY CARTER, in a number of impassioned speeches, stated his concern for human rights and stressed the right of Russian Jews to emigrate. He is credited with being the person responsible for the Camp David Accords.

—GEORGE H. W. BUSH in 1985, as Vice President, had played a personal role in “Operation Joshua,” the airlift which brought 10,000 Jews out of Ethiopia directly to resettlement in Israel. Then, again in 1991, when Bush was President, American help played a critical role in “Operation Solomon,” the escape of 14,000 more Ethiopian Jews. Most dramatically, Bush got the U.N. to revoke its 1975 “Zionism is Racism” resolution.

—BILL CLINTON appointed more Jews to his cabinet than all of the previous presidents put together.

—GEORGE W. BUSH is the first President since Herbert Hoover who has no Jews in his cabinet at all.

My thoughts and questions:

(1) Is this true?

(2) I thought John Ashcroft was Jewish. (UPDATE: That is a lame JOKE, folks!)

(3) If George Bush doesn’t have any Jews in his cabinet but invites some prominent Jews over for Chinese food, that’ll probably make up for it. Christians use 100 B.C. Jews use 100 B.C.F. (Before Chinese Food).

(4) This list leaves out people like LBJ and Richard Nixon, who was not exactly an aspiriging Bar Mitzvah boy.

(5) From my viewpoint? Even if Bush doesn’t have any Jews in his cabinet it doesn’t mean a thing to me. I do NOT believe in filling a cabinet with members of X group — even though I am Jewish (I was BORN to be Jewish AND an entertainer: the first doctor I saw as an infant took 10 percent..). This doesn’t mean or prove one iota that Bush — one of the biggest, most adamant supporters of Israel ever — is in any way, shape or form against people who are Jewish. And — again I remind you — I am NOT a Bush or a Kerry supporter.

IDEA: Comedian Jerry Lewis has been ill recently and he is slowly recuperating. Why not offer Jerry Lewis a soft job in the White House? Make him Condi Rice’s assistant. Then he can yell: “Hey, laaady!”

Al Jazeera is airing a show discussing how useful it is to behead infidels. Youssef M. Ibrahim’s piece carried on UPI has all the details — details showing, once again, that Al Jazeera is a propaganda tool for the most barbaric political behavior known to man:

Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Sep. 28 (UPI) — Imagine a television talk show where the hosts debate the merits and demerits of cannibalism, discussing whether it is good to kill people to eat their flesh, liver and hearts — seriously, on the air on prime time.

Don’t give the networks any ideas for a new reality show…

This past Tuesday, Feyssal Al Qassem, the infamous anchorman of Al Jazeera’s program “Counter Direction,” or “Alti jah Al Muaakess,” went well beyond.

Al Qassem hosted an Egyptian guest who over an entire hour was allowed to advocate, with sickening insistence, the beheading of hostages in Iraq as a legitimate act of resistance to what he called “these American dogs,” regardless of whether the captives — who are of many different nationalities — are military personnel, civilians, aid workers, or spies.

They are all mercenaries, the Egyptian man screamed, as Al Qassem of the Al Jazeera network cheered him on. Truly, he who has no shame is not afraid. Arabism and Islam have nothing to do with such people.

Fortunately the writer of this piece, which originally appeared in Gulf News, doesn’t let them get away with it:

Where does Al Jazeera, and Al Qassem, think they are taking their Arabic-speaking viewers, the young before the old, when they put on a talk show tantamount to issuing a fatwa, or edict, for murder in the name of Islam and God or Arab Nationalism?

Do Al Qassem and his network appreciate how much damage they are doing to the religion of 1.2 billion Muslims, in addition to polluting the minds of many who watched him dish out this garbage?

Al Qassem — whose program is already known as vile, loud, and messy — descended further into ignominious behavior.

As the host of this unbelievable conversation, Al Qassem prompted, watched and blessed a so-called Egyptian political commentator arguing that people having their heads severed from their bodies in the most savage of ways is okay in the name of resistance to American occupation — and more important — to teach the Americans a lesson.

How about what this teaches Arab children? What will they retain when they hear gratuitous invitations to kill, slash, hate, demean and ostracize “the other”, including innocent journalists, aid workers, and United Nations officials, both men and women who came to help Arabs of Iraq?

On Al Qassem’s television show, the guest representing the opposing view, an Iraqi who argued hopelessly that such savagery is inhuman, was at a loss for words. Who would not be?

And he says it all for us when he writes this:

There is a point where freedom of expression in the media stops and advocating irresponsible bloody savagery begins. Clearly Al Jazeera and Feyssal Al Qassem have no idea where that point is. Sponsors, mainly the government of Qatar, should pull the plug on him, tell him he is fired, and then apologize to Arabs, Muslims and the whole civilized world for this smear.

Like it or not, Al Jazeera has a huge following of Arabic-speaking people. This is a public trust. If a satellite channel claims to speak in the name of Arabs, its bosses and sponsors must make sure it does not spit where it eats.

By this show alone, Al Jazeera has crossed “the line” — a line that actors, musicians, and politicians can cross in varying ways. It’s a line where you lose your credibility and reveal yourself — usually unintentionally — as an extremist or an advocate of amoral behavior. More:

Al Jazeera has absolutely no right to allow ignorant, persons and reckless anchormen to further soil the reputation of all Muslims and Arabs by debating decapitation of human beings. There are no pros and cons here.

And it is not the first time Al Jazeera has done that. For years it has given prime time to the rabid Egyptian so-called religious leader Yusuf Al Qardawi, who issued an edict allowing the killing of Americans in Iraq and wife beating. The other day Al Itihad, the Emirates Arabic daily, to its credit, denounced him as an “ignorant man” misleading Muslims. Abdelrahman Al Rashed, the manager of the competing Arabic network Al Arabiya, also to his credit, also took him on saying he is polluting minds and shaming Muslims. It is now up to the Qatari government to stop these charades.

All this comes shortly after Al Azhar, the highest authority in Sunni Islam, condemned as a crime the kidnappings and beheadings of anyone being carried out in Iraq in the name of Islam.

YES: there ARE Muslims who are condemning it — which makes Al Jazeera all the more isolated as a vehicle of extremist propaganda.

What’s worse is that in an electronic voting on the issue, a huge majority of Al Jazeera’s viewers encouraged decapitation while less than 10 percent voted against.

Unless it happened to THEIR relatives (which won’t fortunately happen because there are indeed certain values that Westerners will not suspend).

The calamity that most of those who voted for it were Arabs and Muslims living in the West with free access to the Internet, enjoying the full freedom of Western democracies.

And we wonder where Osama’s “sleeper cells” are?

What does this say? That Al Jazeera has successfully polluted the minds of millions who should think differently, or that Arabs seriously suffer from schizophrenia?

Is it a surprise that prominent psychiatrists say that 10 percent of Arab children do not sleep for 10 days after viewing such repulsive kidnap-and-behead-industry photos and images of people begging for their lives with masked men standing behind defaming the Holy Koran by holding it up high.

But that doesn’t matter since the goal is indoctrination.

If adults are confused, what are children supposed to be? A friend, a medical professional, wrote me the other day an e-mail in which she said, “We do not need nation-building. We need nation-rebuilding. This is a big, big issue.”

Indeed, as long as people such as Al Qassem are not checked, we are in trouble.

Youssef M. Ibrahim , a former Middle East correspondent for the New York Times and Energy Editor of the Wall Street Journal, is Managing Director of the Dubai-based Strategic Energy Investment Group. He can be contacted at ymibrahim@gulfnews.com

Send him your KUDOS for this piece.

It looks as if viewers are deserting Dan Rather in droves — a sign of both his damaged credibility and the intense (almost scary) polarization in this country.

The New York Post reports:

Dan Rather’s ratings in New York continue to tank in the wake of the fake-documents scandal.

The “CBS Evening News” averaged 160,000 viewers last week on WCBS/Channel 2 — down from 231,000 viewers the week before.

Rather apologized for the National Guard documents debacle on the Sept. 20 newscast, and his numbers actually rose the next two days, reaching a high of 241,000 viewers Wednesday.

In the week before Rather’s on-air mea culpa, viewership was off a staggering 49 percent.

The numbers spiraled downward since Wednesday, with Thursday’s “Evening News” pulling only 140,000 viewers on Channel 2, and a measly 108,000 viewers Friday, according to Nielsen numbers.

Meanwhile, a fourth of American adults polled for USA Today and CNN by Gallup say Rather should be fired over the story charging President Bush got special treatment during his National Guard service — but 64 percent said the anchor should not be canned.

Also, 38 percent said the CBS report was a hit job aimed at making Bush look bad, while 56 percent said it was an “honest mistake.”

Why is this happening? The controversy over the story is one thing. The polarization of the electorate — seen in the growth of two talk radio cultures (conservative and liberal Air America) and even ideological dating services for singles — is another.

But there’s also the fact that Rather has never quite been a journalism icon on the same scale as Walter Cronkite. Cronkite was to TV news what the late Ed Sullivan was to TV variety shows: he epitomized an era and had an aura. The era was the days when journalists genuinely strove for objectivity and sneered at tabloids, or even theme music on newscasts. The aura was of someone who attempted to go straight down the middle. LBJ’s now cliched comment that when he lost Walter Cronkite he knew he lost the war was true; Cronkite bent over backwards when he was on CBS to at least give everyone a fair shake.

Rather hasn’t quite been Mr. Investigative reporter, but he didn’t have that reservoir of good-will. It’s a generational thing; it seems each generation is more aggressive as we move into the 21st Century (you experience this in Road Rage, which was not the rage years ago).

So when The Great Documents Controversy broke, he had nothing to fall back on because his past clashes with Republicans had already sucked up any remaining good will to cushion his fall.

This is the same danger politicians face in this race: you can go for immediate gratification (polarization in politics, or a quick “scoop” or confrontation with a President who belongs to a political party in journalism)….but that means the feather bed won’t be there cushion you when you have an inevitable fall.

So the lesson of Rather’s decimated ratings isn’t just for TV executives: John Kerry and George Bush take note…………

JOHN KERRY: IF YOU WANT TO HAVE A CHANCE AT WINNING DON‘T READ THE NEW YORK TIMES TODAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We won’t even tell you who wrote what, but it is on the editorial page. It’s an Op-Ed piece.

Now, John, since I enjoy watching political horse races where one horse (actually, we’re talking about posteriors of horses here) isn’t totally in the lead, please do me a favor and go to another website.

We know that you and George Bush and James Carville and Karl Rove all read my blog for tidbits of political wisdom and lessons in life and political ethics and all that — and to read run on sentences written by a five foot one Jew from Connecticut.

But PLEASE. Go to another website. Here, go to this. WHOOPS! Wrong one! Go to this since it’ll be useful to you.

Now for my other reader. (Hi Mom!)

It’s actually not a bad Op-Ed column, except why would John Kerry want to listen to Al Gore on debates?

In his debates with Bush, Bush didn’t beat Al Gore — Al Gore beat Al Gore. He sighed (voters didn’t like that). He got in Bush’s face (women didn’t like that; if it had been Tom Ridge’s huge face Gore would have needed two debates to get in his face). He changed his persona with each debate. And his make up varied: first he looked bland, then so heavily made up he looked like he had just come back from gig as a mime.

And it isn’t that the advice is bad. You can read his whole piece by clicking on the link in the first line. But here’s a taste of it:

My advice to John Kerry is simple: be prepared for the toughest debates of your career. While George Bush’s campaign has made “lowering expectations” into a high art form, the record is clear - he’s a skilled debater who uses the format to his advantage. There is no reason to expect any less this time around. And if anyone truly has “low expectations” for an incumbent president, that in itself is an issue.

But more important than his record as a debater is Mr. Bush’s record as a president. And therein lies the true opportunity for John Kerry - because notwithstanding the president’s political skills, his performance in office amounts to a catastrophic failure. And the debates represent a time to hold him to account. For the voters, these debates represent an opportunity to explore four relevant questions: Is America on the right course today, or are we off track? If we are headed in the wrong direction, what happened and who is responsible? How do we get back on the right path to a safer, more secure, more prosperous America? And, finally, who is best able to lead us to that path?

ETC. It’s worth reading…for ordinary citizens (not John Kerry).

But Kerry is going to have to take inventory of Kerry, then let voters know more than his (God forbid) Vietnam record. He’s going to have to reach deep inside of himself and show what athletes call “heart,” versus rehearsed talking points. He’s going to have to question Bush — and also lay out a viable alternative that’ll peel off swing voters, (the few) moderate Republicans and (the few) conservative Democrats. He has to convince those voters he could be a credible Commander In Chief and that his criticisms are thoughtful observations versus political piffle.

Oh, John, if you haven’t taken my advice already, skip the Times and read this. Whoops! I mean this. It’s more laugh packed.

University of Maryland Political Scientist Larry Sabato’s latest issue of The Cyrstal Ball is out….and as usual it’s a provocative one.

He discusses the possibility of an Electoral College tie this year and updates what’s going on in various states. But of most interest to us is this section on Thursday night’s Presidential debates. Bottom line: if Kerry doesn’t break out in the debates he’s doomed. Here’s the section on the debates in full:

(All of this is by Larry Sabato)

Sabato’s Six Thoughts Before the Debates

Your Crystal Ball rolls around the country with great frequency to “test the waters”…or the land…a full report is coming a few days after the first debate, but for now, a few conclusions:

1. We believe Bush continues to hold the lead, though it may be tightening a bit—-just as we have predicted several times. Instead of a lead of 5-6%, Bush appears to be ahead by 4-5%. Is this a trend? Who knows? But without a breakthrough in the debates, Kerry will probably lose, whatever his final margin.

2. We believe it is essential to stress what so many television commentators seem to ignore: this election is not over by a long- shot! Don’t pull the curtain down before the show is over on November 2, especially in such a volatile year—-before the debates, further developments in Iraq and the War on Terror, and the release of the October jobs numbers.

3. Over and over again, we have been told by the elusive undecided voters (5-7% of the likely voters) that they would vote the right Democratic candidate since they desire a change, but they are unsure Kerry is “the right change”. Bluntly, they don’t like Kerry personally, and they see him as aloof, elitist, and too liberal. And they sense a lack of leadership in the man. These are the impressions Kerry MUST change in the debates if he is to win. Otherwise, Bush will garner some votes even from those who have despaired about the economy or Iraq.

4. Beware any and all polls. They greatly oversimplify what is going on just beneath the surface. And we continue to believe they may be missing some new voters who may be change-oriented, who could make the election closer than advertised. Take the “poll of polls” if you need your polling fix for the day.

5. The Bush campaign continues to run rings around the Kerry campaign on a day-to-day basis (some days excepted, of course). But the real question will remain unanswered until election day: Which party has organized the best get-out-the-vote effort? The GOTV drives will tell the tale as long as the gap between Kerry and Bush is close on November 2. After the experience of 2000, surely the Bush folks take any poll lead with a grain of salt. A pre-election lead can be lost in its entirety on election day—-precisely what happened in 2000 in key battleground states.

6. OVERALL: Bush still leads, but uncomfortably. Kerry can still win, but not without a breakthough in the debates and on one or more key issues, plus a better election-day GOTV.

You can read Sabato regularly or just explore his site by going to our link under Center Voices. You can also get The Crystal Ball sent you each week free, by email.

[By Armed Liberal]

Over the last few weeks, I’ve felt the pressure to get off the fence and declare for one candidate or the other. Commenters here, and people in my personal life, have pushed me to ‘fess up that I’m a Bush supporter, or admit that I’m too much of a Democrat to cross the line.

Thinking about this feels kind of like having a chipped tooth. Every time your tongue curls over and touches it, you get a flash of pain, and yet you keep going back and doing it again.

And then, as I wrestled with it - with Kerry’s opportunistic failure to be honest about where we stand in foreign policy; with Bush’s stream of failures in post-invasion Iraq and domestic security - I realized that there’s a much bigger issue afoot.

I remember the bumper stickers disclaiming responsibility for the Nixon/Humphrey election - “Don’t Blame Me, I Voted for McCarthy” which in today’s discourse have been replaced by bumper stickers saying “He’s Not My President” and trying to disclaim responsibility for a whole Administration.

Well, you can’t. And yes he is. And yes he will be, whoever he is.

Read the Rest…

Mahdi Obeid,the author of “The Bomb in My Garden: The Secrets of Saddam’s Nuclear Mastermind,” has an OpEd in today’s New York Times.

Excerpts:

[T]he West never understood the delusional nature of Saddam Hussein’s mind. By 2002, when the United States and Britain were threatening war, he had lost touch with the reality of his diminished military might. By that time I had been promoted to director of projects for the country’s entire military-industrial complex, and I witnessed firsthand the fantasy world in which he was living.

[….]

Was Iraq a potential threat to the United States and the world? Threat is always a matter of perception, but our nuclear program could have been reinstituted at the snap of Saddam Hussein’s fingers. The sanctions and the lucrative oil-for-food program had served as powerful deterrents, but world events - like Iran’s current efforts to step up its nuclear ambitions - might well have changed the situation.

Read the whole thing.

In 1946, an artist named Nikolai Getman was imprisoned in the Soviet Union’s infamous Gulag system of Siberian concentration camps. His “crime” was that he had been present in a cafe with several fellow artists, one of whom drew a caricature of Stalin on a cigarette paper. The Jamestown Foundation further notes that:

“Upon his release in 1954, Getman commenced a public career as a politically correct painter. Secretly, however, for more than four decades, Getman labored at creating a visual record of the Gulags [paintings displayed online here] which vividly depicts all aspects of the horrendous life (and death) which so many innocent millions experienced during that infamous era.

Getman’s collection is unique because it is the only visual record known to exist of this tragic phenomenon. Unlike Nazi Germany, which recorded and preserved in detail a visual history of the Holocaust, the Russians prefer not to remember what happened in the Gulags. Not a single person has been punished for the deaths of the millions who perished there. If film or other visual representations of the Soviet Gulags existed, they have been largely destroyed or suppressed. The Getman collection stands alone as a most important historical document.”

Additional links mine. These haunting, deeply evocative works of art are very much worth your time for 3 reasons. First and foremost, for their human dimension. Second, they offer us a reminder of where Russia is now in relation to its past. Last but certainly not least, they’re a searing reminder of what communism really was - despite the consistent denials and evasions from many significant figures in the Western Left, too many of whom seemed to prefer onanistic radical whines about life in the hell that was Amerikkka.

Some of them are still at it, and not just in Cuba. Last May, Winds of Change.NET had a long and interesting exchange about this pehnomenon with Armed Liberal, Michael Totten, Roger Simon, Francis Poretto and Caerdroia.

Hugh Hewitt recently interviewed Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz on the repositioning of American forces around the world. The interview originally appeared here and is reprinted with permission of Mr. Hewitt.

HH: Mr. Secretary welcome, great to have you on the Hugh Hewitt Show.

PW: Good to be with you.

HH: This is a huge change in American force structure, can you explain to the audience why it is coming about now and when it got started?

PW: It has been in the works ever since the secretary led the quadrennial defense review in the summer of 2001 when he first came into office, and at that point it was clear that we had a force structure that in many ways reflected what was left over after the Cold War rather than what we needed for the 21rst century, and that we needed force structure around the world that was better aligned with what the real threats were and that took better advantage of the extraordinary changes in U.S. capabilities that have developed over the years. The events of September 11th actually brought this home even more forcefully. We got a clear idea of how much those threats have changed. We found ourselves operating 8,000 miles away in Afghanistan in a place where if, three months before we’d even suggested we’d have an operation like that in line, people would have said you must be out of your minds. So flexibility is the name of the game, but also what we have demonstrated to is that we have enormous reach now, global reach with our forces that means you don’t have to be positioned 10 miles from the place where some trouble might happen in order to be able, very quickly, to reach out and have an impact. I guess the most important thing I’d like to emphasize is that this in no way diminishes our ability to fulfill our commitments to our friends and allies around the world. That remains a centerpiece of American foreign policy and national security policy.

HH: Dr. Wolfowitz, in the prepared remarks, the Secretary talked today to the Senate about the ability to “surge the most ready, best positioned capabilities on a global basis —across theaters.” Now I’m a civilian, but if I am a military guy reading that I’m thinking “Oh my gosh, all the lines of command are going to get jumbled up here, and everything is changing.” Truth to those concerns?

PW: Well, it is true that our commanders need to be much more flexible than they had to be during the kind of rigid periods of the Cold War, but I think they have demonstrated that kind of flexibility and they have improved it enormously in the last three and a half years. It was demonstrated already with the speed with which General Franks put together a plan for Afghanistan that drew on forces from all around the world, within an astonishingly short period of time, brought about the collapse of the Taliban regime and a major victory in the war on terrorism. And it has simply advanced over the last two or three years. yes, there are important new issues that have to be confronted about how you work across what in this department they call seams, he dividing lines, the boundary lines between one commander and another. But the terrorists work right across seams, so we have to be able to do so also.

HH: Speaking about the terrorists —the connections between Zarqawi and Zawahiri and Indonesian terrorists, how does this new force structure address this net-centric warfare, which is asymmetrical, which we are up against, where they are dealing with internet, and not being really allied with each other but kind of operating that way. I think I heard you say once that Al Qaeda doesn’t issue membership cards, and how does the new force structure address this decentralized yet netted opponent?

PW: As far as the military piece of this war —and I want to come back to that because people make a big mistake if they think this is primarily a military conflict, but the military has an absolutely critical role to play obviously— and in part what we’re trying to do with this repositioning is to make sure that our forces are in places where they can be moved quickly to where they are needed, that they are in places where they are welcomed politically, that’s very important. That they are in places that will be comfortable with their being moved someplace else. We have occasionally run into countries that seem to kind of feel that they own the U.S. forces that are there, and in a global struggle, we can’t have forces that are specifically assigned just to specific geographic regions. So that kind of flexibility is important. Also, I think we are going to see a lot of emphasis on those parts of our force which focus on dealing with computer based warfare, both in terms of defending our own computer systems which is important, but also figuring out how to prevent the enemy from making use of the internet to the extent we can. And also special operations forces which may from time tot time be deployed from the United States, from Europe, to places as far away as maybe Afghanistan or maybe the Horn of Africa or some place yet unknown.

HH: There’s a gentleman whose work I am sure you are familiar with, John Arquilla, who’s been a guest on this program, who has talked about decentralizing the ability of the military to go after immediately the terrorists when they surface, when they pop up like a prairie dog. Is that part of the force restructuring that we are seeing unveiled today?

HH: It definitely is. It definitely is. You have to bring various pieces together. You have to bring the intelligence and the military pieces together, so that the time between finding what could be a very fleeting target and the time that you take action against it is short as possible. You need to bring the political and diplomatic piece together because it may be that some very important target is in a country that is a friendly country, and if we are going to take any military action at all, it’s got to be in concert with the friendly government, so it is a very complex set of operations. I must say if I look at our success already so far in this war on terrorism, with some two-thirds of the senior Al Qaeda leadership killed or captured, hundreds of Al Qaeda members and associates killed or captured, I would say already we have shown a great ability to integrate across those different capabilities. But as you and your audience are so well aware, it doesn’t take very many of these people to cause enormous devastation and destruction so we really need to keep improving our capabilities constantly.

HH: Dr Wolfowitz, last year Secretary Rumsfeld put out a memo wondering “Do we have the metrics to judge the success of this effort?” He worried about madrassas’ enrollment and all sorts of different things. How —I know we have had victories— but how do we know we are winning?

PW: I think you can measure a lot of things that are successes. I think Afghanistan is slowly but increasingly emerging as a real success, but, by the way, success in war is only temporary if you let up before the enemy has let up. Of course the Taliban in Afghanistan are still fighting us, still fighting the Karzai government, but in spite of their best efforts to stop people from registering to vote, more than 10 million Afghans, 40% of them women, have registered to vote. It is a historic event for that country. Iraq —there is still horrible violence, but there has been enormous progress there for just a year and a half after the removal of one of the most horrible regimes that’s ever governed any country. And the killing and capturing of specific terrorists that I mentioned have got to be counted as big victories.

But I think what the secretary was getting at in that famous memo of his that unfortunately got leaked was that we also need to be about the business of persuading people, especially in the Muslim world where most of these terrorists are recruited from, that that’s not the right alternative, that there’s a better future for them, that there’s a bright future here on earth. It is kind of sickening to read things like Zarqawi’s letter or other publications by the terrorists where they express enormous contempt for people who love life and fear death. We have plenty of brave young men and women who are facing the prospect of death in Iraq but it is because they love life, not because they think there is some paradise afterwards that they want to rush their way to. And I think I would mention something —it is not something for us to claim credit for— but it is is a sign of real progress that indonesia held its second successful, fair presidential election just about a week ago, second in Otis history. Many people say that to have two fair elections in a row is the real measure of democracy. I think there are some other measures as well, but this is a country with more Muslims than any other country in the world, an they have shown, I think, an ability to move forward towards freedom and democracy, and that’s what the president was talking about when he said last fall that in addition to killing and capturing terrorists we need to show the world, and especially the Muslim world, that the better future lies in our way, not the terrorists’ way.

HH: Dr. Wolfowitz, I know you are running. Thanks for the time. I look forward to talking to you in the future.

————-
Hugh Hewitt is the host of a nationally syndicated radio show, a Professor of Law, an author of four books, an Emmy-winning tv co-host and a blogger.

I thought I’d offer quick summaries and links to all the High Holy Days posts we’ve run here on Winds this year. As we start the new year of 5765 and face the Day of Atonement, I hope they prompt some smiles, understanding, and reflection:

• Everything I Needed to Know I learned from the Road Runner. Wile E. Coyote cartoons as spiritual material? Believe it! Rabbi Brody & Joe Katzman explain.

• Yosemite Sam’s Comeuppance. Ah yes, those busybodies who always seem ready to pull out the spiritual pistols in anger and start a’shootin. One wise soul lapses into this behaviour and gets a big lesson - but has the grace to acknowledge it.

• The Barber of Sayvel. How can there be a G-d when there’s so much suffering in the world?

• True Repentance. Even the angels of heaven need to read blogs these days.

• Popeye & Bluto in NYC. A neighbourhood feud needs to end before the High Holidays do. But how? Rabbi Brody has a plan, but his secret ingredient isn’t spinach - it’s spin.

• Rosh Hashanah for Everyone! A Muslim explains what she has learned from the High Holidays.

• Zen Judaism Humour. “Be here now. Be someplace else later. Is that so complicated?”

• The Angel of the Yangtze Bridge. Chen Si has saved at least 42 people from certain death. How? By noticing that they “walk without spirit.” Who are you an angel for?

• Kol Nidre: Love and Fear. Amidst the awe of this day, remember Maimonides’ words - and Rabia’s, too. Remember, too, the story of the Russian Kantonist who lived them.

In his new book, Inside CentCom: The Unvarnished Truth About the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, retired Gen. Michael DeLong – the former deputy commander of the U.S. Central Command – writes about a new style of war against a new style of enemy. DeLong helped Gen. Tommy Franks plan America’s post-9/11 efforts against al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein’s regime using new weapons, a new strategy of speed and flexibility, and a new urgency to protect the U.S. homeland from terror attacks. In his
book, he explains that much of his work involved building the coalitions for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, new tactics and why the wars played out the way they did. Today, DeLong is Executive Vice President of Shaw Environmental and Infrastructure International and the President of Shaw CentCom service (LLC) for the Shaw Group – a firm doing reconstruction work in Iraq where he still frequently travels.

He spoke with Command Post Contributor Ed Moltzen about his book, the war on terror and conditions today in Iraq.

TCP: August was a difficult month for the Coalition. From what you’ve seen and heard during your visits to Iraq, how is troop
morale?

DeLong: I’m probably not going to go there much. The people I talk to over there right now are the Iraqis. I’ve been there six times in the last four months. I’m leaving again (Friday). The people I talk to are the heads of the corporations over there, the ministers of some of the different agencies over there and the tribal chiefs of the largest tribes over there.

In the book, I was kind of hard on the former military people who commented on how the war was fought, and they didn’t have the knowledge we had. And right now I’m not involved (in the military.)

I am confident in how the people of Iraq and Iran feel. I meet with them all the time. I have hired some of them as security people. I have hired former military people who are working with us and they talk to the military people over there. And from what they say, the morale couldn’t be better. If you talk to the Army and the Marine Corps, their morale could not be better. They are energized about what they are doing. They are energized about trying to help the Iraqi people. They are energized that they are there, and if they have to fight they are fighting on someone else’s ground rather than their own ground.

The civilian people, or the Iraqi leaders I talk to, their issues are different. There are groups of people coming up and they don’t want the elections: Some of the former Ba’athists, some of the Fedayeen Saddam, members of al Qaeda led by Zarqawi. With that said, about 85 percent plus of the people in Iraq, according to the people I talk to, like Americans. What they don’t like is being occupied. What they would like is free and open elections. Whether democracy will work or
not is to be seen. If they are going to elect people, they would like to elect Iraqis and not expatriate Iraqis who were not there during the hard times, during Saddam’s reign.

Will there be a civil war? That’s a possibility according to the people I talk to. It’s two civil wars. One up north – the Sunnis are concerned that they used to be the ruling group and may not be. The Kurds would like to be free and have their own country up north, Kurdistan. But they would have to fight the Turks and Sunnis.

In the south, there is a possibility of a war between the Shia and the Sunni. If that doesn’t happen, and there is some sort of security and people can vote with some sort of feeling good about themselves, there is a good chance the January election will happen.

TCP: Prime Minister Allawi said elections in Iraq will go on, as scheduled, in January. Based on what you’ve seen on the ground and what you’ve heard from the Iraqis themselves, its this realistic?

DeLong: Let me put it this way: The hope of most Iraqis is they have some sort of an election. Whether this country ends up being a democratic issue, it’s a regional issue. None of the countries around Iraq wants that country to be democratic. Why is that? If Iraq was a successful democratic country, the rest of the countries around them are not. That could cause internal failing in their countries and they don’t want that. There’s a lot going against Iraq trying to be a democratic country. It would be great if it happened.

TCP: From an infrastructure standpoint, do you believe Iraq is better today than it was before the war? Does it vary on a region-by-region basis?

Delong: It varies on a region-by-region basis. I will tell you, every region is better than before the war. Baghdad is better, and Baghdad was really the only region – well, Baghdad and Tikrit – that Saddam cared about. The infrastructure in Iraq has not been tended to since 1979. Saddam put all his money into castles and things he liked. But the water infrastructure, the power infrastructure, schools, hospitals, the port infrastructure – no money was put into that. The reason things are in the shape the are today is not because of the Iran-Iraq war, the Gulf War or the second Gulf War. It’s because of Saddam not putting a nickel into infrastructure.

Things were not taken care of. Probably 70 percent of the infrastructure problems were due to neglect over the last 30 years of Saddam’s reign. Now, different contractors have gone in – I being one of them – and have built the infrastructure up. People – if they are not protected – try to destroy the infrastructure.

TCP: The Iraq Survey Group is expected to file a comprehensive report soon on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Reports indicate that it will conclude Saddam had no WMD. But you disagree with that belief. Why do you disagree and is it more likely WMD are still inside Iraq, or have they been moved?

DeLong: I think what the report will say is, just like everybody else has said, there is no proof there was WMD. There will be no definitive statement in this report. I can state, unequivocally, there was WMD in Iraq before and during the war. You have multiple-source intelligence. Also, from other Arab leaders – as Tommy Franks says in his book – King Abdullah said Saddam has WMD. President Mubarek of Egypt said you have to be very careful going in, because Saddam has weapons of mass destruction. Other leaders who have chosen not to be named said the same thing. We had technical intelligence that saw the same thing.

Two days before March 19, 2003, we saw quite a number of vehicles going into Syria. We could not go after them because we said we’d give Saddam 48 hours. A lot of (Iraqi) leaders went into Syria, and a lot of WMD went into Syria. We’ve gotten indications some went into Lebanon, and probably some went into Iran.

The size of Iraq is roughly, in square miles, the same size as California. Seven-eighths of the country is arid desert land. We’ve done calculations that you could probably bury 16 Eiffel Towers or Empire State Buildings and never find them in the desert. Just four months ago, they were digging for something out in the middle of
the desert and they hit something. It was a MIG-25 Foxbat that the Iraqis buried in the sand. We never would have found this thing.
Biological Weapons, you could put almost your whole program in a suitcase. You could probably put your whole chemical weapons industry inside a van. Yes, they did have it and right today they can’t find it. The people we’ve captured, like Dr. Germ and Chemical Ali, the murderer of the Kurds, aren’t talking.

TCP: In the book, you talk about coming face-to-face with Chemical Ali. What was that like?

Like any good commander, I was looking at the prison sites to make sure they were going well and at the time they were. I went into this one prison that held our special prisoners. The last prisoner I went to was Chemical Ali. He was dressed nicely as far as the prisoners were. He was well-taken care of. His hair was gray. (Everybody who had nice, dark, black hair during the war – they had all died their hair. They all had gray hair in prison.)

I had taken my rank insignia off, I had a jacket on. He said, “Who are you?” I said, “I’m just here to look at the prison to make sure everybody is getting taken care of.” He said, “You must be important.” He said, “Who are you? Why are people deferring to you?” He said, “All of the guards who take care of me are wonderful.”

He had a smile on his face all the time. It reminded me, working with police forces when police forces worked with serial killers. You could sit next to this guy and you would let him babysit your child. He was so nice, but he probably killed 100,000 people.

He said, “We don’t have chemical weapons.” I said, “Sure you do.”

Why is he withholding? I can’t tell you for sure, but my guess is anybody inside the Saddam inner circle who was a strong person who had strong feelings about certain things is already dead. Anybody who couldn’t keep a secret – they’re all dead. Until Saddam is killed, or executed, or whatever, they may never talk. They’ll probably never talk until they’re sure he can’t come back.

TCP: Much of your job while you were at CentCom involved building coalitions for the wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq. When you hear the Coalition of the Willing being referred to as a fraudulent coalition, what do you think? What’s your response? (It sounds like that’s a direct criticism of the work you did.)

DeLong: If I believed that, I would take offense. Everybody is choosing to do something they think will effect the election. If I truly believed that - you’re talking about Sen. Kerry – I’d take offense to that. There is nothing more important in today’s world than the defeat of terror, of the pressure of terrorism. As much of the
world as possible has to participate. Russia found that out, sadly, in the last two weeks. Even though they are part of the coalition, they weren’t as tough as they could have been. There are over 70 countries (at CentCom headquarters) in Tampa supporting the coalition. The police forces are going through their countries trying to root out these terrorists. The intelligence organizations of these countries are sharing intelligence like they’ve never shared before. You could go back to 2001 until today. Until this event in Russia, and until the event in Spain, the organizations in the world had thwarted somewhere…between thirty and 100-plus very large terrorist events. People were captured and killed and the event stopped because of what’s going on today.

Guess who’s in the coalition? Spain is in the coalition. The Philippines is in the coalition. Two countries that left Iraq. But if the people in power want to stay in power in their respective countries, and the people of that country don’t want them there (in Iraq), they’ve got to make that choice. But they keep their people in the coalition.

They are still contributing, but secretly. They are working in Afghanistan. France and Germany are working very heavily in Afghanistan even though their people won’t let them work in Iraq.

TCP: How difficult was diplomacy for you, as a career military man?

DeLong: It was easy. People are people. When I retired, I had 36 years and four months of service. I traveled the world. I knew every country. I read the Koran to understand how the Arabs worked. Not that I’m better than anybody in the West. (Understanding the Koran) let me let me not do some things I shouldn’t do, or do things I should do when dealing with them. I used to (coalition members) at my house one a month – all the leaders. They became friends. I could get things
done in some countries that would have taken months of red tape working through the State Department, then with the other embassy, then with their foreign ministry.

I could get it done in thirty minutes because they had access to the prime minister. That doesn’t mean it was right, but it worked. I said this in the book, and I’ll still say it today: The coalition is more important than the war on terrorism. If they hang together and they continue to pursue the terrorists, you wouldn’t have to worry
about the war on terrorism. Terrorism may become like crime. There will be some areas of the world where crime is bad, and some areas of the world where it is not bad. There will be some areas where terror is not bad.

TCP: Sen. Kerry has said more than once that President Bush let Osama bin Laden escape at Tora Bora. In your book, to say the least,
you explain it much differently.

DeLong: Sen. Kerry didn’t know what happened. He’s no more better informed than the armchair generals who went after us (on TV.) And what was going on at the time, where bin Laden was in the Tora Bora caves, there was a tribal area that was full of civilians. You couldn’t go up there with soldiers of any force – especially us
– because we would have been fighting them to get to bin Laden. Whether we would have gotten to him remains to be seen. This was a tribe on the border, and the only people who were accepted up there was the Pakistani army. You know how tough guarding a border is – with Texas and New Mexico and Arizona for example.

We didn’t kill any civilians unnecessarily up there. We know for a fact from our multiple intelligence sources that we wounded bin Laden. But yes, he did get away. If we had killed a number of civilians, our chances of getting elections in Afghanistan would have never happened. It was a diplomatic, not a political call. It was a call to get this country back together again. We knew the death or capture of bin Laden was important. But getting rid of al Qaeda and getting the country feeling good, feeling nationalistic, was important.

TCP: Just days before the Iraq war began, Gen. Shinseki told Congress he believed several hundred thousand troops would be needed for the effort. Was this a big disagreement between the war planners the Army bureaucracy?

DeLong: What happened is, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld talked to all the commanders and all the commanders running area commands around the world and said, “We have new weapons now, very highly sophisticated weapons now for land, sea and air. I’m a good steward of the American taxpayer. I want your operations plans to reflect the updated gear we have. Your plans currently look like Napoleon’s plans. Let’s see what you could do with less people, less airplanes, less ships.”

It was not a bad thing to do. That’s what everybody started doing.

We had the war planned that it was told to us by expatriate Iraqis that the army would stay in tact, the police would stay in tact, you would be able to control different areas inside the cities and prisoners would be in prison. Two days before the war went down, Saddam let between 30,000 and 50,000 of the worst people in the
world – rapists, killers and kidnappers – they were let go into the streets. On the day before we crossed the border, everyone of the police walked out of their uniforms. Now you’ve got 50,000 of the worst people in the Middle East loose on the streets and no policemen. Then the Iraqi soldiers walked out. You had no military police.

Could you use several hundred thousand troops then? Sure you could. But that wasn’t the plan. We couldn’t come in from the north – Turkey wouldn’t let us. We had to funnel our forces coming in from the sea and land (in the south). Once we got in, we got to Baghdad rather rapidly. We had built (forces) up to 200,000. We thought from that time on we could possibly – the people would settle down after the capture of Saddam or the capture of Baghdad. That didn’t happen either. We had to build up a police force and army and a national guard force.

Was Gen. Shinseki wrong? Given what happened, it probably would have been nice to have several hundred thousand (troops). Over time, where do you get several hundred thousand soldiers? Right now we have a heck of a time keeping 130,000.

Were mistakes made? Sure they were. But everybody in the United States, including Congress, had a shot: If you know what the Iraqis are going to do, tell us. If not, we’ll do the best we can.

There were other surprises. We thought they would use chemical weapons on us. That surprised us nicely that they didn’t.

TCP: What do you think will be this country’s response, long-term, to what’s happening in Iraq? Do you think there will be patience over the long haul?

That’s one of the reasons I wrote the book. It was written in novel format, and without a lot of military acronyms, to make it easy to read and for people to make their own decision. Sadly, some people have forgotten that 9/11 happened. Sadly, some people have never thought about what happens if we lose the war on terrorism.

This is not like coming back with your tail between your legs after Vietnam. This could be the downfall of the United States and the downfall of the world. You can’t afford to lose that war. The reason I was in the military for 36 years and four months was not because I was a conservative or a Republican, but that I fought and was willing to die for people’s right to dissent, or whether they want to vote or not to vote. That’s the great thing about living in the United States. What’s sad today is during the election process – it’s good to have the candidates going back and forth. It’s bad when they attack each other. The world looks at that and that’s not good.

Dissent is good. It’s always been good. It’s good for the United States in my humble opinion.

But it’s not going to be months in Iraq. It’s going to be years.

——————————-

Ed Moltzen writes at Late Final. You can read his review of Gen. DeLong’s book here.

Allahpundit has an update for you. As for Rather, he still continues to offer evasions about the documents’ authenticity, confident in his ability to get away with it while many major media outlets still speak of documents that are merely ‘controversial,’ rather than the definitive forgeries they so clearly are.

Memo to bloggers and readers: keep the pressure on. I think a strong campaign to your local media is also called for, to get the word out. You’re bloggers, which makes you interesting to your local press right now. Write them and volunteer to put the background materials together - the links in this very post will give you all you need. See also this outstanding example by Winds community member AMac, as he guest-blogs a magisterial summation of the evidence and the Baltimore Sun’s coverage.

Meanwhile, guess where this quote comes from:

“Several journalism analysts said CBS News producer Mary Mapes’ phone call to Kerry senior advisor Joe Lockhart amounts to at least a potential conflict of interest - giving the appearance that the network had assisted a candidate in the presidential race.”

Read The Rest…

Late last night I saw some footage from Spain’s Socialist Prime Minister, José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, during his speech at the 59th UN General Assembly (or Assembly Of Generals, in reference to the many dictatorships holding equal votes as democracies).

I almost fell out of my chair. The integral text (pdf) of his speech can be found here. I’ve reprinted some excerpts below (emphasis mine):

…On Terrorism in Spain:
“I am speaking on behalf of a country that has had its share of difficult experiences throughout its history. A country in which still living generations have known a civil war, a dictatorship of almost four decades and a democracy that is now 25 years old. We have also experienced the scourge of terrorism for more than thirty years. Over the last thirty years we, Spanish women and men, have learned much about and from terrorism. We soon learned
about its iniquity. We have learned what it is about. We have learned how to defy it, how to withstand its blows with courage and dignity. We have learned how to fight it.”

…On the Madrid attacks and subsequent Spanish response:
“Spanish women and men were not afraid. On the very next day after the bombings, millions of people left their homes, took to the streets and squares of the cities and towns of my country and, once again, we expressed our rejection and disgust, our unanimous contempt for terrorist brutality. From thirty years of terrorism we have learned that the risk of a terrorist victory rises sharply when, in order to fight terror, democracy betrays its fundamental nature, governments curtail civil liberties, put judicial guaranties at risk, or carry out pre-emptive military
operations. This is what our people have learned: that it is legality, democracy and political means and ways what makes us stronger and them weaker.”

…On the ‘root causes’ meme:
“Nothing justifies terrorism. It is irrational, like the Black Death, but the roots of terrorism, like those of the plague, can and must be uncovered. We can and must
rationally analyse how it emerges, how it grows, so as to be able to fight it rationally. Terrorism is insanity and death and, regrettably, there will always be fanatics who are ready to kill to impose their insanity through force. Ready to disseminate the seed of evil. The seed of evil cannot take root when it falls on
the rock of justice, well-being, freedom and hope; but it can take root if it lands on the soil of injustice, poverty, humiliation and despair. Thus, redressing the major political and economic injustices that affect our world would deprive terrorists of their popular support. The more people there are who enjoy dignified conditions around the world, the safer we will all be.”

…On Iraq and Spain’s retreat:
“In this context, I would like to speak about Iraq. But above all I would like to speak about the thousands of victims of this conflict, about the Iraqis and about the
soldiers and civilians who lost their lives. We express our permanent solidarity to them and to their countries. The overwhelming majority of people in Spain spoke out
against the war. We were not persuaded by the reasons given by those who promoted the war. We expressed this view both at the Spanish Parliament and in the streets. We spoke out loudly, we shouted. We also said that winning the war would be much easier than winning the peace. Peace must be our endeavour. An endeavour that requires more courage, more determination and more heroism than the war itself. That is why the Spanish troops returned from Iraq.”

…On the Alliance Of Civilizations:
“Peace and security will only spread over the world with the strength of international legality, with the strength of human rights, with the strength of democracy, of abidance by the law. With the strength of equality: equality between women and men, equal opportunities, no matter where people are born. With the strength of our rejection against those who manipulate or want to impose any kind of religion or belief. With the strength of education and culture: culture is always peace; let us ensure that our perception of others is coloured with respect. With the strength of dialogue among peoples. Thus, in my capacity as representative of a country created and enriched by divers cultures, before this Assembly I want to propose an Alliance of Civilizations between the Western and the Arab and Muslim worlds. Some years ago a wall collapsed. We must now prevent hatred and incomprehension from building a new wall. Spain wants to submit to the Secretary General, whose work at the head of this organisation we firmly support, the possibility of establishing a High Level Group to push forward this initiative.”

On Spain’s lessons from ‘thirty years of terrorism’ (interesting sidenote perhaps, Zapatero starts refering to ETA as terrorists from the death of dictator Franco onwards. ETA was founded in 1969. Does he think they were ‘freedom fighters’ or ‘the resistance’ before his death?), Zapatero mentions that Spain has learned that pre-emptive military operations have not worked. Excuse me? I was not aware that Spain even so much as carried out punitive military actions. Except perhaps he is comparing his Socialist predecessor’s GAL death squads with the pre-emptive military operations of a democratic nation Like the United States of America? He would be saying the same as Spain’s Attorney-General if he did imply that.

After that big slap in the face, there is more. Zapatero brings up Iraq and seeks to explain why Spain retreated in the face of a terrorist onslaught at home (something I’m sure will go down in history as The Big Frustration of this government). Basically, he says that because after the toppling of Saddam’s regime, the hard part started, the going got tough, and Spain did not want any part of that. So it wasn’t Al Qaeda, he’s just a coward in general. And the quote on the peace being an endeavour which requires more courage, heroism even, than war itself. Doesn’t that sound like “the peace of the brave”? I’m sure his Foreign Minister and Arafat-buddy Miguel Angel Moratinos was smiling contently when he said that.

The biggest shocker to me, was his suggestion the UN create an ‘Alliance of Civilizations’, including the Western World and Arab and muslim nations. It is the clearest sign to me that Zapatero has absolutely no clue as to what the War On Islamic Terror is about. It is also a word for word repetition of Irani ‘President’ Khatami’s 1997 call for dialogue with the West.

Zapatero fears that ‘hatred and incomprehension’ will cause a separation between the islamic Arab world and the West. But he’s refering to ‘hatred and incomprehension’ coming from the West, not the hatred shown in New York, Bali, Istanbul, Casablanca, Ryaad, Madrid, Beslan. A hatred which is as much directed at our lifestyle as it is against the Arab dictatorships with whom Zapatero now wants to form an alliance.

The War on Islamic Terror is not about separating the West from the rest of the world, or ‘minding the Gap’ in the words of Thomas Barnett. It is about pulling these Arab nations into the fabric of globalization, interconnected economies and free flows of information and ideas. It is about pushing them to reform, while assisting them in the eradication, pre-emptively, of their terrorists. To form an alliance on equal footing with these dictatorships does nothing but sustain the status quo. In fact, it gives them, by siding with the oppressors, yet another tool with which to supress their own peoples and to push us for more concessions on Israel, through incitement of their own populations via mosques and media. Meanwhile feeding the real source of terrorism, not poverty, but Salafist Islam.

At best, I can see Zapatero’s pro-Arab government angling for a key role in the UN’s Mideast policies, hoping to continue the center stage role under the Aznar government, albeit with a different audience.

At worst, Zapatero is moving his country towards the Arab world, literally positioning itself on the bridge between the West and the Orient. Thoughts of Al Andalus will have passed through a lot of sick minds, yesterday.

first published at Southern Watch.

Your humble SSG has been a veteran of many a campaign on both sides of the aisle. When it came to federal and national races, I had always worked for the right. For local races, for lack of a choice it was often for a Southern/Blue Dog Democrat. This duality of political experience made the jump for me to Gen. Clark’s campaign an easy one. I was dismayed with the growth of government, the erosion of civil liberties, and a number of other things with the Bush administration. Gen. Clark was a fellow Army veteran, a Southern Democrat, and a Little Rock native. It was easy to move over to his camp for the primaries. Many of my Southern friends and Republican friends agreed that he was the only person they would consider as an alternative to the President.

The Marine and his wife I mentioned here may well have crossed over and voted for the General had he have been the nominee. I first heard Mike say what he was quoted saying when I spoke with him last January and shared what I had learned about Kerry’s post Vietnam activities. Yep, all this stuff the Swift Boat Vets are sharing know, we knew then. I was a Veteran’s Outreach coordinator in two states and you can bet that more than a few vets were in New Hampshire and New York knew about this last January and February.

One of the things I have always prided myself on in my campaign experiences has been my tendency to stay friendly with the opposition from the candidate down to their lowliest campaign volunteers. I’ll never forget one time when I was having drinks with some other Arkansas GOP hacks and some ladies from former Oklahoma First Lady Cathy Keating ® after a day of campaign events. They expressed wonder at how paranoid my Arkansas colleagues were about their Democratic counterparts. I had often wondered the same thing. They explained that they might fight like h#ll at the Capitol in Oklahoma City, but at the end of the day they could all go get drinks together and socialize.

I suppose, for me, it goes back to sports or speech tournaments. Sure, I wanted to win and did my absolute best to wipe the competition away, but I never got anywhere by being afraid or avoiding them. I studied them, I picked up on some of their tactics and techniques, adapted to use as my own, picked their brains, tried to figure out how they thought and why they thought it. By embracing my competitors, it was easier to understand them and thereby defeat them. If someone was a skilled operator, I acknowledged it and gave them the respect they deserved.

The same trait carried over into the campaigns I worked. If I saw someone who was a skilled operator, I tried to learn from them, even, nay, especially, if they were on the other side. Love or hate him, Bill Clinton was about as skilled a campaigner as this country has ever seen. Watching how he worked, you can easily learn a lifetime of lessons on successful candidates. Growing up in Arkansas, I watched him for as long as I can remember. The guy is good and there is no denying it. The same thoughts carried over to his campaign team.

One of my first campaign heroes was not a Republican at all. I was hired as a field director for a scrappy Republican candidate that had nearly knocked off the incumbent in 1994. The incumbent stepped down for family reasons and we know had an open seat with plenty of name recognition and a promise to be a NRCC targeted race. Our campaign manager’s first raining tool for our staff might shock you. We all gathered at one of our houses and watched “The War Room.” If you want to see how a successful campaign was run in the early to late nineties, this is a must see documentary.

In that movie, I found my first campaign hero. And he was from the other side. So imagine how I felt when February of this year, we had our big New Hampshire Veterans for Clark rollout event in the picturesque little town of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. In a small VFW building, we packed the room with veterans of all stripes on a small riser and had standing room only for the veterans in attendance. We actually had to clear room to let in all of the media who had come to watch our public salvo in the fight for veterans against Kerry in New Hampshire. At the time, veterans were all the rage because the media had attributed Kerry’s Iowa comeback as due in large part to his support among Iowa veterans.

This entire event had been my show for the New Hampshire campaign and I was overwhelmed with not only the quantity but the intensity of our support among New Hampshire veterans. At the momen,t I knew we were set to roll with the presser, I stepped back to catch my breath.

I looked to the door and the most curious man in a full spandex body suit, shorts and t-shirt walked in the room. He had these small sunglasses on, was skinny as a twig, and bald. My first political hero had just walked in the door to observe my event. It was James Carville, in his bony flesh.

It took a second, if that long, but I walked over and welcomed and thanked him for coming. His Crossfire colleague, Tucker Carlson, had come in right behind him. Seeing as it was a Democrat event, Tucker didn’t have many fans, but folks were flocking to Carville. I had a few minutes with Carville and we chatted about Southern politics, the current primary, and we agreed that John Edwards was a better stump speaker than Bill Clinton. Of course, given my role with the campaign, it would have been inappropriate to ask for his autograph. I didn’t, but I’ll carry that meeting with me for a long time. This was a politico whom I had worked against and admired at the same time.

Now, I am more and more identified as a Democrat. It is always my custom to clarify that as a Southern and/or Blue Dog Democrat. The best known of those kind of Democrats right now is Sen. Zell Miller of Georgia.

I’m not registered as either major party. Even when I was active in GOP campaigns and GOP party politics, I had an independent streak a mile wide. This both helps and hurts a person like me because the current parties are so skewed away from each other and to the extremes that I don’t fit with the party faithful of either side. Still, as a labeled Democrat (Ahem, Southern and/or Blue Dog Democrat), I am as always compelled to give credit where credit is due.

About a week after the CBS Memogate affair had come to the top of the blogosphere’s shared consciousness, I was on the phone with one of my best friend’s from the Clark campaign. He now works for the Kerry campaign. I mentioned the affair and can you guess what Kerry HQ in DC had already been speculating? Rove. It must be Rove. To be honest, I know of a handful of national Democrat operatives I feel might have been capable of such a trick. However, as more and more unraveled, I ruled them out—much too sloppy for their work. Yet, I had said to my mother the day before, “I can’t rule out Rove. He learned from one of the best and he’s just genius enough to pull something like this off.” I doubt he did. It looks more and more like that some over anxious Texas Democrats with a freak streak made it past the usual safeguards, probably because of Rather’s and Mapes’s zeal to get a story-any story-that might counter the Swift Vets information.

Sunday morning I missed a call from my friend Jim who recently returned to blogging. He described what would make an excellent Flash presentation. And, then he blogged it. I have to agree, it would make a good Flash presentation and it would refer to another campaign hero of mine. I bet he would love it when they call him Big Poppa.

(Does anyone know the folks at Jibjab?)

From AEBrain, the Blog.

In the 19th century, the Lunatic Asylum at Bedlam was a tourist attraction. Now I’ve never been able to imagine how someone could possibly be entertained this way.

On another topic completely, and entirely unrelated, I commend to your attention an interesting thread at Democratic Underground.

It starts thus :

At this stage it wouldn’t be wise to come down too hard on the Bush supporters in that if they go to the booth on November 2 and vote for Bush out of SPITE or out of ANGER against what we the Kerry supporters might say to them, then we have lost.

Back off, give Bush supporters enough room to quietly back down from thier support of Bush. Allow them to not be angry (because of what we as individuals might say to them), allow them to maybe just maybe back away from Bush gracefully and quietly and don’t PUSH them to vote for Bush out of anger or spite.

Maybe just maybe we will get more support when the debates commence.

The comments on this are instructive.

Membership of this site is only open to Liberals and Progressives. Democrats. Anti-Republicans. Now I’m a supporter of the Australian Liberal Party, and firmly believe in both Progress and Democracy. For that matter, I’m anti-Republican since I’m a Constitutional Monarchist. But that’s not what they mean. Still, as in general (like most Australians) I’m more in favour of a Mixed-Economy US Democratic platform than an Unfettered Capitalist Republican one, I thought I’d give myself the benefit of the doubt and join.

I wonder how long it will be before I’m thrown off? Hopefully never, as I won’t be commenting on anything political, except to say ‘No comment to avoid giving offence’. I’ll help out whenever I can - for example, giving data about emigrating to New Zealand to someone who’s leaving AmeriKKKa before Bush’s Stormtroopers arrive. The question is, will my mere existence be anathema? I suspect so, even though I fully intend to scrupulously follow their terms of service. But Dissent is not tolerated there - or rather, it’s compulsory, and anyone not in complete agreement is immediately suppressed, banned and banished. There’s still a broad and enlightening spectrum of views though.

In order to be helpful then, I’m publicising these brave souls’ courageous stand against the Dark Forces that would Repress them. Their Voices SHALL be heard! And the more publicity is given to them, the better, say I.

Hat Tip to AllahPundit for the thread about the Exodite

“Some worry that a change of leadership in Iraq could create instability and make the situation worse. The situation could hardly get worse…” - George W. Bush

While the blogosphere crowed about its epic victory over the evil CBS empire—finally proving the earth-shattering charges that big media has a liberal bias (whodathunk?) and that George Bush may have actually served in the National Guard without disobeying orders (gasp!)—another brutal murder took place in Iraq. You know? The Iraq where everything is just peachy? As the Washington Post says: “Not only has Mr. Bush not said how, or whether, he intends to respond to the worsening situation; he doesn’t really admit it exists.”

Of all the Bush supporters I know, not one of them likes his domestic policies with the exception of the tax cuts. There are Bible-thumping conservatives out there, but most people are not anti-gay, anti-abortion, pro-Ashcroft automatons. Other than being anti-Kerry, the only pro-Bush reason for their support I have heard is Iraq and the war on terror.

What flabbergasts and frustrates me is the lengths to which they will go to continue to support this President on that issue. Without resorting to idiotic slogans (no “Bush lied, people died” crap), let’s assume that the Administration believed everything it told us about the reasons to go to war and what would happen once we got there.

They were wrong.

There were no weapons caches. We weren’t greeted as liberators. We couldn’t magically restore Iraq’s infrastructure. We cannot go it alone and be Iraq’s babysitter. In the meantime, we’ve totally alienated our allies and created a new cesspool of terrorist and provided them with a new bullet point on their recruitment posters.

Not only that, but we seem to be ignoring the growing threat from North Korea (which actually has nuclear weapons) and Iran and letting millions of people starve or be killed in the Sudan.

After September 11, we had the support of the world. Virtually, everyone was behind the President when we went into Afghanistan to hunt down Osama bin Laden. How could anyone turn that huge, worldwide support into a universal distrust and still claim to be the guy we should want to manage our foreign affairs? Because of our “successes” in Iraq?

At New York University, yesterday, John Kerry laid out the case against re-hiring this President on those grounds.

Security is deteriorating, for us and for the Iraqis. 42 Americans died in Iraq in June — the month before the handover. But 54 died in July, 66 in August, and already 54 halfway through September. And more than 1,100 Americans were wounded in August –- more than in any other month since the invasion.

Basic living conditions are also deteriorating. Residents of Baghdad are suffering electricity blackouts lasting up to 14 hours a day.
Raw sewage fills the streets, rising above the hubcaps of our Humvees. Children wade through garbage on their way to school.

Unemployment is over 50 percent. Insurgents are able to find plenty of people willing to take $150 for tossing grenades at passing U.S. convoys.

Yes, there has been some progress, thanks to the extraordinary efforts of our soldiers and civilians in Iraq. Schools, shops and hospitals have been opened. In parts of Iraq, normalcy actually prevails.

But most Iraqis have lost faith in our ability to deliver meaningful improvements to their lives. So they’re sitting on the fence, instead of siding with us against the insurgents.

That is the truth. The truth that the Commander in Chief owes to our troops and the American people.

How is this record of total failure a reason to re-elect the President?

OK, so you trust George Bush to stand firm in his convictions. What if his convictions are wrong? Is the fact that he put his arm around a firefighter for a photo-op on September 11th a reason to give him a blank check to bankrupt the country, destroy our alliances and sink us into the swamp of Iraq?

And it’s not like he can use the excuse that this is all some big shock.

This is all the more stunning because we’re not talking about 20/20 hindsight. Before the war, before he chose to go to war, bi-partisan Congressional hearings, major outside studies, and even some in the administration itself, predicted virtually every problem we now face in Iraq.

For crying out loud, even a stupid blogger like me saw it coming. And we want to re-hire the President that couldn’t?

Forget about whether or not going into Iraq was a good idea. It’s too late for that. We’re there, and now we have to fix our mess. Where is George Bush’s plan to do so? I haven’t heard it. According to conservative columnist Bob Novak, the plan is to cut and run. But like John McCain said Sunday regarding Falluja, “As Napoleon said, if you say you’re going to take Vienna, you take Vienna.”

John Kerry has laid out his plan for Iraq. In fact, it is a plan that George Bush could start following today, if he truly wanted to deal with the problem.

First, the President has to get the promised international support so our men and women in uniform don’t have to go it alone. It is late; the President must respond by moving this week to gain and regain international support.

The President should convene a summit meeting of the world’s major powers and Iraq’s neighbors, this week, in New York, where many leaders will attend the U.N. General Assembly. He should insist that they make good on that U.N. resolution. He should offer potential troop contributors specific, but critical roles, in training Iraqi security personnel and securing Iraq’s borders. He should give other countries a stake in Iraq’s future by encouraging them to help develop Iraq’s oil resources and by letting them bid on contracts instead of locking them out of the reconstruction process.

Second, the President must get serious about training Iraqi security forces.

The President should urgently expand the security forces training program inside and outside Iraq. He should strengthen the vetting of recruits, double classroom training time, and require follow-on field training. He should recruit thousands of qualified trainers from our allies, especially those who have no troops in Iraq. He should press our NATO allies to open training centers in their countries. And he should stop misleading the American people with phony, inflated numbers.

Third, the President must carry out a reconstruction plan that finally brings tangible benefits to the Iraqi people.

…the President should look at the whole reconstruction package, draw up a list of high visibility, quick impact projects and cut through the red tape. He should use more Iraqi contractors and workers, instead of big corporations like Halliburton. He should stop paying companies under investigation for fraud or corruption. And he should fire the civilians in the Pentagon responsible for mismanaging the reconstruction effort.

Fourth, the President must take immediate, urgent, essential steps to guarantee the promised elections can be held next year.

Credible elections are key to producing an Iraqi government that enjoys the support of the Iraqi people and an assembly to write a Constitution that yields a viable power sharing arrangement.

Because Iraqis have no experience holding free and fair elections, the President agreed six months ago that the U.N. must play a central role. Yet today, just four months before Iraqis are supposed to go to the polls, the U.N. Secretary General and administration officials themselves say the elections are in grave doubt. Because the security situation is so bad, and because not a single country has offered troops to protect the U.N. elections mission, the U.N. has less than 25 percent of the staff it needs in Iraq to get the job done.

The President should recruit troops from our friends and allies for a U.N. protection force. This won’t be easy. But even countries that refused to put boots on the ground in Iraq should still help protect the U.N. We should also intensify the training of Iraqis to manage and guard the polling places that need to be opened. Otherwise, U.S forces would end up bearing those burdens alone.

If the President would move in this direction, if he would bring in more help from other countries to provide resources and forces, train the Iraqis to provide their own security, develop a reconstruction plan that brings real benefits to the Iraqi people, and take the steps necessary to hold credible elections next year, we could begin to withdraw U.S. forces starting next summer and realistically aim to bring all our troops home within the next four years.

This is what has to be done. This is what I would do as President today. But we cannot afford to wait until January. President Bush owes it to the American people to tell the truth and put Iraq on the right track. Even more, he owes it to our troops and their families, whose sacrifice is a testament to the best of America.

The principles that should guide American policy in Iraq now and in the future are clear: We must make Iraq the world’s responsibility, because the world has a stake in the outcome and others should share the burden. We must effectively train Iraqis, because they should be responsible for their own security. We must move forward with reconstruction, because that’s essential to stop the spread of terror. And we must help Iraqis achieve a viable government, because it’s up to them to run their own country. That’s the right way to get the job done and bring our troops home.

Without using the word “Vietnam” (or any other country involved in a 30-year-old conflict), and without resorting to 7th grade name-calling, can someone tell me what is wrong with this plan? Why shouldn’t we admit our mistakes and get the world to help us with Iraq? Why do we have to go it alone?

Today, because of George Bush’s policy in Iraq, the world is a more dangerous place for America and Americans.

So, why do we think it’s a good idea to give him four more years?

_CBS has essentially issued a retraction in a statement on the CBS 60 Minutes National Guard story, saying it could not authenticate the controversial documents that it was a “mistake” to run with it — and offered a new bit of news in the process.

The statement says that the source Texas Guard official Bill Burkett “has acknowledged that he provided the now-disputed documents” and “admits that he deliberately misled the CBS News producer working on the report, giving her a false account of the documents’ origins to protect a promise of confidentiality to the actual source.”

From the CBS website:
CBS News said Monday it cannot prove the authenticity of documents used in a 60 Minutes story about

President Bush’s National Guard service and that airing the story was a “mistake” that CBS regretted.

CBS News Anchor Dan Rather, the reporter of the original story, apologized.

CBS claimed a source had misled the network on the documents’ origins.

In a statement, CBS said former Texas Guard official Bill Burkett “has acknowledged that he provided the now-disputed documents” and “admits that he deliberately misled the CBS News producer working on the report, giving her a false account of the documents’ origins to protect a promise of confidentiality to the actual source.”

The network did not say the memoranda — purportedly written by one of Mr. Bush’s National Guard commanders — were forgeries. But the network did say it could not authenticate the documents and that it should not have reported them.

“Based on what we now know, CBS News cannot prove that the documents are authentic, which is the only acceptable journalistic standard to justify using them in the report,” said the statement by CBS News President Andrew Heyward. “We should not have used them. That was a mistake, which we deeply regret.

“Nothing is more important to us than our credibility and keeping faith with the millions of people who count on us for fair, accurate, reliable, and independent reporting,” Heyward continued. “We will continue to work tirelessly to be worthy of that trust.”

And CBS will do more on this story. More from CBS:

Additional reporting on the documents will air on Monday’s CBS Evening News, including the interview of Burkett by Rather. CBS News pledged “an independent review of the process by which the report was prepared and broadcast to help determine what actions need to be taken.”

And Dan Rather? He said if he knew what he knows now, he wouldn’t have used the documents.

In a separate statement, Rather said that “after extensive additional interviews, I no longer have the confidence in these documents that would allow us to continue vouching for them journalistically.”

“I find we have been misled on the key question of how our source for the documents came into possession of these papers,” he said.

“We made a mistake in judgment, and for that I am sorry,” Rather added.

The authenticity of the documents — four memoranda attributed to Guard commander Lt. Col. Jerry Killian — has been under fire since they were described in a Sept. 8 broadcast of 60 Minutes.

CBS had not previously revealed who provided the documents or how they were obtained.

Burkett has previously alleged that in 1997 he witnessed allies of then-Gov. Bush discussing the destruction of Guard files that might embarrass Mr. Bush, who was considering a run for the presidency. Bush aides have denied the charge.

In the statement, CBS said: “Burkett originally said he obtained the documents from another former Guardsman. Now he says he got them from a different source whose connection to the documents and identity CBS News has been unable to verify to this point.”

Now the question is going to be: WHO was that source?

But by issuing this statement CBS has at least stopped the massive bleeding — but not the bleeding. It waited so long it’s credibility has been damaged; this wasn’t just a case of bloggers but other key media outlets going after the veracity of CBS. If it had just been a case of bloggers CBS’ retraction wouldn’t have come. In fact, many journalists were dismayed by how this story ever got on the air, given the strict standards of confirmation on major stories practiced by not only most news outlets (including local papers) but also taught in journalism schools.

PREDICTION: This will likely increase interest in the media for more information on George Bush’s military history. There were two issues here: the validity of the documents and whether forgeries were being held up as real, and questions about Bush’s military history.

(For the record we don’t care about the military history of EITHER candidate and it won’t affect our vote. Swift Boat Vets or newly released documents on Bush? We care about other issues relevant to the 21st Century — and will vote for the camp that most focuses on policies, not personalities. We don’t agree with either candidate totally so this will make a difference in November.)

WHAT SOME OTHER VOICES ARE SAYING:
—Susanna Cornett:”That last is a good start, almost two weeks late. At least they didn’t say “but the story is true”. Not yet, anyway. But there’s still a lot on the table, including the ultimate source of the documents. Was it Burkett? Or someone else? nteresting to see where this goes, especially given Burkett’s long history of hatred for the Bushes, and his widely reported comments online that were available to any CBS staffer with access to Google (e.g. all of them). The “good faith” bit is something of a stretch in that light.”
—Dean Esmay:”They’re still not, apparently, admitting that many, many credible sources told them things they chose to ignore which cast doubt on other parts of the story that they aired. Therefore, it appears to this reporter that CBS News is still trying to weasel out from under this one, to merely state that the memos were questionable but not their contents. This despite the avalanche of evidence to the contrary. Rather plans a major apology on the CBS Evening News tonight. We’ll see how far he goes, but it looks to me like he’s still not going to fully do the right thing.
—Oliver Willis:”So CBS is saying not that they have been proven fake, but that they shouldn’t have run them. Fine, though I do wish our media was less sloppy. Fox News outputs the journalistic equivalent of the Bush memos every day, but that seems to never be covered.”
—THIS JUST IN! James Wolcott has this SCOOP!!!:

In a shock announcement that will reverberate through broadcast journalism, CNN has acknowledged that it can no longer vouch for the authenticity of host Wolf Blitzer.

After months of being buffeted by accusations and speculation, CNN subjected Blitzer to a series of forensic tests over the weekend and determined that his beard is a polyfiber synthetic and his lack of affect was attributable to a defective chip insecurely fitted into his fliptop head.

Read the whole thing!!!!!!!!!!!!
—Steven Taylor:

First off, I love “after extensive additional interviews, I no longer have the confidence in these documents that would allow us to continue vouching for them journalistically”–how pathetic an admission is that? They can’t even come out and say that the documents are fake, as the rest of the world has concluded. No, now they are saying that they just there are sufficient doubts not to use the docs, not that the documents are forgeries.

And claiming that they were “misled” is too much of an absolving statement. The honest to gosh truth is that they were sloppy and did not engage in due dilligence with their research–it is that simple.

—Obsidian Wings:”I think it’s fair to question why Rather rushed to air this story. He obviously knew it could harm Bush. He owes Bush an apology, as well as the nation.”
—Daniel Drezner adds:

1) The statement implies that the documents got through the process because their source — Bill Burkett — lied to CBS about their provenance. This fails to mention the fact that their own document experts raised serious doubts.

2) CBS can mock the blogosphere all it wants, but it’s worth pointing out the partisan (meant in the best sense) Kevin Drum recognized the dubious quality of Burkett as a source long before the nonpartisan staff at CBS: “I talked with Burkett at length back in February, and speaking as someone who believes his story about Bush’s files being purged, I still wouldn’t trust him for a second if he suddenly produced a bunch of never-before-seen memos out of nowhere.”

—Allah has a lot of comments, reactions and questions about this controversy.
—Stirling Newberry of Blogging of the President says Democrats shouldn’t wait for a document that’ll win the election for them:”It means it is time to go on the offensive and stop waiting for the memo to fall out of the sky, because the truth is coming home every day - down an arm or draped in a flag, or on a pink slip, or in another phone message that says “I’m sorry we aren’t hiring.” The lesson is that this is about what is going on in the country, and not what is in a file someplace.”
—TBogg:”For those keeping score at home, the fact that the Killian papers may be fake proves that George Bush did fulfill his National Guard service.Just like the fake Hitler Diaries proved the World War II never happened.”
—Michele Catalano:

Burkett was set up by a big fish. Maybe Rather and CBS think a quick passive-aggressive apology (a week too late) and passing the blame to someone else will put an end to this. But I ask this: What happened to Rather’s unimpeachable source? It’s obvious that’s not a reference to Burkett. So why not come totally clean and tell us who the source is?

I think Rather is going to get away with this and that pisses me off to no end. CBS will keep firing away at will at everyone except their man Rather. I mean, a man of such integrity and fairness, a man so honored and admired, cannot go down like this. He is Dan Rather and when the battlefield clears, he’ll be sitting in a throne while the peasants lay bloody in the streets.

—Jude Nagurney Camwell aka Iddybud:In this case, the media turned bloggers’ hard work into their own major storyline.While I applaud the exposé, it has become a sideshow that causes Americans, at this crucial time, to take the focus off important issues that affect our very security. I watched MSNBC today and their news-focus was 70% Dan Rather and 30% left for other issues.

Television journalists are egocentric and love to do stories on their own profession. Combine that ego with a right-tilted bent, and you have FOX News on an acid trip. Everyone in TV journalism should remember there is a war going on in this country and that Dan Rather isn’t the one responsible for all the violence…. The media would never pick up on some of the left bloggers’ developing stories because I firmly believe they are a tool of a corporate oligarchy that is obviously embroiled in a conflict of interest with the TRUTH.
—Dave Pell:

But ultimately, I never thought the documents or the story helped the Dems at all (although the CBS stonewalling and the size of this story likely hurts them). For weeks, the goal of the Kerry campaign has been (or should have been) to get the hell out of the 70s. This story just put them right back there.

If it turns out that these fake memos came from a Democrat hoping to try out some of the GOP’s dirty tricks, then it will mark an epic failure of judgment. The story was a net negative when it looked like it was true. And it’s a disaster now that it’s been proven false.

—Michelle Malkin:

Why am I thinking of the Sound of Music?

I have confidence in confidence alone
Besides which you see I have confidence in me!

Update: From Dan Rather’s statement today:

…I no longer have the confidence in these documents that would allow us to continue vouching for them journalistically…

—In The Bullpen’s Chad Evans has an extensive post. One highlight:

The simple fact of the matter is the CBS probably didn’t know the documents were forged at the time, however they were so interested in finishing a five year old story they didn’t care if they were authentic or not. They sought out documents and evidence that advanced their hypothesis while discounting evidence to the contrary. Is this a moral way of reporting news? Of course it isn’t.

60 Minutes is not a news show, it’s a televised magazine. They can and do push agendas and editorialize the news. In fact it’s what they get paid to do. The fine line between editorializing the news and presenting an editorial as fact was crossed the moment Dan Rather sat down for the Evening News the day after the 60 Minutes II segment and discussed the issue. This is where CBS is guilty and this is where the viewing public should be outraged.

—Josh Marshall:”CBS says that while they have no specific knowledge that the documents are forgeries they also say that they cannot authenticate them and that the story should never have run. This only prompts the question of why they took so much on faith from Burkett in the first place.”
—Scott Rosenberg:

What really hurts, for CBS and the rest of the networks’ news operations, is that, at this late date in media history, trust is the only advantage the broadcast networks can claim. They no longer deliver the news faster than rivals, they certainly don’t deliver it in more depth or from more viewpoints or with more style. Their only remaining edge has been a sort of generic, fossilized authority. More people get their news from us than through any other channel, the broadcasters’ unspoken claim went. That makes us the arbiters of the news. And we take that responsibility seriously — you can count on us to get things right.

I don’t think CBS’s mishandling of the Guard memos story has much to do with left vs. right or Kerry vs. Bush; it’s about the passing of an ancien regime. The twilight of the anchors has been upon us for some time, but with the affair of the memos, the flames are now climbing up Black Rock.

—Glenn Reynolds:”I want to know where the documents came from, and I want to know why Rather isn’t more interested in getting to the bottom of all that — and in telling us what happened. If he’s not willing to do that, he should resign. Or be fired.”
—Powerline’s Hindrocket:

So Rather and 60 Minutes stay resolutely behind the curve. The significant part of the statement—“I no longer have…confidence in these documents”—could and should have been said on September 9. They still can’t bring themselves to admit what everyone knows, that the documents are fakes.

And Rather’s statement studiously avoids the only question that remains open: where did CBS get the forged documents? Specifically, did they come from the Kerry campaign? As we’ve noted, an email from Bill Burkett indicates that he gave materials to Max Cleland for use in the campaign. Those materials are presumably the forged documents. So Rather can’t go much longer without answering the obvious question: did you get the forgeries from Max Cleland?

—Jeff Jarvis:

CBS and Dan Rather so royally screwed up and they didn’t even help themselves when it finally came time to admit they screwed up. They should have come out telling all and explaining every step of the process — reporting on their own reporting — and falling over themselves to apologize to (1) the audience, (2) Bush, (3) journalism….

And what the hell is Rather doing just releasing a statement. You’re a TV network, mate. You should be releasing your statement on video — if not on the air then at least on the internet — so people can hear your tone of voice and judge your contrition.

—Jay Tea at Wizbang:”I guess we all know just what Rather considers “unimpeachable” sources… paranoid nutcases and himself. Now if you’ll excuse me, I feel the need to throw up.”

Roy Horn says his performing white Montecore was only trying to help him when he wrapped his mouth around the Las Vegas magician’s head, dragging him offstage and almost killing him.

Thank God the tiger didn’t actually save him, or he’d be dead.

But it’s all a matter of perspective. The details:

Speaking to German broadcaster RTL, German-born Roy Horn said the tiger, called “Montecore,” was trying to stop him from falling over on stage after he suffered a dizzy spell.

“It was an accident. Montecore understood the signals and wanted to save me,” the illusionist-animal trainer said, adding: “It was unfortunate that his teeth hit my carotid artery.”
Yes, that is an unfortunate accident — sort of like the accidents that happen when Mike Tyson’s fist mistakenly hits another boxer in the mouth.
Horn, who performed glitzy shows with white tigers and his partner Siegfried Fischbacher, insisted Montecore not be destroyed and has already visited the animal since his release from hospital just before Christmas.

Indeed, there are two views on what Horn does. One: he and his partner provided entertainment to the (gambling..whoops I mean GAMING) public by showing them a world-class magic and big cat show. He loves his animals and took great care of them. The other: a Las Vegas stage is not a big cat’s normal performing environment and the animals are being made to do unnatural things onstage, and the animal acts clahss with the animals instincts. The animals, in this view, belong in a refuge or in the wild — not being forced to perform. More:

Horn was clinically dead for about a minute and told RTL about the experience: “I saw flashing bright lights and my mother. My beloved animals were lying at her feet.”

He had a simple explanation for his brush with death on his 59th birthday: “I was not allowed to die just yet, because my wings for being an angel were not quite ready.”

Or maybe the tiger ate them.

Kids are indeed inventive — more than you think:

Deaf children thrown together in a school in Nicaragua without any type of formal instruction invented their own sign language — a sophisticated system that has evolved and grown, researchers reported on Friday.

Their observations show that children, not adults, are key to the evolution and development of language, the researchers report in Friday’s issue of the journal Science.

“It is the birth of a language,” said Ann Senghas of Columbia University’s Barnard College, who led the study.

The living laboratory of up to 1,000 children at a school in Managua was made possible because of the neglect of deaf people before the 1970s, a time of political and social turmoil in Nicaragua.

Deaf children were isolated and almost never learned formal sign language, Senghas and her international team of collaborators said.

“They didn’t let them go out and socialize. You meet deaf people who are 50 and they really can’t communicate,” Senghas said.

But in 1977, a school for special education opened in Managua, followed four years later by a vocational school. For the first time, deaf children could meet and learn together, and could stay together as they grew up.

No one was there to teach them formal sign language, so they made up their own.

“The founding cohort of children started out with gesture,” Senghas, a psycholinguist, said in a telephone interview.

Indeed, I was at a Junior High yesterday and I noticed the kids making gestures as teachers walked past them — quaint gestures, using a balled fist with one finger sticking up…

“Independent” (yeah, right..) columnist Bob Novak often reflects official administration thinking — but the question is: is Novak’s latest revelation truly official thinking or a clever attempt by some in the administration to possibly neutralize voter unease over the war by suggesting Bush will pullout quickly if re-elected?

Here’s what he wrote:

Inside the Bush administration policymaking apparatus, there is strong feeling that U.S. troops must leave Iraq next year. This determination is not predicated on success in implanting Iraqi democracy and internal stability. Rather, the officials are saying: Ready or not, here we go.

This prospective policy is based on Iraq’s national elections in late January, but not predicated on ending the insurgency or reaching a national political settlement. Getting out of Iraq would end the neoconservative dream of building democracy in the Arab world. The United States would be content having saved the world from Saddam Hussein’s quest for weapons of mass destruction.

The reality of hard decisions ahead is obscured by blather on both sides in a presidential campaign. Six weeks before the election, Bush cannot be expected to admit even the possibility of a quick withdrawal. Sen. John Kerry’s political aides, still languishing in fantastic speculation about European troops to the rescue, do not even ponder a quick exit. But Kerry supporters with foreign policy experience speculate that if elected, their candidate would take the same escape route.

Whether Bush or Kerry is elected, the president or president-elect will have to sit down immediately with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The military will tell the election winner there are insufficient U.S. forces in Iraq to wage effective war. That leaves three realistic options: Increase overall U.S. military strength to reinforce Iraq, stay with the present strength to continue the war, or get out.

Well-placed sources in the administration are confident Bush’s decision will be to get out. They believe that is the recommendation of his national security team and would be the recommendation of second-term officials. An informed guess might have Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state, Paul Wolfowitz as defense secretary and Stephen Hadley as national security adviser. According to my sources, all would opt for a withdrawal.

I don’t believe it for a second. I supported the war for a variety of reasons and have never called on the U.S. to withdraw. On the other hand, the post-victory occupation has clearly been an ill-planned toe-stubbing from day one. But if the U.S. just pulled out while the country was in chaos, divided, struggling with violence — it’d be a fiasco. Kerry hasn’t called for that kind of pullout, either.

Our guess: this is to defuse growing voter unease about the way and take some of the wind out of the sails of John Kerry’s current big push on the war issue. This way GWB can have it both ways: insist we’re there until the job is done but have it leak out through a columnist “inside story” that in reality he plans to pull out. Some swing voters might want to vote for Bush then. But Novak’s column, and the number of people it reaches, can only go so far: Kerry shows no sign of letting up on the war issue and Bush responds by insisting the war was a justified one and the stabilizing the country is a crucial one. It can’t be stablized in its present condition…so we’ll be there for a while.

I was surfing on the net and, lo and behold, I found a name for a blog that was quite intriguing: Teenage Pundit. So I clicked on it (like I hope you will now and after you read this).

As soon as I got the page, I started reading and it was clear I wanted to not only read more, but add it to my already too-cluttered blogroll that is overwhelming my site. I read posts on this new blog that were witty, all over the place politically (which I like) and clearly the product of lots of thought.

And then I read something that almost blew me away: the Teenage Pundit is 13. A HIGHLY INFORMED and thoughtful 13.

Go to this blog yourself and check it out. I especially love this post on Dennis Kucinich (but Kucinich’s campaign must have made a mistake: if it’s a Dennis Kucinich ad it should show MARS and not Earth). Read through the posts.

Even if you don’t agree with him on everything (and I’m sure some of the varied readers of The Command Post won’t) he has a clear future not only as an (unpaid) blogger but as a (paid) writer and, most likely, a political analyist.

Since the Blogosphere attracts all types, I am sure some empty-headed members of the GAL Club (I have founded the Get A Life Club for people who have nothing better to do but dump on people and insult them in comment boxes or in the guise of political interest groups indulging in PC hypocrisy-speak) may hassle him about his age.

But I emailed him and noted to him that at least one high level blog uses a skilled 16 year old analyst — and I myself was a political junkie at age 13 who knew more about politics than any of his relatives (some of them felt quoting Time Magazine was The Truth were TMV read a zillion publications from all sides and did not simply regurgitate one publications reporting for his ideas).

We are SURE that we — and a lot of other people — are going to hear a LOT from Andrew Quinn in the future. And we do NOT say that because he’s 13 and doing a blog — but because he is doing a GOOD BLOG that I now visit every day. I do NOT do it because of his age — but because what he writes is often unpredictable, witty and well-thought out. I’m sure when you visit it once you’ll visit it again and I will bet anything that if he sticks with it Andrew Quinn (who I don’t know and never met) will be one of the well-known names on the Internet.

“You couldn’t have a starker contrast between the multiple layers of check and balances [at ‘60 Minutes’] and a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing.” — Jonathan Klein

That mocking quote by Jonathan Klein has been adopted by the blogosphere and turned into an anthem by many of the same bloggers who have gleefully — and might I add successfully — dissected Dan Rather’s fake memos like a high school science whiz carving away at a frog.

However, the snarky nature of the Klein quote has obscured a larger truth: that a network like CBS shouldn’t have needed bloggers — pajama clad or not — to have pointed out that their story was less credible than a column about ethics in journalism written by Jayson Blair. CBS has an immense budget, a large, experienced, staff as well as all the contacts & resources that they needed to determine the truth of the story before it ever hit the airwaves.

So how did they get fooled? Well, to be quite frank, merely saying that CBS was “duped” is being charitable.

CBS interviewed the wife & son of the supposed source of the document and both told them that they believed the documents were fake, but they were ignored. Dean Roome, who is now openly saying the documents are forged, was also interviewed by CBS, but was discounted reportedly because he was “pretty pro-Bush”. “Bobby Hodges, a former Texas Air National Guard general whom 60 Minutes claimed had authenticated the memos” was only read the memos and was never told that they weren’t handwritten. Once he found out that crucial fact, he too questioned the legitimacy of the memos.

On top of all of that, Linda James & Emily Will, document examiners hired by CBS to authenticate the memos, both declined to do so. Will even went so far as to say that,

“I told (CBS) that all the questions I was asking them on Tuesday night, they were going to be asked by hundreds of other document examiners on Thursday if they ran that story.”

Given all of that, at best CBS must have known that there was a good chance that the documents weren’t real and at worst, they believed the memos were fake and hoped that they would be shielded from scrutiny because the documents were from an anonymous source.

“Memogate,” “Rathergate,” “Danron,” whatever you want to call it, has been the most egregious example of the old media acting recklessly of late, but there’s no dearth of other shady stories getting a lot of play.

Kitty Kelley, who has long had a reputation for making wild & unprovable allegations with no proof to back them up, is accusing George Bush of using cocaine during his father’s tenure in the White House among other things. However, the supposed source of that allegation, Sharon Bush, is denying that she ever told Kelley that and is now even considering suing Kelley for libel.

Ben Barnes has once again been trotted out by the media to claim that he helped George Bush get into the National Guard. However, Barnes is a Vice-Chair of the Kerry campaign who raised more than $100,000 for John Kerry and has personally introduced him at a fund-raiser. Moreover, his OWN DAUGHTER has been calling talk radio shows and admitting that her father told her that he’s lying about George Bush for political purposes and to sell a book.

Then there’s the hot, new anti-Bush book written by Seymour Hersh, the Kitty Kelley of mainstream journalism. Hersh’s book, “Chain of Command: The Road From 9/11 to Abu Ghraib,” tries to tie the Bush administration to the Abu Ghraib scandal. Here’s how the The Seattle Times describes Hersh’s sourcing…

“Hersh’s account is based on anonymous sources, some of them secondhand, and could not be independently verified.”

Secondhand anonymous sources, huh? That sounds ironclad. Especially coming from the guy who quoted an anonymous source as saying that “The war was now a stalemate” and that “The only hope is that (our troops) can hold out until reinforcements arrive” during the middle of our three-week long invasion of Iraq.

Oh, but when a group like the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group that might damage Kerry, hits the scene, it’s a completely different story.

You have this enormous array of vets who knew John Kerry, fought beside him, and were in his chain of command, all saying that he’s lying about his record. Moreover, Kerry has been caught in lies about the “No Man Left Behind” incident & Cambodia. His own biography contradicts his accounts of how he got some of his medals, Kerry refuses to release his records, and JFK has been dodging Swift Boat Vet related questions from the press for more than a month and half now.

Yet, the mainstream media reaction to the Swifties has been pure skepticism. Not only are they refusing to buy into what the Swift Boat Vets are saying, they’re treating it as lacking in credibility to such a degree that they don’t believe John Kerry should even have to bother to respond to it.

In fact, the way that CBS has treated these fake memos is particularly ironic in light of the old media’s reaction to the charges made by the Swift Boat Vets against John Kerry. If Dan Killian, the man who was supposed to have written the forged memos, was alive and saying something negative about John Kerry instead of George W. Bush, we could be almost certain that the old media would immediately write him off as untrustworthy.

So why is the old media adopting “Enquirer” standards as to what are “credible” allegations when George Bush is involved? Many people, myself among them, believe it’s because of this…

“The New York Times conducted an informal poll of journalists at the recent Democratic convention that showed they favor John Kerry for president over President Bush by 3 to 1, while reporters based in Washington, D.C., support the Massachusetts senator by 12 to 1.”

The old media’s liberal bias is on display day in and day out. It’s in the questions they ask to each candidate, which stories are on the front page and which ones get buried on A-18, news stories that are filled with liberal opinion, a preponderance of liberal writers on the editorial pages, and a dozen other small ways in which ideolog trumps the old media’s supposed neutrality.

That’s why it makes no difference if bloggers, particularly conservative bloggers, wear their ideologies on their sleeve. CBS, The New York Times, CNN, The Washington Post — they all have viewpoints too, but unlike bloggers, they’re not honest about where they stand.

And now, there are other options out there for people who want a different point of view, people who’re tired of having their concerns ignored by old media sources that practically sneer when George Bush’s name is mentioned. Today, ABC, NBC, CBS, the “old grey lady” and a few other liberal news sources can no longer dominate the debate as they once did and over time, their influence will continue to wane because of talk radio, bloggers, Fox News, conservative websites, and right-leaning magazines. The new media is now stepping up to do the job that the old media refused to do and the public will be better served for it…

From August 28’s edition of the CPUSA’s house organ People’s Weekly World (cache used because site down):

Those “Matricula Consular” cards (“MC”) are only of use to illegal aliens. And, Culberson does have a point:

Given that, you might expect Culberson’s legislation to have passed, but you’d be wrong. From House Backs Bush on Mexican ID Cards:

Before the vote, Treasury Secretary Snow said this:

After the vote, Culberson had this to say:

In that last link, Nancy Pelosi weighs in with a quote in support of MC cards. In case you weren’t confused already.

See also 222 House Members Put Interests of Banking Lobby Ahead of Homeland Security and the extensive backgrounder “IDs for Illegals: The ‘Matricula Consular’ Advances Mexico’s Immigration Agenda”.

But, there’s more. And, you might consider it even worse…

If you were an illegal alien living in, say, Sherwood Arkansas, would you need to travel to the Dallas TX Mexican consulate to pick up your MC card? Not if the consul comes to you. Recent news reports detail how Mexican consuls travel to various outposts in the U.S. exchanging an MC card for the $26 fee. And, most of the reporters who cover the consul coming to their town do so in either a gullible or a disingenuous manner.

In almost all of these reports the sales job given by the consuls is presented without comment. In most cases, nary a dissenting word is heard. And, in some cases local churches or banks are involved.

Some reports are provided below, along with contact information for the editors involved.

· Sherwood [AR] Voice
Arkansas needs Mexican consulate; new documentation
by Warren Watkins (editor)

(church is involved; gullible local leaders provide quotes; no dissenting voices)

includes this consul quote: “[I came to Arkansas to] continue the negotiations with the state and city authorities for making sure that we are going to inaugurate a Mexican consulate in the coming year in Little Rock… Governor Huckabee was a large part of this… He went to Mexico City and met with President Fox and proposed this… [when you get your MC we] don’t care if you are documented or undocumented… I like Arkansas… It is so green. It’s so clean, nice, with very warm, open people, and many friends of Mexico.”

· Hilton Head SC’s Island Packet
Mexican Consulate issues IDs
by Noah Haglund
Fitz McAden, executive editor fmcaden@islandpacket.com

(mentions that social security number is required for a driver’s license in SC and NC, but no terrorism mention; includes FAIR quote)

includes this consul quote: “[The consul] also said he didn’t like seeing illegal immigration because it hurt his national pride to see so many compatriots living far from home.”

· That report generated the letter to the editor ID cards a cash cow “The consulate, as well as the matricula and the cash remittance sent by illegal alien laborers, are cash cows to the Mexican government… Our local governments should avoid being a party to this travesty and refrain from aiding and abetting illegal aliens who seek to arrive and remain illegally in the United States. That too is a federal crime.”

· Naples [FL] Daily News
Mexican nationals flock to mobile consulate for passports, ID cards
by Tracy Miguel
editor: Phil Lewis pplewis@naplesnews.com

(event was co-sponsored by Bank of America; MC’s “acknowledge [a person’s] presence in the United States”; a church is involved; alludes to stricter DL procedures after 9/11; MCs “can be issued whether or not the holder is legally in the United States… The Mexican Consulate will provide the matricula and passport if the person who is requesting the document can prove that he or she is a Mexican national”; article ends with the phone number of the Mexican consulate for those who want more information)

· WKYT (via Paducah News working for AP?)
Mexican government helps immigrants acquire passports, identification cards
Contacts: rclark@paducahsun.com, Jim.Ogle@wkyt.com, info@ap.org

(no mention of terrorism risks, no quotes from consul; church involved; minister says: “These are illegal and legal people… This has nothing to do with immigration.”)

· Racine, WI Journal Times
“Mexican Consulate helps locals with their papers”
by Julio Urdaneta
editor Randolph Brandt: rbrandt@journaltimes.com

(no downsides mentioned; includes this: Alberto Martin, North Shore Bank branch manager in Milwaukee [said] “This is our third venture with the Mexican Consulate. We have participated in activities like this before in Milwaukee and Green Bay and now in Racine… “I believe we are creating a union, a joint work with the Mexican consulate to help Mexicans to obtain matriculas consulares.”)

Contact the North Shore Bank’s president, Jim McKenna, at 1-800-236-4672 or through this complicated form.

If that’s not enough, see Pressure on to support immigration measure. Althoug not directly related to MC cards, that article concerns how banks are forming together to oppose the Protect Arizona Now initiative.

And, for more information on Mexican consulates, search for maus here or consider this quote from 11/02:

I submit this article, dated September 17, 2004, by Howard Zinn, professor emeritus at Boston University and author of ‘The People’s History of the United States.’ This is from the Progressive Media Project.

Some excerpts:

If John Kerry wants to win, he must recognize that our military intervention in Iraq is a disaster - for Americans, for Iraqis, for the world.
[…]
He needs to stop saying, as he did recently in the Midwest, that he defended this country when he was fighting in Vietnam. That is not an honest statement. If it were true, then he would not have turned against the war.

He was not defending this country when he fought in Vietnam. He was defending this country when he said we were wrong to be in Vietnam and we should get out.

He should not be saying that he will wage the Iraq war better, that he will replace U.S. troops with soldiers from other countries. If it is immoral for our soldiers to be occupying Iraq and killing Iraqis every day, then it is immoral for foreign soldiers to do the same.
[…]
To those who say we must not “cut and run,” Kerry can say, with some authority, we did cut and run in Vietnam - and it was the right thing to do.

And if someone doesn’t like the term “cut and run,” he can say: “OK, let’s cut and walk.” Like those signs you see: “In case of fire, do not run, but walk to the nearest exit.” There’s a fire in Iraq whose flames we are fanning. Let’s walk.
[…]
He should say that strength should not be measured in military terms, but in moral terms. Did the possession of almost 10,000 nuclear weapons prevent Sept. 11? Will a $400-billion military budget make us stronger or weaker? Will our military actions diminish terrorism or increase it? Does not our strength lie in being an example to the world of a peace-loving nation, which uses its wealth not for bombs but for food and medicine, for our people, and for others in need around the world? Should we not stop defining “security” in military terms, but talk instead of “health security,” “job security,” “children’s security”? This is not utopian. It is what the American people have shown they want, before they are made hysterical and fearful by government propaganda. It is not simply a moral program, but a winning program.
[…]
War and corporate thievery will not be overthrown without excitement, either. Kerry, if he will stop being cautious, can create an excitement that will carry him into the White House and, more important, change the course of the nation.

I’ll just let what he says stand on its own merits, along with another quote attributed to him :

Objectivity is impossible, and it is also undesirable. That is, if it were possible it would be undesirable, because if you have any kind of a social aim, if you think history should serve society in some way; should serve the progress of the human race; should serve justice in some way, then it requires that you make your selection on the basis of what you think will advance causes of humanity.

“Fake, but Accurate” perhaps.
According to FrontPage (not exactly an objective source…) Professor Zinn’s “People’s History” (which in his conclusion he states plainly is deliberately biased) is quite highly regarded in the halls of academe.

Courses at the University of Colorado-Boulder, UMass-Amherst, Penn State, and Indiana University are among dozens of classes nationwide that require the book. The book is so popular that it can be found on the class syllabus in such fields as economics, political science, literature, and women’s studies, in addition to its more understandable inclusion in history. Amazon.com reports in the site’s “popular in” section that the book is currently #7 at Emory University, #4 at the University of New Mexico, #9 at Brown University, and #7 at the University of Washington. In fact, 16 of the 40 locations listed in A People’s History’s “popular in” section are academic institutions, with the remainder of the list dominated by college towns like Binghamton (NY), State College (PA), East Lansing (MI), and Athens (GA).
[…]
The book is deemed to be so crucial to the development of young minds by some academics that a course at Evergreen State decreed: “This is an advanced class and all students should have read Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States before the first day of class, to give us a common background to begin the class.”

I’ve blogged before about PostModernism. I’ve even stated the following in my profile over at Normblog :

What philosophical thesis do you think it most important to disseminate?
> Self-criticism leading to continuous improvement. Continuous evolution not revolution.

What philosophical thesis do you think it most important to combat?
> Anti-rationalism, typified by the post-modernist ‘Triumph of the Will’.

I don’t blame Professor Zinn for 9/11. But I do believe that the same anti-objectivity is present in both Madrassas and in more US universities than I’m comfortable with. In both cases there is no intellectual enormity too great to commit :

if you have any kind of a social aim, if you think history should serve society in some way; should serve the progress of the human race; should serve justice in some way, then it requires that you make your selection on the basis of what you think will advance causes of humanity

Or carry out the wishes of God.

Of course, in the US universities, the atrocities are nearly all intellectual: people may advocate bloody revolution, but few students or professors actually go and do something about it. Those that do usually confine themselves to guerilla street theatre, or at most ripping up opponents placards. Perhaps scrawling Swastikas on the doors of students known to be right-of-centre. Bashing a Jew or two, while calling them ‘Zionazis’, though this is dangerous: they tend to fight back.

Leave this pernicious philosophy unexposed and unopposed long enough though, and this may change. The majority of students will no doubt refuse to act in accordance with their indoctrination out of “common sense” (actually a very complex phenomenon from an Artificial Intelligence viewpoint, but that’s for another article). But a minority will take it to heart, and put into action what are just so far empty words. After all, just like Al Qaeda, they’ll be killing people for a higher truth.

But perhaps I’m wrong. If so, Nader, as the anti-war candidate, will win the Presidency, as I don’t see Kerry taking the good Professor’s advice. At least, not for more than a week.

Meanwhile, although I admit my own pro-war bias, as a regular contributor to The Command Post I’ll continue to report unselectively about the situation in Iraq. Sometimes, as with an article that could have come from Cherenkoff (another Australian blogger - but one with more talent) with elation. Sometimes, as with an article about yet another group of civilians massacred by the Islamofascists, or worse, killed by US fire during a battle, with a heavy heart. But all of them, not just the ones that fit my views. For if my opinions are valid, criticism won’t dent them, and if not, then I should change my opinions, not falsify the record by omission.

Another quote from my Normblog profile :

What do you consider the most important personal quality?
> ‘I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.’

Three-year-old Sophia Parlock cries while seated on the shoulders of her father, Phil Parlock, after having their Bush-Cheney sign torn up by Kerry-Edwards supporters on Thursday, Sept. 16, 2004, at the Tri-State Airport in Huntington, W.Va. Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards (news - web sites) made a brief stop at the airport as he concluded his two-day bus tour to locations in West Virginia and Ohio. (AP Photo/Randy Snyder)

For evidence that a significant minority of the Far Left behave this way, see Democratic Underground or Protest warriors.

UPDATE:
From IUPAT :

The International Union of Painters and Allied Trades believes in the fundamental right for civil discourse, freedom of speech and activism to support our candidates and issues.

What happened in Huntington, West Virginia yesterday is an affront to everything we, as a union, pride ourselves to represent. We extend our apologies to the Parlock family, especially Sophia, for the distress one of our overzealous members caused them.

I have personally taken steps to address this issue internally, and will take immediate disciplinary action to the fullest extent allowed under U.S. Department of Labor regulations and the constitution of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades.

It is my hope that this incident reminds all of our members that every last citizen in this country has the right to express his or herself freely. Not one single one of us has the right to tell them otherwise.

General President James A. Williams

Little Green Footballs, Powerline, get ready for Pequeños Balones Verdes and Cuerda De Corriente or whatever, the Spanish blogosphere rocks! El Pais today, in both its printed version and its online version, printed an apology for the sick ad they used in an email campaign to win a few new subscribers.

The text of the apology, translated by myself into English, is as follows:

EL PAÍS apologizes for the use of the images of the terrorist attack against the Twin Towers in New York, which happend on September 11, 2001, for a campaign to aquire subscribers to ELPAIS.es. This regrettable campaign, carried out through emails, supported by two photos of New York, one with the Twin Towers and another one without, under the heading “You can do a lot in one day, imagine what can happen in three months”. The promotional campaign started last Monday, September 13, and was sent to more than 50,000 recipients before it was cancelled, on Wednesday 15th.

EL PAÍS, its publisher and the Grupo Prisa profoundly regret the use of a tragedy, which in this case cost the lives of more than 2,700 persons, for publicity purposes. We would like to apologize for it to the victims and their families, to the citizens of New York who experienced that agression from up close, and to those who saw among their email this ominous message, and to all the readers of the newspaper.

Any explanation about the chain of errors which led to the launch of this campaign is insufficient, which some of our readers rightly qualified as repugnant. We share the disgust they have expressed in numerous messages and letters to the management and we are sorry it happened.

The Prisa Group has opened an internal investigation to clarify how it was decided to launch this promotional campaign and to take appropriate measures. Effective inmediately, it has ordered the company used to send out the emails that it mails all recipients of the campaign to apologize.

EL PAIS would like to express once more, like it has done in its 28 years and almost 10,000 editions, its solid solidarity with the victims of terrorism. Like said in EL PAÍS editorial on September 12, 2001, and we repeat it fully here again, those terrorist attacks touch all citizens of good will, without distinction of borders or continents, and constituted an attack “against those with whom we share the same democratic principles which in our country costed so dearly to attain”.

The barbarian terrorist attacks which happened later in the rest of the world, among other places like Madrid, did nothing but confirm the necessity to act firmly and democratically before terrorism, which must exclude any irresponsible use of these events.

As apologies go, CBS might want to start taking notes. Apology accepted.

First published at Southern Watch.

UPDATE: Barcepundit has more. Apparently El Pais received a lot of complaints, and not just them, Spanish embassies around the world too.

Much attention yesterday regarding former Prime Minister José Maria Aznar was diverted to the decision by the parliamentary committee investigating the March 11 attacks in Madrid to have Aznar testify.

Meanwhile, Aznar was giving a speech on human rights and Cuba. The transcript is in Spanish, I’ve taken out some passages I found interesting, and translated them.

…On Cuba’s political prisoners:
Today we are meeting to demand of the Cuban government that they release their prisoners of consience.

There are at least 84 political prisoners on the island, according to human rights organizations. Perhaps the low number comes as a surprise to some of you. Without a doubt there are many more, but in any case it’s the highest number in the world, relative to its population.

Just one political prisoner should already be intolerable. Noone should be imprisoned for peacefully expressing his ideas. No one should be sentenced without a fair and impartial trial.

…On Raúl Rivero, political prisoner:
Raúl Rivero, poet and journalist was one of the signers of the letter sent by various Cuban intellectuals to their government in 1991. In it, they asked for democratic reforms. To sign it, meant breaking the official silence in his country. A country where what is not official, is clandestine.

In 1995 he founded the press agency CubaPress, to give the world an indepent version of what was happening in his country.

That decision also had its consequences. He was detained on several occasions, on top of being subjected to other restrictive measures.

On March 20, 2003, he was detained again, together with 74 other people. Just 17 days later he was convicted to 20 years in prison, on counts of “treason of the country”. Today he is being held in a high security prison, under inadmissible conditions and contrary to all international treaties. His wife Blanca Reyes bravely and permanently keeps the thought of her husband with her.

Without a doubt the voice of Raúl Rivero was bothering the Cuban government. Without a doubt also, he is in prison for speaking publicly in favor of democracy and freedoms in his country. He is living proof that he was right in asking of his country, that what is normal in so many others. Amongst them, ours.

…On Europe vis a vis Cuba, refering to the fall of the Berlin Wall:
Unfortunately, not all similar tyrannies fell. Some continue still, oppressing millions of people. And they continue to do so with the consent up to the applauding of people living in democratic and open societies, who would be incapable of tolerating a dictatorship in their own countries.

I would ask them to be consistent. That they defend for Cuba the same they defend for Europe. That they denounce any violation of fundamental right with the same emphasis, wherever it happens.

Freedom of mind is a universal value. It cannot be confined solely to some countries, instead it must be defended all over the world. Calls for respect of cultural traditions do not apply. No one can justify the execution or the imprisonment of those who express their ideas or those who criticize their government.

Without a doubt it is easier to criticize democratic governments. It involves less risk. Denouncing totalitarian governments can carry a high price. But still there are those who prefer to risk their liberty and their lives to do so.

His speech was given at the presentation of the manifesto “For the freedom of prisoners of conscience in Cuba”. Both the speech and the manifesto can be found in Word .doc format on the FAES website, where you can also sign the manifest, unfortunately not online, but through emailing your personal details. Hopefully they can figure out a way to make it easier for people to sign. It’s also in Spanish.

Last year, the European Union imposed ‘diplomatic’ sanctions on Cuba, as a direct result of the arrest of the 75 political activists of which Aznar spoke (although curiously, the EU’s condemnation focused more on the execution of three Cubans fleeing Castro’s island prison, think about that one for a minute). Sanctions that socialist Foreign Minister-and-Arafat’s-buddy Miguel Angel Moratinos now wants to lift (link in Spanish), in order to ‘improve’ relations with Cuba.

A bit like Zapatero’s call to all countries with troops in Iraq to follow Spain’s lead, to ‘improve Iraq’s prospects’. For whom?

As a side note, did you know that Cuba’s ambassador to Spain is the revered (revered!) author and niece of Chili’s Salvador Allende, Isabel Allende?

To close with a more positive note, and to show everyone that not all Europeans (and lest you forget, half of Spain is bitterly opposed to these Socialist morons in government as well), take a look at the Czechs, who have one of the most anti-Castro policies in Europe:

The United States government has competition when it comes to exporting democracy.

Those not familiar with the special ties between the newly freed and the still-oppressed might be surprised to learn that the Czech Republic is the European nation most devoted to the liberation of Cuba, the only dictatorship left in Latin America.

“‘So why Cuba?’ That is the question we are always asked. The answer is Vaclav Havel,” said Gabriela Dlouha, head of the newly created Transition Promotion unit at the Foreign Ministry. Dlouha’s office aids democracy movements in Cuba, Belarus and Myanmar (formerly Burma) and also works with the governments of countries such as Ukraine and Moldova that are still struggling to implement democracy.

“After the fall of communism in Czechoslovakia, Vaclav Havel was an icon. The people in opposition in Cuba asked him to be their advocate. They asked him to ask other countries to support them. And that is still our moral obligation,” said Dlouha, a former press officer for Havel, who served as president of Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic from 1990 to 2003.

Read it all, it shows there is hope for Cuba, and Europe, still.

First published at Southern Watch.

From the Washington Post :

CBS anchor Dan Rather acknowledged for the first time yesterday that there are serious questions about the authenticity of the documents he used to question President Bush’s National Guard record last week on “60 Minutes.”

”If the documents are not what we were led to believe, I’d like to break that story,” Rather said in an interview last night. “Any time I’m wrong, I want to be right out front and say, ‘Folks, this is what went wrong and how it went wrong.’ “

Worthy sentiments, and in the highest traditions of the Fourth Eastate. And, for what it’s worth, I think he’s sincere.

“This is not about me,” Rather said before anchoring last night’s newscast. “I recognize that those who didn’t want the information out and tried to discredit the story are trying to make it about me, and I accept that.”

Oh yes it is, Dan. It became about you when you told us that your sources were “unimpeachable”. It became about you when you all but swore on your mother’s grave that these (in hindsight) obvious fakes had been “professionally authenticated”. It became about you when you put your career, and your credibility on the line in backing them up.
I, like many people, don’t at this stage give a rodent’s posterior about the story you’re telling. Maybe later we’ll examine that, assuming we find you more credible than a ‘National Inquirer’ piece on Aliens bearing Elvis Presley’s Love Child.
It’s not that we “don’t want this story told”, it’s that we have the right to expect something credible from you. Something a little more believable and fact-checked than Bush Planted a Micro-Nuke in Bali, which in comparison with your recent efforts is far better researched. Even the most partisan Kerry supporters deserve something better, if they want fact-free anti-Bush Propaganda, they can always go to Democratic Underground.
We’re not trying to discredit you : your actions did that. And despite your words, you still don’t accept that, and that’s a shame. Sic Transit Gloria Rather.

As Rather signed off to rush back into the studio last night, he sounded a defiant note.

”I try to look people in the eye and tell them the truth,” Rather said. “I don’t back up. I don’t back down. I don’t cave when the pressure gets too great from these partisan political ideological forces.”

I’m sure you’re sincere, Dan. OK, I‘m not sure, but I do believe you. But if you want to see a truly ‘partisan political ideological force’, just go look in the mirror. You’ve become what you were once fighting against. Realise that, and maybe you truly will be able to regain your professional honour, your pride, and even your credibility. First take a good, long, hard and critical look at Dan Rather. Then go out and break the story of how Dan Rather and CBS went so terribly wrong. Pull no punches. Leave no stone unturned. Show the rarest kind of Courage of all, the Courage required for ruthless self-criticism. CBS will be all the better for it. It could be the capstone of a brilliant career. And we might even listen to what you have to say about the Texas Air National Guard in 1972.

A post copied from AEBrain, the Blog.

This is embarressing. Pathetic.

For my sins, I’ve acted as an Expert Witness in a civil case involving computer technology. Now in order to do my job properly, I had to bone up on what was required when giving a professional opinion about a document.

First, there’s the ‘chain of custody’. How you got your mitts on the thing. If it’s a copy, say so, and say what evidence there is that the copy is genuine, who made the copy, when the copy was made, when the original was produced, (preferrably backed up by statutory declarations) and reasons why the original wasn’t examined. Note that as soon as you have a copy, all you can do is give a report saying ‘definitely fake or altered’ or ‘inconclusive’, you can’t possibly authenticate it.

Secondly, you state exactly what techniques and tools you used to analyse the document. State why these tools and techniques are appropriate ones under the circumstances, preferrably giving examples of previous use in previous similar cases where they were found to be reasonable.

Thirdly, you state the results of your analysis, not just the conclusions, but the reasoning behind the conclusions, how alternate hypotheses were rejected, and if there’s more than one possible conclusion left, state them all along with probabilities assigned to each and reasons for assigning those probabilities. Often you can’t even do that, you just have to say “It may be A, it may be B, I cannot say which” as the conclusion. State areas not considered, such as handwriting if you’re analysing typefaces, and why they were not - usually because your expertise in that area is limited, so you’re not an ‘expert’ as such for them.

Fourthly, you state your qualifications and history of why you are an appropriate expert in the area under investigation.

I’ve probably missed some things out, as I haven’t got my checklist in front of me, but those are the absolute minima that any professional expert would have to include in a summary report. If you have a one-page covering letter, it must reference the longer report, not just give bald conclusions without context.

Now go and look what CBS’s last ‘Expert’ has said, in a letter dated several days after the program aired (funny that, as he’d supposedly authenticated the documents beforehand). I say ‘last’, as all the rest have said that either they just looked at the (copied-and-pasted) signatures, or said that the copied documents were very probably fakes, but they couldn’t totally rule out the possibility they might be genuine.

What this last “expert” has said is:

That the signatures on the copies didn’t appear to differ much.

That similar typefaces existed at the time the memos were supposedly made.

And therefore, in his professional opinion, they are genuine.

Go read the original letter on the CBS site.

Of course Australian readers will be wondering what the heck I’m going on about. The story hasn’t been reported down here. To summarise a previous post, a major news network in the USA was caught passing off obviously Microsoft Word-generated documents as output from a typewriter of 1972 in order to damage Bush. And as of writing, nearly a week later all they can say is “how dare you question our credibility?” and talk about the content being unquestionably genuine, ignoring the point that the memos themselves are faked, and badly faked.

Through an online ad, sent by email, depicting one picture with the Twin Towers, and next to it without them:

“You can do a lot in one single day; just imagine what can happen in three months”

The picture can be seen here.

Apologies, not a lot of opinion this time, but I felt so outraged that I wanted this ad to be seen by as many as fast as possible. Welcome to Socialist Spain, folks.

Today the Democratic Party released its “Fortunate Son” video. The video implies that President Bush lied about his service in the National Guard and repeats the unsupported allegations that Bush did not meet his obligations to the National Guard.

Unbelievably, the video even contains part of the thoroughly discredited Dan Rather interviewing the even more thoroughly discredited Ben Barnes.

Why can’t the Kerry campaign understand that most voters do not care what either President Bush or Kerry did thirty years ago. What is truly important, and what really matters is what they will do in the next four years if elected to the presidency this November. It doesn’t matter that Kerry was awarded medals for valor during his four months of commanding a swift boat. It does not matter that president Bush flew for the National Guard. It doesn’t even matter if President Bush somehow didn’t completely fulfill his obligation to the National Guard as the Kerry Campaign, Dan Rather and CBS would have us believe.

No, what matters is what either candidate will do if chosen to lead the free world in the global war against terrorism for the next four years. The best guide for predicting how they will do that is to look at what the two candidates have done more recently, not thirty years ago.

This is easy concerning President Bush. He has taken the fight to the evil doers who knocked down the towers of the World Trade Center. He has set in motion a grand strategy for eliminating the root causes of terrorism by bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East and Afghanistan. President Bush has been as steady as a rock pursuing this grand strategy.

Predicting what Kerry would do is not so easy. Mrs Kerry says Kerry is more flexible than President Bush. She’s right, but that is not a good thing. Kerry has demonstrated that he is unable to take a principled stand on any issue and stick to it. I will give Kerry the benefit of the doubt and assume that his penchant for taking both sides of each and every issue is because he sees the complexity of the issue, rather than being the result of political pandering. A leader doesn’t lead by nuance. A leader has to be able to take a stand, stick to it, and pursue it. Kerry has not demonstrated that ability

We are a nation at war. In times of war people want someone strong and decisive for a leader, not necessarily someone who can take a position they agree with on every issue. Recent Gallup polling bears that out.

From California Yankee.

It was announced today that President Bush will be visiting New Hampshire on Sunday, attending the Sylvania 300 Nextel Cup race at New Hampshire International Speedway. It seems appropriate somehow seeing as he is far more appealing to so-called “NASCAR dads” compared to his rival, John Kerry.

The president will greet the more than 100,000 NASCAR fans and is expected to meet with the Nextel Cup drivers and drop the flag to start the race.

This will be the first time a president has visited NHIS, track officials said.

The visit by the president provides a double honor for the track as Sunday’s race is the first of the 10 races where only the top 10 drivers are competing for the Nextel Cup Championship.

According to the Laconia Citizen article President Bush is only the second sitting president to attend a NASCAR race, the first being Ronald Reagan when he attended the Daytona race which was Richard Petty’s last race.

President Bush is no stranger to NASCAR racing.

Earlier this year he met with drivers on pit road prior to the start of the Daytona 500, the first race of the year for the NASCAR season. He also dropped the green flag to start the race.

Let’s see….

-A President who works on his ranch chores during his working vacations away from Washington versus a Senator who can’t even be bothered to show up for work.

-A President who enjoys NASCAR racing and likes to mingle with the drivers, crews, and fans versus a Senator who windsurfs off Nantucket and snowboards in Colorado while keeping his distance from his constituents during his ‘off-time’ from ‘work’. (Yes, the scare quotes are on purpose.)

Seems like a no-brainer to me: Gimme the NASCAR guy any time.

The disparaging reference to bloggers as people in pajamas has spurred me into actionover at Winds of Change.NET. I’ve just finished registering the domain Pajamabloggers.com - and will cheerfully work with the person who has the best proposal for how they want to use it.

FYI, I have also reserved cbsmemogate.com, and pajamasrevenge.com. I’m thinking that we need a site to aggregate the information coming in pro and con, which is currently quite fragmented. I have some ideas about that, but I’m interested in hearing others’ thoughts and proposals as well (use Winds’ comments or email “joe” here @windsofchange.net).

[This editorial was written by my son Matt, now a freshman at George Washington University, after attending a 9/11 vigil on Saturday. It is posted here with permission of the author. Dan Spencer, California Yankee]

I just returned from a vigil at University Yard, remembering the victims of September 11. Services like these always hit home; especially for events remembered firsthand.

We each received a candle upon arriving at the yard, surrounded by a plastic cup to keep the wax from our hands. At the conclusion of the service, after speakers and prayers, messages and memories, we lit the candles and stood in silence. Gradually, people drifted off; it was, after all, a Saturday night. I waited, with my roommate, a friend from PE Wild, and her friend from American. We remained until 9:12, allowing for a minute of silence at 9:11 as I remembered doing back home. While waiting, I let my mind wander inside itself a bit, doing its usual pondering about life, the universe, and everything; about existence and reason, emotion and liberty, life and freedom. I’d like to share those thoughts that stuck out.

A breeze started about the time of the candle lightings. It wasn’t particularly strong, but it was chilly enough to force notice. It also required paying attention to the candle, lest the wind extinguish it.

As I’m sometimes wont to do, I made a little metaphor. The candle reminded me of the often-used phrase, almost cliché now: the Flame of Hope, of Freedom, of Life itself. It required an effort on my part to maintain the flame’s strength. I found that, after letting my mind wander for a minute early on, the wind extinguished the flame, and I required someone else’s candle to ignite it again. Such is often the case with Hope. When faced with an unusual situation, one that discourages and scares us, humans cling to this concept of “Hope,” a belief that the storm will pass. Sometimes, when the storm continues to batter us, that hope begins to wane, even dying completely. In those situations, we require the presence and support of others. Through their strength, we can rekindle our own Hope, reignite its flame.

A second time, I caught myself gazing at the sky. The clouds which had eclipsed the stars during the vigil now began to move elsewhere, and the lights of the heavens began to shine through. When I glanced down at my candle, however, I found the flame almost dead. Cupping my hand around it, I shielded it from the chill and strength of the wind, allowing it to remain. It reminded me of our Freedom, such a fragile concept. When our grip on the concept slackens, when we let the idea slip to the background, it can disappear far too quickly. Each of us has to realize the concept, to live it every day, lest that Flame die as well. Freedom is a much harder flame to reignite once it dies.

Before those in attendance lit their candles, the names of nine GWU alumni killed on 9/11 were read aloud. At each name, Omar, the president of the Student Association lit a candle, placing it on a table in front of him. The wind picked up as he tried to light the first candle, and I actually felt my pulse pound as I prayed the light would not go out. Each candle here symbolized a life, and Omar refused to let the lights of those lives burn out. He made sure each candle caught before replacing it, and not once was the wind able to extinguish a flame. Though the lives those candles symbolized had already ended, their memories carried on through the flames. Not even the cold acts of terror, which ended their mortal existence, could erase the marks they as people left upon the Earth and their fellow humans.

We all require assistance at times. Hope can falter, but others can right it. Lives may end, but others will remember the deeds done. Freedom may fall under attack, but those who live it and believe in it can save it.

Cherish your freedom, the life you live, and the hope you carry, for yourself and all those who follow. May all Humanity one day relish in the joys of freedom, from fear, from oppression, from terror. Live your life, and realize you don’t have to do so alone.

Abraham Lincoln, as quoted in Kesher Talk’s 2003 9/11 Roundup:

“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We cannot escape history. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.”

We are beginning to think anew, and act anew, but it is not enough. I have commented before here on Winds of Change.NET re: the uselessness and foolishness of the current Vietnam debate in America’s campaign, and find Ara Rubyan’s similarly frustrated voice on the other side of the spectrum. Michael Totten, in the center, is of the same mind.

CBS’ Ra^thergate shows that step 1 of the rethink needs to happen in America’s media, which covered itself in shame after shame last week. Maybe if they had more people in pyjamas instead of the “professional” twits they currently employ, we’d be hearing more about real issues as Iran prepares to go nuclear and a 3 Conjectures future ticks nearer and nearer. Among other minor problems that obviously weigh less heavily than rehashes of a 30 year old war.

But the winds and waves of change will not stop with the media. For the Class 5 storm that began on Sept. 11 will wash away the certitudes of both parties before it has run its full course.

The Democratic Party’s certitudes stem from the 1960s. Like an interstellar hitch-hiker facing the ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal, they have thrown a towel over their heads; if they can’t see the threat, perhaps it will believe that it can’t see them, either. They sit now in spiteful denial, shouting the same tired slogans, oblivious to their growing irrelevance. As Totten so memorably put it:

“Lefty Boomers seriously need to stop and ask themselves if they want to be today’s Bob Dole.”

Ouch. Owwwwch! Now, here’s the second half of the joke. The 1980s are dead too - and the news hasn’t even reached the GOP’s consciousness yet. But it will:

“If the Sixties are dead, then surely the Eighties are not far behind in the funerary procession. The Reagan years ensconced in the American psyche the notion that we can be strong on defense while frolicking on the beach at home. In Reagan’s time, this was a reasonable expectation with the Cold War as a backdrop. As a society, we were partially mobilized to fight the Soviets; our military was largely transparent. It was the era of parity with our enemy, brought about by mutual nuclear blackmail—-Pax Nuclea. And so the 1980s supposition that America can be militarized without being mobilized has added to our false sense of security in dealing with today’s dark threats.”

I’ll leave the final summation to “Marcus Tacitus” of Between Hope and Fear, an exceptionally promising new blogger:

“This war, to date, is Sitzkrieg. The real battle has yet to be joined. Both parties of our political system equally tow the line that we can go on living exactly as we are accustomed to. And yet the briefest study of past wars always reveals huge sociopolitical and cultural transformations that equally overtake opposing sides regardless of who the victor and vanquished are. We have yet to admit that we are on the threshold to an unknown destiny. We live as though it were the 20th Century, because we still can, not because it is.”

In the end, it will matter not if bloggers were actually wearing their pajamas when they began their education-by-fire of kerns and fonts and the ancient world of typewriters. The fact will remain that they beat some men and women wearing shirts and ties to the punch. No…they did more than beat them to the punch; the shirted reporters barely knew that the fight had begun.

If Jonathan Klein truly believed his notion that “[b]loggers have no checks and balances . . . [it’s] a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas,” when he made that statement, his belief system must be taking quite a hit at the moment. Besides the fact that not all bloggers are guys, I’d have to say that a major portion of us have real jobs that keep us from shuffling around our living room in our feetie jammies all day.

As for checks and balances, we have each other. As Rev. Donald Sensing said:

Bloggers are fact checked incessantly by other bloggers and most blogs have a comment feature where a lot of fact checking goes on. And it’s done in realtime, unlike any MSM. Reporters for MSM generally have one editor. I have, today alone, 17,000-plus, every one of which is empowered to tell me I screwed something up. In realtime. On my site. Try that with 60 Minutes.

Touche, Mr. Klein.

While the memos in question in this MemoGate® or RatherGate® or The Tale of the Tricky Typography (or whatever you would like to call it) have not yet been proven beyond doubt to be forged, the real story here is no longer about Bush’s AWOL service or superscript lettering. It is about the integrity and the accountability of the media, in particular that of CBS and, to a lesser extent, The Boston Globe.

It’s no secret that Dan Rather has an agenda. The website Rather Biased has been chronicling, well, Rather’s Bias, since 2000. The fact that Mr. Rather is seen by millions of people across this nation on a major broadcast network means that his agenda has a wide audience. Now take into account that most people in this country still are naive enough to trust mainstream media (MSM) to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth and you end up with one person yielding a lot of influence just two months before a presidential election.

When word first started traveling that the memos Rather used on his 60 Minute piece on the Bush AWOL story might be forgeries, CBS should have immediately issued a statement addressing the topic, saying that while they stand by their sources they would also be looking into the matter in order to clear up any confusion about the documents. That way, they would let the public know that they were aware of the issue and they were taking this slight on their reputation seriously, while at the same time letting the same public know that they still believe their original source.

But, no. CBS instead went into defense mode, with Rather spewing out bitter nonsense about the internet rumor mill and partisan hacks:

“Today on the Internet and elsewhere, some people, including many who are partisan political operatives, concentrated, not on the key questions of the overall story, but on the documents that were part of the support of the overall story.”

As I said before: the problem is, the key questions of the overall story are moot if the evidence is false.

Things shifted quickly after that. Bloggers dug deeper and some news outlets noticed. Others picked up on the story and, neglecting to mention how the key components of MemoGate began, did their own research and called their own specialists. The Boston Globe, in fact, called upon the same forensic document expert as Bill at INDC. And then they went on to misrepresent his words to the point that the expert, Dr. Bouffard, was livid. Not to mention the fact that the Globe, which continues to perpetuate false statements, got Dr. Bouffard’s name wrong in their article.

CBS then went on to use the Globe story - now known by many to be disingenuous - to prop up their belief that the memos are real. One hand washes the other, one presumes.

It may seem odd that just 50 days before the election the media is honing in on arguments about typeface but, if you look under the surface, it’s not really the kerning that is the greater issue.

Perhaps the reason the LA Times and the New York Times, two papers that could be considered liberal, have printed articles or opinion pieces that seem to favor the blogger side of the story is because, if they don’t take that stance, they run the risk of being lumped together with Rather and CBS, like the Boston Globe. At this moment in time, that’s not a good place to be.

In fact, CBS and Rather are not even going to talk about the memos anymore:

Dan Rather was quoted in the New Zealand Herald as saying that there was no use debating the authenticity of his documents which he claims are proof that George W. Bush committed any number of unethical acts while in the National Guard.
“Until someone shows me definitive proof that they are not [authentic], I don’t see any reason to carry on a conversation with the professional rumour mill.”

What CBS and Rather should have done in this instance was to face the charges head on, rather than trying deflect the issue. This is no longer about AWOL charges and they have to recognize that. This is not some “silly” issue as some professional pundits put it. Anyone connected with MSM who makes a statement like that is clearly in denial that the integrity of MSM as a whole is at stake here. Or, perhaps, they aren’t in denial, but fully aware, and their only defense is to go on the offense.

What’s at stake here is not the election. I honestly don’t think the election will be decided over Bush’s National Guard discrepancies or Kerry’s Holiday in Cambodia. The American people know there is too much at stake to base their vote on thirty year old matters. So why does a news outlet like CBS deem such an issue (in CBS’s case, just the Bush issue) so important as to devote their time and effort to airing it, yet not devote the time and effort towards backing up their evidence? Is someone - or several someones - letting their agenda show? It’s one thing for a news outlet to slant one way or the other in its daily reporting. It’s another when they use their power and influence to sway a presidential race, which I believe Rather has been doing. He has abused the trust that so many Americans have for him. Regardless of whether the memos prove to be true or false, when all the smoke has been cleared, when all the typography experts and kerning specialists go back to their desks, when all the bloggers put on their pajamas and sit back with a beer in their living rooms, one glaring fact will remain: the media cannot be trusted. Specifically, Dan Rather cannot be trusted.

How can you trust a media outlet that aired a negative piece like they did without presenting the other side of the story, which they clearly had? They interviewed people close to the situation who regarded the memos as fakes, yet they did not bother to include those interviews in the 60 Minute segment. Even when faced with more evidence that the authenticity of the memos should be doubted, CBS continued to give the cold shoulder to truth.

Had Rather stood up and feigned shock that the memos might be false, and then hired another expert or at least addressed the possibility that he and CBS might have been duped, we would not be sitting here talking about typesetting. But Rather has been outed, so to speak, as a braying, defensive, partisan hack who has no more integrity than Jayson Blair. Perhaps he should be shaking his fist at his source - or himself - instead of bloggers.

If you’re talking about John Kerry’s record, then regrettably, you must begin by discussing his time spent in Vietnam since he obsessively brags about it at every opportunity. While John Kerry certainly deserves credit for going to Vietnam and getting shot at after his deferment was turned down, he has also been caught in a number of rather significant lies about his service.

For example, although John Kerry has told numerous stories about his “Christmas in Cambodia” over the years and said the memory was “seared in me”, his own campaign now admits that wasn’t the truth. Furthermore, another frequently told story, about how John Kerry’s boat turned into an ambush to save a man in the water while all the other “swift boats (were) evacuating from the area” has been revealed to be untrue as well. In fact, as the Kerry campaign now admits, all the other boats stayed while John Kerry’s boat temporarily left the area.

It also appears to be almost a certainty that John Kerry fraudulently obtained his first and third Purple Hearts which allowed him to leave Vietnam almost a full year early. Not only are there eyewitnesses from the anti-Kerry group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth who say that’s the case, John Kerry’s own biography disaffirms Kerry’s explanations of how he earned those two Purple Hearts. Of course, the Kerry camp denies those allegations, but John Kerry has chosen not to explain the huge discrepancies in his story or to release his military records. Rather than address this issue head on, the Kerry campaign has simply chalked it up to partisan politics and has declared the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the group which brought these allegations to light, to be liars.

However, that group is composed of more than 250 Vietnam Vets including John Kerry’s entire chain of command up to an admiral who has passed away, 17 of the 23 officers who served with Kerry, and 60 out of 100 men who served in the field with Kerry in Vietnam. That begs an obvious question: Why should anyone vote for a candidate who is declaring himself to be qualified for the presidency based in large part on his Vietnam experience when the man who served on his boat for the longest period of time (Steve Gardner), the majority of men who fought beside him in combat, and his own chain of command all say he’s a liar and “unfit for command”?

After Kerry left Vietnam and he came home, he joined and later led an anti-war group called “Vietnam Veterans Against the War”. This group was so radical that they actually considered assassinating pro-war US officials. While Kerry opposed that seditious plan, he did meet with the North Vietnamese in 1971, even as our troops were fighting and dying in the field, and endorsed their “peace plan”.

That was not the last time John Kerry was to be of use to our enemies either. During John Kerry’s 1971 Senate testimony, he recounted stories from the “The Winter Soldier Investigation”. That event was organized, in part, by Vietnam Veterans against the War, and it featured large amounts of fraudulent testimony from “fake witnesses who had appropriated the names of real Vietnam Veterans”. Kerry repeated their lies in front of the world and accused our troops of torture, rape, and acting like the hordes of Genghis Kahn among other things. Kerry’s speech caught the ear of the Vietcong, who actually played his testimony to our soldiers in POW camps in an effort to break their will. Then there was the time Kerry joined traitorous anti-war protestor Jane Fonda in the back of a pick-up truck in order to speak out against the war, Kerry’s medals, which he pretended to throw away, and the atrocities that Kerry admitted he committed in Vietnam (which makes you wonder if Lyndie England could run for President in 30 years). Understandably, John Kerry doesn’t spend a lot of time talking about this period of his life on the campaign trail, but he should be deeply ashamed of his actions.

Later in life, John Kerry became a big man in Massachusetts politics. After a short stint as ultra-liberal Michael Dukakis’ Lieutenant Governor, Kerry went on to a largely uneventful 20 year run as Ted Kennedy’s sidekick in the Senate. Kerry’s time in the Senate, which was so unremarkable that he barely even mentioned it during his 55 minute acceptance speech at the Democratic convention, was mostly notable for his timid record on national security issues & his liberal voting record — when he bothered to even show up at all that is. In 2003, John Kerry missed 64% of all votes and so far this year, Kerry has missed a whopping 90% of all votes cast. But, given the paucity of accomplishments John Kerry has in the Senate, perhaps the people of Massachusetts didn’t even notice the difference.

But I suppose Massachusetts’ loss is the military’s gain. Despite the fact that John Kerry has portrayed himself as a hawk to the American people during this campaign, his record is quite dovish and he has been a persistent foe of the military during his time in the Senate. Just take a look at this excerpt of a speech from John Kerry’s fellow Democratic Senator Zell Miller, who was so concerned by the prospect of John Kerry becoming President during a time of war that he actually agreed to speak at the Republican Convention…

“Listing all the weapon systems that Senator Kerry tried his best to shut down sounds like an auctioneer selling off our national security but Americans need to know the facts.

U.S. forces armed with what? Spitballs?”

Kerry also opposed the invasion of Grenada, Desert Storm, has called National Missile Defense a “fantasy”, & after voting for the war in Iraq, he then voted against funding the troops and the rebuilding effort. The whole image of John Kerry as a gung-ho hawk who’s going to go after the terrorists directly contradicts 30 years of history, from the time that John Kerry was an anti-war activist through the present day. It’s nothing but an election year fiction designed to fool voters who are serious about the war on terrorism into trusting John Kerry with the job of commander-and-chief.

Speaking of “election year fiction,” the same could be said of the claim that John Kerry is a “moderate”. Come on folks, he’s a Senator from Massachusetts, he was Michael Dukakis’ Lieutenant Governor, and he referred to Ted Kennedy as his “mentor” earlier this year. Given that, is anyone really going to argue that John Kerry isn’t a liberal?

If so, they’re going to have a hard time making their case given his Senate record. A Washington nonpartisan policy magazine, National Journal, said John Kerry had the most liberal voting record in the Senate for 2003 (Incidentally, his running mate John Edwards had the 4th most liberal record). Furthermore, Kerry’s lifetime rating from the Liberal Americans For Democratic Action is 92% out of a hundred. Even two politicians long considered to be ultra-liberals, Walter Mondale and Ted Kennedy, scored only 90%!

Kerry’s liberal record is actually what has caused him to acquire his well deserved reputation as a flip-flopper. It’s not that John Kerry can’t make up his mind; it’s that he would rather try to trick voters into supporting him by telling what they want to hear rather than tell the truth about his liberal record.

That’s why John Kerry, a man who “perennially receives a 100-percent rating from (anti-abortion groups like) NARAL and Planned Parenthood,” has affirmed that he believes “life does begin at conception,” which is the central tenet of the pro-life movement. It also explains why Kerry, an anti-gun advocate, recently waved around a shotgun given to him by supporters at a West Virginia campaign stop and called it a “beautiful piece” even though he supports legislation that would ban people from hunting with that very same weapon.

Then there’s John Kerry’s indecipherable position on the Iraqi war which seems to change almost depending on who he’s talking to. One month he calls it “critical to the outcome of the war on terror,” the next month he responds in the affirmative when Chris Matthews asks him if he’s an “anti-war candidate”. In February of 2003, Kerry was saying, “If you don’t believe…Saddam Hussein is a threat with nuclear weapons, then you shouldn’t vote for me”, but earlier this month Kerry said the war in Iraq was, “the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time”.

Of course, that statement really doesn’t make any sense given that Kerry said just last month that he still would have given the President the authority to go to war even “knowing what I know today”. On the other hand, that also contradicts what Kerry said this month, that the “only legitimate reason was the weapons of mass destruction question”. You can go on and on like this, trying to make sense of Kerry’s constantly shifting positions on the war, but there is no logical consistency to Kerry’s position. It’s just like when John Kerry said of his vote to fund our troops in Iraq, “I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it.” Kerry wants as many people as possible, pro and anti-war, to believe that he’s “on their side” and he’s willing to pretend to take both sides of the issue simultaneously if necessary. Quite frankly, that sort of duplicitousness isn’t a very attractive trait for a man who wants to be the next leader of the free world.

Summing this up, if you want a flip-flopping Massachusetts liberal who lied about his war record and made a name for himself by smearing our troops to become President despite the fact that there is sparse evidence to go on in his Senate career that shows he is up for the job or capable of effectively waging the war on terror, then John Kerry is your man.

There’s been a lot of talk about the Blogosphere about a Jacksonian tradition. Now in the past, it’s been taken to mean that of Andrew Jackson (may his socks rot). (Sorry, I lost a relative at New Orleans, and know too much about the Trail of Tears not to despise the man).

Anyway, we now have a new tradition of Jacksonianism being demonstrated by CBS. The one of Thomas J. Jackson.

And it may just work.

From Motley Crue :

Situation’s critical, have we lost our minds?
But we like it.
So much information, you can you see it in our eyes.
I said, “Hey man, just gimmie the truth.”

Why don’t we see what ya wanna see, feel what ya wanna feel.

On one side, we have people who will always believe that the memos are fakes, even if originals with the author’s fingerprints on it are produced, along with the secret typesetter hidden in a disused TANG hanger together with 8mm footage of it being used.

On another side, we have people who can see that it’s trivial to make a document that looks exactly like CBS’s memos using Microsoft Word in a few minutes, see that every other document produced by the author is totally different, and so conclude they’re poor quality fakes. I say ‘exactly’, because after all the photocopying, faxing etc trying to find fine points of difference is difficult at best.

On the final side, people who will always believe that because a specialist, expensive and rare typewriter (that there’s no evidence the National Guard ever possessed) could possibly have been customised to produce something also ‘exactly’ (after the faxing and copying) like the memos after hours of effort by an expert user (though that’s disputed by experts), then the memos must be genuine.

As the quality of the copies-of-copies is so poor, there’s plenty of room for argument on fine details by both amateurs and professionals. Is Times New Roman the best Word font, or Palatino? Could a typesetter be used for the header, and an uncommon but not completely unknown specially customised IBM Selectric Executive have been used for the rest? Is there Kerning or not? Views can legitimately differ here due to the poor quality of the PDF files.

But at the moment, too many people ‘see what they wanna see’ and will bend logic into pretzels to avoid a conclusion that would be against their world-view. And too many newspapers will turn statements like “Expert says memo is very probably forged” into “Experts conclude the memos could well be genuine.”

But there’s one thing not in dispute: the CBS copies are just that, copies. Not originals. CBS admits that. In fact,(as mentioned on TCP), USA Today has earlier copies, without the redaction of Bush’s old address. (And that redaction looks exactly like the effect you get with a blue or green highlighter to me - but as we know the redaction was made this year, this proves nothing other than the CBS documents have been altered and are thus newer than the USA Today ones. But I digress.)

Cutting out all the controversy about whether the memos are genuine or not, we’re left with two undisputed facts:

That CBS ‘authenticated’ copies, and fairly poor ones.
That the things they ‘authenticated’ look extremely similar to the output of Microsoft Word (and redacted using a modern dark highlighter).

Given these two facts alone, CBS could not possibly have authenticated them in any conventional meaning of the term, even if (for the sake of argument) the things turn out to be genuine. The memos may not yet be 100% proven as fake, but CBS’s “verification” of them is.

I Am Not A Lawyer. But I have acted as an expert witness on matters pertaining to computer-generated documentation, and am thus a professional document authenticator (albeit with very limited scope). And there is no way that even a relative Tyro like myself (compared to, say the FBI) would be able to say these things were genuine. I mean, they’re copies, not originals! If all you have are copies, you state that on the report as a reason why you can’t authenticate them. Now if they’d included an e-mail address, or other such blatant anachronism, I’d be able to say ‘definitely forged or altered’. But I’m no expert on fonts, or administrative style in the TANG in 1972. I did own a Selectric in 1977, and can say that at least that model could not do proportional spacing, but that’s irrelevant.

Meanwhile, getting back to the main point: CBS has refused to state the provenance of the article. They have refused to state the names of people who have authenticated it, apart from two who when quizzed on the subject, have expressed outrage at their being misrepresented. CBS have refused to state any method used to authenticate other than the contents fit in with their story!

But all they have to do is to continue to do this. The Blogosphere may rant and rave (except those convinced that even if an e-mail address had been included, the memos would still be genuine), but ultimately they have no power. The other Alphabet networks may hint about ‘doubts being cast’ on the memos’ authenticity, and even state that every expert they’ve contacted has said they’re either probably or certainly as queer as a clockwork orange. But ultimately all CBS has to do is to keep on prevaricating (which in England and Australia means ‘to delay, to stall’ and in the USA means ‘to lie’) until the fuss dies down. As long as Ra^ther keeps his cool, facts won’t get in the way of even the thinnest of smokescreens. There’s already too much partisanship not to confuse the issue, and plenty of partisan writers willing to suspend their disbelief in order to aid a worthy cause.

So welcome to CBS, the new Jacksonians, of the Thomas J. variety. Thomas J.Jackson? Better known as ‘Stonewall’. (Even Australians know that.)

[credit: Allah Pundit. See here for reference]

In the interest of full disclosure, I’ll go ahead and state up front that I consider myself a supporter of President Bush’s re-election. Further, based upon what I learned about how the National Guard operates during my 24 years of Service in the Air Force, I find that Mr. Bush’s service with the Texas Air National Guard was not only honorable, but that he actually exceeded his service commitments under the Guard system. Also, I’ll mention that I find the efforts to portray his service as anything less than honorable to be partisan driven, pathetic, and desperate, relying as they do upon subterfuge, innuendo, leveraged with a calculated reliance of a lack of understanding on most voter’s part for how the National Guard and Reserve system actually works as a part of the overall total military force structure. In other words, lying about it and counting on most folks not to know any better.

Are at least two of the documents used by Dan Rather and CBS News to smear the President last week forgeries? Yes, they almost certainly are. But while the debate amongst those detecting the forgery and those willing to carry water for the purposes of slamming the President continues, the documents themselves, and the actions of CBS News and Dan Rather are less the center of attention than they appear or probably deserve to be.

Because the more important point isn’t that the documents were false, or that Rather and company conducted sloppy, partisan journalism. The important point, particularly for those adamant about defeating this President, is that the entire episode has given the basic story much more coverage than if they’d just dragged out the same old threadbare talking points that have been knocked down over the years. Because the story - their attack on Bush’s Guard Service - is simply a tactic of a larger strategic objective. And that objective is to paint George Bush as a liar. To come up with some angle, issue, or charge, they can harp on to ‘definitively prove’ that George Bush has told a lie, and that they’ve caught him at it. This is such an overriding desire, that it has reached this point where the end has become so desperately desired, that it justifies, for the President’s opponents, some pretty outrageous means.

But why? Why this obsession? And yes, it has reached the point of an obsession.

Is it a need to ‘level the playing field’, to somehow, by proving that Bush lies, re-habilitate their tarnished leader and proven liar William Jefferson Clinton, thus providing the irrational moral equivalency satisfaction of countering with a “see? they ALL do it!” retort to any criticism of their beloved Bubba? Or is it that they’ve been driven to the brink of almost phobic madness by the tendency of the current occupant of the White House to pretty much say what he’s going to do, then doing basically what he said - regardless or in spite of their sage wisdom and opinion? Or is it a need to somehow prove that the man in the White House is the embodiment of that which they cannot bring themselves to call the actual enemies of Western Democracy - evil.

Whatever the underlying reason, pinning George Bush with the ‘liar’ label, or otherwise winning a ‘gotcha’ moment, has been a central, common tenant of the left’s assault on his presidency. From the 2000 campaign, where they gave the TANG stories their initial, unsuccessful trial runs, to the oppositions to the ops in Afghanistan (they’re lying! it’s about an oil pipeline) to Iraq (he’s lying, Saddam is/was not a threat, and does not have WMDs). All of these assaults have proven to be manufactured, or empty and shallow, and ultimately not effective. We know that Afghanistan wasn’t about a pipeline, that Saddam was a threat, and we know the President didn’t lie about the information he was presented concerning WMDs. We also know that he posesses a valid DD214 reflecting an honorable discharge upon completion of satisfactory service.

But out of the various attempts, the only one that doesn’t entail opening up issues that are significant negatives for their campaign to replace Bush with Kerry, is the Guard issue. And it’s sort of a corner their somewhat boxed into by their candidate’s attempt to distract everyone from his 20 years in the Senate by spotlighting the late 60s and early 70s, and Vietnam.

The downside, that they don’t seem to really get or just don’t care about, is that it’s something most people really don’t care too much about. Well, other than it has been brought up to be front and center by a party and candidate that really don’t want to discuss what they’ve been up to more recently.

So the Guard issue, possibly the most irrelevant topic floating around during this election, has been shoved forward for it’s 15 minutes front and center in the spotlight. Again.

Slight problem - that ‘nobody except hard core partisans that have already made up their minds really gives a flip’ angle. A rehash of the kerfuffle from last February was likely to produce more yawns than headlines. Maybe a couple of references by the entrenched partisans, then on to something else. So insignificant that the White House does nothing more than regurgitate the ‘documents’ being waved without any further comment. End of story. End of coverage. End of controversy.

An important component to marketing, advertising, and campaigning is persistence. If you have the greatest ad campaign in the world, but only show it a couple of times on one or two days, it’s doomed to being totally ineffective. It has to stick around long enough to be noticed. It helps if it is controversial - creates a buzz of cross talk, with people mentioning it and talking about it. Love it or hate it, more people will at least hear about it in passing. Facts be damned, just get them to hear the message - and the message here is the ‘Bush ducked/dodged/lied’ theme. Create enough of a smoke screen around the particulars that the waters appear muddied enough to put people off actually taking the time to sort it out, and you win. They recall that ‘charges were levelled’, and maintain a shadow of doubt because of it.

But why would Dan Rather and CBS News risk their reputations and credibility to do such a thing? Why would the DNC or the Kerry campaign take the risk of being exposed as slimy lying muckrakers?

Because actually, it’s a pretty low risk venture, with the benefit of getting some sort of nebulous doubt about the President’s Guard service bouncing around in people’s noggins.

Low risk? Sure. Is Dan Rather in any real danger of being fired? Is CBS News placed in real financial difficulty based on a loss of credibility? Not really. Particularly when most of the spears aimed at them can be either shrugged off with a lame explanation and claims of indignation at being questioned, or just simply ignored until things calm down, and people’s attentions shift elsewhere. CBS News isn’t really in too much danger of taking a financial hit or losing market share over this episode. They still command a nationwide presence, which ensures they’ll be able to sell advertising. Network News Ops have never really been wildly profitable - the best they’ve managed to achieve is making sure their news operations didn’t cost too much. Rather has stuck his foot in it before, and survived. So has CBS and other news organizations. The New York Times survived Jayson Blair and Howell Raines, and continues to survive MoDo and Paul Krugman, daily.

Quite possibly the hubris of believing that they are in the position to tell people what to think, and their desire to see a change of administration comes out as trumping their need for at least posing as impartial or possessing unbiased integrity of some sort. It may even contribute to a sense of invulnerability. Regardless, the indications appear to show that their internal weighing of the pros and cons told them it was worth doing. True, or not. That was a variable that didn’t really matter. Shaping the story and getting it into the public discussion was the overriding concern. And actually, knowing that parts of it were extremely shaky and would generate the buzz I mentioned earlier, would likely be on the ‘pro’ side of such calculation. The cynical view would be that they were willing to ‘take one for the team’, because it wouldn’t cost them in the long run, and they just might have gotten away with it. It actually probably would have fizzled pretty quickly if they had gotten away with it.

Was the DNC or the Kerry campaign involved with the fabrication or distribution of these documents? Doesn’t really matter at this point, although they are definitely on the short list of prime suspects. Why doesn’t it matter if they were directly or indirectly involved? Because anything short of a videotape of a known Kerry/DNC operative handing over the two documents to Dan Rather after holding them up to the camera, and then announcing ‘here are some newly discovered documents about George Bush’s guard service, Dan’ is going to be denied, disputed, rejected, and dismissed as partisan return fire. Even a video depicting such a handover would probably have it’s share of detractors. Besides, while most might consider such charges a problem, they aren’t if you can use them to sow the distraction that it may have been Rove!

Could be that CBS, Rather, and the Democrats were actually overjoyed when the entire thing lit up in the blogosphere like a Roman Candle in less than 12 hours. It may have been hard to stifle the glee and put forth an aura of ‘serious concern’ as the story was picked up by the other MSM outlets. But why? They’re being pilloried over this!

Sure. But it gives the story legs. It creates persistence. It affords the opportunity for air time to spend 10 seconds quibbling about fonts and IBM typewriters before launching into a slew of suspicion, innuendo and disparagement of the President’s Guard service. Air time they couldn’t pay for no matter how long they held George Soros upside down and shook him.

Now let’s be clear on one thing - was this some sort of ‘conspiracy’ to hoodwink the American public. Organized? No, probably not. With the existence of enough predisposition within the CBS organization, and the virtual constant of reflexive defenders from the left, it isn’t something that needed any sort of pre-coordination or planning. Gasoline doesn’t need a playbook or plan to determine what it will do with a lit match. Though skepticism and distancing certainly occurred as the details surfaced, there are still plenty of defenders willing to carry the banner with cult like enthusiasm, probably because they inherently understand that as long as they keep up the ‘defense’, it keeps the issue in the domain of discussion. That persistence thing.

They don’t care if it’s true, as they see the bigger picture, in which Bush must be defeated by any and all means necessary, thus the ends justifies the means. A few minutes in the penalty box is all a part of that game, and a small price to reach one’s goals.

This Op/Ed by Mark Helprin was in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal. It’s available to all over at OpinionJournal, but I found it so compelling … reading it as I did, on a clear September morning, in a 737 at 35,000 feet, just as I was on September 11th, 2001 … that I’ve posted the full text below.

Three Years On: We still haven’t learned the lessons of 9/11.

BY MARK HELPRIN
Friday, September 10, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT

Three years after September 11, where do we stand?

Out of fear and confusion we have hesitated to name the enemy. We proceed as if we are fighting disparate criminals united by coincidence, rather than the vanguard of militant Islam, united by ideology, sentiment, doctrine, and practice, its partisans drawn from Morocco to the Philippines, Chechnya to the Sudan, a vast swath of the earth that, in regard to the elemental beliefs that fuel jihad, is as homogeneous as Denmark.

Too timid to admit to a clash of civilizations even as it occurs, we failed to declare the war, thus forfeiting clarity of intent and the unambiguous consent of the American people. This was a sure way, as in the Vietnam era, to divide the country and prolong the battle.

We failed not only to prepare for war but to provision for it after it had begun, disallowing a military buildup, much less the wartime transformation of the economy. In the First World War our elected representatives decisively resolved that “to bring the conflict to a successful termination all the resources of the country are hereby pledged by the Congress of the United States.” In the Revolutionary War we as a people pledged our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.

What is different now of course is that we are combating neither the British Empire nor Imperial Germany, but an opponent who is fundamentally weak militarily, economically, and, in the long run, ideologically. Still, he has by his near mastery of terrorism and asymmetrical warfare necessitated that we mobilize as if we were in fact fighting a great empire. And yet we have not done so, expending not even the average of 5.7% of GDP we devoted to defense in the peacetime years of the period 1940-2000, but, currently, only 3.6%—as if we were not at war, as if the military technological “revolution” could overcome insurgencies or occupy populous countries, as if China’s armed forces were not ascending, as if our territory were invulnerable, and as if terrorism, as some used to think and some still do, can simply be managed.

We have followed a confusion of war aims that seem to report after the fact what we have done rather than to direct what we do. We could, by threatening the existence of Middle Eastern regimes, which live to hold power, enforce our insistence that the Arab world eradicate the terrorists within its midst. Instead, we have embarked upon the messianic transformation of an entire region, indeed an entire civilization, in response to our inability to pacify even a single one of its countries. As long as our war aims stray from the disciplined, justifiable, and attainable objective of self-defense, we will be courting failure.

Our strategy has been deeply inadequate especially in light of the fact that we have refused to build up our forces even as our aims have expanded to the point of absurdity. We might have based in northern Saudi Arabia within easy range of the key regimes that succor terrorism, free to coerce their cooperation by putting their survival in question. Our remounted infantry would have been refreshed, reinforced, properly supported, unaffected by insurgency, and ready to strike. The paradigm would have shifted from conquer, occupy, fail, and withdraw—to strike, return, and re-energize. At the same time, we would not have solicited challenges, as we do now, from anyone who sees that although we may be occupying Iraq, Iraq is also occupying us.

We have abstained from mounting an effective civil defense. Only a fraction of a fraction of our wealth would be required to control the borders of and entry to our sovereign territory, and not that much more to discover, produce, and stockpile effective immunizations, antidotes, and treatments in regard to biological and chemical warfare. Thirty years ago the entire country had been immunized against smallpox. Now, no one is, and the attempt to cover a minuscule part of the population failed miserably and was abandoned. Not only does this state of affairs leave us vulnerable to a smallpox epidemic, it stimulates the terrorists to bring one about. So with civil aviation, which, despite the wreckage and tragedy of September 11, is protected in an inefficient, irresponsible, and desultory fashion.

We have watched the division of the country into two ineffective camps, something that is especially apparent in an electoral season. On the one hand is John Kerry, a humorless Boston scold, in appearance the love child of Abraham Lincoln and Bette Midler, who recites slogans that he understands but does not believe. And on the other is the president, proud of his aversion to making an argument for his own case, in appearance a denizen of the Pleistocene, who recites slogans that he believes but does not understand.

At this point the American people, who most of the time are wiser than the experts or politicians who briefly take the helm, may already have decided to reinstall the president despite his shortcomings. If this is so, it is because Sen. Kerry’s main motive power has come from those who are foolish enough to exult in the crude and baseless propaganda of a freakish Leni Riefenstahl wannabe (too heavy), and because, in what may have been his campaign’s defining moment, Sen. Kerry stated that he learned a long time ago that when under attack you turn your boat toward the enemy. And yet it is clear from his record, his character, and his present policy that this is precisely what he would not do. Nor, though it is exactly what the country should do, is it at all what his most enthusiastic partisans or the base of the Democratic Party would want him to do.

He and they have adopted simultaneously two opposing propositions and embraced two opposing tendencies, which they then present to the electorate as if there is no contradiction. They do not feel acutely, as others do, the dissonance of their positions, because they truly believe in only the less martial of the two.

Although they cannot state why the American, British, Spanish, and Australian invasion of Iraq was any more or less unilateral or multilateral than France, Germany, and Belgium working to derail that invasion, or deny that they admire Britain for standing alone, unilaterally, in 1940, or that the multilateral Axis invasion of Greece was wrong, or that they themselves urge unilateral American action to stop genocide in Africa, they use these words fervently and without logic. They may believe that this is their subtlety, but it is nothing more than confusion and a stylish capitulation to the French, who unfortunately are perfectly willing to capitulate to Islamic terrorism as long as France has purchased its own safety, as of old.

Given the lack of movement in the war and poverty of choice in leadership, Americans looked to a commission. Like the senescent Ottomans we waited and waited as the seasons passed, and were presented neither with swelling armies, well defended borders, nor a string of victories. Although the bravest commissioners of said commission fought to tell us that we are indeed in a clash of civilizations, even they, appointed by their respective parties, did not state the simple unvarnished truth that for 20 years administrations both Republican and Democratic have ignored or misread the evidence concerning terrorism and must be judged negligent and culpable.

The president could have said this, and in doing so clarified the course ahead and won the trust of the people. The commission could have said it simply and directly, but did not. Instead, it offered the labored and nearly impertinent conclusion that the way to prevail in this war is to rearrange the organizational table of the intelligence agencies. Many of its reforms are questionable on their face, most would have merely a neutral effect on the substance of intelligence, and the emphasis is mistaken. Like those who want to fight the war by funding fire departments—knife attacks are not defeated by bandages, and the Battle of Britain was not won by the London Fire Brigades—the commission looked upon one aspect as if it were the essential element, which it is not.

The more good intelligence the better, but because the enemy moves in small groupings he will on occasion, as intelligence is not perfect, elude it. That is why difficult, expensive, inefficient, and general defensive screens are necessary, and why we cannot rely only on pinpoint intelligence even if it is both fashionable and economical. In stressing intelligence, the commission slights elements of equal or greater importance that led to September 11 in the first place. Had the airport screeners been competent, had cockpit doors been reinforced, had the borders been properly controlled, the thousands who were lost that day, and who are loved, would still be alive.

Neither the commission, the president, nor the Democratic nominee has a clear vision of how to fight and defend in this war. Partly this is because so many Americans do not yet feel, as some day they may, the gravity of what we are facing.

Three years on, that is where we stand: our strategy shiftless, reactive, irrelevantly grandiose; our war aims undefined; our preparations insufficient; our civil defense neglected; our polity divided into support for either a hapless and incompetent administration that in a parliamentary system would have been turned out long ago, or an opposition so used to appeasement of America’s rivals, critics, and enemies that they cannot even do a credible job of pretending to be resolute.

(Via LGF)

While we stood in shock and grief, they celebrated. (4.1MB MPEG)

The following was sent by “American Daughter” and originally appeared here.

Today I want to share a message with an accompanying picture that I received from a friend. The good marine asks if we can get our newspapers to carry this picture and tribute. But as we all know by now, the mainstream media (MSM) is no longer where it is at. Let’s see if we can get this all over the Blogosphere. To all who see this, feel free to copy the blue text written by the marine and the picture to your own website or blog.

The proud warriors of Baker Company wanted to do something to pay tribute to our fallen comrades. So since we are part of the only Marine Infantry Battalion left in Iraq the one way that we could think of doing that is by taking a picture of Baker Company saying the way we feel. It would be awesome if you could find a way to share this with our fellow countrymen.

I was wondering if there was any way to get this into your papers to let the world know that “WE HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN” and are proud to serve our country.” Semper Fi
1stSgt Dave Jobe

[click for larger image]

Three years. In some ways, I’ve lived a lifetime since then. And sometimes, it feels like just yesterday I was standing in the parking lot at work, my eyes fixed on the ugly, brown haze of smoke and debris that enveloped the sky to the west.

There are people who have chastised my obsession with that day; they say I act as if it belongs to me, only. We all own a piece of 9/11, of course. The shape and form of that owned piece is different for everyone. It may look and feel like blame or remorse or a million other things, depending on your view.

The view from here is not as dark and murky as it was when I gripped the door handle of my car, practically paralyzed with fear and horror. That was three years ago this Saturday, when I wanted nothing more but to get home to my family yet could do nothing more than stare and cry.

A year passed. It was a long, hard year filled with questions, doubts, lingering fear and a subtle sense of panic that layered every move I made, every thought I had. We were shell shocked and our response to the world around us reflected that. I cried at random times. I had trouble sleeping. I paced and panicked and popped pills to stop it all. And between all my angst and anxiety, the sun rose and set, the flowers bloomed, my children played and the world, damaged and shaken as it was, went on.

Another year came and went. My kids grew an inch or two, I got married, relatives died, had babies and moved away. Life had a way of making me forget every once in a while. Anniversaries make you remember.

Two years ago, September 11, 2002, the view from here was much the same as it was the year before. I clung to my sadness and anger, wrapped those emotions around me like blankets. I wallowed not only in my own dark vision of the day, but in the darkness and despair of others, as well. It was needed, then. The shared experiences, the sympathetic tears, the virtual hand holding - they were needed. How else could we possibly get through the grief but to do it together?

Those feelings of darkness lingered long after the anniversary. Fall came and went, quickly fading into winter. Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s. Would the new year be any different? Would 2003 look much the same as 2002 and the end months of 2001? Would the fear and anger ever dissipate? Those are the questions I asked myself as we rang in the new year. I wondered how others around me could be so joyous, so wrapped up in their celebrating when all around us, the world was in shambles.

And so 2003 marched on, bringing more changes, more births and deaths and sunrises, war was declared, the battle come down. We cooked dinners, shopped, drank, went to amusement parks and lived. We lived. And as September approached, so did my now annual anxiety and sadness. And once again, I asked everyone to wallow with me.

The Voices Project was therapeutic in many ways. For myself, for the people who contributed, for the people who read, it was a way to join hands again and share the bleak emotions that still welled up inside our hearts and souls. That is my piece of 9/11, the part I own. A little black lump of nothingness that sits sometimes on top of my heart and sometimes lodges itself in the pit of my stomach. I thought by engaging in a sort of group therapy through the project, I could dislodge that nothingness.

But it wasn’t reliving my pain and agony of September 11, 2001 that did it for me. No, it was life. And I didn’t even realize it at that the time, that the black lump of nothingness was shrinking.

I wrote on September 12, 2003:

I watched my son playing hockey with his friends in the driveway last night and my daughter chasing her little cousins around on the lawn and it felt so damn good. The air was cool, the sun was throwing off colors into the early evening sky and the jingle of the ice cream truck could be heard from blocks away. It was just one of those moments that you want to hold onto forever; you want time to stand still so we are always this happy and this joyous and this free.

Of course, it doesn’t work that way, which is why we have cameras and camcorders and halfway decent memories. There are going to be days when the kids are screaming at each other instead of playing harmoniously together, where the neighbor’s dog is taking a crap on your lawn and it’s raining so hard your gutters are overflowing and someone is calling you with bad news.

No one remembers the exact moments of being ecstatically happy. No one says, oh on July 16, 2002 at 7:08 p.m., I felt a surge of happiness in my heart. But we all remember times and dates and intimate details of our moments of despair. Just as no one takes pictures or movies of their family members sobbing over the coffin of Grandma. Well maybe they do, but I don’t.

2003 came to an end and I welcomed 2004 with a small ray of hope that it would bring better things. When I said that out loud to my husband, he asked what I meant by better things. Had the last years been so personally horrible or had I just internalized 9/11 to the point that my entire being was marked by the sights and sounds of that day?

I went back and read those paragraphs I wrote in September and I promised myself live 2004 in a different way.

No, I would never, ever forget. It’s always there, it’s an awareness that will never fully end. It’s there when I see the cars with their 9/11 bumper stickers, honoring the dead. It’s there when I watch the news, it’s there on a day like this when the sky is blue and the air is crisp and it’s….just like then. It’s there, believe it or not, every time the digital clock shows the time 9:11. At all those times, it’s like a small, cold hand touches me on the back. I shiver and remember. It’s a surge of memories that come out me at once, not one particular picture or sound or memory; it’s just a feeling. It’s that small, black lump showing itself again. It may have shrunk but it will never, ever disappear.

It’s September 2004. The third anniversary is in less than a week, which means this is the fourth year in a row I am spending at least one perfect weather day regurgitating every minute feeling of sorrow, despair, anger and disbelief.

I was all set to do the Voices Project again. I was ready to share stories, to remember, to ask how you feel three years on.

No.

That’s what I told myself this morning. No.

I refuse to start myself down that long, rocky slope of depression again. I refuse to take this perfect, blue-sky day and spend it reliving days of darkness. I can’t.

Tomorrow, my son starts his middle school career. My daughter starts high school. Time has a way of smacking you in the face when you need it most. I can’t once again entrench myself in some virtual dark, dank basement where I’m huddled over the keyboard, weeping.

I have moved on. There, I said it.

Not moved on in the sense that I’ve forgotten or I don’t think it’s important. 9/11 will always be a defining moment in my life. It has shaped and colored my world like no other event. It has essentially changed who I am and who I’ll always be. But all my writing and gathering of stories and wallowing will not bring Pete Ganci back. It will not bring back any of my father’s friends, or any of your friends or relatives. It will only make my hurt feel fresh and it is not healthy to walk around with open wounds. Oh, I still have the anger and pain but, instead of trying to will them out of me by throwing myself into a mental re-enactment of that day, I’ve decided to let them be. I’ve learned to live with the little, black lump of nothingness and now I have learned how to not make that bigger than it should be. Nor smaller. It’s the piece of 9/11 I own and I’d no sooner give that up than give up a limb.

Why? Because I’ve learned so much from carrying that around with me. I’ve learned a lot about myself and the people around me. I’ve learned much about the world. In a way, that black lump soaks up any new despair like a sponge. It’s a place where I store things and I’m able to call up that anger or sadness when I need to.

But I don’t need to now. What I need to do is enjoy the life I am grateful to have. I need to breathe the sweet, fall-like air and think not of death but of living. I have mums to plant, a new house to renovate, children who are growing up too fast for me to not enjoy every moment I have with them.

I am moving forward, I guess, not really moving on. I’m leaving behind the Voices Project and leaving behind my annual conscious decision to wallow. I am not leaving behind my despair and anger because to do that would be to forget, which I will never do.

I just want to live again, in a way where I won’t react viscerally to every mention of 9/11. I think the only way to do that is to approach this anniversary in a completely different way than I have in the past. I approach it with hope and optimism and an eye towards the future. I think it’s in my best interest to honor the dead by living. I can think of no other way to explain it and it might sound contradictory to you. I’ve wanted revenge on the terrorists for so long. Someone once said the best revenge is living well. So, perhaps, not cowering in fear or lashing out in anger as a result of 9/11 is the best revenge I can hope for right now.

And before you say I’m contradicting everything I stood for in the past three years, this “moving on” I’m talking about has nothing to do with forgetting who our enemies are and what they have done to us. It’s moving on from a striclty emotional standpoint because one can only live inside an emotional train wreck for so long.

I think, above all, reacting to this anniversary with reverence rather than rhetoric, with hope rather than hate, with dared optimism rather than depression, is the best we can do for those who died.

This is the first and last thing I will write about the third anniversary of 9/11. I will attend a sunrise memorial on the beach this Saturday and I will whisper thanks to the heros and feel sorrow for all who died. And as the sun rises, I will greet the new day as another one in which to appreciate that I still can have absolute moments of happiness while still holding onto my piece of 9/11.

9/11. Of course you remember where you were. That day was a summons, a call; many answered it, in many different ways. Our team at Winds of Change.NET is here because of it. So is The Command Post. In all probability, so are you.

This September 11^(th) we honour those who answered that call, and those who answer it still. Amidst the clamour and tumult of all the 9/11 related posts and articles over the past 3 years, some stand out and speak more truly to the essence of that dark day - and the challenges that lie before us still.

What part will you play? “Ah,” you say, “but I’m not a writer, or a hero.” Funny, but I’ve got a few people in here who would have said the very same thing.

• Fighting Back
• Heroes & Remembrance
• The Twin Towers’ Rise… and Fall
• Humour
• Voices from the Aether

“OutFoxed” has gotten a lot of coverage. Is it time for a CBS documentary? Here’s a possible poster:

In the wake of the Beslan atrocity, conventional wisdom holds that Russia faces two impossible demands: on the one hand, the need to offer Chechnya concessions to eliminate “root causes” of the terror, and on the other hand, the need to project strength and avoid the acknowledged pitfalls of appeasement. Armed Liberal has righly eviscerated the IHT’s William Pfaff for identifying concessions (“just give it to them”) as a solution to the problem of terror. At the same time, even Matt Yglesias can get in touch with his inner Kissinger long enough to write about the “amply justified fear that such concessions would only encourage further attacks.” This is a dilemma – but it’s a false one.

In Armed Liberal’s thread on Pfaff, I advanced the following metaphor:

Read the rest…

[The following was written by Greyhawk of Mudville Gazzette and originally appeared here. It is reprinted with permission of the author. Greyhawk is, as you read this, packing his bags and heading for an undisclosed location within the sandbox. When you are done reading this, I suggest you head over to Mudville Gazzette and wish him well]

“If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being, and who is willing to destroy his own heart?”
— Alexander Solzhenitsyn

September 5, 1972: Eight Palestinian “Black September” terrorists seized 11 Israeli athletes in the Olympic Village in Munich, West Germany. In a bungled rescue attempt by West German authorities, nine of the hostages and five terrorists were killed.

March 2, 1973: U.S. Ambassador to Sudan Cleo A. Noel and other diplomats were assassinated at the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Khartoum by members of the Black September organization.

“So long as there are men there will be wars.”
— Albert Einstein

“Only the dead have seen the last of war”
— George Santayana

“It may be that at some time in the dim future of the race the need for war will vanish: but that time is yet ages distant. As yet no nation can hold its place in the world, or can do any work really worth doing, unless it stands ready to guard its right with an armed hand.”
—Theodore Roosevelt

June 27, 1976: Members of the Baader-Meinhof Group and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine seized an Air France airliner and its 258 passengers. They forced the plane to land in Uganda,where on July 3 Israeli commandos successfully rescued the passengers.

“It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.”
—General Douglas MacArthur

“Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum.”
—“Epitoma Rei Militaris” by Vegetius.
(Therefore, whoever wishes for peace, let him prepare for war.)

November 4, 1979: After President Carter agreed to admit the Shah of Iran into the U.S., Iranian radicals seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took 66 American diplomats hostage. Thirteen hostages were soon released, but the remaining 53 were held until their release on January 20, 1981.

“States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world.”
—George W. Bush on Iraq, Iran, and North Korea

“I think it will take years before we can repair the damage done by that statement.”
— Jimmy Carter on George Bush’s use of the phrase “Axis of Evil”

October 6, 1981: Soldiers who were secretly members of the Takfir Wal-Hajira sect attacked and killed Egyptian President Anwar Sadat during a troop review.

September 14, 1982: Lebanese Prime Minister Bashir Gemayel was assassinated by a car bomb parked outside his party’s Beirut headquarters.

April 18, 1983: Sixty-three people, including the CIA’s Middle East director, were killed, and 120 were injured in a 400-pound suicide truck-bomb attack on the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon. The Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility.

October 23, 1983: Simultaneous suicide truck-bomb attacks were made on American and French compounds in Beirut, Lebanon. A 12,000-pound bomb destroyed the U.S. compound, killing 242 Americans, while 58 French troops were killed when a 400-pound device destroyed a French base. Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility.

“Over the years, the United States has sent many of its fine young men and women into great peril to fight for freedom beyond our borders. The only amount of land we have ever asked for in return is enough to bury those that did not return.”
— Colin Powell

March 16, 1984: The Islamic Jihad kidnapped and later murdered Political Officer William Buckley in Beirut, Lebanon. Other U.S. citizens not connected to the U.S. Government were seized over a succeeding 2-year period.

June 14, 1985: A Trans-World Airlines flight was hijacked en route to Rome from Athens by two Lebanese Hizballah terrorists and forced to fly to Beirut. The eight crew members and 145 passengers were held for 17 days, during which one American hostage, a U.S. Navy sailor, was murdered. After being flown twice to Algiers, the aircraft was returned to Beirut after Israel released 435 Lebanese and Palestinian prisoners.

October 7, 1985: Four Palestinian Liberation Front terrorists seized the Italian cruise liner Achille Lauro in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, taking more than 700 hostages. One U.S. passenger was murdered before the Egyptian Government offered the terrorists safe haven in return for the hostages’ freedom. Years later the leader of the hijackers would be discovered in Baghdad following the liberation of Iraq.

November 23, 1985: An EgyptAir airplane bound from Athens to Malta and carrying several U.S. citizens was hijacked by the Abu Nidal Group.

March 30, 1986: A Palestinian splinter group detonated a bomb as TWA Flight 840 approached Athens Airport, killing four U.S. citizens.

“The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil Constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors: they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men.”
— Samuel Adams

April 5, 1986: Two U.S. soldiers were killed, and 79 American servicemen were injured in a Libyan bomb attack on a nightclub in West Berlin, Germany. In retaliation, U.S. military jets bombed targets in and around Tripoli and Benghazi.

February 17, 1988: U.S. Marine Corps Lt. Col. W. Higgins was kidnapped and murdered by the Iranian-backed Hizballah group while serving with the United Nations Truce Supervisory Organization in southern Lebanon.

“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature, and has no chance of being free unless made or kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.”
—John Stuart Mill

“The Bush doctrine of preemptive war is wrong for America, and sets a dangerous precedent. So many who supported the war now say that they are opposed to the doctrine of preemption. Then why did they vote for this preemptive war? I opposed the President’s war on Iraq, I continue to stand against his policy of preemption, and on my first day in office I will tear up the Bush doctrine and rebuild a foreign policy consistent with American values.”
—Howard Dean

December 21, 1988: Pan American Airlines Flight 103 was blown up over Lockerbie, Scotland, by a bomb believed to have been placed on the aircraft in Frankfurt, West Germany, by Libyan terrorists. All 259 people on board were killed.

“It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace—but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”
—Patrick Henry March 23,1775

“Stop this war before it starts! Bring home our troops…” (said to chants of “Stop this war! Stop this war!”)
—Rep Dennis Kucinich (D-Oh)

January 18-19, 1991: Iraqi agents planted bombs at the U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia’s home residence and at the USIS library in Manila.

February 26, 1993: The World Trade Center in New York City was badly damaged when a car bomb planted by Islamic terrorists explodes in an underground garage. The bomb left six people dead and 1,000 injured. The men carrying out the attack were followers of Umar Abd al-Rahman, an Egyptian cleric who preached in the New York City area.

April 14, 1993: The Iraqi intelligence service attempted to assassinate former U.S. President George Bush during a visit to Kuwait. In retaliation, the U.S. launched a cruise missile attack 2 months later on the Iraqi capital Baghdad.

March 8, 1995: Two unidentified gunmen killed two U.S. diplomats and wounded a third in Karachi, Pakistan.

November 13, 1995: The Islamic Movement of Change planted a bomb in a Riyadh military compound that killed one U.S. citizen, several foreign national employees of the U.S. Government, and more than 40 others.

“My friends, this rush to war does not benefit the American people…”
—Ambassador Carol Moseley Braun

“It’s looking more and more like a case of mass deception… There was no imminent danger, and we should never have gone to war.”
—Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA)

June 25, 1996: A fuel truck carrying a bomb exploded outside the U.S. military’s Khobar Towers housing facility in Dhahran, killing 19 U.S. military personnel and wounding 515 persons, including 240 U.S. personnel. Several groups claimed responsibility for the attack.

February 23, 1997: A Palestinian gunman opened fire on tourists at an observation deck atop the Empire State Building in New York City, killing a Danish national and wounding visitors from the United States, Argentina, Switzerland, and France before turning the gun on himself. A handwritten note carried by the gunman claimed this was a punishment attack against the “enemies of Palestine.”

August 7, 1998: A bomb exploded at the rear entrance of the U.S. embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, killing 12 U.S. citizens, 32 Foreign Service Nationals (FSNs), and 247 Kenyan citizens. About 5,000 Kenyans, six U.S. citizens, and 13 FSNs were injured. The U.S. embassy building sustained extensive structural damage. Almost simultaneously, a bomb detonated outside the U.S. embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, killing seven FSNs and three Tanzanian citizens, and injuring one U.S. citizen and 76 Tanzanians. The explosion caused major structural damage to the U.S. embassy facility. The U.S. Government held Usama Bin Ladin responsible.

“Mr. bin Laden used to live in Sudan. He was expelled from Saudi Arabia in 1991, then he went to Sudan. And we’d been hearing that the Sudanese wanted America to start meeting with them again. They released him. At the time, 1996, he had committed no crime against America so I did not bring him here because we had no basis on which to hold him, though we knew he wanted to commit crimes against America.”
— Bill Clinton explains to a Long Island, N.Y., business group why he turned down Sudan’s offer to extradite Osama Bin Laden to America in 1996.

“The only thing needed for evil to prosper is for good men to do nothing.”
— Edmund Burke

October 12, 2000: In Aden, Yemen, a small dingy carrying explosives rammed the destroyer U.S.S. Cole, killing 17 sailors and injuring 39 others. Supporters of Usama Bin Ladin were suspected.

“The enemy of America is not our many Muslim friends. It is not our many Arab friends. Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists and every government that supports them.”
— George W. Bush

“The architects of this wickedness will find no safe harbor in this world. We will chase our enemies to the furthest corners of this Earth. It must be war without quarter, pursuit without rest, victory without qualification.”
— Rep. Tom Delay (R-Tx)

“I say to our enemies: We are coming. God may have mercy on you, but we won’t.”
— Sen. John Mccain (R-Az)

“I am saddened, saddened that this president failed so miserably at diplomacy that we’re now forced to war”
—Tom Daschle (D-SD)

“I have absolutely no regret about my vote on this war. The cost in human lives. The cost to our budget, probably $100 billion. We could have probably brought down that statue for a lot less.”
—Nancy Pelosi (D-Ca)

“I think there has been an exaggeration. They are misleading all Americans in a profound way.”
—Sen. John Kerry (D-MA)

“Today’s Western society has revealed the inequality between the freedom for good deeds and the freedom for evil deeds. A statesman who wants to achieve something highly constructive for his country has to move cautiously and even timidly; thousands of hasty (and irresponsible) critics cling to him at all times; he is constantly rebuffed by parliament and the press. He has to prove his every step is well founded and absolutely flawless. Indeed, an outstanding, truly great person who has unusual and unexpected initiatives in mind does not get any chance to assert himself; dozens of traps will be set for him from the beginning. Thus mediocrity triumphs under the guise of democratic restraints.”
— Alexander Solzhenitsyn

“What we need now is not just regime change in Saddam Hussein and Iraq, but we need regime change in the United States…I don’t think [world leaders] are going to trust this president, no matter what. I believe it deeply, that it will take a new president of the United States, declaring a new day for our relationship with the world, to clear the air and turn a new page on American history.”
—Sen. John Kerry (D-MA)

September 11, 2001: Two hijacked airliners crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Soon thereafter, the Pentagon was struck by a third hijacked plane. A fourth hijacked plane, suspected to be bound for a high-profile target in Washington, crashed into a field in southern Pennsylvania. More than 5,000 U.S. citizens and other nationals were killed as a result of these acts.

“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and success of liberty.”
—John F. Kennedy

“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”
—Thomas Paine

“In war there is no prize for the runner-up.”
— General Omar Bradley

“These terrorists…we have seen their kind before. They’re the heirs of all the murderous ideologies of the 20th century. By sacrificing human life to serve their radical visions, by abandoning every value except the will to power, they follow in the path of fascism, Nazism and totalitarianism. And they will follow that path all the way to where it ends in history’s unmarked grave of discarded lies.”
— George W. Bush

——-

Ed note: I also recommend reading Greyhawk’s piece “Rick Rescorla Was a Soldier” which can be found here.

Jakarta - Immediately after the blast - Photo : AP

Not our song, but worth borrowing for the occasion.

Paul from Wizbang asks the same question that was rolling around my head after a post-run stretch. Who did it?

I can think of a couple of people right away. Start looking at people involved in 527s—plausible deniability for the Kerry campaign.

As I’m no attorney, I’ll leave it up to one of you folks to name the law that covers fabricating a federal document.

The March 11 Commission will have an extended schedule, it was agreed last Tuesday:

The inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the Madrid terrorist massacre in which 191 people were killed decided Tuesday to hear from more witnesses.

Paulino Rivero, chairman of the inquiry, said it will reconvene on 15 September to make a list of new witnesses.

The all-party inquiry will also decide how much longer they want to carry on investigating the events surrounding the 11 March bomb attacks.

The inquiry originally intended to meet again Tuesday after a break for summer to end the investigative phase of its work and to begin reaching conclusions about the events surrounding the massacre.

But a row blew up between the parties after many smaller opposition groups demanded the former prime minister Jose Maria Aznar should appear.

Aznar, who has agreed to give evidence, was leading the country at the time of when Islamic terrorists planted ten bombs on four rush-hour trains in what was Spain’s worst terrorist atrocity.

He has claimed that he has nothing to add to the evidence which has already been presented by other members of his former government.

His Popular Party also claimed the inquiry should hear from more witnesses – though the ruling Socialists disagreed.

I know it sounds weird, but let me repeat: it’s the Socialist party, now in power but in opposition at the time, who doesn’t want Aznar to testify, even though he was the prime minister on that day. Neither it wants some other key figures, such as Ignacio Astarloa, the deputy Interior minister then and who was the person in charge of all the country’s security apparatus, appearing before the panel. Can you imagine the Dems not wanting Bush or Tom Ridge on the 9-11 panel? I can’t.

Why is this happening?

Well, first of all because any further explanation would make clearer that even though Aznar’s government certainly was wrong at the end of the day about being ETA the author, it didn’t lie (if Allah says it, it must be true, right? read his excellent post): everyone thought it was ETA at first, and even the pro-basque head of the Basque country government said so early in the morning. So did too several people who had been pushing for negotiation with the Basque terrorists, that is, people who were at least sympathetic to their cause. So the canard that Aznar “lied” or “mislead” on March 11 is just as silly as the “Bush lied about Saddam’s WMDs” meme: the available intelligence at that time pointed unequivocally to ETA in the beggining, if only because they had tried twice an identical attack on trains in recent months. And Europol had warned about a possible big ETA attack before the election (in fact, it’s been a regular feature). So though most terrorism experts all over the world.

Unlike the myth that has been propagated all around, it was Angel Acebes, then Interior Minister in the Aznar cabinet, who, at 8.30 pm of the very same March 11 during a nationally televised press conference, talked about the van which was found with detonators and a tape with Koranic verses inside. As he did in several occasions during these days, as more information was available. No media organization broke the news that there was an Islamic clue, it was Aznar’s government.

The sensation that many people were getting that they were lied was due because the media (particularly the pro-Socialist leading media group PRISA, owner of the leading TV and radio networks, and the main newspaper, El País), were feeding false information and then blaming the government for not telling the truth. For example, a key moment was when the SER radio informed that according to three separate sources, a suicide bomber had been found in one of the trains but the government was covering it up. They even offered specific details like that the body was completely shaved and was wearing three sets of underwear, saying that this is what suicide bombers do. Of course, autopsies positively denied that there was any suicide bomber.

Second, because even though we know who put the bombs on the trains, the guys were a bunch of low level crooks who couldn’t have managed to do it without support and orders. And as of today, we still don’t know who gave the orders.

Third, because a collaboration between Arab terrorists and ETA cannot be ruled out. Not at all. Just as with Iraq, the so-called conventional wisdom is that Islamic fundamentalists wouldn’t do anything with a secular group. However, this chasm in cosmovision and beliefs doesn’t seem too much of a problem for the annual get together in Tehran, as Amir Taheri writes.

Fourth, because several of the people now arrested for the bombings (most blew themselves up, as you probably know) were police snitches and claim to have been informing their ‘liaisons’ about some murky dynamite trade between workers in a mine in Northern Spain and some Arab guys. And they did nothing. On Monday, the newspaper El Mundo reported that the firearms used by the terrorists (the ones that they showed off in a video taking responsibility for the attack) had been sold by a police officer.

Fifth, and most disturbing, is that these police officers who were the liaisons with the snitches had past links with the GAL, the secret shadowy group through with Socialist Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez waged dirty war against ETA. I mean, it’s the same guys who hired hitmen in Marseille to kidnap, torture and blow Basque terrorists up. Dunno, couldn’t they hire a bunch of disgruntled Arabs living in Madrid, too?

Trouble is that the current government doesn’t have much incentive to investigate, and are not too interested in having more people testify at the commision; besides of what I wrote above, it keeps the March 11 alive reminding people that their victory is somewhat linked to the slain of 200 innocent Spaniards.

Which means we may never know the truth.

What I have written above is just to prepare your minds for this:

Now, let me try my hand as a mediocre pulp fiction writer.

You have that bunch of Islamic terrorists trying to get hold of some 500 pounds of dynamite to carry out an attack- Most of them are small time drug dealers and petty thugs from Morocco. They finance their operation thanks to the generosity of their distributor, a street wise guy known as “The Chinese”, who trades snitching for the Spanish Secret Service in exchange of immunity for importing not so big loads of hashish from Morocco.

Then, there comes this guy, Rafah –who is a paid informant for the special information unit of the paramilitary police- and tells them that he knows about some guy he was in jail with, who’d be able and willing to sell the 500 pounds of dynamite for a reasonable price: some US$ 7,000 and 14 pounds of hashish. They just have to go and pick up the goods some 300 miles away, in a mining district…

The terrorist cell’s boss and spiritual guide, nicknamed “The Tunisian”, is all excited. He and another terrorist will make the journey with Rafah to meet the sellers. They don’t know it, but they are lucky. Since as early as 2002 they had been monitored by the cops, many of them shadowed, their phones listened to. But then, for some reason, the surveillance is halted one week before their trip to fix up the deal to the mining region.

The sellers of the dynamite are four, three men and a woman, all of them paid informants of the local anti-drug squad. Buyers and sellers strike the deal and iron out the details. The sellers will travel to the capital in order to make sure that the hashish is there all right and that the 7,000 dollars aren’t Mickey mouse; they do as agreed and a week or so later, everything is ready: The Tunisian sends a couple of underlings with a suitable vehicle to pick up the dynamite and some 200 detonators given by the sellers as a bonus.

At this point, not less than two police forces and the Secret Service know about the operation. The informants are all over the place, at a given moment, the terrorists and the people selling the dynamite have a meeting in a MacDonalds; out of seven people, five are snitching for some law enforcement agency. The sellers who came to the capital to check the payment are driven to an isolated cabin where the dynamite is later to be stocked. That cabin would also be the place where the terrorists will make their 15 or so bombs, with a detonation system handcrafted with cell phones.

Now, if you find the whole thing too far-fetched, ya ain’t seen nothin’man. Once you like pulp second-rate stuff, it’s like a drug. You go on begging for more. So, now, let’s go back to Rafah, the first informant, and make his controller a really dirty run-amok cop. He’s a colonel –remember, it’s a paramilitary police force- who under the previous government used to run a special unit who would kidnap suspected separatist guerrillas and torture them to death or, when that wasn’t possible, put contracts on their heads. There was that scandal, some of the cop’s friends had to face the music and he was caught barehanded in Switzerland while paying off 1,5 M US$ to buy the silence of the wives of two of them… so the man was there, waiting to appear in court…

But, well, thanks to the country’s particular bureaucratic customs, the unsavory colonel was still there and could have his Arabic informant to pave the way for those terrorists to buy their 500 pounds of dynamite.

No, come on, it’s still too realistic. We need some really mind-boggling stuff. Well, I’ll make the other cop, the boss of the anti-drug squad in the mining region, the one who controls the informants selling the dynamite, an old hand form the anti-terrorist units, a loyal and sympathetic former subordinate to the run-amok colonel…

OK, now, the Islamic terrorists go on with their plan and put the bombs in full packed commuter trains at rush hour. They kill 200 and hurt 2,500. We make that three days before the election and the government in place is accused of having called upon the massacre because of his sending 1,500 troops to Iraq and having supported the American lead coalition there. Demonstrations take place. The opposition press whips up a hysteria and there are lots of people blaming the government for the deaths. They lose the elections.

A new government is elected, the pals of the run-amok colonel. They immediately say that they’ll pull back the troops from Iraq one of these days.

But then there is another frustrated attack against a railroad. And then, nobody really knows how, the cops get a tip (Rafah?) on where the terrorists are, in a suburban condo, plotting new attacks. Special police forces go to arrest them but then, well, after a little fighting between the SWAT unit and the terrorists, a phone rings in the apartment and there is that enormous explosion that blows all the walls off and kills all the seven terrorists and one cop.

A couple of nights after the cop has his burial as a hero, someone opens the grave, tears the body apart and burns the remains…

Now, the run-amok colonel and his pal haven’t been suspended, although the informants are all behind bars. And Rafah has gone public saying that his former employers have menaced him to send a hit man to shut him up if he talks too much to the investigators.

That’s the known and documented facts of the terrorist attacks in March 11th in Madrid.

Now, let’s get on with the fiction…

Disturbing, eh? It may all be true.

(First posted at Barcepundit in English; only some minor editing, on style and references to mentioned weekdays)

What is “The Bush Doctrine?” Good question.

The Bush Doctrine refers to the core ideas informing American foreign policy since 9/11. It’s the framework that guides American strategies, decisions and debates in the Global War on Terror. Other Presidential doctrines like the Monroe Doctrine and Truman Doctrine have framed key departures from past American practice, and the Bush Doctrine is no different. While it represents an especially sharp shift away from past American approaches to the Mideast, for instance, its changes are far-reaching and extend well beyond that region.

Other Presidential doctrines have gone on to become American policy, remaining largely in force even as the parties in power and their specific tactics changed. America’s 2004 election, however, may revolve around the country’s embrace or rejection of The Bush Doctrine as a set of guiding principles.

Americans should understand The Bush Doctrine before they head to the polls. Others should understand it in order to better understand America’s viewpoint, actions, and choices in the years ahead.

Fortunately, Indepundit’s summary reduces its essentials to simple language. Indepundit’s post has deeper links and background, but let’s recap the key points:

Read the Rest…

“It’s absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we’ll get hit again and we’ll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States.” - Dick Cheney

Excuse me? I don’t think I heard that right, Mr. Vice President. I did not just hear you say, “Vote for me, or the country gets it!” Did I?

Sadly, that is the entire message of the Republican Party this election year: A vote for Kerry is a vote against America.

There is no talk of a future without the words “terror” or “war” in it. There is no talk of a past without the words “terror” or “war” in it. In the Republican vision of the world there is nothing outside the prison that a group of militant Islamists with box cutters put us into three years ago. The greatest power on the planet, and we’re reduced to lashing out at the darkness, afraid of our own shadow. And only George W. Bush cares enough about America to defend it.

In determining the fitness of any Administration for a second term, we should examine the merits of its first one. The Republican strategy is to make sure the voter does not look outside the box and examine those accomplisments. Logic and proportion must fall sloppy dead. The war on terror (and by extension the war in Iraq) are the most critical issues ever to have faced mankind. To question our tactics is un-patriotic. To think other issues might be just as important borders on treason.

“Sure we’ve been in power for four years. But this is war! We can’t be bothered with petty things like the economy and health care. We gave you a tax cut and unfunded Medicare benefits. What more do you want?”

I don’t know about anyone else, but what I want is for the person who’s had the job of President for four years to start telling me why he deserves another term without resorting to scare tactics and blackmail.

Walter Laqueur dispels some common misperceptions about terrorism and the war on terrorism in Policy Review article The Terrorism to Come:

It is not too difficult to examine whether there is such a correlation between poverty and terrorism, and all the investigations have shown that this is not the case. The experts have maintained for a long time that poverty does not cause terrorism and prosperity does not cure it. In the world’s 50 poorest countries there is little or no terrorism. … In the Arab countries (such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, but also in North Africa), the terrorists originated not in the poorest and most neglected districts but hailed from places with concentrations of radical preachers. The backwardness, if any, was intellectual and cultural — not economic and social.

These findings, however, have had little impact on public opinion (or on many politicians), and it is not difficult to see why. There is the general feeling that poverty and backwardness with all their concomitants are bad — and that there is an urgent need to do much more about these problems. Hence the inclination to couple the two issues and the belief that if the (comparatively) wealthy Western nations would contribute much more to the development and welfare of the less fortunate, in cooperation with their governments, this would be in a long-term perspective the best, perhaps the only, effective way to solve the terrorist problem.