Abu Wabu

Ben Stein, writing in American Spectator:
So here's where we are: we have a first amendment guaranteeing freedom of speech and separation of church and state. That means so-called artists can make art of a crucifix soaking in urine and of holy Christian images made of animal dung and no one can stop them. That means bookstores of brick and on-line can sell Mein Kampf and the vilest writings of Hitler's lackeys. These horrible excrescences are protected and the media screams bloody murder if anyone tries to protect the sacred in Christianity and Judaism from the most putrid attacks.

But the media censors itself about the cartoons mocking the prophet of a religion many of whose adherents want to destroy our country and our way of life. We will fight to the death to protect the artists who create Piss Christ, but we'll also fight to the death to protect the feelings of the people who hate us and kill our children. We have surrendered our free expression to people who are at war with us. They kill us in the name of a religion and we bow and scrape to that religion while letting people dump on Christianity and Judaism.

There's a word for this, beyond the words Stockholm Syndrome and the words Political Correctness. The word is cowardice. Or maybe an even shorter word: defeat. Wake up, America. This is serious.

Wafa Sultan: Syrian expatriate, LA psychologist and, in this clip from Al Jazeera, one tough woman when it comes to rubbing Islamofascism's nose in the ugly truth. Both Safa and Irshad Manji offer hope that the future of Islam is in the women; it most certainly is not in the men. Islamic women must challenge the men whose dark-ages approach to life on 21st-century Earth has brought them no freedoms, only invisibility.

All Things Beautiful has some transcript and related material by Mark Steyn and others, while Isaac Schrödinger reminds us of the horrors suffered by Islamic women on a daily basis.

More:
Ed Morrissey
Scott Johnson
Roger Simon
Nidra Poller
Robert Spencer

The problem with quoting Mark Steyn is that everything he writes is worth repeating. Read every word of "Needing to wake up, West just closes its eyes" :

Something very remarkable is happening around the globe and, if you want the short version, a Muslim demonstrator in Toronto the other day put it very well:

''We won't stop the protests until the world obeys Islamic law.''

Stated that baldly it sounds ridiculous. But, simply as a matter of fact, every year more and more of the world lives under Islamic law: Pakistan adopted Islamic law in 1977, Iran in 1979, Sudan in 1984. Four decades ago, Nigeria lived under English common law; now, half of it's in the grip of sharia, and the other half's feeling the squeeze, as the death toll from the cartoon jihad indicates. But just as telling is how swiftly the developed world has internalized an essentially Islamic perspective. In their pitiful coverage of the low-level intifada that's been going on in France for five years, the European press has been barely any less loopy than the Middle Eastern media.

What, in the end, are all these supposedly unconnected matters from Danish cartoons to the murder of a Dutch filmmaker to gender-segregated swimming sessions in French municipal pools about? Answer: sovereignty. Islam claims universal jurisdiction and always has. The only difference is that they're now acting upon it. The signature act of the new age was the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran: Even hostile states generally respect the convention that diplomatic missions are the sovereign territory of their respective countries. Tehran then advanced to claiming jurisdiction over the citizens of sovereign states and killing them -- as it did to Salman Rushdie's translators and publishers. Now in the cartoon jihad and other episodes, the restraints of Islamic law are being extended piecemeal to the advanced world, by intimidation and violence but also by the usual cooing promotion of a spurious multicultural "respect" by Bill Clinton, the United Church of Canada, European foreign ministers, etc.

The I'd-like-to-teach-the-world-to-sing-in-perfect-harmonee crowd have always spoken favorably of one-worldism. From the op-ed pages of Jutland newspapers to les banlieues of Paris, the Pan-Islamists are getting on with it.

John Hindraker remembers Ilan Halimi and excoriates the MSM for their willful ignorance of his story:

Earlier today, tens of thousands of Frenchmen, including prominent politicians of all stripes, participated in demonstrations in Paris and other cities commemorating the murder of Ilan Halimi and demonstrating against anti-Semitism. The crowd in Paris was estimated at 33,000 by police; other estimates were higher.
...

It's hard to excuse this level of obtuseness [in the press about the fact that Halimi's torturers/murderers were Muslims]. I don't doubt that Halimi's murderers wanted money. The fact that they abducted him might have been "primarily motivated by greed." But greed doesn't explain anything that they did over the ensuing three weeks. Greed doesn't explain why Halimi was tortured to death. The world wasn't shocked by this crime because of the abduction; it was shocked by what followed. So I wish the media would stop trying to tell us that the vicious animals who murdered Ilan Halimi were just hoping to get rich.

I wonder if the bombing of the Golden Mosque will ignite worldwide Islamic passions to the extent that the publication of twelve benign Danish and three guttural Islamist-fabricated cartoons did.

Actually, honestly, I don't wonder at all. I know it won't do any such thing.

So does Marc Schulman writing for American Future:
The bombing of the Samarra mosque was an outrageous act. Will Muslims take to the streets to protest the destruction of a religious shrine? Will Muslim governments condemn the perpetrators? Which sin is worse: cartoons of the prophet or the destruction of a sacred place of worship? The answers to these questions will tell us whether the "moderate Muslim" is a myth or not and whether Muslim governments will use anti-Americanism and anti-Zionism to explain or excuse any act, no matter how nefarious.

Seems they've already begun.

One less thang:

The al-Qaida leader in northern Baghdad has been killed in a raid, U.S. military officials said Friday.

The man was identified as Abu Asma, also known as Abu Anas and Akram Mahmud al-Mushhadani, an explosives expert said to be responsible for manufacturing car bombs.

Officials said he died in a northern Baghdad raid conducted by coalition forces with the help of Iraqi police.

"Intelligence reports indicated Abu Asma was in possession of, and expected to use, suicide vests against the Iraqi people and security forces," a statement said. "He was directly responsible for many deaths and injuries of coalition and Iraqi security forces."

Meanwhile, Iraqi soldiers captured four suspected terrorists west of Baghdad believed to be involved in a cell that makes and emplaces roadside bombs.

Elsewhere, two Iraqi soldiers and two civilians were injured when a roadside bomb detonated in the vicinity of Al Haswah.

Frank J. rolls with reality in This Is Your Brain; This Is Your Brain on Ports

The more I learn about this issue with the ports, the more I learn I don't know anything from which to form an opinion. Despite my capitalistic instincts, I would have assumed the U.S. government ran our ports. As for reality, I don't know what "owning" a port entails. I could probably look that up, but it sounds boring. Thus, I don't trust Congress on this issue, because people in Congress seem to be dumber and have shorter attention spans than me.

Anyway, the UAE seems like moderate Muslims in that, deep down, they want to kill us all and force Islam upon the world, but they have better things to do. They're a modern economy, and I don't really see them sacrificing that to blow a few things up.... even to kill Jews. Plus, they are an ally.

For the Bush White House. Say g'night, Dick.

Just when you think Islamist extremism has reached a new low, it turns out that Islamist governments are using it to threaten sovereign countries who won't bend to their will.

Nice civilization you got here. It’d be a shame if something happened to it.

That was the sinister subtext of a letter addressed to Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, asking him to “take all those responsible to task under law” for the infamous Mohammed cartoons. The letter is remarkable for when it was sent and for who sent it.
The letter was signed by the eleven ambassadors of Islamic or heavily-Islamic countries. Libya, Algeria, Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan, Palestine, Indonesia, Morocco, and Bosnia-Herzegovina complained about the Jyllands-Posten cartoons on October 12, long before the current round of protests.

It is, of course, their right to complain, but demanding legal action is pretty arrogant. It’s also depressing, because it shows that these worldly ambassadors don’t even know how a free country works. Asking an executive to restrain lawful speech in a free country is like asking him to kindly restrain the rotation of the moon.

But that’s not the surprising part. The surprise is the implied extortion at the end of this paragraph:
"We strongly feel that casting aspersions on Islam as a religion and publishing demeaning caricatures of the Holy Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) goes against the spirit of Danish values of tolerance and civil society. This is on the whole a very discriminatory tendency and does not bode well with [sic] the high human rights standards of Denmark. We may underline that it can also cause reactions in Muslim countries and among Muslim communities in Europe."

“Reactions?” Whatever could they mean by that?

Peaceful protests? Harsh language? Nothing to worry about in a democracy with a strong free speech tradition, thanks. All in a day’s work. Not worth warning us about.
...

Among the signatories of the letter, Iran has the most to gain from radicalizing the Muslim world right now. As America and Israel contemplate military strikes against Iran’s nuclear program, the smart play for Iran is to poison any efforts at cooperation between the United States and countries in the region—and specifically Turkey, which has already refused to serve as a staging area for American troops during the Iraq invasion. If Iran can convince Turkey to withhold its support again, the mullahs will have neutralized our 39th Air Base Wing at Incirlik without firing a shot.

If that state-security scenario sounds too conspiratorial for you, the alternative is no more reassuring: these signatories of the letter know that their nations are not in control at all. Radical Islamists are calling the shots, and there is nothing Islamic states can do to stop them.
If that is the case, it is a surprising and devastating indictment of global Islam. It is one thing for American pundits and politicians to say the Religion of Peace has been hijacked by violent extremists; it’s far more frightening when the warning comes from the governments that know it best.

The eleven countries (actually, it's ten countries and one piddling little territory whose very existence relies on Western largesse) named in the article, Libya, Algeria, Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan, Indonesia, Morocco, Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Palestinian Authority, are all now on record as having made good on threats to employ state-sanctioned violence against Western countries who refuse to submit to their will. No more can Islam claim to be a "peaceful religion" when it so clearly has a mandate by its governments to terrorize and commit acts of war around the globe. The gloves should come off now.

Christopher Hitchens goes after the Islamofascist riot-mongers and their limp-wristed apologists in his latest Slate piece:
The incredible thing about the ongoing Kristallnacht against Denmark (and in some places, against the embassies and citizens of any Scandinavian or even European Union nation) is that it has resulted in, not opprobrium for the religion that perpetrates and excuses it, but increased respectability! A small democratic country with an open society, a system of confessional pluralism, and a free press has been subjected to a fantastic, incredible, organized campaign of lies and hatred and violence, extending to one of the gravest imaginable breaches of international law and civility: the violation of diplomatic immunity. And nobody in authority can be found to state the obvious and the necessary-that we stand with the Danes against this defamation and blackmail and sabotage. Instead, all compassion and concern is apparently to be expended upon those who lit the powder trail, and who yell and scream for joy as the embassies of democracies are put to the torch in the capital cities of miserable, fly-blown dictatorships. Let's be sure we haven't hurt the vandals' feelings.

This of course relates to this, in more ways than are initially evident. While the official line of so many Western governments is as spineless, apologetic and mealy-mouthed as Hitchens shows, the folks on the ground are becoming ever more likely to fight back against those Hitchens describes as "the silky ones", those oily purveyors of feigned outrage and indignancy whose goal is to render illegitimate all criticism of Islamofascism by invoking a catchy new pejorative, "Islamophobia".

Imagine what global acceptance of the concept of "Naziphobia" would have meant in the context of prewar Europe. Goebbels should have been half as smart.

This blog will have none of that bullshit. There is nothing remotely phobic in calling out Islamofascist thugs who pimp their sick propaganda around the world in order to incite riots, mayhem, murder and bald-faced acts of war against Western democracies.

UPDATE
The world needs to hear more from folks such as these.

The Captain weighs in (emphasis mine):
The isolation and persecution of these journalists show that the riots and demonstrations represent mainstream Islam, despite the multicultural pablum given by most pundits over this eruption. Friends and relatives of these reporters remain silent for fear of violent retribution. A significant moderate faction within Islam has been cowed into almost-complete silence by the ascendant violent and radical factions.

Islamofascists went on a murderous rampage in Nigeria, killing Christians for the crime of belonging to the same religion as those evil cartoon-publishing Danes. Now it appears that gangs of Nigerian Christians have answered back by burning mosques and attacking Muslims. It's a sad fact that violence begets violence in return; the Christians are no doubt acting in as random a fashion as did their Islamist attackers, all of which of course is wrong and not in keeping with Christian tenets.

But as Chris Rock said of O.J., I understand.

HT: Ace

David Frum's most recent entry in his NRO Diary is dated November 4, 2005, so I was glad to see him back with "Pride And Progress", an article chronicling his findings on a recent three-day tour of northern and central Iraq.

Frum makes seven major points, the two most important in my opinion being that Iraqis are fighting for themselves and that

The Americans sincerely stand behind their commitment to Iraqi democracy. I talked to a senior officer who had led men--and lost men--in battle against the extremist Shiite cleric, Moqtada al-Sadr. Asked how he felt about the possibility that al-Sadr might have a role in the new government, he answered: "It's difficult for me, really difficult. But his party did win votes. And that's democracy."

Frum also checks in with the opposite side of this pioneering co-operation between erstwhile enemies:

Meanwhile, personal relationships between the Americans and their Iraqi military counterparts are obviously strong and close. I talked to one officer who had fought in the first Gulf War against the United States--in fact, he had led the only successful Iraqi operation of the whole war. Asked how he liked working alongside his former enemies, he grinned: "Much better now."

Read "Pride And Progress".

NRO's James S. Robbins explains the reasons why Hamas shouldn't expect aid from the West any time soon. Reason Number One: Winning an election does not confer legitimacy upon a murderous terrorist organization bent on the destruction of Israel and the imposition of fascism in the name of a religion.
Promoting democracy only requires us to approve of the process; we need not be delighted with the results. And it is not hypocrisy to shift policies when foreign governments legitimately change hands. It happens all the time. For example, German Chancellor Angela Merkel enjoys a much better relationship with Washington than her predecessor Gerhard Schroeder. Furthermore, the United States is under no obligation to help underwrite the finances of a government that sponsors suicide bombings. It is bad enough that Hamas seeks to create a new terror state in the Middle East, it would be ludicrous for us to pay them to do it. If anything, cutting funds to Hamas shows more consistency than hypocrisy; their program is barely distinguishable from the Taliban's, and lately we have not been on the best of terms.

Read it all.

The Officers' Club presents a collection of Dr. Suess editorial cartoons from New York's PM newspaper of the early forties. The theme tying these cartoons together, that being the gutlessness of appeasers, is as relevant today as are Suess' childrens' books.



If you appreciate Dr. Suess you'll love these timeless gems of political commentary; they're as on-target today as they were the last time a generation of appeasement-idiots chose the path of least resistance to sell out their own democracies to fascism. Then again, if you are an appeasement-idiot then you might not like what you see.

Also at Officers' Club: Time May be Running Out for Moderate Muslims
As the Muslim world continues to agitate over these stupid cartoons, the rest of the world becomes increasingly wary of these foreign people. The rest of the world, if threatened, will respond in kind. If Muslims riot on the streets in places like Germany, Italy, and Austria- how long until “right-wing” groups begin to agitate against the Muslims? How long until that breaks down into violence? What happens then? What happens when the US leaves the Balkans and the former powers that once dominated the Muslim populace decide to finish what they started and get rid of the rioting populace once and for all? What happens when people across the world start responding to threats of violence from radical Islamists with threats of violence of their own?

Rampaging Muslims Murder Christians In Nigeria:
Nigerian Muslims protesting caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad attacked Christians and burned churches on Saturday, killing at least 15 people in the deadliest confrontation yet in the whirlwind of Muslim anger over the drawings.
It was the first major protest to erupt over the issue in Africa's most populous nation. An Associated Press reporter saw mobs of Muslim protesters swarm through the city center with machetes, sticks and iron rods. One group threw a tire around a man, poured gas on him and set him ablaze...

Judith Apter Klinghoffer:
If there is something worse than the killing of 15 innocent Nigerian Christians and the burning of their churches by their Muslim brethren for the sin of belonging to the same religion as the Danes, it is the refusal of reporters to tell the ugly truth.

$11.5 Million Cartoonist Bounty:
A minister in India’s Uttar Pradesh state government has offered a reward of $11.5 million to anyone who would kill any of the cartoonists who drew the images of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him).
Muhammad Yaqoob Qureshi, minister of state for Haj and Minorities Welfare in the Uttar Pradesh government, told a rally in Meerut, 65 km east of New Delhi, after Friday prayers that he would give “the avenger” 510 million rupees ($11.5 million) and his weight in gold.

Muslims Torture Then Murder Parisian Jew:
"They acted with indescribable cruelty," the judiciary police chief leading the investigation said. "They kept him naked and tied up for weeks. They cut him and in the end poured flammable liquid on him and set him alight."

Treasury Freezes Assets of NGO Tied to Hamas:
“KindHearts is the progeny of Holy Land Foundation and Global Relief Foundation, which attempted to mask their support for terrorism behind the facade of charitable giving,” said Stuart Levey, Treasury Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence. “By utilizing this specialized designation tool, we’re able to prevent asset flight in support of terrorist activities while we further investigate the activities of KindHearts.”

So Much For "Concern For Muslim Sensibilities":
The Danish cartoons were almost universally censored in the U.S. The result?
JAKARTA, Indonesia - Hundreds of Muslims protesting caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad tried to storm the U.S. Embassy on Sunday, smashing the windows of a guard post but failing to push through the gates. Several people were injured.
Pakistani security forces, meanwhile, sealed off the capital of Islamabad to block a planned mass demonstration and fired tear gas and gunshots to chase off protesters. In Turkey, tens of thousands gathered in Istanbul chanting slogans against Denmark, Israel and the United States.

Belmont Club on Winning the Propaganda War:
A man after my own heart: "In war, I do not care a damn about what the enemy thinks of me. I want him to fear and respect me. And I want to break his will and break his ability to fight. Truthfully, I do not care about what... Muslims think of me, the unclean infidel. I will always be an infidel to him. ... The only propaganda war that matters to me is the internal one at home. These are the people who will decide my country's fate, and perhaps even the fate of all civilization worth saving. ... And if your domestic media are working on behalf of the enemies of civilization and of your country, you have one major problem that cannot be glossed."

Austin Bay: Army Releases Captured War On Terror Documents: Al Qaeda Offers Medical and Vacation Benefits For Terrorists

Michelle Malkin: Cartoon Jihad In Washington DC

Clifford D. May, Foundation For Defense Of Democracies: VOICES OF REASON: What are Middle Eastern dissidents saying about the Cartoon Intifada?

Palestinian Media Watch, Latest Bulletins:
Hamas plans to kidnap Israeli soldiers to trade for imprisoned terrorists
Hamas Video: We will drink the blood of the Jews
Palestinian Cartoons
New Hamas Video: Gaza leads to Haifa
New Hamas Internet Video
Hamas Remains Hamas
PA Poem: There is no Bin Laden
Classic PLO Hate Speech on PA TV
PA Duplicity: Talk peace to Israelis and terror to Palestinians
Arab Knesset Member: Sharon is "butcher of the Palestinian people"
PA to Israel: "Die anywhere, but don't die here"
65% of Palestinians Support Al-Qaeda Attacks in the US and Europe
Mother Who Sent Sons on Suicide Missions Becomes Hamas Candidate
PA Ridicules US Demand to Oust Hamas from Election
Hamas Election Video: Armed struggle until destruction of Israel
Abbas Approves Grants to Suicide Terrorist Families
PA on Terror: "Condemns" on paper, praises in practice

Michael Ledeen, NRO: How does Iran perceive the West?

Thomas Joscelyn:
More On Iran + Hamas
The Not So Great Escape: Facts, Rumors and Theories "What's this? Former Iraqi generals working with al Qaeda and the Yemeni regime against a common foe in the north?"

The Strata Sphere: Able Danger Hearings Summary

Cox&Forkum: FlimFlammable

Charles Rangel: I'm A Hypocritical Partisan Dunce

Alec Baldwin: I'm Just A Dunce

Joe Repya: Nick Coleman, Liar

Charles Johnson's Little Green Footballs notes this item over at The Jawa Report:

Exclusive: Prisoner Abuse Photos from Iraq that MSM Won't Show You

The story describes an ongoing campaign of abuse, humiliation and murder of prisoners in Iraq by Islamofascist terrorists operating, as they always do, in gross violation of international laws, including but not limited to the Geneva Convention, which should horrify those who value these sanctions on the conduct of human affairs.

The source of the story is the SITE Institute, SITE standing for the Search for International Terrorist Entities. SITE's five-point Mission Statement, describing an aggressive and thorough approach to fighting Islamic terrorism, is an interesting read, particularly the paragraph describing its Educational Mission:

The SITE Institute is guided by the principle that everyone must understand our enemy in order to prevail in the war on terrorism. In addition to its research and investigative activities, SITE seeks to educate the public about the history, ideology, tactics, and methods of Islamic terrorists. SITE Institute staff frequently gives expert interviews and provides information on terrorism to major media outlets, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, and Time Magazine. They have repeatedly appeared on CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC, the Fox News Channel, NPR, BBC, and a variety of other national and international television and radio networks.

Important principal that, that everyone must understand the enemy in order to prevail. This is the biggest problem we face today in the West: too many people, whom I refer to as Useful Idiots (for the purposes of this blog, the more elegant "idiots"- why waste time?), are still largely uneducated about Islamofascist terrorism, preferring to blame a host of others, in fact anyone but the enemy, for various reasons, some selfish, some not, all deluded.

In answer to that ignorance, SITE's website is a lode of information and intelligence on every relevant terrorist group in the world. Sections include a Terrorism Library providing "Background Information on Designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations ", a not-quite-current list of terrorist websites (the Hamas site is a whinefest of blame, victimhood and antisemitism, whilst the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade offering is, shall we say, "no longer in service".), and a database of their in-house publications, none for the faint of heart.

A sample offering: An Article Concerning the Aftermath of Rakan bin Williams’ Attack on the United States Presented by the Global Islamic Media Front.

Jack Kelly is covering the Able Danger hearings and reports on the testimony and the ongoing (and apparently bipartisan) obfuscation of the facts:

There definitely is a campaign to intimidate witnesses. Only three testified in open session, for fear of retaliation. They have good reason to be afraid. After Tony Shaffer "outed" himself as one of Weldon's sources,the DIA tried to fire him. The grounds? When Shaffer was being interviewed prior to becoming an intelligence officer years ago, he admitted that at age 13, he'd stolen a box of pens from the embassy where his father worked. That, $67 in disputed telephone charges and $180 in disputed travel charges were the reasons why DIA said he should be canned.

CNS News has more extensive coverage:

The top-secret, military intelligence unit known as "Able Danger" identified Mohammed Atta, the leader of the Sept. 11 hijackers, 13 times before the 2001 attacks, according to new information released Tuesday by U.S. Rep. Curt Weldon, (R-Pa.), chairman of the House Armed Services and Homeland Security Committees.

Able Danger has been identified by Weldon and team member Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer as an elite group of approximately two dozen individuals tasked with identifying and targeting the links and relationships of al Qaeda worldwide.

On June 27, 2005, Weldon said that Able Danger had offered in the year before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to share its intelligence with the FBI and to work with them to take down the New York City terrorist cell involving Mohammed Atta and two other 9/11 terrorists. Weldon said Clinton administration lawyers prevented the information from being shared with the FBI.

According to Weldon, the lawyers told Able Danger members, " [Y]ou cannot pursue contact with the FBI against that cell. Mohamed Atta is in the U.S. on a green card and we are fearful of the fallout from the Waco incident," a reference to the FBI's raid on the David Koresh-led Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Tex., in April 1993. Media reports indicated that lawyers for Able Danger were concerned that sharing data with domestic law enforcement was illegal.

Weldon on Tuesday said that despite testimony indicating that Able Danger's data had been destroyed, he has discovered data still available. "And I am in contact with people who are still able to [do] data mining runs on pre-9/11 data," Weldon said. "In those data runs that are now being done today, in spite of what DOD (Department of Defense) said I have 13 hits on Mohammed Atta ..."

Weldon would not name the individual helping him obtain the Able Danger data.

One name to watch, because he seems to want the whole thing to go away: Stephen Cambone, undersecretary of defense for intelligence.

Strata Sphere presents the hearings in item-by-item detail; it's a massive amount of work, so many thanks, A.J. A fascinating sample, sans any context, of course, which is why you should read it all.:

20th Item: Weldon’s claims that they reran this second repository of pre 9-11 data and had numerous hits on Atta (hopefully the real Atta which, in hindsight, they should be able to easily match with his now known activities and locations) is enormously helpful to his cause. It is not earth shattering Atta was on radar screens of various intelligence groups. But the fact it has been missed in the 9-11 Omission study and now apparently is being covered up a bit might give this story legs.

21st Item: Pre Meehan (D) is trying to rescue Cambone credibility through irrelevant, soft ball questions. The question is why? Why would a Democrat Congressman try and help a Bush administration figure look better in a public forum like this? After all the left’s efforts to find fault with the Bush administration, why is Cambone being helped by the lefty???

22nd Item: The name of “Mr Shiffrin” arises again. We heard this first when Weldon went ballistic over the reprisals being taken against Shaffer. I think I even have some background in the guy, if it is the right guy. Weldon recounts how the meeting with Cambone in the spring of 2001 (which Shaffer probably attended) included Shiffrin. Shiffrin is the person who states unequivocally that there was no reason to destroy the LIWA data on terrorists (or China for that matter) because it contained information on US persons. I still think it was because it had information on certain US persons close to Clinton. The second time we heard about Shiffrin is when Weldon let out he was in contact with Dr. Bob Johnson - Head of the Garland facility. Shiffrin would eat Cambone’s lunch with all Cambone’s silly claims about legal issues regarding the data sets.

23rd Item: Weldon says the more dramatic testimony was in the closed session - drat.

24th Item: Cambone has guts. He just claimed Able Danger was so important that, after having ‘problems getting it up and running’ at LIWA it was reconstituted at Garland. What a crock of bull! Not having the proper data handling paperwork and cross support agreements is NOT what stopped LIWA. These minor obstacles could just as easily been worked for LIWA as they were for Garland! There is no magic in Federal forms. Cambone just insulted everyone with an ounce of knowledge on how the government works. Clearly there was something very dramatic at LIWA that caused the entire effort to be uprooted - and it wasn’t missing forms.

25th Item: Holy Cow! Weldon has a signed affidavit from a witness that talked to one of Cambone’s staff recently and who said Cambone’s group was going to ‘kill this story’ and Shaffer had no credibility. The name is Butch Willard This is right after Cambone claimed no one was not trying to ‘bring the information forward’. If Weldon is right, Cambone just perjured himself and is in hot water now. The witness is an ex intelligence officer (woman). They moved all this to the closed session!

Newsmax reports that ABC "Nightline" has been caught reinterpreting the Saddam tapes given to them by FBI interpreter and former weapons inspector Bill Tierney. In a clear and obvious attempt to minimize the threat established in the tapes, "Nightline" cut out a crucial reference by Saddam to arranging for terrorist attacks inside the U.S.:

The FBI translator who supplied the 12 hours of Saddam Hussein audiotapes excerpted by ABC's "Nightline" Wednesday night now says the network discarded his translations and went with a less threatening version of the Iraqi dictator's comments.

"What you heard on ABC News was their translation," former U.N. weapons inspector Bill Tierney told ABC Radio's Sean Hannity on Thursday.

"They came up with something different on a key element regarding terrorism in the United States," Tierney insisted.

In the "Nightline" version of the 1996 recording, Saddam predicts that Washington, D.C., would be hit by terrorists. But he adds that Iraq would have nothing to do with the attack.

Tierney says, however, that what Saddam actually said was much more sinister. "He was discussing his intent to use chemical weapons against the United States and use proxies so it could not be traced back to Iraq," he told Hannity.

In a passage not used by "Nightline," Tierney says Saddam declares: "Terrorism is coming. ... In the future there will be terrorism with weapons of mass destruction. What if we consider this technique, with smuggling?"

Tierney's full translations are set for release this weekend by The Intelligence Group in Washington, D.C.

Imagine my surprise that a major network news program would censor and misrepresent solid evidence supporting an element of the Bush administration's cassus belli. Then again, it is ABC.

UPDATE
I'm not so sure about Bill Tierney. Neither is Byron York.

Roger L. Simon, however, is not so ready to dismiss Tierney's message:
Nevertheless, I suspect Tierney was telling the truth as he knew it - and not just because Christ was "whispering in his ear." The man clearly has a great command of Arabic, including the Tikriti dialect, and of the culture. His translation of the Saddam Tapes is most likely more accurate than the one offered by ABC, although I of course would have no way of knowing. It is obviously only a hunch on my part. The most interesting part of the tapes to me, however, was not the discussion of "biologicals" whose translation is under dispute. Later in the tapes, we hear an Iraqi scientist reporting to Saddam about their plasma program. Plasma is a key ingredient in the development of thermonuclear weapons. That was in the year 2000. Those who dismiss these tapes as ancient history ought to think about that.

The increasingly important MEMRI has a translation of an article on the Iranian "reformist" internet daily Rooz, which reports for the first time that extremist clerics from Qom have issued what the daily called "a new fatwa," stating that "shari'a does not forbid the use of nuclear weapons."

The Rooz article states:
"The spiritual leaders of the ultra-conservatives [in Iran] have accepted the use of nuclear weapons as lawful in the eyes of shari'a. Mohsen Gharavian, a disciple of [Ayatollah] Mesbah Yazdi [who is Iranian President Ahmadinejad's spiritual mentor], has spoken for the first time of using nuclear weapons as a counter-measure. He stated that 'in terms of shari'a, it all depends on the goal.'
"The religious leadership of the Islamic Republic [of Iran], which has until now regarded the use of nuclear weapons as opposed to shari'a, and has repeated this point again and again, has so far kept silent about this. In spite of the fact that, in the last few weeks, some of the senior [leaders] of the Islamic Republic have tried to reduce the pressure [exerted by] the radical [conservatives], the radicals nevertheless seem to have complete control over the [political] arena.

Obviously there can be only one reason for such a statement, and that is to pave the way for Iranian nutball ActMadInJihad to actually use one. Or more.

"Within the six months [of Ahmadinejad's presidency], all the achievements of former president Khatami in the international arena have been lost. Through strange proposals and radical approaches, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad managed, in a very short time, to get the world to forget all about bin Laden. Now all eyes are on the Islamic Republic, and everyone is talking about the danger it [poses]. Two weeks ago, the strategy of assaulting [foreign] embassies was formed as well. America regards Iran and Syria as being behind the recent violent incidents, including the setting fire to embassies in Islamic countries. Mr. Ahmadinejad has managed to take the place of bin Laden..." (Emphasis mine.)

MEMRI has provided a context for this story by publishing the Covenant of Hamas. I call it "Islamofascism for Dhimmis". This is the creed of the recently-elected Palestinian terrorist organization that, like Iran's mullahs, aspires to the genocide of the Israelis. It's chilling in the extreme and while you'd hope it's all you need to know about the workings of the Islamofascist mind, it isn't.

Not by a long shot.

HT: Thomas Joscelyn

I like the emerging new term for the MSM: the "me-me-media". It reflects perfectly not only the hissiness let slip by the White House Press Corpse these past few days over the Cheney accident, but also that of the Kosturbators, the Huff'n'puffers, the DUmmies and everyone else enraged by the Cheneyan One having a mind of his own and speaking to the eeeevil Brit Hume.

Best take so far: NRO's Nathan Goulding, writing in the Media Blog. In its entirety:

CNN "Safe Haven" for Bill Clinton

Once again, there's a lot of anger in the media. Now, it's over Cheney's choice to do an exclusive interview with Fox, instead of a full-scale news conference with the White House press corps. Expose the Left and Newsbusters have the video of Jack Cafferty complaining about this, calling Fox the "f-word" network:

JACK CAFFERTY: Well, I obviously didn't see it because it hasn't been
released in its entirety yet. But I would guess it didn't exactly represent a
Profile in Courage for the vice president to wander over there to the f-word
network for a sit down with Brit Hume. That's a little like Bonnie interviewing
Clyde, ain't it? Where was the news conference? Where was the access to all of
the members of the media? Whatever.

BLITZER: You still think he needs to do a full-scale news conference and
invite all the cameras, all the reporters and ask whatever they want?

CAFFERTY: That's never going to happen. But running over there to the Fox
network. Talk about seeking a safe haven. He's not going to get any high hard
ones from anybody at the f-word network. I think we know that.

Besides the childishness of calling FNC the "f-word" network, need we remind Jack Cafferty of Wolf Blitzer's exclusive interview with Bill Clinton, where he conveniently forgot to ask Clinton about Able Danger, the story the NYT had just broken that day? Perhaps he should take a look at his own network's reputation of being a "safe haven" before criticizing Fox.

In fact, Brit Hume questioned Cheney on just about everything possible, including questions about Scooter Libby having been authorized to talk about the classified National Intelligence Estimate. The only thing missing from Hume's interview was the incredulous and condescending tone the mainstream press have perfected.

Like Brit Hume said, when asked by Shepard Smith if the public was as upset as the press about the disclosure of the accident, "If my e-mail is any guide [...] I don't think much of the nation feels particularly deprived that they found out about this on Sunday afternoon or Sunday evening instead of Saturday night or Sunday morning." Similarly, it is the press, not the American people, that feel betrayed by Cheney's choice of venue for this interview.
— Nathan Goulding[ 02/16/2006 12:31 PM ]

Brutally Honest: Ace Of Spades:
The Comedic Stylings of Brit Hume
– Ace

Over at the Huffington Post, Arianna reports:

TiVo Moment #1: After Cheney walked Hume through the specifics of the shooting, including a cataloguing of Whittington's injuries ("He was struck in the right side of his face, his neck and his upper torso on the right side of his body"), Hume inexplicably followed up with this jaw dropper: "And I take it you missed the bird?"

F'n' Brit Hume. Coolest cat in the news.

Arianna then screeches:
The VP has just painted a verbal picture of blasting his friend in the face and Brit is wondering about... the bird?!

I'm pretty sure Michael Huffington is the one homosexual who wasn't born gay. But the poor sonofabitch just never had a chance, did he? What would you have done?

Me? Had I married Arianna Huffington? I think I'd be blasting my own friend in the face right now, if you know what I'm sayin'.

Arianna fancies herself a wit, incidentally. I remember her trying her hand at comedy, when she was still a "conservative" or supposedly so, in a Playboy article. It was about Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton and other Washintonians all in a hot tub together.

It was not funny. It was so not funny it couldn't even be called not-funny. A scientist once described a theory that was so incomplete and nonsensical it couldn't be evaluated as being "not even wrong." It didn't even rise to the level of being wrong, you see.

Well, Arianna's humor is not even unfunny. She tried to be funny on that "Strange Bedfellows" segment on the old Politically Incorrect; shit, she made Al Franken look funny by comparison. Arianna trying to be funny is like listening to the Who's On First routine performed by Frankenstein and The Incredible Hulk. You're not sure what the hell it's supposed to be, but you're pretty sure you'd be better off somewhere else.

Slime... She also links a nasty rumor about infidelity.

What a rotten bitch.

She's the Yoko Ono of politics. About that level of talent, too.

[Recycled joke alert.]

Having to read Arianna Huffington's idiotic rantings is like having to sit through Yoko Ono's screechy atonal non-songs just to hear the decent John Lennon tracks on Double Fantasy.

Wait a minute, that's not right. I just compared the rest of the Huffington Post's writers to John Lennon, which plainly makes no sense at all. Let me reconfigure the analogy: Let's pretend that Yoko Ono was dating one of the guys from Foghat. Okay?

So having to read Arianna Huffington's insipid drivel is like having to listen to Yoko Ono tracks just to hear all that sweet Foghat.

How's about John McIntyre at RCP Blog:
Assuming Mr. Whittington doesn’t die and there are not contradictions in Cheney’s account of what happened, this story is over, and it will have no lasting impact on the Bush administration. Because once again the MSM and the left have massively overreacted to a story in an attempt to damage the Bush administration, and the backlash against their overreaction will counteract whatever political damage this story may have caused.

Now the Democrats are flailing about with the spin that Cheney's handling of the accident is suspect, invoking memories of Chappaquiddick, and that it all reflects on the government's culture of secrecy, which has apparently replaced the culture of corruption as their main concern.

Generation Why?:
So did the eeeeeevil Bush administration also cause the 3-day delay in the nation's most powerful elected Democrat's office issuing information about the Senator's stroke?
...

Was [Hillary Clinton's] failure to alert the media about the White House counsel's suicide part of some "tendency" to "refuse to be forthcoming" from the top all the way to the bottom as well?

Blogs For Bush:
Democrats were the ones who tried to suppress the Barrett Report because of its potential damage to the Clintons.

We all know John Kerry was not telling us the truth about his service in Vietnam... it took a book to force him to reveal that parts of his fabricated version of his service were indeed fabrications.

Democrats have been anything but forthcoming when it comes to their own ethics violations and corruption.

Of course the idiot left is upset about Cheney; try as they have to nail him, they've got NOTHING. And after his treatment at the hands of those babies whining from the WH press gallery these past few years, they deserve exactly what he gave the bubble-mouthed Senator Leahy: a great big fat Cheneyan "F**k you".

From the comprehensive Able Danger Blog, a teaser from the new Able Danger Hearings which opened in Washington on Wednesday:

"It shocked us how entrenched of a presence al-Qaeda had in the United States," former Army Maj. Erik Kleinsmith told two subcommittees of the House Armed Services Committee.

J.D. Smith, a defense contractor who also worked on the Able Danger team, said he used Arab intermediaries in the Los Angeles area to buy a photograph of Atta. Smith said Atta's photo was among about 40 photos of al-Qaeda members on a large chart that he personally delivered to Pentagon officials in 2000, more than a year before the Sept. 11 attacks.

Asked by Rep. Curt Weldon, a Republican from Pennsylvania, how certain he was that the chart contained Atta's photograph, Smith responded that he kept a copy of the chart on the office wall.

"I'm absolutely certain," Smith said. "I looked at it every day."

AJ Strata has been keeping watch as well and dissects Congressman Curt Weldon's press conference.

Via Power Line: listen to the hearing here.

"We have not put fuel on the fire. We have not stirred or agitated the Muslim masses." ~Abu Ladan

"If Muslim countries decide to boycott, and if Muslims feel that it is their obligation to defend the prophet, then that is something we can be happy about." ~Abu Ladan

"Mr Abu Laban's reputation is at an all-time low among many Danes, after he condemned the consumer boycott on Danish television but told the al-Jazeera channel he was 'happy' about it. His conduct led Mr Rasmussen to complain about 'people talking with two tongues'".

The million-pound shithammer first swung at the West by Denmark-based Islamofascist imam Abu Laban is about to come back with a vengeance. From Gateway Pundit:

Hard times for the Imam behind the cartoon controversy:
The anti-immigrant Danish People's party, the government's parliamentary ally, wants him tried for high treason. Several political parties want the legality of his residence permit investigated. And an opinion poll published yesterday showed that 58 per cent of Danes regard Mr Abu-Laban and his cohorts as the main reason the cartoon conflict has spiralled out of control.
...

A quick fall for the cartoon fakers:
The imam's fall from grace was comprehensive and quick, and its cause is clear: Mr Abu-Laban masterminded the plan to bring the cartoons to global attention. Had he not done so, Danes argue, the world would not have noticed a few drawings in an obscure Danish newspaper.

Mr Abu-Laban, a softly spoken 60-year-old of Palestinian origin, refutes this, saying he was motivated by a desire to improve the conditions of Muslims in his adopted home. "I did not expect a reaction that would damage Danish interests," he said.
...

Naser Khader, leading Muslim moderate, said the two are "ignoramuses" and "alien to all that Denmark represents. Most Danish Muslims are peace lovers and don't want to see the Danish flag burned all over the world."

The feeling on the street is that the two have gone too far. "They don't represent me," said Gawad, a vendor at a vegetable shop in the center of town. "They have only damaged the relations between the Danes and the Muslims."

Last week [Abu Laban] told Danish television that he denounced the boycott of Danish products and called for its cancelation. One hour later, however, in an interview with Al-Arabiya, he said he was "pleased" with the boycott.

Since then the Danish media has not ceased to delve into Akari and Abu Laban's past. Apparently, the Imam was deported from Egypt due to his membership in the Muslim Brotherhood. Other reports said Abu Laban sheltered Al-Qaida members in his house, including the organization's No. 2, when they were driven out of Egypt in the 1980s.

Read it all.

Abu Laban is just the latest in a long line of cowardly Islamofascist thugs working to destroy the West by violence and terror. It will be refreshing, if it happens, to watch the Danes show this pig what it means to take responsibility for his actions and words. Could Europe finally be growing a backbone against the Borg?

Updated
That's no coverup - that's the MSM going apeshit over nothing (Caution- this video contains the entire spectrum of typical WHPC behaviour, from the ridiculous to the clueless.). I watched as the White House Press Corpse (Also known as A Braying Pack Of Jackasses) prattled on about what a scandal, a Jeff Gannon-manwhore-sized scandal it was for some humbug paper in Corpus Christi to get first news of the hunting accident, from a private citizen, no less! while the MSM had to wait almost eighteen hours! How brutal is that? Everyone knows that The Shooter should have immediately called the blow-dried set in Washington to issue, via live satellite, a teary-eyed resignation as the ambulance trundled off in the distance with the latest victim of Cheney's Incompetence™. At the very least, the White House should have provided minute-by-minute live-action updates, because the people have a right to know.

That would be the same people whose right to know has been answered by a two-week long MSM blackout of the Danish-Muhammed cartoon images.

And now it looks as if Cheney's so-called "accident" has claimed another victim:



The biggest revelation to emerge from this story is that everyone who knows anything about hunting now knows of one more such accident. That ain't news.

Next up: Cheney's Office Silences PETA

UPDATE
Here's some delicious hysteria from the World Socialist Web Site by way of the Asian Tribune:
Now the vice president has shot a 78-year-old man. Of course, these things happen, though not as frequently as one might suspect. As the Houston Chronicle noted, in a state with over one million hunters, Texas registered only 19 hunting accidents involving firearms in all of 2004.
What distinguishes this apparent mishap from the others, however, is that the man who pulled the trigger is the foremost champion of the doctrine that the government of the United States can arrest and jail people without charges and without informing anyone—torture those branded as "enemy combatants" in clandestine overseas prisons and covertly spy upon American citizens.
It is in this context that the incident—and its concealment from the public for nearly 24 hours—represents far more than grist for the mill of late-night television talk show hosts. Hanging over it is the disconcerting knowledge that the hunter is in this case the leading figure in a government that has arrogated to itself the "right" to imprison torture, shoot and kill with no questions asked.

Someone bring this guy more Depends®, stat!

UPDATE Feb. 14 12PM PST
Okay, everyone is now calling time out on the humour; according to his doctor, Harry Whittington has experienced a mild heart irregularity, probably as a result of a piece of the buckshot, fine-grained 28-gauge pellet, migrating to his heart.

The man shot by Vice President Dick Cheney experienced a heart irregularity after birdshot moved into his heart and will remain hospitalized for another week, doctors reported today. A pellet from Cheney's gun migrated near the heart, and caused "irritability to the heart muscle," said Dr. David Blanchard, who is treating the man.

Blanchard said the result is that the heart "is beating irregularly. Its basically like a short circuit." The doctor referred to the victim having received "a silent, or minor heart attack."Blanchard said the victim, 78-year old lawyer Harry Whittington, has a strong heart and is doing well.

Good prognosis, more than can be said for the MSM's ongoing hysteria. Check this bit of spin from an old Clinton player:
"On the face of it, this looks like something the administration felt the public had no right to know," Joe Lockhart, who was President Clinton's press secretary, said in an interview. "I don't think there's going to be a bunch of people sitting around saying: 'I wonder why they waited to tell us.' But what they will be saying is: 'I wonder what else they're not telling us.'"

My, how ominous-sounding is that? Will Lockhart now reveal how many other stained dresses he didn't tell us about? Or is that, pardon the expression, a Low Blow?

From Greyhawk:

Via email from a family member, a letter from the Mayor of Tall 'Afar, Iraq to the men and women of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment and their families.

In the Name of God the Compassionate and Merciful

To the Courageous Men and Women of the 3d Armored Cavalry Regiment, who have changed the city of Tall’ Afar from a ghost town, in which terrorists spread death and destruction, to a secure city flourishing with life.

To the lion-hearts who liberated our city from the grasp of terrorists who were beheading men, women and children in the streets for many months.

To those who spread smiles on the faces of our children, and gave us restored hope, through their personal sacrifice and brave fighting, and gave new life to the city after hopelessness darkened our days, and stole our confidence in our ability to reestablish our city.

Our city was the main base of operations for Abu Mousab Al Zarqawi. The city was completely held hostage in the hands of his henchmen. Our schools, governmental services, businesses and offices were closed. Our streets were silent, and no one dared to walk them. Our people were barricaded in their homes out of fear; death awaited them around every corner. Terrorists occupied and controlled the only hospital in the city. Their savagery reached such a level that they stuffed the corpses of children with explosives and tossed them into the streets in order to kill grieving parents attempting to retrieve the bodies of their young. This was the situation of our city until God prepared and delivered unto them the courageous soldiers of the 3d Armored Cavalry Regiment, who liberated this city, ridding it of Zarqawi’s followers after harsh fighting, killing many terrorists, and forcing the remaining butchers to flee the city like rats to the surrounding areas, where the bravery of other 3d ACR soldiers in Sinjar, Rabiah, Zumar and Avgani finally destroyed them.

I have met many soldiers of the 3d Armored Cavalry Regiment; they are not only courageous men and women, but avenging angels sent by The God Himself to fight the evil of terrorism.

The leaders of this Regiment; COL McMaster, COL Armstrong, LTC Hickey, LTC Gibson, and LTC Reilly embody courage, strength, vision and wisdom. Officers and soldiers alike bristle with the confidence and character of knights in a bygone era. The mission they have accomplished, by means of a unique military operation, stands among the finest military feats to date in Operation Iraqi Freedom, and truly deserves to be studied in military science. This military operation was clean, with little collateral damage, despite the ferocity of the enemy. With the skill and precision of surgeons they dealt with the terrorist cancers in the city without causing unnecessary damage.

God bless this brave Regiment; God bless the families who dedicated these brave men and women. From the bottom of our hearts we thank the families. They have given us something we will never forget. To the families of those who have given their holy blood for our land, we all bow to you in reverence and to the souls of your loved ones. Their sacrifice was not in vain. They are not dead, but alive, and their souls hovering around us every second of every minute. They will never be forgotten for giving their precious lives. They have sacrificed that which is most valuable. We see them in the smile of every child, and in every flower growing in this land. Let America, their families, and the world be proud of their sacrifice for humanity and life.

Finally, no matter how much I write or speak about this brave Regiment, I haven’t the words to describe the courage of its officers and soldiers. I pray to God to grant happiness and health to these legendary heroes and their brave families.

NAJIM ABDULLAH ABID AL-JIBOURI
Mayor of Tall ‘Afar, Ninewa, Iraq

From Power Line:
Col. McMaster is the Commander of the Regiment and a Ph.D. in American history. This past September, Col. McMaster briefed the Pentagon press corps on Operation Restoring Rights by video from Iraq that was accessible here (I can't find it at the moment). Forty minutes long, Col. McMaster's briefing was utterly compelling, including an account of the discovery of an enemy house rigged with chemical weapons. You may also wish to check out Col. McMaster's Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam.

It has become clear that Americans lucked out more than they imagined when Al Gore failed in his bid for the Office Of The President Of The United States, because he is clearly unwilling to defend the U.S. Constitution or to uphold the law or even tell the truth. What Gore does instead is sell out the U.S. in the middle of the land of Wahabbism. Unbelievable.

The story prompts these thoughts from Captain's Quarters:
I'm stunned almost to speechlessness. We held mass roundups of Arabs? When? Where? What exactly were the "unforgivable" conditions of which Gore speaks? And as far as the visas go, when exactly did Saudis have a right to enter the United States at whim without any consideration of security? Perhaps the former VP has forgotten, but most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis.

In truth, Gore sold out the United States and any notion of freedom by appearing after Denmark got barred from attending an economic forum for the publishing decision of one of its privately-owned newspapers. Just showing up was bad enough. To make accusations about some mythical internment program for Arabs in the US just plays into the hands of the conspiracy-addicted Arabian press.

Thanks, Al. You've gone from a respectable politician to a Saudi suck-up in one of the worst political meltdowns in American history.

...Al Gore could have said this in New York and I would still call it a sell-out and a betrayal of his nation. He spouts the worst conspiracy-theory garbage, without any supporting evidence, which feeds into the propaganda of our enemies. The fact that he did it on stage in Jeddah in a forum which had already booted the Danes for daring to stand up to Islamists only emphasizes the craven and self-involved character of the former VP.

Gore's remarks were cowardly, irresponsible and dangerous lies, outrageously bad form for a former Vice-President. But then Al Gore is not just any former Veep; he's a Bush-hater, which fact alone explains much of the selfish and destructive behaviour in which he so often indulges.

Remember, this fool is considered by his party and its supporters to be an elder statesman, whose patriotism you'd better not question.

As bloggers go, Frank J. is one of my personal favorites, so it's fun to see him expand on a point this blog made a while back about stopping an insane and unwinnable war.

Frank J.:
How many Democrats have lost office in this fight against Bush? While people seem to care about the death counts in Iraq, no one takes note as the number of Democrats who have lost office increases. Not only that, but there is the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder from losing against Bush. It is obvious that Al Gore will never be able to live a normal life again and will require constant supervision for the rest of his days. Just check the internet for more instances of people having lost their minds trying to fight against the ephemeral foe that is Bush.

Read it all. While you're there, take the time to revisit The Hunting Song, and remember: Shotguns And Dicks Don't Mix!

...to Islamofascists, at least, is Irshad Manji. I read her book, The Trouble With Islam Today, upon its publication in 2003, and took comfort in the realization that there is at least one strong Muslim voice standing up for Islam by exposing both its inherent faults (its medieval attitudes toward women and demonizing of other religions to name but two examples) and its perversion by the disease of Islamofascism. She delivers her message with a combination of intellectual rigour, ringing eloquence and smash-mouth candor.

Now she has taken on the cartoon issue in The Hindustan Times:

Muslims have little integrity demanding respect for our faith if we don’t show it for others. When have we demonstrated against Saudi Arabia’s policy to prevent Christians and Jews from stepping on the soil of Mecca? They may come for rare business trips, but nothing more. As long as Rome welcomes non-Christians and Jerusalem embraces non-Jews, we Muslims have more to protest than cartoons.

None of this is to dismiss the need to take my religion seriously. Hell, Muslims even take seriously the need to be serious: Islam has a teaching against ‘excessive laughter’. I’m not joking. But does this mean that we should cry ‘blasphemy’ over less-than-flattering depictions of Prophet Muhammad? God no.

For one thing, the Quran itself points out that there will always be non-believers, and that it’s for Allah, not Muslims, to deal with them. More than that, the Quran says there is “no compulsion in religion”. This suggests that nobody should be forced to treat Islamic norms as sacred.

Fine, many Muslims will retort, but we’re talking about Prophet Muhammad — Allah’s final and, therefore, perfect messenger. However, Islamic tradition holds that the Prophet was a human being who made mistakes. It’s precisely because he wasn’t perfect that we know about the so-called ‘Satanic Verses’: a collection of passages that the Prophet reportedly included in the Quran. Only later did he realise that those verses glorified heathen idols rather than God. According to Islamic legend, he retracted the idolatrous passages, blaming them on a trick played by Satan.

When Muslims put the Prophet on a pedestal, we’re engaging in idolatry of our own. The point of monotheism is to worship one God, not one of God’s emissaries. Which is why humility requires people of faith to mock themselves — and each other — every once in a while.

...Clearly, I’m as impure a feminist as I am a Muslim. The difference is, offended feminists won’t threaten to kill me. The same can’t be said for many of my fellow Muslims.
What part of ‘no compulsion’ don’t they understand?

The same part not understood by Islamist apologists, dhimmis and the useful idiots of the left, which is what makes them all so dangerous to Western freedoms.

From Tiger Hawk:



"A little unfair in a technical sense, in that no serious Muslim would disrespect Jesus, whom Muslims revere as a prophet. And the scimitar is also a problem. Today's Muslim extremists use box-cutters and bomb belts.

The Indianapolis Star and Gary Varvel had better beef up security.

CWCID: Myrtus."

You had to know this was coming: The Poster Child of Dhimmitude, the man who started the Islamic revolution and who has just falsely accused President Bush of spying on Americans, really did spy on Americans. Read The Anchoress: Carter's Tiresome Hypocrisy.

Dhimmi Jimmy Carter, who decided to cheapen Coretta Scott-King's memorial service by lobbing a juvenile fizzler at President Bush, authorised the wiretapping of (insert Psycho's shower-murder-scene staccato violins here) an American citizen. That's right! Oh. My. God.

We got trouble Oh we got trouble right here in River City Oh we got trouble

I wonder if Ted Kennedy even noticed that Carter clumsily employed Jack and Bobby Kennedy's wiretapping of Martin Luther King to suggest that President Bush is spying on innocent Americans. King was standing up to monumental institutional bigotry for his rights as an American citizen. The Kennedys spied on him for domestic political purposes. That was a breach of King's civil rights. In contrast, President Bush's terror surviellance program is not only not directed at innocent American citizens but is assiduously and completely in accord with the Constitution.

Assignment for idiots: prove me wrong.

The Danish cartoons do not breach any sanctions of the Quran. Period. So if the University Of PEI's student union doesn't respect freedom of expression enough to publish said cartoons, I'll do it for them.

These cartoons are offensive to Islamofascists; in the words of a certain leftard icon, "Screw 'em". (Caution: link leads to graphic footage of the real world.) Time for these monstrous bastards to take responsibility for their crimes.

Michelle Malkin, Belmont Club, Captain's Quarters, Little Green Footballs and NRO are all doing a masterful job of covering all aspects of the information war being waged by Islamofascists against Western freedoms.

The Hamilton Spectator has a fascinating look at the machinations leading up to David Emerson's crossing over to the CPC. Stephen Harper has absolutely torn the directionless Martin Liberals a new one. Some may have trouble with that; I do not.

But to quote Slow Joe Biden, and who wouldn't, I'm puzzled.

I'm puzzled as to why the Liberals in Emerson's Vancouver riding are demanding reparations when they offered none to the Conservative Party Of Canada for the defection of Belinda Stronach.

Just asking.

Anyone?

Didn't think so.

Junkyard Blog directs us to Taqiyya, a movie that shows how a lying Islamist son of a bitch managed to spread murderous anger throughout the dumbest and most dangerous demographic on the planet. Just like newsweak.

What is Taqiyya? It's what idiots fall for on the way to their doom.

Michelle Malkin:
It's worth a reminder that the phenomenon of manufactured hate crimes by Muslims is something we're quite familiar with here in America:
Fake Muslim hate crimes: Where's the apology, CAIR?
Muslim "hate crimes"
The Muslim hate crime that wasn't
More Muslim hate crime myths
Myth of the Muslim hate crime epidemic
The boy who cried "Muslim"

Meanwhile, the Islamist-directed theater continues: "100,000 Muslims to vent anger in London at cartoon protest."

Amir Taheri in The Opinion Journal:
The Muslim Brotherhood's position, put by one of its younger militants, Tariq Ramadan--who is, strangely enough, also an adviser to the British home secretary--can be summed up as follows: It is against Islamic principles to represent by imagery not only Muhammad but all the prophets of Islam; and the Muslim world is not used to laughing at religion. Both claims, however, are false.
There is no Quranic injunction against images, whether of Muhammad or anyone else. When it spread into the Levant, Islam came into contact with a version of Christianity that was militantly iconoclastic. As a result some Muslim theologians, at a time when Islam still had an organic theology, issued "fatwas" against any depiction of the Godhead. That position was further buttressed by the fact that Islam acknowledges the Jewish Ten Commandments--which include a ban on depicting God--as part of its heritage. The issue has never been decided one way or another, and the claim that a ban on images is "an absolute principle of Islam" is purely political. Islam has only one absolute principle: the Oneness of God. Trying to invent other absolutes is, from the point of view of Islamic theology, nothing but sherk, i.e., the bestowal on the Many of the attributes of the One.

MEMRI cites a typical example of the hate-mongering being propagated by the imams:
In a February 3, 2006 Friday sermon, Sheikh Yousef Al-Qaradhawi, who is head of the European Council for Fatwa and Research, president of the International Association of Muslim Scholars (IAMS), and the spiritual guide of many other Islamist organizations across the world (including the Muslim Brotherhood), exhorted worshippers to show rage to the world over the Danish paper Jylland Posten's publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. The sermon was aired on Qatar TV on February 3, 2006.

Little Green Footballs has the video.

National Review Online:
Creating Outrage
The recent anti-Danish emotional wave coming from the Muslim world, in fact, is far from a spontaneous reaction, but it has been cunningly orchestrated by a knowledgeable insider, a real snake in the grass who has been creeping in Denmark for the last 15 years.

Ahmed Abdel Rahman Abu Laban, a 60-year-old Palestinian imam who has been residing in Copenhagen since 1993, has become over the last few years the face of Islam in Denmark, creating his own persona of a moderate cleric who seeks dialogue but who is victimized by the widespread "racism" of the Danes. Despite his poor command of the Danish language, Abu Laban is a frequent guest on Danish television and in meetings with government officials, where he claims to represent the voice of the local Muslim community. Even though part of the establishment has always looked at him with suspicion (Prime Minister Rasmussen has always refused to meet with him), Danish intelligentsia has made him a celebrity — so much of one that even the Washington Post recently profiled him as "one of Denmark's most prominent imams."

But Abu Laban's real face has now been revealed. In September, the imam immediately condemned Jyllands-Posten's cartoons and led protests at the local level. Danish politicians and media, busy with local elections, ignored him. But Abu Laban is not the kind of person who gives up easily.

Danish Courage
As the riots spread through the Islamic world, the British Foreign Secretary, the U.S. State Department, the United Nations secretary general, various responsible Muslim organizations, many commentators in Europe and the U.S., including some distinguished conservative commentators, are calling for restraint on both sides.

What both sides would those be then? Well, one side has published a handful of cartoons, arguably blasphemous and certainly insulting to the Prophet Mohammed, and the other side has burned embassies, taken hostages, murdered three people suspected of being Christians and/or Danes, shot at Danish soldiers helping children in Iraq, marched through London with banners threatening further bomb attacks on the city, and attacked and beaten people whom they suspected of some vague connection with, well, with Europe or Christianity.

Suppose both sides listen to these calls for restraint. What would happen? I suppose that one side would stop burning embassies and murdering people and the other side would no longer publish cartoons to which the murderers might object. That would mean the murderers had obtained their objective and the Danish newspaper that first published the cartoons had been defeated in its campaign against the unofficial Islamist censorship that in recent years has spread across Europe by murder and intimidation.

Drawing Fire
To try and compare the actions of Jyllands-Posten, as Bill Clinton effectively did, with the race-baiting traditions of Der Sturmer is to reveal an ignorance of history and a disdain for free speech that disgraces the office he once held. Even the most notorious of the cartoons, the one that shows Mohammed with a bomb decorated with Islamic text in his turban, can be seen not as an insult, but as a challenge to Muslims to demonstrate that (as is indeed certainly the case) there is far more to their faith than the atrocities that have recently defaced it. Harsh? Maybe, but it was also in the Western tradition of vigorous, free discussion. And as such it should be defended.

Bombing Of Turkish Riot Police In Istanbul
Crap.

CNN: "The blast took place at an Internet cafe frequented by police officers from the nearby local headquarters of Istanbul's riot police."

Three guesses as to what the local riot police have been doing lately.

Turkish television is showing injured bomb victims arriving at the hospital. Some of 'em are just kids, or early teens. Wire services are reporting four injured.

By the way, today's Turkish Daily News: "Protests spread across Turkey as concerns rise that bigger demonstrations may be in the offing as Friday prayers approach."

UPDATE: SkyTurk just said 14 injured.

The case for cleansing the world of the virulent evil of Islamic fascism grows ever stronger.

The NY Sun's Eli Lake is on to new developments in the outstanding matter of Saddam's WMDs.
I've long wondered why antiwar idiots who cite a litany of mistakes by US Forces during the first days of OIF think the Iraq Survey Group infallible in its assessment that there were no WMDs there. Along comes a plausible answer in one David Gaubatz, a former member of the US Air Force's Office of Special Investigations.

Gaubatz, who now serves as Chief Investigator for the Dallas County Medical Examiner, also trains Texas state troopers in basic counterterrorism and basic Arabic. And he insists that inspectors will find Saddam's WMDs if only they will look.

The memorial service held today for Coretta Scott King was, to no-one's surprise, besmirched by the sad spectacle of idiot weaklings hijacking the occasion to take political shots at President Bush. Nothing, not a Supreme Court Judicial nomination hearing, not the State Of The Union Address, not even a solemn memorial to an American hero, is immune from the idiots' relentless war on civility if even a sacred ritual, in this case the Coretta Scott King memorial service, presents to the left an opportunity to bash George W. Bush; even Jimmy Carter and Joseph Lowery can't hide their powerlessness, their anger, their selfishness. The result was that these classless assholes used the departed Mrs. King to engage in the same old juvenile venality they always eventually resort to.

In contrast, President Bush had the class to hug and shake hands with Lowery.

Stop The ACLU:
Leave it to the liberals to use the funeral of a Civil Rights leader to preach their Bush hatred. It isn’t even shocking how low they will go now. Absolutely shameful how the race baiters have no respect for the dead, and used this as a political platform.

Junk Yard Blog:
To Carter, to Revs. Jackson and Sharpton, I would like to say thank you. Thank you all for disabusing the rest of the nation that you and your party retain any soul or capacity toward good will.

UPDATE:
The Anchoress was not surprised:
No, none of it was surprising. It was not surprising that President Bush went, knowing - as he had to know - that a few opportunists and insecure old men would try to take their shots in an attempt to ingratiate the rabble and make the news shows. It was not surprising that both President Bushes spoke with class and humility. It was not surprising that Bill Clinton got the room rocking, and got just a little dramatic, as ever, appealing to the emotions -and he does it very well. It was not surprising that Hillary stood there nodding before plodding. It wasn’t even surprising to me that Hillary got to speak last - in essence giving her the “keynote” spot. In a crowd for whom everything is political and everything is calculated, that was completely predictable.
It's not surprising ... but it is sad that the Left cannot allow a single moment to pass without partisan rancor marring what could have been a marvelous bipartisan show of unity, in respect for a woman who deserved it.

John From WuzzaDem, blogging at AoSHQ, serves it up:

Regardless of your persuasion, put BLACKFIVE in your favorites folder and read him often. Been on the blogroll since day one.

Read Ed Koch's article in the Feb 1 issue of RealClearPolitics, "Hamas Victory Has Brought A Moment Of Truth." Koch argues that there is too much in Hamas' past actions (hundreds of Israelis murdered by Hamas garbage and their founding charter pledge to destroy Israel altogether) to expect Israel or anyone else in the world to trust anything but their stated intentions. It is both their words and their actions which demonstrate the truth about Hamas, as Koch later describes.

Hamas' offer to Israel of a hudna is an insult to Jews, indeed all non-Muslims; everyone on the planet knows a hudna is so meaningless that the word doesn't even merit italics.

Islamofascist Hamas seeks the destruction of the State Of Israel and all Jews. That we know.

Therefore, Hamas and the Iranian terror infrastructure must be stopped with the dispatch the world has ever wished it would have visited upon Adolf Hitler.

Koch writes:
Israel and the rest of the world should take these fanatics at their word, just as Mein Kampf foretold Hitler’s plan for Europe, the Jews and the world. The Islamic fanatics whose views are often described as fascist -- and there are hundreds of millions of them -- have launched a war of civilizations: Islam against the West. This war will continue for a long time to come. In the minds of Islamic fanatics, Israel and the U.S. are at the top of the list of nations they see as standing in their way to victory.