Now, See, That's a Big Surprise. The Jews Also Control the United Nations? Huh! Who Knew?
We learn from the Persian Journal that the "mullah-run" newspaper Kayhan International has declared the Mehlis Report just another Jewish plot to impugn the good character of Lebanon's true ally, Syria.

Kayhan International here Sunday commented on the report provided by a German magistrate on the assassination of Rafiq Hariri, calling on Muslim states to protest against the "dictated" story.

"The German Magistrate (Detlev Mehlis) has merely struck to the script dictated to him by those whose vested interests in the region warranted the physical elimination of Hariri," said 'Kayhan International'.

It further criticized the report by saying that Mehlis "has tried to implicate Lebanon's staunch and only dedicated Arab ally, Syria, in his report", which the editorial described as a "yawning tale".

The logic's hard to follow, but let's try: the United Nations, which has routinely sponsored forums and resolutions which explicitly call Zionism a racist policy, is actually controlled by the Jews. Sure. Why not?

The infantilization of the Arab mind is astonishing. As far as default settings go, blaming the Jews for everything and all the time is just incredibly lame. What children!

Interference Running
The Gateway Pundit brings us the picture you see below, as well as the attached Reuters caption:

Coffins of Kurdish people killed during former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's rule are seen during a ceremony at Arbil's airport, northern Iraq, October 17, 2005. The bodies of some 7,500 members of the Kurdish Barzani tribe, who were made captive and then executed were buried in mass graves at the border between Iraq and Saudi Arabia, were brought to Arbil on Monday for reburial.

I wouldn't say that Bush the Elder and Baker and Cheney and Powell and Scowcroft and Schwarzkopf are the ones who murdered these Kurds, but they allowed to live the monster who did. Because there was no mandate from the United Nations to remove him from power. Because they didn't want a "power vacuum." Because "stability in the region" is code for letting tyrants and murderers oppress their own people because it's easier to obtain cheap oil that way.

Did you know about these mass murders from the summer of 1983? I didn't. I was in junior high. Back then, all I would have known of Iraqis was that they were not those awful Iranians. I knew to hate them because they had taken our fellow citizens hostages and humiliated us. But what did I know or care about what was happening next door in Iraq? Nothing. America didn't care about the Iraqi people, either, or about the man who was brutalizing them because at least Saddam Hussein was a thorn in the Ayatollah's side. Good for him. We weren't ones to interfere in their internal matters, anyhow.

Pretty soon, though, came the incident with the USS Stark and the invasion of Kuwait. We would soon know that you don't stay friends with the enemies of your enemies forever. You move to act with moral clarity. You punish those who murder their own citizens. You punish those who murder and plot to murder the leaders and former leaders of other nations.

History won't care to remember that Bush the Younger didn't genuflect before the French or Kofi Annan or that wretched dwarf Gerhard Schroeder. But History will record that this President went to Iraq and helped to correct the errors his father made. I believe that Dick Cheney knew that he, too, had a chance to do the right thing this time. And they are doing it, however ugly it is.

Boghopper Survives to Drink Again
The anti-American Irish journalist Rory Carroll was released a day or so after he was taken captive by pro-Sadr gangsters this past week. So much for my Schadenfreude.

It is interesting to note, however, that the BBC report linked to above fails to mention the fact that Carroll was first released into the custody of Ahmed Chalabi, the hated manipulator of the entire Western world and professional Gavrilo Princip impersonator. Why should that be? Any guesses?

Views of Syria
The Christian Science Monitor says that we don't have the military strength right now to correct the Syrian problem, but I think that might only be true if we're talking about ground troops and occupation. I don't think that's what we're talking about, though.

A possible American military incursion into Syrian territory to chase Iraqi insurgents would send a threatening signal to the regime. But as France, Saudi Arabia, and many other nations now appear willing to alter the regime's bad habits through UN sanctions, such a bold US step right now would be unwise.

As a matter of fact, an "incursion" into Syria is a great idea. I say we find and present to the world the evidence that's out there of the Syrians' involvement in Iraq (just as there certainly is ---now--- of their involvement in Hariri's assassination in Lebanon). Syrian-sponsored terrorists are in Iraq killing American soldiers and Marines. We have every right to respond to these threats against ourselves and our Iraqi allies.

The Lebanese people, like the Iraqis, are currently shoring up their democracy. Preventing Syria from harming that course should be the focus of the US and the UN far more than trying to force democracy on Syria.

Who's talking about forcing democracy on Syria? I just want to see us bombing the ratlines that essentially run between Damascus and al-Anbar. Maybe that would focus Assad's attention.

International economic sanctions would send a message to the regime as well as to Syrians that they, too, can help lift the Arab world by relying on ballots instead of bombs.

Sounds great. But we need immediate action. Like this week. The sooner we can get the international community to take the side of justice and democracy for Lebanon, the sooner we'll get the Syrians to end their support of murderers in Iraq.

Co-opt Assad like we co-opted Pervez Musharraf in Pakistan. I'm not necessarily equating the two men, but we have had more success in Afghanistan ---by some measures--- because of how we first secured Pakistan's cooperation. That is an unsung achievement in the War against the Terrorists. We need the same "deal" in Syria if we ever want Iraq to be able to stand on its own.

CNN: Not Even Pretending to Care Anymore
Why am I not surprised that there's some hair-do sitting in for Larry King tonight that's interviewing Ashlee Simpson? I mean, what the fuck is that?

Temerity Russert
Check out this useful and interesting post by the oddly attractive Arianna Huffington on what nerve NBC newsman Tim Russert has in not explaining his role in the Plame Unpleasantness.

Here is how Russert handled the latest developments in Plamegate (the question is addressed to Michigan Senator Carl Levin):

"The New York Times today publishes a lengthy article about the CIA leak investigation. Judith Miller, the Times reporter, writes that she had at least three meetings with the vice president's chief of staff, Scooter Libby, in which they talked about Ambassador Joe Wilson's trip to Africa regarding uranium and also some discussions about Wilson's wife. What is your reaction?"

That's it. Not a single mention of his own conversation with Libby. What does NBC think about this? As Judith Miller herself might say, "I don't know."

Huffington then provides a great timeline of Russert's involvement and how often he fails to take the opportunity to explain himself. Good stuff.

(Thanks to Tom Maguire.)

Read the Pretext on the Wall
I am borrowing the photo you see from Michael J. Totten, who took it in Beirut yesterday in the aftermath of the release of the Mehlis Report.

Considering the suckfest that's been pro-war America the past few weeks, it sure would be nice if President Bush would insist on a very strong response by both ourselves and the international community to the Syrian problem. And as soon as possible. We not only need a distraction from the bad news for conservatives here, but an affirmative change for the Lebanese people.

Use it or lose it, I say. Don't let the UN fritter away the anger against the bullies in Syria. We need to punish Assad now and pressure him into stopping the incursions into Iraq. He'll do it if we threaten him hard enough. Impose hard sanctions now. I'll bet even some of the Euro-wankers would sign off on that.

Editorial Oversight
This is an interesting story:

THE United Nations withheld some of the most damaging allegations against Syria in its report on the murder of Rafik Hariri, the former Lebanese Prime Minister, it emerged yesterday.

The names of the brother of Bashar al-Assad, President of Syria, and other members of his inner circle, were dropped from the report that was sent to the Security Council.

The confidential changes were revealed by an extraordinary computer gaffe because an electronic version distributed by UN officials on Thursday night allowed recipients to track editing changes.

The mistaken release of the unedited report added further support to the published conclusion that Syria was behind Mr Hariri’s assassination in a bomb blast on Valentine’s Day in Beirut. The murder of Mr Hariri touched off an international outcry and hastened Syria’s departure from Lebanon in April after a 29-year pervasive military presence.

But if you thought that a UN led by the extremely corrupt Kofi Annan was finally going to be useful in the fight against Arab and Islamofascism, try again:

Mr Annan had pledged repeatedly through his chief spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, that he would not change a word of the report by Detlev Mehlis, a German prosecutor. But computer tracking showed that the final edit began at about 11.38am on Thursday — a minute after Herr Mehlis began a meeting with Mr Annan to present his report. The names of Maher al-Assad, General Shawkat and the others were apparently removed at 11.55am, after the meeting ended.

I don't know if Annan is involved in those changes or not, but the UN's a dirty organization that has to be forced to matter. Looks like they've failed again.

Unless, of course, this can be made into the excuse we need to bomb Damascus.

Torture to Me Ears (An Open Letter to Bush the Younger)
Mood:  irritated
Dear Mr. President:---

Please stop talking. Now.

Sincerely,

A Respectful Citizen Who Is Violently Opposed to the Very Idea That Harriet Miers Might Become a Justice on the Supreme Court for the "Reasons" You Have Given

"The Astros Win the Pennant! The Astros Win the Pennant!"
Mood:  celebratory
See, Mary-Bess? I told you they were going to win.

Succinctitude
Mood:  on fire
I read this essay by Jacob Weisberg earlier today and decided he has made the finest distillation yet of what the Plame Unpleasantness is all about:

You need a pretty low opinion of people in the White House to imagine they would knowingly foster the possible assassination of CIA assets in other countries for the sake of retaliation against someone who wrote an op-ed they didn't like in the New York Times.

That's what it's all about right there. The first and last person who says this fucking thing was about revenge against Joe Wilson is Joe Wilson himself. Interestingly enough, he is the one who has committed the crime which he attributes to his and his wife's enemies. If that isn't clear to you yet, don't worry. I'll help you out.

Mmmmm. Kahk.
Although it's something like adulteration, looks like The Simpsons have gone Arabic:

After 17 seasons of entertaining U.S. audiences, "The Simpsons" can now be seen on Arab television. While U.S. foreign policy is not always a hit overseas, there is a huge audience for American popular culture.

So the Arab satellite network MBC is bringing the cartoon saga of Springfield to the heart of the Arab world. "The Simpsons" has been exported overseas and is now called "Al Shamshoon."

The new take on the cartoon classic debuted this month, just in time for the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, as first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

With Omar instead of Homer, and Badr substituting for Bart, MBC hopes to win coveted young viewers. After all, 60 percent of the Arab world is 20 years old or younger.

See, this is all part of our imperialistic plan to corrupt Mo with democracy, whisky, and sexy.

My favorite bit is this, though:

Homer Simpson's ubiquitous Duff beer will now be soda in the Arab version of the show.

Hot dogs will become Egyptian beef sausages, and donuts will become popular Arab cookies called "kahk." Moe's Bar has been completely written out of "Al Shamshoon."

Tee hee.

(Post title swiped from Warren Bell.)

No (More) Comment
As Lisa Simpson once observed as her brother rightly got his ass beat down, "It's funny how two wrongs sometimes make a right."

So it is with the news that Irish journalist Rory Carroll has been kidnapped by "armed men in Iraq."

Rory Carroll, you ask? Why, he's the anti-American sack of wet stools who accuses American soldiers of crimes against humanity in the pages of the Guardian Unlimited. Take some of his work for a spin. Go on. He won't mind:

Since the 2003 invasion US forces have killed at least 18 media workers in incidents for which no one has been charged or punished. "Whitewashes. There have been no satisfactory investigations that we know of," said Rodney Pinder, director of the International News Safety Institute (INSI), a Brussels-based advocacy group.

Angry and frustrated, several radio and television networks, agencies and newspapers, including the Guardian, met last week to chart a joint response to the crisis. The gathering agreed to form a foreign correspondents' association and to jointly lobby the US military and state department.

This guy, if he's ever found alive, could get a job stunt-doubling for Eason Jordan.

In addition to shooting them, US forces have a habit of detaining journalists without charge. Weeks can pass before a bureau is able to confirm that an employee has been arrested, possibly injured, and held incommunicado in Abu Ghraib or another prison. A driver for the Guardian, accredited with the US authorities, was held without explanation for five days.

At stake is not only the existence of independent media, says Alastair Macdonald, Reuters' Baghdad bureau chief, but the credibility of US claims to be fostering democracy. "The American ambassador recently called us the fourth estate, a pillar of the democracy, but we're not being allowed to do our job here."

Oh, y'all could do your jobs if the mundane details of a recovering Iraqi society mattered to you. But, instead, you become an instrument of al-Qaeda and the other jihadi psychopaths in Iraq. You report on death and destruction to the near-exclusion of stories of triumph and positive change. Don't ever forget that, you Euro-wankers. I don't care how much I sound like Spiro Agnew: you are the problem.

Predictions
Mood:  cool
For what it's worth, I predict there will be no indictments this week for any member of the White House under the Espionage Act of 1917 or the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982. Those are completely out of the question.

As for lesser charges of obstruction or perjury, I am not so sure.

The Common Thread
I think I have just discovered the common thread running through many of my bannings from the chat rooms at Eschaton: whenever I raise the issue of Joe Wilson's malfeasance, Duncan Black shuts me down. If I recall correctly, my charge against Wilson is the proximate cause in at least three such bannings.

Very interesting.

It almost makes me think that Black has some stake in these matters.

What can I say, though? RESTORE HONESTY, baby! RESTOREHONESTY.COM!

Yeah, I Said I Hope DeLay Walks
Although I credit National Review Online as my first real online political crush (especially "The Corner"), I find it easier and easier to blow off these days. That's mostly because they can't keep their popery in check. And because they're too self-absorbed.

Anyway, to get to my point, you should really check out the last few days of their "Media Blog" wherein Stephen Spruiell really rips Ronnie Earle a new one. I mean, okay: Tom DeLay is a creepy man and a bully, too. But Earle? This clown has gone plum haywire.

And he's going to be in a movie about this shit? One that he's basically making possible? Jesus! I hope DeLay walks ---just as a slap at Earle for such an inexcusable indiscretion.

Mass Murderer Blames America for His Country's Collapse, Receives Applause
Mood:  don't ask
Robert Mugabe, the "president" of Zimbabwe and a psychotic murderer, has accused the United States and Great Britain of harming his country ---presumably by keeping alive with food donations those who survive his campaigns of murder:

President Mugabe drew applause at a United Nations conference on hunger yesterday when he said Britain and the United States were to blame for his country's economic collapse.

In a diversion from his scripted speech at the World Food Day event organised by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, Mr Mugabe called Tony Blair and George W Bush "the unholy alliance of the millennium".

He then compared the two world leaders to Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini and accused them of interfering in the domestic affairs of countries such as his own.

Mr Mugabe made his attack after a speech in which he patted himself on the back for the "long overdue" land reforms started five years ago in which land was forcibly taken from white farmers.

The reforms sent the economy, which once provided food for the region, into a tail-spin, leaving it dependent on international aid for survival.

The US alone has donated almost $300 million (?166 million) in food aid to Zimbabwe since 2002.

I don't know what kinds of chattering toilet bowl brushes were in attendance at this conference, but we can be sure that they are degenerate heathens who deserve to be burnt at the stake. Rome used to be a great city for that kind of thing, you know.

What say we put in a call to il cavaliere?

Even Ratfucking Begins with Foreplay
Now Playing: "Can't Get There from Here" by R.E.M.
Courtesy of Duncan Black, have a look at this post over at Editor & Publisher. It is a letter from former CBS News national security correspondent Bill Lynch on the subject of New York Times reporter Judith Miller's apparent possession of a security clearance from the Department of Defense, which she would have needed as an embedded reporter with the United States military. Says Lynch (hyperlink added):

There is one enormous journalism scandal hidden in Judith Miller's Oct. 16th first person article about the (perhaps lesser) CIA leak scandal. And that is Ms. Miller's revelation that she was granted a DoD security clearance while embedded with the WMD search team in Iraq in 2003.

This is as close as one can get to government licensing of journalists and the New York Times (if it knew) should never have allowed her to become so compromised. It is all the more puzzling that a reporter who as a matter of principle would sacrifice 85 days of her freedom to protect a source would so willingly agree to be officially muzzled and thereby deny potentially valuable information to the readers whose right to be informed she claims to value so highly.

Hmmm. The plot thickens. But it gets better (emphasis added):

I am a former White House and national security correspondent and have had plenty of access to classified information. When I divulged it, it was always with a common sense appraisal of the balance between any potential harm done and the public's right to know. If I had doubts, I would run it by officers whose judgement I trusted. In my experience, defense and intelligence officials routinely share secrets with reporters in the full expectation they will be reported. But if any official had ever offered me a security clearance, my instincts would have sent me running. I am gravely disappointed Ms. Miller did not do likewise.

So, here's an example of a news media reporter who had "plenty" of access to classified information that he divulged. Does this mean that we will now be treated to the farce of liberals and Leftists complaining that we've been learning too much from our Government? Why wasn't it treason when Lynch was divulging classified information without a security clearance?

Oh, I'm not going to say it's because he was with CBS News! Ha, ha, ha...

Scramble, comrades! Gotta get that story straight!

Get Some of Captain B
Here's a few thoughts on yesterday's constitutional referendum in Iraq from a Marine who's there:

Now as the country has made a milestone achievement they have democracy in motion. As Americans we want things done yesterday and have little patience for things not produced now. Patience is what is needed here and the coward left wing bed wetters won’t understand that. Iraq is where the US was 200 yrs ago. Will their constitution change? Yes of course as ours still changes to this day. Will there be continued fighting? Yes, there are plenty of scumbags here that need to be delt with as they recognize that their days are numbered now since they couldnt alter the elections. The fact that there wasn’t a major mass casualty of voters, SBVIED in polling centers or assassinations conducted that the foaming mouth reporters could get in the middle of just reinforces how far the Iraqi forces have come and how they are getting stronger than the scumbags. Reporter’s countrywide saturated the area days prior to the elections to hopefully catch the US forces failing. Well to damn bad it didn’t happen so pound sand!

Heh, heh. "Left wing bed wetters."

Keep up the good work, Captain. Many, many of your countrymen are proud of you.

The others just hate themselves.

(Hat tip to Professor Reynolds.)

Miraculous