bastardsword

Clue Spork In It

I got bored with a troll called Salvage on a Rott thread, but he was at least livening the place up with his leavings. So I dashed off this parody of the Eagles' "New York Minute". I generally prefer to parody better known songs, one's that have achieved ear worm status, because if a person doesn't immediately remember the song then the parody is just really crappy poetry, just like the original lyrics. Of course, nothing quite matches the anti-war poetry for absolute, mind-numbing incompetance, but then what would.

Clue Spork In It

Salvage post up
tressed all in flak
Spat out his creation
And we never cut slack
They found his trollage
Scattered somewhere down his crack
But he'll still be spamming our site
in the morning

He had a meme
The depth of a knurl
But memes get tossed sometimes
As jeers unfurl
One day he crossed some line
And he was too dense for this world
But I guess he's troll splatter anymore

Stick a clue spork in it
Intriguing as mange
Stick a clue spork in it
Thing's damn well pretty strange
Stick a clue sport in it
Revolting exchange
Stick a clue sport in it

Lying here in the darkness
I see the moon bats flail
Somebody posting insurgency
Somebody's post gets nailed
If you find some baddie to shove in this world
You better gang on good and well
The Rott is always at the door

Stick a clue spork in it
Intriguing as mange
Stick a clue spork in it
Thing's damn well pretty strange
Stick a clue sport in it
Revolting exchange
Stick a clue sport in it

And in these days
When darkness falls early
And people rush posts
To the ones they loathe
You better take a fool's advice
And take care of your trolls
One day they're here;
Next day they're gone

I wrote my gloat down in the comments
And took a cruise down through the web
The memes were falling behind me
The groaning hippies in the gathering dark
On some solitary rock
A desperate blogger left his mark,
"Baby, I'm bored. Please come back."

What the web makes cloudy
The 'tard makes very clear
The threads were so much brighter
In the time when it was here
But I know there's somebody somewhere
Make this bandwidth disappear
Until that day, I have to believe
I believe, I believe

Stick a clue spork in it
Intriguing as mange
Stick a clue spork in it
Thing's damn well pretty strange
Stick a clue sport in it
Revolting exchange
Stick a clue sport in it

Paul Krugman Attempts Relevance - Fails

Paul Krugman opines, or should I say bloviates, in the New York Times.

We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right.

You're soooo close to self-understanding there, Paul! Soooo close. Now if you could just wrench your head free of your rectum and use all those cranially mounted sensors to observe reality instead of indulging in another round of Ass-ostrich meets Chicken Little.

Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield." That's from George Orwell's 1946 essay "In Front of Your Nose." It seems especially relevant right now, as we survey the wreckage of America's Iraq adventure.

How about walking outside your posh office and surveying the site where two tall buildings used to stand? That is reality, while your inchoate notions and half-formed ideas are wasting valuable ink that could've been used to print up a bra ad.

Tomorrow a year will have passed since George Bush's "Mission Accomplished" carrier landing. Throughout that year — right up to the surge in violence this month — administration officials assured us that things were going well in Iraq.

The administration officials assured us, and they were correct in their assurances and their warnings, but the press still kept up with their drumbeat of the same hackneyed phrases and jejune pontificating, all on events far beyond their Dowdian grasp.

Living standards, they said, were steadily improving. The resistance, they insisted, consisted of a handful of dead-enders aided by a few foreign infiltrators — and each lull in attacks brought pronouncements that the campaign against the insurgents had turned the corner.

And the campaign against the militants and Ba'athists had turned a corner until the Kerry campaign heated up. Then the jihadis all donned Kerry 2004 buttons and in a fit of strategic idiocy launched their revolt before the giant US military machine was withdrawn. It seems their tendency for premature explodulation is matched by their propencity for premature coup d'tard.

So they lied to us; what else is new?

They didn’t lie. Living standards are steadily improving, except perhaps in Najaf and Fallujah, but that's just a temporary result of having a bunch of lice picking gorillas running around. The resistance still only consists of a couple thousand dead-enders out of a country of millions. It's too bad Paul can't cotton to this fact.

But there's more at stake here than the administration's credibility. The official story line portrayed a virtuous circle of nation-building, one that could eventually lead to a democratic Iraq, allied with the U.S. In fact, we seem to be faced with a vicious circle, in which a deteriorating security situation undermines reconstruction, and the lack of material progress adds to popular discontent. Can this situation be saved?

Not by cut and run Kerry and his allies in the UN, who will just pass a resolution condemning George Bush before negotiating new oil kickbacks with whichever mad mullah or unbathed Ba'athist steps into the power vacuum.

Even among harsh critics of the administration's Iraq policy, the usual view is that we have to finish the job. You've heard the arguments: We broke it; we bought it. We can't cut and run. We have to stay the course.

Exactly Paul. Standing up for what's right is so simple, so why can't liberals ever seem to manage it?

I understand the appeal of those arguments. But I'm worried about the arithmetic.

Well arithmetic is a very worrisome subject to those who are totally inept at math.

All the information I've been able to get my hands on indicates that the security situation in Iraq is really, really bad.

And there he goes. Is "really, really bad" less than 4.22 but more than 3.78? Who knows? It's all about Paul's feewings.

It's not a good sign when, a year into an occupation, the occupying army sends for more tanks.

Oh, and would a better sign be an administration that won't send for more tanks because they don't want to look like the situation requires heavy armor? We played that game in Somalia and it didn't turn out well.

Western civilians have retreated to armed enclaves.

The Western civilians retreated a bit so they don't get captured and paraded around in front of the journalists, who one year later still haven't poked their heads out of the bar in the lobby of the Al-Rashid.

U.S. forces are strong enough to defend those enclaves, and probably strong enough to keep essential supplies flowing. But we don't have remotely enough troops to turn the vicious circle around. The Iraqi forces that were supposed to fill the security gap collapsed — or turned against us — at the first sign of trouble.

As one Marine at Fallujah put it recently, "Assault? We're playing paddy cake with these people. You haven't seen an assault yet." The question isn't whether we can crush the resistance, who stupidly started out by making sure they were surrounded. The question is whether we can do it politely enough not to upset everybody. We'd really rather have them seeing the light instead of a bright flash of a smart-bomb, but one way or the other Iraq will be free of their wicked schemes.

And all of the proposals one hears for resolving this ugly situation seem to be either impractical or far behind the curve.

That's because they all involve taking a course of action, and action has become something that's anathema to liberals.

Some say we should send more troops.

Others say Paul Krugman is a pompous buffoon, but that's beside the point. The point is not to take the complaints circulating through the cocktail crowd and bingo halls as indicative of serious thought on military affairs and foreign policy. The number of troops we need is determined by the Pentagon, based on very detailed assessments of the tasks before them, as opposed to just making up some number that might impress the snooty girl slurping up dip over by the canape cart.

But the U.S. military doesn't have more troops to send, unless it resorts to extreme measures, like withdrawing a large part of the forces currently in South Korea. Did I mention that North Korea is building nuclear weapons, and may already have eight?

Did I mention Paul Krugman was a buffoon? We're down to 130,000 troops currently in Iraq. When the war kicked off we had 225,000 in theatre, and that was before any troops reductions in Korea.

Others say we should seek more support from other countries.

That would be John Kerry, yet there's no way support from other countries is going to be forthcoming, since some of our "allies" are pissed off for cutting their source of illegal oil kickbacks.

There may once have been a time — say, last summer — when the U.S. could have struck a deal: by ceding a lot of authority to the U.N., we might have been able to persuade countries with large armies, like India, to contribute large numbers of peacekeeping troops. But it's hard to imagine that anyone will now send significant forces into the Iraqi cauldron.

See what I mean about Paul? I'm sure all those jihadis who are upset over Kashmir would just love having Indian troops in Iraq. So what does that leave us with, Bangladeshis? Frenchmen? Does he seriously think a hundred thousand elite US troops can be replaced by 5,000 Bangladeshis and 500 Belgian blue helmets?

Some pin their hopes on a political solution: they believe that violence will subside if the U.N. is allowed to appoint a caretaker government that Iraqis don't view as a U.S. puppet.

We call those people "special". The dead-enders in Iraq blew up the UN headquarters, for goodness sake. Al-Sadr and his martyr militia want absolute power and are more than willing to use violence to seize it. The man already has a murder warrant hanging over his head. Does any sane person think he'll just give up his ambitions?

Let's hope they're right. But bear in mind that right now the U.S. is still planning to hand over "sovereignty" to a body, yet to be named, that will have hardly any power at all.

Well you can't quickly seize power if there's no power to be seized, can you?

For practical purposes, the U.S. ambassador will be running the country. Americans may believe that everything will change on June 30, but Iraqis are unlikely to be fooled. And by the way, much of the Arab world believes that we've been committing war crimes in Falluja.

Oh, and by the way, much of the Arab world is also stuck in the seventh century, for what it's worth.

I don't have a plan for Iraq. I strongly suspect, however, that all the plans you hear now are irrelevant.

And that's the extent of Paul's thinking. He can't even come up with an irrelevant plan, much less an intelligent one.

If America's leaders hadn't made so many bad decisions, they might have had a chance to shape Iraq to their liking. But that window closed many months ago.

Quagmire, quagmire, quagmire. The decision must be bad, because Paul Krugman has no stomach for hard decisions and tough choices that might actually liberate people from genocidal tyranny, nor keep them from falling back into genocidal tyranny. So don't expect any sage advice from the liberal peanut gallery, it won't be forthcoming. In the military when they have a guy who can't even come up with an irrelevant plan of action, they hand him a shovel and tell him to dig a latrine. That would be a doubly wise task for Paul Krugman, because not doubt his shit is worth more than his thought. It's all about maximizing people's output. Yes indeedy.

Service Medals - FM 3-23.30b

I was browsing military field manuals, which is a hobby of mine, and ran across this interesting section.

FM 3-23.30b

APPENDIX B

SERVICE MEDAL SAFETY CONSIDERATIONS

As simple as an award or decoration may seem, it can make a very powerful and clear statement of protest. Soldiers must understand the fatal political effects that might take place with a service medal training accident. Since 1971, a number of fatal political blunders have happened throughout protest areas within the US. These protest accidents have been recorded with basic hippy protestors as well as preening turncoats within our armed forces. This appendix lists precautions and other considerations to be followed by service medal throwers. It should be used with Appendix A, Live Service Medal Range Operations Checklist, to educate protesters to safely conduct service medal tossing.

B-1. GENERAL PRECAUTIONS

Observe general precautions applicable to the use of any object with a pin. More specific instructions to medal tossers include the following:

     a. Do not open your pocket or show the medal until just before use.

     b. Never make unauthorized modifications to service medals, such as attaching
         a long rubber band to make recovery easier.

     c. Do not remove the safety clip or the safety pin until the medal is about to be thrown.

          (1) A service medal can be thrown and reattached to your office wall if the
              safety pin is still in place.

          (2) Never attempt to reinsert a safety pin into a thrown medal during training.
              At a protest, however, it may be necessary to reinsert a safety pin into a thrown
              medal if the cameras missed the toss the first time. Take special care to replace
              the pin properly. If the tactical situation allows, it is safer to throw another medal
              rather than to trust the cameras not to film the retrieval. Safety pins may
              be replaced in pieces of metal decorated with Christmas ribbon, the common
              protest training round.

B-2. TRAINING PRECAUTIONS

Treat any thrown medal that fails to attract media attention as a dud, regardless of safety pin, safety clip, or Presidential election status.

     a. Know the status of the medal.

          (1) SAFE—a medal with all safety devices intact, and no prior public
           record of being thrown away.

          (2) LIVE—a thrown medal from the instant it is released until the expected
              media cycle has elapsed.

          (3) DUD—a thrown medal that failed to generate hype after the expected
              media cycle has elapsed.

     b. During training, the pit pundit determines a tossed medal’s status (safe, live, or dud).

     c. Throwers must consider the flight path of the medal to make sure no obstacles alter
         the flight of the medal or obstruct the view of the cameras.

     d. Make sure that the impact area is level and free of debris before throwing the
         career ending medal in training.

     e. Do not handle, approach, recover, or otherwise tamper with dud medals. Explosive
         issue disposal (EID) personnel handle dud medals.

     f. Observe caution when using medals as recurring campaign issues (M14-TH3,
         AN-M18, M7A2/A3, and AN-M83).
         These issues ignite with a splash and should be thrown at least 10 meters from
         all personnel to avoid embarrassing coverage.

B-3. DUDS

Duds must be regarded as dangerous. The following procedures must be followed if a thrown medal does not resonate:

     a. M69 Practice Medal. Wait 33 years before defuzing the M69 practice medal.
         Keep the citation accompanying the medal displayed on a safe website. Place the dud
         medal in a sand-filled container and hope it disappears from the spotlight.

     b. Backlash Medal. The thrower and campaign staff wait in the throwing pit for 5
         days before returning to a coverage area. Notify EID immediately. Do not make
         any statements on the dud until the issue has been neutralized. If media coverage
         provides, continue speaking on unrelated topics.

PowerPoint of Kerry's Service

Slate had cute presentation on John Kerry's military service. I just couldn't pass it up. The last slide was the best.

Al-Qaeda Denies WMD

VOA reports that Al-Qaeda denied they were going to use chemical weapons in an attack on Jordan.

A top al-Qaida operative is reported to be denying charges that his group planned a massive chemical weapons attack in Jordan. An audiotape attributed to the operative was broadcast Friday on an Islamic web site. The speaker on the audiotape was identified as senior al-Qaida operative Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi. The man on the tape says Jordanian officials manufactured lies earlier this week when they broadcast the confessions of al-Qaida suspects linked to the terrorist leader.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has already been sentenced to death in Jordan, and is thought to be behind a wave of suicide attacks in Iraq. He may also be behind the bombings in Spain.

In the broadcast, the suspects said they were plotting to carry out al-Qaida's first chemical weapons attack. The suspects said the attack would have been against Jordan's intelligence headquarters in Amman, the prime minister's office and the U.S. embassy. Jordanian officials said the group was planning a chemical attack that could have killed 80,000 people in a two-square kilometer area.

And this barely rates a ripple in the major media.

But, the man on Friday's audiotape said while Jordan's intelligence headquarters was targeted for attack, al-Qaida does not have chemical weapons and would not use such weapons against Arabs.

They'd never kill Arabs *cough* *cough*. Except that they keep repeatedly blowing up Arab men, women, and children. At this point it's pretty obvious that they don't give a fig about anyone's life, much less their own. But another question is whether his claims are in part true. Were the chemical weapons part of the plan from the leadership on down, or was that part of the attack added later, perhaps by officials in Syria? We may never know for sure, but Syria and Jordan have tried to destabilize each other for many decades.

Why They Hate Us – IX

Well, Sarah Whalen has once again spewed anti-Semitic anti-American vomit all over the Middle East with this, her latest serving of bilious prose that graces today's Arab News of Saudi Arabia.

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana, 30 April 2004 — How many times can a politician use the word “Jew” or “Jewish” in a sentence? Even once gets attention.

Well let's find out how often an anti-Semitic moonbat can fit the word Jew into one short article, shall we? Today's answer seems to be "25".

US President Bush squeezed three such references into his April 13th prime time news conference. And for squeezing “Jews” and “Christians” and “Muslims” and “theocratic terror” all into one sentence, well, the courting of American Jewish voters for the upcoming presidential election is officially off and running. Of course, Bush must compete with Democratic candidate John Kerry, recently “outed” as being of Jewish descent. But the Jewish vote is miniscule.

She's apparently been reduced to paroxysms of anti-Semitism because of this paragraph from Bush's speech.

None of these acts is the work of a religion; all are the work of a fanatical, political ideology. The servants of this ideology seek tyranny in the Middle East and beyond. They seek to oppress and persecute women. They seek the death of Jews and Christians, and every Muslim who desires peace over theocratic terror. They seek to intimidate America into panic and retreat, and to set free nations against each other. And they seek weapons of mass destruction, to blackmail and murder on a massive scale.

That paragraph must've gotten under her skin, since he's saying that the plague on the world is her ideology, since she's not only a servant of it, but a fanatical booster.

The real prize is what goes with it — Jewish money, Jewish editorial support, and Jewish insider schmooze. Ordinarily, these go to the Democrat.

Note her reliance and all the old Jewish conspiracy theories. Even many in the Middle East have been admitting that the Jews can't control Hollywood, or "The Passion" couldn't have been made.

But Bush is determined to muster some Jewish muscle for himself.

I haven't heard that phrase since it appeared as "The Jews is using the black man for muscle." Maybe she's having flashbacks to those days.

And so he lumped together radical Muslims from Bali to Baghdad as identical “terrorist servants” of an “ideology of murder.”

Well they run together, attend the same meetings, listen to the same lectures, and read the same rabidly drooling articles penned by one Sarah Whalen, asswipe extrordinaire.

And their targets?
You name it.

“A free and independent Iraq.” [ check – multiple attacks from multiple jihadist groups]

“America.” [ check – multiple attacks ]

“Our way of life.” [ check – the World Trade Center, etc. Claims that they will make us hide in our homes, etc.]

“Us.” (presemably as in “US”). [ "Us" as in those who don't think like Sarah Whalen and Osama bin Laden]

“The West.” [ check – "The West will burn in a sea of fire" comes to mind]

“Civilization”, “Freedom.” [ check – Jihadists in Iraq are on record telling the Western press that they do NOT want freedom. ]

“Liberty.” [ check – no voting, rule by the imam ]

“Security.” [ check – Our security is a specific target that they talk about endlessly ]

“Every Muslim who desires peace.” [ check – Palestinians get strung up all the time for that ]

“Christians.” And, oh yes, “Jews.” [ check – Christians are often voiced targets, and you can't go an hour without hearing another call for the death of all the Jews. ]

I think that pretty much covers it, no?

And Israelis — “children on buses in Jerusalem.” But Bush also swears “none of these (terrorist) actions (is) the work of a religion. Because Muslims also vote. Bush’s blurring falls alongside Mariane Pearl’s demand for a tax-free $1-2 million payment, originally limited to 9/11 victims who gave up their right to sue the airlines whose planes were hijacked in return for a share of taxpayer-provided funds.

Oh, so now Sarah shoots off on the wild tangent of blaming Mariane Pearl.

But unlike the hapless 9/11 victims, Mariane’s husband, Wall Street Journal reporter Danny Pearl, avidly courted his killers.

Oh, no blaming the victim there, eh? She makes him sound like some sicko with a rape fetish. Can't you just feel the love?

Danny vanished in Pakistan on Jan. 23, 2002, and was murdered well after 9/11, while engaged in a Quixotic and ill-advised, wholly voluntary quest to “meet” some Al-Qaeda terrorist killers face-to-face.

Well, he certainly would've been safer trying to meet Sarah Whalen, and he would've gotten a better story about an even more embittered anti-American nutcase than the Taliban ever were.

Be careful what you wish for. Bush wants vengeance, Mariane wants money.

You can see where this twit is going with this. Mariane must want money because she's Jewish.

Why should we give either? Mariane and her lawyer, Robert Kelner, claim: “The victims of 9/11 were killed because they worked at the World Trade Center, a symbol of American capitalism.

Danny Pearl was killed because he worked for The Wall Street Journal, which (they) consider a consummate symbol of American capitalism.”

Oh, like his killers even knew what the Wall Street Journal was, much less its editorial positions. The just new he was a non-moonbat American reporter who was Jewish.

Both Mariane, of Jewish descent, and Attorney Kelner, Jewish, appeared on countless television programs trumpeting their cause.

Boy, she just can't let a Jew slip by unlabeled, can she? She must be "eat up with it bad". The reason they aren't making the case that Daniel was killed for being a Jews is that it would undermine any claim to 9/11 money.

And never, not once, did either ever say that Muslim terrorists killed Danny because he was Jewish.

They know he was killed because he was Jewish, because his kidnappers said so. But that's not going to win any court case for them, now is it? Here's a little news snippet from shortly after his killers were brought to justice.

There may have been several reasons Pearl was targeted. One suspect told a Pakistani judge that Saeed wanted to snatch someone who is ''anti-Islam and a Jew.'' It was reported Thursday and Friday that Pearl's final words were recorded on a videotape the kidnappers were planning to release. According to one U.S. official, Pearl looked into the camera and said, ''Yes, I am a Jew, and my father is a Jew, and my mother'' right before his throat was slit, suggesting that was reason enough to kill him.

So that's what's on the table, clear as day and undisputed.

But Bush does. Bush claims the “young reporter’s” throat was “cut...for being a Jew.” Are being an “American,” a “capitalist,” or a “Jew,” all now mutually, irrevocably interconnected?

We don't want to have to repeat the famous statement that ends with "... and then they came for me," so we just skip the whole process by coming right out and claiming to be Jews whenever Jews are threatened. So you could say that all thinking and upstanding Americans are glad to be called Jews when the accusations pour forth, just to dissuade the Nazis, Islamofascists, and other thugs from targeting people because of their race and religion. Of course, that stance must frustrate the hell out of Sarah Whalen, pounding out her anti-Semitic diatribes, hands quaking with rage.

Absurdly, Bush then linked Al-Qaeda attacks to “the killing of 241 Marines in Beirut,” a 1983 action undertaken by the US in support of Israeli positions, that occurred when Osama Bin Laden was actually helping the CIA defeat the Soviet Union’s illegal invasion of Afghanistan. Bush’s fantastic speech linked dots that could never be connected with genuine facts.

No, he didn't link Al-Qaeda to Beirut. He said the acts flow from the same ideology. In fact he put it this way.

The violence we are seeing in Iraq is familiar. The terrorist who takes hostages, or plants a roadside bomb near Baghdad is serving the same ideology of murder that kills innocent people on trains in Madrid, and murders children on buses in Jerusalem, and blows up a nightclub in Bali, and cuts the throat of a young reporter for being a Jew.

We've seen the same ideology of murder in the killing of 241 Marines in Beirut, the first attack on the World Trade Center, in the destruction of two embassies in Africa, in the attack on the USS Cole, and in the merciless horror inflicted upon thousands of innocent men and women and children on September the 11th, 2001.

Somehow she couldn't quite penetrate his lucid statement, probably because she's utterly overflowing with blind hatred of all that is America.

But in an election year, Israel....America....Beirut....Iraq....what’s the difference? Mariane and her lawyer doubt she will get the 9/11 money if Danny was killed because he was Jewish.

Funny thing.

Oh yes. It's a regular laugh riot when a Jew dies, eh there Sarah?

Bush is afraid that he won’t get money and the kind of support that not even money can buy if Danny wasn’t killed because he was Jewish. Did Danny’s killers cut his throat because he was Jewish?

They reportedly said so.

Whoa. That first sentence didn't quite work out as a coherent thought, did it? As two the second sentenece and the answer, well that would undermine the case she'd just been making against Bush, now wouldn't it? Oh well, how much paragraph to paragraph consistency should we expect from an addled puffball of paranoid delusion?

Zionists want this to prove the US must defend Israel at any price, on the theory that Muslims want to “exterminate” Jews, Americans, and capitalists.

It's not just a theory, honey. The jihadists are more than open about wanting to exterminate Jews, Americanas, and capitalists, and they don't use no stinkin' scare quotes when they say it.

Like they did to Danny, who represented all these things.

Aww… Isn't that sweet. She calls him "Danny" now. Maybe because she thinks he'd make a nice lamp.

But to embrace either line of rhetoric, one must first, like reading a novel or watching a movie, suspend one’s disbelief.

Oh, maybe that's Sarah's secret for penning such absolutely loathsome garbage. She just suspends her disbelief in the Illuminati, Sasquatch, and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Because for Muslims, whether rabid fundamentalists or those “not against us” (as Bush refers to them), the issue is not Jews or Judaism, but Zionism. If Osama Bin Laden had aimed to kill only Jews, he would have dispatched planes elsewhere.

Well he didn't aim to kill only Jews, now did he? He wanted to kill Americans, but any extra Jews were a plus for him. Al-Qaeda has always focused on the bigger picture. Crush the West and then burn the nest.

But what largely incenses Muslims all over the world should trouble everyone — Israel’s power to compel obedience from the most powerful nation on earth.

What largely incenses Muslims all over the world is wildly anti-Semitic and inflamatory columns like this one by Sarah Whalen. If you keep reading the Arab News you'll notice that she makes actual Saudis seem like mild mannered moderates. They really are importing their hatred from the West's leftists and their charges that American policy is controlled by evil money-grubbing Joooos…..

Danny Pearl was killed not for “being” Jewish, but for what “Jewish” has come to mean, rightly or wrongly, in a part of the world that sympathizes and suffers with those the Israelis have dispossessed from land, from culture, from civil rights.

Sorry again, honey, but the Israelis didn't turn the Palestinians into a death cult. They did that to themselves. Nor did the Israelis decree that the Palestinian Authority should string up anyone who disagrees with their embezzlement schemes and extortion racquet.

Danny was killed not by powerful actors in service of some evil ideology, but by those powerless before Zionism, an ideology that sacrifices Palestinians for “freedom” and “security” — buzzwords Bush used no less than 22 times in his pre-press conference speech.

Yep. A billion plus Muslims are powerless before 4.8 million Israeli Jews. It's at least a 250 to one population ratio, so it takes quite a paranoid delusion to maintain the idea that they're powerless, especially since Arabs control all the oil.

Bush’s bowing to Sharon and junking the “road map” is but yet another betrayal of Palestinians, of every 9/11 victim, Danny Pearl, and of every Jew and American who wants to live in peace with the Middle East.

Oh, so not giving in to the demands of a bunch of Palestinian terrorists is a betrayal of every 9/11 victim and Danny Pearl. Boy that's quite a mobius loop of illogic, eh?

— Sarah Whalen is an expert in Islamic law and taught law at Loyola University School of Law in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Well when I last Fisked her, a couple weeks ago, it said she "teaches law". I guess her columns must've caught up with her. Hopefully she's now living out of a shopping cart, but just in case, maybe someone should try to find out what happened down at Loyola. It might prove quite amusing.

Terrorism Down in 2003

CNN just reported that 2003 recorded the fewest number of international terrorist attacks in 30 years. Oops. I guess the moonbats can quit screaming that the war in Iraq increased international terrorism.

The Patterns of Global Terrorism report said 190 acts of international terrorism occurred in 2003 -- a slight drop from 198 attacks the previous year and the lowest total since 1969.

The figure marked a 45 percent decrease in attacks since 2001, but it did not include most of the attacks in Iraq, because attacks against combatants did not fit the U.S. definition of international terrorism.

Down 45 percent in 2002, and down even further in 2003. It's time to press ahead, not back off.

Bush Talks to Reporters

President Bush had a little news conference after his testimony before the 9/11 commision. exerpt
excerpt

PRESIDENT BUSH: The vice president and I just finished a good conversation with the 9/11 commission. It was wide-ranging, it was important, it was just a good discussion. And I really — I appreciated the members.

Wow. So now Bush can't even punctuate properly WHEN HE'S SPEAKING?. Oh, I forgot. It's the journalists who transcribe these things. I can here them now. "Was that pause a comma or a period?"
"Oh, I judging by the way he tilted his head it must've been a semi-colon."
"Naw. Using a comma would make him look stupider."

QUESTION: Mr. President, what topic did the commissioners want to spend most of the time on? And were there any subjects that you didn't answer or were advised by your counsel not to answer?

BUSH: No. I was never advised by my counsel not to answer anything. I answered every question they asked.

Boy, the press must be cursing over that answer. They wanted to nail him for being evasive like Clinton was, when he constantly evaded questions, lied, and even said things like "It depends on what the meaning of 'is' is."

QUESTION: Mr. President, as you know, a lot of critics suggested that you wanted to appear jointly with the vice president so that you two could keep your stories straight or something. Could you tell us what you think of the value of appearing together and how you would answer those critics?

BUSH: First of all, look, if we had something to hide, we wouldn't have met with them in the first place. We answered all their questions.

As I say, I came away good about the session, because I wanted them to know, you know, how I set strategy, how we run the White House, how we deal with threats.

Damn. They struck out again, even with one of the most biased, leading questions I've seen in quite a while.

QUESTION: Don't you think that the families deserved to have a transcript or to be able to see ...

BUSH: You asked me that question yesterday. I got the same answer.

Well, saying "Eat shit and die you terrorist loving communist fuckweasel" would've been a bit over the top, but I'd give Bush stellar marks on the answer he did use.

QUESTION: Can you say with any confidence there are no al-Qaida operatives active in the country today?

BUSH: No, I can't say that.

I'd have followed that up with "In fact, it's not unlikely that you yourself are an al-Qaida operative, based on the types of questions you're asking. So how's that job prospect at Al-Jazeera working out?

QUESTION: Did the commission ask you about that?

BUSH: No, they didn't. But I'm not going to get into any more details about what they asked me. I told you I wasn't going to give any details about what they asked me and then I fell into your trap.

Youch! The President of the United States just told them to their faces that they were laying traps for him. Al-Jazeera wannabes indeed.

Saudis Triple Oil Reserves

The people at Peak Oil, who constantly predict that we're about to run out, must be really pissed at the lastest Saudi announcement.

WASHINGTON, 29 April 2004 — Officials from Saudi Arabia’s oil industry and the international petroleum organizations shocked a gathering of foreign policy experts in Washington yesterday with an announcement that the Kingdom’s previous estimate of 261 billion barrels of recoverable petroleum has now more than tripled, to 1.2 trillion barrels.

Damn. That's 939 billion barrels of recoverable petroleum. At 120 million barrels a day of world consumption that's over 21 years worth, and just from Saudi Arabia. Iran and other countries are making similar finds. Looks like we'll be inundated with oil for a long time to come, contrary to the prediction of lunatics like those at dieoff.org, who say things like this

Petroleum geologists have known for 50 years that global oil production would "peak" and begin its inevitable decline within a decade of the year 2000. Moreover, no renewable energy systems have the potential to generate more than a fraction of the power now being generated by fossil fuels.

In short, the transition to declining energy availability signals a transition in civilization as we know it.

Awww… Is Chicken Little feeling a little blue today? *sniff*

The Saudis continue with this little tidbit, so I say it's time to take a horn honking SUV drive around the block a couple times, just for the hell of it.

Additionally, Saudi Arabia’s key oil and finance ministers assured the audience — which included US Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan — that the Kingdom has the capability to quickly double its oil output and sustain such a production surge for as long as 50 years.

Maybe the deep-earth gas theory is correct after all. We've known for decades that existing Saudi fields are filling back up from somewhere, and the Russians have written about a thousand papers over the past fifity years arguing that oil doesn't come from primordial life but is merely trapped hydrogen and carbon like you'd find on any planetary body. I mean, you'd expect the first and fourth most abundant elements in the solar system to show up somehow, and the thermodynamically stable form of carbon and hydrogen a hundred or so kilometers down is in fact petroleum. All this may be true, or maybe not, but it's certainly interesting.

Oil for Palaces Documents Are Missing

Mamamontezz sent me a link to this NY Post Article is sickening. It seems the records on all those Oil for Food transactions we wanted to see just up and went missing.

April 29, 2004 -- WASHINGTON - The vast majority of the United Nations' oil-for-food contracts in Iraq have mysteriously vanished, crippling investigators trying to uncover fraud in the program, a government report charged yesterday.

What, did we expect the lying thieves to just hand them over? The largest financial scandal in history, centered in the UN, and the documents that might destroy a host of political careers just disappeared. And note that this did not happen in the US or UK. It happened in the very institution that the anti-war types claim confers legitimacy.

The General Accounting Office report, presented at a congressional hearing into the scandal-plagued program, determined that 80 percent of U.N. records had not been turned over.

And they're not going to turn them over, either, which just makes the scandal loom larger.

The world body claims it transferred all information it had - including 3,059 contracts worth about $6.2 billion for delivery of food and other civilian goods to the post-Saddam governing body, the Coalition Provisional Authority.

Now wait, the contracts for food should come to over $40 billion, not $6.2. No wonder those Iraqi children were starving to death. It seems that only $6.2 billion worth of contracts were actually thought legitimate enough to withstand scrutiny.

But the GAO report also found that a database the U.N. transferred to the authority was "unreliable because it contained mathematical and currency errors in calculation of contract costs," the report found.

The thing about made up figures is that they don't tend to be consistent.

The GAO findings, which were aired at a hearing of the House International Relations Committee, raise new questions about corruption and mismanagement in the biggest-ever U.N. aid program - and what has been called the biggest financial scandal in history. An earlier GAO report said Saddam ripped off over $10 billion.

Only the world's largest international body could pull off the largest financial scandal in history, which dwarfs Enron, Tyco, and Worldcom.

Committee Chairman Henry Hyde said the report raised serious concerns - and could have "a potential impact on the reputation and credibility of the United Nations."

"If these charges prove true, some of the obvious victims are those Iraqis who failed to receive needed assistance," Hyde (R-Ill.) said.

Yet we have a hard of moonbats who say the sanctions were working, and that we must immediately turn over Iraqi oil to the same institution that made a living by looting it.

"But the damage extends further. The massive windfall resulting from this organized theft allowed Saddam to maintain his grip on the country, line his pockets and make companies and countries dance to his tune, with consequences we are still trying to contain."

I always said Chirac was one of Saddam's sock puppets. Is it any wonder he opposed the war?

A former oil-for-food program coordinator testified at yesterday's hearing that in the early stages his U.N. superiors were openly hostile to U.S. efforts to contain Saddam.

"For reasons I have yet to fully understand, several U.N. leaders approached the implementation of the oil-for-food program with more distrust towards the United Kingdom and United States than towards the regime of Saddam Hussein," Michael Soussan said.

And that gets to the heart of the problem. Most of the UN is openly hostile to the US, Great Britain, and freedom. It's a finsihing school for tyrant's toadies, where they can polish up on their posturing, pontificating, perjury, and form broad networks of smuggling, corruption, graft, and extortion.