Is Iran Wanting to Get Its Ass Kicked?
Looks like it.

From a news site called IranMania, here's how it goes (emphasis mine):

According to Associated Press Monday's arrests of two Iranians focused new attention on how Tehran is trying to protect its interests in Iraq. The Iranians were suspected of attempting to carry out a vehicle bombing in Iraq.

The announcement of the arrests by the Iraqi Interior Ministry was a rare instance tying Iranians to a particular attack. But there was no indication that the two men - who the ministry said were caught trying to detonate a car bomb in an eastern Baghdad neighborhood Monday - were Iranian government agents. They might instead be working on their own.

However, if the Great Satan and the Zionist Pigs decide to do something about Iranian agents lurking around Baghdad with explosives, the Ayatollah knows how to handle it:

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned the United States yesterday that any attack on the Islamic republic's interests would be met with a global response.

"If the enemy attacks our scientific, natural, human or technological interests, the Iranian people will cut off its hand without hesitation and place in danger the interests of the aggressor everywhere in the world," he told a gathering in the western city of Hamedan.

Go right ahead, turbanhead. Your fucking government will come down on top of you along with the bricks and mortar.

The Manufacture of Anecdote
In case you're not yet convinced that Michael Moore is not only a traitor, but a filthy cunt, be sure to read Kynn Bartlett's account of a "police raid" of a Moore book signing in March 2002.

Bartlett, whom even I have very briefly crossed paths with online, is a big Moore fan and a Leftist, but offers a very fair account of a manufactured "us against the fascists" moment that Moore has tried to sell to his very gullible public.

Enjoy.

On Teheran's Bid for Power
The indispensible Wretchard at the Belmont Club offers his analysis of what Iran is up to by meddling in Iraq. The mullahs are definitely trying to take the Coalition's measure (e.g., the seizure of three British navy patrol boats and eight crew last month in the Shatt al-Arab). Nor can there be much doubt that they have infiltrated Iraq with thousands of agents. As Wretchard reports

STRATFOR thinks the Iranians are playing deadly games. In their geopolitical diary of July 6, 2004 they offered the opinion that the 2 Iranians captured in planting bombs in a predominantly Shi'ite (!) area of eastern Baghdad were probably on a mission to compel the new Iraqi government and its main ally, the United States, into recognize Teheran as a force to reckon with, the kingmaker of the region.

I'm thinking that the lid must be kept on this situation until after our elections are over. But, then, we may have to start pushing on the domino of Iran. They may wish to distract their populace with yet another war with their Iraqi neighbors, but they won't be doing it against just Iraq. And if war comes for us and our clients in Iraq, we will be obligated (as I'm sure Israel well knows) to smash the mullahs' nuclear capabilities while we're at it.

As Michael Ledeen often says, "Faster please."

Against the Half-Educated, Vindictive Buffoons
As ever, Victor Davis Hanson has put it right in his latest essay, "Fantasyland." We are, indeed, in trouble if we allow the kind of irresponsible pro-terrorist and anti-American hatred so popular on the Left to become the stuff of mainstream liberalism.

Let us face it: the Left in this country has gone absolutely crazy. Without worries of rebuke or censure, the dinosaurs of the 1960s really do wish us to give one final gift of their wisdom and humanity--and so does its best to bring us a repeat of American choppers fleeing the embassy roof, circa 1975, with millions left behind awaiting death, reeducation camps, and exile.

A Great Shame
Whatever I think of the world's various cultures, good or ill, I have never felt anything but utter revulsion at seeing their history and artifacts destroyed by radical assholes who think they're obeying the word of Kenny Rogers in the Sky or whatever other fucked up notion of deity they're infected with.

Kashmir's oldest school was burned down yesterday, destroying one of the world's oldest copies of the Koran and thousands of other rare Islamic texts. Arson is suspected in the attack, which some blamed on Islamic militants targeting moderate Muslim leaders.

The destruction of the 105-year-old Islamia Higher Secondary School and its 30,000-book library shocked many in the disputed Himalayan territory, and people went out into the streets of Srinigar to protest. The school, set up in 1899, was a landmark symbol of the movement to modernize Islam.

Disgusting. These would be the same kind of fucks who blasted the ancient rock-hewn Buddhas out of the side of a mountain in Afghanistan a few years ago, right?

I tell you this: Save some souvenirs and put what you should under glass for the tourists to see, but Islama delenda est.

Desgraciados Mexicanos
This story is almost as pathetic as the recent news that there's such a thing as the Mexican Air Force.

SAN LUIS DE LA PAZ, Mexico (AP) -- Mexican soldiers with automatic weapons interrupted the July 4 funeral of a U.S. Marine and demanded the Marine honor guard give up ceremonial replicas of rifles they carried.

Hundreds of friends and relatives packed a small cemetery for the funeral on Sunday of 22-year-old Juan Lopez, who was born in this sun-scorched farming town, immigrated to Dalton, Georgia, as a teenager and became a Marine.

Apparently, it's against Mexican law for foreign soliders to brandish or fire guns on Mexican soil. Isn't that cute? It's almost like a blue law or following ballroom etiquette.

More Than Can Be Chewed

(Courtesy of Allah Is in the House.)

"Albatross! Albatross!"
Michael Barone drops the hammer on the anti-American Michael Moore and the Democrats who are so busily associating themselves with his lies and distortions.

If you shitforbrains Dhimmicrats think that this low-point in your intellectual and moral depravity is going to be forgotten, you are sorely mistaken. As Barone observes

It's amazing that any politician, however opposed to Bush, would want to be associated with this film or its maker, a man who said shortly after the 9/11 attacks: "We, the United States of America, are culpable in committing so many acts of terror and bloodshed that we had better get a clue about the culture of violence in which we have been active participants." As for the current situation in Iraq, Moore has written: "The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not 'insurgents' or 'terrorists' or 'The Enemy.' They are the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow--and they will win." Are these messages Democrats really wish to embrace?

Enjoy the albatross hanging around your neck, you idiots. You have painted a giant bull's eye on your asses and now all you've got left is to wait for the incoming.

"A Lot to Lose"
It hasn't gotten a lot of attention here lately, but the recent incident in which eight British servicemen on patrol in the Shatt al-Arab Waterway near the Iran-Iraq border were detained by Iranian authorities may soon turn nasty.

All eight British servicemen were eventually released, but not before being paraded around on Iran's state television in blindfolds like it was 1979. Iran is still convinced that they were up to no good. The servicemen say they were forced into Iranian waters. Iran says otherwise. And they are refusing to return the three British boats which, if the GPS equipment on board has not been damaged, would prove the Britons' contention that they are innocent.

This article in the Christian Science Monitor is very helpful in figuring it all out and is worth looking over.

Shadow foreign secretary Michael Ancram called the alleged treatment of the sailors "absolutely outrageous" and demanded a "full apology" from Iranian authorities if the servicemen's claims are true. He said the incident created "an extraordinary strain on Iranian-British relations."

"We were required to apologize for what appeared to have been trespassing into Iranian waters. Our servicemen were paraded blindfolded and humiliated. The equipment still has not been returned."

Iran has "a lot to lose" from the episode, Mr. Ancram said.

Yeah, I know. It's Bush's fault.

Human-Made Probes Orbit Saturn and Its Moons: Abu Ghraib Still Gets More Attention
Be sure to check out the NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory's site for news on the Cassini-Huygens Mission to Saturn. Lots of interesting information and images. As well as casual observations such as

One early result intriguing scientists concerns Saturn's Cassini Division, the large gap between the A and B rings. While Saturn's rings are almost exclusively composed of water ice, new findings show the Cassini Division contains relatively more "dirt" than ice. Further, the particles between the rings seem remarkably similar to the dark material that scientists saw on Saturn's moon, Phoebe. These dark particles refuel the theory that the rings might be the remnants of a moon. The F ring was also found to contain more dirt.

Yep. You can't know until you go.

Can't Get No Satisfaction
Apparently, according to the Jerusalem Post, the Car-Swarm People are upset over the treatment of Saddam Hussein. They are indignant that such a brave man as the Butcher of Baghdad could be brought so low by the dhimmis. However, we also hear that

Saddam, who once used to pay the families of Palestinians suicide bombers and victims of the confrontation with Israel thousands of dollars, lost the empathy of many Palestinians after he surrendered to US troops without resistance.

That's very interesting. Saddam was just great as long as he was keepin' it real, but when he went out like a sucka, his shit no longer flew. Still, we learn

He had also lost the backing of many Palestinians after it transpired that his regime was responsible for the torture and killing of tens of thousands of Iraqis - a fact Palestinians say was unknown to them before the collapse of Saddam.

Sure. The Palestinians had no idea that their great hero ---the New Nasser of the Arabs--- was also engaged in genocide against the Kurds and the Marsh Arabs. Nor did they have any questions about how Saddam routinely earned 99 percent of the vote every time out. You can't buy that kind of loyalty.

You have to force it through a wood-chipper, really.

Gibberish
The nauseating Leftist Eleanor Clift has proclaimed the Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive war to be "moribund, if not dead." I don't know where she's getting that from, but it's obviously gibberish.

It is an article of faith with those on the anti-war Left that Iraq has been a huge disaster for us. But this is a partisan perception unsubstantiated by the facts. What has the President promised in Iraq that he has not accomplished? We invaded the country and seized virtually all of it in a matter of weeks, overthrew the government, captured its tyrannical leader, killed or captured his only plausible successors, began stabilization and rebuilding efforts, and have passed on sovereignty to a government that is largely trusted by its people. Democratic rule has sprung up all across the country at the local levels, especially in the Kurdish north where we are well-liked. The Iraqis have a free press, increasing access to the outside world and its markets, and the help of the greatest military in the history of the world to see things through. Those are the fruits of pre-emption.

But here's what Clift says about the notion that a forcibly liberated Iraq is a catalyst to positive change in the Middle East:

Invading Iraq was supposed to intimidate the mullahs in Iran to curb their nuclear ambition. Instead, the Iranian nuclear program is much further along than we realized, and the mullahs are in a strong position, having just rigged their own election.

How is this relevant to the question of whether the doctrine of pre-emption has done good in the region? The biggest problem with this pessimistic view is that the effect has barely begun to be felt. Does Clift suppose that the IAEA would be in any position at all to make its investigations into Iran's nuclear programs if there weren't the example next door of a coalition willing to take on tyrants over this very issue?

Our work in Iraq must be given time to make its full impact known. We have not, as Bush the Elder and his containment-minded friends once feared, left a power vacuum in Iraq. What we have there now is a government working towards full sovereignty. The anti-war crowd is afraid of that because it means that Bush has succeeded. Therefore, they try to paint the situation as darkly as possible. But don't listen to them. They don't want any part of an America willing to take the war to the terrorists and their collaborators. Instead, they want to sit back and wait for the other boot to drop.

Let it drop on their heads.

B'Damn!
Did y'all watch the Wimbledon Ladies' Championship this morning? Maria Sharapova, the 17 year-old Russian tennis star, handily beat Serena Williams. It was quite a demonstration of firepower and desire.

Williams, who is always very gracious (and is the proud owner of one of the most knuckle-gnashingly outrageous bodies in all of Christendom), pointedly congratulated Sharapova on her "first" Grand Slam. She, like many others, seems to know what lies in store for the equally-delicious young Russian.

Am I allowed to say that? Yes, by God! These things are self-evident.

The Men's Championship between Andy Roddick and Roger Federer will be played tomorrow. I like men's tennis, too, but it's even worse than the women's game with all the power-serves and the short points. Not very exciting stuff unless it actually winds up in a volley. Anyway, it will still be good to watch. I hope Roddick, who's somehow supposed to be an Austinite, pulls one off for us on our birthday. What do you say, Mr. 150 MPH Serve?

Daschle On Moore-On
Over at the blog Daschle v. Thune is an interesting post on Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle's response to the anti-American craphound Michael Moore's latest pack of lies.

The Democratic Party has completely hung an albatross around its neck. Time for it to start stinking.

(Hat tip to Power Line.)

More Dhimmicratic Strateegery
According to al-Jazeera, Texas Congressthing Eddie Bernice Johnson (whom they misidentify as a Floridian) is "spearheading" a request to the United Nations that they come and act as observers of our elections this November.

I mean, you can't set out to write shit like this; it has to flow naturally from its source, like the effortless insanity that it is.

(Hat tip to NRO.)

Kerrion
Howard Fineman, in speculating about Kerry's choice for his running mate, writes that

Kerry is operating as if he wants the result of his deliberations to be a shocking surprise.

Yeah. His only sensible choice is Edwards, but he's already demonstrated that he wanted his choice to be unconventional (see John McCain). If he goes to this degree to be secretive and then goes ahead and picks Edwards, the letdown factor is almost increased. I know for a stone fact that someone like Gephardt or Vilsack would be a huge disappointment to the base. But Edwards is predictable, so...

This weekend, he's going to ask Hillary to run as his Co-President.

"You Can Act Like a Man!"
Marlon Brando has passed away. He surely has to be one of the greatest actors of the cinematic age. After all, he is the central character in the greatest movie of all time, so how can you top that? It's true that his methods eventually became unsound, but the body of his work is immortal. And it's that achievement that matters most.

CNN Agrees with Saddam
The Butcher of Baghdad is on the TV right now, looking fully human and not at all genocidal. What a sight! But what's on the minds of the CNN commentators? Why, the same thing that's on Saddam's mind! I'm so happy that they can all agree that his appearance in an Iraqi court today is obviously a questionable move for so young a government when they've got other, much bigger problems to deal with first. See? It's more of that Liberal Big Media strategic genius: they know what sequence events must follow to be considered legitimate. Do these stupid fucks have any idea how much worse an idea it is to be agreeing with Saddam Hussein? To echo his belief that his sudden appearance has been commanded by that War Criminal Cowboy George W. Bush? To suggest that a mere interim government has no right or interest in bringing this murderer before a nation of his victims? I dunno. Maybe the Iraqis have some interest in it, too.

And maybe CNN sucks like they always do. Fuck the dhimmis.

Diaspora
Now Playing: "Astronomy Domine" by the Pink Floyd

Hard to Say
Teresa Heinz Kerry told an audience in Des Moines yesterday something interesting about her huge fortune. As reporter Ryan J. Foley puts it:

Teresa Heinz Kerry, who inherited a vast family fortune and heads a billion-dollar foundation, said yesterday she would give up the money to have her first husband back.

"It was a very sad day when that happened," Heinz Kerry said, speaking of Senator John Heinz, heir to the Heinz food fortune, who was killed in a 1991 plane crash. "I'd rather have my husband alive than that money."