No Replacement For Displacement

I don't know what that smell is, but it sure is stinking up the neighborhood!

Donahue Show Deathwatch Update: US News is reporting(scroll down) that Chris Matthews is a bit miffed that Phil Donahue is acting as a boat anchor around the neck of MSNBC, and, of course, Matthew's show. Chris might be a complete weenie, and if he still had his column, I would build a weekly fisking around it, but he isn't such a complete idiot as to bring on crackpot leftists like George Galloway, and still expect to have a show.

Update: I forgot, if you are new here(which means just about everybody), don't forget to put in your date for the deathwatch.

The National Review is defending Hollywood Bubbleheads. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this is one of the signs of the apocalypse.

The wonderful consistency of Yasmin Alibhai-Brown

Read this article.

Then read this one.

First, she engages in a bit of innuendo by accusing the anti-foxhunting demonstrators of being racist thugs(without any facts to prove this point), then the very next week waxes eloquent about what a lovely anti-war demonstration it was, while worrying about "being seen" near a bunch of islamofascist thugs, whose representatives then demand that the crowd chant "Allah is great." This for some reason troubles her far less than a bunch of people from the rural areas of England complaining about high gas prices. I could go into a detailed fisking, but if she can't make up her mind from one week to the next, what's the point?

82321794

Wolf Blitzer was going after a "peace activist" with hammer and tongs today. As soon I can find a transcript, I'll put it up.

Woohoo!

I got myself an extra zero today:

Now that I've got my warm fuzzy, I promise no more self-referential posts for the rest of the week.

Mail Call!

I'm watching "Mail Call" on the history channel right now, which is narrated by the eternal drill instructor, R. Lee Ermey:

"My mission, is to read your mail, and educate your sorry ass."

Watch the show. If you don't, you won't like what happens.

More good news for Al Gore

Ralph Nader might run again.

A different perspective of the Atrocity

Like I said yesterday, I am glad I am getting the extra hits from all of you today, and I am especially glad I didn't make a phony shitstorm to do it. This post might create such an occurrence. At least, it will if you don't read the whole thing.

In the book, What's so Great About America, Dinesh D'Souza talks about how his grandfather came to hate the English, while he held no such animosity. The reason why was that while colonialism was bad for his grandfather, the aftereffects of colonialism were good for Dinesh himself. And this got me thinking about the atrocity.

September 11 will be a cause for morning here in the United States. Thousands of people died, and a hole was carved out of our largest city. However, for millions of people, that is not the case. For them, it might even be a cause for celebration.

Now, I can already tell that the blood pressure for a lot of you out there is already starting to rise. You are probably thinking I have pulled a giant bait and switch, with 8 weeks of conservative opinion, a post which has drawn thousands of impressions, and now that I have your eyeballs on this page, I am revealing my true nature, and engaging in some Fisk/Pilger/Donahue style wailing about why we are hated. In which case, you would be wrong.

For millions of Afghans, Iraqis, and Iranians, September 11, 2001 marks the first day that their struggle for liberation received the first light of hope. Much as how Churchill was ecstatic about how Pearl Harbor brought the United States into WWII, those who suffered under the Taliban and their Arab colonial masters are ecstatic to have been liberated, and those who suffer under Saddam and the Ayatollahs have cause for hope that now, finally, their liberation is at hand. None of this would have been possible had not those 3000 died in lower Manhattan.

Had the atrocity never occurred, millions of Afghans would be suffering at the hands of the Taliban. Saddam would still be on his way to building a nuclear weapon, and we would have wasted years trying to build a go-slow approach to building an Iraqi resistance. The Iranians would still be suffering under the Ayatollahs, and we would be ignoring the Iranian people's urgent cries for freedom. We would have spent most of the summer and fall agonizing over Chandra Levy, some moronic farm bill or drug program, and ignoring the plight of millions forced to live in darkness.

The atrocity changed that. We are no longer worried about such petty things today. We are engaged in a struggle to change the very foundations upon which life in the Middle East is based. Already we have liberated 25 million people. By this time next year, another 25 million people will be liberated. The year after that, maybe another 70 million will breath the fresh air of freedom, and after that, who knows? That means that each of those who died on that September day will be responsible for liberating over 30,000 people. And that's not a cause for mourning, but a cause for celebration, and we should, alongside mourning for those who died, celebrate for those who are free, because the smiling faces of children in Kabul are as much a legacy of that horrible day as those anguished faces we saw through our television that horrible morning.

Wow

That's it. Just wow. I've only started this blog back in August, and thanks to the Great Glenn who linked to me a few days ago, my hits have gone through the roof. Take a look at this graph:

On September 23, I was averaging about 35 to 40 impressions a day by the Counted stats(the "counted" bitmap at the bottom of the blogroll). I spiked a bit when Glenn linked to me for the McAfrica burgers, but that was on a weekend, in the middle of the summer, so it didn't spike anywhere near as much as it is now, though at the time, I thought it was the bees knees. Compared to the traffic I'm receiving now, it would barely twitch in comparison. The Bravenet counter numbers are similarly incredible too. Two weeks of minimal activity, followed by an explosion.

For a lot of you established bloggers, who get a few thousand hits a day as a matter of routine, this must seem like no big deal. However, prior to this week, on a good day I would get a 60 visitors and be happy about it. Now, I have received three times more visitors since tuesday than I have since I started the blog.

Wow. And thanks..

Update: I had to dump the bravenet table of hits. The HTML was becoming a pain, and I want to write posts, not play around with HTML all day.

Tinfoil hat leftists, are you threatened by logic? Wishing you could spend more time listening to the wisdom of Noam Chomsky? You're not alone! With this handy-dandy product, all your problems are solved!

Germany's contribution to the war on terror:

Navy Launches new ship to fight on war on terror

The U.S.S. Edward Kennedy (I know, I know, old joke)

I was reading Britain's Independent Communist a few weeks ago, and as usual, they had an wildly anti-American screed by an Anita Roddick. Now, I was thinking about engaging in a fisking, but it was such a doctrinaire piece, I thought, "What's the point?" That was until I read an article by Andrea Peyser in the New York post a few days ago. It turns out that Anita Roddick is the founder and a very major stockholder in The Body Shop a beauty shop which crows about its eco-fascist credentials:

World Leaders Criticised For Setting No Green Energy Targets
The Body Shop today (3 September) criticised world leaders for failing to sign up for specific targets to make renewable energy available to two billion people in the developing world.

This is a perfect example of vomit-inducing limousine liberalism. The two billion in the developing world are far more concerned about having a roof over their head, food in their bellies, and not being a victim of the next Mugabe, Idi Amin, or Pol Pot. Their need for "renewable energy" ranks somewhere between a crop of freshly harvested poison ivy and The Body Shop's overpriced commie-friendly products. But I digress.

Anita Roddick's website makes the Body Shop look like Worldnet Daily in comparison. Therefore, I have, on an empty stomach, waded through this vast septic tank of pseudo-intellectual fecal matter so you, the reader, are spared the agony of doing so yourself. The problem is where do I start? Her views are such a cornucopia of idiotarianism along such a wide range of topics that it is almost impossible to find a good place to start.

Almost, but not impossible. The best place to start is with what brought me to this immense gathering of verbal flatulence, her September 11 anti-American screed, and then her "Oh horrors, they don't like me!" wail afterwards.(The anti-American screed in red, the shock at the reaction in green, in solidarity with her enviro-commie agenda):

How has the world changed since Sept. 11? For one thing, Europeans no longer aspire to be Americans.

Who would, given how that country moves steadily and inexorably toward dictatorship? The American people, in a scant 12 months, have had their once-enviable civil liberties outrageously eroded in the name of patriotism. The ideals of freedom and democracy which America pledges to export across the globe have been perverted so spectacularly at home that America's admirers hardly recognise her anymore.

Where once Americans reveled in their uniquely American right and willingness to criticize their government, they are now told that those who dissent are no better than terrorists, or terrorists themselves. They have had their pride of country, their patriotism, hijacked by a self-interested and short-sighted government which steals freedoms from its own people and gives riches to corporations and "security" infrastructures such as the military, FBI, and CIA, all of which which have proven, in the past 12 months, to be either fatally incompetent and totally corrupt.

Those Americans who would question their government are told to "watch what they say." The FBI has been given broad reign to spy on citizens with phone taps and email snoops. Long-held ideals of fair and speedy trials are thrown out the window as suspected terrorists and sympathizers are "disappeared" like the enemies of Pinochet 20 years ago in Chile.

(...)

America's us-against-the-world mentality has managed to wear away almost all of the remarkable international sympathy it built up just after Sept. 11. Bush & Co. has slapped the international community in the face as the it tried to embrace and console the United States. Now the enmity has left America alone, more reviled and isolated internationally than before.

Then, of course, she's shocked to find that Americans might find the juxtaposition of the United States with Pinochet's Chile a wee bit offensive:

My outrage and sadness in these times is precisely because I love America. I am deeply sorry if a few Americans took personal offense because they misunderstood me or were misinformed by right-wing commentators who quoted me out of context, but I stand by my sentiment.

She doesn't need to just get a Clue, she needs to get the Parker Parker Brothers Deluxe version. She accuses Americans of being complete dupes, and when we take offense to her slanders of us, then we must simply be "misinformed", and read something quoted out of context. I'd like her to explain how, "...the enmity has left America alone, more reviled and isolated internationally than before," can be considered anything other than anti-American?

Then, of course, in pure idiotarian rhetoric, she talks about how the boycott of her little empire is somehow "intimidating":

Those who have called for my head and encouraged a boycott of The Body Shop because they disagree with me may believe they are defending America, but is intimidation, retaliation, and suppression of ideas really what America is about? I don't believe it.

Of course, when it is her little bastion of leftism that is under boycott, it is intimidation and suppression of ideas. However, when it is Exxon, a greedy capitalist oil company, she sings a different tune:

In May 2001, The Body Shop was the first international company to join Greenpeace's Stop Esso campaign, calling on our staff and customers to buy petrol from anyone but Esso. I saw it as a good opportunity to repoliticize our staff. If we couldn't vote George W. Bush out of the White House, at least we'd be able to vote with our wallets against the company whose will he was exercising when he pulled out of the Kyoto treaty.

But her astonishing intellectual vacuity doesn't end there. She puts up a page of anti-war quotes, putting William T. Sherman and FDR alongside the wisdom of Abby Hoffman, Pat Schroeder, and George McGovern. She uses a quote of Teddy Roosevelt to imply that he would wholeheartedly approve of the drum banging morons who comprise the idiotarians. She should remember that Sherman promised to "make Georgia howl," and TR said, "don't hit a man if you can possibly avoid it; but if you do hit him, put him to sleep." She should also remember that it was FDR who authorized the building of the A-bomb, and none of these three could be considered a pacifist in any way, shape, or form, and were actually quite the opposite, and, if any of them were alive today, they would have responded in such a way that there probably would not be a city left standing from Beirut to Islamabad.

However, her idiotarianism is not simply related to the war. In this paragraph from a November, 2001 waste of bandwidth, she waxes nostalgic about how proud she was of her participation in the riots in Seattle, and how alarmed she is that the "success" of Seattle was not repeated:

I was one of those teargassed at Seattle when the World Trade Organization last met in 1999, and felt the collective outrage and sense of empowerment that we got from standing up to the world's economic bullies.

So this working class hero, with her TWENTY FOUR MILLION shares of stock, along with a bunch of spoiled trust fund kiddies, felt a sense of empowerment at shutting down McDonalds and Starbucks staffed by people making salaries marginally above minimum wage, throwing rocks and bottles at police who make less in a year than she makes in a week, and disrupting the lives of millions of everyday people who work in Seattle, most of whom work there to support their families. All so that she can show that she stood up to the "bullies." Maybe this old leftist crone and her trust fund kiddy brethren should ask themselves who the bullies really were.

She continues:

So now when I see how little protest there was outside the latest WTO ministerial at Doha in Qatar, with only Greenpeace's Rainbow Warrior in the harbor, I have quite mixed emotions. Granted, visa and travel restrictions in Qatar kept all but the most determined activists away. But even so, there seems to be less outrage just two years after Seattle, despite the fact very little has changed.[my emphasis]

Notice how she seems to completely ignore that minor event that occurred two months earlier. I guess the slaughter of 3000 people are just a trifling compared to some good drum-banging protest against more "bullies". Dang. I guess the war got into that too. Nonetheless, it serves its purpose. In her wailing about how she was being (gasp!) criticised for her idiocy, she writes the following:

I hate terrorism and terrorists. I was shocked and horrified and saddened as much as anyone at the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. My heart bleeds for everyone who lost loved ones on that awful day, and my heart aches for all Americans who were made to feel frightened and confused and terrorized. I celebrated, like everyone, stories of heroism and bravery; I cried a thousand tears at the stories of lives cut short by fanatics and their hatred. I would be devastated if people who know of me thought that I felt any differently.

Now justapose that little statement with the fact that only two months after the atrocity she laments that nothing has changed! What was she, in a f*cking cave?!? On the limo ride to Kennedy Airport, did she not notice that the New York Skyline was a little bit different? Or was it that she just considered those people in the towers an abstraction, like she considered the people and policemen of Seattle an abstraction, like she considers the American people an abstraction, and that her concern for the victims of the Atrocity lasted about as long as it was on the front page?

Well. I could go into more detail, but I'm starting to feel a little ill. If you want to endure some time in the furthest ring of idiotarianism, go to her site. I would suggest you not do it unless you are rather well lubricated with alcohol, or have taken anti-idotarian immunity pills.

Nanny Nanny Boo Boo

Pejman Yousefzadeh
posted yesterday that someone agreed with him. I commented that when someone agrees with something he says, he should say "Nanny Nanny Boo Boo" and crow to the world that he said it first. In that vein, let me say the following:

Nanny Nanny Boo Boo

Why? Read this article by Dick Morris in the New York Post, dated yesterday. Now read this post by me dated six weeks ago. So how come everyone is beating his door down for speaking engagements, and he gets a regular guest spot on Hannity and Colmes, and I can't even get on cable access?

82194674

Well it finally happened. My earthlink account maxed out, and all the pictures on the site disappeared. I was hoping I would be able to make it for another three days until the end of the month, but alas, it just wasn't meant to be. Time to go digging out the old sun box.

Do you want to scare Richard Gebhart?

Turn the volume on your speakers all the way up, then click here.

The Nature of Deterrence

This might cause a minor storm, but I was thinking today about deterrence. Most everyone who could be considered a warblogger, the President, and the entire national security apparatus believe that deterrence has failed. The few somewhat rational members of the anti-war crowd say that we should give deterrence another chance. The reality is that both are wrong. Deterrence has not been credibly tried in the Middle East, at least not by the United States, anyway(Israel is a different matter).

First, a bit of history of deterrence. In the final days of Nazi Germany, the Soviet armies invaded Germany, they were kind of shocked at what they saw. Every major city they had approached had been already been turned to rubble by British and American air power. This had an impressive effect on the Soviets in general, if not Stalin himself . They saw the aftermath of what American air power could do, and they didn't want to be subject to it themselves, and the institutional memory of bombed out German cities proved the concept of a "decadent" West was a fiction. The A-bomb simply reinforced that viewpoint.

Nonetheless, deterrence was tested, and repeatedly. First the Berlin airlift, then Korea. The fact that we were willing to sacrifice thousands of American lives in Korea, and that we had bled the Chinese in the process helped keep the concept of deterrence alive. Vietnam may have been a defeat for us in war, but that we were willing to endure riots and sacrifice 50,000 people half way around the globe simply so the Russians couldn't get their hands on it impressed both the Russians and our allies. When push came to shove, we would fight, and we would make an enemy pay a horrible price for doing so. The Soviets knew that if we were willing to sacrifice so much for a slice of bug-infested jungle in Southeast Asia, sacrificing Kansas City to prevent them from reaching the Rhine wasn't much of a stretch. While the Soviets might have used the "decadent west" as a propaganda tool, they never believed it themselves, and that is why deterrence worked.

Now let's look at our record over the past 12 years or so. We let Saddam live after invading Kuwait. We kissed the butt of Aidid after he killed 18 Americans, when we should have dispatched a Mechanized battalion to rip him apart. When Saddam attempted to assassinate George H.W. Bush, we launched a token, worthless retaliation. We allowed a mob to bully an American expedition off of Haiti. The World Trade Center was bombed--nothing happened. Khobar towers bombed--nothing. After the embassy bombings, we launched the "ten million dollar missile to hit a ten dollar tent and hit a camel in the butt." If you were Saddam or Bin Laden, would you expect us to hunt you down and kill you after what we did during the post Cold War era, or more precisely didn't do at all?

What we are engaged in now is not an abandonment of deterrence in favor of preemption, but a restoration of deterrence. Deterrence is a useless concept unless your enemies are convinced you are willing to fight a war. Say what you like about the Soviets, they knew we would fight, because they knew it, deterrence worked, so we never had to fight a war.

We went into Afghanistan to evict al Qaeda and the Taliban, and prevent them from killing more Americans. However, that wasn't the only reason. We went into Afghanistan to shock the muslim world into reform, true, but that is only part of it. We are going into Iraq to disarm the country, give Saddam a dirt nap, and eliminate it as a base of terrorism, and hopefully create a prosperous and democratic Arab country. However, even though these are stated and unstated goals, they are still not the only reasons why we need to fight and win this war.

The unstated, and unpondered reason why we need to fight, and win decisively, is to bring back deterrence. Winning the war against the islamofascists will make us safer, yes. It will eliminate the cesspools of Middle East tyranny, certainly. But it is also an unspoken warning shot to potential adversaries that no, the United States is not as decadent as they think, and yes, if they attack the United States, this vast war machine will show up on their doorstep, and do to them what we did to the Taliban, and what we will do to Saddam we will do to them, whoever "they" might be. Winning the war will restore our ability to deter potential unforeseen enemies(China?) for the next generation, and probably the next two generations.

Noone appears to have considered this, but the beneficial effects of an American victory echo far beyond the Middle East. It will mean that threatening the United States becomes a vastly higher risk activity than it was just over a year ago. And that will mean that we can engage in deterrence far more effectively than we could have before. I'm not saying that we won't have to engage in preemption again, but speaking softly and carrying a big stick will be credible again. And that is a good thing.

Newsweek(link in MSNBC's site) has an excellent article by Mohammed Al-Jassem, who writes for the Arabic language version of Newsweek. He writes an iron-clad confirmation of what I have written, and what Steven Den Beste, Cato, Indepundit, Bill Quick, and just about every warblogger of note has stated repeatedly and en masse. It also shows just how wrong the EUroleftists and the perpetually incorrect at Warbloggerwatch have been. Al-Jassem states:

The Arabs need shock therapy, some kind of tremor that would bring them back to reality and away from their political dreamscape. Egypt?s loss in the 1967 war against Israel was the sort of shock that did away with the nationalist slogans prevalent since the July 1952 revolution carried out by Gen. Gamal Abdul Nasser. If the 1967 shock laid the ground for the spread of Islamism as an alternative to the nationalism, the ?Saddam Shock? might be what is needed to launch the era of pragmatism. The Islamist mantra has not been dropped yet, but it was tested in the Afghan war and did nothing for its supporters except spark a few demonstrations here and there, which soon died out.

This is a solid confirmation of what we've been saying all along. We shouldn't pander to the Islamofascists and Baathists, we need to defeat them utterly. We should ignore the "Arab Street". We need to show, completely and unmistakeably, that the ideologies of oppression and violence that are part and parcel of the Middle East will only bring death and destruction to their adherents. Nothing else will suffice.

A little exercise in demographics

If you work at a major airport, bus stop, or railroad station, or have been to any of the above in the past two weeks, step back.

If you share a house or apartment with someone who works at or has been to a major airport, bus stop or railroad station in the past two weeks, step back.

If you live in, or work at, or have visited a major city in the past two weeks, step back.

If you share a house with someone who has been to a major city in the past two weeks, step back.

If you work as an EMT, in a doctor's office, or in a hospital step back. If you share a house with any of the above, step back. If you have been to a hospital in the past two weeks, step back, and if you share a house with someone who has been to a hospital in the past two weeks, also take a step back.

If you have attended a national convention of any kind in the past two weeks, step back. If you share a house with someone who has attended a major convention, step back also. If you cleaned the hotel room of someone who has attended a major convention in the past two weeks, also take one step back.

If you are a prostitute, or have visited a prostitute in the past two weeks, step back. If you are a stripper or have attended a strip joint, step back as well. If you share a house with any of the above, step back.

If you have been to Disney World, or to a casino in Atlantic City, Tunica, Las Vegas, Reno, or Connecticut in the past two weeks, step back. If you work at any of the above, step back. As before, if you share a house with someone who has been to or worked at any of the above tourist destinations, step back.

If you have been on a cruise in the past two weeks, or worked on a cruise ship, step back. If you share a house with someone who has been on a cruise ship in the past two weeks, step back also.

Now for the kicker: If, in the past two weeks, you have come into contact with any of the above people either by direct physical contact, or by indirect contact via money, clothes, bedsheets, phones, silverware, etc step back.

If somehow you didn't have to take a step back, consider yourself lucky. Had this been a real attack using smallpox, you would be among the few who would not have to worry about being infected. For the rest of you, I hope you had your shots early.

The One Good Democrat Award

Has anyone noticed that Rendell basically unendorsed Gore the day after Al Gore's "breakthrough" foreign policy speech? That flushing sound you hear is Al Gore's election prospects in '04.

There are no terrorists in Iraq!

And of course, OJ is innocent too. Ha'aretz reports that the Israelis have nabbed 3 Palestinians from the PLF who received training to be a terrorist in Iraq. After listening to the anti-war crowd crowing about how there is no link between Iraq and terrorism Iraq and Nuclear/Biological/Chemical weapons, and dismiss the mass murders he has already committed with a handwave. I am convinced that one of Saddam's secret programs was to replace rational people with pod people, completely impervious to all logic. The OJ jury was the first successful test of this, a pilot program was then used for the pod people to excuse Bill Clinton's rampant perjury in the Lewinsky trial, and now Saddam has fully deployed them to oppose his ouster. This explains the Scott Ritter phenomenon completely. He went to bed one night in 1998, and the next morning he woke up, but was, like, different. He sounded the same, had the same mannerisms, but he wasn't Scott Ritter. There are other explanations for Ritter and company, but this is the only way to explain it without my head exploding.

Blogspot seems to have barfed a lung. I can post just fine, but all the blogspot blogs are dead as a doornail.

AOL and Disney are looking to merge CNN and ABC news into a joint cable operation. Now, if they can get Donahue, Bill Moyers, and Robert Fisk as well, they can become the world powerhouse in aging crackpot leftists.

Ewwwww!!!

Someone arrived at my blog by searching for "Big testicular pics" on Google. I want to get more hits, but not those hits. Ick!

War Aims

Examine this photo:

This picture was taken of a meeting between MacArthur and Hirohito right after Japan surrendered.

Steven Den Beste has made a lengthy post about the nature of our enemy. His thesis is that Arab culture has become morass of cultural stagnation and decline, prone to blaming everything that is wrong with Arab Society on Jews, Christians, and the West(specifically the U.S.). This applies both to the islamism of bin Laden and to the Baathists, pan-Arabists, etc. They all share the same basic goal, and have generally similar pathologies under the surface, even if they appear at cross purposes. Den Beste, along with Cato, myself, and others have this view.

Now back to the picture. This picture was taken in the days immediately after Japan's surrender to the Allies. This picture became public, and spread alarm throughout the Japanese. Why? Because it showed that Japan had been defeated. There was an obvious difference in the stature and demeanor of MacArthur v. Hirohito. MacArthur is relaxed, wearing a relatively casual khakis. Hirohito is stiff, in very formal attire, and looking a bit worse for wear. The picture created an impetus among the Japanese to engage in self examination for the first time, and with the active help of the MacArthur, truly changed Japanese society forever.

Now why do I bring up this picture? Because this is exactly the point that Steven is trying to make. We need to inflict a serious, undeniable defeat on the both Islamism and Pan-Arabism. Saddam is a perfect example of low hanging fruit. if we defeat, and hopefully kill him, preferably in some sort of public manner, we will create a reaction in the Arab world something akin to what that picture did to the Japanese. If you listen closely to what is happening in the Arab press now, you will notice that the process of self-examination is beginning, with vague fits and starts. The commonly accepted wisdom is being questioned, and talk of democracy is no longer being pooh-poohed. Our defeating Saddam, and either putting him in irons(publicly) or him dying(preferably in public) will strengthen and enhance that process. The questions from the Islamists about Bin Laden and the pan-Arabists about Saddam will be the same, "This was our hero, he was supposed to be able to fight the Americans, and instead, he was beaten and destroyed in a matter of weeks. Why?" When that happens, we will be able to change the pathology of Arab culture today, and that will make the world a far safer place.

Update: I found an article in Newsweek that is a pretty strong confirmation of the point that myself and others have made regarding Iraq.

Update: OK, not really an update. However, a lot(and I do mean a lot!Wow!) of you are coming here from The Great Glenn, and all the hits are probably maxing out my free webspace on earthlink, which I'm using to host all the pictures here. So, since you are here, please scroll down a bit and read A Silent Fisking, which is a response to a terrorist-sympathising sob story in the UK Daily Mirror. Since you are already here, the bandwidth has already been used for this story, and I'd hate to see it go to waste.

I just realized something while watching the news. Tom Daschle, Trent Lot, Denny Hastert, and Richard Gephardt are probably 4 of the 8 most influential people on the planet, outside of the President, and the rest of Congress are probably 535 of the 700 most influential people on the planet. For all the talk of the UN, and sanctions, and the Indy's bleating that we poor Yanks will have to wait a year while inspections get underway, the congressional authorization of force will have a stronger international effect than anything the UNSC does. For all the blathering of Kofi Annan, and assorted EUroleftist ranting, the UN will have nowhere near the influence on the conduct of the war as these four people, and their 531 brethren. The congressional resolution will sail through in a week, and when it does, the UN is going to look like a completely failed organization if they don't authorize a resolution that isn't functionally identical in wording. In any event, the sound you hear in the next two weeks or so will be the collective gasp of dozens of EUroleftist journalists and minor government functionaries as they watch a war resolution sail through congress with the requisite 2/3rds votes that would qualify it as being a DoW.

I just read the President's proposed Congressional authorization of force in regards to Iraq. If this gets passed, the UN can do what it likes. It won't matter whether the inspections are tomorrow, a week, or a year away. Saddam is toast.

Fred Barnes agrees with me. However, I was right a month ago. I wonder if this will convince Roger Ailes to let me be guest host on the Beltway Boys.

We're losing him! Give me 4ccs of D5W and lidocane, STAT!

Donahue Death Watch update: Well, Donahue is on his way into ratings oblivion. On tonight's show Donahue has to bring in Katie Couric("the affable Eva Braun of Daytime TV") and Matt Lauer in an attempt to rescue his ratings. I am certain that there was an appropriately large announcement regarding this "coup" on the Today show this morning. I guess bringing George Galloway on didn't quite bring the ratings bonanza Donahue had hoped, and now they are mining NBC's prime time to try to keep this headless turkey alive.

Rhetorical question of the day:

Which column made the front cover of USA Today?

This one?

World support for war recedes Bush: Iraq's reversal should not deter U.N.

Or this one?

President gains support for military action Majority say Saddam poses threat to USA

Bad day for the Saudis

A pipeline carrying oil from the Caspian through Turkey to the Mediterranean is complete. Yet another step towards the day when we can tell the Saudis to f*ck off.

But Everyone I know voted for Mondale!?!

Tom Friedman talked to all his friends, and found out noone wants to invade Iraq. Of course, all of his friends voted for Mondale too.

I knew that when the scientists cloned sheep they were up to no good:

Scientists have identified a mutation that gives some sheep huge, hard bottoms. Understanding how the mutation works could give rise to leaner, meatier sheep and provide insights into inheritance.

I could say something here, but it is just too easy.

I've put in yet another counter. I'll probably remove one of the others when I've settled on which ones I like best.

I've put in yet another counter. I'll probably remove one of the others when I've settled on which ones I like best.

Becoming a Big League Blogger

Dawn Olsen(and probably others, truth be told) complain that Andrew Sullivan, Bill Quick, Steven Den Beste, the Great Glenn, N.Z. Bear, and others don't link to her and have formed a sort of exclusive blogger club. For Steve, this made him wax nostalgic back to the days when he was a blogging nobody, and got less hits than websites offering pictures of a nude Janet Reno. And that got me thinking. I don't want to complain about them not linking to me. That signifies a form of defeatism, and whininess. (Think about Noam Chomsky discussing blogs). I want their spot on the blogosphere. I want their hits. I want whiny notes from bloggers on a daily basis complaining about how I ignore them. I want my own TCS column, and a column on Fox News, and an occasional guest spot on the O'Reilly factor. I want people mentioning me as "The Great John". Well, maybe not "The Great John", because that makes it sound like I'm a real high quality commode, but something like that.

Now here's the hard part. The only way I am going to get their job is if I'm good. Not just sorta good, but the best. I'm only going to get the hits, and the repeat visitors, and that lovely tipjar that pays for my laptop, if my writing is better, my ideas stronger and more interesting than any of them. I'm not going to get it by being a link-whiner, or writing something about blogs guaranteed to produce a shitstorm. My hits might spike for an afternoon or two, then I would fall back into the dregs, and more importantly, I don't want to be known as the sort of guy who throws a bomb just to get a few random hits. When I write, it is going to be what I believe to be right and true at the time. If you like it, read it. If you don't like it, too bad. Either way I don't much care.

What will be the end result of this? One of two things. If I suck, I'll get virtually no hits, and I'll start seriously thinking about putting up nude pics of Janet Reno to increase traffic. If I'm good, in a few months or years, I will write about the good ol' days, when I was just starting to write this blog, and talking about how Steven Den Beste, Glenn Reynolds, and Bill Quick used to ignore everything I wrote, never linked to me, and basically treated me like dirt. At which point, some other prospective blogger will read that retrospective, and say "Glenn Reynolds? Who the fuck is Glenn Reynolds?"

Iberian Notes puts a whole new spin on the term unilateral. I won't ruin the joke for them. You have to read it for yourself.

Steven Den Beste thumps the Iraqiletter.

I've been trying to dig up the little statement by Kofi Annan about how Iraq has allowed inspectors and about how it will being about peace in our time, but I haven't been able to find either a video copy or a hardcopy of it. From what I heard of it, it would have made great fisking material, but alas, 'twas not to be. Kofi Annan burst out with joyous rapture about how how Iraq would allow "uncondtional" inspections, once Iraq had finished negotiating the mechanics of inspections. If this sounds like Iraq is putting conditions on their unconditional acceptance, that is because that is exactly what Iraq is doing. Kofi, after breathlessly trumpeting this valiant multilateral non-success, then proceeded to thank the Arabs, and all sorts of lovely and completely useless institutions for bringing this about, making Annan look, sound, and act precisely like Neville Chamberlain.

What is amazing to me is after the end of the Cold War, is that we even give the Secretary General the smallest fig leaf of credibility. During the Cold War, the Sec General was some guy that everyone knew was some figurehead, and all the *real* action took place between the British, American, and Soviet missions, with occasional input from the French and Chinese. Since the Cold War, and Clinton's multilateral fetish, the Euroweenies talks about the Sec General as some sort of world savior from the ravages of starvation, oppression, and tyranny. This of course, is ludicrous. When was the last time the UN knocked a dictator out of power? When was the last time the UN stood up for any of the Four Freedoms outlined by FDR? The reality is that the UN stands for none of these, and unless the United States makes demands upon the UN, the institution doesn't expand the cause the of freedom, but acts as an apologist for dictatorships, and gives them a figleaf of legitimacy. And, this, of course, is exactly what Kofi Annan tried to do yesterday--give Saddam Hussein a figleaf of legitimacy.

Cathy Young of the Boston Globe has an excellent column today about why feminists have become irrelevant.

A Silent Fisking

A Silent Fisking

INSIDE THE NEW CAMP X-RAY

Here 598 al-Qaeda and Taliban suspects from 38 countries - including seven Britons - are held without charge, without legal rights and for some, without hope.

For 167 of the 168 hours in a week their world is a cramped 8ft x 6ft 8in cell.

Their day-to-day existence in a remote corner of the US Naval Base on the south-east of the island is pitiful.

The strain of living in such conditions - condemned by human rights groups again last week - has taken a severe toll. The Daily Mirror has learned that more than 30 of the men have attempted suicide.
Occupying five dusty acres on a clifftop half a mile from the old Camp X-Ray, the new facility is no temporary jail.
Camp Delta is designed as a permanent prison - a grim monument of rigid metal, steel and razor wire to President Bush's determination to continue offending basic human rights. As the weeks and months crawl by, more and more unidentified prisoners arrive.

Guantanamo's business is banging up suspected Taliban and al-Qaeda. And business is clearly good for the Americans.
But the mental health of the detainees is cause for concern. One of the 30 who attempted suicide tried to slash his wrists with a plastic razor while three others tried to hang themselves.
US officials also confirmed to us that 37 other detainees are being treated for severe mental health problems.
And 18 of those psychiatric cases are so severely traumatised that they are receiving daily treatment and powerful drugs to stave off a variety of symptoms.

The psychiatric problems include major depression, post-traumatic stress, personality disorders, psychotic attacks and suicidal tendencies.
A new Amnesty International report says the detainees are in legal limbo and face a serious breach of their human rights.
They are routinely denied the right to see lawyers, although they could face trial by special US military courts with power to pass death sentences.

The Mirror quizzed guards, doctors, nurses and military officials during a heavily-escorted three-day visit.
Our every move was monitored. And it was difficult to get any information, either on or off the record.
But despite the tight restrictions the Mirror has pieced together the most accurate picture yet of life for the detainees. And it's not pretty.

The cramped cells, cut from steel shipping containers and even smaller than X-Ray's notorious cages, are collected in 10 blocks.
Delta, surrounded by thick green netting to keep out prying eyes, is brightly lit by powerful arc lights 24 hours a day and the camp is ringed with seven wooden guard towers manned by sharpshooters.
There are regular incidents when some prisoners go stir crazy, shouting and screaming as they climb and claw their cell walls in despair.

The 30 who have tried to end their lives have taken desperate and pathetic measures. A few have used the plastic utensilExtraordinarily, the military insist none of men's mental health has degenerated since being incarcerated in either camp and that all 37 had their psychiatric problems s issued with their meals to try and slash their wrists.

Some repeatedly banged their heads against the metal wall in their cells or punched the walls in frustration.
Other men suffer from insomnia which in turn makes them anxious and then depressed. A few pace their cells manically or pass the time doing endless press-ups.

The rear section of the cell has a 4ft x 4ft mesh window which allows - in theory - the breeze from the Caribbean to blow through the prison.
But the desert heat which sends temperatures soaring into the high 90s by 8am, coupled with intense humidity, means there's little fresh air, let alone wind, to cool off in.

Food is served on plastic plates and passed through a slot in the wire cell door.
Each week they receive just two opportunities to exercise for a strict 15-minute period. That's it. They exercise in a purpose-built yard shielded from the rest of the population. Most run around in circles and it is no wonder the detainees have all gained an average of a stone locked up in their cells for such long stretches.
Disgracefully, yet just within the guidelines of the Geneva Convention, they are allowed only two 15-minute showers a week when they are also given a freshly laundered orange two-piece prison suit.

Each time they are required to leave their cell they are shackled at the hands, waist and feet and escorted by at least two guards who tightly grip either arm.

Detainees needing medical help - one in three has dormant tuberculosis - are strapped to a trolley to be taken to hospital and are also restrained and manacled by their ankle to hospital beds during treatment.

It is camp policy that inmates use a normal speaking voice. Any shouting or attempts to communicate with other prisoners over distance are punished severely. The ultimate punishment is The Cooler, a metal box which is air-conditioned and lit, with just enough room for the offender to move around in.

For the detainees each day is the same. They all ask what's going to happen to them. They all ask for lawyers. They all ask for some glimmer of hope.

To each question the guards have only one answer: "We don't know".
And it seems that at this time nobody knows, not even the President of the United States himself.

The Most Dangerous Man Alive!

Donald Rumsfeld is now The Most Dangerous Man in Washington. I was shooting for that job, as the slot for Most Boring Man Alive is already taken.

From Atlético Rules

No, the template didn't change. Move along now.