Well Excuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuse Me.

From the man who thinks nothing of pulling down his trousers and dropping a little French turd on our Country and its heroes, while praising those that would do us harm, comes a new low. That’s right… Pepe le’Rall has found a new target for his venomous drivel… me.

It all sounds great--until you read them. Once you spend some time surfing this ocean of likeminded righties, however, you realize the awful truth: the "populist" blogosphere is cowing the mainstream media even further into submission to the powers that be.

Borg-like, the various right-wing blogs simultaneously discuss the same stories, applying identical rhetoric. They create blacklists and urge their readers and fellow bloggers to threaten and harass their targets. Surfing this cheesy world of flag-draped neo-McCarthyite HTML makes it impossible to deny Columbia Journalism Review writer Steve Lovelady's conclusion that most are "salivating morons" who form an ideological "lynch mob." Worse, many of the right-wing bloggers are flat-out liars.

Bloggers are ordinary people, many of them uneducated and with nothing interesting to say. They're sitting in their rec rooms, regurgitating and spinning what real journalists have dug up through hard work. They don't have sources, they don't report, and no one holds them accountable when they make mistakes or flat out lie. Yeah, there's a new sheriff in town. Unfortunately he's drunk, he's mean, and he works for the bad guys.

I Wonder If Bush Is On That List

The nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize are in, and this year there is a record number of nominees.

This year's list includes 36 organizations such as the International Atomic Energy Agency, in the 60th anniversary year of the atomic bombing of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II.

Also on this year's list are Indian spiritual leader Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Israeli nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu and Irish rock star Bono.

I am guessing that President Bush, the person responsible for getting rid of one of the most violent tyrants of the century, is not on that list. For most of these "thinkers" anyone who wages war can not possibly bring peace. Yet, invading Iraq, Bush has done more for the possibility of peace and freedom in the Middle East than anyone else.

Anyway, given the recent recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize, Arafat, Carter, etc, I doubt that Bush would even want to be included in that company.

Music I’ve grown to dislike.

1. Fairport Convention’s “The Deserter”…

"Don’t despise the deserter who ran from the war."

Ummmm… no. Court martial for you, followed by a long acquaintance with the bread and water circuit.

2. Jackson Browne’s “Soldier of Plenty”…

"Ahh boy… this world is not your toy. How much longer you gonna keep this world hungry for?"

He refers to a US soldier as “Boy”, blames him for keeping the world hungry and likens his mission to that of child play. Oh yeah… nice grammar Jackson… like finger nails on a chalk board.

3. “There goes old Georgetown”…

I don’t care what Princeton review says. It’s a dirty place. May the fleas of a thousand camels infest the turbans of any parent who allows their kids to attend that shameful institution.

4. “Happiness Runs” by Donovan…

"Happiness runs in a circular motion. Thought is like a little boat upon the sea. Everybody is a part of everything anyway." (Over and over in three part staggered harmony… pounding your brain with happy thoughts).

This song climbs into your noggin’ and pitches tent. Get out of my head Donovan!!! If I was to commit mass murder, I’d probbaly be wearing headphones and this song would, no doubt, be the song of choice to guide me through. I can’t believe that AT&T is using it in their new TV advert campaign. Ugggh.

5. “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree”…

Come on Arlo, can we please keep it under 5 minutes? I’ve got a Turkey to carve. Oh… and pick up your garbage ya dirty hippie.

Hey! Hey! ... Ho! Ho! ... The Syrian Military has Got to Go!

Thousands of protestors fill the streets of Beirut. They scream "Enough!" and carry signs that read "Syria Out Now!"







An opinion article by David Ignatius in today's Washington Post titled "Beirut's Berlin Wall" describes this new voice of the "Arab Street."

"We have nothing to lose anymore. We want freedom or death," says Indra Hage, a young Lebanese Christian. "We're going to stay here, even if soldiers attack us," says Hadi Abi Almouna, a Druze Muslim. "Freedom needs sacrifices, and we are ready to give them."

Brave words, in a country where dissent has often meant death. "It is the beginning of a new Arab revolution," argues Samir Franjieh, one of the organizers of the opposition. "It's the first time a whole Arab society is seeking change -- Christians and Muslims, men and women, rich and poor."

And even the most radical are starting to feel the winds of change in this "New Arab Revolution." Take Walid Jumblatt, for example. He is the leader of the Druze, a Lebanese minority group that has supported the Syrian occupation of Lebanon for the past 20 years. Jumblatt is also the head of the Lebanese Progressive Socialist Party, a self-described Marxist group founded by his father, Kumal Jumblatt. Historically, the Jumblatt clan has not been much of a friend to the US or Israel.

Ignatius interviewed Jumblatt the Younger this week, and made a startling discovery:

[S]omething snapped for Jumblatt last year, when the Syrians overruled the Lebanese constitution and forced the reelection of their front man in Lebanon, President Emile Lahoud. The old slogans about Arab nationalism turned to ashes in Jumblatt's mouth, and he and Hariri openly began to defy Damascus.

"It's strange for me to say it, but this process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq," explains Jumblatt. "I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, 8 million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world." Jumblatt says this spark of democratic revolt is spreading. "The Syrian people, the Egyptian people, all say that something is changing. The Berlin Wall has fallen. We can see it."

This self-described socialist, this Syrian occupation apologist, this enemy of the US and Israel ... this man speaks of "the start of a new Arab world?" Maybe the winds of change that are blowing from Washington to Kabul, Baghdad, and Ramalah have finally reached Beirut? Other headlines today may help to convince the skeptics:

Syrians flee Lebanon fearing reprisals after Hariri assassination

A growing exodus of Syrian workers, fearful they will be scapegoated for last week's killing of ex-premier Rafiq Hariri, threatens to cost Lebanon's construction and agriculture sectors millions of dollars.

Businessmen say many building sites are scarcely functioning amid reports of a spate of beatings, robberies and arson attacks targeting the 300,000-plus Syrian migrant workers.

Lebanon's Syrian-backed PM says he's ready to resign

Beleaguered Lebanese Prime Minister Omar Karameh said he was ready to quit in the face of intense pressure to end Syrian domination of his country and find the killers of ex-premier Rafiq Hariri.

"I am ready for the resignation once we agree on a new government in order to avoid a vacuum," Karameh told AFP.

After a meeting in the home of Druze leader Walid Jumblatt later, opposition MPs announced they were demanding the "departure of the entire (pro-Syrian) regime."

Remember the name Walid Jumblatt. History may recognize him as Lebanon's Founding Father. And why does any of this matter? Who cares about whether or not Syria remains in Lebanon? President Bush (increasingly on message these days) answered these questions during an address to the troops at the Wiesbaden Army Airfield Base in Germany today:

The sacrifices you have made will change the world for decades to come. By fighting terrorists in places like Baghdad and Karbala and Tikrit, you are making sure we do not face those enemies at home. By helping captive peoples gain their freedom, you have made a critical contribution to the history of liberty. And that means the world will be more peaceful, and our children and grandchildren will be more secure. Your success is sending a clear message throughout the Middle East, that the only force powerful enough to stop the rise of tyranny and terror, and replace hatred with hope, is the force of human freedom.

The freedom of the good people of Lebanon is directly related to the safety and security of every American and Israeli. And those who record history will one day laugh at the irony surrounding this tidal wave of freedom sweeping through the Middle East. They will giggle that it all started with a sick old man hiding in a small cave in the mountains of Afghanistan who ordered his followers to fly airplanes into buildings in an effort to destroy the United States and Israel.

Irony can be so ironic sometimes.

Let freedom reign!

Who Killed Hariri? Who Else?

Continuing in its anti-Israel vein, Patrick Seale of The Guardian finds the real killers of Hariri.

If Syria did not kill Hariri, who could have? There is no shortage of potential candidates, including far-right Christians, anxious to rouse opinion against Syria and expel it from Lebanon; Islamist extremists who have not forgiven Syria its repression of the Muslim Brotherhood in the 80s; and, of course, Israel.

The actual logic of the situation doesn't seem to intrude on Seale's analysis, specifically that it was clearly not in Israel's interest to kill Hariri. Hariri was anti-Syrian and after the election in the spring, an election that he was favored to win, was sure to push Syria to withdraw its troops. Killing Hariri was sure to destabilize Lebanon. Additionally, once he was elected, he very likely would have tried to make peace with Israel. This would have been very negative for Syria and Hizbullah. Placing the blame in Israel, simply because it

has great experience at "targeted assassinations" - not only in the Palestinian territories but across the Middle East. Over the years, it has sent hit teams to kill opponents in Beirut, Tunis, Malta, Amman and Damascus.

is ridiculous. Israel has killed terrorists in all those places, not pro-Israeli politicians. The fact that the Guardian can not recognize the difference, and the need to blame Israel are simply further example of the Guardian's anti-Israel propaganda.

Unsung Victories

Victor Hanson reviews the victories in the GWOT that do not get much mention, as well as how we can know that we are doing the right thing.

As a rule of thumb in matters of the Middle East, be very skeptical of anything that Europe (fearful of terrorists, eager for profits, tired of Jews, scared of their own growing Islamic minorities) and the Arab League (a synonym for the autocratic rule of Sunni Muslim grandees and secular despots) cook up together. If a EU president, a Saudi royal, and a Middle East specialist in the State Department or a professor in an endowed Middle Eastern Studies chair agree that the United States is "woefully naïve," "unnecessarily provocative" or "acting unilaterally," then assume that we are pretty much on the right side of history and promoting democratic reform. "Sobriety" and "working with Arab moderates" is diplo-speak for supporting or abetting an illiberal hierarchy.

Uprising in Lebanon?

According to Debkafile,

Syrian forces have begun distributing first 10,000 side-arms to 1.4 million Syrian workers in Lebanon and local pro-Damascus factions.

They acted after Lebanese opposition declared “uprising for independence,” demanding pro-Damascus government resign

If this is true (much of Debkafile needs to be taken with a grain of salt), we could be seeing the direct results of President Bush's inaugural address. How the US responds to such an uprising against Syria, will tell a lot about Bush's commitment to democracy. The US needs to commit itself to helping the Lebanese. If we don't, and instead do what we did with the Iraq uprising after Gulf War I, we will lose all credibility with Arab dissidents. This would make achieving democracy in Iran through a similar uprising virtually impossible. Conversely, standing up with a Lebanese rebellion could embolden the Iranian people to overthrow the mullahocracy.

Moving Goalposts

Throughout the GWOT, the Left has been moving the goalposts. It started with Afghanistan, and the inevitable "quagmire" there that had doomed many an empire. But since things went well there, and elections were held for the first time in the history of that country, they have had to move on to other complaints. Iraq has been full of this goalposts moving. First they said that the war would cost 10s of thousands of lives and create 110s of thousands of refugees. When that didn't happen, Baghdad was supposed to be Stalingrad. When that didn't happen, Saddam was still on the loose. After he was caught, we still need to hold elections. When the Sunnis boycotted, they said the elections were illegitimate. Now that the Sunnis have decided to participate in the government, in effect validating the elections, the chief complaint is that the Shiites are in power, and that means that we are creating another Iran.

Robert Kagan points out that just because there are Shiites in Iraq, does not mean that they are the same as the Shiites in Iran. In fact, almost none of the Iraqi Shiites want to set up a theocratic state like Iran.

One could note, for instance, what Iraqi Shiite leaders have actually been saying since their election victory, which is that they have no interest in or intention of copying the Iranian model or in making Iraq an ally of Iran. Adel Abdul Mahdi, a top Shiite leader, told CNN exactly that. He also insisted, "We don't want either a Shiite government or an Islamic government." Abdul Aziz Hakim, the leader of the Shiite alliance that won 48 percent of the vote, has pledged a "government of national unity," and already it is clear that bargaining among Iraq's constituencies is likely to produce a government with strong Kurdish as well as Sunni participation.

Additionally, the Shiite bloc is made up of very different Shiite factions, some religious and some secular. From all indications, the Shiites of Iraq consider themselves Iraqis first.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Update (from Elder of Zion #6):

Once again showing superior vision and ingenuity, the Right has leaked an internal memo stating that, from this point moving forward, they will endeavor to move “the ball” as opposed to “the goal posts” as part of their man-hour cost savings effort. The memo goes on to say that this recommendation comes courtesy of a 3 month research and development project involving countless hours of watching old Peanuts cartoons (specific episodes of interest included sequences featuring Lucy / Charley Brown relations).

Mending Fences

Denis Boyles, NRO's resident reviewer of European press has some advice on what President Bush should say to the Europeans on his "mending fences" trip.

So when the president goes to Europe to give his speech to all the EU-niks in Brussels on Tuesday, it’s important that he speak clearly - or at least clearfully. Because there are a few things he needs to say, and they can all be summed up in seven handy, easy-to-utter phrases:...

Green Light

The New York Sun points to a number of statements from the Bush Administration, including President Bush himself yesterday, that seem to suggest that they really would not mind if Israel dealt with the Iranian nuclear threat.

Global Warming vs. Science

A couple of days ago Europe fully embraced the further damaging of their already fragile economies by implementing the Kyoto Accords. Even if one accepts the premise that anthropogenic global warming exists, the net effects of Kyoto on the environment will be nil since China, India and most of the not-yet industrialized - but rushing to industrialize - world is exempt from this treaty. So in effect, Europe has just imposed another huge tax on its economies, all for something that is scientifically in doubt.

One of the main legs on which the global warming argument rests is a graph published by Michael Mann, a geoscientist, that supposedly shows temperatures constant over the last 100 years, and then a sharp rise over the last century - the Hockey stick. It is undoubtedly a very pretty graph, and one that is alarming. Unfortunately for the alarmists, its wrong.

In 2003, Stephen McIntyre, a Toronto minerals consultant and amateur mathematician, and Ross McKitrick, an economist at Canada's University of Guelph, jointly published a critique of the hockey stick analysis. Their conclusion: Mr. Mann's work was riddled with "collation errors, unjustifiable truncations of extrapolation of source data, obsolete data, geographical location errors, incorrect calculations of principal components, and other quality control defects." Once these were corrected, the Medieval warm period showed up again in the data.

Of course, all those who question Mann and his hockey stick are instantly accused of heresy and derided as shills of oil companies, if not worse. Clearly there needs to be some scientific debate about the issue, yet because of the politicization of global warming none is possible. Michael Chrichton gave a great speech two years ago at Caltech entitled Aliens Cause Global Warming that perfectly describes the problems of politicizing science.

And so, in this elastic anything-goes world where science-or non-science-is the hand maiden of questionable public policy, we arrive at last at global warming. It is not my purpose here to rehash the details of this most magnificent of the demons haunting the world. I would just remind you of the now-familiar pattern by which these things are established. Evidentiary uncertainties are glossed over in the unseemly rush for an overarching policy, and for grants to support the policy by delivering findings that are desired by the patron. Next, the isolation of those scientists who won't get with the program, and the characterization of those scientists as outsiders and "skeptics" in quotation marks-suspect individuals with suspect motives, industry flunkies, reactionaries, or simply anti-environmental nutcases. In short order, debate ends, even though prominent scientists are uncomfortable about how things are being done.

And just imagine, if Al Gore were elected President in 2000, the US would now also be on its way to damaging its economy in the service of a phenomenon which may not even exist.

Hippies vs. Capitalists

A bunch of Greenpeace protesters learned the hard way not to get in the way of capitalism at work.

WHEN 35 Greenpeace protesters stormed the International Petroleum Exchange (IPE) yesterday they had planned the operation in great detail.

What they were not prepared for was the post-prandial aggression of oil traders who kicked and punched them back on to the pavement.

"We bit off more than we could chew. They were just Cockney barrow boy spivs. Total thugs," one protester said, rubbing his bruised skull. "I've never seen anyone less amenable to listening to our point of view."

Iran and Syria Race to be Next ...

It's on folks ... Iran and Syria are involved in a race to become the next Middle Eastern rogue state that attracts US military attention. Bewildering as it is, the evidence mounts each passing day:

Iran to aid Syria against threats

"We are ready to help Syria on all grounds to confront threats," Iranian Vice-President Mohammad Reza Aref said after meeting Syrian PM Naji al-Otari.

Syria Is Blamed in the Slaying in Lebanon

The White House called the assassination of the former prime minister in downtown Beirut "an attempt to stifle these efforts to build an independent, sovereign Lebanon free of foreign domination." France called for an international investigation. Lebanese dissidents and Washington legislators pointed directly at Syria, as did many in Jerusalem.

Iran Threatens to Shoot Down U.S. Drones

"Most of the shining objects that our people see in Iran's airspace are American spying equipment used to spy on Iran's nuclear and military facilities," the minister told reporters. "If any of the bright objects come close, they will definitely meet our fire and will be shot down. We possess the necessary equipment to confront them," Yunesi said.

Lebanon, Syria's slave state, plans to have general elections in May and Iran will be having their version of phony "elections" in June. Both will be ideal opportunities to test President Bush's newly established freedom doctrine, if the good people of Lebanon and Iran choose to rise up against the evil dictators currently ruling their respective countries.

Could this be the summer of freedom in Beirut and Tehran?

Stay tuned kids ... it's all going down soon.

What's long and hard and full of sea men?

Jimmy Carter

The UN Mix

Mark Steyn once again takes on the thuggish nature of the UN.

It's a good basic axiom that if you take a quart of ice-cream and a quart of dog faeces and mix 'em together the result will taste more like the latter than the former. That's the problem with the UN. If you make the free nations and the thug states members of the same club, the danger isn't that they'll meet each other half-way but that the free world winds up going three-quarters, seven-eighths of the way. Thus the Oil-for-Fraud scandal: in the end, Saddam Hussein had a much shrewder understanding of the way the UN works than Bush and Blair did.

Syria News

In response to the assasination of Rafik Hariri (whether or not the Syrians actually did it), the US has announced that it is withdrawing its ambassador.

Legitimacy

Since the election of Mahmoud Abbas, the "international community" has been pressuring Israel to make concessions to the Palestinians, and Sharon has been complying with these demands. The concessions are ostensibly meant to give legitimacy to him among the Palestinians. Caroline Glick asks an excellent question about that:

Why does Abbas, who (according to the so-called international community) was legitimately and overwhelmingly elected in a free and open and democratic election, need legitimacy? Isn't the 66 percent of the vote he garnered in a more or less uncontested race legitimacy enough?

What are these concessions for then?

Additionally, Glick points out that Abbas has undertaken to fight terror. Yet,

[i]f Abbas is supposed to be convincing the Palestinians that they have to reject terrorism, it seems odd for him to be insisting that Israel conduct a mass release of convicted terrorists, let alone murderers. Abbas justifies this demand by claiming that these men and women are Palestinian heroes and that his people won't accept their remaining in prison.

Yet his acceptance of the notion that these war criminals are heroes of the Palestinian people makes it hard to imagine that he has anything but admiration for the crimes they committed – namely acts of terrorism against Israelis. Far from opposing terrorism and being poised to purge the scourge from Palestinian society, in his first act as the legitimate, democratically elected, anti-terror, reform leader, Abbas is sticking out his neck to support terrorism.

It seems that once again we are going down the Oslo road - Israel makes real concessions for Palestinian promises that are never fulfilled. As we have already seen, such a strategy does not lead to peace.

Evolution of Anti-Semitism

Dan Pipes has put forth several interesting observations regarding the historic transformation of the makeup of Anti-Semitism. It has been observed several times on this site that the hatred of Jews seems to be taking a major directional shift from the Right to the Left. Pipes agrees, embellishes and goes on to delineate how this and other trends could ultimately affect even Jews living here in the U.S.

Syria

Over the last few months, the US has been putting more pressure on Syria. The UN Security council, passed a resolution urging Syria to remove its troops from Lebanon (which Syria basically ignored). President Bush specifically mentioned Syria in his SOTU address. And there have been reports of authority given to US commanders in Iraq to execute attacks in Syria. After today's bombing of the former Lebanese PM, the US is once again putting pressure on Syria. Perhaps this pressure on Syria is elated to our issues with Iran. If the US could get Syria to withdraw from Lebanon, and in effect cease its support for Hizbullah, it would make military action against Iran that much easier for either the US or Israel since Iran would be less able to use Hizbullah to retaliate against Israel.

Columbia's Liberal Education

Alan Dershowitz takes on Columbia University's virulent anti-Israel bias.

Thank goodness the Israelis don't have to make peace with Columbia University's department of Middle East and Asian languages and cultures. All the Israelis have to do is make peace with the Palestinian Authority. Several influential members of Columbia's Middle East faculty are so extreme that they regarded even the warmongering terrorist Yasser Arafat as too soft on Israel.

Helpful as Usual

Despite the fact that it has been referred to as "the A team" of terrorism, France still refuses to put Hizbullah on its list of terror organizations.

Babs hits a home run

Sometimes when you have a horrific month, in the form of national embarrassment in front of a national audience, you need to just rear back and swing for the fences. Well, our friend Barbra Boxer had such a month, (ref. Condi Rice proceedings), so she closed her eyes... and swung for that center field wall. To be honest, I expected a big time strike 3 call. Instead, I think the old girl hit herself a homer.

The Global War on Terror goes on ... and no one notices

Did I miss something?

Or did we all?

Well, I think we did.

And I think you will too, once you realize that the following new stories were never reported on the evening news, nor in the mainstream press:

Iran captured 3 British Ships ... Israel shot down 2 Syrian Migs ... Iran and Russia tout "military cooperation" ... Evidence ties Iran and Syria to Iraq terror acts ... Palestinians fear Iranian assassination plot against Abbas ... Iranian head-of-state calls for students to become "martyrs"

It's disgusting that the news media has chosen to ignore these real-life news events that our children will (hopefully) read about in their history books. Instead, we get up-to-the-minute Michael Jackson child molestation updates :(

A few examples for ya:

Iran emerging as major threat to post-election Iraq
(registration required)

In December 2004, Iran captured three British Navy vessels in Shatt al Arab, long the source of dispute between Baghdad and Teheran. Iran has released the crews but has refused to return the vessels. ... Coalition sources said Iran's military appears to be on wartime alert along its border with Iraq. They said Iran has sparked provocations along the Iraqi border and had sent thousands of agents into Iraq to influence the nationwide elections on Jan. 30. ... Coalition military sources said Iran has stepped up patrols along the border with Iraq, particularly the Shatt al Arab waterway. The sources said Iran engages in constant surveillance and infiltration of Iraq's eastern borders. "I envision clashes between Iran and Iraq in 2005," a coalition commander said.

Israel downed 2 Syrian MiGs last September over sea
(and Russia is arming the Syrians)

Diplomatic sources said Israel Air Force F-16 multi-role fighters intercepted and downed two Syrian MiG-29 fighter-jets last year. The sources said the dogfight took place in September 2004 over the eastern Mediterranean Sea. ... The sources said the air battle took place when Israel Air Force fighter-jets buzzed the Syrian city of Latakia, a port used by Iran for the shipment of weapons to Hizbullah. ... Diplomatic sources said the Syrian losses led President Bashar Assad to accelerate efforts to procure advanced anti-aircraft systems from Russia. ..."Russia has cooperated with Syria for decades, and my country is convinced that Syria has a strong right to get defensive weapons," Russian ambassador in Tunisia Aleksei Tserub said.

Iran acknowledges military ties with Russia for first time
(registration required)

Iran's ambassador to Russia described defense and military cooperation between the two countries. It was the first time a senior Iranian official asserted that the two countries were engaged in defense and military projects. "Russian-Iranian cooperation is also developing in the military and technical sphere," Iranian Ambassador Gholamreza Shafei said. ... On Jan. 29, Iran and Russia signed an agreement for the sale of a Russian telecommunications satellite to Iran. Shafei said the $132 million Zohreh project was an example of space cooperation between Moscow and Teheran.

Iraq identifies Iranian, Syrian terrorists arrested during elections

"As far as I know, one of those who blew himself up was from Chechnya; another one was from Sudan; and a third person, who was killed, was a Syrian," [Iraqi Interior Minister Falah al-Naqib] said. Another Syrian was arrested. ... During one raid last week, Iraqi National Guard troops seized 16 trucks filled with weapons, explosives and cash. ... According to Iraqi authorities, the people involved in the arms smuggling admitted to having ties to Iranian intelligence ... The captured smugglers provided details of the activities of the Al Fajer, a branch of Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security, which is working to recruit Iraqis for terrorist operations.

PA fears Hizbullah to target Abbas

Palestinian Authority security officials on Wednesday expressed fear that Hizbullah and Iran were planning to kill PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas in order to thwart attempts to revive the peace process. ... "Hizbullah and Iran are not happy with Abbas's efforts to achieve a cease-fire with Israel and resume negotiations with Israel," a top PA security official told The Jerusalem Post. "That's why we don't rule out the possibility that they might try to kill him if he continues with his policy."

Iran's Political and Military Leadership Call for Martyrdom

In a recent statement to the 8th Congress on Martyred Students, Iran's Leader Ali Khamenei praised the culture of shahada (committing martyrdom operations), and called upon students to follow the path of martyrs. Speaking at a memorial service at the University of Qom, a senior Iranian Revolutionary Guards general, Shabani, called for the training and education of students as martyrs.

Thank you Hollywood!

From the hills looking down upon Hollywood, Citizen's United is sending a message to (as they say in London) our right honorable friends from the party opposite:



Gotta love it! :)

Hudna Update 2

As expected, Hamas is not just sitting around during this ceasefire.

TEL AVIV — Hamas has launched an effort to accelerate missile production in the Gaza Strip.

Israeli military sources said Hamas has used Israel's ceasefire pledge to rebuild its military capabilities. The sources said this includes production of the Kassam-class short-range missiles, anti-tank rockets and mines.

Peace Hopes

Charles Krauthammer explains why the Palestinians came back to the negotiating table.

Was not Barak the good guy? And Sharon the tough guy? Surprise. Arabs respect toughness. Sharon launched a massive invasion of the Palestinian territories after the Passover massacre of 2002. Western experts and the media were practically unanimous that this would achieve nothing.

Completely wrong. In fact, it is precisely Israel's aggressive counterattack against Palestinian terrorists, coupled with the defensive fence (which has prevented practically all suicide attacks wherever it has been built), that has brought us to this point of hope.

And in abandoning the intifada and returning to negotiations, the Palestinians came back with different demands.

The second intifada was fought under the old land-for-peace slogan: The terrorism would stop only when Israel agreed to full territorial withdrawal to the 1949 lines, a Palestinian state, Jerusalem as the capital and God knows what else. The Palestinians got none of this. They got death and destruction instead. What do the Palestinians now demand from Israel in return for a cease-fire? That Sharon stop hunting down and killing terrorist leaders. Not land for peace. Peace for peace.

Of course, this does not mean that peace will suddenly break out. Until the Palestinians come to a complete acceptance of Israel, and abandon their oft-repeated goals of its destruction, there will not be peace - not matter how much land is given to them, or how many terrorists are released from jail.

Academic Freedom

The Ward Churchill controversy seems to be gaining steam. The new line of the academic left, picked up by CNN and its likes, is that its good to have people like Churchill teaching at universities because students need to be exposed to bad ideas also. George Neumayr responds to this absurd notion.

On Wednesday night, CNN's Aaron Brown discussed the Ward Churchill controversy with guest Dahlia Lithwick of Slate.com. He asked a question of her that produced a perfect description of modern universities. Brown: "Just on the face of it academic freedom ought to embrace even dumb things, I suppose. Is that right?" Lithwick: "That's sort of the cornerstone of the notion of what university is about, Aaron."

This cornerstone isn't exactly of an ancient coloring. It wasn't laid at Oxford, Bologna or Cambridge -- the scholars who started these schools would be surprised to learn that the promotion of irrationality is the university's founding purpose. No, this cornerstone was laid more recently at, say, Berkeley, and on its wobbly footing professors have been giving impressionable minds the chance to experience stupidity ever since.

That embracing dumb ideas is the cornerstone on which universities are now built explains why those who exercise reason and demand the observance of rational standards are treated as the only real threats to academic freedom. It explains why tenured professorships are meted out not on the basis of intelligence but its absence -- on a kind of promise not to use one's mind should it conflict with reigning academic dogmas. Playing dumb is now an academic job requirement. Literally dumb: you must not say or see certain things.

At this point it has been shown that besides comparing the victims of 9/11 to "little Eichmanns", Churchill has fabricated a historical event, lied in court documents, and faked his heritage (he is not actually an Indian). The interesting question is how a man with such views, and without a PhD get not only tenure, but a department chairmanship at the University of Colorado.

The Left's Causes

Nelson Ascher at EuroPundits speculates on the causes of the Left's anti-Americanism.

Those whom the fall of the Berlin Wall had left orphans of a cause, spent the next decade plotting the containment of the US. It was a complex operation that involved the (in many cases state-sponsored) mushrooming of NGOs, Kyoto, the creation of the ICC, the salami tactics applied against America’s main strategic ally in the Middle-East, Israel, through the Trojan Horse of the Oslo agreements, the subversion of the sanctions against Iraq etc. I’m not as conspiratorially-minded as to think that all these efforts were in any way centralized or that they had some kind of master-plan behind them. It was above all the case of the spirit of the times converging, through many independent manifestations, towards a single goal. Nonetheless we can be sure that, after those manifestations reached a critical mass, there has been no lack of efforts to coordinate them.

And so, spontaneously up to a point, anti-Americanism became the alternative ideology that came to fill in the vacuum left by the failure of traditional, USSR-based communism and its Maoist or Trotskyite satellites. Before 1989, the global left had something to fight for: either the strengthening of the communist states or the correction of what they called their bureaucratic distortions. To fight for something is simultaneously to fight against whatever threatens it, and thus, the leftists were anti-Western and anti-Americans too, anti-capitalistic in short.

Now, whatever they wanted to defend or protect doesn’t exist anymore. They have only things to destroy, and all those things are personified in the US, in its very existence. They may, outwardly, fight for some positive cause: save the whales, rescue the world from global heating and so on. But let’s not be deceived by this: they choose as their so-called positive causes only the ones that have both the potential of conferring some kind of innocent legitimacy on themselves and, much more important, that of doing most harm to their enemy, whether physically or to its image.

Media Bias

Elder is right that the very framing of the ceasefire as a "mutual" one is the media's framing of the conflict in terms defined by the Palestinians. Unfortunately, this is not a new thing. Bruce Thornton reviews Covering the Intifada. How the Media Reported the Palestinian Uprising, a book by Joshua Muravchik of the American Enterprise Institute, that deals with exactly that topic.

How a beleaguered, tiny Israel has been turned into a pariah state is a fascinating historical question. The answer lies in the many cultural pathologies of the Western democracies—anti-Semitism, sentimental Third-Worldism, Marxist anti-colonialism, and anti-Americanism are just a few of the irrational prejudices, bankrupt ideologies, and moral idiocies that have rendered the Middle East's only full-fledged democracy and free society into an international villain, the gnat the U.N. and the international left obsessively strain even as they swallow an endless number of murderous totalitarian camels.

Of the many transmitters of these pathologies, the Western electronic and print media have been the most destructive, shaping as they do the perceptions of the everyday voters who ultimately determine their countries' policies. The ideological bias, sloppiness, and often the sheer ignorance of the reporters, editors, and news anchors who fashion the news for Americans have created a distorted view of Israel and her predicament, one that frequently compromises American foreign policy in the Middle East.
[...]
Perhaps the worst habit that compromises the media's coverage of this crisis is the moral equivalency it grants to both sides of the conflict. Such equivalency is attractive to journalists who then can pretend that they are merely being objective and treating both sides the same. Yet both sides aren't morally the same: there is a right and a wrong, an aggressor and a defender in this conflict, a distinction supported by the facts of history. Thus to treat an inadvertent death caused by self-defense the same as a premeditated murder is not objectivity but a despicable moral idiocy akin to considering a surgeon and a knife-wielding mugger morally the same because both cut with edged weapons.

It seems to me that the acceptance of such media bias stems in large part from the ignorance of most people regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict. Clearly the media has not helped out in erasing that ignorance.

The implication of “cease fire”?

Once again, the Palestinian lobby is winning the war of world opinion through the skillful use of language. Throughout the past few days the MSM insists on referring to the situation in Israel as a mutual cease fire. I take umbrage at this characterization. To my understanding, Israel has never had a policy of aggression towards Palestinians. As such, this is not a change in the Israeli stance. When the IDF kills a Palestinian terrorist they are not killing a Palestinian who happens to be a terrorist. They are killing a terrorist who happens to be a Palestinian. If I was to become a terrorist, and I went to Israel with the intention of committing an atrocity, I would hope that Israel would take action against me. In my scenario, the fact that I am an American would have little relevance and Israel’s hunting me down would not be an aggression against America. Instead it would be a defensive measure against terrorism. That being said, am I to understand that the IDF is going to stop hunting terrorists? Is this what is meant by cease fire? If so, then this is a very dark day in the war on terror. If this is not the case (and I am hopeful that it is not), then the distinction must be made in a clear and concise way. Israel’s policy of allowing the Palestinian leadership to rewrite history in order to save face is an insult to all those that bravely fight in the war on terror as well as to those that have fallen as victims in that war. Functionally, this policy of public relations appeasement will result in the same way that all appeasement policies do… in failure.

Hudna Update

Seems the hudna didn't last long.

At least twenty-five mortar shells and Kassam rockets have landed on Gaza Strip settlements since 2:00 a.m. Thursday, hitting settlements in Gush Katif, southern Gaza, and northern Gaza, according to the IDF.

The pretext for this, as if one wouldn't have been invented, is the death of a Hamas terrorist from a work accident, and the shooting of a Palestinian who was approaching a "settlement" in Gaza. The Palestinian police did nothing to stop the firing, or pursue those who were firing. So how many violations of the ceasefire do the Palestinians get before Israel is allowed to respond?

Ceasefire

In the past few weeks there has been much optimism over a renewed chance for peace with the Palestinians. The election of Mahmoud Abbas, Sharon's disengagement plan, the recently declared ceasefire (though nothing was actually signed, and Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade say that it does not apply to them), and Abbas's attempts to stop incitement and calls to murder in the Palestinian press have all once again contributed to the sense that maybe peace is around the corner. But is this really the case? Is peace now possible, simply because of the death of one man and the election of his subordinate? Or is this once again heading down the road of Oslo - a road that led to one of the worst wars in Israel's existence.

At this point, it seems to me that despite all the sanguinity, nothing has really changed. The Palestinians have not come to an acceptance of Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state. Their fundamental goal remains not coexistence with Israel, but replacing Israel. In poll after poll, in statement after statement, they still yearn for the destruction of Israel. This is one of the fruits of Oslo. Instead of using the seven years between the signing of the Oslo Accords and the final status talks at Camp David and Taba to inculcate an acceptance of Israel, Arafat used the time to raise another generation on rejectionism, hatred, and genocidal anti-Semitism. Does anyone think that this has disappeared with his death? The main cause of the desire for a hudna - a temporary ceasefire - on the part of the Palestinians has been the separation barrier and Israel's military operations that have decimated Hamas and the other terrorist groups. Now that they have a ceasefire, they can (and will) use the time to regroup, retrain, and adjust to resume their war on Israel.

But now that the ceasefire is in place there will be a push by the Quartet to push the roadmap. And once again, there is a great danger that all the old habits of Oslo will be repeated: Israel will be forced to give up tangibles for Palestinian promises. And once those promises are broken, the Quartet - especially Europe and the UN - will ignore them, and move on to pressuring Israel into more concessions. There will then be the demands to move on to final status talks that will fail because Palestinian society will still be clinging to their hopes of destroying Israel. The one hope is that President Bush will live up to the doctrine that he has been propounding, and not force the Palestinians to truly reform their society. Of course, such reformation is a long term prospect, and much of the world has little patience.

So what then can be done? What is the solution to this conflict? I had a discussion about this tonite with my brother-in-law, an Israeli living in Jerusalem. He agreed that this was a repeat of Oslo, but his solution was a complete disengagement - finishing the separation barrier and declaring that Gaza whatever parts of Judea and Samaria Israel decides are Palestinian. And that’s it. The Palestinians will have their state, and will be completely separated from Israel and the conflict would be over. It seems to me that even if such a separation were possible, it would not end the conflict, but instead a prescription for a larger war. Undoubtedly, Palestinians would acquire rockets from Iran and Hizbullah, and would be in range of all Israeli population centers. Does any still believe that Israel would be allowed by the "international community" to respond to rocket attacks on its citizens? And so, under great condemnation, Israel would be forced to do in the West Bank what it did in South Lebanon in 1982.

My solution is one that does not fit with current mores and politically correct thinking. I believe that the only way to resolve this conflict, short of a complete transformation of the entire Arab world, would be to follow something like the Elon Plan. In effect, Jordan would once again become the legitimate representative of the Palestinians, and would repatriate all the Palestinians living in Judea and Samaria to Jordan. Israel would then annex Judea and Samaria and have a realistic and defensible border - the Jordan River. I know that most will argue that this is politically, and otherwise impossible. But three years ago a separation barrier was also impossible. There could be a number of ways to accomplish this, and it would not have to be done by force (for example, monetary inducements to relocate). Yes, this is a radical resolution, but at this point, and for the foreseeable future, it is the only one that offers the prospects of peace.

Rebuttal assistance.

Those that know the Elder know that he passes much of his free time playing tennis, often followed by an hour or two of social beer guzzling. Currently, I am playing for a team that often finds itself immersed in alcohol induced heated political debates after our practices or matches. Most of the guys tend to lean to the right to some degree, while a couple could use a V-8 to get themselves off the left. One of the more outspoken players is a guy named Andy. He is well spoken, a good listener and seemingly buys in to pretty much any talking point that the left has to offer. He is a teacher in the Boston area (surprise… surprise) and actually happens to be one of my favorite guys on the team. Oh the point, you ask? So this week, in response to our “call to arms” email he posted several suggested talking points for the after-tennis beer session. To that effect, I figured I would take a pre-emptive strike and post them here in the hope that the cumulate readership can come up with something witty or insightful (in the form of a rebuttal). I have a zinger or two of my own, but I figured I would infuse one or two from the peanut gallery, if you guys step up. Oh and… be nice please… no name calling… just thoughtful rebuttaling. In any case, bellow is an excerpt from his post…

I hope we can all get some beers afterwards and continue our political debates
after the match. I'd like to cover the following areas:

1. Taxes are a good thing, they pay for shit. When I received 600 dollars from Bush, I sent it back with an angry note in protest. "I do not want a tax cut until you take care of the billion dollar deficit."

2. The War in Iraq. I thought Osama Bin Laden was responsible for 9/11?

3. Bill Clinton was a good President. Who cares if he got a blow job?

4. Women should have their own private rooms in gyms.

5. The ACLU is a force for good in this country, both historically and today as they fight against the Patriot Act.

6. White men still have it better than anyone else.

7. Why the Pope is the son of Satan.

“Are you for real”ity TV?

Western civilization seems to have a battered wife syndrome. Why do we insist on convincing the world that we are the bad guys over and over again? Guantanamo Bay, the reality show? What’s next? Live Book Burning TV? Or nightly fireside chats with Professor Ward Churchill? Maybe an instructional series on proper Infidel decapitation technique? Maybe, instead of freaking out over Janet Jackson’s saggy breast, the letter writers amongst us could focus on a broadcast that is truly damaging. Uuugh!! Big breath… I relinquish the soap box.

Elimination of Stupid Genes

The dedication of this fan is stunning.

Rigid and Flaccid

A thriving and diverse intellectual community is essential for a functioning democracy to thrive. Unfortunately, the intellectual community in the form of the Universities in the US is anything but diverse.

Nudnikette's take on that issue:
The excellent blog of the New Criterion, Armavirumque, has been posting on the subject of the Left-leaning infestation of academia, personified as of late by the twin peaks of Ward Churchill and the stars of the Columbia University documentary "Columbia Unbecoming" Joseph Massad, Hamid Dabashi, and others. So here is my own little addendum: the atmosphere of complete political uniformity in elite American universities is very real. Expression of dissenting ideas is received with deep perplexity from even the friendliest circles. This party control breeds fear, chiefly among graduate students whose future careers and livelihoods are dependent on the regard of their benefactors (read: academic advisors, i.e. professors). The result is a subtle yet constant ripple of anxiety, an awareness that calls for a graduate student to be always on guard, wittily parrying off any comments that might lead to a political discussion and basically hiding the true nature of one's - horror - real opinion even amongst peers. If this smacks of Soviet Russia you are right on the money, with one major difference - it is not your life, only your future employment that is at stake. The source of intimidation, however, is the same: Leftist enlightened intelligentsia. But the fear, mendacity and evasiveness that are necessary for a right wing graduate student to survive in the Humanities of today are the opposite of intellectual honesty, integrity and diversity. Where have all the intellectuals gone?

Richard Posner, on his blog, makes some more comments about the state of academia.

But no one who has spent much time around universities thinks they've ever "encourage[d] uncircumscribed intellectual explorations." The degree of self-censorship in universities, as in all institutions, is considerable. Today in the United States, most of the leading research universities are dominated by persons well to the left of Larry Summers, and they don't take kindly to having their ideology challenged, as Summers has now learned to his grief. There is nothing to be done about this, and thoughtful conservatives should actually be pleased. As John Stuart Mill pointed out in On Liberty, when one's ideas are not challenged, one's ability to defend them weakens. Not being pressed to come up with arguments or evidence to support them, one forgets the arguments and fails to obtain the evidence. One's position becomes increasingly flaccid, producing the paradox of thought that is at once rigid and flabby. And thus the academic left today.

An "Iraqi" Voter

A very interesting article, which raises some questions about identity, of an Israeli of Iraqi origin who voted in the recent elections.

The New Iraqi Army

At a speech at University of Massachusetts, Senator Kennedy demanded to know

"If America can train the best military in the world in 13 weeks, why can't we train the Iraqis in eight or 12 or 15 months to fight and die for their country?"

And by this question he demonstrates either his mendacity and political opportunism, or his complete ignorance of military affairs. W. Thomas Smith describes how difficult it actually is to train an army.

Granted, it takes approximately 13 weeks to transform young civilians into "basically trained" U.S. Marines. Nine weeks for U.S. soldiers.

But that is only the beginning. Newly minted American warriors must then attend advanced training where they learn the finer points of combat. Combined with boot camp, that can take anywhere from six months to a year, and even then, the new warrior is only a private first class in the Army or a Marine lance corporal (a sub-corporal, equivalent in rank to an Army PFC). Training for incredibly complex special operations missions takes longer, as does the amount of time required to develop noncommissioned officers (NCOs) and commissioned officers who can effectively lead small units into battle.

This doesn't even begin to address the years of training and experience it takes to develop seasoned captains, majors, and lieutenant colonels, even more so, full-bird colonels and generals. Fact is, it would take years — perhaps decades — to build a ground combat force like the U.S. Army or Marines.

Undoubtedly, training an Iraqi army is an important goal. However, to expect that it could be done in 18 months is simply absurd. If one looks back at modern Arab military effectiveness, it would be surprising if it would be possible at all to train an effective Iraqi army in the short to medium term.

In every conflict that they have engaged in since the end of World War II, Arab armies have proven themselves to be completely incompetent. Probably the most comprehensive account of their performance is Kenneth Pollack's book Arabs at War. Pollack attributes this ineffectiveness in large part to societal reasons that express themselves in the inability of Arab forces to fight other than from a carefully rehearsed script and to conduct combined arms co-ordination. Norvell B. De Atkine has some similar observations about the societal influence on Arab military ineffectiveness.

It is true that all of those examples raised by Pollack and De Atkine are from armies of totalitarian regimes, as opposed to a now free Iraq. But just changing the political organization of a country does not change its culture. In the long term, if Iraq can become more modern and less tribal it may be possible to create an effective army there. But in the short to medium term, a new Iraqi army, no matter who trains them will still be an Arab army.

A Bad Week

Noemie Emery describes the bad week that the Democrats just had.

THE DEMOCRATS' WORST WEEK AND a half since Black Tuesday (November 2, 2004, when the U.S. election returns came in) began on January 18, when Barbara Boxer took on Condi Rice in the Senate, and ended on Black Sunday (January 30, 2005, when Iraq held its first free election). In one comparatively short window of time, the Democrats managed to exhibit all of the class, grace, wisdom, presence, good sense, and strategic and tactical brilliance that had allowed them to move from absolute parity after the 2000 election to the loss of the House, Senate, and White House in the 2004 election, and left them apparently poised to lose even more. You too can turn yourself into a loser if you study and follow their recent behavior, and the cases to look at are these...

It seems that the Dems keep having these types of weeks, and almost every single time the wound is self-inflicted.

They're Still Here?

All I can say in response to this article is don't let the door hit you on the ass on your way out.

Melanie Redman, 30, assistant director of the Epilepsy Foundation in Seattle, said she had put her Volvo up for sale and hopes to be living in Toronto by the summer. She and her Canadian boyfriend, a Web site designer for Canadian nonprofit companies, had been planning to move to New York, but after Nov.2, they decided on Canada instead.

"I'm doing it," she said. "I don't want to participate in what this administration is doing here and around the world. Under Bush, the U.S. seems to be leading the pack as the world spirals down."

I guess these "progressives" are unhappy about bringing freedom and democracy to the Arab world.

Phase III in the Global War on Terror

If Afghanistan was phase I and Iraq was phase II, many are wondering: "what's our next move in the Global War on Terror?"

Well, the President gave us an idea this week when he announced during the State of the Union address that: "Iran remains the world's primary state sponsor of terror — pursuing nuclear weapons while depriving its people of the freedom they seek and deserve... And to the Iranian people, I say tonight: As you stand for your own liberty, America stands with you,"

And now Fox New is reporting that members of Congress are looking to make this the law of the land.

Aides for Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., said the senator is drafting legislation that would resemble a bill he introduced in the last congressional session, the "Iran Freedom and Support Act." Though the language in the new bill is being worked out, it is expected to echo the prior bill in that it would include financial assistance for opposition groups. The original bill did not make it to the Senate floor.

"By supporting the people of Iran, and through greater outreach to pro-democracy groups, we will hopefully foster a peaceful transition to democracy in Iran," Santorum said in a statement regarding his new proposal. "The bill also notes the futility of working with the Iranian government."

"the futility of working with the Iranian government" ... gotta love it. I hope that language makes it into the final draft of the bill! And for God's sake, take an up or down vote on this one!!!

More to come on this one ... LOTS MORE!!!

Wonder Where They Will Come Up With the Money

It seems that Iraq isn't as thrilled with the UN and its vaunted Oil-for Food Program as the UN thinks it should be. In fact, after all the revelations of fraud and misplacement of funds by the UN, Iraq wants its money back. Kofi Annan, of course, "vowed to get to the bottom of wrongdoing by U.N. staff."

Are They Still Saying Something?

In the past four years, the Left has accelerated the pace of discrediting itself and its ideas. Victor Hanson thinks that after all the anti-American stories, after all the overhyped rhetoric, and after all the absurd exaggerations, people are simply no longer listening to what the Left says. They have just been wrong too many times.

Do we even remember "all that" now? The lunacy that appeared after 9/11 that asked us to look for the "root causes" to explain why America may have "provoked" spoiled mama's boys like bin Laden and Mohammed Atta to murder Americans at work? Do we recall the successive litany of "you cannot win in Afghanistan/you cannot reconstruct such a mess/you cannot jumpstart democracy there"? And do we have memory still of "Sharon the war criminal," and "the apartheid wall," and, of course, "Jeningrad," the supposed Israeli-engineered Stalingrad - or was it really Leningrad? Or try to remember Arafat in his Ramallah bunker talking to international groupies who flew in to hear the old killer's jumbled mishmash about George Bush, the meanie who had ostracized him.

Then we were told that if we dared invade the ancient caliphate, Saddam would kill thousands and exile millions more. And when he was captured in a cesspool, the invective continued during the hard reconstruction that oil, Halliburton, the Jews, the neocons, Richard Perle, and other likely suspects had suckered us into a "quagmire" or was it now "Vietnam redux"? And recall that in response we were supposed to flee, or was it to trisect Iraq? The elections, remember, would not work - or were held too soon or too late. And give the old minotaur Senator Kennedy his due, as he lumbered out on the eve of the Iraqi voting to hector about its failure and call for withdrawal - one last hurrah that might yet rescue the cherished myth that the United States had created another Vietnam and needed his sort of deliverance.

Who is Ariel Sharon?

Michael Oren has an interesting article about the true political identification of Ariel Sharon. He asserts that Sharon is not really a rightist, but in fact the inheritor of the Israeli labor Zionist tradition.

Sharon's transformation from warrior to peacemaker, making the Gaza withdrawal his personal crusade, has shocked the Israeli left, but many right-wing Israelis long anticipated that change. Raised in a secular Labor environment, Sharon was never nurtured on religious or conservative ideology, and, for all his opposition to a return to Israel's pre-1967 borders, he repeatedly conceded territories captured in the Six Day War. And, when his policies no longer enjoy public support, Sharon, unlike true rightists, pays no mind to the will of the people--a tendency historically displayed by members of Israel's socialist left. Sharon, rightists insist, is actually a Mapainik.

D'oh

Another reason for the French to be proud.

the French version of the Secret Service might be even less effective than France's military forces. When President Jacques Chirac arrived in Dakar, Senegal, yesterday, at least two members of his security detail were pickpocketed. Among the pilfered possessions: a camera and a cellphone.

Iran's Nukes

While the EU-3 continue to talk, Iran is quickly approaching the point-of-no-return in its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Today, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, a resistance group that has been fairly accurate on identifying Iran's nuclear progress is saying that Iran tested nuclear triggers.

PARIS (Reuters) - Iran has conducted successful experiments on a crucial triggering mechanism for a nuclear weapon, an exiled opposition group said on Thursday.

DoctorZin thinks that the US strategy towards Iran has been quietly enunciated over the past few months, and that issue is focusing on human rights.

German unemployment highest since World War II...

In an alarming report, Germany's unemployment rate skyrocketed to its highest levels since the end of WWII.

The adjusted unemployment rate rose to 11.4 percent, a seven-year high, while the unadjusted jobless total passed 5 million for the first time since the war.

In December, Germany had the second highest unemployment rate after Spain among the 12 countries that share the euro, at 10 percent on a comparable basis. The rate in France was 9.7 percent.

In stark contrast ...

Germany's rising unemployment contrasts with the U.S., where the jobless rate probably remained unchanged at 5.4 percent in January as 200,000 jobs were created outside farming, a Bloomberg survey of 70 economists showed.

In the U.K., the latest available comparable rate is 4.6 percent for October.

So why does the American left continue to insist that the US needs to be more like "old" Europe? When will they understand that Europe's antiquated social policies (aka. socialist programs ... aka. the government trying to run the economy) just don't work?

Counting His Blessings

It has been said that Bush has been blessed with the opponents he has had. And it seems the Democrats continue to bless him.

WASHINGTON, Feb. 1 - Howard Dean emerged Tuesday as the almost assured new leader of the Democratic National Committee, as one of his main rivals quit the race and Democrats streamed to announce their support of a man whose presidential campaign collapsed one year ago.

Why the Democrats would do this to themselves is a mystery. But the editors of NRO are begging Pretty Please.

But now he's back. And this time it isn't the supposedly unsophisticated Democratic caucus and primary voters who are swooning for Dean, but the party's insiders, the voting members of the Democratic National Committee. Freud could get an entire monograph on his theory of the "death drive" out of observing contemporary Democrats. The party is displaying an unquenchable thirst for irrelevance. Several theories have been advanced in the wake of Bush's reelection for the Democrats' troubles: a lack of seriousness on national security; an out-of-touch liberalism on social issues; an inability to sell its message in terms that connect with "red state" voters. The DNC is about to reject all these theories in favor of one of its own — all that ails the Democratic can be fixed by more of the same, only more so.

Its always preferable in a democracy to have at least two viable parties. But how does one stop the Democrats from sticking the knife further and further into their own gut?

Where Did they Go?

It seems that the most vocal critics of President Bush's Iraq policy have disappeared.

Soros, Moore, Carter are all strangely silent these past few days. In their hatred of President Bush, they - these fighters for liberty and human rights - can't even acknowledge the success of the Iraqi elections. It takes a big man to admit he is wrong, and they - and all their ilk - have shown just how small they are.

Too Quiet

Maybe it just isn't being reported, but since the election in Iraq there has not been one suicide bombing. Is this a sign of good things to come, or are the terrorists just regrouping?

I have a scream ... Iraqi style!

Brit Hume of FOX News always knows how to end a broadcast:

BRIT: And finally tonight, critics of US policy in Iraq have said that US-style democracy just can't take hold in that country. But listen to how one of the Iraqi candidates who didn't do so well is reacting.

CUT TO CLIP FROM TONIGHT SHOW [and just to set the stage, there is an Iraqi man at the podium with an Iraqi flag in the background, and he's yelling in the microphone]: "We're going to go to Fallujah, and Mosul, and Baghdad, and Basra, and Kirkuk, and Sadr City! Yeeeeeeeearrrrrrhhhhh!"

PRICELESS!

Jay In Davos

If you've never read Jay Nordlinger's annual review of the World Economic Forum in Davos, then I strongly encourage you to check out his 6-part series this past week in National Review here, here, here, here, here and here.

A few excerpts for ya:

"Think of Davos as one big, multinational New York Times editorial board, with a dash — or several dashes — of al-Jazeera thrown in."

On Sharon Stone speaking about AIDS:

Finishing up, the actress says, "If we just stopped arrogantly killing people all over the world, and channeled the money into AIDS, we would have a solution."

I imagine that "arrogantly killing people" is an allusion to the War on Terror. And I think for a minute about that phrase, "arrogantly killing people." It seems to me that two experts in arrogantly killing people were the Taliban and the Saddam Hussein regime. I think of Iraq's mass graves, the gassing of all those innocents, the putting of men into industrial shredders, feet-first (so that the torturers could hear the screaming). I think of the routineness of rape, and the cutting out of tongues for dissent, and the children's prisons.

And the Taliban? I'll say it again: There are people in this world — I suspect many of them are here in Davos — who would rather homosexuals be crushed to death by stone walls, bulldozed onto them by decree of sharia, than that they be freed by George W. Bush and the U.S. military.

But "arrogantly killing people": That sums up, better than anything I have heard, the ignorant or malicious Left's view of U.S. operations — operations designed precisely to keep bad people from arrogantly killing people.

On Saif al-Islam al-Gaddafi, son of the Lybian dictator:

And what has Gaddafi to say about the future of Israel/Palestine? He seizes on a line that is growing popular in the Arab world, and on the Western left: There's no need for two states; Israel/Palestine should be like South Africa — in which blacks and whites live in harmony; Arabs and Jews should live in harmony in the same way. This is the "final solution," says Gaddafi. (Oops.)

Of course, if Israel/Palestine becomes like South Africa — that means no more Jewish state. Which, of course, is Gaddafi's point.

On Ted Turner (to whom Jay humbly refers as the "Mouth of the South"):

Anyway, about the Mouth: Who could have told you, 20 years ago, that, between Ted Turner and Jane Fonda, Jane would turn out to be the more conservative?

And there's plenty more where that came from.

The Kerry Interview

The Tim Russert interview with John Kerry seems to have claimed one victim, although he is now on the road to recovery.

“Meet the Press” host Tim Russert is “slowly regaining consciousness” after suffering a one-hour interview with Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass) on Sunday, Mr. Russert’s doctors said today.

The NBC newsman, who is said to be resting comfortably and “doing well” at George Washington University Hospital in Washington, D.C., experienced what is being termed a “major concussion” after his head hit his desk during the hour-long conversation with the former Democratic nominee.

Amorality of the Left

"Someone who does not know the difference between good and evil is worth nothing." -- Miecyslaw Kasprzyk, Polish rescuer of Jews during the Holocaust, New York Times, Jan. 30, 2005

Much of Europe, and the American Left have come to perfectly fit that description quoted by Dennis Prager. The Left, which bills itself as "progressive" and caring is no longer able to make judgments. This is not immorality (bad morals), but amorality (the absence of morals), and this trait of the Left has recently appeared in many forms.

Since the 1960s, with few exceptions, on the greatest questions of good and evil, the Left has either been neutral toward or actively supported evil. The Left could not identify communism as evil; has been neutral toward or actually supported the anti-democratic pro-terrorist Palestinians against the liberal democracy called Israel; and has found it impossible to support the war for democracy and against an Arab/Muslim enemy in Iraq as evil as any fascist the Left ever claimed to hate.

There were intellectually and morally honest arguments against going to war in Iraq. But once the war began, a moral person could not oppose it. No moral person could hope for, let alone act on behalf of, a victory for the Arab/Islamic fascists. Just ask yourself but two questions: If America wins, will there be an increase or decrease in goodness in Iraq and in the world? And then ask what would happen if the Al Qaeda/Zarqawi/Baathists win.

A couple of days ago there was a story about a woman in Germany who was going to lose her unemployment benefits because she refused a job providing "sexual services" in a brothel. The most interesting part of the story however was this line:

The government had considered making brothels an exception on moral grounds, but decided that it would be too difficult to distinguish them from bars. As a result, job centres must treat employers looking for a prostitute in the same way as those looking for a dental nurse.

Now, I've been to a few bars in my life, but somehow I have never had much difficulty distinguishing them from brothels. Why is it that the German government could not? The same line of thinking that makes one lose the ability to distinguish a bar from a brothel makes one also lose the distinction between attacker and attacked, and between good and evil.

Fear and Self Doubt on the Left

I almost feel like the first line of this post is an opener straight out of The Onion ... but here goes:

In a startling development, self-described Liberal Democrats are starting to question whether or not they have actually been wrong about Bush and Iraq all along. The funny thing is, this is no joke. An op-ed piece in today's Chicago Sun-Times by columnist Mark Brown was the first sign of such self-doubt.

A few excerpts for ya:

"But after watching Sunday's election in Iraq and seeing the first clear sign that freedom really may mean something to the Iraqi people, you have to be asking yourself: What if it turns out Bush was right, and we were wrong?"

"I won't say that it had never occurred to me previously, but it's never gone through my mind as strongly as when I watched the television coverage from Iraq that showed long lines of people risking their lives by turning out to vote, honest looks of joy on so many of their faces."

"Maybe the United States really can establish a peaceable democratic government in Iraq, and if so, that would be worth something. Would it be worth all the money we've spent? Certainly. Would it be worth all the lives that have been lost? That's the more difficult question, and while I reserve judgment on that score until such a day arrives, it seems probable that history would answer yes to that as well."

"If it turns out Bush was right all along, this is going to require some serious penance."

Ya gotta love it.

It almost makes ya wanna ask "Would you like some fries with that CROW?"

But I still don't know whether to be thrilled about the fact that some of them are finally beginning to turn the corner, or appaulled that even the "honest looks of joy on so many of their faces" didn't convince this clown that freedom is a good thing and worth fighting for!

Gorbachev Calls Iraqi Elections “Fake”

This must be the MOST absurd story of the day ...

In an interview with the Interfax news agency, he said the elections are “very far from what true elections are. And even though I am a supporter of elections and of the transfer of power to the people of Iraq, these elections were fake.”

“I don’t think these elections will be of any use. They may even have a negative impact on the country. Democracy cannot be imposed or strengthened with guns and tanks,” the agency quoted Gorbachev as saying.

This comes from a real-live communist who was directly responsible for preventing hundreds of millions of people from participating in elections for decades in the former Soviet Union.

Is it just me, or does anyone else have a hard time listening to the final dictator of the Evil Empire talk about what constitutes a real vs. a fake election? I mean, that's like listening to Stalin talk about human rights ... or even better, Bill Clinton talk about self-restraint.

(sorry, I lost some self restraint there myself for a minute).

And the goofy comment of the day was: "In his defense, Gorbachev has more expertise than almost anyone alive today when it comes to fake elections!"

Desperation

Yesterday, terrorists in Iraq claimed that they had taken a US soldier hostage and would behead him in 72 hours if their "brother and sisters" were not released from US custody. They even showed a picture of the soldier sitting in front of a black banner, as we have seen with other hostages. Now Drudge is reporting that the "soldier" that is sitting in front of that banner is actually a toy. Seems the mujahedin are getting desperate.

Update (from the Elder of Zion #6):

Through baffling and ingenious processes, far beyond the meager mental powers of the terrorists, the Elder has uncovered the identity of the hostage. Sometimes life is just good.

Michael Moore spreading the love in former Yugoslavia

I would have thought that the vision shattering revelations of youth (there is no Santa Clause, people look ugly when they are naked) would fizzle eventually until, as an adult I would ease into a warm and fuzzy acceptance of “I’ve seen it all”. Well, I get older and every once in a while, I still have one of those conversations where you just get surprised.

So I was perusing (as I sometimes do) a Muslim chat room yesterday and came across a very nice young lady. She was 24 and married, living in Sarajevo. She was quite interesting as she was able to recount, first hand, some of the atrocities that took place there. She was pretty cool and well traveled, educated (with a masters degree in economics), modern in many ways and actually married to a Christian man (kind of remarkable given her religiously volatile surroundings). We shared some pleasant small talk banter, covering music, books and sports. Apparently she was a world class figure skater in training, as a little girl, until the war came of course.

And then, as all nice conversations do, we took a wrong turn at Albuquerque as it accidentally drifted to politics. At one point, she let it slip that she went to visit Canada last year. She was going to visit the United States as well, but changed her mind. I asked her why she did not want to visit the U.S. and she replied, “I would never spend any money that would go to your country”. As you can imagine, I was surprised to hear this. I pointed out, what I though to be the obvious, that U.S. soldiers lost their lives in order to liberate her people. Not to mention, the U.S. was directly responsible for saving her from the very atrocities, she had only moments before recounted. Why would she feel this way? To my amazement, she stated that it was not the United States that did this, it was Bill Clinton. She is forever grateful to him. Now that he is gone, she wants nothing more to do with us. I mentioned that we still have our military in the region, which play a big part in keeping things from tumbling back to where they were only a few years ago. She said that they are there in order to maintain control of the region, just like we are in Iraq… and then she referenced the Michael Moore movie.

So here is the thing, the holes in her logic are obviously of Grand Canyon proportions, but that is not the point. The point is that she did not come to these conclusions herself. Our own media, our own filmmakers, convince the very people who should be eternally grateful, to hate us.

Victory or Exit?

The Democrat's pre-buttal to President Bush's State of the Union speech revealed once again their erroneous thinking on Iraq and the GWOT. On that front, their chief demand seemed to be to define an "exit strategy". It seems that what the Democrats want is for the US to leave Iraq. Whether we win, is not that important to them. But as Frank Gaffney shows, there is nowhere to exit to.

In fact, were America actually to heed the siren's call - issued by Mr. Kennedy before Sunday's remarkable election in Iraq made doing so, at least for the moment, unimaginable - and retreat from the Iraqi front in that war, it would simply assure we will fight these enemies far closer to home and, indeed, in all likelihood here.

Let's be clear: The discredited Left, epitomized by Mr. Kennedy, proposes a reprise of their cut-and-run exit strategy in Vietnam. Just leave and if somebody else wants to take over - say, the United Nations - so be it.

History shows that the longer the US stays in an "occupation", the more likely that we succeed in establishing a viable and productive country. If we leave Iraq within the next five years we are virtually guaranteeing failure there, and more trouble in the Middle East.

Yes, But...

What happened in Iraq this past weekend was truly remarkable. Perhaps the most important Arab country held elections - something that has been unheard of in the modern Middle East. Pretty much everyone recognized the significance of this event...with the exception of the Democrats. Mark Steyn points out that these are the same people who have been wrong about everything over the last 3 years.

AND so the "looming Iraqi election fiasco" joins "the brutal Afghan winter" and "the brutal Iraqi summer" and "the seething Arab street" and all the other junk in the overflowing trash can of post-9/11 Western media fictions. The sight of millions of brave voters emerging from polling stations holding high their purple dye-stained fingers was so inspiring that, from America's Democratic Party to European protest rallies, opponents of the war waited, oh, all of three minutes before flipping the Iraqis their own fingers, undyed.

"No one in the United States should try to over-hype this election," warned John Kerry yesterday before embarking on the world champion limbo dance of Iraqi election under-hyping.

He has a point. One vote does not a functioning democracy make. To be a truly advanced, sophisticated democracy you need an opposition party that knows how to react to good news by sounding whiny and grudging and moving the goalposts. "The real test is not the election," he declared, airily swatting aside 8 million voters. "The real test is..."

The Diplomad calls these people "The Comma-ists".

There is one group of singularly anti-American types who just have had the hardest time imaginable praising the events of January 30. Who are these foul anti-Americans? Has The Diplomad taught you nothing? Why the leaders of the Democratic Party of the USA, of course! The party that has become the party of the Comma-ists. You know what we mean: the types who must always insert a comma after a ritual throw-away phrase. For example: "Of course the terrorist attacks of 9/11 were horrible [Here it comes! Listen for it!] [COMMA] but US policy in the Middle East . . ." "Of course the Iraqi elections were a good thing [COMMA] but they will not resolve the serious issue of severe income inequality in East St. Louis, or the growing gender disparity in the granting of scholarships to welding schools . . ."

I'm not saying that the Right has not made mistakes in the GWOT and in Iraq. But at the very least, they recognize the importance of the elections and celebrate the beginning of democracy and the "march of freedom" in an area that has known neither.

Iran

I think MAH is absolutely right that Iran is next in the sights of the US. Statements out of Cheney and Bolton in the last week are probably meant to try one last time to push Iran to voluntarily give up its nuclear weapons program. At the same time, there was a story on Sunday that the US was refusing to join the EU diplomatic drive against Iran, another move intended to pressure Iran. There are also rumors that Air Tasking Orders (the orders for what kind of planes, what ordnance, and what flight routes are to be used for an attack) have been issued by the Pentagon to units in the area.

The question then is who would actually execute the airstrikes against Iranian facilities and how, assuming that John Pike is right and Iran's facilities are above ground and we know where the vast majority of them are. It seems to me that it is not in either Israel's or the US's interest to have Israel destroy those facilities. First, the routes that Israeli planes would need to fly would be either through Saudi Arabia (an unwelcome prospect even with Saudi Arabia's concern about Iranian nukes), or through US controlled airspace. In any case, the US would be blamed for bombing Iran's facilities. Why take the blame, without getting any of the credit?

Second, and Israeli strike on Iran could cause a much wider regional confrontation. Iran will undoubtedly want to retaliate against Israel for such an attack. It could launch its Shihab-3 ballistic missiles at Israel, though it seems from some reports that those missiles are not fully operational yet. More likely, Iran will activate Hizbullah to fire missiles at Israel. Given the number of missiles that Hizbullah has been given by Iran and Syria, and and the range of those missiles - some able to reach the center of Israel - Israel will have no choice but to respond. The response would need to be a full-scale multi-divisional assault on Hizbullah-land in the south of Lebanon, and would then potentially put Israel in confrontation with Syria. Clearly, this scenario is not one that either Israel or the US wants.

So, barring a revolution in Iran, it seems that unless the US can pressure Iran into completely giving up its nuclear weapons pursuit, the US will need to carry out airstrikes on the Iranian facilities. Hopefully this will spur reformist elements in Iran to rise up and overthrow the mullahs.

"We're not flying over frigging Iran" ... or are we?

A great little article appeared in the Guardian (London) on January 29, 2005:

US jets flying over Iran to spot targets, says source

In-Depth Coverage
By Julian Borger in Washington

The US is increasing the pressure on Iran by sending military planes into its airspace to test the country's defences and spot potential targets, according to an intelligence source in Washington.

The overflights have been reported in the Iranian press and the head of Iran's air force, Brigadier General Karim Qavami, declared recently that he had ordered his anti-aircraft batteries to shoot down any intruders, but there have been no reports of any Iranian missiles being launched.

"The idea is to get the Iranians to turn on their radar, to get an assessment of their air defences," an intelligence source in Washington said. He said the flights were part of the Pentagon's contingency planning for a possible attack on sites linked to Iran's suspected nuclear weapons programme.

"It make sense to get a look at their air defences, and it makes the mullahs nervous during the EU negotiations (over the suspension of Iranian uranium enrichment)," said John Pike, the head of GlobalSecurity.org, an independent military research group.

The flights come after reports of American special forces incursions into Iran. However, former US intelligence officials have said they believe the incursions are being carried out by Iranian rebels drawn from the anti-Tehran rebel group, the Mujahedin-e-Khalq, under US supervision.

The US military denied the reports. "We're not flying over frigging Iran," an official said, suggesting Tehran was making up the incidents to attract international sympathy.

And the commentary that must follow: IRAN IS NEXT!!!

Last year's mantra was "No war in '04" (understandable during an election year in the US, yet regrettable nonetheless).

Well, '04 is over and the US has been on a cycle of one-war-every-two-years (Afghanistan 2001 and Iraq 2003). Moreover, our President has finally adopted a long-awaited (by many) "Freedom Doctrine", which was both announced (at his inaugural) and vindicated (by successful Iraqi elections) in the past 30 days.

And if you were shocked when President Bush referred to Iran (as well as Iraq and North Korea) as a full-fledged member of the Axis of Evil in his often-quoted State of the Union Address from a few years ago, then you may be floored in the days and months to come.

So don't be surprised on Wednesday if President Bush goes a lot further than merely calling evil by it's rightful name when referring to the gross lack of freedom in Iran (except, of course, for the Iraqis who live in Iran, who actually had the opportunity to vote this past weekend) during his widely-anticipated (by many) 2005 State of the Union Address.

And if you think that's far-fetched, I would direct you to comments made by Vice President Cheney, who just a few weeks ago said that if you "look around the world at potential trouble spots, Iran is right at the top of the list."

By the way, if you're interested in reading about how it could all go down (and if you have some time because this isn't a quick read), I would refer you to a brilliantly-written (in my opinion) piece by John Pike and his team at GlobalSecurity.org, which you can find here.

And one last sidenote - If the US doesn't do it, Israel will. The above-mentioned article cites the following evidence (as well as a ton of additional insightful information about possible Israeli and/or American preemptive options to hit Iran's nuke facilities) that substantiates Israel's determination to keep nukes out of Iran:

The annual intelligence assessment presented to Israel's Knesset on 21 July 2004 noted that Iran's nuclear program is the biggest threat facing Israel, "Maariv" and "Yediot Aharonot" reported on 22 July 2004. Some Likud and Labor Knesset members subsequently called for a preemptive strike against the Iranian nuclear facility. Former Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh (Labor) said, "If the international community's helplessness in the face of the Iranian threat persists, Israel will have to weigh its steps -- and soon." Ehud Yatom (Likud) said, "The Iranian nuclear facilities must be destroyed, just as we did the Iraqi reactor. We must strive to attain the ability to damage and destroy any nuclear capability that might be directed against Israel." On 08 September 2004 Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said the international community has not done enough to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon and warns that Israel will take its own measures to defend itself. He also said Iranian officials have made it clear they seek the destruction of the Jewish state. Israeli Air Force pilots have been practicing attacks on a scale model of the Bushehr reactor in the Negev Desert.

And if you have any reason to doubt that Iran is a threat to Israel (as many do), then I would encourage you to read this (a recent MEMRI report titled" Antisemitism and Holocaust Denial in the Iranian Media), this (another MEMRI report titled "Recent Speeches by Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei"), and this (yet another MEMRI report titled "Iran's Political and Military Leadership Call for Martyrdom").

And for those of you who are not familiar with MEMRI, it's the Middle East Media Research Institute, one of the only true sources of non-biased news from sources inside the Middle East. And they even translate it all from Arabic to English so YOU can read what THEY are saying over THERE about US. You know (or you may not) ... it's all those things that Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw and what's-his-face-who's-taking-over-for-Dan-Rather won't bother reporting to you because it doesn't support their twisted worldviews.

OK ... Mad's out ... catch y'all later :)