the blue revolution

Article No. 1: Bomb Found on Spanish Train Track

Translation: those Spaniards obviously aren't surrendering fast enough. Geez, what should they do about these terrorists?

Article No. 2: Iraqi Cleric Condemns Fallujah 'Mutilation'

As U.S. troops remain outside of Fallujah awaiting orders for an "overwhelming" response to the gruesome attacks this week, a senior Islamic cleric urged preachers on Friday to condemn the mutilation of four slain American contractors, but he did not say if those prayers should condemn the act of killing as well.

Translation: just kill the Americans, dammit. Don't let the world know we're savage animals when you do it.

I tried to stay away from blogging about Richard Clarke as much as possible, because I felt that this was an unfolding story that can only be commented on after enough of it has revealed itself. Now is the time.

My question: why the heck does anyone still listen to this guy?"

Gorton: Now, since my yellow light is on, at this point my final question will be this: Assuming that the recommendations that you made on January 25th of 2001, based on Delenda, based on Blue Sky, including aid to the Northern Alliance, which had been an agenda item at this point for two and a half years without any action, assuming that there had been more Predator reconnaissance missions, assuming that that had all been adopted say on January 26th, year 2001, is there the remotest chance that it would have prevented 9/11?

CLARKE: No.

That was Mr. Clarke on Wednesday last week in the 9/11 Commission.

"The people in the FBI and CIA dropped the ball or we would have known those facts," said Clarke, adding, "If that information had bubbled up — if the system had worked in FBI, if the system had worked in CIA — I think we probably could have” made a difference.

Acknowledging that he was indulging in "20/20 hindsight," Clarke said, "I would like to think I would have gone on battle stations."

That was Mr. Clarke a week later on Hardball.

And I thought John Kerry flip-flopped. Of course, this isn't his first time having a debate with himself, so I'm not surprised. But the fact that people are still giving him the attention he so obviously craves is beyond me. My excuse is that I've been saving this for a while, but I hope I never have to discuss him again. No point feeding this fire.

I'm finding that the entire debate over Iraq, 9-11, terrorism in general, etc., have taken on a surreal air. Both sides seem to be debating over issues and points that have little basis in reality.

First off, the side that I'm on. The point has been made before, but why do the Bush adminstration keep trying to insist that terrorism was its biggest focus before 9-11, and why do everyone else give a damn when they find evidence to the contrary? 9-11 was a paradigm shift, and to have one of those, one has to have a different paradigm before the shift. Doesn't anyone remember that the biggest international affairs crisis for the Bush administration before 9-11 was a mid-air collision between a US surveillance plane and a Chinese fighter jet? The whole concept of 9-11 was, for the vast majority of Americans, what Rumsfeld would call an "unknown unknown," a concept so beyond comprehension that no one could've imagined it before, except for government employees paid to think up doomsday scenarios (I'm not belittling their jobs, since obviously they were right, but I bet even they didn't exactly expect this to happen). Now we toss around blame like it was blindingly obvious that 19 people were going to slam planes into buildings. The point of the debate isn't who could've prevented 9-11, but who's the one that learned from it and would be better at preventing it from happening again. Bush or Kerry? I'll put my money on GWB, thank you very much.

Another point that is starting to annoy me is the shift of the justification of the war in Iraq on humanitarian grounds. Now I'm not above feeling good about the liberation of the Iraqi people, but it wasn't the fundamental reason why I supported going to Baghdad. It was always about the national security threat, the ominous cloud of WMDs and support for terrorism. And guess what: I had my doubts whether WMD stockpiles would be found in Iraq even over a year ago. And the truth is that it didn't change damn squat. George Shultz recently gave an excellent speech on the issue of why the Iraq War was justified, and it sums up my point nicely (thus saving me the tedium of typing it out). It didn't dawdle into the liberation of the Iraqi people (I can't find the words "liberate," "human rights," or "humanitarian" anywhere in the article). I must emphasize: I am not belittling the humanitarian accomplishments, but we need to make our arguments on the grounds made by Shultz more often. National security was the primary reason that the vast majority of us supported the war: we weren't wrong then, and we aren't wrong now.

Meanwhile, those I'm arguing against seem to have even more of their collective heads in the clouds. At the last anti-war demonstrations, they were shouting for the end of the "occupation" of Afghanistan. Calls for the end of the occupation of Iraq were being made a mere three months before the transfer of sovereignty in that country. These people cheer for Richard Clarke, a man who advocated the very policies the Bush administration currently uses. These people don't have positions. They just do whatever they think GWB is against.

Recently, I haven't really discussed the pressing issues of the day (9-11 Commission stuff, what's happening in Iraq, etc.). I suppose this post explains why. Call me back when everything makes a bit more sense.

Another feel-good story about Iraq on NRO. But what really struck me was this: Saddam kept a law school running in Iraq? What a waste of his hard-swindled Oil-for-Palaces cash! At least now it's doing what it was meant to do.

Gonna start slow by lampooning a celebrity, AKA shooting fish in a barrel. Tonight's lucky famous person: Pink.

"I'm so disappointed in people right now," she said. "We don't protest anymore. That's why I've always said I missed my time. I was supposed to be here in the '60s, you know, when people stood up and were educated and political and had opinions and weren't afraid to share them and weren't afraid that their song was going to get taken off the radio if they had an opinion. I figure if people are listening to what I have to say for whatever amount of time that they will, I might as well say something important."

Where has she been for the last year? Hiding in a cave (like a certain former Saudi rich boy)? 100,000 people marched in New York over a war that was fought a year ago (yah yah, I'm sure the organizers did a bit of inflating the numbers, but the point still stands). Hippyism hasn't been this popular since, well, Pink's beloved 60s.

But then, I suppose Pink is more involved with animal rights issues than anything related to human beings. Personally, the only PETA I like is one wrapping grilled chicken, but I digress. In any case, here's what she has to say about her beloved organization.

"But I have very conflicted views on everything. I'm a proud member of PETA and I got leather boots on my feet, you know what I'm saying?"

*Bang* *Bang* *Bang* *Fish stops flopping*

One thing that pisses me off about Mark Steyn's site is that everything eventually all get lost in some "undisclosed location" (that's my term, not his), which means digging up old gems will be nearly impossible within about a month or two from now. So for the sake of posterity (again), here is an excellent reader's letter that will put the entire War on Terror in context. A must read.

Re: Clinton's war
PREEMPTIVE ACTION
Regarding Richard Clarke's testimony this week: as if!

It's 2001, and John Ashcroft, acting on some lucky breaks by the FBI and an unusual amount of interagency cooperation by the CIA, arrests Mohammed Atta and his merry band in several states. Acting on information gained in interrogations of the suspects and ignoring outraged clamor from Europe, the United States puts boots on the ground in Afghanistan, toppling the Taliban.

At home, Bush is derided as a Nazi and an imperialist, with his religious zealot of an attack-dog Ashcroft trampling the Bill of Rights. An editorial cartoon of Bush, Cheney, and Ashcroft as a three-headed Satan right out of Dante's Inferno chewing Human Rights, World Opinion, and Islamic Relations in their bloodstained maws wins a Pulitzer. Doonesbury depicts Bush as Queen Victoria's tiara, trying to deflect public attention from a bad economy with a "War on Terror." The Washington Post notes that no guns, no bombs, nothing more threatening than boxcutters and Swiss army knives were found in the homes of Atta & Co., and demands to know "where are the weapons of terrorism?" The New York Times editorial page dryly observes that Atta & Co. visited strip clubs and Vegas as part of their "attack preparations" and sniffs "hardly the behavior of Islamic fundamentalists hell-bent on self-immolation" as the administration "farcically" claims. Editorial pages list a series of Jewish sounding names in the administration and the world "cabal" is used.

It's 2004. Congress holds hearings. Johnelle Bryant, an official with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, fights tears as she describes Atta as a "man of the American dream" trying to start a crop dusting company, so in love with his adopted country that he tried to buy an aerial picture of Washington with all its famous landmarks right off her wall.

The highlight of the hearings come when Richard Clark, Clinton's counterterrorism chief and victim of the new administration's housecleaning, testifies to Congress the same week as the release of his media-hyped blockbuster. His testimony, and his book, is greeted by the New York Times editorial page with noisy delight that verges on the orgasmic. In his testimony, he depicts the Bush Presidency as a fundamentalist-Christian group of hatemongers who have diverted American attention from serious secular national security issues such as Korea and China, but particularly one he's warned administration after administration about both in public and privately. According to British and French Intelligence, this threat is on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons, "if they haven't already" thanks to Pakistani technology and African yellowcake uranium. This threat has attacked its own citizens, its neighbors, and unlike the impoverished pile of rubble known as Afghanistan is a real sponsor of terrorism with the money and the training facilities to do "real damage" with "real weapons." The name of the threat? Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

Eric E Frisch
Oak Park, Illinois

I'm sure someone's gonna need these sooner or later: Yoshida’s First Five Laws of Politics.

Sometimes I take things for granted, and then it occurs to me that not everyone knows why the world is as f*cked up as it is. So here is an enlightening NRO article on the complicity of the UN, specifically the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), in causing the mess in Israel and the Territories.

The High Commission is mandated to help refugees get on with their lives as quickly as possible, and works to settle them rapidly, most frequently in countries other than those they fled. UNRWA policy, however, states that the Palestinian Arabs who fled from Israel in the course of the 1948 war — and their descendants! — are to be considered refugees until they return to the homes and villages they left more than half a century ago (which actually no longer exist). The principle they apply is called the "right of return."

In truth, there is no such legal principle. According to the UNRWA mandate, U.N. General Assembly Resolution 194 provides the basis for this right. There are, however, several problems with this — the primary one being that GA resolutions have no standing in international law. This resolution, which in fact also suggested other alternatives in addition to return, was no more than a non-binding recommendation.

Yet, for all of these years, UNRWA has not only been telling the refugees that they have such a right, they have been promoting it actively via a variety of programs. The goal is to ensure that the refugees focus on achieving that return. To that end, UNRWA policy has also been to make certain that the refugees are not too comfortable, as this would diminish their motivation to "return." Thus, for example, when the physician who was head of medical services in Gaza for Israel's civil administration from 1967-1985 wanted to improve medical facilities for the refugees, UNRWA blocked his efforts. And when Israel wanted to move refugees out of camps and into permanent housing in the 1980s, she was prevented from doing so by U.N. resolutions.

The Palestinian "refugees": victims of Israeli "aggression", or deliberate effect of UN policy? Answer seems pretty obvious.

This is just a rip off an Impromptus column on NRO, but I'm posting it here so that I can look back upon this and laugh.

Have you gotten a load of Bush spokesman Terry Holt? He's far blunter than the usual spokesman, and therefore much more fun. He said, "John Kerry's campaign seems to be summed up this way: 'I went to Vietnam, yadda, yadda, yadda, I want to be president.' He would have the American people ignore his 19-year [Senate] record."

I like him — Holt, that is. Hope he isn't muzzled, any time soon.

I almost spit out my vanilla cream when I read this. Definitely worth saving for posterity.

The US Senate passed the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, recognizing that harming an unborn child during an act of violence to a pregnant women constitutes a separate act of violence against another victim besides the woman. Such common sense legislation is long overdue (of course, on the state level, 29 states have already enacted similar legislation).

Meanwhile, pro-abortionists are howling that the law will be a first step towards the overturning of Roe v. Wade. In one sense, that is the truth: recognizing the unborn as a separate entity with rights will likely be a major step towards the end of the abortion era. However, they have put the cart before the horse: enacting a law protecting the rights of the unborn is the effect of changes in the popular views on fetal status, not vice versa. After all, this is unofficially Laci and Conner's Law. Cases like the Laci Peterson case, as well as technological advances in medicine, are awakening people to the truth of what happens inside the womb. Polls show overwhelming majorities in support of a law like this.

Meanwhile, Sen. Diane Feinstein attempted (and failed) to attach an amendment that replaced treating the fetus as a separate victim with the nebulous crime of "causing termination of pregnancy." Right... ...and why exactly would that be a crime? Last time I checked, pro-aborts compare abortion to tonsillectomy. It's pathetic seeing the pro-aborts twist and contort themselves to explain how it is okay to kill an unborn child if the mother wants it, but it's wrong if someone else forced it, but that it's not actually killing anyone, but it's still wrong... ...geez, by the time these guys figure out what their position is, I could 've grown a beard.

And who are you to tell me that this isn't a human being?