Bahraini Women's Rights Activist Ghada Jamshir Attacks Islamic Clerics for Issuing Fatwas Authorizing Sexual Abuse of Infants

This interview is priceless. Watch the 'journalist' squirm as Ghada nails each question. Now that's a women's rights activist! It is sad that we have to have our noses rubbed in the truth sometimes.

Fake but... er... Fake

From the LA Times, whose editor not so long ago poo-poo'd the blogosphere saying that mainstream newspapers like the LA Times are superior due to multiple layers of editors and fact checkers, we find this little gem.

Meet Floridian Farris Hassan, 16

This story about a sixteen year old who used his savings and his Christmas break from school to travel to Iraq is a must read. This kid has serious couilles, not to mention clarity of vision, and he can write better than most college graduates, too.

"There is a struggle in Iraq between good and evil, between those striving for freedom and liberty and those striving for death and destruction," he wrote.

"Those terrorists are not human but pure evil. For their goals to be thwarted, decent individuals must answer justice's call for help. Unfortunately altruism is always in short supply. Not enough are willing to set aside the material ambitions of this transient world, put morality first, and risk their lives for the cause of humanity. So I will."

Perfect. (I'd say Farris is grounded for quite a while though.)

H/T Michelle Malkin.

My Choice for Worst American in History: Jimmy Carter

(John Wilkes Booth gets my vote for second worst American in history, Al Gore is third worst, the managing editors for the New York Times and the Washington Post tie for fourth, LBJ gets my vote for fifth, Ted Turner and Jane Fonda tie for sixth, Bill and Hillary Clinton seventh, Henry Blackmun is eighth, James Earl Ray is ninth, Jesse Jackson and Noam Chomsky tie for tenth, Ted Kennedy and George Soros tie for eleventh, and Rev. Fred Phelps is twelfth.)

All Things Beautiful asks for nominations for the Ten Worst Americans of All Time. And why not? Just a couple months ago we had this big nation-wide poll/debate for the Greatest American in history. At the time it got a lot of media exposure, kind of like American Idol, right up until the winner was announced. (It was Reagan!)

Ed Morrissey responds with his Ten Worst Americans of All Time list, chock-full of historical goodness, I mean badness. He puts Jimmy Carter at number 10:

...after a promising beginning of his post-presidential career of building houses for the homeless, Carter has inveigled himself into so many foreign-policy crises and made them exponentially worse that it’s becoming more and more difficult to believe it isn’t done with purpose. His efforts to defuse the North Korean crisis deflected what had been until then a rather effective strategy by Bill Clinton to use a military threat to stop Pyongyang from producing nukes. After Carter jumped into the negotiations uninvited – violating the Logan Act – Carter’s prestige within his party and the US forced Clinton to accept the ridiculous Framework agreement that allowed Pyongyang to go nuclear within months. Carter has done the same with Haiti as well, and has traveled the globe to support many a leftist dictator or autocrat as long as they opposed American interests.

But the real reason Carter winds up here at #10 is because he singlehandedly almost lost the Cold War and allowed the start of the Islamofascist terror war during his single term in office. His naiveté in dealing with the Soviet Union, captured perfectly by kissing the jowled cheek of the Soviet dictator Leonid Brezhnev, led him to believe that worldwide Communism was here to stay and that we could do nothing about it. He also assured Americans that we had nothing to fear from the Soviets, who really weren’t bad guys – right up until they invaded Afghanistan. Even then, his response in boycotting the Olympic Games of 1980 has to remain one of the most embarrassing examples of displayed impotence in our nation’s history.

The winner in that category, however, also belongs to Carter. In November 1979, after pulling his support from the Shah in the highly strategic nation of Iran and watching him fall to an Islamist uprising, the same nutcases sacked our embassy in Teheran, an undeniable act of war. Instead of giving an ultimatum for the return of our embassy and the release of our diplomatic staff, Carter sat for 444 excruciating days, doing little except pleading publicly for mercy. He staged one – one! – military response to the crisis months later, which failed miserably. The failure to act not only allowed the rickety Khomeini government to survive, but gave Islamofascism a tremendous boost of prestige throughout the Middle East. It also allowed Iran to become a center for the funding and direction of terrorist activities for the past three decades, a legacy that has finally engulfed us since 9/11.

Other administrations have made their own mistakes in remaining blind to the threat of Islamist terror, but Carter played midwife to it and enabled it to survive when he had every opportunity and a perfect casus belli to kill it in its cradle.

Carter's withdrawal of support from the Shah of Iran put the Mad Mullahs in power. Did this liberate the Shah's 3,000 political prisoners? No. The dictatorship of Ayatollah Khomeini put most of them up against walls alongside 20,000 "pro-Western" Iranians and killed them by firing squad. Women became property. Western music banned. (It has recently been re-banned.) One year later, Iran was engaged in a war with Iraq. As the U.S. had sided with Stalin to defeat Hitler, in the Iran-Iraq War the U.S. sided with Iraq to oppose Iran's Islamic fascism and, in theory, stop it from spreading. Granted, that mistake wasn't Carter's fault, but if he'd nipped the Islamofascist problem in the bud, maybe the Iran-Iraq War, Saddam's invasion of Kuwait, numerious terrorist bombings, and 9/11 wouldn't have happened. We'll never know. Jimmy Carter is the one who first allowed terrorism to become diplomatically acceptable. He countered the kidnapping of American diplomats by a foreign nation's government with... with what? Talk about impotence!

I can still remember the years that Jimmy Carter was President. What I remember the most was inflation - the highest inflation since the Civil War. During Carter's presidency, the dollar lost more than half its value, more than half of its purchasing power. In response, Carter enacted price controls and rationing, which caused incredibly long lines and, if anything, made prices go up even more. An economic genius Carter was not.

You know, I think Jimmy means well, but he has screwed up everything he has touched with the exception of Habitat for Humanity and that Israel-Egypt treaty. He should have stuck with building houses and stay away from foreign policy (i.e., repeatedly stabbing our country in the back).

Ok, so he did that Mid-East peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. Was that a good thing? Yes. Was it heroic or courageous in any way? No. Begin angered his own political allies by returning Sinai to Egypt, endangering his leadership position in democratic Israel. Sadat knew that he quite likely might be assassinated for making peace with Israel (and assassinated he was). Jimmy Carter risked nothing. All he did was supply the meeting place.

"But he received the Nobel Peace Prize three years ago," you say? Bwaah! And Arafat (inventor of the bomb-belt) got one in 1994, too. This year, the Nobel Prize went to Mohamed ElBaradei, for enabling Iran to become a nuclear threat presumably. Carter's award, according to Nobel Peace Prize Committee Chairman Gunnar Berge, “should be interpreted as a criticism of the line that the current [i.e., George W. Bush] administration has taken. It’s a kick in the leg [i.e., poke in the eye, or slap in the face] to all that follow the same line as the United States.” Carter was given the Peace Prize for opposing America abroad. Knowing that he was awarded the Peace Prize not out of merit but as a "kick" at his own nation’s elected President and the American people, Jimmy Carter accepted the prize and the $1 million that came with it. If Jimmy had had an ounce of dignity, he would have rejected the prize and the money. The prize is now displayed proudly at the Carter Center.

When President Carter was struggling with the Iranian hostage crisis, former Presidents Nixon and Ford had the dignity to stay out of foreign affairs. Carter has no such dignity and his interference has hurt our country. Jimmy Carter is good buddies with some of the worst dictators in the world, including Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez. Why won't Carter speak out, not for the dictators but for the oppressed?

For all of the reasons stated above, as well as prolonging the Cold War - for having done more to harm the U.S. than any other American I can think of - Jimmy Carter gets my vote for Worst American of All Time.

Meet the F/A-22 Raptor

Bowl Mania

Yes, it's bowl week. The Dick List has a round-up of this year's douche bowls. A sample:

...In other bowl news, hotel heiress Paris Hilton absolutely demolished Cuban dictator Fidel Castro at the Chlamydia Bowl by the score of 72-14. Hilton's margin of victory- 58 points- is the largest ever recorded at any douche bowl game. "I've really made great progress this year" said Hilton as she left the field. "To be more despised than a brutal murdering dictator in such a convincing fashion really says something about me and the image I've worked so hard to create..."

Facts, Meet Brain

First, a quote from The Glittering Eye:

"The sad truth is that no matter how fervently you may want something (or, perversely, fear something), that of itself that will not cause the desired (or feared) event to happen."

Or as Mick Jagger put it:

"You can't always get what you want."

Jack Welch adds,

"Face reality as it is, not as it was or as you wish. . . You have to see the world in the purest, clearest way possible, or you can't make decisions on a rational basis."

Dr. Sanity remarks,

"When both sides are convinced that the other side is deluding themselves, it becomes extremely important that SOME ADULT SOMEWHERE examine the external reality and follow a process of reason to assess the truth."

Ok. Well, check out this process of reason from some adult somewhere, then come back here and tell me again how Iraq is a quagmire.

Flash-Back to 6/30/05

Andrea Mitchell: "It is an iconic picture: American hostages, hands bound and blindfolded, being paraded outside the U.S. embassy in Tehran by their captors. But has one of those student radicals now become Iran’s newly elected President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?...Tonight, U.S. intelligence officials say that they will continue to study this, but may never have definitive proof of what the role was of Iran’s new president, Brian."

Brian Williams: "Andrea, what would it all matter if proven true? Someone brought up today the first several U.S. Presidents were certainly revolutionaries and might have been called terrorists at the time by the British Crown, after all."

Andrea Mitchell: "Indeed, Brian."

— NBC Nightly News.

PREVIOUS: NBC's Brian Williams - MOONBAT

The $100 Laptop

This site has some nice pictures of the $100 laptop computer being developed by MIT and Quanta Computer of Taiwan for children in third-world countries.

The Dishonest Reporter 'Award' 2005

Honest Reporting has a good roundup of 2005 MSM duplicity and connivance. It should be required reading for anyone and everyone who tries to be informed about what goes on in the world.

Cool Video

Crazy street acrobatics/stunts that make you you go, "Wow."

"What we’re doing now may be the only way to prevent all out war between Islam and EVERYONE else"

According to Sharon Lapkin, "Everywhere in the world, Muslims are in conflict with their neighbours." It certainly does appear that way, no?

This letter from a soldier puts it well (via Willisms):

I am a member of the United States’ much maligned military. I spent seven years in the Army and the last five years in the Air Force Reserves. In the Army I was a Patriot missile man. Now in the Air Force I am an Explosive Ordnance Disposal technician (Bomb Squad). All twelve years of my service I have been on active duty (thanks in part to 9-11). I have been I’ve spent most of my adult life, in one way or another, working in the Middle East (6 deployments). The reason I mention this is that I want my pedigree fully understood. I’m not some armchair quarterback, and my involvement with the Middle East is not shallow or purely academic. I have taken the time to study the Arab region and the Muslim culture. I even learned Arabic.
Now that I’ve established some background, let me say that which the PC crowd won’t say. Folks, the culture and religion in question is hostile. The individual’s are often sweet and well meaning people. Some would bring credit to any group or situation they could be placed in. The overall society however, is as poisonous as a pit viper and twice as touchy. I’ve sat back and watched as academics and media people have apologized over and over again for the Muslim culture. Saying repeatedly “Islam is peaceful” and constantly rehashing the “Jihad is spiritual struggle” meme. This is categorically false. The “Jihad of the spirit” many apologists refer to is a late Sufi tradition, extremely rare and often discredited among “mainstream” Islam. To put it in perspective, Sufis are as rare in Islam an 7th day Adventists are in Christianity. Probably more so.

Having stated all that, let me tell you about the Islam that I have witnessed. On my first deployment in 1994, while eating at a café in Riyadh, I saw a woman beaten and dragged away from her children on the street. What was her crime? After a very careful inquiry, my friends and I learned that she was selling souvenirs without her husband present. Her three small children were left to cower on the street in tears. We were nearby for almost an hour; we wanted to help, but were unable to. Both because we were advised against it, and for fear that the Mutawa (religious police) would take us in as well. The woman’s husband never showed. On another deployment in 1995, also in Riyadh, I saw a Saudi man beat a Pakistani nearly to death for the crime of being hit by the aforementioned Saudi’s Mercedes. I watched the accident and the subsequent beating. The Saudi was clearly at fault for the accident. When the aforementioned Mutawa showed, they hauled off the Pakistani to an unknown fate and sent the Saudi man on his way. In case you didn’t know, Pakistani’s and members of other poor Muslim countries are often recruited to work in Saudi Arabia as indentured servants / slaves. The conditions they live in and treatment they receive are appalling. I could go on, there were other incidents that I observed, both more and less disturbing. I have observed similarly jarring incidents in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan. From conversations with other servicemen I can tell you such incidents were not unusual or even rare. Call them “cultural quirks” if you will, but I was raised to know right from wrong when I see it.

All of the “little” incidents I witnessed or heard about, pale into insignificance compared to what I observed and learned about during my time in Baghdad. On a visit to rid a small village of UXOs (Un-eXploded Ordnance), I had a conversation with a man who lost most of his family to one of Saddam’s Gas attacks. By most let me clarify by saying that only his sister and three cousins survived. By the time I met him, he’d already lost one of those cousins to a bomb set by Zarqawi’s group. Later, during one of my longest duty days (38 hours), I had to conduct a post blast analysis where an IED had gone off. The only victims were two Kindergarten aged girls. One of their little shoes (blood stained) was still at the scene when we arrived. I had to watch my friend’s stricken face when he realized that what he thought was a component of the device revealed itself to be a little girls’ tooth. Ansar Al Islam claimed responsibility for the bombing. It was not the only such incident. One of the other incidents I helped investigate was the grand opening of an elementary school. A device with approximately 10lbs of explosives was detonated during the opening ceremonies. The vast majority of the crowd consisted of children and Iraqi civilians. Thankfully the only injury was a scraped elbow received by a soldier knocked from his vehicle. I will not speak of the atrocities I heard about that were committed by the Taliban. They literally give me nightmares, and I do not wish to pass them on. As with the “minor” cultural incidents in the preceding paragraph, there is much more that I could mention. I hope my point is made. DO NOT fall under the spell of the apologists for Islam. The Islamic people need to be held accountable for their actions. Ideally, they should police themselves and purge the radical elements from their society. Personally, I believe that is unlikely to happen, except possibly in Iraq where they have suffered so much at the hands of the radicals. The long on the short of it is that there is a reason why most of the conflicts occurring around the world involve Islam in some fashion. I encourage anyone and everyone who has read my words to look into this for themselves. Read deep enough and you will see that I am at least partly correct. As I said, I am hardly neutral.

Right now, my colleagues throughout the military are fighting and dying to provide Iraqis with a chance to improve the Arab culture and bring democracy to a region that desperately needs it. I believe that democracy is the only thing that can “tame” the Islamic cultures of the world. What we’re doing now may be the only way to prevent all out war between Islam and EVERYONE else. I wish others could see the war in Iraq and Afghanistan in that context.

Anyway, now that my probably incoherent rant has come to a close, I can only say that I hope someone out there listens. With or without WMD’s, going into Iraq was the right thing to do. Facing down and destroying “Islamofascism” on our terms, is the only way to deal with it.

MERRY CHRISTMAS

A bit of Projection?

Any of these Der Spiegel covers alone would be over the top, but so many...
I have a theory - that the Germans still, after all these years, feel guilty about what they did to the world during World War II, and that they are projecting their guilt onto those who stopped their attempted genocide and their attempt to take over the world.

PREVIOUS:

The Elections in Germany...
Pearls of Wisdom from the German Ambassador, and a Response

As do I

What happened to all those "embedded reporters?" Oh well. I was browsing articles at Townhall and came across this:

"What do you want for Christmas?" the young Marine asked. It was the middle of the night, and we were standing atop a heavily sandbagged "strongpoint" known as "Outpost Horea" in downtown Ramadi, Iraq -- long the bloodiest city in this very bloody country. In the dark, the Iraqi soldier standing watch beside the American looked toward us as a cold breeze rustled through the camouflage netting over our heads.
"What do I want for Christmas?" I repeated, somewhat surprised by the question. "I want you to get home safely."

The 21-year old Tennessean, girded in 65 lbs. of armored flak jacket, a night-vision equipped helmet, grenades and several hundred rounds of ammunition reflected on that for a moment and replied, "so do I."

Then, quietly, from the young Iraqi soldier beside us, words in broken English that stunned me: "As do I -- but not too soon."

DC Press corps again exposed as fools and traitors

Just saw Bush give a press conference on live TV, and the press asking the questions were once again exposed for being the ignorant hacks that they are. I guess if you have a degree in journalism, that makes you an expert on everything - NOT! Good comments from Noonz Wire:

...based on the insipid questions coming from the press, the only person in the room who is truly concerned about our national security is the President himself.

NY Slimes - Propaganda Machine

Finally, I'm off work and able to enjoy more of the propaganda of the day. Let's look at today's NY Slimes, shall we? First headline: "Supporters of Patriot Act Suffer a Stinging Defeat in Senate - Supporters are well short of the 60 votes needed to bring the anti-terrorism act to a final vote, leaving it in limbo." Ooh. Double wammy! Not only do terrorists get a major break, but the democrats reestablish the fabled "supermajority" rule that has been in place ever since they lost the majority in the Senate in 2002. We must be the only country in the world where the minority party gets to call the shots. No wonder this is the lead story - the Slimes must be in party mode! Let's see, second story: "Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts - Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the National Security Agency has spied on hundreds of people inside the U.S." Not only is this report a blatant attack on the President, but it puts our national security at risk. To see why, see here, here and here.

The program accelerated in early 2002 after the Central Intelligence Agency started capturing top Qaeda operatives overseas, including Abu Zubaydah, who was arrested in Pakistan in March 2002. The C.I.A. seized the terrorists' computers, cellphones and personal phone directories, said the officials familiar with the program. The N.S.A. surveillance was intended to exploit those numbers and addresses as quickly as possible, the officials said.

It seems like anything the CIA touches gets leaked to the Slimes. (Amazing, isn't it?) Turns out the NY Slimes has been sitting on this story for more than a year, and chose this time to release it not only on its own pages but on the pages of newspapers across the country. (I question the timing.) Special council Fitzgerald should investigate the NY Slimes and all the security leaks they have been getting instead of the Plame game.

The Truth On the Ground

The front page of the Washington Post is a great example of propaganda in journalism. In the upper left of their front page (online version), we see a picture of a man and his dog walking across what looks to be dry, heavily cracked mud and the headline is, "2005 Continues the Warming Trend," so they are starting with the obligatory gobal warming pitch. The top headline in the center of the page reads, "Bush Allowed Domestic Spying in 2002 Order - President authorized NSA eavesdropping operations with post-9/11 order, despite previous legal prohibitions against such tactics." At least they got the obligatory stab at the President out of the way early. Actually, now that I look, the rest of the front page is a verbal assault on our nation's President, too. That's what it's all about though, isn't it? Attacking the President. Every. Single. Day. Nothing unusual there. Next on their front page we have, "Sen. McCain Takes the Lead - Torture ban compromise becomes an awkward dance in which President Bush must follow." So now we are to believe that Senator McCain is telling the President what to do, reinforcing the "Bush can't think for himself" meme. (Funny. I thought this week's angle was that the President does not listen to others - that he lives in a bubble.) This story from the Post further paves the way for a McCain run for President in '08, which wouldn't be as good as Hillary but better than any other Republican the Post's editors can think of. Next we have, "Experts Cautious on Iraq Vote - Analysts say high turnout and little violence during elections is a positive step but not a turning point." What would we do without the Post's duplicitous "experts" and "analysts?" Actually, we'd do pretty well, particularly in Iraq. I'm wondering how they can call this "news" without collapsing in a fit of laughter. Next we have the Post's lead opinion piece apparently, which starts with "The struggle for Mideast democracy will be a human triumph if it succeeds -- but not, by itself, a victory for American national security." The 'Post didn't have articles like this when we invaded Kosovo or Somalia, or Gulf War I even. Explain to me how Kosovo or Somalia made our nation more secure.

But, speaking of troops, I did find this article in the Post yesterday which is not an article at all but a letter from a US Marine. It was not mentioned on their front page of course, but at least they printed it. Maybe they're slipping. (I can dream, can't I?) The letter is so good, I think I'll just 'post' the whole thing right here:

The Truth On the Ground
By Ben Connable

Wednesday, December 14, 2005; Page A29

When I told people that I was getting ready to head back to Iraq for my third tour, the usual response was a frown, a somber head shake and even the occasional "I'm sorry." When I told them that I was glad to be going back, the response was awkward disbelief, a fake smile and a change of subject. The common wisdom seems to be that Iraq is an unwinnable war and a quagmire and that the only thing left to decide is how quickly we withdraw. Depending on which poll you believe, about 60 percent of Americans think it's time to pull out of Iraq.

How is it, then, that 64 percent of U.S. military officers think we will succeed if we are allowed to continue our work? Why is there such a dramatic divergence between American public opinion and the upbeat assessment of the men and women doing the fighting?

Open optimism, whether or not it is warranted, is a necessary trait in senior officers and officials. Skeptics can be excused for discounting glowing reports on Iraq from the upper echelons of power. But it is not a simple thing to ignore genuine optimism from mid-grade, junior and noncommissioned officers who have spent much of the past three years in Iraq.

We know the streets, the people and the insurgents far better than any armchair academic or talking head. As military professionals, we are trained to gauge the chances of success and failure, to calculate risk and reward. We have little to gain from our optimism and quite a bit to lose as we leave our families over and over again to face danger and deprivation for an increasingly unpopular cause. We know that there are no guarantees in war, and that we may well fail in the long run. We also know that if we follow our current plan we can, over time, leave behind a stable and unified country that might help to anchor a better future for the Middle East.

It is difficult for most Americans to rationalize this optimism in the face of the horrific images and depressing stories that have come to symbolize the war in Iraq. Most of the violent news is true; the death and destruction are very real. But experienced military officers know that the horror stories, however dramatic, do not represent the broader conditions there or the chances for future success. For every vividly portrayed suicide bombing, there are hundreds of thousands of people living quiet, if often uncertain, lives. For every depressing story of unrest and instability there is an untold story of potential and hope. The impression of Iraq as an unfathomable quagmire is false and dangerously misleading.

It is this false impression that has led us to a moment of national truth. The proponents of the quagmire vision argue that the very presence of U.S. troops in Iraq is the cause of the insurgency and that our withdrawal would give the Iraqis their only true chance for stability. Most military officers and NCOs with ground experience in Iraq know that this vision is patently false. Although the presence of U.S. forces certainly inflames sentiment and provides the insurgents with targets, the anti-coalition insurgency is mostly a symptom of the underlying conditions in Iraq. It may seem paradoxical, but only our presence can buffer the violence enough to allow for eventual stability.

The precipitous withdrawal of U.S. troops would almost certainly lead to a violent and destabilizing civil war. The Iraqi military is not ready to assume control and would not miraculously achieve competence in our absence. As we left, the insurgency would turn into internecine violence, and Iraq would collapse into a true failed state. The fires of the Iraqi civil war would spread, and terrorists would find a new safe haven from which to launch attacks against our homeland.

Anyone who has spent even a day in the Middle East should know that the Arab street would not thank us for abandoning Iraq. The blame for civil war would fall squarely on our shoulders. It is unlikely that the tentative experiments in democracy we have seen in Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan and elsewhere would survive the fallout. There would be no dividend of goodwill from heartbroken intellectuals or emboldened Islamic extremists. American troops might be home in the short run, but the experienced professionals know that in the long run, quitting Iraq would mean more deployments, more desperate battles and more death.

Sixty-four percent of us know that we have a good shot at preventing this outcome if we are allowed to continue our mission. We quietly hope that common sense will return to the dialogue on Iraq. Although we hate leaving our families behind, many of us would rather go back to Iraq a hundred times than abandon the Iraqi people.

A fellow Marine and close friend epitomizes this sentiment. Sean has served two tours in Iraq as a reserve officer. During his last tour, he was informed of the birth of his baby girl by e-mail, learned his father was dying of cancer, and was wounded in the same blast of an improvised explosive that killed his first sergeant on a dirt road in the middle of the western desert. Sean loves his family and his job, but he has made it clear that he would rather go back to Iraq than see us withdraw.

Everyone in uniform does not share this sentiment. Thirty-six percent of military officers are less confident in the mission. But these officers will continue to work as hard as the rest of us toward success because they, too, are professionals. With men and women such as this, the United States has an excellent chance of success in Iraq. We can fail only if the false imagery of quagmire takes hold and our national political will is broken. In that event, both the Iraqi people and the American troops will pay a long-term price for our shortsighted delusion.

The writer is a major in the Marine Corps

I think the disparity in opinion is due to the fact that 99% of Americans have not spent a day on the ground in Iraq and only know what the Post and other mainstream media propaganda outlets tell them. Much of the information we receive from our most trusted sources is false - if people don't see the world clearly then they can't make decisions on a rational basis.

Hope

 

The NY Slimes refused to publish this editorial cartoon by Ramirez.

Chronology of News Events in 2005

Check it out. As far as I can tell, there do not appear to be any inaccurate headlines, though some important things were, of course, left out. For example, shortly after New Orleans Mayor Nagin ordered the city's evacuation, Louisiana Governor Blanco said, on national TV, that she had not signed off on the decision. She went on to say, "The mayor certainly has ordered that but the governor, and that would be me, would have to enforce it or implement it." Blanco is an excellent example of one who hoards power but refuses accountability for her actions, or in this case inaction. By the end of the week, Gov. Blanco and Sen. Landrieu were deflecting blame by, as usual, blaming President Bush for the disaster in New Orleans.

Another Fake Headline

From AFP: "Bush defends Iraq war, says he will attack another nation if necessary"

The article is about a speech that US President Bush gave yesterday. I actually watched the speech in question on C-Span, and Mr. Bush never said what the AFP is reporting he said. Of course, he did not say that he would "not" attack another nation if necessary, either. Jacques Chirac didn't say that he would not attack another nation, so should we conclude that Jacques is a warmongering cowboy? Who writes these headlines, anyway?

Giving the world the Finger

 

The Iraqis seem pretty determined. This woman sums up Iraqi sentiment nicely.

Plan Plan, who's got the Plan?

Harry Reid just went on national TV and said the President "is still not focused on what needs to be done in convincing the American people and showing the American people what his plan is in Iraq." Well, I suppose it's hard to see or hear the plan if your eyes are closed and your ears are plugged. By the way, when's the last time the Dems had a plan?

PREVIOUS: Gulag. Gulag. Who's got the gulag?

Nothing to fear but fear

Thanks to Vietnam, this war we are engaged in is being fought in the media as much as it is in Iraq and Afghanistan. Protein Wisdom makes an interesting observation:

...it is not death as such that we fear—particularly those of us who support the war—but rather the inevitable spectacle of a parade of “deaths” pushed by an anti-war media that we fear will break our national will and fuel the kind of political opportunism we’re seeing today among many Democratics. This feeling is a defensive reaction to the recycled tropes of the Vietnam War era—the favored weapons in the arsenal of our media elites --and the knowledge that 55 thousand Americans died, ultimately, in a war that was lost here at home in the halls Congress, when political opportunists joined with self-righteous anti-war activists to break the national will, largely through a media-driven propaganda effort. In short, we fear the syndrome moreso than we fear the body bags.

PREVIOUS: Some Thoughts on Casualties.

Surprise Surprise

According to an ABC News poll:

Four years after the fall of the Taliban, Afghans express both vast support for the changes that have shaken their country and remarkable optimism for the future, despite the deep challenges they face in economic opportunity, security and basic services alike.

An ABC News poll in Afghanistan — the first national survey there sponsored by a news organization — underscores those challenges in a unique portrait of the lives of ordinary Afghans. Poverty is deep, medical care and other basic services lacking, and infrastructure minimal. Nearly six in 10 have no electricity in their homes, and just 3 percent have it around the clock. Seven in 10 Afghan adults have no more than an elementary education; half have no schooling whatsoever. Half have household incomes under $500 a year.
Yet despite these and other deprivations, 77 percent of Afghans say their country is headed in the right direction — compared with 30 percent in the vastly better-off United States. Ninety-one percent prefer the current Afghan government to the Taliban regime, and 87 percent call the U.S.-led overthrow of the Taliban good for their country. Osama bin Laden, for his part, is as unpopular as the Taliban; nine in 10 view him unfavorably.

Progress fuels these views: Despite the country's continued problems, 85 percent of Afghans say living conditions there are better now than they were under the Taliban. Eighty percent cite improved freedom to express political views. And 75 percent say their security from crime and violence has improved as well.

Why should military servicemen vote for Democrats?

"Where you have our uniformed members being put in a position where it looks like they're rooting for one side or another is very disconcerting," said Greg Noone, a former Navy lawyer. I actually agree with this statement, and it is sad that the Democrat Party has alienated the military to such an extent. It is the Democrat Party leadership that has been openly rooting for defeat in Iraq, to the point where all al Qaeda leader Zawahiri has to do is echo Democrat Party leaders. The Democrat Party leadership seems to have a sickness that makes them believe they can only win when bad things happen to America. In recent months, the Democrat National Party leaders have repeatedly compared our military to Nazis, waged war on military recruitment and ROTC; they've said that the military is broken and we need to retreat/surrender, that the U.S. is going to lose the War in Iraq, and that American soldiers are terrorists.

You know, there are people who terrorize young children and women. And they're called U.N. peacekeepers. And in the Congo, they trade in child sex with girls as young as four. They do so at sex operations not just in the child sex operations and U.N. peacekeeping, not just in the Congo, but in West Africa, and the Balkans, and out in Cambodia, too. And the press couldn't be less interested in it. So if there were really members of the 3rd Infantry Division, or the Marines or whatever, terrorizing Iraqi women and children, you can bet that CNN and the BBC and the New York Times and the Washington Post would all be there covering it 24/7. [Kerry] is just making it up.

The demonic party has even tried to disenfranchise military servicemen. (In the 2000 Presidential elections, after vigorous challenges by Gore canvassers, 1,527 of the postal ballots from soldiers and sailors on active service overseas were rejected.) And to top it all off, Democrats constantly invoke their own military service in attempts to silence those who oppose their views (e.g., Kerry, Murtha - yet you never heard anyone pointing to Cunningham's military record to defend him). Given all of this antagonism from the Democrat Party leadership towards military personel, it should not surprise anyone that the vast majority of military servicemen vote Republican.

John Kerry: American Soldiers Are Terrorists

Lifted word-for-word from Captain Ed:

John Kerry appeared yesterday on the CBS talking-head show, "Face The Nation", to discuss the war in Iraq with Bob Schieffer. Just as in his speeches on the Viet Nam War, Kerry has slipped into deep Left-speak in an attempt to gain national traction for his pose as a party leader. In fact, in language reminiscent of his infamous "Genghis Khan" speech before the Senate in April 1971, he yesterday referred to American soldiers as terrorists -- and then suggested that we leave terrorism to the new Iraqi army.

From page 3-4 of the CBS transcript, emphasis mine (h/t:CQ reader Dave Z):

SCHIEFFER: All right. Let me shift to another point of view, and it comes from another Democrat, Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut. He takes a very different view. He says basically we should stay the course because, he says, real progress is being made. He said this is a war between 27 million Iraqis who want freedom and 10,000 terrorists. He says we're in a watershed transformation. What about that?

Sen. KERRY: Let me--I--first of all, there is so much more that unites Democrats than divides us. And Democrats have much more in common with each other than they do with George Bush's policy right now. Now Joe Lieberman, I believe, also voted for the resolution which said the president needs to make more clear what he's doing and set out benchmarks, and that the policy hasn't been working. We all believe him when you say, `Stay the course.' That's the president's policy, which hasn't been changing, which is a policy of failure. I don't agree with that. But I think what we need to do is recognize what we all agree on, which is you've got to begin to set benchmarks for accomplishment. You've got to begin to transfer authority to the Iraqis. And there is no reason, Bob, that young American soldiers need to be going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children, you know, women, breaking sort of the customs of the--of--the historical customs, religious customs. Whether you like it or not...

SCHIEFFER: Yeah.

Sen. KERRY: ...Iraqis should be doing that. And after all of these two and a half years, with all of the talk of 210,000 people trained, there just is no excuse for not transferring more of that authority.

Kerry thinks that the American soldiers are the terrorists in Iraq, applying that unique gift of his for moral relativity once again to indict an entire deployment of soldiers as criminals of the same order as our enemy. And Bob Schieffer sat there, without even raising an objection to Kerry's smear. Had Kerry not shown a long track record of this kind of rhetoric in the past -- and had to answer for it repeatedly during last year's presidential election -- one could possibly believe it came out as a slip of the tongue. However, he obviously has never stopped believing that the American fighting man and woman represents the same relative evil as the Viet Cong, the Khmer Rouge, and al-Qaeda.

The Democrats need to answer for this outrage. Is it really the party position that American soldiers terrorize Iraqi civilians? Do they want the Iraqis to do it instead of us? Kerry has unmasked himself and his fellow anti-war zealots for the hypocrites they are.

More from Ace:
The Democrats and the media want Bush to lose this war, for political reasons. They want to pressure him to cut and run and allow Iraq to be the war-torn terrorist haven they need it to be in order to prosper.

But they cannot advocate this cut and run strategy if we're winning the war. They cannot press for the withdrawal of all troops from a war when actual victory is perhaps just a year away.

So they need to claim that the war is "unwinnable." If the war is unwinnable, of course, there's hardly anything lost by withrdawing now. In fact, if the war truly were unwinnable, it would be prudent to get out early, rather than throwing living soldiers after the dead.

This requires them to deny all progress being made in Iraq, denigrate the fantastic job our military is doing in hunting down and killing terrorists who would otherwise be committing terrorist actions directly against US interests, claim that Iraq's constitutional, elected government is actually worse than Saddam's dictatorship, etc. Only with this false predicate -- "We're losing now, and we will lose in the future" -- can they advance their defeatist agenda, and disguise the true reasons for wanting a bug-out (they have to defeat Bush politically before he achieves victory militarily in Iraq).

Their careers, political and media, depend upon an American defeat in Iraq.

And from Tamy Bruce:
Let the enemy be mislead by the cut-and-run Leftists and Democrats in this country. Let them underestimate the will of the people. Monica Lewinsky's fat and sloppy boyfriend is no longer running this country, and the cowards like him, equally fat and sloppy, will not determine our future.

LA Times on Joe Wilson: Over 12 Mistakes in Just 2 Sentences

Bummerdietz gives the LA Times a bitch slapping. What media bias?

The Red Crescent Returns - Flight 93 "Memorial"

Date: Thu, 1 Dec 2005 10:50:49 -0800 (PST)
From: DW
Subject: Design for the Flight 93 National Memorial
To: info@paulmurdocharchitects.com

Paul Murdoch Architects,

I just viewed your brochure on the "Design for the
Flight 93 National Memorial," and I just have one
comment: You are stuck on Stupid.

Everything I said in my earlier email (below) still
stands. It is still a red crescent; it still points
toward Mecca. Anyone can see that. From the pictures
on your brochure, it appears that if you draw a line
connecting the "tips" of the red crescent and bisect
it, drawing another line perpendicular to the
crescent-tip connecting line, then not only does this
perpendicular line point toward Mecca, but it bisects
the memorial wall making it clear that this aspect of
the design is not accidental. Your intent is now quite
clear. You wish to memorialize the hijackers.
Moreover, after your previous failed design, I do not
need to prove this assertion but it is your job to
disprove it.

In your letter on the brochure, you say this was a
"democratic selection process." I was born in
Pennsylvania, I have relatives who were in the World
Trade Center on 9/11/01, and I vote NO. So does my
entire family.

DW
California

--- On Sept. 9, 2005 DW wrote:

> I am deeply disturbed by your design for the Flight
> 93
> memorial in Shanksville, PA. You could not possibly
> be
> unaware that the crescent moon with a star is the
> internationally-recognized symbol of the faith of
> Islam. Is it your intention to honor the terrorist
> hijackers? Your design appears to be the equivalent
> of
> putting a swastika over a holocaust memorial site. I
> am thoroughly disgusted, and would expect others to
> be
> equally disgusted when they discover your plan. If
> your "Crescent of Embrace" memorial goes forward, it
> will further victimize Americans. I can only imagine
> your motivation - perhaps it is to turn Americans
> into
> hate-filled terrorists, as you must expect the trees
> in this memorial to be torched.
>
> DW
> California

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