Are there words to describe men who strap bombs onto mentally disabled women and then send them into a marketplace, only to blow up the women and kill and injure hundreds of surrounding civilians, using remote control devices that keep the bombers themselves safe? I think there is a word: Evil. This is pure, undiluted, undisguised evil.
Filed under: Iraq, Muslim violence | Tagged: 101, 536, 75 | 10 Comments »
I’ve never believed Bush lied and, to the extent his information was incorrect (as was information in the hands of all other Western agencies and governments), I assumed that our spywork was to blame. Now we get confirmation of what’s been rumored forever — it was Saddam who lied, never suspecting that his bluff would be called, not by Iran, but by the US:
Saddam Hussein initially didn’t think the U.S. would invade Iraq to destroy weapons of mass destruction, so he kept the fact that he had none a secret to prevent an Iranian invasion he believed could happen. The Iraqi dictator revealed this thinking to George Piro, the FBI agent assigned to interrogate him after his capture.
[snip]
“He told me he initially miscalculated… President Bush’s intentions. He thought the United States would retaliate with the same type of attack as we did in 1998…a four-day aerial attack,” says Piro. “He survived that one and he was willing to accept that type of attack.” “He didn’t believe the U.S. would invade?” asks Pelley, “No, not initially,” answers Piro.
Once the invasion was certain, says Piro, Saddam asked his generals if they could hold the invaders for two weeks. “And at that point, it would go into what he called the secret war,” Piro tells Pelley. But Piro isn’t convinced that the insurgency was Saddam’s plan. “Well, he would like to take credit for the insurgency,” says Piro.
Saddam still wouldn’t admit he had no weapons of mass destruction, even when it was obvious there would be military action against him because of the perception he did. Because, says Piro, “For him, it was critical that he was seen as still the strong, defiant Saddam. He thought that [faking having the weapons] would prevent the Iranians from reinvading Iraq,” he tells Pelley.
You can read the rest of the article here and, of course, watch the 60 Minutes interview.
Incidentally, it’s also apparent from the interview that, even if Saddam didn’t have WMDs in 2003, he was plenty prepared to have them in future:
He also intended and had the wherewithal to restart the weapons program. “Saddam] still had the engineers. The folks that he needed to reconstitute his program are still there,” says Piro. “He wanted to pursue all of WMD…to reconstitute his entire WMD program.” This included chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, Piro says.
But do you think any of this will change of the minds of the Bush lied/people died crowd?
UPDATE: From SGT Dave’s comment to this post:
The only problem I have at this time is that, contrary to conventional wisdom, there were indeed chemical weapons in Iraq at the time of the invasion. We captured some while I was serving in Baghdad (the 500 “old” rounds) and had at least one shell used as an IED.
Saddam had all the physical machinery in place to start making chemical and biological weapons; he didn’t have the chemical precursors, but was seeking them. The same goes with radiological/nuclear weaponry. The only reason he didn’t have these items was lack of ways he could get money out of the country and into the hands of the dealers.
The bottom line remains that at least five tons of the chemical weapons reported destroyed by the UN inspectors were recovered by US forces; the mobile laboratory facilities reported destroyed by Iraq and the UN were captured in western Iraq during the opening days of the war; the Saddam regime attempted to purchase yellow-cake uranium for refining (despite C.Wilson’s false statements to the press – contradicting his sworn report) in a centrifuge array that was captured by US forces – again reported as destroyed by Iraq and the UN; and Saddam ordered items shipped to Syria (though the contents of those shipments is not known/releasable at this time).
The writing on the wall is just about as clear as the German redeployment of the Panzer divisions eastward into Poland. If not for the Germans’ own crazy leader interfering with the battle plan, the ignorance and arrogance of the Russian leader of the time nearly brought down an entire nation in a single campaign season. While Bush is no Churchill or Roosevelt, I fear that the other choices we were given would have given results in the range of Stalin or Chamberlain.
Wow, quite a rant – even for me.Even now the literate and relatively knowledgable are falling prey to the spin. Don’t concede that there “weren’t” WMD – there were. Don’t even let them put out that there “wasn’t a significant amount” – enough agent to kill over a million people ten times over is quite a bit. They are lying now, as they were before, but they are lying about the lies that they told about the lies. Don’t give them the first step; they will keep lying until the truth is only known by those willing to dig into the classified and official “sworn” documents.
Don’t be a victim of Newspeak and Newthink. They’re lying to you.
UPDATE II: And more from SGT Dave, whose comments here are factual enough that they shouldn’t be buried:
Saddam was killing dozens every day in Baghdad, not to mention the “swamp Arabs” and the Kurds.
Training areas used to practice hijackings – including a set of four that killed about 3,000 Americans.
Mid-grade weaponized anthrax, enough to pollute an area the size of Kansas.
Enough sarin, VX, and mustard gas to kill every Shi’ite in Baghdad.
And I won’t go into the torture and rape rooms – it took days to get the images out of my nightmares.
Saddam may have been lying on some things, but you cannot take that kind of risk. I’m out here; I was there. The truth is that we didn’t do it because we “can”. We did it because the risk was too high regarding what he could have done. There is no defense in thousands of miles of sea any longer.
Maybe I’m a simple reactionary, but I believe it was worth the time I spent there. I have friends that still serve and believe it was worth it. You didn’t get to meet a young woman of my acquaintance, there in Mashtal in Baghdad. She didn’t have fingers on her left hand and her right leg didn’t work quite right anymore. When she was eight Uday thought she was very pretty playing in the schoolyard. She can’t ever have kids and was trembling when she took the aid bag from my hand, with food for her mother and sister. My counterpart with Civil Affairs and her female terp got the story of why she was scared of the big men in uniform.
I will never, ever, forget the look on that woman’s face and the fear those unspeakable individuals made manifest in her. If one – ONE – little girl in that place was spared this by our actions, then it was worth every cent, every drop of blood, sweat, and tears we shed.
Those people were dead, Swamp. They were just waiting their turn to be buried. They have a chance, you selfish, greedy, me-me-me, complacent goof. And some died – but so did the founders of our nation, disregarding the “safe” path that allowed tyranny to rule unchallenged. Too many “liberals” complain of the cost, ignoring the pile of bodies that went to making their right (RIGHT!) to complain possible.
I’m ranting again; God save me, I am not as strong as I should be. I am fallable, weak, and human. But I am a soldier, and I will cleave to my duty and find strength in my honor. Don’t think that the men and women who gave all gave in vain. They gave for that elusive, precious, and irreplacable commodity – hope.
And I hope the Iraqi people fulfill that hope. But I know that the enemy is not attacking my home, my business, or my nation on our land. And I know why – so do you, if you look at what the enemy is saying.
And that too, is what “defend against all enemies, foreign and domestic” means. They would be fighting us anyway – you want the shootout in your house or theirs?
And Ari; there are no dispassionate historians; the ISP could have stopped the hijackers by turning their trainers over to INTERPOL when they crossed the border from Syria and moved overland to Turkey with ISP assistance before boarding planes into the EU to give guidance to the hijackers. Or even by taking Bin Laden out and shooting him instead of throwing a four day feast/orgy congratulating him on the USS Cole and US Embassy incidents.
‘Nuff said – There is a lot of Truth out there, but few, if any, are willing to address it.
Filed under: Bush Derangement Syndrome, Iraq | Tagged: 29, 461, 75, 766, 883, 890 | Leave a comment »
The Surge’s effectiveness in bringing down the rate of deaths in Iraq is stunning. Naysayers (and there are a few who hang out here), have already moved the goal posts, saying that the Surge hasn’t worked because (a) all the necessary internecine, tribal, religious, etc., killing was already done before the Surge kicked in and (b) the Surge was supposed to bring instant harmony to the Iraqi government. Both these arguments are specious.
As to the first, that argument is belied by the direct correlation between the Surge and the drop in casualties. It’s possible, of course, that the Surge just coincidentally happened at precisely the same moment the Islamist slaughterers decided that they had succeeded in their bloody work. Possible, but hardly probable. That’s an argument only for those who resent the fact that more troops on the ground mean less deaths in Iraq.
And as to the second, that’s a cart before the horse argument. Government cannot be stable if the country is awash in violence. For one thing, the violence surges upwards, with assassinations being used in lieu of ballot boxes. Only the insanely brave, the foolhardy or the complicit will seek political office under those circumstances. For another thing, the ordinary citizenry can scarcely be expected to think in political terms if survival is its primary issue. When violence declines, when ordinary people of good will can run for office, and when the citizens can view politics as a ballot sport, not a death sport, government tends to stabilize.
The same thing goes for economic stability. When streets are awash in blood, ordinary people cannot develop, sell and buy goods. All they can do is hunker down, which has a stagnating effect on the economy.
The Surge, which has always been a military operation, has achieved its military goals and, with luck and with a continued strong US presence, the political and economic goals will be able to follow.
Filed under: Iraq, Military | Tagged: 75, 817, 97 | 5 Comments »
Iraqi oil production is above the levels seen before the US-led invasion of the country in 2003, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
The IEA said Iraqi crude production is now running at 2.3 million barrels per day, compared with 1.9 million barrels at the start of this year.
It puts the rise down to the improving security situation in Iraq, especially in the north of the country.
Typically, the IEA goes on to put a lot of negative spin on things, but the core news is good. Even better is that revenue from this oil, rather than going into the pockets of Hussein and his minions, or into the pockets of corrupt UN officials, will, at least in theory, benefit the Iraqi people.
Filed under: Iraq | Tagged: 688, 75 | Leave a comment »
You remember Matt Sanchez, don’t you? He’s the conservative military writer who suddenly shot to fame when it was revealed that he’d had an earlier career working in gay porn. He’s since turned against the lifestyle (porn), and writes about how it degrades the human spirit. He’s also been writing from Iraq and Afghanistan, and Right Wing News has an email interview with him. A lot of his responses are a bit too flip — too trying to be funny — but I think he’s on to something when he discusses the MSM’s Iraq news coverage:
Now, since then, you’ve been embedded in Iraq and Afghanistan. First off, tell us a little bit about your time in Iraq and how you think things are going there.
In Iraq, the media tried pulling off a coup attempt, by cooking the coverage. I understand performance is an element of the news, but these people were just flat out hamming it up for the cameras.
Iraq is a country the size of California with a population as large as Canada’s. On any given day things happen—very ugly things happen. Iraq was under a coordinated assault by Islamofascists who terrorized the country after the fall of Saddam. What the media showed was a one-sided military drama about how directionless the conflict was, while completely downplaying the actions and motives of the enemy.
Fast forward a couple of years, and the coverage has changed, because of great independent reporting. Iraq had an average of only 30 western reporters from 2005 through 2007. The country is the size of California, but even less media interest than Brian Depalma’s hit Redacted.
When people like Michael Yon, Michael Totten, Bill Roggio, JD Johannes, Michelle Malkin and Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity et al showed a more in-depth view, it challenged the media monopoly. The internet and talk radio played a HUGE role in this.
Thanks to eyes on the ground reporting, spin, like Thomas Scott Beauchamp, was challenged and debunked. That entire liberal soap opera would have stood unchallenged, a bit like how the McCarthyism myth has largely stood unchallenged.
Filed under: Iraq, Media matters | Tagged: 621, 75 | Leave a comment »
In my post about Jews’ love for Israel and America, I noted Michael Medved’s thought experiment, which was to imagine whether world attitudes towards America would change if Israel magically vanished, as well as his conclusion that nothing would change. Nevertheless, in the comments to that post — and perhaps inevitably given how widespread the canard is that Israel taints America — came the charge that it’s all Israel’s fault that the Muslim nations have aligned against us. It is for that reason that I now post about a bombing that normally would not provide subject matter for this blog (heinous though the bombing was):
Two car bombs ripped through the Algerian capital Tuesday, reportedly killing at least 62 people in what appeared to be targeted attacks on government and United Nations buildings.
One explosion occurred outside the constitutional court in the Algiers neighborhood of Ben Aknoun while the other took place in the residential area of Hydra tearing the front off the U.N.’s headquarters in the city.
A reporter from CNN affiliate BFM quoted hospital sources as saying 62 people were killed in both blasts.
[snip]
So far no group has admitted responsibility for Tuesday’s blasts.
[snip]
Algeria, which has a population of three million, is still recovering from more than a decade of violence that began after the military government called a halt to elections which an Islamist party was poised to win.
Tens of thousands of people died in the unrest. Although the country has remained relatively peaceful, recent terrorist attacks have raised fears of a slide back to violence.
In April, the northern Africa wing of al Qaeda claimed responsibility for a bomb attack in downtown Algiers that killed 33 people.
A couple of points: First, although the police are not yet sure, it is reasonable to believe that this is an Al Qaeda blast, both because of Al Qaeda’s history in Algeria and because of the simultaneously explosions, a typical AQ hallmark. Second, neither Algeria nor the UN are friends of Israel or America.
In other words, the Muslim violence described above had nothing to do with America’s support for Israel. The same holds true for the Muslim violence in the Philippines, India, Spain, England, and Russia, all of which have distinguished themselves over the years by continued hostility to Israel and, often, to America. (Although India, faced with intractable Muslim violence and a booming capitalist economy, is hewing closer to both Israel and America.) Likewise, the Sudanese — both Christian and Muslim — being slaughtered left and right at the hands of their Islamist compatriots probably have only the haziest knowledge of either America’s or Israel’s very existence.
And for those who claim that Spain and England came into the line of Islamist fire only because they supported the Iraq war, which in turn is the result of a Zionist conspiracy, a couple of facts should put that argument to rest: First, it does not explain the Islamic violence in the other countries, which have nothing to do with or actively opposed the Iraq War. Second, Israel and most American Jews opposed the Iraq War, the former because it viewed Iran as the greater threat and didn’t want to get side tracked, and the latter because they hate Bush, and whatever he’s for, they’re against.
Indeed, when one looks thematically at Muslim violence, there is only one common thread: Islam itself. That is, one cannot wrap around each act of Muslim violence the blanket of economic oppression, or support for the Iraq War, or support for Israel, or support for America, or any other common denominator other than Islam itself. Islam is now, as it has always been, a religion devoted to territorial conquest and the acquisition of non-Muslims to serve as a tax base. Islam also is now, as it always has been, a religion defined by a deep and abiding intolerance for anything non-Islamic and, true to the teachings of Mohammad himself, this intolerance provides license for rapine and slaughter.
So please disabuse yourself of the notion that Muslims world-wide hate America because America staunchly supports the nation that so closely shares her values and that is so besieged by those who don’t. Instead, Muslims world-wide hate America because Muslims currently hate everyone.
UPDATE: Just today, out of Indonesia, comes a story, not of another bombing or attack, but of Muslim militants sent off to jail for slaughtering Christians in that land. The murder victims, including several school girls attacked and beheaded, had no known connection to Israel or America.
Filed under: Islam, Israel, Muslim violence | Tagged: 262, 656, 75, 76, 77, 9 | 10 Comments »
When I say “the war at home,” I’m not taking of the home front, a la WWII. I’m taking about Americans at war with the War. One young American, fighting (and, ultimately, dying) in Iraq, had his fill of that war:
Published: Oct 19, 2007
A Soldier’s Last Words: Listen Up CBS, CNN, Cindy Sheehan, Al Franken by Louisa Centanni
SGT. Edmund John Jeffer’s last few words were some of the most touching, inspiring and most truthful words spoken since the tragedy of 9/11 – and since our nation went to war.
SGT. Jeffers was a strong soldier and talented writer. He died in Iraq on September 19, 2007. He was a loving husband, brother and son. His service was more than this country could ever grasp – but the least you can do for the man who sacrificed his life for you … is listen to what he had to say. Listen up and pay attention to all of the Cindy Sheehans and Al Frankens of the world. To MSNBC, CNN, and CBS. To all who call themselves Americans … Hope Rides Alone.
Hope Rides Alone
By Eddie Jeffers
I stare out into the darkness from my post, and I watch the city burn to the ground. I smell the familiar smells, I walk through the familiar rubble, and I look at the frightened faces that watch me pass down the streets of their neighborhoods. My nerves hardly rest; my hands are steady on a device that has been given to me from my government for the purpose of taking the lives of others. I sweat, and I am tired. My back aches from the loads I carry. Young American boys look to me to direct them in a manner that will someday allow them to see their families again…and yet, I too, am just a boy….my age not but a few years more than that of the ones I lead. I am stressed, I am scared, and I am paranoid…because death is everywhere. It waits for me, it calls to me from around street corners and windows, and it is always there.
There are the demons that follow me, and tempt me into thoughts and actions that are not my own…but that are necessary for survival. I’ve made compromises with my humanity. And I am not alone in this. Miles from me are my brethren in this world, who walk in the same streets…who feel the same things, whether they admit to it or not.
And to think, I volunteered for this… And I am ignorant to the rest of the world…or so I thought. But even thousands of miles away, in Ramadi , Iraq , the cries and screams and complaints of the ungrateful reach me. In a year, I will be thrust back into society from a life and mentality that doesn’t fit your average man. And then, I will be alone. And then, I will walk down the streets of America , and see the yellow ribbon stickers on the cars of the same people who compare our President to Hitler.
I will watch the television and watch the Cindy Sheehans, and the Al Frankens, and the rest of the ignorant sheep of America spout off their mouths about a subject they know nothing about. It is their right, however, and it is a right that is defended by hundreds of thousands of boys and girls scattered across the world, far from home. I use the word boys and girls, because that’s what they are. In the Army, the average age of the infantryman is nineteen years old. The average rank of soldiers killed in action is Private First Class.
People like Cindy Sheehan are ignorant. Not just to this war, but to the results of their idiotic ramblings, or at least I hope they are. They don’t realize its effects on this war. In this war, there are no Geneva Conventions, no cease fires. Medics and Chaplains are not spared from the enemy’s brutality because it’s against the rules. I can only imagine the horrors a military Chaplain would experience at the hands of the enemy. The enemy slinks in the shadows and fights a coward’s war against us. It is effective though, as many men and women have died since the start of this war. And the memory of their service to America is tainted by the inconsiderate remarks on our nation’s news outlets. And every day, the enemy changes…only now, the enemy is becoming something new. The enemy is transitioning from the Muslim extremists to Americans. The enemy is becoming the very people whom we defend with our lives. And they do not realize it.
But in denouncing our actions, denouncing our leaders, denouncing the war we live and fight, they are isolating the military from society…and they are becoming our enemy. Democrats and peace activists like to toss the word “quagmire” around and compare this war to Vietnam . In a way they are right, this war is becoming like Vietnam . Not the actual war, but in the isolation of country and military. America is not a nation at war; they are a nation with its military at war. Like it or not, we are here, some of us for our second, or third times; some even for their fourth and so on. Americans are so concerned now with politics, that it is interfering with our war.
Terrorists cut the heads off of American citizens on the Internet…and there is no outrage, but an American soldier kills an Iraqi in the midst of battle, and there are investigations, and sometimes soldiers are even jailed…for doing their job.
It is absolutely sickening to me to think our country has come to this. Why are we so obsessed with the bad news? Why will people stop at nothing to be against this war, no matter how much evidence of the good we’ve done is thrown in their face? When is the last time CNN or MSNBC or CBS reported the opening of schools and hospitals in Iraq ? Or the leaders of terror cells being detained or killed? It’s all happening, but people will not let up their hatred of Bush. They will ignore the good news, because It just might show people that Bush was right.
America has lost its will to fight. It has lost its will to defend what is right and just in the world. The crazy thing of it all is that the American people have not even been asked to sacrifice a single thing. It’s not like World War Two, where people rationed food, and turned in cars to be made into metal for tanks. The American people have not been asked to sacrifice anything. Unless you are in the military or the family member of a service member, its life as usual…the war doesn’t affect you.
But it affects us. And when it is over, and the troops come home, and they try to piece together what’s left of them after their service…where will the detractors be then? Where will the Cindy Sheehans be to comfort and talk to soldiers and help them sort out the last couple years of their lives, most of which have been spent dodging death and wading through the deaths of their friends? They will be where they always are, somewhere far away, where the horrors of the world can’t touch them. Somewhere where they can complain about things they will never experience in their lifetime; things that the young men and women of America have willingly taken upon their shoulders.
We are the hope of the Iraqi people. They want what everyone else wants in life: safety, security, somewhere to call home. They want a country that is safe to raise their children in. Not a place where their children will be abducted, raped, and murdered if they do not comply with the terrorists demands. They want to live on, rebuild and prosper. And America has given them the opportunity, but only if we stay true to the cause, and see it to its end. But the country must unite in this endeavor…we cannot place the burden on our military alone. We must all stand up and fight, whether in uniform or not. And supporting us is more than sticking yellow ribbon stickers on your cars. It’s supporting our President, our troops and our cause.
Right now, the burden is all on the American soldiers. Right now, hope rides alone. But it can change, it must change. Because there is only failure and darkness ahead for us as a country, as a people, if it doesn’t.
Let’s stop all the political nonsense, let’s stop all the bickering, let’s stop all the bad news, and let’s stand and fight!
Eddie’s father, David Jeffers, writes:
I’m not sure how many letters or articles you’ve ever read from the genre of “News from the Front,” but this is one of the best I’ve ever read, including all of America’s wars. As I was reading this, I forgot that it was my son who had written it. My emotions range from great pride to great sorrow, knowing that my little boy (22 years old) has become this man.
He is my hero. Thank all of you for your prayers for him; he needs them now more than ever. God bless.
Though Eddie is no longer with us, you can help to let his voice be heard.
Thanks to News Media Journal and David Jeffers for print permission.
Hat tip: W “B” S
Filed under: Anti-war | Tagged: 13, 412, 413, 75, 97 | 12 Comments »
Dennis Prager likes to say (and I’m paraphrasing here) that liberals and conservatives have entirely incompatible world views. They understand facts in such a different way that there are few points of intersection. I had a reminder of that truism the other day when I watched Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center with a liberal friend.
As you may recall, WTC, which came out last year, tells the true story of two Port Authority police officers (John McLoughlin and Will Jimeno) who got trapped in an elevator shaft when the Trade Center buildings collapsed. The movie traces their day from its ordinary beginnings, to their bewildering mission into the building, to their entombment, survival in the wreckage and ultimate rescue. It also looks at how their families cope with both the news and the complete absence of news, and how they are discovered and extricated. I found it a very moving experience to watch. My friend did not. He thought it was sentimental and pedestrian, despite learning at the end that much of the dialog was lifted right out of newspaper stories and quotations from the people actually involved in the events.
My friend’s perception in that regard could just be an artistic, movie-making quibble. What was more interesting was his emotional response to the movie. As I watched events unfold, especially when the planes hit the buildings and people began to realize that America had been attacked, I became furious all over again at those who had attacked us, and at those who masterminded and funded the attack. I was sorry that the Saudis in the plane died, and that they died fulfilling their hearts’ desires, because it would have been so much more emotionally satisfying to subject to them to some horrible medieval style torture. (And, in that way, it’s probably good for America’s soul that we didn’t get the opportunity to flay them alive, and remove their intestines and burn them before their eyes, which is what they richly deserved.) That was my response.
My friend’s response was this: “Bush is going to go down in history as the worst president ever. He squandered the opportunity to go after the terrorists.” I didn’t want to talk politics during the movie, so I let it drop, but I had a few thoughts: As to the source of this attack, which was Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, Bush didn’t squander the opportunity. Instead, he went in and destroyed the Taliban. And as to the fact that it was Saudi Arabia that provided the manpower, the money and the ideology, I doubt my friend seriously believes anyone could attack Saudi Arabia without destroying the West in a single, oil-dripping stroke. In other words, once Bush went after the Taliban, which was a low level player in world Islamism, although a high level players in this single attack, what should he have done vis a vis the Twin Towers?
There will be, for a long time, debate about the wisdom of Bush’s next responsive choice — invading Iraq. I’d like to avoid the justification given for the war — violating UN sanctions, creating a Potemkin nuclear village (although some of the village’s real components seem to have drifted into Syria), funding terrorism, etc. — and focus on the strategic benefit of going into Iraq.
George Friedman, who is the founder of Stratfor, a company that produces intelligence analysis, wrote a book in which he opined, based on information available to the public, that Iraq was a proxy attack on Saudi Arabia. That is, Bush used information available at the time built up a credible and honest case that Iraq was a threat (and I say honest because most of the information was, in fact, true and, as for that which was untrue, there was no way to know at the time that it was false). Neutralizing Iraq, though, was only one goal and, perhaps, even a secondary one. What he really wanted to do was to create a strong American military presence, both short and long term, that was breathing over Saudi Arabia’s shoulder. Saudi Arabia got the message, by the way, and after the War began, Saudi Arabia instantly stepped up its own attacks against Al Qaeda within Saudi borders.
Bush also hoped to create– and, in fact, may have created — a stable pro-American bulwark in the heart of the Middle East. He almost incidentally created a honey pot that attracted Al Qaeda fighters from all over the Muslim world (especially Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia), men who rendered themselves useless by becoming dead. While there may be other fervent anti-American Muslims around the world, not all are willing to die for their beliefs, so the fact that they hate America (as they have done for decades) may be less important than the fact that they’re suddenly not so willing to throw themselves in front of American bullets to demonstrate their hatred.
That’s my view, but I willingly concede that there is room for intelligent disagreement, both about the War’s origins, its conduct, and its eventual results. Nevertheless, I still found peculiar that my friend, watching in almost real time a Muslim/Saudi attack on America that killed 3,000 people, rather than venting at the attackers, used the opportunity to vent against George Bush.
My friend also had one other interesting take on the movie. I’m not giving anything away here, since it was well publicized when the movie came out, but the two police officers were discovered because an ex-Marine, living in Connecticut, recognized that the US was at war, pulled on his old uniform, and went down to the ruins to hunt for survivors. And because he was not affiliated with any official organization, he wasn’t constrained by orders from headquarters calling the search off for the night. He just went in. Once there, he found another ex-Marine, exactly like himself: someone who pulled on his uniform and did his duty. It was these men who, in the dark, dusty, dangerous smoke, went around yelling for survivors to call out or tap. And it was these men who, when they found McLoughlin and Jimeno, assured them that, as Marines, these survivors had become their mission, and the Marines would not abandon them. Since you know how I feel about the Marines, I was really moved by that moment.
Interestingly, when my friend was talking to my son, and telling him about the movie, he described these two rescuers thusly: “These ordinary guys decided to go looking for survivors.” I interrupted to say, “They weren’t ordinary guys, they were Marines.” My friend insisted that I was wrong. They were ordinary guys, he said, because they weren’t fire fighters or police officers or FBI agents or anyone else working with an organization. They just went in on their own. My friend is technically correct — both men were ex-Marines who showed up without orders — but I think he missed something profound, which is that it was their Marine identity and training that drove them there. Strikingly, both of them showed up in their uniforms, which I think was more than just a way to avoid police cordons. I think it was a statement about their identity and their goals: they were Marines, and they were on a mission.
So, one movie, two very different responses.
Filed under: Anti-war, Bush Derangement Syndrome, Iraq, Islam, Jihad, Saudi Arabia | Tagged: 122, 461, 608, 647, 75, 822, 893 | 5 Comments »
Next time someone tells you about the intractable Civil War in Iraq, you might take a moment to show them this photo. It’s by no means the factual clincher to an anti-War argument, but it is a wonderful insight in a society that hopes to mend itself, even as the anti-War crowd in America, by demanding the instant withdrawal of troops or, at least, their bankruptcy, and by focusing obsessively on the War’s genesis, rather then its progression and best outcome, hopes to throw it back to the anarchistic Islamic wolves.
Filed under: Anti-war, Iraq | Tagged: 114, 348, 715, 75, 76 | 14 Comments »
As Saddam Hussein’s miles of documents are slowly being translated, more is being revealed about the WMDs:
The gist of the new evidence is this: roughly one quarter of Saddam’s WMD was destroyed under UN pressure during the early to mid 1990’s. Saddam sold approximately another quarter of his weapons stockpile to his Arab neighbors during the mid to late 1990’s. The Russians insisted on removing another quarter in the last few months before the war. The last remaining WMD, the contents of Saddam’s nuclear weapons labs, were still inside Iraq on the day when the coalition forces arrived in 2003, but were stolen from under the Americans’ noses and sent to Syria. Syria is one of eight countries in the world that never signed a treaty banning WMD, and now is the storehouse for much of what remains of Saddam’s WMD Empire. This was the target of the recent Israeli air strike.
That’s just a teeny snippet, though, of a much longer article that goes into great details about Hussein’s tortuous machinations with his WMDs, as well as pointing out the many hidden hands and hidden storerooms still manipulating these instruments of destruction. It all makes for fascinating, and quite scary, reading.
Filed under: Iraq, Syria | Tagged: 131, 75, 883, 890 | 4 Comments »
Scott Malensek, writing at Flopping Aces, revisits the question of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear abilities. After a scathing indictment of Congresspeople who had access to the full National Intelligence Estimate detailing all known information about Saddam’s nuclear capabilities and his access to other illegal weapons of war, but who still chose not to exercise that right, Malensek points out that information obtained since the Iraq War dovetails with the conclusions in the NIE: Saddam wanted to build WMDs, Saddam was capable of building WMDs, and Saddam would probably have acquired the last, most important ingredient (weapons grade nuclear material) by 2007 — facts that are worth remembering next time someone comes up to you and chants “Bush lied, people died.” As it happens, Bush didn’t lie, although one can still quarrel with his and Congress’ decision to take this nation to war with Iraq. (I don’t quarrel, but one still can.)
UPDATE: More on Hussein and WMDs, this time explaining that Hussein erected a Potemkin village to scare away Iran, a bit of political calculus that might have worked if 9/11 hadn’t suddenly changed the equation.
Filed under: Iraq | Tagged: 75, 890 | Leave a comment »
Americans like to talk about ecumenicalism, which is an idea that concerns itself with “establishing or promoting unity among churches or religions.” We in America have proven to be very good at it, so much so that we think nothing of little news stories about the rabbi giving a talk to his neighbor’s church, or the minister from one Protestant church joining a prayer meeting from another Protestant Church. The difficulties many conservatives are having with the Romney candidacy (Mormon!) and the Giuliani candidacy (Catholic and pro-Choice!), or even the nasty smears the Democrats leveled against Bobby Jindal during his successful candidacy for governor, are about as bad as religious differences get here. No blood is shed, no villages are destroyed, no people are persecuted or driven from their homes. We are, therefore, exceptionally blessed.
Other nations, and particularly Middle Eastern nations, are less blessed. In Muslim dominant countries, Jews are banished and Christians are persecuted. Once that’s done, the Muslims turn on each other, with the varying sects diving into blood baths to attain religious and secular predominance.
That’s why Michael Yon’s most recent photograph out Iraq, which you can see here, at his blog, is so important. On its face, it shows something wonderful: a cross going up on a Church in Iraq. What’s even more amazing, though, is the text that accompanies the photograph, since it explains that this is not just a Christian church that is taking a risk at reestablishing a place of worship. Instead, it is ecumenicalism in action, in the heart of the Middle East:
I photographed men and women, both Christians and Muslims, placing a cross atop the St. John’s Church in Baghdad. They had taken the cross from storage and a man washed it before carrying it up to the dome. (Emphasis mine.)
Some regimes are cancerous. They grow and swell, and make the body politic look strong and full, but they are, in fact, slowly killing it from within, with their poisonous tentacles reaching out to destroy every organ in their path. Cancer does not yield easily, preferring to kill its host rather than to give up.
With real cancers, we go in with knives and chemo and radiation. And with political cancers, sometimes the only answer is troops and weapons. The body bleeds and suffers but, if it is fundamentally strong and if the disease is stopped in time, it can recover fully.
I’d like to think that this is what we are seeing in Iraq — after the removal of the cancerous Hussein leadership from the Iraqi political scene, and after the trauma of that removal, the Iraqis are recovering and going on to be stronger and healthier than ever before.
UPDATE: Unsurprisingly, Chris Muir has the last and best word:
Filed under: Christians, Iraq, Islam, Uplifting stories | Tagged: 35, 351, 378, 630, 656, 75 | 3 Comments »
One of the things I landed on, hard, in my post about the great Rush Limbaugh smear was the fact that Media Matters, in order to smear Rush, did some very selective editing so as to destroy entirely the context in which his “phony soldier” comment arose. It seems that another “respected” member of the MSM has been caught engaging in the same tactics — although there is a caveat about this, because it’s unclear whether the source material is itself a fake.
Anyway, here’s the story. In connection with the Scott Thomas Beauchamp affair (that’s the one where TNR’s roving Iraq correspondent told some patently fake stories and TNR is sticking to them), Glenn Greenwald (of sock puppet fame), claims to have received an unsolicited letter from Col. Steven A. Boylan, the Public Affairs Officer and personal spokesman for Gen. David G. Petraeus. Greenwald reprints the letter with lots of ellipses, ends by throwing in his own opinion about the redacted letter:
Everyone can decide for themselves if that sounds more like an apolitical, professional military officer or an overwrought right-wing blogger throwing around all sorts of angry, politically charged invective. Whatever else is true, it is rather odd that this was the sort of rhetoric Col. Boylan chose to invoke in service of his apparent goal of proving that there is nothing politicized about the U.S. military in Iraq.
What’s interesting is all the stuff behind the periodic ellipses in Greenwald’s repost of the alleged letter. The Dread Pundit Bluto received, from Greenwald himself, a copy of the entire email that Boylan purportedly sent (and Boylan has not confirmed whether he did, in fact, send the email). Bluto reprints the entire email, bolding all the bits Greenwald left out — bits that give context to what Boylan allegedly said. Here’s are just the first few paragraphs of the entire letter, with the parts that Greenwald redacted highlighted in bold:
Glenn,
I had hoped to post this in response to your article, but apparently it is closed already.
I am not sending this as anyone’s spokesperson, just a straight military Public Affairs Officer, with about 27 months overall time in Iraq who is concerned with accuracy, context and characterization of information and has worked with media of all types since joining the career field in 1991. The issues of accuracy, context, and proper characterization is something that perhaps you could do a little research and would assume you are aware of as a trained lawyer.
I do enjoy reading your diatribes as they provide comic relief here in Iraq. The amount of pure fiction is incredible. Since a great deal of this post is just opinion and everyone is entitled to their opinions, I will not address those even though they are shall we say — based on few if any facts. That does surprise me with your training as a lawyer, but we will leave those jokes to another day.
You do have one fact in your post — then Brigadier General Bergner did work at the National Security Council on matters concerning Iraq. Not surprising as he had returned from a year plus deployment to Iraq as the Multi-National Division – North Assistant Division Commander. It would seem reasonable that someone with Iraq experience would work issues at the NSC that was familiar with and had experience in Iraq. All else after that portion in your post about Major General Bergner is just your wishful thinking to support your flawed theory.
So, right off the bat, we learn why Greenwald received the unsolicited letter, we learn that Boylan is not writing in his professional capacity, and we learn that he has just a few factual quibbles with Greenwald’s view of events. You should definitely head over to Bluto’s place to see the rest, and to get a sense of just how much Greenwald changed the meaning of the original text with his selective redactions.
As I noted in my Rush post, the tactic that Greenwald and Media Matters use is the “reporting” equivalent of those movie advertisements that say “Johnny Critic of ABS news said ‘It’s amazing….'” And then, of course, when you track down the whole Johnny Critic review, you discover he actually said “It’s amazing that anybody would pay money to see this piece of garbage.”
I’ve said it before and before, and I’ll say it again and again: if you read anything in the MSM, double and triple check the facts supporting the reporter’s or pundit’s conclusions. They often do not play fair.
UPDATE: I seem to have gotten linked at Salon, and I’ve had a few people take issue with the fact that Greenwald included a link to the original letter at another website. I don’t care.
The bone I’m picking is with the fact that he created a straw man against which to argue when he selectively edited the original letter and used that selectively edited text as his target. Once Greenwald did that, he created a strong disincentive for readers to trot over to the link and read the whole thing. His readers trust that Greenwald, in his redaction, nevertheless preserved the original text’s meaning — which he did not.
So my beef is with a stylistic approach to argument, not with the argument itself. There are three reasons that lead people to edit their opponent’s statements to suit their own argument, rather than arguing against what their opponent said in the first place: carelessness (my most common sin), intellectual puniness (and I won’t accuse Greenwald of that), or an agenda (which Greenwald openly displays and which Media Matters displayed when it went after Rush).
So, Greenwald had an agenda, and he pursued it. That’s fine, but he used a smarmy lawyer’s tactic to do it, and that’s not fine. He deserves to be called on that tactic.
UPDATE II: Check out Best of the Web, and scroll down for the discussion on 101 Ways to Abuse a Quote, which is another example of the point I’m making. Incidentally, it gives a name to the use of ellipses that I describe above: dowdification.
UPDATE III: Lorie Byrd has chimed in with her always interesting take on the ellipses issue:
The Greenwald post linked above is a good example of how those on the left have argued the issues surrounding the war in Iraq by omitting relevant facts. The media has done the same in much of their reporting. The way Greenwald omitted the section citing the errors Boylan noted from his post trying to paint the email as bizarre is the same way those on the left have debated the war in Iraq. They often link to a report, but then will cherry pick certain portions, while ignoring any favorable ones. In some cases, positive reports are not mentioned at all, but are omitted entirely. It is no wonder so many Americans still believe there has been no progress made in Iraq.
As with me, her beef isn’t with the underlying factual argument, it’s with the way Greenwald selectively editing his opponent’s writing to create a factual straw man he could then attack.
UPDATE IV: I had the misfortune to get linked at a site called Balloon Juice, which has a large readership, so I can anticipate a big dose of snarky, ill-informed comments coming in. Just FYI, after Balloon Juice castigated me for being unfamiliar with the purpose behind ellipses, I wrote this response (and yes, my response is snarky too, but I’m tired of being challenged for things I didn’t write or accused of being ill-informed about things I know quite well):
Sweetheart, I know all about using ellipses when writing to reduce the amount of text or tighten an argument. As a lawyer, I use it all the time to remove extraneous, or irrelevant material. I actually get that bit.
My problem was, and continues to be, that Greenwald removed substantive material to create a straw man against which he could argue. That’s a stylistic approach that interests me irrespective of the merits of Greenwald’s factual assertions (something I quite carefully and explicitly did not touch upon). I simply found dishonest the way in which Greenwald castigated Boylan’s writing after having edited it down to something that it did not start out to be.
So, if anyone is doing the la-la-la, hide the facts approach to writing, you’d better check in with Mr. Greenwald. All I did was point out the elephant in his intellectual living room. I didn’t put it there.
Filed under: Iraq, Media matters | Tagged: 468, 75, 764, 780, 810, 838 | 71 Comments »
TNR has finally broken its silence and responded to the fact that Drudge made public documents regarding the Scott Thomas Beauchamp affair. According to TNR, everything Beauchamp said is true, and any recantations resulted from the military’s bullying him, augmented by right wing spin. I don’t have time to comment know, and don’t have a deep knowledge of the facts to do so, but I’ll remind you that Beauchamp’s story had fallen apart without his recantation, as it emerged that it was impossible for the military vehicles described to swerve around to hit dogs; that no disfigured woman in Iraq had been ridiculed at a base; and that no one else in Iraq recollected soldiers frolicking with the bones of the dead.
I’ll keep you posted as more intelligent analyses come along.
UPDATE: Here’s what I was waiting for. Bob Owens, who has followed this story with incredible tenacity, takes on TNR’s “vast right wing/military conspiracy” defense.
Filed under: Iraq, Media matters | Tagged: 621, 75, 780, 838, 97 | Leave a comment »
Zabrina, who blogs at Thought You’d Never Ask, used my anatomy of the faux Rush Limbaugh scandal to give us the heads up about Michael Yon’s most recent post, Resistance is Futile. It’s a fabulous post, truly fabulous, and the sole reference to it at my blog does not deserve to be buried in a comments section, but should be trumpeted up here, in the main area.
The resistance to which Yon refers is not to some Borg-like al Qaeda/insurgent movement that will inevitably engulf the Americans. (Although, if you’re a Next Generation fan, as I was, you know that the Borg’s lost!) Nope. He’s talking about the gaping, enormous, valle-like chasm between the stories the MSM spins about Iraq, and the reality on the ground:
I was at home in the United States just one day before the magnitude hit me like vertigo: America seems to be under a glass dome which allows few hard facts from the field to filter in unless they are attached to a string of false assumptions. Considering that my trip home coincided with General Petraeus’ testimony before the US Congress, when media interest in the war was (I’m told) unusually concentrated, it’s a wonder my eardrums didn’t burst on the trip back to Iraq. In places like Singapore, Indonesia, and Britain people hardly seemed to notice that success is being achieved in Iraq, while in the United States, Britney was competing for airtime with O.J. in one of the saddest sideshows on Earth.
No thinking person would look at last year’s weather reports to judge whether it will rain today, yet we do something similar with Iraq news. The situation in Iraq has drastically changed, but the inertia of bad news leaves many convinced that the mission has failed beyond recovery, that all Iraqis are engaged in sectarian violence, or are waiting for us to leave so they can crush their neighbors. This view allows our soldiers two possible roles: either “victim caught in the crossfire” or “referee between warring parties.” Neither, rightly, is tolerable to the American or British public.
Today I am in Iraq, back in a war of such strategic consequence that it will affect generations yet unborn—whether or not they want it to. Hiding under the covers will not work, because whether it is good news or bad, whether it is true or untrue, once information is widely circulated, it has such formidable inertia that public opinion seems impervious to the corrective balm of simple and clear facts.
Yon acknowledges that the military made mistakes in handling the media, that being a reporter in Iraq could be quite dangerous (note the past tense I use), and that the situation was, in fact, bad. BUT
But it wasn’t until I spent that week back in the States that I realized how bad things have gotten. I believe we are witnessing a conspiracy of coincidences conflating to exert an incomprehensibly destructive force on the free press system that we largely take for granted. The fact that the week in question also happened to be when General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker were delivering their reports to Congress makes me wonder if things are actually worse than I’ve assessed, and I returned to Iraq sadly convinced that General Petraeus now has to deal from a deck clearly stacked against him in both America and Iraq.
Clearly, a majority of Americans believe the current set of outdated fallacies passed around mainstream media like watered down drinks at happy hour. Why wouldn’t they? The cloned copy they get comes from the same sources that list the specials at the local grocery store, and the hours and locations of polling places for town elections. These same news sources print obituaries and birth announcements, give play-by-play for local high school sports, and chronicle all the painful details of the latest celebrity to fall from grace.
You really should read Yon’s article in its entirety. Then, if you have a blog, blog about it. If you don’t, email it to your friends. As Yon says, this is world changing stuff, and the MSM doesn’t seem to have notice (or, in my opinion, refuses to notice).
Filed under: Iraq, Media matters | Tagged: 621, 630, 75, 880 | 2 Comments »
There was yet another news headline today in which the press reported on a general critical of the Bush Administration. The headline read “‘No end in sight’ in Iraq, retired general says.” I read the news story and that is, in fact, what Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez said. Indeed, Sanchez is one very angry man about how the war was and is conducted:
Retired Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, who led U.S. forces in Iraq for a year after the March 2003 invasion, accused the Bush administration Friday of going to war with a “catastrophically flawed” plan and said the United States is “living a nightmare with no end in sight.”
Sanchez described the current troop increase in Iraq as “a desperate attempt by the administration that has not accepted the political and economic realities of this war.”
“The administration, Congress and the entire interagency, especially the State Department, must shoulder the responsibility for this catastrophic failure, and the American people must hold them accountable,” Sanchez told military reporters and editors. “There has been a glaring unfortunate display of incompetent strategic leadership within our national leaders.”
Sanchez lashed out specifically at the National Security Council, calling officials there negligent and incompetent, without offering details. He also blasted war policies over the last four years, which he said had stripped senior military officers of responsibility and thrust the armed services into an “intractable position” in Iraq.
That’s quite a scathing indictment, and there is no doubt but that he’s correct about the vast problems caused by the Administration’s attempt to run a big war on the cheap. I was a little surprised, though, at the vitriol, only to become less surprised when I read at the Dread Pundit Bluto that there’s more than this story than meets the eye: and the more is that Sanchez’s vitriol isn’t specifically limited to the Administration, but also sweeps in the press, something that, as Bluto points out, all major press coverage ignored. Indeed, the heart and start of Sanchez’s anger is the way the press pilloried him because of Abu Ghraib, a smear job that cost him his 4th star and led to his retirement.
Army Times reports the missing part of the MSM story:
The former top commander of forces in Iraq lambasted reporters Friday for having “agenda-driven biases” he called “a threat to democracy,” and then laid out the Bush administration and Congress for bad planning and no clear end state for the war in Iraq.
“There is no question America is living a nightmare with no end in sight,” said retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez at an annual professional conference for military reporters outside Washington, D.C. “There is nothing going on today that would give us hope.”
Sanchez was head of coalition forces in Iraq from June 2003 to June 2004.
When asked where accountability lay while he headed the forces, as well as for his part in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, Sanchez said it was too late for him to do anything when he took over.
Sanchez retired in 2006 after he wasn’t offered another command position after the Abu Ghraib scandal broke in April 2004. Leaked photographs depicting mistreatment of detainees at the prison outside Baghdad erupted into an international story that harmed U.S. efforts to build support for the war. Nine enlisted soldiers were court-martialed and convicted of crimes in connection with the scandal.
Sanchez said his career was a casualty of the Abu Ghraib scandal.
He berated the room of about 30 to 40 reporters, saying he had been portrayed as a “liar” by people who had never met him. Many of the reporters, in Arlington, Va., for a Military Reporters and Editors conference, had covered the trials that came from photos leaked to the media showing pyramids of naked Iraqi prisoners, a hooded man convinced that if he fell off a crate he would be electrocuted, and dogs snapping inches away from a prisoner.
Watchdog organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union complained that lower-enlisted soldiers took the brunt of the blame for what many called a “leadership void.”
“I’m still being sued by the ACLU, so I have to be careful,” Sanchez said, after he was asked if he was happy with the conclusions of the Abu Ghraib trials.
Jaws dropped as Sanchez glared out at the room, and then eyes rolled as he spent an hour blaming everyone but himself. Most of what he said about the military has been said before: There’s no grand strategy, the Iraqi Army should not have been disbanded, there was no planning for stabilization or recovery past the initial invasion and, “the administration has failed.” (Emphasis mine.)
There’s no doubt that Sanchez is really mad at the powers that be, and that is news and should have been reported (although, as the Army Times noted, he’s scarcely original in his criticism). The press should have been honest, though, and reported that they too came in for a tongue lashing from one very angry retired general. Indeed, the Army Times reporter indicates that the press, as it sat in the room, was discounting what he said because he’s such an angry man. However, when it came time to write the story, the anger was presented as legitimate anger against the Administration, with no mention whatsoever of the equally legitimate anger against the press. Double standards, anybody?
(For more on double standards, read James Taranto taking on Lee Bollinger. For more on Sanchez, read American Thinker.)
UPDATE: And here’s more on one paper’s really crude sin of omission.
Filed under: Iraq, Media matters | Tagged: 245, 597, 621, 75 | 7 Comments »
There’s a new movie out about “homegrown religious fundamentalists who kill in the name of God” — and Manolah Dargis, who writes movie reviews at The New York Times really wants to like it. You’ve got to admire Manolah. After all, who in America doesn’t want a solid documentary about the homegrown Western Islamists who are engaging in an ever escalating kill cycle. I want to learn more about the very British boys who blew up 52 people and injured 700 others in 2005. Or about Lee Malvo and John Allen Muhammad, who killed 10 people and wounded 3 more in Washington D.C. And it would be interesting to get more information about the recent German discovery of a major plot to target American interests in that country, with one of the arrestees being a German man who had converted to Islam.
Frankly, I admire a Times journalist who appreciates a movie like this. It’s probably a good movie even if it doesn’t touch upon the homegrown terrorists in Iraq who are responsible for thousands of Iraqi deaths, or the homegrown terrorists in Bali who are responsible for hundreds of Balinese deaths, or the homegrown terrorists in the Philippines who are responsible for hundreds of Filipino deaths, or the homegrown terrorists all over Africa who are responsible for hundreds of thousands of African deaths, etc.
Wait! Gosh! I’m am sorry. Ignore everything I just said. I got so excited by the first sentence in Dargis’ review, and made so many assumptions about it, that (a) I didn’t read the rest of the review and (b) I read the first sentence wrong. Here’s what the first sentence of the review really says: “The first thing you should know about the documentary ‘Lake of Fire’ — an unblinking look at the violent fight over abortion in the United States, including those homegrown religious fundamentalists who kill in the name of God — is that it was made in black and white.” The terrorists Dargis is talking about are the people who target abortion clinics.
Now, before I get to the real review, about the real movie, let me riff a little about the attacks on abortion clinics. They were and are inexcusable and do indeed manifest the same religious craziness that characterizes the Islamists. Even if you believe abortion to be profoundly wrong and murderous, the people who work at abortion clinics are acting lawfully. In any civilized country, if you have a problem with legal acitivty, you don’t kill people, you work to change the law. That is, those who bomb clinics or kill doctors are no better than any other criminal. But the thing to keep in mind about the anti-abortion activists who went violent is that the heyday of that kind of violence is over.
Between 1993 and 1998, three doctors and four clinic workers were brutally murdered in four shooting incidents and a clinic bombing. There have been no killings since then. According to statistics kept by the National Abortion Federation, most violent acts have declined dramatically or vanished entirely in the last decade. Between 1977 and 2000, there were 17 acts of attempted murder. There apparently have been no attempted murders since then. The last, very isolated, bombing was in 2001, with bombings peaking before 1991. There are still random acts of arson but only 6% have occurred in the 21st Century. That doesn’t mean people aren’t still trying, but they’re trying less: while there have been a total of 93 attempted bombings and arsons since 1971, only 16% took place in this century. All the numbers are like that (declining) except for one — trespassing, which has increased dramatically. My suspicion is that what the NAF calls “trespassing” is what is reported in the papers as “picketing. ” That is, in lieu of violence, abortion opponents have opted for nonviolent protest instead.
Most importantly, the acts of violence come from loners. Every major anti-abortion organization condemns violence and the decline in violence means that their voices are the ones dictating conduct in the field. To the extent there is a violent arm of the abortion rights movement, it is small, discredited and increasingly ineffective. In this regard, the abortion rights movement is the exact opposite of the Islamic jihad movement which is encouraged from the top, which has almost no voices from within Islam speaking against it, and which is growing ever more aggressively violent. Keep those facts in mind as you read the rest of this post about the movie review.
The movie is a British 2006 documentary called Lake of Fire. One of the movie’s strengths, says Dargis, is that it interviews “heavyweights like Noam Chomsky” to make more “sober points” (presumably, given Chomskey’s presence, sober points about how bad the anti-abortion crowd is). These sober points are necessary because, in Dargis’ view, the filmmaker commits the unforgivable sin of showing abortion. Having teased you above with mere clauses and sentences from the review, let me give you the first three paragraphs, in full, including Dargis’ honestly stated reaction:
The first thing you should know about the documentary “Lake of Fire” — an unblinking look at the violent fight over abortion in the United States, including those homegrown religious fundamentalists who kill in the name of God — is that it was made in black and white. This is critical. Because the other thing you should know about this fascinating, discomfiting, at times unpleasant, confused and confusing film is that it sets off extremely graphic images of actual abortions against a notorious photograph of a woman who died after an illegal motel room abortion, visuals that are inflammatory if, for the most part, also germane.
Not everyone will agree about the abortion visuals, including, perhaps, those who worry that such explicit imagery can speak louder than any pro-abortion-rights argument. It’s an understandable concern. Because they are filmed (the dead woman is immortalized in a still photograph), the abortions are unnerving, which is why I suggest that the faint of heart skip the rest of this paragraph. After the first operation, a second-trimester abortion, the doctor sorts through a tray of fetal parts, including a perfect-looking tiny hand and a foot, to make sure that nothing has been left inside the patient, which might lead to poisoning or even death. The doctor then holds up the severed fetal head. One eerily bulging eye looks as if it’s staring into the camera and somehow at us.
My initial and admittedly angry first thought about these images was that the director, Tony Kaye, was just resorting to shock tactics. The film doesn’t employ narration or on-screen texts that reveal his views on abortion; instead, there are 152 minutes of talking-head testimonials, on-the-street interviews and archival and new visuals. This means that you have to pay extra-special attention to his filmmaking choices, to the way he juxtaposes sights and sounds and who gets to speak and when.
It is in this context that Dargis expresses gratitude for the fact that such Leftist heavyweights as Noam Chomskey and Peter Singer inject their ideas into the film. Incidentally, for those of you who know Chomskey, but not Singer, Singer is the Princeton ethicist who created the modern animal rights movement (PETA-style); who believes parents should have a 30 day window within which to euthanize less than perfect newborns; and who thinks bestiality is okay, provided that the cow consents.
Anyway, after this start, the rest of the review is a muddled mess about context and images and credibility. You can read it yourself, but you won’t learn anything.
For me, the review highlighted, not just the Left’s, but everyone’s unwillingness to look unpleasantness in the face. We no longer live a raw life. People don’t die at home, they die neatly in hospitals. Criminals aren’t hanged in public spectacles, they’re dispatched in quiet, clinical rooms. As a squeamish type, I don’t generally mind, but it does seem to me that it interferes with our ability to understand just how bad things can be. With the Iraq War, our dead or their dead are filmed discretely from afar, both out of respect for the family’s of American soldiers and for fear that it could inflame things.
But maybe people need to be inflamed. One of the fascinating things about Ken Burns’ show “The War” is the newsreel footage he shows, both from the late 1930s and the 1940s. Keeping in mind that this was an era when married couples were not shown sleeping in the same bed and when the word “pregnant” was considered practically obscene, I would have expected the news footage to be equally discrete. Surprisingly, it wasn’t. Starting in 1938 and throughout the war, the newsreels people saw in theaters graphically showed victims of the Nazis, the Japanese and the Italians. Whether dead or dying, there they were, skeletal bodies, whose missing heads, gaping wounds, or other terrible war injuries and insults were caught for eternity in black and white. Even more shocking to a modern American, audiences got to see equally horrible images of Allied soldiers too.
I think that the old-time filmmakers showed these images because they could predict the audience reaction: when the audience saw the horrors of war visited on the innocent and the Allies, they would be outraged at the perpetrators; and when they saw the horrors visited on the Axis powers, they would feel self-righteous vindication. Nowadays, we can’t be sure how people will react and, in the mainstream media, I think the Powers That Be are worried that people might in fact react precisely as they did in the late 1930s and the War years: with outrage at the deaths Islamists inflict, whether these deaths are civilian or military; and with grim satisfaction over the deaths of these same Islamists. And you certainly can’t have that type of reaction, since it is the antithesis of the multi-culti, PC thinking that has been drilled into us for so many years.
Filed under: Abortion, Iraq, Islam, Jihad, Media matters, Multiculturalism, World War II | Tagged: 148, 4, 577, 621, 675, 75, 871 | 3 Comments »
I want to direct your attention to two excellent articles that go way beyond the facile statement that “the Surge worked.” First, this Big Lizard post looks at the drop in deaths in Iraq and explains why it means that the US broke the insurgency’s back.
Second, this Bartle Bull (real name) article in Prospect explains in lucid detail the forces that were at work in Iraq before the war, what happened to them during the War, and why their current situations mean that, with the exception of (1) a few regional convulsions; (2) localized ongoing tribal fights; (3) localized mafia style crime lord battles; and (4) the never-ending mischief making of Iran and Saudi Arabia, it’s all over but for the shouting. Here are a couple of key summary paragraphs, but you’ll really be cheating yourself if you don’t read the whole thing:
Iranian-made rockets will continue to kill British and American soldiers. Saudi Wahhabis will continue to blow up marketplaces, employment queues and Shia mosques when they can. Iraqi criminals will continue to bully their neighbourhoods into homogeneities that will give the strongest more leverage, although even this tide is turning in most places where Petraeus’s surge has reached. Bodies will continue to pile up in the ditches of Doura and east Baghdad as the country goes through the final spasm of the reckoning that was always going to attend the end of 35 years of brutal Sunni rule.
But in terms of national politics, there is nothing left to fight for. The only Iraqis still fighting for more than local factional advantage and criminal dominance are the irrational actors: the Sunni fundamentalists, who number but a thousand or two men-at-arms, most of them not Iraqi. Like other Wahhabi attacks on Iraq in 1805 and 1925, the current one will end soon enough. As the maturing Iraqi state gets control of its borders, and as Iraq’s Sunni neighbours recognise that a Shia Iraq must be dealt with, the flow of foreign fighters and suicide bombers into Iraq from Syria will start to dry up. Even today, for all the bloodshed it causes, the violence hardly affects the bigger picture: suicide bombs go off, dozens of innocents die, the Shias mostly hold back and Iraq’s tough life goes on.
In early September, Nouri al-Maliki said, “We may differ with our American friends about tactics… But my message to them is one of appreciation and gratitude. To them I say, you have liberated a people, brought them into the modern world… We used to be decimated and killed like locusts in Saddam’s endless wars, and we have now come into the light.” Here is an eloquent answer to the question of when American troops will leave Iraq. They will leave Iraq when the Iraqis, through their elected leadership, tell them to. According to a September poll, 47 per cent of Iraqis would prefer the Americans to leave. The surprise is that it’s not 100 per cent. Who, after all, would not want his country rid of foreign troops? But if Iraqis had wanted government by opinion poll, they would have written their constitution that way. Instead, they chose, as do most people when given the choice, representative government.
And a big hat tip to Confederate Yankee for bringing my attention to Bartle Bull’s article.
UPDATE: Of course, victory doesn’t mean a damn thing when you’re completely invested in failure.
Filed under: Iraq | Tagged: 529, 533, 75, 868 | Leave a comment »
There aren’t a whole lot of facts in Seymour Hersh’s interview with Spiegel online, but it becomes clear that, while he fears President Bush for being on a mission for God (Seymour’s opinion), Ahmadinejad’s pronouncements that he’s going to destroy Israel and have the bomb soon are totally copacetic. I’ve included some examples of his answers below, but you’d do well to read the whole thing for yourself, assuming you have the stomach for a fact-free, recycling of 1960s tropes (Communists? What Communists?).
As you read the interview, keep an eye on the fact that, in response to direct questions, Hersh is often what we lawyers call “non-responsive.” That is, he’s answering, but he’s not answering the question. Instead, he’s reading off of an endless loop in his own head:
SPIEGEL ONLINE: [Regarding the possibility of a nuclear Iran] Is this just another case of exaggerating the danger in preparation for an invasion like we saw in 2002 and 2003 prior to the Iraq War?
Hersh: We have this wonderful capacity in America to Hitlerize people. We had Hitler, and since Hitler we’ve had about 20 of them. Khrushchev and Mao and of course Stalin, and for a little while Gadhafi was our Hitler. And now we have this guy Ahmadinejad. The reality is, he’s not nearly as powerful inside the country as we like to think he is. The Revolutionary Guards have direct control over the missile program and if there is a weapons program, they would be the ones running it. Not Ahmadinejad.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Where does this feeling of urgency that the US has with Iran come from?
Hersh: Pressure from the White House. That’s just their game.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: What interest does the White House have in moving us to the brink with Tehran?
Hersh: You have to ask yourself what interest we had 40 years ago for going to war in Vietnam. You’d think that in this country with so many smart people, that we can’t possibly do the same dumb thing again. I have this theory in life that there is no learning. There is no learning curve. Everything is tabula rasa. Everybody has to discover things for themselves.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Even after Iraq? Aren’t there strategic reasons for getting so deeply involved in the Middle East?
Hersh: Oh no. We’re going to build democracy. The real thing in the mind of this president is he wants to reshape the Middle East and make it a model. He absolutely believes it. I always thought Henry Kissinger was a disaster because he lies like most people breathe and you can’t have that in public life. But if it were Kissinger this time around, I’d actually be relieved because I’d know that the madness would be tied to some oil deal. But in this case, what you see is what you get. This guy believes he’s doing God’s work.
Would it surprise you to learn that, seeing things as he does, Hersh is a cut and run kind of guy? He also accuses Bush of “ethnic cleansing.”
Now “ethnic cleansing” is a loaded term and one that Spiegel highlights at the top of the article to catch the reader’s interests. As I understand it, ethnic cleansing means deliberately targeting an ethnic (or religious) group by (a) slaughtering it or (b) forcibly removing it from it’s lands. Hersh has a much looser application. According to him, the sole result of the Surge — and the reason fatalities are dropping — is that people are hunkering done in ethnic enclaves (that would be the Kurds who were doing that all along, especially when Saddam tried to murder them all) or hunkering down in religious enclaves (that would be the Sunnis and Shias, who are moving away from each other, not because American soldiers are killing them, but because they’re killing each other). How does he know this? Simple: “I think that’s a much better reason than the fact that there are a couple more soldiers on the ground.” With rock solid research like that, you’ve just got to trust the guy’s conclusions, right?
Incidentally, Hersh is not satisfied with the Leftist rubric that Iraq is Vietnam all over again. That’s too ordinary. He goes further:
SPIEGEL ONLINE: If the Iraq war does end up as a defeat for the US, will it leave as deep a wound as the Vietnam War did?
Hersh: Much worse. Vietnam was a tactical mistake. This is strategic. How do you repair damages with whole cultures? On the home front, though, we’ll rationalize it away. Don’t worry about that. Again, there’s no learning curve. No learning curve at all. We’ll be ready to fight another stupid war in another two decades.
It’s possible that Hersh’s conclusions are correct (although I’m inclined to doubt them). But if you were someone actually neutral on the issue, seeking information, would you take seriously a man who has no facts that he can assert, but simply engages in mindless name calling, supported by casual conclusions based on his gut instinct. This is not an investigative reporter. This is a lazy guy who is living in the past and can only recycle tired old ideas without any awareness that he’s not reporting on the same old situation.
UPDATE: I did a rather facile analysis about Hersh’s tone. Laer took the time to expose the gross factual errors underlying Hersh’s statements. If you want to know more about how dreadful Hersh is, you need to read Laer’s post.
Filed under: Iraq, Media matters | Tagged: 422, 75, 792, 817 | Leave a comment »
We’ve heard it before (’cause the NY Times says it’s so) that Al Qaeda has nothing to do with Iraq. Apparently someone forgot to tell either AP or Al Qaeda:
U.S. and Iraqi forces killed more than 60 insurgent and militia fighters in intense battles over the weekend, with most of the casualties believed to have been al-Qaida fighters, officials said Sunday.
The U.S. Embassy, meanwhile, joined a broad swath of Iraqi politicians — both Shiite and Sunni — in criticizing a nonbinding Senate resolution seen here as a recipe for splitting the country along sectarian and ethnic lines.
U.S. aircraft killed more than 20 al-Qaida fighters who opened fire on an American air patrol northwest of Baghdad, the U.S. command said.
The firefight between U.S. aircraft and the insurgent fighters occurred Saturday about 17 miles northwest of the capital, the military said.
The aircraft observed about 25 al-Qaida insurgents carrying AK-47 assault rifles — one brandishing a rocket-propelled grenade — walking into a palm grove, the military said.
“Shortly after spotting the men, the aircraft were fired upon by the insurgent fighters,” it said.
The military did not say what kind of aircraft were involved but the fact that the fighters opened fire suggests they were low-flying Apache helicopters. The command said more than 20 of the group were killed and four vehicles were destroyed. No Iraqi civilians or U.S. soldiers were hurt.
“Coalition forces have dealt significant blows to Al-Qaida Iraq in recent months, including the recent killing of the Tunisian head of the foreign fighter network in Iraq and the blows struck in the past 24 hours,” military spokesman Col. Steven Boylan told The Associated Press.
Iraq’s Defense Ministry said in an e-mail Sunday afternoon that Iraqi soldiers had killed 44 “terrorists” over the past 24 hours. The operations were centered in Salahuddin and Diyala provinces and around the city of Kirkuk, where the ministry said its soldiers had killed 40 and arrested eight. It said 52 fighters were arrested altogether.
The ministry did not further identify those killed, but use of the word “terrorists” normally indicates al-Qaida.
In a separate operation, U.S. forces killed two insurgents and detained 21 others during weekend operations “to disrupt al-Qaida in Iraq networks in the Tigris River Valley.”
Filed under: Iraq | Tagged: 258, 75, 835 | Leave a comment »
The results are in at the Watcher’s Council and I have to admit to being pleased, since my post Cosmic Ironies came in first. This was the post in which I looked at my Dad’s family history in pre-WWII Germany and thought about the little twists of fate that saw some live, and some die. It is a personal reminiscence, but I thought it was a useful antidote to the Holocaust baiting Ahmadinejad periodically brings to center stage.
Second place went to Big Lizard’s for The Human Touch, which urged the State Department to stop trying to find a one size fits all philosophy for deciding whether people from terrorist sponsoring nations can immigrate to America. BL points out that many of these immigrants are trying to escape tyranny, and they can be useful agents in the fight against terror. He acknowledges that enemy governments could certainly use a more open immigration policy to plant spies and agents but says that, instead of blanket ban because of this risk, State should to actually look at the people involved and use its human resources to make the more difficult immigration decisions, a la the Israeli approach.
A third place that came in so close to tying for second that it deserves mention here in the “winner’s circle” is Cheat Seeking Missiles’ Gates’ Iraq Agenda Short On Democracy, which notes that, while we are making military strikes in Iraq, we need to start focusing — really hard — on building a Democratic friend in that nation, so that we can secure our gains there for the long term.
The other Council written articles are, of course, excellent even though the votes were too spread out to give any one of them a commanding lead. I urge you to read them, and you’ll find the links here.
Things were also good on the non-Council side. The winner was Rafael Medoff: Columbia “Invites Hitler to Campus” — As it Did in 1933, which spells out in detail the premise of the title, which is that Columbia, with the recent Ahmadinejad idiocy, was just playing to type. Second place was a very scary Dr. Sanity post, Islam and Marxism — A Marriage Made In Allah’s Socialist Paradise. Again, the title says it all, and the post just does an excellent job of filling in the blanks. It’s a horrifying confluence, and it’s already happening, as each of those two totalitarian ideologies uses the other to make advances against old fashioned Western Democracy and freedom.
Filed under: Watcher of Weasels | Tagged: 142, 364, 384, 611, 73, 75, 76 | Leave a comment »
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