“You Jackin’ It?”

Jason Jones does exposé on exposer.

Bizarre and sad

The photos are seriously among the creepiest I’ve ever seen.

And the article only makes me feel worse about them.

Al Qaeda No. 2: Bush a liar, ’spiller of Muslim blood’

Mr. Z’s latest (addressed to Bush):

“Can’t you be honest at least once in your life and admit that you are a deceitful liar who intentionally deceived your nation when you drove them to war in Iraq under the pretext of the presence of nuclear weapons there and under the pretext of al Qaeda’s connections with Saddam Hussein, following which evidence proved that you intentionally lied and misled?” al-Zawahiri asks.

Who’s writing his stuff?  Harry Reid or Karl Rove?

International Dispute over Toilets

“My dignity does not allow me to stand this situation.”

-Vladimir Kramnik of Russia

Sullivan’s Last Throes

According to Andrew Sullivan the right, as always, will point to the spectre of media bias when confronted with terrible news from Iraq.

The violence in Iraq continues to surpass even its own previous psychopathic levels. Key fact of the day:

[T]he past week saw the highest number of suicide bomb attacks of any week since the American-led invasion in 2003, according to the chief United States military spokesman in Iraq, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV. “This has been a tough week,” General Caldwell said. “This week’s suicide attacks were at their highest level in any given week.” But such attacks, he said, are still not the No. 1 killer of Baghdad civilians. “Murders and executions are,” he said.

I’m waiting for Michelle Malkin and Glenn Reynolds to dismiss this as media bias. But this is a U.S. general telling the truth. And this is where we are: the signature act of the Jihadists, suicide bombing, is at an all-time high. But this isn’t the biggest problem. Iraq is now a failed state. It failed because we decided to let it fail - because the pride and arrogance of Cheney and Rumsfeld were more important than the most vital mission of our time. Their incompetence has made us all much, much less safe. And their authoritarianism has made us much, much less free.

Sullivan’s view that Iraq is kaput leans heavily on a single statement from the good general’s statement. But what else has General Caldwell said this week? In his weekly statement (from September 25):

Caldwell: Iraq’s Transformation is Subtle

This (violence) however, is only part of Iraq’s present story. The violence belies the gradual but remarkable transformation this nation is experiencing. Focusing on just violence would miss telling the bigger story of how — despite it —Iraqis have made enormous steps toward self-sufficiency in both the security and political realm.

Read just a little more of the statement and it’s obvious that his view is that Iraq is FAR from a failed state. Not even on the radar. The same U.S. general Sullivan cites as an authority has an outlook that is nearly a polar opposite.
The problem with the left is that they think any criticism of their viewpoints is generated by some equal-but-opposite counterforce in the political sphere. That is not always correct. Sullivan seizes on a single statement and is quick to generalize it as a representation of the overall picture. That is an error in judgement, and whether it is intentional or not deserves to be countered strongly.

Borat for President

Here’s why:

Reason 1

Reason 2

Reason 3 - this is hilarious.

If we’re going to constantly elect jokers to represent us, why not choose someone who is actually funny?

“Freedom” Marching

But the Iraqi government isn’t interested in freedom of speech.  They actually prefer Saddam’s take on freedom of speech… literally, they pulled language verbatim from his penal code criminalizing public insults against government officials.  “Roughly a dozen” have been charged and those found guilty are eligible for a seven year prison term.    

When debates intersect. . .

We’ve debated the multiple subjects of 1) the President’s Daily Brief (PDB) from August 6 2001 and 2) the New York Times editing “style”. Here’s an interesting intersection of the two, all wrapped up into a tight little package. The accusation was that the President failed to act on actionable intelligence from the PDB, and could have conceivably prevented the 9/11 attacks from succeeding.

The original PDB is here. The controversial part seems to be the second-to-last paragraph in the two page report.
Mickey Kaus notes the following NYT story from Tuesday and notices that this loaded subject soldiers on at the Times:

Here’s the second paragraph from Raymond Hernandez’ Wednesday NYT story on Hillary:

In unusually blunt terms, Senator Clinton questioned the current administration’s response to an intelligence briefing President Bush received about a month before the 9/11 attacks. It mentioned that Al Qaeda was intent on striking the United States using hijacked planes. [emph. added]

Doesn’t that sound as if the presidential briefing had warned Bush that Al Qaeda would use planes as weapons? It does to me. But here’s the briefing itself, which mentions “hijackings’ but only in the traditonal context–i.e. taking over a plane “to gain the release of “Blind Shaykh” ‘Umar’ Abd-al-Rahman and other U.S.-held extremists.” An old controversy, I know–but that’s why it’s so astonishing to find this casual, loaded distortion in the lede of an important story. Hernandez–or whatever anonymous Times editor decided to goose up his second graf–had to have known that the sentence was deceptive, no? Or if they didn’t know they didn’t care. … We’re a month away from an election! They’re manning the battle stations at the NYT. … 1:38 P.M.

Another interesting note: in today’s latest AQ call for Holy War in Iraq, the new leader of AQ in Iraq, Al-Muhajer, also known as Abu Ayyub al-Masri:

pushed for the kidnapping of “Christian dogs” who could be exchanged for Omar Abdel-Rahman, an Egyptian Muslim cleric imprisoned since 1995 for conspiring to blow up landmarks in New York.

Al-Muhajer delivered his statement from an Iraq which, according to critics, is not a theater of the overall “War on Terror” but nonetheless seems to have been the primary cause of a growing terror threat.

May we please prevent your genocide?

U.N. Peacekeepers in Darfur Unlikely
A U.N. Security Council resolution calls for 20,000 peacekeepers to replace the ill-equipped and underfunded AU force that has done little to prevent escalating violence in Darfur. But Sudan’s president fiercely rejects the U.N. mission, and it can’t deploy without his consent.

Bob Woodward: Bush Misleads On Iraq

Per Bob Woodward on CBS:

The situation is getting much worse, says Woodward, despite what the White House and the Pentagon are saying in public. “The truth is that the assessment by intelligence experts is that next year, 2007, is going to get worse and, in public, you have the president and you have the Pentagon [saying], ‘Oh, no, things are going to get better,’” he tells Wallace. “Now there’s public, and then there’s private. But what did they do with the private? They stamp it secret. No one is supposed to know,” says Woodward.

Woodward’s guess is as good as anybody’s, however I have a hard time believing that any real shocking secrets can be kept private anymore, not with the New York Times in charge (wiretapping, detainee treatment, Plame, NIE statements, et al.)  This administration is being watched like none before it.

The Runup to Election 2006

What kind of pre-election teeth gnashing can we expect from Democrats this election season?  Here’s a look back at some of the hysteria from the 2004 cycle:

1. Bush was going to reinstate the draft (John Kerry)
2. Bush would fail to protect us from the flu (John Kerry)
3. The economy was in sorry shape (John Kerry)

BushCo are at least as vulnerable on Iraq in 2006 they were in 2004, and mainstream opinion has tilted more and more against them. Between now and the election, I’m looking forward to sorting the legitimate grievance news from the MSM from that news which is contrarian for the sake of being contrarian.

News from AQ Iraq

Iraq terror leader recruits scientists

But also says that more than 4,000 foreign insurgent fighters have been killed in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

Look for a withdrawal timeline soon from Bush

Bush has always said American forces will leave when the Iraqi government asks us to begin the process.  Here is some polling that may spur the beginning of a long withdrawal process.

7-Eleven Drops Citgo As Gas Supplier

7-Eleven Drops Citgo As Gas Supplier, and officials said Wednesday that the decision was partly motivated by politics.

As long as they don’t stop stocking Slim Jims.

The Case of Mr. Clueless & a Cause Celebre

Newspaper reports that the NIE report sums up Iraq as a breeding ground for jihadists and that the war in Iraq has made us less safe.

President retorts (to paraphrase):  ”No, the report was wrongly summarized in an illegal leak.  That’s not what it says at all!”

President asks for portion of NIE report to be declassified so that the people can learn of said newspaper’s cruel, partisan twisting of NIE findings. 

Based on declassified portion, the public can read for itself:  Iraq has become “the cause célèbre for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of U.S. involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement.”

Just another day in Bush’s America.

Yes, the world CAN be an awfully confusing place for those who can’t read.

 

 

 

Report: Video Posted of U.S. Soldiers’ Bodies Being Burned

While the worrisome among us fret about making a high-value detainee shiver in a cold interrogation room, this WaPo story assures us that our boys in Iraq are treated with all the dignity afforded by the Geneva Conventions.  At least we’ve maintained our moral high ground!

A HYPOTHETICAL question (don’t go bonkers):  If it’s illegal to put a detainee through minor physical or mental discomfort, why wouldn’t it be illegal to shoot that same (albeit armed) person dead if met out on patrol?

Iraq as seen by others

A more optimistic view of the Iraq situation.

Via Instapundit:

New IRS Data

The 2003 tax cut was the third in three years, but the tax code still remains highly progressive. The average tax rate ranges from 2.97 percent of income for the bottom half of the earning spectrum to 23.49 percent for the top 1 percent.

The top-earning 25 percent of taxpayers (AGI over $60,041) earned 66.1 percent of nation’s income, but they paid more than four out of every five dollars collected by the federal income tax (84.9 percent). The top 1 percent of taxpayers (AGI over $328,049) earned approximately 19 percent of the nation’s income (as defined by AGI), yet paid 36.9 percent of all federal income taxes.

TaxProf remarks that those taxpayers in the top half of the income distribution are paying the highest share in decades.

What if. . .

Claudia Rossett, whose investigative journalism forced a reluctant UN into investigating itself over charges of bribery and corruption via the Iraq Oil-for-Food program, talks about the good ol’ days with Saddam:

Saddam, when toppled, had not just been sitting around hallucinating about WMDs and happily bribing UN officials through their own Oil-for-Food relief program. He had a deadlier strategy. As the CIA’s own Charles Duelfer reported, based on massive evidence found in Iraq, Oil-for-Food had become Saddam’s weapons program — giving him cover to skim and smuggle billions in illicit funds and use the money to set up a sanctions-busting global network of secret bank accounts, front companies, arms dealers and easy access to anyone he pleased. That all-star cast included Hamas, Al Qaeda, and — among other pals— the new sensation of the UN stage, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, who in 2000, despite UN sanctions, dropped in on Saddam in Baghdad.

What if Bush had left his organization in place? Almost certainly in election years 2004 and 2006 Bush would have been excoriated for not doing enough in dealing with the cornucopia of threats originating in Baghdad.

Leaking Season

Will the Times (and WP) call for a leak investigation (a la Plame) for this weekends limited glimpse into the latest NIE report?  I doubt it.

Losing Ground

and losing the fight.

Where are Bush’s much-touted Christian morals?  It appears (once again) that they are as fictitious as that “reading list” of his.

Mahmoud Muhammad Taha: “The Moderate Martyr”

A fascinating article in the New Yorker about a man who challenged repressive Islamic law.  Mahmoud Muhammad Taha and Sayyid Qutb were both executed by Arab dictatorships.  Qutb advocated strict Islamic law was hanged in secular Egypt in 1966.  Taha, who promoted a vision of Islam that embraced social justice and equality and personal freedom, was hanged by Islamic Sudan in 1985.  Qutb’s writings greatly influenced Zawahiri and Bin Laden.  Unfortunately, Taha’s writings have not found a large following. 

Surprise, (edited) (Sur)prise… The Iraq war makes us less safe.

Who woulda thunk it?

**ED - cleaned up the title

Some Mid-East Dictatorships are Cool!, Part II

As stipulated in their truce with Islamic separatists, Pakistan has released over 2,500 Al Qaeda and Taliban members from their prisons.

Those released included the guys who abducted journalist Daniel Pearl and demanded that the US follow through on a sale of F-16s to Pakistan.  They murdered Pearl shortly thereafter.

So why is Bush rewarding the demands of terrorist by pushing through the sale of those F-16s to Pakistan when Pakistan’s commitment to, and allegiance in, the “War on Terror” is in question?

 

Jihad hits home

An Ohio car dealership wages jihad–on the car market.

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