Oh no. No. No. No.

The Troops Also Need to Support the American People, a parable by William Arkin who is in a HEAP of hissing right now.  This is the WaPo’s milblog voice?

(read some of the comments)

The AP Admits Disputed Iraq Report Was Erroneous

From IraqSlogger:

The Associated Press acknowledged today that it was wrong in reporting on November 24 that four Sunni mosques in Baghdad were destroyed that day in attacks.

It just took them two months to correct an easily verifiable story.  And, the AP has not to this day come clean on the enigmatic Jamil Hussein–who was he, really?

Minimal sage for minimum wage

A reasoned observation about the rhetoric abiding the argument for increasing the minimum wage.

Zombie alert

Nobody really knows much yet about last weekend’s major battle in Najaf, other than that US and Iraq ground forces were involved.   I have a feeling, though, a few hundred Mahdi thrill seekers were probably really disappointed.

Evolution of rhetoric

US must explain Mideast military build-up, says Russia, and suddenly the notion of stalemate in Iraq seems pregnant with US/Russo tension.

Two Americas

Yours, and his.

AP Headline Mania

U.S., Iraqi troops clash in Baghdad says the AP.  But did they?  Did Jamil Hussein contribute to this story?

Opinion disguised as news

You tell me if this is “news” or “opinion” from the AP’s Jennifer Loven:

(AP) New Orleans Not Part of Bush’s Speech
New Orleans is still a mess and the pace of recovery across the Gulf Coast from Hurricane Katrina’s strike remains achingly slow after 17 months. But none of this captured President Bush’s attention on the year’s biggest night for showcasing policy priorities.

In the president’s State of the Union speech last year, delivered just five months after the disaster, the devastation merited only 156 words out of more than 5,400.

On Tuesday night, the president spoke for almost exactly as long before a joint session of Congress. But Katrina received not a single mention. . . .
. . . Seeking to recover from criticism of his initial reaction to the storm, the president focused intensively on the Gulf Coast in the weeks and months after Katrina hit. But that attention level quickly dropped off, and he hardly mentions the region now. His only visit there in the last eight months was to mark one year since the storm’s strike in August.

Not filed under opinion, huh?

Germans get by without the euro

Despite efforts by the EU to consolidate currency, commerce, bureaucracy, and culture, some local regional activists are actively promoting alternatives to the euro, and are quite successful.

Link roundup from Beirut

Play time for Hezbollah means the whole city shuts down.

Ripping Gregory

Mickey Kaus flames NBC’s David Gregory, and couldn’t have been more accurate:

Maybe he’s brilliant on Imus. I haven’t hear him there. But on the Nighly News and Chris Matthews he’s an opinionless Prof. of the Obvious.

Hee hee hee.

Democracy stagnant?

According to Fareed Zakaria, the basic problem afflicting fledgling democracies and the overall growth of democracy worldwide is “an absence of governance.”  This is absurd, unless he believes the phrase “absence of governance” actually means “armed opponents of democracy.”

The failure of democracy to spread wildly over the last ten years is not because of democracy’s many weaknesses and liabilities. Democracy has–more often than not–been a target of overt, violent resistance levied by its traditional foes.

“Get your surge on”

As described by Mudville Gazette.

The real “open ended” commitment

Imagine this: a shadowy nation famous for its split personality is stealthily expanding its already robust military operational capabilities in the Middle East and Central Asia. Its decades-old propaganda apparatus continues to influence debate in the Western media establishment it so successfully penetrated years ago. It is carefully constructing a collaborative of anti-US nations in South and Central America. It had challenged the US in wars of proxy, most recently during the Israeli-Hezbollah war last summer. It has exhibited the bizarre duality of simultaneously supporting two seemingly contradictory causes in War on Terrorism.

That country is, well, let’s hold off on that a minute.

While Iraq supposedly hangs across America’s neck like an albatross, there is paranoid rumor-mongering that even our success in Afghanistan is doomed to failure, the best example of such being that the Taliban can now fight through the winter because they’re now equipped with proper warm clothes and winter footwear! (hat tip to the peccant Western media mentioned above).
Yet Bush maintains course, and provides all kinds of fodder to keep his domestic enemies mired in inconsequential red herring debate. Take for example the ridiculous notion that the authorization of a small troop surge is Bush’s last chance for success. That will keep detractors and the media abuzz for several more weeks! Troop levels? Well that’s any good general’s guess, but this question is akin to asking how many firefighters it will take — to stop arsonists.

Irrelevant debate about troop levels aside, the media’s perception of the war depends almost entirely on body counts and the number of daily insurgent attacks–attacks themselves that are often executed purely for propaganda purposes. It’s a self feeding narrative that can easily burn up the first 15 minutes at the top of the hour in every news broadcast. And it’s definitely not the real story about the war, even though the we’re starting to see reports of direct Iranian involvement on Iraqi soil. This sort of meddling has likely been happening since much earlier in the American occupation, but yet even Iran is not the biggest story of the war.

Know the name of the country yet?

The administration’s stubborness on Iraq is not, as almost every Democrat and some Republicans stupidly believe, the result of myopic disdain of public opinion, outright incompetence, or a refusal to consider a political solution to end the conflict.  As if some sort of political solution has never been considered.  How long is the War going to last? What is the holdup? Good questions. Even normally hawkish folks are asking–why is the war taking so long? There has got to be some other reason that the Bush Administration is not telling us, they say.

The War on Terrorism is global, the threats real, and the priorities of the multi-theater conflicts must be met. But Bush’s intransigence is necessitated by the nature of an even larger struggle, one that predates 9/11, the first Iraq War, and even the rise of modern terrorism and Iranian fundamentalism. Our simultaneous overt wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are resident in the framework of a much older and enigmatic conflict– a contemporaneous cold war with Russia.

This could explain so much in the world. Like Russia’s condemnation of the removal of Saddam Hussein in 2003, and Moscow’s refusal to sanction Iran with anything stronger than a frozen checking account. Or delivering additional weapons systems (and untold numbers of military advisers) to Syria and Iran. Or building additional nuclear reactors for a country that clearly states it will peel off some of the nasty bits for later consumption against many innocent souls in the West. Or the Neo-Marxist Book Club in Venezuala, Ecuador, Cuba, Bolivia, and Iran. Or the nuanced collusion between the post-marxist left and militant Islamism, a combined voice that, although far from ubiquitous on American soil, gets a suspiciously sympathetic soapbox in the American media.

There, it’s been said. A resurgent Russia, still smarting when we flipped Egypt after the Yom Kippur War (maybe James Baker WAS onto something with Syria), is knocking on the door of all of its current and former client states and is pressing hard. Really hard. Hard enough that it’s starting to get difficult for Bush to shield this aspect of the conflict from concerned Americans much longer. The stakes Bush had described for failure in Iraq are serious enough, for so many important reasons. But if he’s going to leave office in two years with a positive legacy, he’s going to have to expose the wormhole between the real wars and the shadow war and at least summarize the true nature of the strategic situation for the American people. And explain that–regardless of what he meant by denying an “open ended” commitment for Baghdad–he’s not just trying to win Iraq, he’s trying to win a real open-ended struggle that has lasted more than sixty years.

Sunnis Allege Sadr A Saddam Executioner

IraqSlogger: Sunnis Allege Sadr A Saddam Executioner

If only we can get a picture of this guy’s teeth.  The teeth!

Explosion in Iran?

Report: Nuclear Explosion in Iran.

No, it’s just the 12th Imam returning to lead the world to universal peace.

Bin Laden “outsourced” his escape from Tora Bora?

If we are to believe this man, bin Laden’s escape from Tora Bora was not the result of the US “outsourcing” the war to Afghan warlords, but of bin Laden himself “outsourcing” his own safety to tribal allies.

Troops in N.O. stay the course

A temporary surge in forces for New Orleans.  When is Ted Kennedy going to call New Orleans a “quagmire”?  When is the AP going to characterize this as a significant escalation?  Doesn’t Gov. Kathleen Blanco know that by adding more forces to an already volatile situation only encourages more violence?

This lady, she’s gone mad.

War, circa 2006

The big push is on:

US sanctions state-owned Iranian bank.

US goes after Hezbollah.

US puts the squeeze on Iranian petroleum markets.

US leads effort to sanction Iran via the UN Security Council.

US bombs more than 25 sites in Diyala governate, between Baghdad and the Iranian border, presumably targeting Sunni insurgents for a second straight day. Sunni insurgents, using Iranian weapons, right near the border. US bombers flying near the border, and maybe even across the border. Al Qaeda known to favor Diyala province over Anbar nowadays. . . .Hmmmm.

But what we need are some symbolic votes protesting the “escalation” of the Iraq portion of the war.

“So This Is Our Victory”

Michael J. Totten: “So This Is Our Victory”

Totten describes his foray into Hezbollah-controlled southern Lebanon, a place few Americans have been able to venture lately.

Soon we reached Bint Jbail, Hezbollah’s de-facto “capital” in South Lebanon. The outskirts were mostly undamaged, but the city looks now like a donut. Downtown was almost completely demolished by air strikes and artillery.“So this is our victory,” Said said. “This is how Hezbollah wins. Israel destroys our country while they sleep safely and soundly in theirs.”

Said parked in the center of what used to be the central market area. The four of us got out of the car. Noah and I walked around, dizzied by the extent of the 360-degree devastation.

Although Hezbollah may claim victory from last summer’s war with Israel, such a victory must have had a colossal pricetag. Entire Hizbollah strongholds have been annihilated.

Big day for airpower

From the daily air power summary at www.af.mil:

F-15E Strike Eagles provided close-air support to troops in contact with anti-Iraqi forces near Turki Village. The F-15Es expended cannon rounds on enemy positions.

Cannon rounds?  F-15E?  I guess I had forgotten how operationally flexible this aircraft was.

I also saw that two B-1B’s dropped about 64k lbs of delicious treats on some malcontents in Diyala. . . I’m assuming they flew the long route from Oman UNLESS we decided to make a menace run over Tehran at 750ft.   Hmmm. . .

Special Ops also flew an AC-130 deathship down from Djibouti and picked off some cornered AQ suspects fleeing Somalia.

A preview for us, or just deja vu?

Climate change killed the golden civilizations, says the Sunday Times. However, National Geographic mentioned this several years back.

You shall know my name, as my name is…

Glenn Danzig!!!  Musings on why darkness is really the absence of light.

Hogzilla, Part Deux

Another monster from the South, this time an 1100 lbs feral hog with many witnesses and substantial video footage to prove it.
Remember the original Hogzilla?

Best comment comes from the young boy in the clip, who likens the stench of the dead beast to a “girl that’s wearing hairspray”.   Compelling, and rich.

Strike that, bad news…

Jackets and scarves are soooo out this year!  More alarmists abound.

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