Duthie On...

This story may be some comfort for those of us with loved ones in Iraq: An estimated 123 people were shot and killed over the summer. That's nearly double the number of soldiers killed in Iraq over the same time period. In May, cbs2chicago.com began tracking city shootings and posting them on Google maps. Information compiled from our reporters, wire service reports and the Chicago Police Major Incidents log indicated that 123 people were shot and killed throughout the city between the start of Memorial...

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So the Pentagon released a report that says, among other things: One question remains regarding Iraq’s terrorism capability: Is there anything in the captured archives to indicate that Saddam had the will to use his terrorist capabilities directly against United States? Judging from examples of Saddam’s statements (Extract 34) before the 1991 Gulf War with the United tates, the answer is yes . In the years between the two Gulf Wars, UN sanctions reduced Saddam’s ability to shape regional and world...

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Good for The Daily Show for taking on more than just conservative targets: How can you possibly out-parody the self-parody that is Code Pink? The final moment of the video is just hysterical, and so representative of the clue-free nature of this debate. Also watch for the lib answer to the question, "so if we got rid of the police, we wouldn't have crime? (around 3:50). Priceless."...

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If only this were true...certainly the least we could do to welcome him: Only Scrappleface, Alas   [ Kathryn Jean Lopez ] Report: Ahmadinejad Tasered at Columbia University by Scott Ott (2007-09-24) — Columbia University promised a full investigation into charges of police brutality after today’s reported Tasering of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who had come to the Ivy League school to give the annual Adolph Hitler Memorial Peace and Tolerance Lecture. Like a similar...

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OK, so when you've failed to convince Rolling Stone that a favorite liberal solution is a good thing, you've got a real problem (WARNING: article contains some strong language): The great danger of confronting peak oil and global warming isn't that we will sit on our collective asses and do nothing while civilization collapses, but that we will plunge after "solutions" that will make our problems even worse. Like believing we can replace gasoline with ethanol, the much-hyped biofuel that we make...

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Apparently Barak Obama has figured out how to win the war on terrorism: WASHINGTON - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Wednesday that he would possibly send troops into Pakistan to hunt down terrorists, an attempt to show strength when his chief rival has described his foreign policy skills as naive. ADVERTISEMENT The Illinois senator warned Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf that he must do more to shut down terrorist operations in his country and evict foreign fighters...

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Saudis attempting to silence critics who claim they're funding terrorism in the name of charity? Sounds like it: Here’s a story with huge implications for freedom of speech (all negative), and it’s apparently gone almost entirely unreported in the mainstream press. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription required), under threat of a law suit, Cambridge University Press has just agreed to pulp all unsold copies of the 2006 book, Alms for Jihad: Charity and Terrorism in the Islamic...

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So The New Republic 's anonymous correspondent from Iraq is no longer anonymous : My Diarist, "Shock Troops," and the two other pieces I wrote for the New Republic have stirred more controversy than I could ever have anticipated. They were written under a pseudonym, because I wanted to write honestly about my experiences, without fear of reprisal. Unfortunately, my pseudonym has caused confusion. And there seems to be one major way in which I can clarify the debate over my pieces: I'm willing to...

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If you haven't been keeping up with it, the New Republic is under fire for some stories that they published by "Scott Thomas," who's supposedly a soldier serving in Baghdad. Thomas recently wrote a piece called "Shock Troops" that described soldiers engaging in a variety of abhorrent behavior, from mocking a woman disfigured by an IED, to running down dogs with a Bradley Fighting Vehicle. The Weekly Standard's Michael Goldfarb has kept an impressive roll call of the soldiers and bloggers calling...

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Andy McCarthy on the Iraq war and the surge : That's why I get so disheartened when I hear the president talk this nonsense about the universality of freedom. If the surge is just about Iraqi freedom, we shouldn't be doing it. The American people don't care what form of government Iraq has — not enough to fight a war over it. They care about defeating enemies who threaten the United States, and the president has never made the case — nor do I think he could — that American national security is materially...

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Bob Novak : I never spoke to Armitage again about Wilson. But he acknowledged to me nearly three months later through his political adviser, lobbyist Ken Duberstein, that he was indeed the primary source for my information about Wilson's wife. Shortly thereafter, he secretly revealed his role to federal authorities investigating the leak of Mrs. Wilson's name but did not inform White House officials, apparently including the president. After Patrick Fitzgerald, the U.S. attorney in Chicago named...

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Iain Murray observes , regarding the foiled London car bomb: James Forsyth of The Spectator has an important comment : One of the great delusions of our time is that once Blair, in the UK case, and Bush, in the American one, stepped down from office the terrorist threat would disappear. The news that a car bomb attack was foiled in London last night illustrates just how wrong this belief was. Although, the fact that the vast bulk of planning for the 9/11 attacks was done during the Clinton presidency...

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OK, so perhaps that isn't an exact quote, but he certainly seems to be a fan, and views them as having won a "democratic mandate" to lead. This should come as no surprise for Carter, who's never met an anti-American thug he didn't like, but what's remarkable is Carter being so open about supporting a terrorist organization supported by Iran: The United States, Israel and the European Union must end their policy of favoring Fatah over Hamas , or they will doom the Palestinian people to deepening conflict...

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This one, with the Hoover Institution's Peter Robinson, is a little more substantive than his appearance on Leno: The more I hear, the more I like. As an aside, I should mention that in last week's GOP debate, Rudy Giuliani impressed the heck out of me with his answer on health insurance, namely, that a major part of the problem is the disconnect between the individual and the costs of their health care, thanks to government and employers being intermediaries in how most of us pay for health insurance...

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More disturbing news about the wanna-be superpower in the east: China arming terrorists New intelligence reveals China is covertly supplying large quantities of small arms and weapons to insurgents in Iraq and the Taliban militia in Afghanistan, through Iran. U.S. government appeals to China to check some of the arms shipments in advance were met with stonewalling by Beijing, which insisted it knew nothing about the shipments and asked for additional intelligence on the transfers. The ploy has been...

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This is an amazing story about a brilliant maneuver pulled off by one of the amazing folks serving in Iraq to avert a bloodbath in Anbar: The Final Option Read the whole thing, because it's surely a story that won't be told in the mainstream media. Source: Michael Yon : Online Magazine » Blog Archive » The Final Option...

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Ever the pedant, Andrew Stuttaford reminds Andy McCarthy, who had posted some commentary about Koranic support for wife-beating, that: Nevertheless, it's worth remembering that there's plenty of savagery to be found in the Old Testament too. What really matters is not what was said or written back in the Dark Ages (or, in the case of the Bible, even earlier), but how those words are interpreted now , if, indeed, at all. I'll let McCarthy's response speak for itself: Yes, Andrew. And I'll address...

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In this Corner post , Andy McCarthy points out, based on things we either know to be true, or cannot rule out, the absurdity of the immediate dismissal of any connection between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and 9/11. The gist is that there is abundant evidence of significant, ongoing, and operational ties between al Qaeda and Iraq, going back at least to the 1990s, and there's plenty of reason to believe that part of the animus for bin Laden's fatwa against Americans involved sympathy for Iraq (see this...

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...and you're a Democrat, you can be pretty sure that you've put your foot in it, big time. If you're Nancy Pelosi, and you've made a damn fool out of yourself by going to terrorist-sponsoring Syria and proclaiming yourself a broker of peace between Syria and Israel, only to have one side you're claiming to represent (Israeli PM Olmert) immediately repudiate what you've claimed, and even the Washington Post feels it necessary to criticize you (link requires registration), well you can feel certain...

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Although I wasn't able to make it, my mother and brother attended the Gathering of Eagles counter-protest to the usual moonbattery organized by International ANSWER and funded in part by George Soros. Although many of the MSM stories would lead one to believe that there were either only a few hundred counter-protestors, or that the anti-war folks outnumbered those who rallied in support of our troops, the folks who were actually there say differently...and their story is bolstered by unofficial park...

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...and the first thing the FBI can think of to say is that it doesn't appear to be terrorism-related? While I understand the desire to avoid being seen as jumping to conclusions, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to recognize that whether or not the Pakistani Muslim man responsible for shooting six women (one pregnant, and another who died) at a Seattle Jewish center was associated with a terrorist organization, his goal was to terrorize Jews. When will we be willing to name things properly? This...

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Once again, the New York Times demonstrates that they have no scruples, nor any sense of loyalty towards the country that makes their work possible. And that they have contempt for the armed forces that protect their rights. In this photo , the Times shows "[a] sniper loyal to Shiite cleric Moqtada al Sadr" firing on U.S. troops. Apparently photographer Joao Silva and the editors at the Times think it's just fine to allow someone to attempt to kill our troops while they go for a good picture. Even...

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Not to be confused with "Rolling Thunder" which is a different matter entirely, a group of Hollywood anti-war protestors, including Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon (among the usual suspects), are planning their latest anti-war stunt. This time, they're planning a "rolling fast". Apparently, for those who aren't willing to risk the downsides of a real hunger strike, a "rolling fast" allows you to get the political and social credit for your protest, without any of that nasty risk of weight loss, malnutrition...

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Question...why is it that it was imperative that we find out who in the White House "leaked" the identity of Valerie Plame to the media (I use the quotes because left unresolved has been the question of whether Plame actually had covert status at the time, and because of the fact that no crime has been alleged in the case relating to illegally leaking classified information), and yet attempting to discover who at the CIA leaked uncontestably classified information regarding the NSA wiretapping program...

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In a remarkable, if not surprising, revelation of the arrogance of the management of the New York Times, Times public editor (i.e. - the guy who's job it is to keep the NYT honest in the wake of things like the Jayson Blair scandal) Byron Calame writes that he has been completely stonewalled by management in his attempts to get more information on the questionable timing of their story on the NSA domestic eavesdropping story. The timing is important for a couple of reasons, not the least of which...

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Buried deep within a Times UK story on the grossly corrupt Iraq 'oil-for-food' program , amid revelations that yet more 'oil-for-food' money has been traced to the estranged wife of British anti-war zealot George Galloway, is the following interesting tidbit: The report found that Marc Rich & Co financed oil purchases from Iraq and the associated kickbacks for the son of a French MP shortly after the company’s founder received a controversial pardon from President Clinton. One assumes that this...

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Apparently Fred Phelps is still at it . This unbelievably disgusting excuse for a human being is apparently showing up at and disrupting military funerals to insist that God is punishing the U.S. for harboring homosexuals. This man and his followers are hateful and foul, and I think it should be fair to say that if there's anything that both Right and Left should be able to agree upon, it's that jerks like this should be shamed, shunned, and probably (though one wouldn't want to encourage law-breaking...

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...there's the news that the Sheehan 24x7 media blitz is being funded by a group called True Majority, funded by B&J's Ben Cohen. Also of note in the article is the fact that when the "Cindy you don't speak for me" tour of military wives and moms who support the Iraq war arrives in Crawford, Sheehan won't meet with them with reporters present: The "You don't speak for me" group is expected to be in Crawford on Saturday. Sheehan said today she'll welcome to meet with her without reporters present...

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The money quote:

I think that calling for "more troops" is a way to criticize while not sounding weak, and that it thus has an appeal that overcomes its uncertain factual foundation.

Pretty much what I've been thinking. Read the whole thing, which also includes some on-target quotes from Kevin Drum.

That's a question I think we need to ask ourselves in the wake of the recent reporting on the Marine who is being accused of “war crimes” for shooting an insurgent who was apparently feigning death, perhaps in an attempt to ambush the Marine and his companions. And the question isn't about whether looking after an embedded reporter is a burden that endangers our troops. It's a question of whether the next Marine is going to hesitate when making a decision about whether to kill the enemy...

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From The Belmont Club : One of the situational dangers of the battlefield was illustrated by the death of a California Marine. The Mercury News reports: Marine Lance Cpl. Jeramy Ailes, 22, of Gilroy was killed Monday in Al-Fallujah by small arms fire. "They had finished mopping up in Fallujah and they went back to double-check on some insurgents. From what we gathered, somebody playing possum jumped up and shot him ,'' said his father, Joel Ailes, who learned of his death Monday evening. "It's extremely...

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If you have any doubts about whether the media is being misleading in its reporting on a Marine in Fallujah who killed a wounded (and, according to the embedded reporter, unarmed), you should read the letter from a Marine that was posted on Powerline blog. I'll be the first to admit that I don't know all the facts of what went on. But if it's true that these terrorists are in the habit of feigning surrender or death, only to blow themselves to bits in an attempt to take out those who fall for their...

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That's the conclusion of a study by Harvard professor of Public Policy Alberto Abadie, of the John F. Kennedy School of Government. Some interesting points in the article: Before analyzing the data, Abadie believed it was a reasonable assumption that terrorism has its roots in poverty, especially since studies have linked civil war to economic factors. However, once the data was corrected for the influence of other factors studied, Abadie said he found no significant relationship between a nation...

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That's the title of a CD due in stores today, according to a story in the Washington Post Style section (link may require registration). I'm sure that the timing of the article is coincidental and has nothing to do with the election (yes, that was sarcasm), but what's particularly striking about the article, and indeed the CD itself, is what it illustrates about the worldview of those who oppose President Bush. The basics of the story are that a Norwegian music producer heard Bush's “Axis of...

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...at least more forcefully: Kerry and Edwards have a demonstrated track record of treating foreign policy as a popularity contest. Cheney hit on this somewhat in his discussion of their Iraq policy in the face of the anti-war views of Howard Dean, but he did not adequately make the connection with Kerry's current statements on Iraq and the “global test” and Edward's insistence on defending this silliness. Despite both Kerry and Edwards' claims that they would not provide another country...

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...allies don't set you up with faked documents (something that Dan Rather should be thinking about these days). From Ed Morrissey over at Captain's Quarters , a report from the London Telegraph on the source of the fake Niger documents that were initially part of the case for war with Iraq: The Italian businessman at the centre of a furious row between France and Italy over whose intelligence service was to blame for bogus documents suggesting Saddam Hussein was seeking to buy material for nuclear...

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I'm practically speechless. Moments ago, I watched former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright claim (with a straight face, no less) that the Bush administration was responsible for North Korea getting nuclear weapons. The claim came in response to a question from Meet the Press host Tim Russert. Albright claimed that the responsiblity lies with the Bush administration because, according to her, they failed to continue the negotiations that the Clinton administration had been conducting with the...

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I know that I shouldn’t be surprised at anything a terrorist would do, but taking a school full of children hostage beggars belief. Churches are not safe, Temples and graveyards are used as staging areas, and now schoolchildren are considered legitimate targets: Kazbek Dzantiyev, head of the North Ossetia region's Interior Ministry, said that the hostages have threatened "for every destroyed fighter, they will kill 50 children and for every injured fighter - 20 (children)," the ITAR-Tass news...

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Neal Boortz describes the view from his hotel (link includes a photo): Perhaps the best rooms in NYC during the next four days are the west-facing rooms of this hotel. All we need to do is to walk over to the window to see why what will take place in this city this week is so important. Almost three thousand people died right across the street, victims of hate-filled Muslims with a driving desire to kill. Someone standing in this very window on a Tuesday morning a little more than 1000 days ago would...

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This is sad for the French, and these journalists will be in our prayers, but it needs to be said: the kidnapping of two French journalists in Iraq makes it eminently clear that no one is immune from these fanatics, not even those who opposed the Iraq war, and who refuse to participate in the post-war military efforts. All it takes is to do something that does not fit with their worldview. In the case of France, this was banning Muslim headscarves in schools. So the next time someone tells you that...

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According to a story reported by AFP , there are doubts being raised about building a case against Saddam Hussein, in part because witnesses may still be afraid to testify against him for fear that they and their families might be targeted for revenge. Now, I suspect that this report is overblown, and that Saddam will be tried, found guilty, and punished (and if justice is to be done, probably executed). But if you want to understand the major difference between the foreign policies of Bush and Kerry...

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…between al Qaeda and Iraq? Think again . (It’s a long article, but worth the read)...

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Assuming this story is being reported accurately, there are some people in San Francisco who need to find better ways to deal with their anger, or face some jail time. The story discusses a San Fran gallery owner who was threatened and assaulted after displaying a painting that seems to be a critical study of the prisoner abuse at Abu Graib. Having not seen the painting, I can’t comment on its contents, but apparently many people objected, including one who spit in the gallery owner’s...

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An article in National Review on Kerry’s stance on terrorism provides some interesting food for thought. For example, the article recalls Kerry’s claim some weeks ago that President Bush had “exaggerated” the threat of terrorism. Now, however, in the wake of Richard Clarke’s testimony before the 9-11 commission, Kerry is jumping on Clarke’s testimony to claim that the Bush administration didn’t take terrorism seriously enough, and hasn’t done enough...

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French lawyer 'to defend Saddam' That’s just too rich…first, the French accept bribes from the U.N. oil-for-food program, and threaten vetos in the Security Council to keep their sugar daddy Saddam in power, and now this. Do the French know no shame where this monster is concerned? Yes, I know it’s unfair to tar all the French with the brush of a single loathsome lawyer willing to defend a mass murderer, but doesn’t it sort of figure he’d be French? via Drudge...

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Claudia Rosette reports in National Review Online that the U.N. is finally acceding to demands for an independent investigation of the wholly corrupt oil-for-food program in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. No, it’s not shocking that there could be corruption at the U.N., nor is the extent of the corruption, or the fact that there were clearly some members of the Security Council allowing their votes to be bought for the price of some juicy oil contracts (“no blood for oil”? Guess that...

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Robert Kagan and Bill Kristol completely destroy the argument that the fact that we have not found stockpiles of WMDs in Iraq proves that the war was not justified, or was fought on the basis of a lie, in an article in the Weekly Standard . It’s a long article, but well worth the read, for anyone who needs to be reminded that the threat wasn’t just the WMDs, that the threat posed by Iraq was recognized by the Clinton administration, that it has been U.S. policy to work for regime change...

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In a full-page ad in today’s Washington Post A section, MoveOn.org and Win Without War assert that “He Knew”. That is, they assert that President Bush knew that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, and that he nonetheless took us to war…a war, the ad asserts, that was decided on before the attacks on September 11 th , 2001 ever took place. To support their assertions, they repeat an oft-repeated lie of the left. Let’s take these one at a time: · “Bush...

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With the recent news that the chemical weapon ricin was found in a Senate office mailroom, in a letter addressed to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, it’s been interesting to watch the media dance surrounding the issue. Early this morning (before anyone could possibly know one way or another) came reports from unnamed “government officials” who said they think it’s probably a domestic group that’s responsible, because ricin doesn’t bear the signature of al qaeda...

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Earlier this month, I wrote about flip-flops by politicians , to the effect that expecting consistency from politicians was a fairly unrealistic expectation, and that changing views on issues are not intrinsically bad, assuming they’re motivated by principle, or by changing facts. One thing I didn’t say (since it seemed obvious) is that one clearly bad type of flip-flop is the one that insults our intelligence. Wesley Clark’s position on the war in Iraq is precisely this sort of...

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Ole notes another instance of: Want to see an example of CNN anti-Israeli bias? Check out this headline: Israelis kill Palestinian, another dies in explosion. Read the story to find out the Palestinian in question was lighting a Molotov cocktail, and the explosion was a suicide bomber whose explosives detonated prematurely. Horrible. The bias is so evident, it probably backfires. I hope so. [ Critical Section ] I hope Ole’s right about the bias backfiring, but unfortunately, I don’t think...

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According to an article on CNN.com, a raid in the Baghdad area netted a "significant weapons cache" that included, of all things, al Qaeda literature and videotapes. I'm sure that the usual suspects will claim that this is simply evidence that the U.S. liberation of Iraq has only resulted in hightened terrorism in the area, but for my money it's yet another indication that those who claimed that Iraq and al Qaeda weren't working together -- and never would due to ideological differences -- were flat...

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Jonah Goldberg of National Review Online asked today for suggestions of the most overreported stories of the year, both in the “political” category, as well as the “pop-culture” category. He also asked for suggestions for the most overreported story of the year. While I'm sure there are many good candidates for underreported stories of the year, nothing occurred to me immediately, but I was hit with (figuratively) the answer to the most overreported story of the year: SARS. Unless you were living...

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Those are the words reportedly spoken to Italian PM Sylvio Berlusconi by none other than Gaddafi, according to the UK Telegraph: A spokesman for Mr Berlusconi said the prime minister had been telephoned recently by Col Gaddafi of Libya, who said: "I will do whatever the Americans want, because I saw what happened in Iraq, and I was afraid." Assuming the report is true, that's an even clearer indicator that Bush's policy of pre-emption has paid dividends well beyond eliminating the threats posed by...

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CNN is carrying a story about a new audio tape said to be from al Qaeda. Nothing new there, we seem to get these on a regular basis. But what is new, and very interesting, is that the voice on the tape is not that of Osama bin Laden. Rather, the voice is said to be that of al Qaeda's #2 man, Ayman al-Zawahiri. Now I can think of a few possible explanations for this off the top of my head: Given the recent capture of Saddam Hussein, OBL is laying low. OBL is dead, captured, or otherwise incapacitated...

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In a front-page editorial...oh, sorry...” analysis ”, the Washington Post completely misreads the recent announcement by Libya that they will voluntarily give up their WMD programs. The subhead for the analysis piece reads “ Two Decades of Sanctions, Isolation Wore Down Gaddafi ”. While it may be true that sanctions and isolation played some small part in motivating Gaddafi to admit the existence of, and pledge to dismantle, his WMD programs, one would have to be rather short-sighted to miss the...

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