Category: Internet

Turns out Mort Kondracke said it already:

In this respect, there is a real danger that Iraq could become like Vietnam – a self-inflicted defeat. Public support for the war is down, and even conservative columnists such as David Brooks and George Will are implying that Bush’s aims are unachievable.

Just as we lost Vietnam in the newsrooms and not on the battlefield, Iraq will be quagmire or success depending on America’s attention span.

Via Matt Welch.

Citizen Smash – The Indepundit explains it all:

The artillery shell discovered earlier this week, according to General Kimmitt, contained a “mix-in-flight” binary chemical warhead. This type of warhead, as noted above, was not used in the Iran-Iraq war, and was not included by Saddam in any of his weapons declarations.

Keyword = new.

Any questions?

There’s an interesting little aside at the end of this essay by Christopher Hitchens on Hersh’s fantasy:

So a Sarin-infected device is exploded in Iraq, and across the border in Jordan the authorities say that nerve and gas weapons have been discovered for use against them by the followers of Zarqawi, who was in Baghdad well before the invasion. Where, one idly inquires, did these toys come from? No, it couldn’t be.

Oh, but it could, couldn’t it?

Beheading returns focus to terror war:

“Why is it that there’s more indignation over a photo of a prisoner with underwear on his head than over the video of a young American with no head at all?” — Sen. Zell Miller

Via Dean Esmay

Here’s the website where you can order The Poetry of Donald Rumsfeld and hear a clip from The Unknown.

Instapundit does a little digging and essentially proves that the mainstream media are burying the Nick Berg story in preference to the massively guilt- and blame-inducing prison abuse scandal, and meanwhile some video emerges showing that the charges that Abu Ghraib measures were dictated from the top are most likely bogus.

The video, seen by members of Congress but not released to the world, shows Lynndie England having sex with multiple partners, apparently consensually. I’m sorry, anti-liberation crusaders, but Rumsfeld didn’t order her to have an orgy, and he shouldn’t resign on account of it.

For another perspective on Abu Ghraib, from someone who was actually there, go read Ali at Iraq the Model.

Hobbs nails the fake outrage:

Let’s be honest. The Left, which didn’t care that hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were being tortured and murdered by Saddam Hussein, is only professing outrage about the events at the Abu Ghraib Prison because it’s a chance to undermine the Bush administration and the War on Terror.

The American soldiers who abused the Iraqis deserve punishment – their actions can not be tolerated. But to hear the Left’s “outrage” over the abuse of a few Iraqi prisoners of war is just sickening. They’d have been happy to leave 24 million Iraqis under the boot heel of a murderous thug who ran a regime of rape rooms and mass murder, of feeding dissidents into shredding machines, of draining the wetlands to kill of a tribe that lived there, of gassing civilians, of starving the citizenry while diverting billions in oil revenue to his own ends and to the bribing of foreign officials, and of burying dead women and children in mass graves.

It took around 200,000 brave and heroic American soldiers to end that awful regime and wake Iraq from its 30-year nightmare. A tiny fraction of the 200,000 have done some awful things, and they rightly will be punished for it. But they and their actions are an aberration. Don’t ever forget that. Don’t ever forget that America liberated 24 million Iraqis.

Exactly. And for a fine example of how to pretend to be a deeply caring person while not actually having a clue, go read Jon Garfunkel, who calls the incidents of hazing/torture “atrocities”.

While we all abhor torture, etc, and strongly condemn the unlawful treatment of Al Qaeda members by US forces in Abu Ghraib prison, dontcha know, and call for an investigation to get the root causes, of course, we nonetheless note that not all Iraqis are upset about the photos:

EVERETT — The abuse of Iraqi prisoners at the hands of U.S. soldiers draws intense reactions from some who left Iraq to find freedom in Washington state, but prolonged outrage isn’t one of them.

While some local Iraqis are bothered by the images, others welcome them.

“It’s a terrible thing and it adds more wood to the fire,” said Hussein Al-Muhanna, who came to the United States in 1993. “(But) to me, it’s not the issue I have to worry about. To me, the main issue is Iraq’s future.”

Imad al-Turfy, another Everett resident, shows no sympathy for the prisoners, saying their treatment paled when compared with the horrors inflicted under Saddam Hussein’s regime.

“They raped our women. They killed our kids. So there’s hatred between us, the people here, and the people in Iraq,” he said, referring to the Shiite Muslims who emigrated and the Sunni Muslims who ruled Iraq under Saddam.

“Anything coming to them would make me happy.”

Ahem.

Frank Paynter makes an interesting claim on his Sandhill Trek blog

Since March 20, 2003 I have been arrested twice for symbolic and non-violent acts of civil disobedience in protest of the wars that the Bush administration has chosen to enter. The crimes were misdemeanors, and the punishments were modest. The judges were pleased to have us in the court room, and the police were uniformly courteous as they performed their duties. Times have changed since the days when symbolic protest was met with violence, incarceration, and felony convictions in my community. These minor acts of civil disobedience in opposition to the Bush regime are the least I can do to stand up for what I know to be true regarding the administration and its wanton foreign policy. By standing up against the Bush regime in this small way, I earn the right to criticize it.

Frank’s objection to the Bush Administration’s wars of liberation in Afghanistan and Iraq, as far as I can tell, is some sort of violation of international law owing to the lack of the UN’s blessing:

…I do know that the Bush unilateralism made it impossible to bring the full force of international law into play. And I opposed the Bush war on Afghanistan, as I oppose a so called WAR on terrorism and the war on drugs.

There seems to be a basic contradiction here. How can a person engage in acts of civil disobedience that violate the law in the interest of a personal moral conviction against a political leader who himself is acting in accordance with a personal moral conviction that happens to violate international law, in the opinion of the protester? In other words, how can you break the law to protest someone else’s breaking the law and still consider yourself a moral actor?

I put that question to Mr. Paynter, he offered an answer, but now he’s erased it. Any other moral snobs who share Mr. Paynter’s point of view are welcome to explain the reasoning to me.

Here’s a little background on Lynndie England, the good-time girl in the Abu Ghraib prison torture incident:

Spc. England frequently visited Graner, a one-time Pennsylvania prison guard. There are published reports Graner had a history of domestic violence.

CBS News has learned England and Graner, both divorced, were involved in a romantic relationship in Iraq and that England is four months pregnant with Graner’s child.

So she’s soon to be a mother, and she gets off on violent men. She hails from a trailer park in West Virginia, the state that elected a member of the KKK to represent them in the US Senate. It all sort of fits together, doesn’t it?

Of course it does, and appropos my last post, check Donna Britt:

Mom’s Day notwithstanding, old stereotypes of women as viscerally compassionate peacekeepers are being challenged everywhere. Violence in the United States remains overwhelmingly male-dominated. Studies conducted by the Family Research Laboratory at the University of New Hampshire in 1975, 1985 and 1992 found that domestic abuse rates were equal between husbands and wives. In fact, evidence suggested that abuse of wives by husbands is decreasing while abuse of husbands by wives is increasing. The nation’s No. 1 movie, “Mean Girls,” depicts a teeny-bopper swept up in the vicious, back-stabbing world of high school cliques.

Cruelty is not a gender issue.