The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler

2007-10-26T10:49:00.000-05:00

Dusting off the HQ

Still here.

2007-08-04T22:31:00.000-05:00

Testing... Testing

This is a test post to see if the old Imperial Headquarters are still working which, it would appear, it is.

I have no clue what is going on with HM right now, but they were having a major outage with servers out all over the board, so I'm sure they're more than busy fixing it right now.

2003-10-21T20:40:00.000-05:00

Welcome to the Bunker!

This is where His Imperial Majesty will be sulking around in the future, should his new host be temporarily inconvenienced.

You might want to avoid this site in those cases, though, since His Majesty's already obnoxious temper is very likely to be even more repulsively repugnant, should such a situation occur.

2002-10-03T14:13:00.000-05:00

The Rott Has Moved!

Yes, dear readers, my journey to the Dark Side™ has been completed and I am now free of the yoke of Blogger™.

That being said, I would like to extend my thanks to Ev of Blogger™ for providing his services for free, a service without which I would most likely never have started blogging.

I would also be much amiss if I didn't extend my heartfelt thanks to each and every one of you who, by your reading my rants and coming back to read more, have encouraged me to stay in the business and take the next logical step.

Thank you, all of you!

In the future, my rants and raves can be found at:

www.nicedoggie.net

Or, alternatively, please click here.

Please edit your permalinks and bookmarks accordingly.

2002-10-02T08:25:00.000-05:00

Uh-Oh, We're In Trouble...

Well, not the "we" of the magnificent Rottie, but Paul Wright of TAANSTAFL might catch himself a bit of controversy over this post.

I have to say, though, that once you're done spurting coffee through your nose, you have to realize that he has a point: Why isn't the "Why Do They Hate Us?"-ninnies suggesting anything along those lines? Because they'd have to do the sacrificing themselves, rather than outsourcing it to the Israelis?

I report, I decide.

2002-10-02T07:53:00.000-05:00

Fiskings'R'Us

Fellow blogger and author of the rightly feared Iron Fisk Technique™, Cato the Youngest , was kind enough to point my Oppressor Nose in the direction of the latest offering from the well known Ass of a Flatulent Goat, Edward Sa'id.

Sucks monkey butt for poor ol' Eddie that his inane gibberish was snatched up by MEMRI, those "Evil Translators From Hell", at least as far as the lying Islamofascists are concerned.

Let us delve into his latest analogy, but wear full NBC protection as you go:

Not content with the Jews having a monopoly on being erm... Jews, Edward decides that the Paleosimians are the Jews of the 21st century and that Sharon is just as bad as Hitler was, which is interesting, not only for the crass stupidity and gross inaccuracy of the claim, but also considering that the Arab world otherwise seems to be in full denial with respect to the Holocaust, much like our own al-BoreBot, although, in "Big Honest Al"'s defense, you might claim that he's just, well, stupid.

So, in short, Eddie-baby is comparing the Paleosimians' fate with something that, according to his Arab brethren, never happened. Another prime example that reality is only accepted in the Arab world when it suits their purposes.

He starts off by recollecting what happened to the Jews in Europe during the 30s and 40s, which is a first for an Arab author. Somebody call Guiness, please:

"Sixty years ago, the Jews of Europe were at the lowest point of their collective existence. Herded like cattle into trains, they were transported from the rest of Europe by Nazi soldiers into death camps where they were systematically exterminated in gas ovens. They had offered some resistance in Poland, but in most places they first lost their civil status, then they were removed from their jobs, then they were designated official enemies to be destroyed, and then they were."

"In every significant instance they were the most powerless of people, treated as insidious, potentially overpowering enemies by leaders and armies whose own power was far, far greater; indeed, even the idea of Jews representing a danger to the might of countries like Germany, France, and Italy was preposterous. But it was an accepted idea, since with few exceptions most of Europe turned its back on them during their slaughter..."

Holy Moses! Truth in Arab Media???

But don't worry, Eddie is just warming up.

"Every human calamity is different, so there is no point in trying to look for equivalence between one and the other.

...but there being no point in it doesn't mean that you shouldn't do it anyways, especially if you're a mouthpiece for the Islamofascists...

But it is certainly true that one universal truth about the Holocaust is not only that it should never again happen to Jews, but that as a cruel and tragic collective punishment, it should not happen to any people at all.

#1 on the "But-Count". And true, it shouldn't happen to any people at all, which is exactly why we're doing our damndest to prevent you Bloviating Bilge Basins from creating "Holocaust, the Sequel".

But if there is no point in looking for equivalence, there is a value in seeing analogies and perhaps hidden similarities, even as we preserve a sense of proportion."

Logic, Eddie-style (and hit #2 on the "But-Counter"). If there's no point in taking the full leap into the realm of the illogic, then surely there's value in opening the door and taking a peek inside?

And he then goes on to gaily throw the "sense of proportion" that he vowed to preserve to the four winds...

Israel Makes Arafat Feel Like a Hunted Jew

"Quite apart from his actual history of mistakes and misrule, Yasser Arafat is now being made to feel like a hunted Jew by the state of the Jews.

"Quite apart from every single misdeed he's ever committed, which is the real reason that he's now holed up in the Ruins of Ramallah"... Nice going, Eddie... If I'd been as Monumentally Ignorant as your intended audience, I might even have bought it for a second.

There is no gainsaying the fact that the greatest irony of his siege by the Israeli army in his ruined Ramallah compound, is that his ordeal has been planned and carried out by a psychopathic leader who claims to represent the Jewish people.

Quite to the contrary: There is nothing but "gainsaying", you Flatulent Fuckwit of Islamicism.

For one thing, there's not any evidence that Sharon is "psychopathic", at least not by any standards employed by actual psychiatrists, for another, he does not "claim" to represent the Jewish people, he was duly elected by it in an arcane Western process known to the civilized world as "democratic elections".

I know all of this is too much for you to squeeze into the space behind your sloping forehead, but I'll be gracious and wait while you scramble to get your dictionary, Eddie.

I do not want to press the analogy too far,...

Yes you do, and you already have.

...but it is true to say that Palestinians under Israeli occupation today are as powerless as Jews were in the 1940s.

...'cept the Jews never had a habit of blowing themselves up in German Kindergartens, but let's not dwell on facts, your articles would be shortened considerably if that was to become a criterion for being published in the Arab Press...

Israel's army, air force and navy, heavily subsidized by the United States, have been wreaking havoc on the totally defenseless civilian population of the occupied West Bank and Gaza strip..."

"Wreaking havoc"?

Boy, you ain't seen havoc, and you'd better pray that the Israeli never sink as low as your Pali buddies, or you might end up actually getting a taste of it!

And what is this thing about "totally defenseless population"? I suppose that the IDF's fallen just tripped over their own feet, eh? And all of those AK-47s that your Paleosimian friends are so fond of waving and firing off into the air are nothing but fakes, shooting blanks?

And not a word about the totally defenseless Israeli civilian population on buses, in schools, in kindergartens, in pizzerias and in discos that used to be blown up on a regular basis by your "harmless, unarmed, defenseless" Pali splodeydopes, right?

'Criticism of Israeli Policy is Equated by the Zionists and their Allies with Antisemitism'

And still Sharon makes the case that Israel is struggling to survive against Palestinian terrorism.

This quite possibly because that's exactly what they're doing.

Is there anything more grotesque than this claim,

Oh yes... Here's an example:

"Islam is Peace".

even as this deranged killer of Arabs sends his F-16s, his attack helicopters and hundreds of tanks against unarmed people without any defenses at all?... As popular protests grow worldwide, the organized Zionist counter-response has been to complain that anti-semitism is on the rise... Criticism of Israeli policy is now routinely equated by the Zionists and their allies with antisemitism of the kind that brought about the Holocaust..."

"What conclusion is one to draw from all this?

That you Loonies of the Levant still don't get it and that the clock is running out... Fast!

That Israeli policy has been a disaster for the entire region.

It's only been a disaster for the nations of the region that wish Israel harm, that would like nothing more than to fulfill Adolf's dreams of an "Endlösung" to the "Jewish Problem" and I honestly don't have a problem with them experiencing a bit of "disaster".

The more powerful it becomes, the more ruin it sows in the countries around it, to say nothing of the catastrophes it has executed against the Palestinian people, and the more hated it becomes. It is power used for evil purposes, not self-defense at all.

Only if you define self-defense as "evil", which you obviously do, at least when it's Jews defending themselves.

The Zionist dream of a Jewish state being a normal state like all others has come to the vision of the leader of Palestine's indigenous people hanging on to his life by a thread,

[Snippety-snip!] Heh...

while Israeli tanks and bulldozers continue to wreck everything around him. Is this the Zionist goal for which hundreds of thousands have died?... Isn't it time for those who feel that his [i.e. Sharon's] appalling actions do not represent them to call a halt to his behavior?"

They have, and it was an impotent squeak drowned out by the roar of rigtheousness.

Now go contemplate the future, Eddie, you haven't got much left of it...

UPDATE: Oh, and while we're at comparisons of today and WWII, "Infidel" has been kind enough to send me the link some real connections between then and now.

You've gotta love the picture of Yasser Arafat's uncle discussing the "Endlösung" with "Uncle Adolf". It's priceless, I tell you.

2002-10-01T13:02:00.000-05:00

Confessions Of a Moron...

It was just brought to my attention that I'm seriously lacking in the permalink dept.

Jennie Taliaferro has now been punching out consistently great entries since March, she's a fellow Texan, she's all over various and sundry blogs' comments and yet I, in my infinite ignorance, HAVEN'T YET PERMALINKED HER.

Too many Shiners under my belt, I suppose...

Well, it's now been corrected, now all I can do is thank my Maker that she hasn't shot me dead yet.

2002-10-01T09:27:00.000-05:00

OK, THIS Needs Exposure!

And LOTS OF IT!

Remember the Chief Liar, the Inventor of the Internet, al-Gore? Of course you do.

Well, as you know, he held one of his usual drone sessions not too long ago at the Commonwealth Club. What not so many people know is that there was a Q&A session afterwards and what even less people know is that there's a link to the audio of it right here.

Why's this important?, I hear you sensibly ask.

Well, take this little tidbit, courtesy of Rachel Lucas:

"I first spoke against the regime of Saddam Hussein in the fall of 1988, soon after he used poison gas against a minority within his own people. My father's older brother had been the victim of poison gas in World War I. Because of that fact, our family's oral histories had always put a special emphasis on the horror of those weapons. And you know, that generation impressed that same lesson on peoples around the world. We went through all of World War II without poison gas being used, save in some horrible experiments in the Far East, but not used by combatants. When Saddam became the first to break that taboo, it really set off alarm bells."

I'm sure that David Irving will be delighted to know that he's gotten himself a new friend in the Democratic Party.

Those 6 million Jews?

Never happened. They died of malnutrition or tuberculosis or something, because, in the words of al-Snore, poison gas was never used "save in some horrible experiments in the Far East".

Or maybe Germany is in the "Far East" in the BoreBot's atlas? Maybe Zyklon B isn't a "poison gas"? Maybe pigs fly? Maybe the Earth really is flat?

Now go ahead and say "that's not what he meant", "he's quoted out of context" and whatever other excuses for this Blithering Babboon's Ass you can come up with, but then answer me the following question:

Why haven't the press and the EUnuchs said a teensy weensy lil' bit about how "uneducated", if not downright "stupid", al-Gore is?

Nope, no bias here, move along...

UPDATE: And speaking of the continuing deterioration of the Donks in general, Sharp Knife has quite a few well-placed jabs too. Go read it now or the Baby Jesus will cry!

2002-09-30T18:15:00.000-05:00

Taking a Snarky Break™

It seems that "The Torch" has finally admitted that he's... well... torched...:

Senator Robert G. Torricelli of New Jersey, his campaign for re-election grievously wounded by questions about his integrity, said today he was retiring from public life rather than hurt the Democratic Party.

Damn, a Donkey with an elementary grasp of Politics 101!

It's a crying shame, I tell you.

Declaring that he "could not stand the pain" if his political vulnerability cost his party control of the Senate, Mr. Torricelli said it was of paramount importance that Democrats name a worthy candidate to defeat the Republican candidate, Douglas R. Forrester, a man who "does not belong in the United States Senate."

Thanks for the advice, Mr... What was your name again?

Good thing you were available for comment on the worthiness of candidates too, otherwise I might've had to resort to the advice of Gov. Dioxin "Sellout" Davis. Of course, I could also call Reps. Thompson, McDermott and Bonior (those are excellent names for top billing on "This Week's Executions for Treason", by the way), but the long distance rates would kill me. Besides, it would be hard to understand what they're saying when they're taking Mr. Hussein "deep throat".

Gov. James E. McGreevey, who stood near Mr. Torricelli during the senator's somber appearance in Trenton, said the state Democratic Party would ask the New Jersey Supreme Court to allow Mr. Torricelli's name to be substituted on the ballot for the Nov. 5 election.

Just Say No... Of course, that's never gonna happen in that State.

Mr. Torricelli, occasionally choked with emotion as he recounted his two decades on Capitol Hill, declared that it was time for him to become a private citizen again, once he completes his first and only Senate term in January.

"You gave me the only life I ever wanted," he said, addressing his remarks to the people of New Jersey. "I gave you 20 years of my life."

...Cue violins... And could you hand me a barf bag, please?

Nor is there much about that life that he would change, he said, recalling his pride in helping to achieve social programs and environmental measures. But now, he said, he himself has become the issue.

"I will not be responsible for the loss of the Democratic majority in the United States Senate," he said. "There is just too much at issue."

Pity.

Finally he gets a chance to do some good for his country and he balks at it. But he's a Democrap, so whaddaya expect?

Mr. Torricelli's decision came after a week in which his standing plummeted in public opinion polls and he was under increasing pressure from within his own party to step aside.

The horse's head in his bed was the final straw...

Senator Torricelli met on Sunday night with Governor McGreevey at Drumthwacket, the governor's mansion in Princeton, to discuss the Senate race. That meeting was followed by a discussion, also at the governor's mansion, with Democratic Party leaders and senior elected party officials.

...and a few fish wrapped in the NYT...

Mr. Torricelli's ethics difficulties,

Translation service: This is NYT-speak for "he got caught taking bribes" when it's a Democritter. If he'd been Republican, it would've been "Mr. [insert name here]'s involvement in shady deals and alleged connections to [insert major disaster occurring before, during or possibly after his time in politics]"

which culminated this past summer when he was admonished by his colleagues for accepting gifts from a businessman, have been blamed by political analysts for the dizzying plunge in his standing with the electorate — at least if the polls are accurate. Some polls have shown Mr. Torricelli going from a double-digit lead to a double-digit trailing position in just a few weeks.

The senator said he made his decision to withdraw after talking for hours with Governor McGreevey and Senator Jon Corzine, the state's junior Democratic senator, on Sunday night in the governor's study. He said he was unswayed by Senator Tom Daschle's opinion, offered to him this morning, that he could still win.

At least he's got the good sense to wipe his ass in Tiny Tom's advice, though I wish it hadn't been so.

In September alone, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee spent $2.1 million on three television advertisements promoting Mr. Torricelli's positions on crucial voting issues in New Jersey, including abortion rights, environmental protection and gun safety.

What??? Not a word about The Children™? Oh, I forgot, his first issue sorta leaves them out.

The Forrester camp has been relentless in trying to make Mr. Torricelli's ethics the main campaign issue, and Mr. Torricelli has responded in kind.

Evil mean 'publicans! Here's the honorable Mr. Torricelli, nobly speaking about abortions for everyone (sadly, abortion was not an option when his mother was pregnant), close off the environment to everyone and only allow criminals to have guns and that EEEEEEEEEEEEvil Mr. Forrester questions his ethics? Oh, the HUMANITY!!!

And don't forget the lovely "and Mr. Torricelli has responded in kind"... He didn't start it... He was forced to! Mamaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!

As recently as Friday, Mr. Torricelli was vowing to keep pounding away at Mr. Forrester. "I must say I cannot respect a man who seems to have so little regard for the issues that are important to the people of New Jersey," he said in an interview with The Record of Hackensack.

I must say, however, that I cannot respect an Idiotarian who attempts to monopolize on "what's important for the poor, ignorant masses of New Jersey". It seems the good people of New Jersey tend to agree with me.

Throughout his political career Mr. Torricelli showed a flair for self-promotion, fund-raising and hardball partisan politics.

That's NYT-speak for "bragging, taking bribes from anyone with a briefcase full of money and lying about the opponent", when it's a Donk they're talking about.

I kinda wish that the slimeball would've stayed around for a Fisking at the polls, but I guess there's still a possibility that the wholly owned subsidiary of the Donk party, the judiciary of New Jersey, put a stop to his withdrawal.

2002-09-30T08:45:00.000-05:00

Public Service Announcement:

If the Free Icecream Cones seem a little smaller these days, my dear and loyal readers, I ask you humbly to bear with me.

I'm currently working on an erm... "project" and I promise I'll work my way back to speed soon.

In the meantime, please continue checking in (I'm not totally gone) and don't hesitate to make use of the list of Very Fine Blogs™ on the left side of the page.

Thank you.

2002-09-29T22:50:00.000-05:00

Well, That Settles It...

The Democraps are committing political suicide.

Reps. Mike Thompson (D-Baghdad) and Jim McDermott (D-Tikrit) [pictured above] along with Rep. David Bonior (D-Mosul) let Saddam Hussein's dick slip out of their mouths for long enough to go on the record as bottom-feeding traitors to their own country.

There can be no doubt that these three stooges are guilty of "aiding and abetting an enemy of the United States" and, as to the "two witnesses requirement", I think that one will be easy to meet as well.

Of course, as we all know from the Administration's limp-wristed, milque-toast, feckless stance on the issue of treason, they won't even get a slap on the wrist for their assistance in trying to get millions of innocent Americans killed, but I just want these three filthy scumbags to know that, whereas our own Administration may be a bunch of yellow-bellied panderers to polls, there are quite a few of us not thusly inhibited.

2002-09-29T19:28:00.000-05:00

Watch My Pet Comment Troll Dance...

I got one and he's dancing all over these comments!

Sadly, this specimen is unforgivably incompetent and pathetic, even by Loony Left standards, so I guess I'll have to wait some more for a better catch.

In the meantime, I'll just console myself by watching "Bob" bleeding to death from self-inflicted wounds to his feet.

2002-09-28T22:02:00.000-05:00

Grady Makes a Promise That He'll Soon Retract...

Grady Olivier of Kumbaya HQ "fame" restates his promise that he'll prove himself not a "chickenblogger" by going to Iraq as a human shield. Of course, being the Lefty Loon that he is, there are conditions attached, said conditions being that an equal number of "chickenhawk" warbloggers accompany him to the sandy wastelands of Iraq.

I'm in. I've stated this from the very beginning of the war that I'd be happy to jump back into my fatigues if only the Gov't would ease up on their demand that re-enlisters be under the age of 35, a demand that I cannot meet.

There are many reasons why my government should show some leniency on my behalf. For one thing, I've got something that most of the kids currently in uniform don't have, namely experience. Now I'm not belittling their sacrifice, far from it. I was one of them once and they will get experience with time and, no matter what, I salute each and every one of them for putting themselves on the line for the country that they love. They've all got more worth in their individual little fingers than all of the civilian chickens combined.

But one thing I will say is that, whereas they're currently in their prime, at the very beginning of their lives, I've already enjoyed the fruits of life more than they have. I have a wonderful wife, a great job and two awesomely adorable little boys. To put it bluntly, I could go to my grave right now and don't feel cheated, 'coz I've had it all. I would love to enjoy it until I'm at least a hundred, but if I had to choose between a kid of 19 and myself, I'd punch the ticket myself immediately.

So I'm not afraid to die. I don't want to, there's too much left for me to experience, but I'm not afraid. I've been blessed with everything I've ever hoped for and more and I'd be happy to give whatever remains of my life to ensure that my sons have the same opportunities that I've had.

I love my wife, I love my children and it's because of that unconditional love, not in spite of it, that I'd gladly lay down my life to protect them.

Your move, Grady, you cowardly fuck...

UPDATE: I have just filed an additional request for re-enlistment with the U.S. Army, hoping for a positive reply this time. I'll keep you updated. See you in Baghdad, Grady!

2002-09-28T20:28:00.000-05:00

The Presidential Campaign For 2004 is Heating Up

...and, for once, it's got a candidate I can endorse, the one and only Laurence Simon.

I know, I know... I must be the last person in the Blogosphere™ to post about this, but that's your Rottie for you: Always last with the first or something along those lines.

As a matter of fact, the reason that I haven't yet trumpeted my support all over this place is that I've been busy sulking and feeling slighted that he didn't nominate me for any positions in his cabinet. Luckily for me, I realized that this behavior was turning me into a right wing version of the whiny brat Al Gore, and I decided to pull myself out of the swamp by my proverbial bootstraps, wake up and smell the coffee and come out of the closet (and quit using senseless metaphors, but I had to scratch that one. After all, senseless metaphors are my raison d'etre).

However, the talented and erudite Lynn Sislo immediately saw my stellar potential and promptly nominated me for Secretary of State.

She's right, you know, I'm definitely the right man (or dog) for that position.

Foreign Relations might not improve a whole lot with me as Chief of Foggy Bottom, but lets face it: They aren't to great to begin with and we mostly don't give a sh*t anyways. What I can promise is that, during the Simon Administration, the EUnuchs will learn to know their roles and shut their holes and any and all tin pot dictators who dare call my office will be promptly redirected to the speaking clock of Nuuk, so they'd better start brushing up on their Esquimeaux right now!

Furthermore, I promise that every time a whiny Fuckwit from some third grade socialist shithole of Idiotarianism calls me and threatens us with some sort of backlash in "international opinion", I'll promptly answer "and we should care about this because?"

So there you have it: Misha for Sec-of-State, finally somebody who knows how to say "sod off" in several foreign languages...

2002-09-28T19:35:00.000-05:00

From the Department of "Too Much Information", or "TMI":

The lovely Shell finally opens up and lets us menfolks in on the mysteries of what's going on behind that door with "Women" stamped on it.

I guess it's just as well that I never bothered to invest in one of those wireless miniature cameras... (I'm KIDDING, dammit!)

2002-09-28T19:30:00.000-05:00

I Love Short and Pithy Comments...

...and I wish that I could do it myself, but instead I tend to go off on long-winded rants containing pretty much anything that happens to trip somewhere in my mind and fall out my mouth...

Random Nuclear Strikes, however, seems to have it down to a fine art in his observations about Kumbaya HQ:

Now, I have lurked at WBW quite a bit, and posted a few times. Today, for the first time, I noticed their slogan (right below the hidden faced terrorist guy who is apparently their mascot), which reads:

Ideas are also weapons

In that case, these guys are definitely going into battle unarmed.

Short, accurate and to the point.

I'm taking notes here.

2002-09-28T19:18:00.000-05:00

Looks Like We're Finally Getting Ready to Roll...

As you all know by now, the Turks apprehended a cabbie trucking around 33lbs of weapons-grade uranium some 155 miles away from the border of Iraq.

I can already hear the entire Loony Left going into deep denial and trying to come up with a link to oiiiiiiiiiiiiiilllll for this one.

Sure, this one was caught, but that doesn't mean very much, really. What his sashaying around the Turkish countryside with this lethal load does imply is that it's far from paranoid to assume that Saddam's gotten his hands on some already or, at the very least, will eventually.

It's in your hands now, Dubya: Either we roll, RIGHT FUCKING NOW, or you'll live on in infamy as the impotent limp-wrister who sat by and listened to world opinion while the slaughter of millions of Americans was being planned.

Your choice.

UPDATE: From the "tee-hee" Dept.: I'm sure that the fat old alkie and cowardly fuck Ted Kennedy is beginning to wish that it was his girlfriend and not he who made it out of the icy Chappaqua waters, having made this statement just hours before the Turks made the arrest.

UPDATE the 2nd: So now there's much less of the stuff than originally reported, just a few grams, actually. Hmm... First it's 33 lbs, then it's not weapons-grade after all, now it's only a few ounces and it's still supposedly worth $5 million? And the Turkish authorities are "still investigating whether it was destined for a neighboring country". True, we may not know that yet, but I find it highly unlikely that the cab driver was just taking a local nuclear plant's uranium rods for a ride 'round the countryside. I may not be an engineer, but I haven't ever heard of that being standard practice.

Ultimately it doesn't matter. What this incident proves is that there is uranium floating around on the black market and this particular batch happened to be "floating around" uncomfortably close to a country run by a certified genocidal lunatic. What I'm left wondering is how much of the stuff hasn't been intercepted by authorities and how much of it is still on its way to Iraq.

And rather than sitting around waiting to find out, I suggest we go in immediately and render the question moot by pounding Saddam and his acolytes into a fine paste.

2002-09-27T22:06:00.000-05:00

Ann Coulter, Hot or Not?

...and no, I'm not going to be talking about her looks, because they matter as little to me as her shoe size.

All the Cool Kids are talking 'bout her, so I thought I'd finally come around and offer my silly 2 cents on the matter too. Peer pressure, running dog lackey, you name it, I'm it.

It seems to have become quite fashionable in the Right Wing Blogosphere to single Ann out for derision. I'm not quite sure if it's because of her language or if it's because some Right Wingers aren't quite comfortable in their Right Wing skins and would like some scapegoat that they can take out their anger on so's to be able to say "look, I don't agree with everything the Righties say" (in which case they can just hobble on back to the Left where they rightfully (pun intended) belong, as far as I'm concerned), or if it's because they're really, honestly upset by her use of invective, in which case they can do the same.

Now let it be known that I sometimes find Ann crude in her remarks (such as the remark about wishing that Timothy McVeigh had hit the NYT instead, a remark she herself immediately acknowledged was out of line), but I am not going to use her as a whipping-gal to satisfy a vain urge to be accepted among the PC crowd.

I'm not PC, I never have been and I never will, and I steadfastly refuse to be lured into the snare of moderating my language to sound "reasonable". If I'm pissed off, I'm pissed off and I want whoever's listening to me to know that I'm pissed off! I offer no apologies, no moderation, no "well that wasn't nice". If that's what you're looking for, go talk to a professional pol who depends on his use of PC language for a living, 'coz I ain't offering.

I will be happy to go on the record as saying "that remark about the NYT was awful and I certainly wouldn't want the fate of the WTC visited upon anybody (with Islamofascists as the possible exception), no matter how much I disagree with them", but I will not go through an idiotic song and dance about denouncing her in general because of a few heated remarks just to appease the Leftie Loons who keep claiming that we approve of anything a Conservative says.

I wouldn't cross the street to piss on a Leftie Loon if his pants were on fire, so I certainly won't smear one of the most intelligent, erudite Conservatives that we have as a sacrificial lamb to people that I respect less than the crap I scrape off the soles of my shoes on a daily basis.

And I won't be a condescending prick towards my fellow conservatives in assuming that anybody with an IQ above room temperature doesn't know that Ann didn't literally wish for a jet liner to crash into Pravda on the Hudson.

And that brings me to the fresh controversy about Fisking™ as a legitimate form of argument.

Bargarz brought it up (at least that's where I caught the whiff of it) and he referred to a post by the Brothers Volokh where they (or he, being Eugene) debate the effectiveness or legitimacy of the method.

Now I like the Volokhs, but if the point they're trying to get at is that you can't use invective in criticism, as in "Queensbury Rules" for dissent, then they can go heartily screw themselves. I do agree that critique that never rises above the level of "you're stupid" is useless, but I refuse vehemently to abide by a set of arbitrary PC "rules" for what words I can use to criticize my opponents.

If they're, in my opinion, ass-licking, boot-kissing sons of bitches, I reserve the right to say that they are. If it hurts their sensitive feelings, then so be it. I don't give an Islamofascist fuck.

I make sure, just as any other "Fisker™" that I know of, that I link to the original that I'm Fisking™, so's my readers can jump to it and decide for themselves whether I've crossed the line or not. If they think that I'm being too rough on the Fiskee™, then they can go read Mr. Rogers for all that I care, I won't miss 'em.

I hate "PC" with a passion and if I don't accomplish anything else in this life than to let my readers know that I mean what I say and that I say what I mean, then I'll be satisfied, PC be damned.

If you don't like it, then piss off, and don't let the door kick you in your hypersensitive butts on the way out.

And that's all I have to say on that subject, at least for now...

2002-09-27T20:47:00.000-05:00

"Squashing of Dissent" at Kumbaya HQ?

Question for today, or something.

I was alerted a while ago to the fact that a faithful reader and fellow Anti-Idiotarian of mine who goes by the handle "Infidel" seemingly had his posts deleted at Kumbaya HQ, one of the most notorious Fisking Pools™ on the web.

At first I didn't think all that much of it. Kumbaya HQ, after all, has the same commenting system that I do, "Haloscan", and they were having some problems which caused posts to disappear and re-appear pretty much like the al-BoreBot's political views or lack thereof, so I honestly thought that that was the explanation.

I did make a mental note of it, however, and, once Haloscan's trouble were over, "Infidel"'s posts continued to disappear for no good reason at all.

"Infidel" inquired about this with the Kumbaya head honchos and they assured him that they'd never resort to a thing as vile as that, but the fact remains: His posts are disappearing. Thus I was left with the following logical possibilities:

They were lying through their teeth when they denied "censoring" his posts.

Why they would be is a mystery to me. For one thing, it's their website and they most certainly have every right in the book to edit and/or delete any posts they want to. I still reserve that right myself. I haven't yet seen anybody push the envelope far enough to convince me that I should (and it would take some doing) and I hope I never will. I don't mind people disagreeing with me, in fact I welcome it, and I certainly don't mind people using the invective that I'm so fond of using myself against me. But it's still their right, as it is mine, and I would definitely tell people if I did use that right.

Another thing is: If they're really "censoring" his posts, then how come I'm not being "censored" too, not to mention the horde of other commentors publically Fisking™ them on a public basis?

That leaves me with option

They are not "censoring" anybody, but someone is. In that case, I'd suggest that they look into who that might be.

After all, it's not exactly helpful for a site that keeps yammering about "squashing of dissent" if it looks like they're doing just that themselves.

2002-09-27T16:36:00.000-05:00

It's Official At Last:

The blithering blister of bovine bloviations, Ramsey Clark, has finally lost the last two remaining cracked marbles:

July 29, 2002

Dear Ambassador,

Any remaining hope the peoples of the United Nations have to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war through the United Nations would be crushed by another United States attack on Iraq.

...That has to be the most horrible attempt at mangling the English language that I've seen in a long time, not to mention that it makes no sense at all.

So the future of World Peace (which is, reportedly, good for Children and Other Living Things™) hinges upon whether or not the US goes to war against Saddam or not? Impressive. Amazing that he couldn't find it in himself to get Global Warming™ in there too, but maybe that's due to him being the main cause of it with all the hot air that he's blowing...

What about the hopes of succeeding generations of Americans, such as hoping that they might never again have to witness a 9/11 or worse? These are, of course, irrelevant, especially to a former Attorney General of a Democrap administration. Well, at least this one is not directly responsible of burning American children.

Threats to attack, invade and overthrow the government of Iraq by President George Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, various cabinet officers and Pentagon officials have been routine for a year.

...and a sizable portion of the American population, who are all just itching to go...

The psychological warfare is itself a crime against peace and violates the U.N. Charter.

It is? Well, in that case, Saddam should perhaps reconsider his numerous threats against the US and her allies. Perhaps he should reconsider the wisdom of trying to assassinate a former President, perhaps he should reconsider the genius in being involved with bombing the WTC...

Today's front-page headline story in the New York Times, "U.S. Exploring Baghdad Strike As Iraq Option," is typical of the in terrorem intention of the threats. The danger to civilian life in Baghdad from such a strike would be enormous.

Apart from the fact that the only ones likely to hear of this in Iraq are the members of Saddams junta, and I most certainly don't have a problem with them shitting their pants, I don't see why the allegedly "terrified" Iraqi population aren't leaving Baghdad in droves, then.

THE UNITED NATIONS MUST ACT TO PREVENT AN ATTACK BY THE UNITED STATES AGAINST IRAQ

I think so too. Because it would be the last act ever of that odious body of dictators.

If the United Nations is unable to restrain the United States, a permanent member of the Security Council, from committing crimes against peace and humanity as well as war crimes against a nation that has already been violated by the U.S. beyond endurance,

...as mandated by the UN itself, one should add.

then what is the United Nations worth?

Don't get me started on what the UN is worth, please, I'm fresh out of vitriol... At any rate, I happen to have the total amount stuffed somewhere behind the back seat of my car. Let me go get it.

At the very least, opposition to any attack or attempt to overthrow the government of Iraq by force must be publicly expressed by the United Nations.

Oh NO! Not the Furious Scowl™!!! Please! Will nobody think of The Children™?

I think that you just got a demonstration of the UN's "worth".

THE UNITED STATES BOMBED DEFENSELESS IRAQ MERCILESSLY FOR FORTY-TWO DAYS IN 1991

Well, guess what, Ramsey-boy? Wars aren't being fought by Queensbury Rules. We don't have to sit by until the enemy has built up a force equal to our own before pummeling the shit out of them.

Besides, the "defenseless" Iraqis would've been a whole lot less "defenseless" if their jet jockeys hadn't taken off to hide in Iran and if their troops hadn't been preoccupied with performing a "French Advance" along the Highway of Death. The ones that weren't busy surrendering to army cooks and CNN news crews, that is.

The U.S. led and glorified the massive assault on Iraq in January and February 1991. The Pentagon announced it conducted 110,000 aerial sorties against the defenseless "cradle of civilization,"

For once the sneer quotes are highly appropriate.

The baby has grown up, left the cradle, moved out and never calls anymore.

dropping 88,500 tons of bombs. The widespread bombing destroyed the economic viability of the civilian society throughout the nation.

More importantly, it destroyed the military viability of the Butcher of Baghdad.

It killed tens of thousands of Iraqi citizens and others. A major part of the bombing was directed at civilians and civilian facilities.

Sure it was, Ramsey. I remember clearly how everybody was briefed on how to avoid wasting munitions on military target so's not to let one single "baby milk factory" go untouched.

It was less accurate than the recent indiscriminate attacks in Afghanistan.

That would make it... lemme see... "hyper-indiscriminate"? "super-indiscriminate"? "extra-plus-grand-indiscriminate With Cheese!"?

U.S. bombs destroyed Iraqi water systems, electric power transmission, communications, transportation, manufacturing, commerce, agriculture, poultry and livestock, food storage facilities, markets, fertilizer and insecticide production, business centers, archeological and historical treasures, apartment houses, residential areas, schools, hospitals, mosques, churches and synagogues.

Ahhh... I remember that too... The world famous Jewish Quarter of Baghdad with its towering synagogues, sadly no more thanks to the Evil Mairkins precision-bombing anybody spotted wearing a yarmulke.

As to the civilian facilities that really were hit, I've got a hint for Saddam, Ramsey and Scott Ritter, the goat-felching menages-a-trois of Tikrit and burbs:

Sticking your military facilities smack in the middle of residential areas is a very bad idea. It's also against the 4th Geneva Convention, a document that Ramsey and the rest of the Loony Left studiously avoid mentioning, except for the odd out-of-context excerpt. It's an actual War Crime, you know.

The Pentagon stated its casualties were 156. One third were from "friendly fire"; the rest were accidental. The U.S. had no combat casualties.

Damn good job, if you ask me.

Of course, the friendly fire incidents were nothing short of tragedies and I wish dearly that they'd never happened, but it says a lot about the capabilities of your own Army, compared to that of the enemy, when your likelihood of being shot by the enemy is infinitely smaller than of being shot by mistake by your own.

THE UNITED STATES FORCED THE IMPOSITION OF GENOCIDAL SANCTIONS ON IRAQ IN 1990

Of course we did. We positively had to shove the sanctions down the throats of the UN, ignoring vetoes and cries of outrage left, right and center.

I often find myself wondering what color the sky is in Ramsey and his fellow Idiotarians' world?

The U.S. crafted economic sanctions against Iraq which the Security Council approved on August 6, 1990, the 45th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima.

This coincidence is significant because... erm... well it IS, dammit!

Those sanctions are the direct cause of the very cruel deaths of more than a million people.

Nope. The direct cause of those deaths (that aren't even approaching "more than a million") is Saddam's unwillingness to use the more than 30 billion dollars that have been flowing into Iraq since the Gulf War for anything except palaces, weapons of mass destruction and race horses for his retarded hell-spawn Uday.

This is the greatest crime against humanity, in the last decade of the most violent century in history.

It certainly is a crime, but oddly enough you seem hell-bent on protecting the criminal... Well, birds of a feather, I suppose...

Each painful death of an individual wasting away--from malnutrition; Kwashiorkor; the rush of dehydration from contaminated water and from diseases was preventable.

And yet the UN chose to sit on its hands for a decade while Saddam was starving his own people (the ones he weren't gassing).

The sanctions continue to this time to cause hundreds of deaths each day.

That's the, let's see, the third time you say that. It still isn't true, Ramsey. Have you been channeling the ghost of Goebbels again? Bad boy, I told you not to do that! Now go to your room and sulk with Scott and don't let me hear that nonsense again!

Every United Nations agency dealing with food, health and children--including FAO, WFP, WHO, UNICEF--has proclaimed the horror, magnitude and responsibility for this human catastrophe.

The great majority of the deaths caused by the sanctions...

...I HEARD THAT, Ramsey! Don't MAKE me come up there!... Sheesh... Kids nowadays...

...are infants, children, the elderly, the chronically ill and emergency medical cases. These are the people most vulnerable to polluted water, malnutrition, and the lack of medicines and medical equipment and supplies.

U.S. claims that it is the Iraqi government that is responsible for deaths from shortages of food and medicine are false.

(Sneaky little brat!) LISTEN, Ramsey! Rephrasing it won't do it either! It's STILL nonsense!

The U.S. blocked oil sales by Iraq for six years before appearing to yield to humanitarian pleas to permit oil sales to purchase food and medicine. Since 1997, when sales began, it has effectively frustrated and delayed the Oil for Food program, which does not provide sufficient income at the levels approved to stop the daily deterioration of health and growing death rates in Iraq.

It's provided $34 billion. I'd say that's a lot of Medicaid and Meals on Wheels right there, but of course, when you have to deduct necessary expenses such as nuclear reactors, biolabs and palaces, there's not a whole lot left.

Before sanctions there was virtually no malnutrition in Iraq and free hospital, health services and medicines were a model for the region. Its present system of government distribution of available food staples is a model of fairness and efficiency, lacking only in quantity and variety of food.

"He's a sadistic, child-murdering son of a bitch, but he's a fair sadistic, child-murdering son of a bitch!"

I feel so bad about wanting his head now on a spike now.

UNITED STATES MILITARY AIRCRAFT HAVE ATTACKED IRAQ AT WILL FOR ELEVEN YEARS

The U.S. has engaged in air strikes against Iraq at will since March 1991, when the massive attacks averaging one aerial sortie every 30 seconds ended.

The air strikes would have been much fewer and further between if Saddam's trigger-happy serfs would have abstained from lobbing SAMs against our boys every once and again.

Without losing a single plane, U.S. attacks have killed: cleaning personnel at the Al Rashid Hotel in Baghdad in a failed attempt to assassinate Saddam Hussein; scores of people each year in attacks on radar stations in or near the U.S.-imposed no-fly zones; all the persons aboard a U.N. helicopter shot down by U.S. aircraft; and civilians from all walks of life,

Damn those unfair Mairkins! Not losing a single plane! If they'd only hold still while Uday aims the sling shot!

...including the internationally famous artist and Director of Iraqis' National Center for Arts, Leila al Attar.

Leila al... who? Hopefully it's not the "artist" responsible for those hideous over-sized murals of the Chief Executor, because then I can only regret that it wasn't done much sooner.

IRAQ IS NOT A THREAT TO THE U.S., COUNTRIES IN THE REGION OR OTHERS

The U.S. has falsely claimed that Iraq is working to develop weapons of mass destruction to attack the U.S., Israel, its neighbors and others.

I'm sure the Kuwaitis, the Soddies (if they weren't too afraid of their own population to speak) and the Israelis would beg to differ. Somehow I don't think that the Iranis staged a phony war with Iraq just to keep attention away from domestic problems, somehow I don't think that the Kuwaitis just pretended to have been occupied by the Iraqi army and somehow I don't think that the Soddies would've invited our Armed Forces to sleep over if there hadn't been a threat.

The U.S. claimed its 1991 attacks destroyed 80% of Iraq's military capacity. The U.N. inspection efforts claimed to discover and dismantle 90% of Iraq's post-1991 capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction.

...and the Finns claim that Santa Claus comes from Finland.

No matter what, even 10% is 11% too much and I don't even want to think about what has happened to that number since Iraq, in blatant defiance of the UN, kicked the inspectors out in '98.

Iraq, its peoples and resources are exhausted. It has a "stunted" generation of children under age 10 and a debilitated population at all ages. It is the victim of the worst crime against humanity in recent decades.

Now I need that damn violin again.

Wouldn't you say that it's about time that we cleaned up the pig sty so that the Iraqi people might rejoin the human race? Of course you don't.

THE UNITED STATES IS THE GREATEST PURVEYOR OF VIOLENCE ON EARTH

Two of the highest U.N. officials responsible for U.N. weapons inspection within Iraq and a principle U.S. citizen participating in the inspections have resigned, denounced the sanctions and denied that there is a threat that Iraq will develop weapons of mass destruction.

It's a good thing you don't name names, Ramsey, because if you'd used the words "Ritter" and "principled" in the same sentence, I'd have come to your room and beat the stuffing out of you with a marinated halibut!

The U.S. has more nuclear weapons than all other nations combined as well as the most sophisticated and numerous systems for the delivery of nuclear weapons, including the Trident II submarine fleet. It possesses the greatest stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and the most advanced and extensive research in mass destruction weaponry in the world. Military spending by the U.S. exceeds that of the nine next largest budgets for war combined. President Bush has repeatedly declared the right to strike first. The U.S. attacked Hiroshima and Nagasaki with atomic bombs and continues to justify those acts.

You just made a fine case for crawling into the nearest corner and mewling "please don't hit me", didn't you?

Isn't it odd, given all of this massive weaponry and our alleged Dreams of Empire, that the Star Spangled Banner isn't flying from Casablanca to Kandahar?

You go ahead and connect the dots now, Ramsey. Here's a crayon.

The U.S. has renounced treaties controlling nuclear weapons and their proliferation; voted against the protocol enabling enforcement of the Biological Weapons Conventions; and rejected the treaty banning land mines, the International Criminal Court and virtually every other international effort to control and limit war.

Nope. We've rejected each and every effort by international unelected bodies to exert influence over our national sovereignty, for the very good reason that it would be unconstitutional.

The U.S. War Against Terrorism is a declaration of right by the U.S. to attack first--anyone, anywhere, on mere suspicion, or without excuse, unilaterally.

Actually, that right is inherent in our status as a sovereign nation and not dependent on any War on Terror.

Again, have you ever wondered why the entire world isn't a colony of the US if we're all that mean, considering our awesome power? Could it be that we don't want one shitty acre of the rest of the world? Could it be that we tend to only use power when people mess with us? Well, punk... Could it?

The U.S. wants to overthrow the government of Iraq and many others in violation of law. Unless restrained the chance for peace and global equality of economic, social, cultural and political opportunity among nations will be lost. Which government presents the greater threat to peace globally or for Mesopotamia and its neighbors--the U.S. or Iraq?

Well.. Given that we only go to war when provoked and that Iraq goes to war whenever Saddam thinks he can get away with it...

Do you have any hard questions, Ramsey dear?

AN ATTACK BY THE UNITED STATES ON IRAQ TO OVERTHROW ITS GOVERNMENT WOULD BE A FLAGRANT VIOLATION OF THE U.N. CHARTER, THE NUREMBERG CHARTER AND INTERNATIONAL LAW

If, as promised so many times, the U.S. does attack Iraq to overthrow its government, it will be the most notorious, arrogant and contemptuous violation of the Charter of the United Nations, the Nuremberg Charter and international law yet experienced, or likely hereafter.

...except perhaps for the overthrow of the Japanese and German governments back in '45, overthrows that Ramsey, presumably, also violently opposes.

Well, your friends Adolf and Tojo got themselves killed, Ramsey, and it seems that you're really scraping the bottom of the barrel trying to come up with new playmates these days.

Only absolute power unrestrained by any rule of law or standard of human decency openly taunts an intended victim as President Bush has taunted Iraq.

Is this where we're supposed to feel sorry for poor, "taunted" Saddam?

Because the U.S. has committed historic injustices against Iraq, most during his father's presidency, and still seeks dominion in the region, President Bush, his Vice President and others in his administration hate Iraq and want finally to destroy it.

I am writing this letter to you; to each U.N. Representative of a Security Council Member; the President of the General Assembly; and President Bush. This is one of a series of letters describing and protesting U.S. and UN wrongs against Iraq.

If you keep up the unintended humorous qualities of your Inane Idiocies, they might actually be read before they're sent to the shredder too.

The threatened wrong addressed here is the worst. If twelve years after its devastating aerial assault and after twelve years of genocidal sanctions, the omnipresent risk and frequent fact of random attack with the ever present stalking by U.S. aircraft and endless threats against its helpless victim, the U.S. commits its coup d'grace on the people of Iraq to the silence of the U.N. and wealthy nations of the world, human shame and impotence will doom us to ever greater violence.

Pop a Viagra™, Ramsey, that'll take care of your impotence.

As to your shame... Well, just keep the lights turned off, OK?

A U.S. ASSAULT ON IRAQ WILL CAUSE MORE AND GREATER VIOLENCE; URGENT ACTION BY THE UNITED NATIONS TO PREVENT A U.S. ASSAULT OF IRAQ IS REQUIRED

I urge you to immediately activate the United Nations, the General Assembly, the Security Council and all its agencies...

The UN's been deactivated? Is English really your first language, Ramsey?

...to denounce the continuing threats by the United States against Iraq, to demand immediate cessation of the threats and to warn the United States that an attack by it on Iraq will violate the Charter of the United Nations, international law and the friendship of all who seek peace and respect the dignity of humanity.

...not to mention the plague of frogs, don't forget the frogs!

AN ATTACK BY THE U.S. ON IRAQ WOULD VIOLATE THE CONSTITUTION AND LAWS OF THE UNITED STATES REQUIRING IMPEACHMENT, TRIAL BEFORE THE U.S. SENATE AND CRIMINAL CHARGES IN FEDERAL COURTS AGAINST PRESIDENT BUSH AND ALL OFFICIALS RESPONSIBLE

OK, this is where I just couldn't stand it anymore...

This guy used to be Attorney-friggin'-GENERAL???

An attack on Iraq by the United States would also violate the Constitution and laws of the United States and expose President Bush to impeachment by the House of Representatives under the Constitution of the United States for the highest of crimes, those against peace and humanity, to judgment by the United States Senate and trial in federal court for crimes charged.

Unfortunately in recent years our Constitution has been more honored in the breach than in faithful observance of the rights it is intended to protect for all. But the effort to hold accountable any U.S. authority who participates in an assault against Iraq will be made here by those who love their country and for that reason insist that its acts be just.

Sincerely, Ramsey Clark

Your assignment for tomorrow, Ramsey:

Read the Constitution, ALL of it, then sit down in a dark corner and hit yourself over the head with it until you pass out.

Repeat as necessary.

(Link courtesy of Midwest Conservative Journal)

2002-09-27T08:52:00.000-05:00

Laughing My @ss Off

...and surfing through the undiluted goodness that is one of the latest additions to my blogroll, the Berkeley Anti-Idiotarian Mean Mr. Mustard .

I wanted to link something from there, but it's all good so I don't know what to pick out. I'll do so anyway: This one made me snortle coffee all over my keyboard for the 245th time, so I suggest you go check it out too.

Just remember to swallow before you click on the link, in case you're currently drinking something!

My assignment for the weekend? Reading through all of this guy's archives...

2002-09-26T21:22:00.000-05:00

Common Nightmares

I just found me my own well of Idiotarian Fisking that no one, inexplicably, have yet claimed for themselves.

Of course, it's equally inexplicable why I haven't yet pounded my claim into the ground there, considering that I've known about the site's existence for quite some time...

Anyhoo, let's get down to business, shall we? The site, of course, is the dungheap of Idiotarianism known as Common Dreams, a sewer so chock-full of Unabashed Idiocy™ that it'd take an army of Anti-Idiotarians to just browse through the emissions that issue forth from there.

The article in question is about an issue near and dear to my heart: The drive to let Idiotarians go waste their useless lives protecting one of the most notorious mass murderers of our times, Saddam Hussein.

American Pacifists Descend on Baghdad
They Hope Presence Will Forestall War
by Greg Barrett

WASHINGTON -- For $2,000, you can risk your life in Baghdad.

Of course, if you sign up for Dr. Weevil's drive to pour Clorox™ into the gene pool, you can do it for free.

If you want additional perks, and if you want to be on the winning side and not end up as putrid remains on tank treads, you can go here instead. Not only will you gain the admiration and the gratitude of all Americans with more than two synapses to fire, you'll also be (Wait! There's MORE!) the last word on whether or not to use military force, at least according to Philip Snotshire and his al-Aqsa "Kick Us" Brigades, seeing as you're no longer a "chickenhawk".

Included in that price: round-trip airfare from the United States, ground transportation from Jordan to Iraq, and lodging in a $10-a-night hotel where rats gnaw on the floorboards and a cluttered basement doubles as a bomb shelter.

Not only that, you'll also be granted the right to be interred in a far off and forgotten piece of Iraq!

While the Middle East braces for war, about three dozen self-described peaceniks will rotate into Iraq on renewable 10-day visas for as long as a threat exists.

Three dozen??? That's the number of peaceniks actually willing to put their mouths where their welfare checks are?

The pacifists range in age from 25 to 77 and will put themselves in harm's way if the United States attacks Iraq.

"It is important for people serious about peace to take it as seriously as the people who engage in warfare," said Claire Evans, a delegation coordinator for Christian Peacemaker Teams, one of at least two peace groups sending volunteers to Baghdad. "We should be as willing as the soldiers to risk our lives."

I hate to say this but, misguided as they are, every one of these folks have more guts than the entire Peacenik Crowd at, say, WBW, put together.

The pacifists hope their presence in Iraq as international witnesses to record the damage -- and possibly be counted among the injured -- will persuade military planners not to bomb civilian infrastructure, a target in the rush to disable Iraq's military during the Persian Gulf War.

Of course, this is assuming that one of the foremost goals of the US Army is to pound innocent civilians into dust, which is blatantly absurd. If it was true, the entire Middle East would be radioactive glass by now. Another flawed assumption is that Saddam will use these useful idiots to protect civilian targets only, whereas we all know that he'll be placing them outside "baby milk factories" devoted to the production of Ebola or worse.

Retirees have been particularly recruited and about a dozen have agreed to go.

"It has some moral weight to have a group of people there like grandmothers and grandfathers," Evans said.

It does? I suppose it's less money we need to worry about vis-a-vis the "Social Security Lock Box".

The volunteers will work in Iraq with humanitarian agencies such as UNICEF and the Red Crescent Society. In the event of a U.S. bombing, they will try to be near likely targets such as electric plants, roads and bridges, said Kathy Kelly, co-founder of Voices in the Wilderness, a nonprofit organization sending three peacekeeping groups to Baghdad.

Kelly, who has made 16 trips to Iraq, sounds unflinching. She is driven by the tremendous collateral damage inflicted by today's weapons.

...collateral damage at a minimal level. Indeed at a level that was unheard of a mere 10 years ago. I suppose she'd much prefer if we'd go back to fire bombing.

"You can't be a vegetarian only between meals," said Kelly, 49. "And you can't be a pacifist only between wars."

She has been blunt when recruiting volunteers for this trip: "We are asking people to be able to say they have had a good life and this could be their last year."

More likely: It will be.

Retired U.S. Air Force Col. John A. Warden III, architect of the Desert Storm air campaign in 1991, calls the peace effort noble but extraordinarily naive.

"It represents a gross misunderstanding of modern war," he said.

Of course, he's a "chickenhawk"... Wait, no he's not... Erm... Wait a minnit, what's the peacenik comeback to this one?

If U.S. military officials decide that demolishing Iraqi transportation, electricity and communication is the best way to limit combat casualties, pacifists are not likely to thwart that strategy.

Which, surprise surprise, is one of the cornerstones in any strategy designed with actually winning in mind.

Still, Warden sounded awed by their effort. The closet thing to it he could recall was actress and activist Jane Fonda visiting prisoner-of-war camps in Hanoi during the Vietnam War and "making common cause with North Vietnamese communists."

This is ArmySpeak for "they're bitches that we'll give not one tiny little shit about wiping off of the face of the planet", in case you're in doubts.

But like Fonda, Warden said, Kelly and her entourages are "intruding in something they don't understand."

"It strikes me as pretty bizarre," Warden said, "that you would have Americans going to protect one of the evilest guys in the world from getting his just desserts."

...and it strikes me as pretty appropriate that we get those morons weeded out of the gene pool, even though it seems that the Saddam-felching peaceniks are doing their damndest to ensure that only non-fertile individuals are recruited.

Pacifist Tom Nagy, a professor at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., does not doubt Saddam's menace. He is not choosing sides. He only wants to stanch the suffering of innocent Iraqis who were caught in Desert Storm's crossfire, he said.

Nagy, 58, a Quaker-turned-Buddhist and father of one, leaves for Baghdad on Friday. His usual lighthearted manner is brooding today, and he admits he is afraid. He is preparing his will and has bought emergency medical evacuation insurance that could help expedite his rescue from Iraq.

Hey! I thought you were prepared to die for The Cause™? And I hate to be the one to piss on your parade, moron, but I somehow doubt it that your insurance company is going to parachute in a bunch of paramedics to rescue you from the glowing ruins of Baghdad.

After Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, Americans and other foreigners in Iraq and Kuwait were held hostage by Saddam and used as shields against an attack threatened by U.S.-led allied forces.

Nowadays, they sign up themselves. Another proof that Homo Sapiens is devolving.

Under international pressure, Saddam freed the civilians one month before the gulf war.

This time, the human shields are volunteers who know the dangers that lie ahead.

"The only thing that stands in the way of evil prevailing are good-hearted people that refuse to remain quiet and indifferent," said Bill Rose, 69, a retired postal worker from Tampa, Fla., and a father of two.

He leaves for Baghdad on Oct. 23.

"I am a Christian," he said. "I am a Quaker. I have had a good life."

And you're gonna end it a traitor to your people, your children and your grandchildren.

Bravo, Fuckwit.

UPDATE: Reader Michael Burris suggests, in the comments, that I lay off the poor Quakers, because "As you said, each one has more guts than the entire WBW peacenik crowd."

Well, Michael. I agree and I don't. I most certainly agree that the people in question has the courage of their opinions and you won't ever find me accusing them of cowardice.

That being said, I also have to say that having the courage of your opinions is not a "get out of jail free"-card, especially not when dealing with traitors. And there's no way that anybody can argue that they're not wilfully aiding and abetting an enemy of the United States by their actions, no matter how ineffective and deluded these actions may be. And that used to be called "treason" in this country and is something that I have no intentions of letting go unnoticed, even though it seems that everybody in the Administration couldn't care less about it (see the John Walker Lindh case for an example of the limp-wristed handling of bona fide traitors by our current Admin.)

2002-09-26T15:10:00.000-05:00

It's Link Time In the Blogosphere

...and it gives me great pleasure to introduce a new one to the lot of you, the "Sharp Knife".

Just landed, he's hit the ground running and the Rottweiler staff (me, my dog and the voices in my head) wish him a long and happy stay in this weird and wacky part of the web.

In other linkagery, I'm alerted to the existence of another blogger, Peter Salomon, who's taken it upon himself to Fisk the unintentionally hilarious "letters to the editor" of Arab News. The Rottie would like to utter his appreciation of this selfless act, but he's currently chewing on a bone (half an ox, to be precise) and couldn't be reached for comment. Check it out! (The blog, NOT the Rottie with the bone!)

And finally, there's "Kesher Talk", a blog so fine that I'm ashamed to not have linked it earlier. But it's a big blogiverse out there...

2002-09-26T07:45:00.000-05:00

Good Questions All

Mike Hendrix of Cold Fury has prepared a helpful list of questions to throw at the next Idiotarian you meet, should the conversation meander its way towards the War on Terror and Saddam Hussein.

Of course, your average Idiotarian will be unable and/or unwilling to answer any of these truthfully, but you still owe it to yourself to try them out. If for nothing else, then for the sheer fun of watching your pet Idiot turn all blue in the face while he/she sputters: "Zeeble bop fickle fackle, bush Bush BUSH!"

2002-09-26T07:31:00.000-05:00

Watching the Train Of History Disappearing in the Distance

Another blog makes the move to Movable Type. Damn, I need to get working on that too, lest I become one of those sad blogosauruses that all of the cool kids point their fingers at. (Not to mention that Blogger seems to be constipated again today).

Anyways: If you, like me, are a regular reader of "Random Nuclear Strikes", I'm sure you'll like to know that he's moved to:

This address.

You should adjust your links accordingly.

2002-09-25T22:00:00.000-05:00

More Nigerian Goodness...

Just got another one of those wonderful business opportunities from the Scam-ridden nation of Nigeria:

Dear Sir,

REQUEST FOR AN URGENT CONFIDENTIAL BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP

After due deliberation with my colleagues, we have decided to forward to you this business proposal. We want a reliable person who could assists in the transfer the sum of Twenty Million, Five Hundred Thousand United States Dollars ($20,500,000).

Knowing me, methinks you should have deliberated a little more...

Via International Bank Draft Cashable in any First World Countries.

Hardly a surprise, seeing as the combined capital of Third World Countries comes to, roughly, $4.37 give or take a penny.

This fund resulted from an over-invoiced bill from contracts awarded by us under the budget allocation to our Ministry. This bill has been approved for payment by the other concerned Ministries.

I'm sure they'll be even more "concerned" when they find out what you did with the moulah.

The contract has since been executed...

...along with the guy who drew it up...

...commissioned and the contractor was paid the actual cost of the contract. We are left with the balance US$20.5M as part of the over-invoiced amount which we have deliberated over estimated for our own use.

If this made any sense whatsoe'er, I'd be commenting on it. But it doesn't, so I won't.

But under our protocol division, we as civil servants are forbidden to operate or own foreign accounts.

Common practice all over the world, or so I'm told...

This is why we are soliciting your assistance in this manner and regard. As you may want to know and to make you less curious, I got your address from adverts in the business directory.

You did? The "Rottweiler" has ads in the Nigerian Business Directory™? Wow! I'm... so... NOT fooled...

I am the Chief Accountant/Internal Auditor of the Contract Award Committee (CAC) of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). This transaction is very much free from all sorts of RISKS and TROUBLE from my Government.

...which, presumably, is why you're taking such great trouble contacting complete strangers from all over the world...

We the N.N.P.C. Officials involved in this deal have put in many years in service to this Ministry. We have been exercising patience for this opportunity for so long and to most of us this is a lifetime opportunity we cannot afford to miss.

...a lifetime that I, being the sadistic little bastard that I am, will now cut considerably shorter by forwarding your spam to the Nigerian government.

We have agreed to COMPENSATE you duly if agreement is reached by both of us and I and one of my colleagues involved in this deal will come to your country to arrange for our share, upon the confirmation from you that the Certified International Bank Draft has been Approved and Raised in your favor.

Why all this trouble? Just send me the money and I'll be happy to share the loot with you once you get here.

Consequent upon your acceptance of this proposal, kindly confirm your interest by the above email address. (Please fax to my American-fax number which is +1 775-593-0605.Your indication by revert email or fax to me of your sincere and serious interest will enable me fax you or brief you of
the PROCEDURES FOR THIS TRANSACTION. If my line is busy, please keep trying you will surely get through.

Sure I will... Who are all these people faxing you, by the way? I thought that you guys only got in contact with people after "careful and due deliberation"?

It might surprise you why we choose you and trusted you for this transaction. Yes, we believe that good friends can be discovered and business like this cannot be realized without mutual trust. This is why we have decided to trust you for this transaction.

I'm flattered. I'm also convinced that you guys must be utterly nuts. Heck, I wouldn't trust myself further than I could throw me!

Be further informed that everyone's interest and security had been considered before you were contacted, so be rest assured and feel free to go into this transaction with us. But let Honesty and Trust be our watchword throughout this transaction and your prompt reply will be highly appreciated.

Be rest assured that your security doesn't matter one whit to me and that I just finished ripping out the pages with the words "honesty" and "truth" in my dictionary. Let's roll...

2002-09-25T21:27:00.000-05:00

Damn That Logic!

It's so friggin' annoying to the Looney Left that the Right always use logic rather than emotion to push their agenda, because there's so little that can be done about it. But, laughing in the face of derision, Polly Toynbee, noted Idiotarian of the al-Guardian, sets out to do this anyway. Don Toynbee and Sancho Fisk, tilting at windmills for your eye-rolling pleasure:

It was a bravura performance - it almost always is. With eloquence, reason and deftness of foot, the prime minister silenced the war wobblers - at least for now.

"Curse his Anti-Idiotarian bones!"

Many remain queasily uneasy, crossing their fingers that Saddam sees sense in time: yesterday's unsurprising dossier...

Now there's a winner! Considering that it was "unsurprising", then what was the reason for the boneheaded bleating from the Rectums of Ridiculousness™ known as the "left" all about?

...changed few people's risk assessments of war. Yet whatever their doubts, both cabinet and loyalist MPs were forced by their leader's inexorable logic to nod in assent at each stepping stone towards (probable) war.

Don't you just hate it when that happens? Don't you hate it even more that it happens all the friggin' time? Poor Polly, have a cracker...

Does the UN and international law matter? (Nods all round.)

If you hear something, it's the sound of my head shaking vigorously.

But it sure is a nifty way of painting Idiot Tranzis into a corner, I'll give Tony that

Is all law worthless unless backed by the might to enforce it? (Nods again.)

Ayup.

Is there any point in threatening force if the UN does not mean to use it? (No, of course not.)

Even a professed liberal Idiotarian should smell the trap now, but, alas, it's too late by far.

Did diplomacy unbacked by threat of force ever bring dictator down? (Heads shake.)

Nope, it never did.

Would failure to enforce UN resolutions tell all dictators they could flout the law with impunity? (Yes, indeed.)

As a matter of fact, the UN Idiots have been telling Saddam just that for 11 long years, vociferously backed by the Lefty Loons who love all dictators, as long as they're opposed to the US.

And so the path to perdition may be papered with the purest logic, sanctioned by the highest law and blessed with thoroughly noble sentiments

...but will this keep Polly from throwing logic to the four winds gaily, falling back on her knee-jerk anti-Americanism? Of course it won't, she was separated from her brain at birth, after all. Hint: It wasn't the placenta you morons threw out.

- yet still be a dangerously misguided act.

See? It's perfectly logical, it's backed by facts, yet it's still "dangerously misguided".

Oh, to be a leftie again. Never having to use your brain...

Outside America and No 10 there are precious few leaders (and even fewer of their peoples) who sincerely believe that an attack on Iraq is wise.

Fortunately, none of these "leaders" and their peoples matter more than a Catholic bishop at a Bar Mitzvah.

But the combination of Bush's hegemonic will and barrister Blair's legal and moral logic drive on remorselessly.

"DAMN that logic! DAMN the fact that we're all impotent little wussies who'd have to think twice about invading Monaco!"

When is the right time to talk of due proportion and prudence? When does the inexorable logic pause to ask which risk is worse - war or continued no-fly containment? Where is the evidence that Saddam will use these weapons, while thus contained?

Where is the evidence that he won't, you Odious One-trick Ostrich? There are some of us that aren't quite ready to sit it out and wait to see what happens next. Of course, being a citizen of an irrelevant country, you needn't worry as much as we do, but we're worried alright.

Though White House hawks at first refused to go to the UN, now the UN emerges as the trap forcing the world to threaten war in the name of its own credibility.

Heeh, heeh, heeh... That damned "idiot cowboy", eh? Heard about the motto "Don't Mess With Texas"? Well... Now you know why...

If Saddam miscalculates and invites attack, then who can pull back from a logic they have nodded through? The problem for MPs yesterday, and for the rest of the world at the UN, is that once the threat is made it can never be withdrawn.

Yep. That's called "having the courage of your opinions" and "making your case and sticking to it", something the Idiotarian Left has never quite mastered.

This sabre-rattling phase was not the right time for parliament to hold this debate, when every reasonable person wants to show Saddam that he must comply. Yet it might be the only time to challenge the "logic" of all this.

Sneer quotes... Ahhh... I love the smell of Lefty Loon sneer quotes in the morning... Smells like... Despair!

Tony Blair was at pains this week to stress the difference between his fundamental beliefs and those of George Bush.

In the universe that Idiotarians inhabit, this is a bad thing. You have to disagree! Consent is the Mother of All Evil™! Dissent is Noble! Dissent is Good! If all of my friends say that jumping off bridges is stupid, then I must jump! Right now!

Careful to breathe nothing but respect for the president himself, there is much eyerolling dismissal of the hawks about him. Despite the humiliating master/lackey surface, there are two quite different doctrines at work. The Bush doctrine published last week in his new national security strategy lays out the nature of US power in remarkably bald terms.

"Fuck with us and you're dead. And there's not a damn thing you can do about it either."

Scant diplomacy bothered to mask its brash self-interest.

"Self-interest". The Nemesis of the Left.

It outlines an unfettered "distinctly American internationalism" ready to act unilaterally when it wants. Asserting a US right to pre-emptive attack against any hostile state, it offers a recipe for global mayhem on every disputed border.

...as illustrated by our numerous wars against... erm... anybody? Bueller? Bueller??

Listen, you Clueless C*nt: It's quite simple, really. You can do whatever you damn well please, but if you mess with our national interest and the security of our citizens, we're gonna burn down your chickencoop and piss on the ashes, capice?

Above all the Bush doctrine promises that never again will any other nation rival American might, whatever it takes to keep it that way. This is America's first genuine post-cold war doctrine, daring to trumpet its monumental unfettered power.

...and it scares the willies out of Statist Utopians such as Polly, which is the best argument for it that I can find.

The Blair doctrine, as befits a mini-power lacking brute force, instead summons up a mighty moral imperative. First propounded in Chicago when urging Clinton to rescue the Kosovans, all this week Blair has expounded it to all doubters.

...because the feckless fucknuts of the left have been demanding it... Now that they've got it, they got their knickers all tied up in knots. This is a Good Thing™.

Yes, he would intervene anywhere, any time to depose tyrants and free victims. In Zimbabwe, if he could. In North Korea. In the mullahocracy of Iran, maybe: the half world still living without democracy is potentially on his list. It is an admirable ambition, casting away the cynical old Kissinger doctrine that wheeled and dealed with any tyrant so long as he was useful, letting sleeping monsters lie so long as they were our monster, South Africa included.

Polly still hasn't gotten over the fact that now that the Soviet Union is no more, we're no longer constrained by Realpolitik. She also haven't gotten over the fact that the "monster" South Africa has gone from being the only successful nation in Africa to being another dictatorial, aid-sucking hellhole in record time.

The Blair doctrine also arises from seizing a new post-cold war chance. What need stop the onward march of liberation from tyranny now? The trouble with his doctrine is that it lacks reality. To topple the Taliban, a multitude of filthy regimes had to be paid, strengthened and appeased - in my view, worth the result.

They'll be mightily surprised when they wake up and realize that there's the head of a horse in bed with them. But thank you so much for your endorsement of our blowing the Taliban to Hell. It means so... little... to us. I wish that you'd find it equally worthwhile to rip Saddam a fresh one and free his people of his tyranny, but I'm asking for too much.

To invade Iraq again requires abetting regimes as bad on the Blair moral index. He has been right three times - Kosovo, Sierra Leone and Afghanistan - and he might be right now; or else Iraq could bring his doctrine crashing to earth. (And his political career with it.)

I'm not quite sure what those regimes that we need to "abet" are. Shoddy Arabia? Make me laugh. What do you think that new base in Qatar is all about?

There was another great awakening from the cold war this week when Gerhard Schröder won by breaking all the old rules of European diplomacy. Sensing not only among his own voters, but right across Europe, a significant groundswell of anti-Americanism since Bush took power, he severed an umbilical cord with the US.

...and pulled the plug on the life support as well, a move that will be cursed by generations of Germans to come.

You think that was a "smart" move? Well, I suggest that you go cheer up Schroder and his cabinet, then, if you can get them to pull their tongues and noses out of the US Administration's asses for long enough to listen to you.

At a stroke Germany's war guilt, Germany's gratitude for the Marshall plan, plus German reliance on US defence in Nato was forgotten.

...and at a stroke, American goodwill towards that Teutonic Cesspool was equally forgotten.

Whatever reconciliation is patched together, overnight Schröder shattered a European taboo: others may now find it easier to turn away from an America whose present regime is abhorrent to an essentially social democratic continent.

...or they might wake up and smell the coffee. They might realize that you can't expect to shit on the hand that feeds you and then expect them to still respect you in the morning. They might also realize that you EUnuchs need us more than we need you.

Schröder's desperate electioneering ploy may start a surprising new spirit of European independence. That would trigger an angry US review of Nato, forcing the EU to forge a useful common defence capability and a more united foreign policy. Is that over-optimistic, since Blair and Schröder's positions could hardly diverge further at this moment?

I'd say it's seriously over-optimistic, you fuddle-headed fucknut Idiotarian. To have a "united foreign policy" you need something to back it up. To get something to back it up, you need a "defence capability". To get a "defence capability", you'd have to create an actual army and to create an actual army, you'd have to give up your statist, illiberal utopian welfare states.

Oh, and I forgot the most important thing: To develop a "useful common defence capability", you'd have to learn the meaning of the word "consensus", something that's not likely to happen in a gaggle of gibbering socialist states who can't even agree on the correct curvature of cucumbers.

Blair may have yet again lost an opportunity for leadership in Europe, with even Al Gore standing to his left on this.

Note to Idiotarian EUnuchs: the GoreBot stands wherever his handlers tell him to stand. He's about as likely to be found in the same place for more than ten seconds as a squirrel on crystal meth.

Unease is everywhere, among senior EU figures and politicians all across Europe, reflected in newspaper editorials of many political hues. They watch the Dow Jones and FTSE falling through the floor as war looks likely, hurtling the world towards recession. They see oil prices rising whenever war is mentioned. Labour is falling in the polls.

Good news indeed. Labour plummeting in the polls... I guess it ain't good news for Tony, but I somehow feel that, once Saddam is a bullet-riddled corpse, we'll see another swing in the polls. Good to see that there are still a few honest pols around who value the safety of their citizens higher than their immediate chances of re-election.

Gee, Polly, maybe you're a little bit out of touch with the actual population of the country that you live in? Heaven forbid! Well, they're obviously just simplistic morons anyways, people who need to be enlightened by your superior insight...

If there's anything more funny to watch thant the entire Loony Left sitting on the deck of the Titanic, claiming that if they just scream loud enough, the cold waters of the North Atlantic will cease to pour into the hull, I haven't heard of it.

Serious talk in many corridors of power considers the suitcases of horror waiting under unknown beds to be unleashed in US and EU cities the day Saddam falls: no one doubts the dossier's descriptions of what he has, only his likelihood of using it except in his death throes. He is well enough contained currently in his no-fly zone.

...says Polly Dimwit, safely ensconced in the Idiotarian shelter of Ignorance that she inhabits. If you have conclusive evidence that he's "well enough contained", why don't you show it to the rest of us, Polly-Wolly-Doodle?

Igniting Arab outrage...

...which takes about as much effort as pulling a nose hair and has considerably less serious consequences.

...inciting worse terror...

...I can't hardly cross the street without running into an Arab splodeydope since we annihilated the Taliban...

...uniting enemies against the aggressor with dominoes of states falling to fundamentalist rebellion...

...as seen in Iran, where the mad mullahs have had to resort to hiring Hezbollah thugs to keep power from the people who are tired of theocratic despotism and sense a new morning...

all are logical fears,

...sure they are, Polly... SQUAWK!

but they seem like mere self-interested cowardice under the blazing moral light of the Blair doctrine.

...that's mainly because they are, Polly.

The puzzle is Tony Blair's uncharacteristic recklessness abroad, risking his own career, his support at the polls and much else.

...all conundrums to the self-serving Idiotarian Left. How can anyone possibly put morals and security over polls????

How brave he is over the moral certainties of distant war; how over-cautious, by comparison, he has often been over familiar dilemmas at home.

Blah, blah, blah... I sense an "It's the Economy, Stupid!" coming on. Thankfully, we're not listening...

Stupid Fuckwit Idiotarian...

2002-09-25T20:15:00.000-05:00

OK, If THIS Ain't Worth Supporting, Nothing Is...

I was just alerted to the existence of, I swear I'm not making this up, a bona fide, card-carrying Anti-Idiotarian in, get this, EFFING Berkeley!!!

Not only is this some of the best news I've heard all day, he's also the author of a damn fine website, Mean Mr. Mustard (which happens to be one of the Rott's favorite Beatles songs, but that's beside the point), a site so loaded with Anti-Idiotarianism that you're a wet liberal drool-blanket if you don't go check it out, right now.

If you can't find it in yourself to support Anti-Idiotarianism at friggin' Berkeley, where can you?

While I'm at it, I'd like to make the following official Rottweiler Linking Statement:

If you hear about a great site or if you're the author of such, or if your significant other is, or if your pet hamster is or for whatever reason at all, and if you think that I might like it, please feel free to let me know about it. In fact I URGE you to do so.

If you don't tell me about it, it's pretty unlikely that I'll ever know. And not only will you be cheating me of a great read, you'll be cheating everybody else who comes here as well.

Of course I reserve judgment, seeing as I can't link to everything in the blogiverse and also, and no less importantly, because I like my philosophy that if I link it, I like it and if it's on my blogroll, it's because I think it's good (the Idiotarian Fisking Holes excluded, obviously). But please don't hesitate to give me a hint.

2002-09-25T16:34:00.000-05:00

Oh, Did I Mention?

...that Charles Austin has put up not one, but two pieces of Scourging Goodness™ on this very fine day?

'Tis a fine day to be a blogreader indeed!

Don't just stand there, get thee hence or may thy dreams for a fortnight be disturbed mightily by visions of Al Gore in a thong!

I'll be repairing the soapbox while you're gone...

2002-09-24T19:46:00.000-05:00

The Chief Fisk™ Is Cruising For a Bruising Again

(I'll try the Rantburg Format on for size this time. Let me know if you liked the old indented and longer format better):

Bobby "Whack Me, I'm an Idiot" Fisk is at it again in this "Independent (...of Facts)" column:

Tony Blair's "dossier" on Iraq is a shocking document. Reading it can only fill a decent human being with shame and outrage.
This, of course, excludes Bobby Fisk immediately, but let's go on anyway.
Its pages are final proof – if the contents are true – that a massive crime against humanity has been committed in Iraq. For if the details of Saddam's building of weapons of mass destruction are correct – and I will come to the "ifs" and "buts" and "coulds" later – it means that our massive, obstructive, brutal policy of UN sanctions has totally failed. In other words, half a million Iraqi children were killed by us – for nothing.
They were, of course, not killed by anybody even close to fitting the pronoun "us", but that's just par for the cause for the Fisk™. They were, in fact, killed by the sick priorities of the madman that Fisk seems so Hell-bent on protecting from the "US Hegemon™" (just wait until it "Digivolves™").
Let's go back to 12 May 1996. Madeleine Albright, the US Secretary of State, had told us that sanctions worked and prevented Saddam from rebuilding weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
Let's go forward to 1998, when now Saddam Hussein fuck-toy Scott Ritter declares that: Again, I'm not going to avoid the issue. The bottom line is that because of Iraq's choosing, they have painted me as a troublemaker in an effort to distract the world's attention away from its failure-Iraq's failure to abide by its disarmament obligations. In doing so they made me a lightning rod for attention, and there many in the U.S. administration of Madeleine Albright included, who felt that my inclusion on certain inspections would attract attention and would become the cause for conflict, and they felt that it should be the inspections, not the inspector, that are at issue, but they just don't get it.

What a diff'rence four years make.
Our Tory government agreed, and Tony Blair faithfully toed the line. But on 12 May, Mrs Albright appeared on CBS television. Leslie Stahl, the interviewer, asked: "We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that's more than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?" To the world's astonishment, Mrs Albright replied: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price, we think the price is worth it."
Could be because, in a rare moment of moral clarity, the two-bit whore for the left, Madeline Not-too-bright, realized that it was Sammy who was choosing to use Iraqi babies as hostages in his attempts at avoiding abiding by the terms of peace that he himself had signed.
Now we know – if Mr Blair is telling us the truth – that the price was not worth it. The price was paid in the lives of hundreds of thousands of children.
Murdered by Soddy Hussein and, added to that, 3,000 innocent Americans. But Fisk wouldn't let fact get in the way of a shoddy argument, now would he? Of course he wouldn't, the balding Idiotarian with a Death Wish.
But it wasn't worth a dime. The Blair "dossier" tells us that, despite sanctions, Saddam was able to go on building weapons of mass destruction.
Well hooray! It seems that the Idiotarian-in-Chief, Booby Fisk, has finally been hit a sufficient number of times over the head with the Clue-Bat that he's understood something! But let's not get our hopes up.
All that nonsense about dual-use technology, the ban on children's pencils – because lead could have a military use – and our refusal to allow Iraq to import equipment to restore the water-treatment plants that we bombed in the Gulf War, was a sham.
Nope, it was ineffective. Among human beings with a rudimentary capability for logical reasoning, this would lead to the inevitable conclusion that some other approach would be a good idea. But then again, Bobby Fisk is neither human, nor logical.
This terrible conclusion is the only moral one to be drawn from the 16 pages that supposedly detail the chemical, biological and nuclear horrors that the Beast of Baghdad has in store for us. It's difficult, reading the full report, to know whether to laugh or cry. The degree of deceit and duplicity in its production speaks of the trickery that informs the Blair government and its treatment of MPs.
And again, the Fisk fails to provide anything even remotely resembling "logic". The only logical conclusion to be drawn from this is that the skanky whore, Madeline Dimbulb, was too afraid to land her promiscuous, pederast boss in hot water to utter the truth about the threat from Saddamn Hussein. To put it in language that even a Lefty Moron ought to be able to understand: She was lying through her false teeth.
There are a few titbits that ring true. The new ammonium perchlorate plant illegally supplied by an Indian company – which breached those wonderful UN sanctions, of course – is a frightening little detail. So is the new rocket test stand at the al-Rafah plant. But this material is so swamped in trickery and knavery that its inclusion becomes worthless.
You could just have said: "I have no way of refuting this, so I'll just say that they're lying", Booby, it would have made just as much sense.
Here is one example of the dishonesty of this "dossier".
Could you give me a moment while I bate my breath, Booby?
On page 45, we are told – in a long chapter about Saddam's human rights abuses
..."we'll ignore most of this, but I found a grammatical "error", so I'll just use that to refute the whole thing"
– that "on March 1st, 1991, in the wake of the Gulf War, riots (sic) broke out in the southern city of Basra, spreading quickly to other cities in Shia-dominated southern Iraq. The regime responded by killing thousands". What's wrong with this paragraph is the lie is in the use of the word "riots". These were not riots. They were part of a mass rebellion specifically called for by President Bush Jnr's father and by a CIA radio station in Saudi Arabia.
They were a "riot", as opposed to "riots"? Oh the humanity! And a rebellion against an oppressive, murderous thugocracy? How could anyone with a Fisk™ ever support that?
The Shia Muslims of Iraq obeyed Mr Bush Snr's appeal. And were then left to their fate by the Americans and British, who they had been given every reason to believe would come to their help. No wonder they died in their thousands. But that's not what the Blair "dossier" tells us.
Full honesty mode: I am not in the least bit proud of the fact that Bush Sr. created a political environment in which revolt seemed like a good idea, then failed miserably to follow through on it. I think that Bush Sr. was an inexcusable wimp on that issue and that he ought to be publically flogged for it. However, I don't consider it an "argument" for not doing the job right this time.
And anyone reading the weasel words of doubt that are insinuated throughout this text can only have profound concern about the basis for which Britain is to go to war. The Iraqi weapon programme "is almost certainly" seeking to enrich uranium. It "appears" that Iraq is attempting to acquire a magnet production line. There is evidence that Iraq has tried to acquire specialised aluminium tubes (used in the enrichment of uranium) but "there is no definitive intelligence" that it is destined for a nuclear programme.
...and of course, our friend Booby would argue that playing Russian Roulette with millions of lives would be perfectly acceptable, since Shoddy hasn't actually killed anyone (apart from hundreds of thousands of Iraqis) yet.
"If" Iraq obtained fissile material, Iraq could produce nuclear weapons in one or two years. It is "difficult to judge" whether al-Hussein missiles could be available for use. Efforts to regenerate the Iraqi missile programme "probably" began in 1995. And so the "dossier" goes on.

Now maybe Saddam has restarted his WMD programme. Let's all say it out loud, 20 times: Saddam is a brutal, wicked tyrant. But are "almost certainly", "appears", "probably" and "if" really the rallying call to send our grenadiers off to the deserts of Kut-al-Amara?
It is, unless you'd rather sit around and wait for the first nuke to go off in London or New York. My guess is that that's exactly what you'd prefer, seeing as you'd make doubly-damn sure that you weren't in either of those locations when it happened, using your friends to obtain the info if need be.
There is high praise for UN weapons inspectors. And there is more trickery in the relevant chapter. It quotes Dr Hans Blix, the executive chairman of the UN inspection commission, as saying that in the absence of (post-1998) inspections, it is impossible to verify Iraqi disarmament compliance. But on 18 August this year, the very same Dr Blix told Associated Press that he couldn't say with certainty that Baghdad possessed WMDs. This quotation is excised from the Blair "dossier", of course.

So there it is. If these pages of trickery are based on "probably" and "if", we have no business going to war. If they are all true, we murdered half a million Iraqi children. How's that for a war crime?
You're an idiot, Booby, and "if" you ever happen to be in my neighborhood, I'll "probably" find an excuse to put a hollow-nosed .45 through your Idiotarian skull. The children of Iraq would thank me.

2002-09-24T18:43:00.000-05:00

A Long Overdue Announcement:

People who've been hanging out around this little corner of the web already know who my "blogmama" is, the talented Idiotarian-Fisker who keeps the ding-dongs at Kumbaya HQ busy running for cover, Donna.

However, I never got around to mention who my "blogdaddy" was. I have to say, without a doubt that it has to be John "Grumpy" Cole who was one of the very first to welcome me to the blogosphere (Charles Austin was the first) and, even more importantly, was the one responsible for my first "Instapundit" link.

Those of us who remember being young bloggers (and I most certainly do, being still very wet behind the ears) will know how much that first link means. It doesn't matter what the quality of your writing is (and I'm not too impressed with my own), if you're never linked, you're like the tree falling in the forest without anybody being around to hear it.

When you are linked, however, you get a shot. People come around and check you out and, hopefully, some of them decide to come around again.

And that's why those first few links matter so much. It's not "pushing" you, it's giving other people a chance to check you out. If they don't like what they find, no amount of blogrolling and pushing will keep you afloat, but you won't even get a chance at a launch if nobody gives you that first "linkalanche".

So, with that in mind, let me thank all of the people that have linked me over the last month and a half again in hopes that you'll continue to give "newbies" (of which I am one) a chance. I have no doubts that it'll continue to be that way, the Blogosphere™ is one Heck of an accomodating "community", I just want to reiterate the importance of it.

OK, I'll get back to being an annoying, abusive, ranting maniac now. Just one of those things I had to get out of my system, yanno?

2002-09-24T14:22:00.000-05:00

Woooooo HOOOOO!

Past 30,000 unique visitors and not even at my 2 month mark yet!

Thank you all of you who, for some inexplicable reason, keep coming by for more of my babbling, thank you to all of you kind people who've helped me out by linking to me since I started, thank you to all of you who keep inspiring me by writing in and leaving comments and... lest I forget... Thank you mom! (Yeah, I know, but it had to be in there somewhere).

(And a special thank you to my reader in Poland, my reader in the United Arab Emirates, my reader in Argentina, my reader in Mexico, my reader in the Czech Republic and my reader in Austria.)

2002-09-24T13:20:00.000-05:00

Time To Move the UN.

But, unfortunately, according to Idiotarian letter-writer, it shouldn't be into the East River, a move I would most heartily endorse. Heck, I might even go all the way up there and help out shoving the pigs in!

A decade ago, when I worked at the United Nations, the building was in dire need of repair, modernization and expansion. When the United Nations moved into its present headquarters in the early 1950's, there were about 50 member states. Today there are 190.

...and pretty soon, I hope, there'll be only 189, none of which will be the US.

Many citizens of other members of the United Nations were killed at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11. What better memorial than to build the new headquarters at ground zero?

What better memorial indeed?

Turning the site where 3,000 innocents were brutally murdered by Islamofascists into a giant monument to the very body that, through their endless squabbling, multilateralism, moral equivalence chutzpah and moronic kvetching, helped keep the thugs in power that supported the hijackers in committing their heinous act?

If the ~~League of Nations~~ UN had suggested moving into the Twin Towers pre-9/11, however, it would have been a brilliant idea. Unfortunately, time machines haven't yet been invented.

Contributions and design proposals could come from around the world and would represent an international response of defiance of terrorism.
RONALD I. SPIERS
South Londonderry, Vt.
Sept. 20, 2002
The writer was United Nations under secretary general for political affairs, 1989-92.

This babbling, Idiotarian UN-has-been oxygen thief needs to look up "defiance" in the dictionary. I personally guarantee that he won't find a picture of the UN building anywhere near that entry.

I'm also sure that the definition of the word "defiance" won't be anything remotely resembling: "Building a massive and quite superfluous building at taxpayer expense."

(Link via Spleenville)

2002-09-23T08:55:00.000-05:00

The Childrens' "Crusade"

Paul Wright of TAANSTAFL fame has had quite enough of the Chickenhawk "argument" as well, but won't dismiss it out of hand. He has therefore come up with a fair and equitable solution.

NOTE: Lefties need not read this, seeing as how they're totally incapable of understanding "humor". The rest of you, however, will go read it or be forever considered French. Just don't drink anything while you do so.

2002-09-23T00:02:00.000-05:00

"Please Don't Let That Big Meanie Hurt Me! Whaaaaaaaaaahhhh!

Watching Arafat slide into obscurity is getting funnier with every passing day:

Arafat: Sharon wants to kill me.
If he did, Yasser-boy, you'd be busy plucking raisins from the ass of Mohammed right now.
Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat spent the past 48 hours phoning numerous world leaders, urging them to stop the IDF operation in Ramallah.
Rumor has it he even phoned the speaking clock of Ulaanbaatar.
He also authorized three senior PA officials to contact the government to try to find a solution to the standoff.
Just hand over the snuffies, Yasser, you can even keep the baby wipes if you do.
Arafat's deputy, Mahmoud Abbas, phoned Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer yesterday morning, urging him to end the military operation.
Ben-Eliezer was reported to have laughed so hard after he hung up that he nearly got a hernia, one of the most successful attempts on the health of a senior Israeli officials ever.
Palestinian Legislative Council Speaker Ahmed Qurei asked to see Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, but was turned down.
Apparently he refused to lift his shirt to prove he wasn't carrying any Semtex.
PA negotiator Saeb Erekat was also rejected.
This, however, was due to Saeb being a notorious nobody.
PA officials told The Jerusalem Post last night that Arafat told several Arab leaders that he believes Sharon is "determined" to kill him.
Nope. He's coming to steal your last boxes of baby wipes, Yasser.
"Sharon wants to kill me, because he wants to take revenge for what happened in Beirut in 1982," a senior PA official quoted Arafat as telling Arab heads of state in a series of phone calls.
No need to go 20 years back in time to find a legitimate reason to put a bullet in your skull, Yasser, and, again, if he wanted to, you wouldn't be making those phone calls.
The anonymous official also quoted Arafat as saying that he would prefer to shoot himself in the head rather than fall prisoner to IDF soldiers.
By all means, don't listen to those defeatists trying to talk you out of it, Yasser, they're all traitors. Here, use my gun.
He said the chairman was critical of the Arab governments for failing to pressure Israel into stopping the attack on his offices.

Arafat warned that "any attempt to liquidate the Palestinian leadership will result in total anarchy in the Middle East," the official said.
Sounds like a giant leap forward for the Middle East, if you ask me. Commence firing.
"[Arafat] stressed during these conversations that Sharon's plan is to destroy the PA completely and reoccupy the West Bank and Gaza Strip," the official added.
...almost there... Faster, please.
Among the Arab leaders who received phone calls from Arafat over the weekend were Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Morocco's King Muhammad, Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah, Jordan's King Abdullah, Tunisian President Zen al-Abdeen Bin Ali, Arab League Sec.-Gen. Amr Moussa, and Malaysian Prime Minister Mahatir Muhammad.
Not to mention Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and Osama bin Laden, who refused to answer his call.

I'm glad I won't have to pay the long distance charges on Yasser's phone bill once he's done using up his "Jihad Whenever Minutes".
Yesterday, Arafat also talked to French President Jacques Chirac and Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moller, whose country chairs the European Union.
He might as well have called the Easter Bunny a second time, for all the good that's gonna do him.
Palestinian officials, who were busy yesterday mobilizing the international community to intervene, warned of an explosion in the entire Middle East should anything happen to Arafat.
Oh... There's going to be an explosion alright...
"We have told the Americans how dangerous the situation is... any shrapnel from shells directed at other targets in the compound might hit and kill or hurt Arafat," said Arafat adviser Bassam Abu Sharif, who lives next to the compound.
...and what a terrible, terrible tragedy that would be. The official answering the call is being told to have asked Mr. Sharif if that was a promise.
"That would trigger an explosion in the entire Middle East," he warned.
It would also trigger several free rounds at my local bar.
Salaam Fayyad, the PA's recently appointed finance minister who is with Arafat inside the three-story Ramallah compound, told the Post that Israel should think of the "dangerous consequences of the siege."
Yep. It's gonna take forever to disinfect the rubble in that compound once Yasser and the goons are pushing up daisies.
"This is a dangerous situation, where will it lead us?" he asked, hinting that extremists are profiting from the situation.
Well... That should make you happy, if that was indeed the case.
Meanwhile, Arafat issued a statement to the PA's official news agency WAFA yesterday, urging all Palestinian factions to immediately cease attacks on Israeli civilians within Israel.
Much too little, much much too late.
"I reiterate my call to the Palestinian people and all our parties to halt any violent attacks inside Israel, because Sharon exploits them as a cover to destroy the peace of the brave," said the statement.
"The peace of the grave", more like.
Yet Arafat remained defiant in his statement, saying he would never capitulate to Israel. "We are ready for peace but not for capitulation, and we will not give up Jerusalem or a grain of our soil," he said.
...says the baby wipe billionaire weasel who will be sitting in Paris in a month, living the good life on the funds that he embezzled from the Palestinians.
Hani al-Hassan, a Fatah leader who is also holed up with Arafat, told the Post by phone that local Fatah leaders are calling him to ask for permission to renew attacks, but he stressed that the Fatah leadership is sticking to its decision to end attacks on civilians.
"If Fatah will renew attacks, it will take us another three months to calm things down again," he said.

Hassan was behind the draft statement circulated to Fatah members some 10 days ago in which Fatah vowed to end attacks on civilians. While senior Fatah leaders and PA officials wanted the declaration to include all civilians wherever they are, many local Fatah leaders are still opposed to ending attacks on Israelis in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip.

Yesterday, Fatah issued a statement threatening retaliation should Israel harm Arafat.
Goodbye Fatah and good riddance too.

2002-09-22T23:26:00.000-05:00

And That's All I Wanna Say About THAT:

Lynn Sislo has a great post on the "Tumbling Woman Controversy" that I'm perfectly willing to adopt as my final word on the subject as well.

It's fair, it's unemotional, it's honest and it's entirely rational. I can't sum up the essence of it here without doing it a terrible injustice, so I suggest you just go read the whole thing if you're interested in the subject.

My personal opinions can be best summed up this way:

Is it art?
I think so. (And don't give me any nonsense along the lines of "well, you must like it, then". "Art" is not confined to that which I like. I hate "Guernica" with a passion, for instance. In my opinion it's one of the most profoundly disgusting pictures of all time, aesthetically speaking. Yet I will never argue against it being "art".)

Is it in bad taste?
Horribly so.

Is it alright for the artist to make such a sculpture?
Heard of the first Amendment? Of course it is.

Is it alright for the public to take offense and demand it removed?
Same as above.

Is it alright for the ones displaying it to revise their decision upon hearing of the reactions to it?
Of COURSE it is.

Does our system work?
Very well indeed.

2002-09-22T14:06:00.000-05:00

More From Norway

I'm sure you'll remember my link to Norwegian Blogger Vegard Valberg a few days ago, in which he questioned the seemingly "starry-eyed idealism" of the American people in these days with regards to what we have to do and our chances of accomplishing it.

Initially this post might have seemed overly skeptical and even slightly defeatist (I myself felt a whiff of the latter in it), but today he elaborates on what it was that he meant, and he does so in a way that is both thoughtful and illuminative, at least to me.

From reading his post (and you should too, it's very well written) I'm left with the feeling that he asks two questions (and I'm paraphrasing here):

"Are we aware of the kind of determination and hard-handedness such a strategy requires?".

I am, but are we, as a people? We're basically talking about reverting (at least for a while) to the values of Victorian England vis-a-vis the colonies with the terrorists and the nations that aid and abet them substituted for Zulus, Thuggees, wily Pathans etc. Can we do that? I don't believe that we have a choice. And:

"Are we willing to stick with it, even if it requires us to hold on this mentality, a mentality that isn't exactly in keeping with our American traditions, for however long it takes?"

This is a very good question, if you ask me. I'm willing to go on if it takes the rest of my life, but are the majority of us? Isn't it true that we have a tendency to rejoice in early victories and then declare the job done and go home? Isn't it true that it would require enormous efforts to keep our determination going for, say, a decade or even longer? Do we indeed have the attention span required or will we fall back on Jerry Springer and admiring Britney's boobs?

If we don't (and I'm using Vegard's analogy here because it's right on the money), we might as well not start, because to leave the job half finished would be like only going through half your prescribed anti-biotics when fighting an infection. It'll delay the outcome, but the disease will be back, only this time it'll have "learned" from its mistakes and be stronger for it.

I think he's right in bringing up this issue, because, whereas I still completely agree on the premises set up by Steven den Beste if we're to achieve a real victory, I sometimes find myself asking myself if we, as a people, really have the "stomach" to do what we inevitably will have to do.

We're not going to be able to "smart bomb" our way out of this one. At some point in the future, we're going to have to take off the kiddie gloves and use an iron fist instead, if we're to be successful in eradicating Islamism.

And eradicate it we must. I'm not a defeatist and neither is Vegard, if I understand him correctly, but we simply cannot afford to enter this conflict without the hard, uncompromising determination to do whatever has to be done, whenever we have to do it. If we do, it'll just mean delaying the inevitable.

We must mobilize the determination of our grandparents and stick to unconditional surrender, no matter what the other options are and no matter how tempting it may be to just finish half way and go back to the illusion of pre-9/11 America with a negotiated peace. For an illusion it will be. We will have delayed the inevitable, but one day we or our children will wake up to another 9/11.

Islamism must not be merely handed a defeat, no matter how decisive, it must be eradicated, wiped from the Earth, and the ground that it got its nourishment from must be plowed with salt.

If we do not keep this in mind and stick with it, no matter what "sticking with it" is going to mean, our losses and sacrifices will have been in vain and we'll eventually have to start over again, only the next time the fight is going to be harder.

I have no doubts that we have the abilities required to do it, but sometimes I wonder if we have the will.

Now go read Vegard's post yourselves and tell me if I got him completely wrong.

2002-09-21T22:10:00.000-05:00

This Just In:

RAMALLAH, 9/21/02 The "Rottweiler"'s correspondent reports that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat is currently holed up in a lean-to made out of a few plates of corrugated iron, allegedly accompanied by 15,237 Islamic militants, a Shit-zu and a poster of Jane Fonda.

One of his aides just got through communicating to the assembled press corps, by semaphore, that Mr. Arafat has no intentions of giving himself up and that he welcomes this opportunity to become a martyr, a martyr or a martyr. Word has it that the last word signalled resembled the word "please", but this hasn't been confirmed as of yet.

The "Rottweiler" is also proud to be the first to publicize the following prepared statement, intercepted by picking up a piece of used toilet tissue that was floating towards the IDF lines (corrections as they appear in the original):

"~~Berlin, April 31st, 1945~~ Ramallah, September 22nd, 2002.
It is reported that the ~~Führer~~ illustrious leader of the ~~German~~ Palestinian people, ~~Adolf Hitler~~ Yasser Arafat, fell on the field of honor this morning, defending ~~Berlin~~ Ramallah to the last bullet."

UPDATE: Our correspondent in the Middle East informs us that it has been discovered that it wasn't toilet tissue. It was, of course, a dried-up baby wipe.

UPDATE the 2nd: We are now informed that the poster in question was not of Jane Fonda, but of Scott Ritter, the bitch-boy of the Arab world. I suppose our correspondent got confused by the thong. There goes his pay raise.

2002-09-21T00:12:00.000-05:00

"This Is Another Fine Mess I've Gotten Myself In"

...Arafat is quoted as saying as the IDF did some urban renewal on his compound again today.

Israeli tanks and bulldozers smashed their way through Yasser Arafat's compound in Ramallah last night, destroying half of the last building still under his control, forcing more than 20 of his aides and bodyguards to surrender, and leaving the Palestinian leader trapped in his office.
"One day, my followers, all of this will be yours..."
"Fuck that, old man, we're outta here!"
"The president refuses to leave. He says, 'I shall either be a martyr or a martyr or a martyr, period. I will not surrender'," an aide inside the building said by mobile phone.
Hmm... What does this mean? Wait, don't tell me, I got it!... Shit, time to go buy some more free candy for the kids around here.
Eyewitnesses said Israeli troops were digging a deep trench and running coils of barbed wire around the office.
Don't forget the sign saying "Please Don't Feed the Animals (unless the peanuts are laced with cyanide)".
"I think they may be targeting the president himself", the aide said.
Your "president" wouldn't be alive now if they were, dimwit.
Around a hundred people were still with Mr Arafat, he added.
In half a building? Must be awful waiting for your turn outside the toilet.
They are believed to include 20 hardcore militants whom the Israelis want to arrest on the grounds they have been involved in terrorist activities.
Sounds like reasonable grounds for arrest to me.
Israeli forces smashed a walkway, cutting off a meeting hall from the Palestinian leader's private quarters. "They have destroyed the president's reception area," the official said. "He is surrounded by people with high morale. They will defend him with their lives".
I'm sure they will, if they're given the option, which they won't be.
Earlier, Israeli forces dynamited other parts of the compound. Tanks roamed across what had once been a helipad, their gun turrets trained on Mr Arafat's rooms.
Nothing quite as inspiring as looking down the barrel of a big fucking gun.
The rest of Ramallah was under curfew, with tanks and armoured personnel carriers patrolling the empty streets.
Must've been the lunch break for the vaunted "Arab Street".
The onslaught followed an emergency cabinet meeting called by the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, after a bomb in a bus in Tel Aviv killed six people. The defence minister, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, said the aim was not to expel Mr Arafat but to "isolate" him.
Cool! I can't wait to go to Israel so I can get an opportunity to throw peanuts at the old fart.
The escalation in violence is bound to complicate the US effort to get support for war on Iraq.
"Complicate"? As in "we might now get less than no support for the war"? I suppose I should be worried by that, but I'm really not.
US officials had been advising Israel to keep the situation quiet so as not to inflame Arab opinion.
Noticably, we're now no longer doing any such thing. Somebody might want to consider if there's a message in there somewhere.

2002-09-20T23:22:00.000-05:00

If I Don't Post This Link, the Terrorists Will Have Won...

Not that I think that anybody is unaware of it by now, but, just in case, Charles Austin has another Scourge™ up and it's chock-full of sarcastic goodness, as usual.

2002-09-20T14:17:00.000-05:00

Idiotarians Manage to Murder Even MORE People:

First, it was killing starving Africans to push their Idiotarian and completely unscientific agenda against "dangerous" GM foods, now it seems that they're out to kill off all the AIDS-victims too. They've finally managed to make research in anti-AIDS drugs so unprofitable that the drug companies are steering their R&D in other directions.

You know, it never ceases to amaze me how "bleeding heart", "compassionate" Idiotarian Lefty Loons are perfectly willing to murder off large parts of the population of the planet, just to show all of us "evil" capitalist how much they "feel our pain".

Well, would you murdering, filthy swine on the loony left kindly stop "caring", before you wipe the whole planet out?

Bill Quick, as always, has a few choice words to share on the matter too:

There's no surprise here. The murderous, discredited socialist and communist philosophies that animate the activist left have never been willing to admit that markets and profits are far more effective drivers of innovation than heavy-handed statist attempts to force free men and companies to do what the activists think is desirable.

Here's a clue, idiot activists: if you make one expression of capitalism suddenly much less profitable than other forms - especially in an area as capital intensive as drug development - you are going to force movement to the more profitable areas.

And I'm really not interested in hearing any activist whining about not knowing this would happen. Many of us told them it would, and did so at the top of our lungs. Andrew Sullivan, for instance, has long been on record outspokenly explaining the truth to these fools, again, and again, and again.

So now they've got what they wanted. They won. But did they? Really?

Why don't these socialist, statist pigs go count the bodies that are (and will be) the result of their murderous stupidity, and then get back to me on it?

What he said... In triplicate.

Genocidal Gerbil Molesters.

(Link courtesy of the one and only Bill Quick)

2002-09-20T10:22:00.000-05:00

Public Service Announcement:

Blogging over the next few days is going to be erratic at best and non-existent at worst, due to family visit.

I'll be back to speed come Tuesday, though.

2002-09-19T22:30:00.000-05:00

The "Elite" Republican Guard or "It Sucks To Be Hated"

From The al-Guardian:

Elite forces from Iraq's Republican Guard may not be called upon to protect Saddam Hussein in the event of an American attack - for fear that they might turn against him.
It wouldn't be nice for me to laugh hysterically at this point, would it?
This is because President Saddam cannot be sure of the Guard's loyalties, according to a non-Iraqi source with well-placed contacts in Baghdad. "It's touch and go who they fight for," said the source, who asked not to be identified.
My bet is "whoever's got the biggest gun", and it ain't Soddy.
"The officer corps in the Republican Guard are highly trained and motivated, but they hate Saddam Hussein. They also hate the United States.
Kinda leaves them with nothing but the choice of whose bullets they'd rather end up being punctured by, doesn't it?
The United Nations is currently scrambling to devise a means of forcing the Iraqi regime to succumb to renewed arms inspections in a desperate effort to avoid war. Should that fail Iraq has already made clear that its aim is to draw invading US forces into urban warfare, and officials regularly invoke memories of previous city battles in Beirut and Mogadishu.

The result in Iraq, Baghdad strategists calculate, would be to maximise casualties among both the American military and Iraqi civilians, thus increasing the political risks to the US.
"I see, mushrooms rising..."
But the Republican Guard would not be allowed to join street-fighting inside Bagh dad. Its forces would be kept outside the centre, defending three access routes to the capital, where they would be at the mercy of US bombers.
Oh yeah! A replay of the unforgettable scenes of Gulf War I, where the "elite" were scrambling for cover while our Apaches were picking them off one by one.
The Guard, which numbers 50,000-60,000 men, was originally set up as a counterweight to the regular army, and to protect the Iraqi regime, especially the presidential palace in Baghdad. It grew dramatically during the 1980-88 war with Iran, developing a broader role as an elite force.

Although highly privileged and well-equipped in comparison with the regular army, it has become less trusted as a result of several coup plots involving officers from the Guard. One plot, unmasked in 1990, two months before it was due to take place, included a brigadier-general from President Saddam's home town, Tikrit. A member of the Iraqi leader's own tribe was also arrested but later freed.

This led to an expansion of the super-elite Special Republican Guard (SRG),
I just can't wait for the "Super-Elite Invincible Special Republican Guard With Cheese™" to emerge.
In addition, there is the Saddam Fedayyeen, a thug militia run by President Saddam's elder son, Udai, which specialises in internal repression - such as cutting off tongues and beheading prostitutes.
Just about all his retarded son is capable of. And it'll come in handy too, when the nasty Mairkins invade with their Divisions of Prostitutes. "Hah, Infidels! I'll cut your tongues off! If I can catch you!
Members cover their faces and alternate between white uniforms in summer and black in winter.
...and a combination of red and brown when confronted with actual enemies, to conceal the blood and shitstains, respectively.

(Oh, and how's the color, dear readers? Tell me if you liked the cyan better)

There's gonna be a lot of corpses to clean up after this, but I suppose that the Super-Elite Republican Special Man of Steel Guard can handle that. They do know how to operate a shovel, don't they?

2002-09-19T22:02:00.000-05:00

I Thought It'd NEVER Happen!

...but finally I managed to achieve my goal: I got hatemail!

Poorly spelled, chock full of Idiotarianism and just begging for publicity.

I'm nothing if not a kind, accommodating soul (it's not for nothing that my email link says "Ask Mr. Misha"), so without further ado, let's hear what our "friend" Otto has to say:

Herr Misha:
We have many things in common and I generally enjoy your bucolic rants.

Generally, I'd consider that a compliment but, sensing a "but" coming on and having read the rest of the spew already, I'm afraid I'm going to have to go take a shower once I'm done typing this.

however , as komeradin, I feel I must remind you that Hitler was also a card-carrying, unilateralist and simplistic member of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy amoung a plethora of other labels ..

He may have been "unilateralist" and "simplistic", I certainly won't argue that, but I think you need to study up on the meaning of the word "socialist". As in: "National Socialist".

While you've got your dictionary handy, you might also, with regard to the words "unilateralist" and "simplistic", want to look up the word "sarcasm".

I would suggest, when using a slav nomen , (Misha)

...at least your abilities as a linguist aren't all bad.

it is an obvious sign of poor selfesteem to refer to a lame Reichskunt as a Nazi Sow..

I rather prefer to think of it as an obvious sign of low esteem for Nazi Sows employed as ministers of justice, but to each his own.

and when the name Coventry comes to your mind and mine , I will never forget Dresden..

I certainly hope not. Unfortunately, as the rest of your drivel shows, the lesson seems to have been lost on you.

Now let me clarify to whatever German readers I might have left: I fully agree that my remark about Dresden was in poor taste. I intended for it to be. I was trying to illustrate just how much I resent having my President compared to the Scourge of Humanity, Adolf Hitler.

And I'm sure that the intelligent among my German readers (and I suspect that that's the vast majority) already realized that and that I, in no way, was advocating an actual repeat of the terror bombing of '45.

But back to Otto, who obviously doesn't belong to that category:

I think the greatest difference between us , after much reading, is that I refuse to be a bitch for a nation of displaced convicts,

I really hate to be the one to have to break it to you (no I don't), Otto, but you already are. If it hadn't been for the Marshall Plan, you guys would still be feasting on turnips and begging for scraps. Fortunately, my ancestors (and considering what they had to go through at the hands of your Herr Adolf it's truly amazing) decided that you'd already suffered enough and that the only sensible end to WWII would be to let bygones be bygones and to move on. And I agree with that, just as I do not for a second believe that the Germans of today should be made to suffer for what happened 55 years ago. It's a good thing that us "displaced convicts" don't carry a grudge for very long, isn't it, Otto?

but I certainly would not waste any energy , time or capital on their undoing, or their victory.. or any other of the untermensch cultures of that miserable land..
On to Dunkirk!! und Dobredainne komeradin Otto

It's a good thing that I know that the vast majority of Germans are nothing like you, or I'd be itching to get my hands on the launch codes, Ottolein.

Ich kann es nur so sagen: Du kannst mir herzlich am Arsch lechen, du verflichster Arschgeier!

Jetzt hau ab, bitte, und gib die Burschen im Horst Wessel Klub ein Tritt im Arsch von mir... Verdammte Nazischwein!

Ausserdem: Es heisst "dobrij djen", oder jetzt lieber "dobrij vjecher".

Jetzt wirst du gefälligst dein Maul halten, oder?

2002-09-19T20:53:00.000-05:00

"What Is It With All This Starry-Eyed Idealism?"

This is a question I just received from fellow blogger Vegard Valberg from Norway, who is just a little bit annoyed with the seeming optimism of people such as myself and Steven den Beste with regards to the upcoming reform of Middle Eastern culture.

Before you immediately disregard this question as a sign of EUroweenie defeatism, I would like to point out that Vegard is by no means what you'd call a EUroweenie, nor is he in any way an "Idiotarian" and he does, indeed, present some very good questions that I'll try to the best of my ability to answer in the following. I'll only present snippets here, so I do recommend checking out his post in its entirety, it certainly deserves it:

Vegard starts off by stating that it is, ceteris paribus, always preferable to bring about change from within, without outside pressure:

I think that if we can bring about a change without war or reconstruction then that is best, a change that arise from within the nation in question is going to make them better long term neighbours, and more stable in the long run.

I will not argue that, because Vegard's absolutely right.

And that used to be the philosophy. We as Americans are extremely reluctant to try and force our values on other people, no matter what Idiotarians (to whom Vegard most certainly does not belong) may say about our "cultural imperialism". The fact is that our much-maligned cultural imperialism doesn't exist. Nobody's forcing anybody to buy our burgers, soft drinks and watch our movies, just to name the Usual Suspects™, we're only selling the stuff because there's a demand. If there wasn't, we'd be producing something else that we could sell, that's the way we're wired.

Another, and more basic, reason for our lack of willingness to force ourselves upon others is that we, to put it bluntly, couldn't care less. We're happy, we're rich, we're successful (all relatively speaking), so why would we want to bother? As long as nobody bothers us, there's no reason for us to bother them. We're always willing to help if asked, but we certainly don't have a need to get involved where we're not wanted, because why should we?

That used to be the philosophy. But with 9/11 (actually before that, but that was the "line in the sand" for most Americans), the rest of the world ceased to be an SEP (Somebody Else's Problem). Suddenly we no longer had the option of "letting other people mind their own business", because they'd made their business our business by attacking us. And, as a result, the "leave them to themselves until they figure out that their ways won't work" had to be scratched out of the playbook, because American lives would be lost while we were waiting, and that's not permissible. We and our leaders have a duty to protect ourselves from harm.

So passive non-interventionism is out of the question now. We could afford that idea (and it worked) with the Soviet Union because, in spite of their rabid ideas, they knew that any aggression against us would lead to their own destruction. They were rational players. Islamists are not. Death for "the cause" is noble to them, death, to the Soviets, was death, no matter what the cause. The Soviets were driven by a desire to turn us into communists by working on it for as long as it would take, the Islamists are driven by a desire to turn us into either Muslims or corpses.

And whereas the Islamist death cults are certainly psychotic, they're by no means stupid, so they know full well that the first option is out of the question, which leaves them with number 2. Furthermore, knowing that their failings and inadequacies are only going to become more pronounced with time, not less, they also realize that the sooner they act, the larger the likelihood that they'll succeed.

So how are we going to get this reform of the Islamist world?

Well, seeing as we can't afford to wait for it to come about by itself, we have to shove it down their throats.

To this, Vegard has this to say:

The stubborn refusal to see plain facts, and the starry eyed idealism of many people is really annoying. Saddam was democratically elected, after all the other candidates were shot, you can say the elections were rigged, but let me ask you where are you going to get a democracy for the Middle-East? Do you have one in your pocket? Or in your backpack perhaps? Or are you going to make it out of clay and water and try to raise it with a strange Cabbalistic-Constitutional ceremony?

No, we're not, but it's a good question.

I harbor no illusions that it's going to be easy because, as Vegard correctly points out later in his post, there's precious little to work with in the cesspool of Islamism.

But we have no choice.

We'll have to go in, throw the garbage out, and then try to build something on the ruins.

Will it be easy?

Hell no, it'll be the toughest job we ever had because, as Vegard also correctly points out, with Germany and Japan we at least had something to begin with. With Islamism, we'll have to start from rock bottom. But it can work, as we've seen in Turkey and, to a lesser extent, in Iran.

But most of all, we have no choice.

So why the "starry-eyed" idealism?

Well, I think that the "starry-eyedness" comes from realizing that here's a job that we have to do if we want to continue to exist, so we might as well concentrate on the best outcome.

If we dwell too much (and don't get me wrong, one shouldn't ignore the possibility of negative outcomes on the way, it would be foolish to think that we could fight and win a war without any mishaps on the way) on "worst case scenarios", it'll at the worst discourage us from doing what we have to do and, at best, just hurt our morale.

It won't change the fact that we're caught in a fight that we have to fight, sooner or later, so it might as well be sooner. The choice not to fight has been taken from us, for that way lies destruction. The clash between medievalism and civilized, modern society had to come, it's just our bad luck that it happened to come in our lifetimes.

I'm sure our grandparents felt the same when they were faced with Adolf Hitler, cursing a cruel fate for being born in "interesting times", yet they realized that they couldn't just shirk their responsibilities, so they fought on, and won.

We must do the same or perish. It's that simple.

But I'm only talking for myself, of course, your mileage may vary.

2002-09-19T17:30:00.000-05:00

Who Is The Enemy?

Be warned. This essay by Steven den Beste is a LONG one, but it's every bit as much worth reading as it is long.

If you can't set aside the time to read it all now, print it out or bookmark it and read it when you can. You'll be happy that you did.

2002-09-19T16:59:00.000-05:00

Seems There's Another Country Ripe For Regime Change Too...

Well, considering who it's coming from, maybe we should acknowledge the expertise on the matter:

The regional Schwaebisches Tagblatt newspaper quoted German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's justice minister, Herta Daeubler-Gmelin, as saying "Bush wants to divert attention from his domestic problems. It's a classic tactic. It's one that Hitler used."

Careful with what you say, you Nazi Sow.

Assuming that what you're saying isn't just idiotic bloviating from a Klueless Kraut (and that's tough, even for argument's sake), you might want to consider other tactics that Hitler used. Does the name "Coventry" mean anything to you?

Hmmm... Maybe those old navigational maps of Northern Europe will come in handy again some day...

[humming: "I love Hamburg in the springtime, I love Dresden in the fall..."]

"Amusing", no?

Shitheel...

Oh, and if you're feeling bored and have a thing or two to say to the German representatives here in the US before we wrap them up in body sized plastic bags, pull the zipper and drop them over Krautland without the benefit of parachutes, here's a contact link you might want to look into.

UPDATE: Maybe the Morgenthau Plan wasn't such a bad idea after all...

(Link via Bill Quick)

2002-09-19T15:36:00.000-05:00

My Apologies

Haloscan screwed up again, so if you're wondering where your comments went, that's what happened. Hopefully they'll return when they figure out what it was they did wrong this time and correct it.

Come to think of it: Better check if the Haloscan server is in Miami-Dade or Broward.

UPDATE: That was quick! I just barely had time to pop by their message board and whine about my lack of free ice cream (gratitude never was one of my defining traits) when, lo and behold, everything's back in order and the comments have re-appeared.

2002-09-19T15:22:00.000-05:00

Lack of Clue All Over Again

It seems eternal whiner Al Bore is not content whining about his own defeats, he has to whine about others' too.

Doing what Idiotarians are known to do, namely repeating the same action over and over expecting different results, he's now busy blaming the Child Murdering Monster Janet Reno's defeat on, you guessed it, Republicans. At least it wasn't global warming this time.

It's a subject about which he has some expertise,

What, lying? growing a beard?.

and not surprisingly Al Gore yesterday blamed the latest problems in Florida's election system on President Bush and Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

Nope, not surprising at all. What would be surprising would be if anything, anything at all happened and the al-Bore didn't blame it on the Bush family.

"Honey? When did that dent in the Volvo get there?"

"It was BUSH, dear!!!"

The man is more pitiful than a Greek suicidal chorus with the blues.

During campaign appearances in Jacksonville and Palm Beach County, areas that figured in the 2000 election debacle, the former Democratic presidential candidate called last week's botched primary election "déjà vu all over again."

...then proceeded to claim that he'd just come up with that expression. His dear black Mammy back on the ~~tobacco~~ cotton plantation had inspired him by saying something similar when he was a kid, planning the Internet.

He gives pathological liars and plagiarists a bad name.

"I didn't expect there to be all the problems at the polling booths again," said Gore, who attended a rally and fundraiser for Rep. Corrine Brown.

You didn't? You thought your cretinous supporters in Miami-Dade and Broward had been abducted by aliens and replaced by something sentient since 2000? Like, say, turnips?

"The money the Congress tried to allocate was defeated by President Bush and there was a lack of attention and leadership at the state level by Governor Bush."

I didn't realize that State level elections were the responsibility of the President of the United States, but you're probably right about his brother. He was probably busy putting up roadblocks, siccing pitbulls on black voters and kicking little old ladies.

The governor's office responded by saying Florida's 67 counties received $32 million to fix their independent elections systems and only two, Miami-Dade and Broward, run by Democrats, had serious problems.

Which was one of the biggest non-surprises of the year. As Andrea Harris once very aptly put it: "The Democrats couldn't run a pair of pantyhose".

Imbeciles, the whole sorry lot of them.

"This sounds like a wannabe candidate who's desperate to be heard," Katie Muniz, Jeb Bush's spokeswoman, told the Associated Press.

Sounds more like an incredibly sore loser trying to squeeze the last moist almost-drops of sympathy out of a public that don't give a shit about the washed-out old fool anymore.

During the Sept. 10 primary, hundreds of voters in the two largest counties said they were turned away because of equipment failures.

The herds of wild dogs and the barbed wire roadblocks will, presumably, be next.

Other tabulating problems and recounts led Janet Reno to wait a week before she conceded Tuesday to Bill McBride in the Democratic gubernatorial primary.

...other sources have it that The Waco Monster just wasn't quite sure what week it was or whether pouring gasoline over the Governor's Mansion and burning it down was still an option.

"Even though the late-night comics have gotten ahold of it again, it isn't funny," Gore said earlier at a fundraising breakfast in West Palm Beach for Carol Roberts

Oh yes it is. It's hysterical! But obviously, the most boring man in the world wouldn't realize true humor if it jumped up, kicked him in the face, pulled his ears, poked one of his eyes out and bit his nose of.

While Gore traveled in Florida, the Republican state government was asking for help from the Justice Department in averting a third straight election fiasco in the Nov. 5 general election. Secretary of State Jim Smith called on Attorney General John D. Ashcroft's staff to "take whatever steps necessary" to ensure a fair election.

Quite simple, really: Go back to the pencil and paper system, only this time make sure both ends of the pencils are sharpened, or the glueheads in Miami-Dade and Broward won't get to vote at all.

Come to think of it, that might actually be a good idea...

(Link thanks to Charles Austin)

2002-09-19T13:06:00.000-05:00

Of Bitches and Lefty Loons

Norm Jenson of "One Good? Move" has finally taken it upon himself to offer a brutal and humorous takedown of yours truly. If only he would at least try. But, as expected, he sputters ineffectively, pats himself on the back and moves on in search of that good move that seems to be forever eluding him:

Pejman was matched at his request with Misha a cute little Rotweiller. Your my bitch now he was heard to say.

Oddly enough I have no recollection of that, much less a recollection of Pej spelling "you're" wrong, but I guess it is possible.

But, in the interest of fact checking, I've looked up my referrer logs and it turns out that I am, and have been for quite some time, Glenn's bitch.

Misha listens carefully to the instructions from his mentor. He has already learned several important warblogger commands he understands Sic that dude deserves a fisking but is having trouble understanding the concept of "Fact check his Ass" he does a lot of sniffing around, but to date hasn't had any success.

Without even bothering to come up with any examples (I'd hate to injure your fragile ego by upstaging you beyond your limited comprehension), I can safely say that my successes in that area are vastly superior to your successes in the arcane art of "punctuation".

I assume those keys are among the ones on your keyboard that are hopelessly stuck together.

2002-09-19T10:09:00.000-05:00

Commenting Back On

We'll see how long Haloscan can keep the leaky old barge afloat this time...

2002-09-19T07:03:00.000-05:00

But What If...?

Let's assume that, for some reason, Saddam gets his way and we don't invade right now but instead flood Iraq with inspectors? (Yeah, it's a long shot, but it could happen). What then, happens if these inspectors actually find something?

Paul Wright has thought about that and come up with some rather chilling ideas about what might happen, ideas that further reinforce (as if it needed reinforcing) my conclusion that we need to stop waffling and send Soddy off to the long dirt nap, the sooner the better.

Let's get this job over with, for crying out loud! It's not like the weenies are gonna change their mind ever, not even if, Heaven forbid, Soddy and his drooling fanatics manage to stage another terror attack on the US. So let's get it done, get it done thoroughly and get it done quickly, we can always deal with the hand-wringing Idiotarians' impotent whinging later.

I'd one heck of lot rather risk having to deal with a bunch of howling fossilized Idiotarians who haven't gotten over the 60s yet, than risk having to sift through the glowing ruins of New York for survivors.

2002-09-19T00:04:00.000-05:00

And a Few Way Overdue Additions:

Referrer logs are a good thing, especially for folks like me who have trouble keeping track without the use of several legal pads and badly chewed pencils. Thanks to this wonder of modern web technology (the log, not the pencils, you...), it came to my attention that there were a couple blogs out there that, for inexplicable reasons, had seen fit to link me.

The only reasons I could come up with without having to resort to delusions of adequacy would be that either the blogowners were on the same meds as myself or that they felt they had something in common with me or heck, even liked me (of course, a small hope that it would be some fresh Fisking™ grounds also reared its bloodthirsty head), so I decided to go check them out.

One is Icchan's Spent Casings (Icchan also happens to be a long-time reader of mine, so he's now entitled to slap me repeatedly upside the head with a dead trout), the other is Gregory Hlatky's Dog's Life.

I recommend both sites heartily and, as a consequence of my unreserved approval, they're now doomed to spend a long time on my ever-growing Blogroll of Infamy™, with all of the stigma that a Rottweiler Stamp of Approval™ carries with it.

My apologies for taking so long, gentlemen.

UPDATE: I know, I won't have room on my blogroll for much longer, but I just came by another Oz blog that is well worth a look, especially if you, like I, love the use of unashamed invective and verbal abuse combined with good sense. Ladies and Gents: Paul & Carls Daily Diatribe.

2002-09-18T22:48:00.000-05:00

A Washed Out Has-Been Refuses To Shut the F*ck Up...

It seems that Nelson Mandela is determined to bury whatever might be left of his legacy, which is very sad indeed, but that won't keep the cerebrally challenged clusterfucks of the al-Guardian from taking him all the way, right down to the hilt:

Say what you like about Nelson Mandela,
I wish I could, but this is a family-oriented website.
but he is not a man known to bear a grudge or lose his temper easily.
Sadly, he seems to be losing his mind now.
Having waited 27 years for his freedom, he emerged from jail to preach peace and reconciliation to a nation scarred by racism.
Since then, all that has changed is that the racism has gotten itself a brand new color.
When he finally made the transition from the world's most famous prisoner to the world's most respected statesman, he invited his former jailer to the inauguration.
And then the long slide downhill began...
So when he criticises US foreign policy in terms every bit as harsh as those he used to condemn apartheid, you know something is up.
Yep. And it ain't his IQ.
In the past few weeks, he has issued a "strong condemnation" of the US's attitude towards Iraq, lambasted vice-president Dick Cheney for being a "dinosaur" and accused the US of being "a threat to world peace".
Unconfirmed reports also have it that he's taken to believing that he's Santa Claus and that pigs can really fly...
Coming from other quarters, such criticisms would have been dismissed by both the White House and Downing Street as the words of appeasement, anti-Americanism or leftwing extremism.
Coming from Mandela, however, it's not only the words of appeasement, anti-Americanism or leftwing extremism, it's also a clear and very sad sign that a once truly great man has finally reached dementia.
But Mandela is not just anyone. Towering like a moral colossus over the late 20th century, his voice carries an ethical weight like no other.
Did I hear a feather fall?
He rode to power on a global wave of goodwill, left office when his five years were up and settled down to a life of elder statesmanship. So the belligerent tone he has adopted of late suggests one of two things; either that some thing is very wrong with the world, or that something is very wrong with Mandela.
Pick me! I know it! Pick me! Pick me!
What Mandela believes is wrong with the world is not difficult to fathom. He is annoyed at how the US is exploiting its overwhelming military might. Earlier this month, after President Bush would not take his calls, he spoke to secretary of state Colin Powell and then the president's father, asking the latter to discourage his son from attacking Iraq.
One would've thought that Mr. Mandela would've taken a hint, but oh no... He's a "moral colossus", after all and, as such, not subject to the whims of mere mortals.
"What right has Bush to say that Iraq's offer is not genuine?" he asked on Monday.
Well... One could go by past experience, just to name one.
"We must condemn that very strongly.
The Royal "We", no less. Methinks it's time for Nellie to take his meds.
No country, however strong, is entitled to comment adversely in the way the US has done. They think they're the only power in the world.
That could have to do with the fact that, for all practical purposes, we are the only power in the world. Another reason is that we're the aggrieved party in this conflict and, as such, hold certain privileges.
They're not and they're following a dangerous policy. One country wants to bully the world."
Nope, Nellie. We just don't want to have to ask the world for permission to defend ourselves and no amount of sanctimonious, whining B.S. from you or anybody else is going to change that fact. Get over yourself and let the rest of us remember you as the great statesman that you were.
Having supported the bombing of Afghanistan, he cannot be dismissed as a peacenik. But his assessment of the current phase of Bush's war on terror is as damning as anything coming out of the Arab world. "If you look at these matters, you will come to the conclusion that the attitude of the United States of America is a threat to world peace."
And I've just come to the conclusion that you're certifiable, old man.
And then there is the dreaded "r" word. Accusations of discrimination do not fall often or easily from Mandela's lips, but when they do, the world is forced to sit up and listen. So far, he has fallen short of accusing the west of racism in its dealings with the developing world, but he has implied sympathy with those who do.
Which is, for all that I care, the same thing. And no, we're not "forced" to do a damn thing, least of all listen to an old man who's obviously lost his marbles.
"When there were white secretary generals, you didn't find this question of the US and Britain going out of the UN. But now that you've had black secretary generals, such as Boutros Boutros Ghali and Kofi Annan, they do not respect the UN.
I'm glad you could clear that up for me. Last I checked, Boutros Boutros Ghali wasn't exactly black. Another thing is that, under the "white" Secretary Generals, we didn't have a problem with Islamofascists murderers driving passenger jets into our office buildings.
This is not my view, but that is what is being said by many people."
And if it's not your view, then why are you so Hell-bent on airing it, you transparent fool?
Most surprising in these broadsides has been his determination to point out particular individuals for blame.
...most likely because he's having trouble remembering all the names in his dotage.
As a seasoned [well-seasoned and burnt to a crisp -ed.] political hand, Mandela has previously eschewed personal invective but has clearly made an exception when it comes to Cheney.
Another sign of senility: You tend to remember people from your past better than the realities of your present.
In 1986, Cheney voted against a resolution calling for his release because of his alleged support for "terrorism". Mandela insists that he is not motivated by pique. "Quite clearly we are dealing with an arch-conservative in Dick Cheney... my impression of the president is that this is a man with whom you can do business. But it is the men around him who are dinosaurs, who do not want him to belong to the modern age."
Nope... No pique here... Move along, nothing to see.
In fact, behind the scenes, the White House is attempting to portray Mandela, now 84, as something of a dinosaur himself - the former leader of an African country, embittered by the impotence that comes with retirement and old age.
Send him some free Viagra™ samples, ferchrissakes!
It is a charge they have found difficult to make stick.
Oh?
Mandela has never been particularly encumbered by delusions of grandeur.
...apart from the occasional Royal "we" and the very modest notion that the future of the entire world rests on his drooping shoulders.
When asked whether he would be prepared to mediate in the current dispute, he replied. "If I am asked by credible organisations to mediate, I will consider that very seriously.
Now that's a forceful "no thank you!" if ever I saw one!
But a situation of this nature does not need an individual, it needs an organisation like the UN to mediate. A man who has lost power and influence can never be a suitable mediator."
Nope, not bitter at all...
But if there is something wrong with Mandela it is chiefly that for the past decade he has been thoroughly and wilfully misunderstood. He has been portrayed as a kindly old gent who only wanted black and white people to get on, rather than a determined political activist who wished to redress the power imbalance between the races under democratic rule. In the years following his release, the west wilfully mistook his push for peace and reconciliation not as the vital first steps to building a consensus that could in turn build a battered nation but as a desire to both forgive and forget.
And, as subsequent developments in South Africa have shown, neither "forgive" nor "forget" are words that he has even the faintest of acquaintances with. He's every bit the vengeful bastard that Bobby Mugabe is.
So it was for Mandela when he came to Britain in 1990, after telling reporters in Dublin that the British government should talk to the IRA, presaging developments that took place a few years later. The then leader of the Labour party, Neil Kinnock, called the remarks "extremely ill-advised"; Tory MP Teddy Taylor said the comments made it "difficult for anyone with sympathy for the ANC and Mandela to take him seriously."

He made similar waves in the US when he refused to condemn Yasser Arafat, Colonel Gadafy and Fidel Castro. Setting great stock by the loyalty shown to both him and his organisation during the dog days of apartheid, he has consistently maintained that he would stick by those who stuck by black South Africa. It was wrong, he told Americans, to suggest that "our enemies are your enemies... We are a liberation movement and they support our struggle to the hilt."
Is it just me, or didn't this al-Guardian spew start out with the words "...he is not a man known to bear a grudge..."? Just checking to make sure that I haven't become as senile as the sad old fossil himself.

You can swallow now, Gary Younge.

2002-09-18T20:21:00.000-05:00

While I'm At It, I Mustn't Forget This:

Blogrolling like crazy today, it seems.

I just came across a most excellent Fisking™ of the Fisk™, remarkable not only by being extremely well-written, but even more so by not "merely" being the usual Fisking™ of the Idiotarian drivel in one of Bobby's columns, but by being a solid Fisking™ of the man (if indeed he can be called that) himself and his less than illustrious career.

It's by the fabulous Bargarz, a blogger on his well-deserved way to Blogger Stardom, and can be found right here.

2002-09-18T18:40:00.000-05:00

Rachel On a Roll...

She rolls off posts like they're going out of style and yet the quality never decreases.

How does she do it???

Anyways, I was going to link to her latest about the Brady Idiotarians, then I wanted to link to her excellent public flaying of Sleazy Lawyers Who Oughta Be Publically Hung, then there's the bit about "parents" who somehow managed to murder a child through their inexcusable stupidity...

Oh what the Heck, just go catch up on it all. If you haven't already, you'll be grateful that I told you to.

2002-09-18T10:26:00.000-05:00

SPLAT!

Juan takes the old Fiskin'™ rod to the hideous hide of Maureen Dowd and leaves pieces of the old Idiotarian Hag sticking everywhere. I love it, and you will too!

UPDATE: And, just when the Dowdie is trying to do a Terminator™ and coalesce back into the cruel caricature of a woman that she is, Paul Wright jumps in the middle of the pool of Dowd-goo and sends tiny globules of Idiotarian flying yet again.

2002-09-18T07:36:00.000-05:00

The Beat Goes On...

War Now may be gone, but there's a different site up now that just might replace it and it might be worthwhile to go take a look. Just sayin' 's all...

2002-09-18T07:06:00.000-05:00

I Have No Idea How This Site Has Managed to Slip Under My Radar...

...but no longer will my blogroll suffer under the absence of the eminent Prof. Bunyip from Down Under.

If our friends the Ozzies keep producing bloggers of this quality at the current rate, we may have to consider revoking their blog-license...

2002-09-18T06:58:00.000-05:00

Don't Read This While Drinking and/or Eating

James Lileks has an interview with Scott Ritter, former NYC health inspector, and if I wasn't laughing so hard, I'd post some excerpts. Instead I urge you to go check it out before your neighbor.

2002-09-18T06:50:00.000-05:00

To Whom It May Concern

I don't know who you are, but I would like to extend a HUGE Rottie "Thank You" (have your towels ready ;-) ) to whomever bought my banner. It was a very nice gesture and it is VERY much appreciated.

You guys and gals are GREAT, THANK YOU!

In other news: "Haloscan" seems to be having trouble digesting its traffic for the moment, so, to cut loading times, I've switched the comments off temporarily. They'll be back up as soon (or late, as might be the case with Haloscan) as they've got their ~~shit~~ stuff back in order. I apologize for the interruption and hope it won't last very long. Without comments, it just ain't the same.

UPDATE: OK, comments back online. Let's see if it lasts more than a few hours this time.

UPDATE the 2nd: Sprize, sprize... It didn't... Comments off again...

2002-09-17T23:12:00.000-05:00

Wash, Rinse, Repeat...

The UN has come up with yet another Utopian scheme to eradicate poverty, hunger and disease in Africa. It's called the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD):

The 190-member U.N. General Assembly formally endorsed Monday a new initiative to rebuild and rejuvenate one of the world's most crisis-stricken and war-ravaged continents: Africa.
Well knock me over with a feather. I thought you were talking about the Middle East again. Of course, that's not a continent, but you never know with you Idiotarians.
''I am delighted to join you for this important meeting dedicated to exploring ways in which the international community can support the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD),'' U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan told a special meeting of the General Assembly.
"That's "Annan-speak" for "exploring ways in which I can get you guys to give me money that you've stolen from people who worked for it so I can give it to people who haven't", in case you were wondering, which, of course, you weren't.
''What had hindered Africa's development in the past was the absence of resources to facilitate the realization of its development objectives,'' Mbeki
And here's the rare "Mbeki" dialect, expressing the same thing.
Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika said that NEPAD reflected the continent's determination to launch a new development path whose objectives were designed by Africans.
...and paid for by everybody except Africans.
''Africa was increasingly marginalized within the global economy because of its conflicts, the spread and aggravation of poverty, HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis,'' he said.
...most of which is due to a strange African tendency to put murdering each other, stealing from each other and fucking anything with a pulse without protection above unimportant stuff such as food and jobs.
NEPAD aims to achieve 7.0 percent annual growth, so Africa can meet one of the goals laid down by the 2000 U.N. Millennium Summit: halving poverty on the continent by 2015.
Another goal of the project is to invest a substantial amount of the funds in the pursuit of porcine aviation.
The Assembly also urged ''the U.N. system and the international community, in particular donor nations,...
...no shit, Sherlock.
...to assist with NEPAD's implementation.''

African leaders say that about 64 billion dollars in aid and investments are needed annually to fight poverty and disease, and also rebuild the African continent.
Whoa! That's a lotta dough! I suggest you guys roll up your sleeves, drop the AK-47s and get to work then.
But the G-8 countries - the United States, France, Britain, Canada, Japan, Germany, Italy and Russia - have pledged only about eight billion dollars annually, starting in 2006, to help bolster Africa's economic development.
Oh, I forgot, sorry... We're supposed to pay for all of that. Speaking of money, I have this prime ocean front property in Arizona...
NEPAD has also been described as ''seriously flawed'' because it depends on that aid money, much of it with strings attached.
I knew that they wouldn't just accept our money without bitching.
African nations have been asked to promise a wide range of political and economic reforms, including multi-party democracy, free and fair elections, respect for human rights, the elimination of corruption, transparency and accountability, market access and free market economies.
How DARE we??? That is just... INHUMANE!!! What'll the next thing be? Equal Rights?
Several non-governmental organizations, including Action Aid and Oxfam, have criticized Western donors for offering ''peanuts'' in return for those commitments.
Does the expression "take it or leave it" mean anything to you guys?
''NEPAD has been instrumental in mobilizing discussion about Africa, but beyond that we have serious concerns, including the fact that NEPAD has been developed in a closed way and doesn't reflect the priorities of the African continent,'' said Amboka Wameyo of London-based Action Aid.
"So can you just give us the money and let us get back to stoning, murdering, raping and pillaging already? I mean, we're talking about some of our most important and time-honored traditions here, you culti-fascist Westerners"
Blair has already expressed disappointment over the lack of African support for his campaign against Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, who has been accused of forcibly taking white-owned land, mostly from settlers of British origin, and giving it to landless peasants.

Blair has also accused Mugabe of rigging presidential elections and suspending the rule of law - both of which go against the basic principles of NEPAD.
...all of which is true, but we're playing "Real Journalist™" here, which is a fun game involving intensive use of words such as "accused", "alleged" and "suspected". Unless we're referring to something Jews or Americans have done, of course.
At the recently concluded U.N. Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in South Africa, Mugabe lashed out at Blair accusing Britain of continuing its old colonial policies.

''Blair, you keep your England, and I will keep my Zimbabwe,'' Mugabe said amidst cheers from some African delegates.
Fine, Bobby old chap, keep it. Don't let the door kick you in the ass on the way out, y'hear? And ferchrissakes, stop holding out that hat, it's pathetic. Have a nice day.
''Massive assistance'' was needed to combat the scourges of HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases on the African continent, added Obasanjo.
Send us a postcard when you've decided to stop stoning women for adultery, you fascist prick.

UPDATE: Alert reader Henry suggests that you read the name "NEPAD" aloud to yourself.
I hadn't thought of that, so now I've got coffee stains all over my monitor, Henry, thanksamillion... I have to admit, though, that the pronounciation of the acronym makes perfect sense.

UPDATE the 2nd: Seems fellow blogger Kieran Lyons has his own unique take on the "kneepad" angle and it's a very good take too.
Unfortunately for Kieran, his tipping me off on this means that he will no longer be able to escape the shame of being on "The Rottie"'s blogroll. Sooner or later, I will find you all. Resistance is futile... One roll to rule them all, one roll to find them... (Misha!, time for your meds!)

2002-09-17T21:34:00.000-05:00

The al-Guardian Is Showing Its True Colors Again

From today's (dear) leader:

Surviving Saddam

The west faces a choice between two evils

Leader
Tuesday September 17, 2002
The Guardian

Understanding Saddam Hussein has always been difficult, if not impossible.

This is often the case with rabid dogs. The solution, however, is always the same.

Again and again, in his war with Iran, in his refusal to vacate Kuwait, in his vicious domestic purges, in his provocative meddling in Palestine and in his battles with the UN, he has acted irrationally, illogically and in direct opposition to his own and Iraq's best interests. A twisted form of egotistical nationalism, in which the state and his own person are fused, a vague, contemptuous aspiration towards pan-Arab leadership, and a visceral defiance and intolerance, steeped in pathological violence, seem to be the main elements of his warped mind-set.

Quite a character, this Sammy. Surely anything that would turn him into worm food would be a good idea, no?

But one characteristic stands out above all others.

That he's a murderous, rapacious, psychotic son of a bitch that ought to be put out of our collective miseries, the sooner the better?

Since 1979, when he seized overall power, Saddam has proved himself a survivor.

Largely thanks to the whimpering, whining and procrastination of the "international community" who'd much rather have him continue to kill, maim, murder and mutilate that actually do something about it, as long as it's "only" Kurds and Jews that he's murdering.

This basic instinct for self-preservation has remained constant and paramount throughout all his rash gambles and innumerable acts of daily tyranny.

...which the al-Guardian would much rather see continue indefinitely than to let those eeeevil unwashed Yanks do something about it, as we shall learn shortly.

It is a sad irony that Saddam's very survivalist credo may now represent the best hope of avoiding an all-out US-led war in Iraq.

The Hell with the goals or the motives, as long as we avoid the war at any cost.

Neville Chamberlain would've been proud. The rest of us wouldn't line the cage of a gerbil with diarrhea with the al-Guardian and its noxious spew.

And it is a surprising paradox that, for a growing number of European and Arab states, Saddam's survival now presents the lesser of two great evils.

No it isn't.

The EUnuchs know full well that a war against Iraq will kick them off to the dark, damp corner of utter irrelevance and the Arabofascists know that their days are numbered once Sammy is out of the picture, as he will be shortly after the shooting war starts.

It's touching that the EUrinalians value their own already dubious relevance higher than the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis perishing while they waffle about with their limp dicks in their hands. Not very surprising, though. It's what one has come to expect.

In the urgings of Saudi Arabia and the Arab League, in statements emanating from Paris, Berlin and Moscow, there is a tacit recognition that agreement by Saddam to allow the return of weapons inspectors, preferably before any binding new UN resolution is passed, would be rewarded by tacit agreement to his remaining in power.

Kinda sad, then, that what you limpwristed appeasers think is of absolutely no fuckin' consequence at all, isn't it?

Come on, EUnuchs, say it: Who's your daddy? You know you want to.

Even our own government seems to hint along these lines. "Either Saddam deals with those weapons of mass destruction or his regime will have to end," says Jack Straw. "The choice is his." Put another way, the foreign secretary's words suggest that unrestricted cooperation will put an end to talk of regime change.

That's what you'd like to read into it, anyway. Let's see about that...

This is emphatically not the US position, as plainly implied by Mr Bush last week. He wants both.

For one thing, he'd be pleasantly surprised if the UN, once and for all, would back up all of its own resolutions regarding Iraq, rather than going right back to sleep as soon as it looks like Saddam might agree to just one of 'em.

It's not like any of us expect to see that out of BS Central on the East River, but it sure would be nice for a change.

But the emerging consensus since Mr Bush's UN speech is that a majority of regional and western leaders would far prefer full and unfettered weapons inspections, as part of a UN-directed, multilateral process,

...[jump!..] Oops, sorry must've nodded off there. Did I miss anything? No, doesn't seem so... Translates into "inaction".

to the precedent-setting full and unfettered exercise, anywhere, any time, any place, of overweening US military power.

Thank you for stating your idiocy so clearly for everybody to see.

This majority of which you speak so fondly and repeatedly, in other words, would rather see another round of ineffectual negotiating back and forth, leading to absolutely nothing, zip, zilch, nada, while thousands die in vain, than it would allow the US to go in and clean it up once and for all.

I'm more and more happy with every moronic statement of yours that you idiots don't have a say in the matter.

This unlikely conjunction of interest has been occasioned not by any sneaking sympathy for Saddam...

...but rather an irrational, knee-jerk contrarian attitude towards any decision made by the US, combined with a bad case of inferiority complex.

...but by the imperiousness of a correspondingly irrational US policy.

Same thing.

Mr Bush's motives and timing understandably inspire distrust among putative allies.

...not that the al-Guardian would ever stoop as low as to actually provide any actual examples of what is so "suspicious" about the President's timing and motives, but we didn't expect anything else from this vile waste of pulp, did we?

The possible consequences for Iraq's people, the region, and other regimes the US dislikes inspire alarm.

As to the "other regimes that the US dislikes", I couldn't give a shit even if I ate 10lbs of prunes and tried really really hard, as to the people of Iraq and other people in the region, they really ought to worry a whole lot more about what will happen once a certain mustachioed megalomaniacal psychopath gets his hands on a couple of the big firecrackers.

Mr Bush's evidence that Saddam has the capability and intent to threaten or attack the US or its allies, and is party to a wider terrorist conspiracy, remains opaque.

...only if you have the same visual acuity as a myopic bat and are trying to read the evidence readily at hand to everybody with a computer and an ISP in a dark closet after having translated it into a language you've never heard of.

Of course, this would perfectly describe the average Idiotarian trying to come to terms with facts that he or she doesn't like.

Sudden US concern for the UN's authority and international law looks, in a broader context, hypocritical.

Nope. It was a clear case of "you asses keep whining about us acting unilaterally in defiance of the UN. Well, here's your own damned decisions on a silver platter, so fuckin' well ACT on 'em already or shut your drooling pieholes!"

But you just can't win with Idiotarians. Either we act and we're "simplistic unilateralists in defiance of the international community" or we consult with the UN and are "hypocrites".

Thank Heavens we don't have any need to "win" their approval!

Not for the first time does the Bush administration's proposed cure appear more immediately dangerous than the disease.

Again, we're not presented with examples of the horrible dangers that we face if we go in and pop a couple FMJs through ol' Soddy's skull.

But of course, we don't need any. The al-Guardian says so, so that oughta be enough, right?

If Saddam's tactical aim is to thwart US pressure, and if his strategic aim is, as ever, to retain power,

Gee! Ya think that might be his ultimate goal? How'd you come up with that example of sheer genius?

then such divergences afford him a clear opportunity.

Nope.

One thing I find hysterically funny as I read through the various papers from all over the world is how they all seem to think that Soddy's "agreeing to inspectors" for the 117th time came as a complete surprise to the President and his administration.

You really think we didn't expect that? You think we haven't gotten that one covered in the playbook as well?

Of course you do, we're all "simplistic" Americans, after all. What do we know?

Well, buckwheats, you're about to get surprised, methinks. Sit back and take notes...

Thus, in all logic, he will open his doors to the UN and work out the details later. Unsatisfactory though this is for some obvious reasons,

Such as the fact that it's been tried before. And it didn't work then either.

and for both sides, it is also the best way of defusing a crisis that, for many, still bears the stamp "Made in America".

There you have it: It's all the Americans' fault! It's our fault that Saddam is gassing his own population, it's our fault that he invaded Kuwait, it's our fault that he's building palaces to himself and buying weapons while his population is starving to death, if only we'd just sit down and be good EUnuchs and do absolutely nothing at all... blah, blah, rant, rave, blah...

Well... I think you imbeciles are about to get a message "Made in America" and I'm pretty damn sure that you're not going to like it one little bit.

The only thing that I'm more sure of is that I don't GIVE A FLYING, DANCING, TWIRLING FUCK!!!!

Now piss off, EUroweenies, before you get hurt.

Useless Fuckwits...

2002-09-17T12:52:00.000-05:00

Post-9/11 Greed

Rachel has an excellent post up about it already, and there's not a whole lot I can add to it.

She argues that she can't see why families of victims of 9/11 should be entitled to billions of our taxpayer dollars and I agree with her in every way.

For sure, I feel for those families, I feel for them in ways that I've rarely felt before, but for them to be "entitled" to funds from anybody (at least in my view) they'd have to prove, beyond any reasonable doubt, that the ones they're suing for the funds were in some way responsible for their loss.

Are we, the taxpayers, responsible for 9/11? Of course not, that's hogwash. Are the airlines? Well you might say that now, but hindsight has a tendency of being 20/20, doesn't it?

So why should either party be forced to pay? The answer is as elementary as it is obvious: They shouldn't.

Now don't get me wrong. I gave, voluntarily, after 9/11, all that I could spare, out of concern for those families. That's what we do in America, we're never slow to help out when other people are in need and I'm proud of it. And one of the things that really really pissed me off is when the bloodsucking leeches in "United Way" and "The American Red Cross" figured out that the longer they could sit on those donations, the more interest they would accrue, but that's still not my fault. I've learned. I'm never going to give a red penny to those organizations ever again. The next time, if there, Heaven forbid, is a next time, I'm gonna send a check directly to the bereaved.

But my concern doesn't give the government the right to dole out the money that they stole from me at gunpoint via taxes. I didn't fly those planes into the WTC, the airlines didn't fly those planes into the WTC, so why should we or they be forced to pay?

If anybody should, I suggest that the funds that we've frozen since 9/11 be paid out to the relatives of the victims.

At least that would be fair.

2002-09-17T12:30:00.000-05:00

Delivery In 30 Minutes Or...

...Well, doesn't matter, you're toast...

This story really made my day!

But now I'm left wondering if a Hellfire can lock on to the heat signature of a double pepperoni with black olives?

(link thanks to LGF)

2002-09-17T12:23:00.000-05:00

A Day Late And a Dollar Short

...that really ought to be the motto of this site.

Nevertheless, I give you the Indepundit and his Daschle Dawdle Watch.

He's going to keep track of Sen. Dasshole (D-Baghdad) and his antics as he tries to downplay US national security for political gain.

For those of you saying "oh yeah, so what?", I'd like to remind you of the rather appropriate effects that Scott's whistle-blowing on the McKinney family and their sponsors had on their political futures.

It's true that it was the media that nailed her, but the media got the story from somewhere, didn't they?

2002-09-17T11:56:00.000-05:00

Now THIS Is Bloody Bad News!!!

I just got word via Sasha that Bruce and his magnificent War Now is going out of circulation...

I'd noticed that it looked kinda weird earlier, but I thought that he was just messing around with the template. Apparently the news are worse than that, much worse.

I don't have the faintest clue as to what made him reach that decision, but I have one thing to say: Whoever gets him back to blogging can have all he wants to drink, courtesy "The Rottweiler", 'coz I'm gonna miss him immensely.

He can be reached at: pacificreporter@hotmail.com.

2002-09-17T06:47:00.000-05:00

I've Got It! By Jove, I've Got It!...

"Eureka" might have been a good choice for a headline too, come to think of it.

I've been wondering ever since I started how to generate some nasty hatemail but so far, I haven't been successful.

Our friend at Whigging Out, however, have gotten it down to a fine art already, which leaves me green with envy. The recipe, it would seem, is to write some nasty truths about liberals and hey presto, they come squirming out of the woodwork like crazy.

So, for all of you who, like me, can't seem to make people hate you enough to put it in an email, here's a textbook example (not to mention a damn good read) from our One and Only Whig. (Start with my link, then read the rest. Trust me, you won't want to miss any of it, it's ALL good!).

2002-09-16T23:35:00.000-05:00

To Shoot or Not To Shoot...

And here's the old format:

Idiotarian Dave Barger of the Pravda on the Hudson is all up in arms (pun very much intended) about the issue of arming pilots:

In an attempt to make America more safe, Congress has approved legislation that will make flying more dangerous.

...according to Barger, that is, but he's a columnist and you're not, so you better take that as a fact, right?

Earlier this month the Senate passed a measure that would allow pilots to be armed, and the House approved a similar bill in July. Many details of this bill have yet to be worked out, and the Bush administration has expressed reservations about some aspects of it. As Congress considers this measure, it should include a provision to allow airlines that meet certain other security requirements to opt out of the program.

By all means... Just let me know which ones are opting out so I can call my broker...

The arguments against guns in cockpits are overwhelming. James Loy, head of the Transportation Security Administration, has identified several issues that need to be addressed:

He's from Norm's Flying Circus? Well that's certainly going to lend a lot of weight to his erm... issues...

the possibility of accidental gun discharges in flight,

Yep, those pesky spontaneous discharges. I have several and I'm telling you, it's like the 4th of frickin' July every day around here! They just keep going off for no good reason at all! That is, until I got this bright idea about not having anything in the chamber.

the distraction of pilots from their proper role during an emergency,

Their proper role during an emergency (such as a raving lunatic trying to take over the plane so he can drive it into an office building) is to put as many holes in the nut as he can in the shortest possible time. That's why we have co-pilots, not to mention auto-pilots.

the introduction of loaded weapons into the secure areas of airport terminals, the cost of initial and recurrent training, and tracking the chain of custody and maintenance of the weapons.

I'm sure you can come up with a couple miles of Imperial Federal Red Tape that can keep a few thousand unemployables in jobs. You always managed to do so in the past.

Other questions have been raised in Congressional hearings. Many pilots commute to work by plane, flying with regular passengers. Would they be armed? Wouldn't this be another security risk?

Absolutely! I've talked to many a pilot who, confidentially of course, told me that the first thing on his mind on his way to work had always been "if only I had a gun so I could take over this plane and kill myself and everyone in it". I'm so relieved to see that our incumbents have found that out too.

Or, if the gun is to remain locked in the cockpit, who is responsible for maintaining it and guarding the aircraft overnight?

I'm sure you can come up with a Federal Program to employ another few thousand misfits to sit around maintaining the gun overnight, singing lullabys to it.

And if it is locked, will pilots have quick and easy access to the weapon in an emergency?

Odd... This question never came up when the debate was on trigger locks?

Congress may or may not be able to answer these questions.

I think that's a given.

What's certain is that airlines have been working with the federal government and local airport authorities to improve aviation security since last September.

Certainly! No longer will the Nursing Mothers of Jihad™ be able to terrorize flight attendants with their breast milk, no longer will quadriplegic old men in wheelchairs be able to escape scrutiny in any of our airports and the avalanche of incidents involving toddlers taking over aircraft armed with plastic M-16s taken from their GI Joe dolls has been finally put to an end, thanks to the vigilance of the Federally Funded (that means money stolen from me and you) Screeners.

This legislation represents a step in the wrong direction.

It certainly does! For one thing, it provides actual security. For another, it only involves arming private sector employees already there, so no vote scams built in either.

Like all businesses and citizens of New York City, JetBlue and its employees mourned the loss of dear friends and colleagues in the aftermath of Sept. 11. We also saw an enormous decrease in passenger traffic. Accordingly, we responded with several improvements to make our customers feel safe.

Within weeks of Sept. 11, JetBlue chose to outfit its entire fleet with bulletproof cockpit doors, locked with titanium dead bolts, to help ensure the safety and security of the pilots and the integrity of the flight deck. We also began installing cabin surveillance cameras to help protect our flight attendants and customers while allowing our pilots to monitor the cabin.

Good! Really!

With security enhancements like these in place, arming pilots is simply unnecessary

"With Ship Design like this, life boats are simply unnecessary [White Line, 1912]"

My philosophy is that if the pilots want 'em, give 'em to them. They're already entrusted with my life along with those of hundreds of others, surely I can trust them to use a gun as well, given training, of course?

2002-09-16T23:02:00.000-05:00

Democracy, the Islamofascist Way:

I'll most likely be accused of plagiarizing Fred Pruitt here, but I really really like this format. Tell me what you think:

A teenage boy was killed and at least two other people were wounded in Indian Kashmir yesterday as Islamist militants tried to disrupt the first day of the state parliamentary elections.
"Quick, Abdul, they're having an election!
OK, lemme see... Pencils, paper, rockets... I'm ready!
The boy, 16, was at a polling station in Seri Khwaja, 118 miles north-west of the winter capital Jammu, when militants fired a rocket into the crowd. In Kupwara two men were hurt in an apparent grenade explosion.
They're still investigating, however. It could've been anything, after all. Things blow up for no good reason all the time around Kashmir.
At least 440 people have died since electioneering began several weeks ago.
At that rate, there won't be much of an electorate left by the time the voting booths are closed.
There is little doubt that the National Conference party, a member of the Indian federal government coalition, will win again.
Well... That certainly explains it. We can't have that, after all, can we Mahmoud?
It has barely been challenged by opposition parties. Moderate separatists are not contesting the election and have urged a boycott.
Many shops were closed in the summer capital Srinagar yesterday, where separatists called a strike.
"Hah! You infidels will NEVER win! And to prove our point, we're choosing to close down our businesses and starve to death! Allah u-Akhbar!
New Delhi has made it clear that it regards the vote as a test of Islamabad's promises to rein in the Islamist militant groups, many of which are based in Pakistan.
Seems to me that the results of the "test" are in now.
For the past decade they have fought a guerrilla war against the Indian army in Kashmir.
Not to mention the fact that they've also fought a much more succesful (by way of casualties) war against the civilians of Kashmir, but the al-Guardian wouldn't want to get into that, now would they?
The turnout seemed to be poor early yesterday morning, perhaps a sign of intimidation by the militant groups.
It could have something to do with the likelihood of being blown to Beef Stroganoff if you go vote, yes, but let's not be too definitive, right?

2002-09-16T22:36:00.000-05:00

Told Ya So...

I've said it numerous times already, but mainly in the comments sections of various and sundry blogs (including this one), so maybe it's time to devote a post to the subject:

Although it is with no small pleasure that I slap around EUroweenies and Idiotarians of all nationalities, there are certain nations out there that I've never doubted the loyalty of. It seems, from my email and comments, that the actual people out there are every bit as distanced from the opinion of the worthless chattering classes as is the case in this country.

The three on the very top of my list are, of course, the UK, Australia and Canada.

We may have our differences, nothing wrong in that, I'm not even saying that we're always right and they're always wrong when we do, far from it, but when push comes to shove, these guys never fail to back us up. No conditions, no blather, no "ifs" or "buts", just "let's get it over with".

I admire that and I can never appropriately express my gratitude to all the citizens of those great nations that have fought and fallen along with us, but I can say that I'll never forget.

I was reminded of that when I read the results this recent poll from Britain:

Public opinion in Britain has dramatically swung away from opposition to a military attack on Iraq, according to the first findings of a new weekly Guardian/ICM tracker poll.
Three weeks ago a similar Guardian/ICM poll asking the same question showed 50% opposed to a military attack on Baghdad and 33% in favour, a gap of 17 points.

Now the gap has narrowed to four points with 40% against the possible war and 36% in favour.

The people of Britain know, as well as we do, that the chips are now down and we all have to decide whose side we are on. And, not surprisingly, they're on ours again.

Thank you, you Limey bastards, I love you guys!

2002-09-16T21:33:00.000-05:00

Damn Postal Service...

Just received this letter in the mail. I guess I should've smelled a rat when the stamp had a picture of somebody humping a goat on it, but I cheerfully opened it anyways:

Dear Secretary-General,

Sheesh, I'm moving up in the world, ain't I?

Honey! I'm a Secretary-General! I guess this means that I get to order all the secretaries at the office around? [SLAP!!!] No honey, that's not what I meant! (damn right hook!)

I have the honour to refer to the series of discussions held between Your Excellency and the Government of the Republic of Iraq on the implementation of relevant Security Council resolutions on the question of Iraq which took place in New York on 7 March and 2 May and in Vienna on 4 July 2002, as well as the talks which were held in your office in New York on 14 and 15 September 2002, with the participation of the Secretary-General of the League of Arab States.

Sorry, man, but I have absolutely no recollection of any meetings whatsoever with the Govt. of the Thugocracy of Iraq, neither in New York nor anywhere else, for that matter. You wouldn't have a government now if I'd ever met you.

Maybe it's an Iraqi version of the Nigerian Scam Mail? I can't wait to see how much money they want to give me this time.

I am pleased to inform you of the decision of the Government of the Republic of Iraq to allow the return of the United Nations weapons inspectors to Iraq without conditions.

I'm sure you are and that's great news. How does tomorrow after lunch suit you, my turbaned little friend?

The Government of the Republic of Iraq has responded, by this decision, to your appeal, to the ap peal of the Secretary-General of the League of Arab States, as well as those of Arab, Islamic and other friendly countries.

...not to mention the direct order and ultimatum issued by the President of United States, George W Bush...

"Noooooo, infidel, do not say that!!! Our most enlightened leader gets his moustache all knitted up in a wad when he hears it!"

Say what? Bush?

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh!!!"

The Government of the Republic of Iraq has based its decision concerning the return of inspectors on its desire to

...avoid having its ugly butt whupped into confetti...

complete the implementation of the relevant Security Council resolutions and to remove any doubts that Iraq still possesses weapons of mass destruction.

Oh? How good of you. It's only taken 11 FRIGGIN' YEARS you filthy goat molesting piece of Shiite!

Funny how your sudden change of heart seems to coincide with the massive build-up of highly motivated, well-trained and magnificently equipped troops with a taste for whuppin' Iraqi asses, isn't it?

This decision is also based on your statement to the General Assembly on 12 September 2002 that the decision by the Government of the Republic of Iraq is the indispensable first step towards an assurance that Iraq no longer possesses weapons of mass destruction

Yep... First step... Now you'll presumably go on to address the remaining steps as outlined by President Bush ["AAAAAAAAaaarghhhh!!], won't you?

equally importantly, towards a comprehensive solution that includes the lifting of sanctions imposed in Iraq

Erm... You seem to have forgotten all the other conditions, haven't you?

and the timely implementation of other provisions of the relevant Security Coun cil resolutions, including resolution 687(1991).

The "timely implementation" of resolutions dating back 11 FRIGGIN' YEARS indeed. Seems to me that you not only missed the train on that one, buster, you also failed to notice that everybody else left the station and that the demolition crews have moved in.

To this end, the Government of the Republic of Iraq is ready to discuss the practical arrangements necessary for the immediate resumption of inspections.

Tell you what: You guys can go sit in one of Sammy's 50 palaces and "discuss" all you want while we dismantle your weaponry and make sure that you'll never be able to get any ever again, just don't get your loathsome asses in our way, y'hear? It's not healthy.

In this context, the Government of the Republic of Iraq reiterates the importance of the commitment of all Member States of the Security Council and the United Nations to respect the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of Iraq, as stipulated in the relevant Security Council resolutions and article (II) of the Charter of the United Nations. I would be grateful if you would bring this letter to the attention of the Security Council members.

"Please HELP, we're being oppressed! Come watch the violence inherent in the system!"

Piss off, you pathetic whining little sand crab.

Please accept, Mr Secretary-General, the assurances of my highest consideration.

Dr Naji Sabri

Minister of Foreign Affairs

Republic of Iraq

Please accept, Mr. Naji Sabri, my American boot so far up your ass that you'll have the taste of shoe polish ruining the flavor of your falafels for a month!

Well... Guess I better go forward this load of bull to BS Central on the East River, they might find some use for it...

UPDATE: It would seem that our friends in the Casa Blanca have already put together an answer to Mr. Sabri.

Translated, I think it means, roughly: Eat Sh*t And Die...

2002-09-16T01:33:00.000-05:00

Monday's Edition of the Pravda on the Hudson

Saudis Indicating U.S. Can Use Bases if U.N. Backs War

WASHINGTON, Sept. 15 — The Saudi foreign minister indicated this weekend that his country would let the United States use its military bases in a United Nations-backed attack on Iraq, a sign that Arab nations may be dropping their resistance to an attack on Saddam Hussein.

So that's the side you Merkins butter de bread! Why didn't you tell us sooner?

in an interview with the London-based Arabic language newspaper Al Hayat, Prince Saud said, "Since Iraq says it does not possess weapons of mass destruction and has no plans to produce any, why doesn't it agree to the return of inspectors to settle the issue which will go to the Security Council?"

Good dog... Finally you're beginning to get it...

Iraq's foreign minister, Naji Sabri al-Hadithi, again insisted that any new inspections be tied to the lifting of decade-old United Nations sanctions. "Iraq's sovereignty must be respected, and the inspections must result in the easing of sanctions against Iraq and the elimination of all weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East, particularly in Israel," he told German television.

It hasn't quite sunk in yet that you're in no position to demand anything, has it?

But Ms. Rice, speaking on the ABC News program "This Week," insisted: "The Iraqi regime can have no say in what is required of it. We've been down that road before. It's done nothing but weaken the resolutions that the Security Council had passed."

Ms. Rice also insisted that the United States would be capable of pursuing its campaign against terrorism even if it was forced to wage war on Iraq.

"We fully believe that the United States is capable of conducting the war on terrorism and dealing with other threats," she said. "We don't believe there are limits on what we can do in the war on terrorism and dealing with a major threat of weapons of mass destruction."

Did I mention that I love Condi?

Science Slow to Ponder Ills That Linger in Anthrax Victims

"I want to saturate my brain to keep it working and help it to recall information," said Ms. Wallace, 57, still on disability leave from her job as a mail processor at the postal center in Hamilton, N.J. "My short-term memory is coming back."

Asked when she imagined she'd be back from disability leave, she responded: "As soon as I remember where I work".

Her co-worker Richard Morgano says he does not feel so fortunate. The nightmares and cold sweats that marked the first months of his recovery from a probable case of skin anthrax have eased. But his health is poor, his mood dark and his anger high. He avoids people and work, he says, afraid he might explode. "I get too bent out of shape," he said. "My temper is short. Even when I drive, I get road rage."

That's not after-effects of anthrax, that's called "being a postal worker".

But only now is the government beginning to study their progress. While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta has drawn blood from survivors to measure changes in their immune systems, it has not conducted comprehensive follow-ups or physical examinations. The reason, officials say, include a lack of trained personnel, red tape and a surfeit of competing demands.

Perchance if they cut back on their programs to get guns banned, they'd have more time to study actual diseases?

F.B.I. Makes Sixth Arrest in Buffalo Inquiry

"We have the key players in western New York," said Peter Ahearn, F.B.I. special agent in charge in Buffalo. "They worked together, they socialized together, they lived within blocks of each other. It's a trained group of individuals that were trained in Afghanistan. It's an Al Qaeda-trained cell."

Well... For the "Sorry, No Terrorism Here, Move Along" FBI to say something like this, there has to be something about it, I suppose.

Over and over, people on the streets, while wary of talking too much to the journalists who poured into town today, insisted that the five men charged Saturday were good family men, religious, and fond, above all, of playing soccer.

..."They even helped handing out free candy to the children last Sept...", one witness added, before being unexpectedly slapped upside the head by one of the other Yemeni present.

What the five, all of whom were born here, had in common, according to the F.B.I. indictment and people in the community who knew them, was that they all went to Pakistan in the spring of 2001 to study Islamic religion and culture under the auspices of a group known in Arabic as Tablighi Jamaat.

"When they went there, they wanted to study about their religion, but something else happened," [Mr. Bakri] added. "They came back and they didn't look like they had studied their religion."

..."The powderstains on their fingers, the long unkempt beards... It was just strange..."

2002-09-15T22:14:00.000-05:00

Link Redundancy

I know that the Instaman has already linked to this, so y'all most likely already know about it, but it's so damn good that it deserves all the linkage it can get. William Burton has a message to the world, and I think you should go read it, right now.

2002-09-15T02:23:00.000-05:00

Damn I Should Really Go To Bed

But instead, I'll offer this:

I've decided to save you folks from the hassle of having to pony up real money for the Sunday edition of the NY Times (All the Lies We See Fit To Print) and just put up a summary of today's headlines here. For those of you (and my Mad Psychic Abilities™ tell me that that's most of you) that wouldn't dream of spending money on that gerbil cage liner in the first place, I've just saved you the hassle of demonstrably not buying it).

Today's headlines:

U.S. Says Suspects Awaited an Order for Terror Strike

Five Arab-American men charged today with operating an active cell of Al Qaeda in western New York had received intensive weapons training in Afghanistan in the summer of 2001 and been sent back to the United States to await the order for an attack,

...however, the carrier pigeons must have perished during the crossing of the Atlantic.

The Justice Department acknowledged, however, that it had no evidence to suggest that any attack by the group was imminent. The government did not contend today that the men had weapons in their possession or that they had participated in any violent act.

"We have not seen any plans of an imminent attack in western New York or elsewhere in the United States," the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, said in announcing the charges.

At a news conference in Washington, Deputy Attorney General Larry D. Thompson said the disruption of a "Qaeda-trained terrorist cell on American soil" was an important victory for the United States in combatting terrorism.

...despite the fact that, according to government sources, there was no signs of terrorism whatsoever.

Another "No terrorism here, move along" story from our trusted leaders, fully in line with Flight 587, the LAX shootings, the Radioactive Floor Tiles and the Alligator Alley arrests.

It's a good thing that we, the people, have a few brain cells left, because obviously the government doesn't.

We know it's terrorism, so please stop coming up with stupid stories to cover up the fact. Roswell is so 50's, yanno...

Arrests Raising Hopes in Hunt for Al Qaeda

Today, Mr. bin al-Shibh's legal status remained unclear. He was apprehended by the Pakistani authorities operating in coordination with the United States, but it was uncertain whether he was in Pakistani or American custody.

How Mr. bin al-Shibh will respond to interrogation is a critical and unresolved issue. In the past, it has taken long sessions to extract information from senior Qaeda prisoners, and some have refused to talk, according to intelligence officials.

Mr. bin al-Shibh has been charged in Germany with 3,000 counts of murder for his role in the attacks.

Which, under German law, will give him at least 200 hours of community service.

Interrogators are expected to focus hardest on getting information about Mr. bin al-Shibh's contacts with Qaeda cells as well as his knowledge of ongoing operations and methods of financing attacks and communicating with operatives in the field.

"If he cooperates, it will be a major breakthrough to efforts to break up the remnants of Al Qaeda in Europe and other places," a Western diplomat said in an interview today.

If the Germans get their hands on him, however, we will only become privy to the information if we promise not to kill him.

China Wages Rear-Guard Battle in Effort to Rein in Press

"Some media take too much pleasure in the government's miseries," the propaganda department's memo complained.

It added: "The party congress is fast approaching, so we need to prevent problems. For those newspapers that frequently have problems, we'll discuss whether to let them keep running."

...or whether we should just roll a few tanks over them.

It's nice to see how our "Most Favored Nation" China is embracing the concept of a "free press".

Religious and Public Stations Battle for Share of Radio Dial

The Christian stations routed NPR in Lake Charles under a federal law that allows noncommercial broadcasters with licenses for full-power stations to push out those with weaker signals — the equivalent of the varsity team kicking the freshmen out of the gym.

This is happening all over the country. The losers are so-called translator stations, low-budget operations that retransmit the signals of bigger, distant stations. The Federal Communications Commission considers them squatters on the far left side of the FM dial, and anyone who is granted a full-power license can legally run them out of town.

NPR is getting run out of town by the law of supply and demand? Oh, the HUMANITY!

"It is, like, nuts," said Torey Malatia, general manager of WBEZ, which has the country's third-largest public-radio audience. "Starting about four years ago we realized that if we didn't learn how to fight back, our coverage area would effectively shrink by a million people."

...which would make the number of your listeners shrink into the red.

NPR, meet free market rules, free market rules, meet NPR "boo!"...

Burning of Chemical Arms Puts Fear in Wind

ANNISTON, Ala. — Some nights, when he is in a worrying mood, Samuel Robinson sits by himself in the glow from his television screen and counts the windows in his home.

I find myself doing that all the time when I feel down. Nothing quite as comforting as counting the windows in my home. Other than drying my hair or clipping my nails, of course.

But we're talking about disposing of vicious chemical weapons stockpiles here, a worthy cause, no?

The Army's scientists say that when the burning starts, at 2,700 degrees, 2,254 tons of the most inhuman weapons ever devised will be rendered little more dangerous than water vapor.

...but they're all Army types, so they're lying, right?

Well, we have to assume that they are or we won't fill up our allotted column space this week and the editor will get really, really pissed!

But similar Army efforts elsewhere, while avoiding disaster,

I can almost hear the dead-tree-journos mutter "dammit!" under their breath.

have been marred by mechanical foul-ups and human error,

So... No problem? Where's the MEAT, dammit?

Another non-story from the NYT.

And these, ladies and gents, were the headlines of today.

2002-09-15T01:27:00.000-05:00

On War

TAANSTAFL has a very insightful and poignant (I just love that word) post on that subject.

With this, he advances yet another step on my blogroll, according to my Madly Ingenious Blogrolling System™ that I have, tentatively, dubbed "The Rip-Off Bubblesort System", a name that should bring on a smirk with sad old dweebs, such as myself, who dabbled with programming back in the days when we had to chisel our code into granite tablets by candlelight, fighting off the wolves...

Or something...

2002-09-15T01:23:00.000-05:00

Clarifying Terms That Have Lost Their Meaning

Kathy Kinsley is on a worthy mission in that respect. So far she's taken care of "multiculturalism", "racism" and "sexism". If you have any further suggestions, you should jump to her site and post it.

2002-09-15T01:00:00.000-05:00

Quality and Quantity Are Not Mutually Exclusive

Juan may not think much of his last 24 hours of blogging, but that makes only one of us.

First he presents us with the most appropriate use of a certain four-letter word beginning with the letter "F" that I've seen in a long time, a post sure to be in my distinguished, if somewhat potty-mouthed taste, then he delivers a couple of short, but very painful whacks to MoDo's head and finally, when you're sure that he can't possibly deliver more, he delivers a double Fiskin' to McGrory and MoDo at the same time.

He says about the last one that "it didn't turn out as funny as he'd hoped". I can only pray that nothing ever will, then, because I'm running awfully low on keyboards.

2002-09-15T00:39:00.000-05:00

Dirty, Dirty POISONOUS Money!

More news from the unintended laugh-fest that is the Euroweenie Union:

...a Swiss scientist, Dr Frank Nestle, advises today against prolonged contact with euro coins...based on the coins' tendency to provoke rashes in sensitive people...The amount of allergy-inducing nickel released is an alarming 320 times the level allowed by the European Union nickel directive. (There is such a thing.) Thus the coins are bound to become a "health and safety issue", perhaps even found to be an infringement of the European Convention on Human Rights. Supermarket checkout workers are at high risk.

I, for one, can't wait to see the first EUrodiktat banning use of their own much-trumpeted common currency based on health issues.

The previous ones about directives for the proper curvature of cucumbers and the maximum allowable lumps in gravy pale in comparison.

No, EUrope, we're not laughing with you.

(Kudos to lovely Sasha for this one)

2002-09-14T15:37:00.000-05:00

Fisking™ the Fisk

The Grand Mullah of Idiotarianism is at it again, and this time he's really getting worked up about it:

Robert Fisk: America's case for war is built on blindness, hypocrisy and lies

Well... Coming from a well-established expert in those three fields, perhaps I should actually read this one... Wait a minute while I get the barf bags, please.

George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld are wilfully ignoring the realities of the Middle East. The result can only be catastrophic.

Now where did I hear that damn song before? The lyrics went something along the lines of "Brutal Afghan Winter", "Graveyard Of Empires" and s'more nonsense that I don't recall any more. But don't let that stop you, Bobby. (As if anything could stop that terminal case of keyboard diarrhea from pounding out Idiotarian claptrap).

And he does.

First the Idiotarian Extraordinaire takes us on a trip down memory lane to a ~~seedy~~ snug restaurant in Tehran, where Bobby relives an interview he once had with an Iraqi ex-head of nuclear research who'd been tortured by Saddam's henchmen. Initially this might confuse the casual Fisk-reader a bit, considering how it apparently paints Bobby's friend Saddam in a somewhat unfortunate light.

But oh no, the Fisk™ is far too erm... "smart" for that. He immediately springs his fiendishly "clever" trap on all of us anti-Idiotarians by stating:

All this happened, of course, when Saddam Hussein was still our friend, when we were encouraging him to go on killing Iranians in his 1980-88 war against Tehran,

You see? We didn't pull out Saddam's fingernails and hang him from a palm tree then, so therefore we can never consider doing it, ever. Because situations never change and people, once endorsed in any shape, form or fashion, remain eternally your responsibility.

Welcome to the "logic" of the universe that Idiotarians inhabit.

when the US government – under President Bush Snr – was giving Iraq preferential agricultural assistance funding.

Odd... I don't remember Bush '41 being president between '80 and '88. Must've passed under my radar. Well... Fisk says so, so it must be true...

Not long before, Saddam's pilots had fired a missile into an American warship called the Stark and almost sunk it. Pilot error, claimed Saddam – the American vessel had been mistaken for an Iranian oil tanker – and the US government cheerfully forgave the Iraqi dictator.

Of course, according to Bobby, we should immediately have dropped everything and gone to war against Iraq, right?

It's odd how we can learn here that it would be alright for the US to go to war based on an accident involving two missiles, but it's absolutely impermissible to do so based on 3,000 dead civilians.

It was two missiles, by the way. It really doesn't take much Googling to come up with facts, you muckraking moron, but, as we shall see, facts have an annoying tendency to get in the way when you're a Fisk Cruising for a Fisking™, which must be the explanation for Bobby's strange aversion to search engines and the 'net.

Those were the days. But sitting in the United Nations General Assembly last week, watching President Bush Jr tell us with all his Texan passion about the beatings and the whippings and the rapes in Iraq, you would have thought they'd just been discovered.

You certainly would have, you cerebrally challenged cretin, if you'd considered the UN's complete and utter inaction during the decade of Saddam's mooning their resolutions, but somebody apparently had to bring the issue up for the assembled unelected bureaucraps to remember.

For sheer brazen historical hypocrisy, it would have been difficult to beat that part of the President's speech. Saddam, it appears, turned into a bad guy when he invaded Kuwait in 1990.

He certainly did, at least as far as the UN is concerned, starting with SC Resolution 660.

Most of us would expect the statements in a speech of somebody to the UN would contain elements relevant to the UN, but apparently you're shocked, shocked! to find out.

'Tarded Tumblef*ck.

But the real lie in the President's speech – that which has dominated American political discourse since the crimes against humanity on 11 September last year – was the virtual absence of any attempt to explain the real reasons why the United States has found itself under attack.

Again I'm baffled.

I was always under impression that, in order to speak a lie, you would actually have to speak, but again I find myself in utter retreat in the face of Bobby's superior use of the English language.

And those "real" reasons? Surely you're just dying to tell us, right? Of course you are...

In his mendacious article in this newspaper last week, President Bush's Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, also attempted to mask this reality. The 11 September assault, he announced, was an attack on people "who believe in freedom, who practise tolerance and who defend the inalienable rights of man".

Hmmm...

We believe in freedom, we practise tolerance, we find ourselves defending the inalienable rights of man time and time again and we were, indeed, attacked.

I may not be quite as enlightened as the almighty "Beat Me, I'm A Vile Oppressor" Fisk, but I can't quite see where the "mendacity" in that quote of Rummy is to be found.

He made, as usual, absolutely no reference to the Middle East, to America's woeful, biased policies in that region,

"Did he just say 'woeful'?"
"Yes he did, try not to snicker, it's not nice"

to its ruthless support for Arab dictators who do its bidding – for Saddam Hussein, for example, at a time when the head of Iraqi nuclear research was undergoing his Calvary

"Calvary? Did they nail him to the cross?"
"I have no idea, but Bobby might get back to it later. Or not."

– nor to America's military presence in the holiest of Muslim lands,

That the Soddies themselves invited us into, because they were rightfully afraid that Saddam would strangle them in their own kaffiyehs if they didn't.

nor to its unconditional support for Israel's occupation of Palestinian land in the West Bank and Gaza.

"Unconditional"?

I'm sure there are a lot of people, myself included, that would wish that our support for one of our staunchest allies would even approach the level of "unconditional" but, lamentably, in the real world that the rest of us live in, Fisky, our support is anything but.

And what are those "occupied Palestinian lands" of which you speak? Jordan? Of course not, that would mean that you'd have to do an ideological 180 and actually develop brains, something that it'll take huge advances in medical science to accomplish. You're speaking of the territories that were lost, fair and square, as a result of the numerous wars of aggression ineptly started by Israel's Muslim neighbors, right?

Well get over it, they're no more "Palestinian" than Minnesota is. However, you might want to consider, for a second (that's about as long as I believe I can reasonably demand that you keep your attention on actual facts), that those territories are the very same territories that Israel's "unconditional" ally, the US, has repeatedly urged Israel to cede to your Pali friends so they could have a state of their own.

Oddly, a very faint ghost of this reality did creep into the start of the President's UN address last week. It was contained in two sentences whose importance was totally ignored by the American press – and whose true meaning might have been lost on Mr Bush himself, given that he did not write his speech

...and of course never even bothered to read it. You're so... "clever", Bobby.

– but it was revealing nonetheless. "Our common security," he said, "is challenged by regional conflicts – ethnic and religious strife that is ancient but not inevitable. In the Middle East, there can be no peace for either side without freedom for both sides." Then he repeated his old line about the need for "an independent and democratic Palestine".

Some "unconditional" support right there. But of course, it was only an "old line".

This was perhaps as close as we've got, so far, to an official admission that this whole terrible crisis is about the Middle East.

I'd say that the President's clear ultimatum to Saddam coupled with massive US deployments to the Middle East is a pretty clear "official admission", but obviously you don't.

If this is a simple war for civilisation against "evil" – the line that Mr Bush was so cruelly peddling again to the survivors of 11 September and the victims' relatives last week

Yes, I'm sure that those left behind were horrified to hear Bush describe the murderous swine that killed their relatives and friends as "evil", how insufferably cruel of him.

then what are these "regional challenges"? Why did Palestine insinuate its way into the text of President Bush's UN speech? Needless to say, this strange, uncomfortable little truth was of no interest to the New York and Washington media, whose wilful refusal to investigate the real political causes of this whole catastrophe has led to a news coverage that is as bizarre as it is schizophrenic.

Still holding out on the "real reasons", are we? Why don't you just go ahead? It's not like it's going to come as a major surprise to anybody anyways when you do.

Before dawn on 11 September last week, I watched six American television channels and saw the twin towers fall to the ground 18 times.

Bet you taped the whole thing too.

The few references to the suicide killers who committed the crime made not a single mention of the fact that they were Arabs.

That would've been "insensitive and racist" wouldn't it? And it's not like we don't know already from whence they came.

All references to Palestine or illegal Jewish settlements or Israeli occupation of Arab land were simply erased from the public conscience last week.

Maybe because they have precious little to do with the war we're fighting here, at least to us?

Maybe because the Israeli presence is neither "illegal", nor an "occupation"?

When Hannan Ashrawi, that most humane of Palestinian women, tried to speak at Colorado university on 11 September, Jewish groups organised a massive demonstration against her.

Massive indeed... Literally hundreds of protesters and a riot did not break out.

It was quite another story when Benjamin Netanyahu tried to speak at Concordia University in Montreal. Here, Nazis and Palis went amok hand in hand, trying to (and, sadly, managing to) oppress free speech.

US television simply did not acknowledge the Palestinian tragedy. It is a tribute to our own reporting that at least John Pilger's trenchant programme – Palestine is Still the Issue – is being shown on ITV tomorrow night, although at the disgracefully late time of 11.05pm.

Could it be that nobody wants to hear you and Pilger rant and rave anymore? That you have become... How shall I put it?... Irrelevant?

But maybe all this no longer matters. When Mr Rumsfeld can claim so outrageously – as he did when asked for proof of Iraq's nuclear potential – that the "absence of evidence doesn't mean the evidence of absence",

Erm... It isn't... It's just a logical statement, not really very "outrageous".

And we neither can nor will sit down and wait for Saddam to provide us with solid evidence in the shape of a mushroom cloud over Tel Aviv, Washington or New York.

we might as well end all moral debate.

I'd settle for you shutting up, but then I'd have to find somebody else to Fisk, I suppose.

When Mr Rumsfeld refers to the "so-called occupied West Bank", he reveals himself to be a very disreputable man.

... Not to mention "mendacious" and "outrageous". Coming from a bona fide Idiotarian Grand Master such as yourself, those words are high praise indeed.

When he advances the policy of a pre-emptive "act" of war – as he did in The Independent on Sunday last week – he forgets Israel's "pre-emptive" 1982 invasion of Lebanon which cost 17,500 Arab lives and 22 years of occupation, and ended in retreat and military defeat for Israel.

OK, time for you to put down the bong, Bobby, 'cause you're making even less sense than usual.

"22 years of occupation"?

That would mean that the Israeli-Lebanese war ended in... Hmmm... 8+2, carry the one... 2004!

I Have Seen the Future, And It Is Fisk™!!!

While you're Back to the Future™, Bobby, could you please send me the numbers for today's Texas Lottery? I would really, really appreciate it! So much so, in fact, that I promise not to Fisk™ you for one full month if you do!

The rest of us, being tied to the present, of course know that the war, which was started as a reaction to increasing PLO activity across the Lebanese border combined with no attempt by Lebanon to stop it, ended in 1985 when Israel, after having thoroughly Roto-Rooted the Lebanese sinkhole, pulled back and left Lebanon to its own devices. Hardly a "defeat", if you ask me.

Strange things are going on in the Middle East right now. Arab military intelligence reports the shifting of massive US arms shipments around the region – not just to Qatar and Kuwait, but to the Arabian Sea, the Red Sea and the eastern Mediterranean.

"What can it mean?"

I'd love to explain it to you, Bobby, but I don't have all week.

American and Israeli military planners and intelligence analysts are said to have met twice in Tel Aviv to discuss the potential outcome of the next Middle East war.

Good Grief! Allies consulting on the eve of war! Get my pills!

The destruction of Saddam and the break-up of Saudi Arabia – a likely scenario if Iraq crumbles – have long been two Israeli dreams.

...and that is of course the sole reason why it is going to happen.

One might ask oneself, then, why it is that Israel's "unconditional" supporter, the US, hasn't helped making this Israeli dream come true a long time ago, but that would require several whacks over Bobby's head with a Clue-by-Four.

As the United States discovered during its fruitful period of neutrality between 1939 and 1941, war primes the pumps of the economy. Is that what is going on today – the preparation of a war to refloat the US economy?

Shit! He's on to us! Quick, get the shredder going!

It's only a matter of time before he finds out that those planes were remote controlled by members of the ZOG, who were concerned about the value of their stocks.

My Israeli colleague Amira Haas once defined to me our job as journalists: "to monitor the centres of power". Never has it been so important for us to do just that.

Wallowing in delusions of importance, a Hallmark of Fisk-ness™

For if we fail, we will become the mouthpiece of power.

As it is, you're the Mouthpieces of Irredeemable Idiocy.

So a few thoughts for the coming weeks: remember the days when Saddam was America's friend; remember that Arabs committed the crimes against humanity of 11 September last year and that they came from a place called the Middle East,

Oh we remember alright.

The problem for you is that we don't quite remember it the way you'd want us to do.

Well, tough shit, Fisky, ain't gonna change.

a place of injustice and occupation and torture;

It almost sounds as if he's changed sides again and is advocating war on these backwards, oppressive, medieval Islamofascist rat-infested dungheaps.

remember "Palestine";

...or maybe not...

Where is "Palestine", by the way?

remember that, a year ago, no one spoke of Iraq, only of al-Qa'ida and Osama bin Laden.

Is that so? I really hate to have to do this to you (no I don't), Bobby, but methinks you weren't quite listening when these words were spoken. Let me give you a snippet to save you from using the 'net that you abhor:

"From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime."

Nope, Bobby, no al-Qaeda there, nor the merest hint of has-been Laden, but a very clear warning to the rest of the shitholes in the Middle East that we're coming for them unless they change their terrorist ways.

But back to the Fisk™ for his closing comments:

And, I suppose, remember that "evil" is a good crowd-puller but a mighty hard enemy to shoot down with a missile.

...but very easy to erase with a Daisy Cutter.

How's the weather in 2004, by the way? Any signs of global warming yet or is it all about the "Brutal Iraqi Winter" in your time?

2002-09-14T12:17:00.000-05:00

Now This Is Vicious!

Whereas I still believe that Colin's playing nice is part of a grander scheme that has, this far, worked wonderfully, I would be amiss if I didn't link to this work of art by Norm Liebmann in which he slices, dices and atomizes the Secretary of "Let's Sleep On It" State.

I don't think that Colin deserves all of this, but the rant is a work of art that deserves to be judged on its own merit.

(link thanks to Kathy Kinsley).

2002-09-14T00:40:00.000-05:00

Aaaaaaaaaaarghhhh!!!

They're coming to get me!

If you'll excuse me while I retreat to the dog house and start reading up on "Defensive Measures 101". Christopher Johnson is out to get me and I don't like it one bit.

A claymore a day keeps the vet away?

Now stay away from me with that syringe, Chris, I don't care what you say it's for...

While you're over there, please take the time to enjoy the virtuosity with which Chris rips right wing Idiotarian Pat PukeAnnan a fresh one. It's a thing of beauty, I tell you.

2002-09-13T23:53:00.000-05:00

And That's Putting It Mildly

Bill Quick says what needs to be said and, as usual, manages to do it in sharp, short bursts of highly appropriate vitriol, unlike yours truly, who has a tendency to go on for hours:

Janet Reno asked for a statewide recount Friday of every vote in Florida's botched gubernatorial primary, but the state elections board promptly turned her down. Reno's attorney said a court challenge was unlikely.

So retire now, Janet, and spend the rest of your days thinking about those kids screaming as they burned to death at Waco.

As a Texan, I can only say "right on!".

2002-09-13T18:55:00.000-05:00

SQUEAK!

There's nothing quite as refreshing as the last squeal from an appeasement-loving Tranzi rat when it gets run over by the big 18-wheeler of history.

Meet Polly Toynbee, Tranzi has-been. In a generation or so, we'll have to explain to our grandchildren what those were. And they won't believe a word of what we're saying.

"Surely nobody could be that dumb, grandpa?":

There he stood, this unlikely emperor of the world, telling the UN's 190 nations how it is going to be.

Well at least somebody noticed, instead of curling up with their safety blanket and their thumb in their mouth, pretending that he'd said what they wanted to hear. I'll have to give you a point there, Polly.

The assembled nations may not be quite the toothless Roman senate of imperial times, but at the UN the hyperpower and its commander-in-chief are in control as never before: how could it be otherwise when the US army is the UN's only enforcer?

Quite.

And how did it get to that point, Polly? It got to that point because Idiotarians like yourself and your welfare addicted ilk thought up a "brilliant" scheme under which you could spend all the money for buying votes that you didn't have to spend defending yourself while we were guarding your worthless backs.

Worked marvellously, didn't it? At least until the enemy disappeared and we suddenly had better things to do with our army. Suddenly, there you were, naked as jaybirds, realizing that you'd made yourselves irrelevant.

This is, President Bush said, "a difficult and defining moment" for the UN, a challenge that will show whether it has become "irrelevant". He pointed his silver-tongued gun with some delicacy and a certain noblesse oblige, but there was no doubt he was holding it to the UN's head: pass a resolution or be bypassed.

She's still got a clue, at least as far as getting the message is concerned... But she's about to lose it, as per usual.

It was a fine and gracious speech that might have been borrowed from better presidents in better times. He spoke of a just and lasting peace for Palestine. He promised a surprise return by the US to Unesco. He spoke of the tragedy of world poverty, disease and suffering, of offering US aid, trade and healthcare. Earnest and uplifting, it was very like the speech he made soon after the twin towers attack last year.

Odd... I don't seem to recall the main theme of that speech as being anything like what you're dreaming up here. The way I remember it, it was a clear and unequivocal message to the world: Terrorism will not stand and whether you're with us or not, we'll put an end to it. And if you're not with us... Well, you do the math...

But how long ago that suddenly seemed.

...obviously long enough for your amnesia to kick in...

Back then the world tried hard to believe him, full of sympathy and hope that this earth-quake had indeed turned him internationalist.

Oh gimme a break, you stupid twat! You think that the natural reaction to having Fundamentalist Murderers killing off 3,000 of your civilians is to turn "internationalist"? And it wasn't an "earthquake". It was premeditated murder of 3,000 innocents, also known as an "act of war". Did you and your lobotomized fellow Idiotarians really for a second believe that that would turn us into a giant mass of Kumbaya-singing funders of dictatorships all over the world? If you did, you're every bit as stupid as bin Laden, if not quite as dangerous. Dingbat.

But this time belief was stretched beyond breaking. The skills of the best speech writer could not blot out the gulf between last year's rhetoric and the reality that followed.

The reality that has followed ever since our President made this speech, has been in full accordance with the words in it. It's just that you lefty morons didn't quite get what he said until now. Well, too bad for you.

Maybe it was the cut-away to Hamid Karzai in his green striped coat of many colours sitting in the chamber. It came as a sharp reminder of America's failure to invest in serious nation-building in Afghanistan,

Which we were under obligation to do under which chapter of the non-existant "international law" that your kind is so fond of quoting? Nevertheless, I'm pretty sure that the majority of the Afghans would rather have Karzai than the One-Eyed Cleric of Hell.

failure to send in enough troops to stop the old warlords seizing power again,

The warlords have seized power again? Must have happened while I was driving home from work.

the paucity of aid and the brazen carelessness once war was won.

...apart from the Special Forces that saved Karzai's hide a week ago. Or humanitarian aid, help with reconstruction, medical assistance as well as the fact that our troops are protecting the Afghans at a time when we have much better uses for them. But of course, it is "never enough", according to EUnuchs such as Ms. Toynbee.

Well... Tough shit, lady. We've got a war to fight, so maybe you weenies could help us out with the "nation building"? It's not like you have any military might you can assist us with...

So Bush's conjured images of a postwar Iraq, peaceful and democratic, sounded like empty phantasms. War in Afghanistan to oust the Taliban was necessary - but so was investing in long-lasting security and prosperity if he wanted to prove how democracy wins over fundamentalist fury.

Again: We did not go into this war with the sole and primary intention of "building nations". To be sure, it wouldn't hurt one bit, but our top priority right now is to kill terrorists and their supporters, and to kill them as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Nobody's keeping you guys from helping out, as I said. It should be right up your alley, after all. In the meantime, stop whining. It's pitiful.

From Kyoto and Johannesburg, to the ICC, steel tariffs, NMD and nuclear testing, too much has happened (or not happened) since last year's speech to take this one at face value.

I'll give you half a point for your objection to the idiotic steel tariff, but that's it. The rest falls under "national sovereignty" and we actually elect our Presidents to protect that, whether you clueless clapweasels like it or not.

Even so, good words are still preferable to bad ones. It was, after all, remarkable that the president was there in that chamber at all. A month ago the strident voices coming out of the White House would have none of it. The Rumsfeld/Cheney axis of war was in the ascendant, the UN was for wimps.

and still is, unless the UN finally decides to wake from its long sleep and live up to its own resolutions, which I highly doubt.

It's amazing, really. In the first paragraph you seem to grasp, correctly, that the UN speech was an ultimatum, not a request and yet here, half a page later, you're back to your utopian daydreaming about the US asking for permission to defend itself.

The hawks would never have let their emperor stand there soliciting UN support in dulcet tones. It would be nice to believe that Tony Blair played some part in strengthening the arm of the Colin Powell internationalists who won the argument on the need for UN legitimacy.

You're still falling for the "Colin Powell Rope-a-Dope"? Don't feel too bad about it, it had me going for a while as well.

Sadly, he features hardly at all in US commentators' accounts of the internal Republican rows that finally brought Bush to the UN.

The ones that did feature in that "row" that had you all clapping in your little hands were all inconsequential to our foreign policy, which should've amounted to a massive whack with the cluestick. Fortunately people such as you are too incomprehensibly dim to get "subtle" little points like that, so you swallowed it hook, line and sinker. Brilliant.

For a very little influence, Blair has paid a frighteningly high price: the split with the rest of Europe, weakening his own influence by becoming Bush's tool, never again an independent honest broker.

I have a strong feeling that, before this war is over, the rest of EUrope is going to find itself wishing very dearly that they'd become "Bush's tool" and had the foresight not to become part of the problem rather than the solution.

We Americans aren't going to forget Tony's support and he and the British will benefit mightily from it in the future, as they should.

As for the rest of the Grand EUrinal, well you can go take a long walk off a short pier, we don't need you.

At home there is angry puzzlement among many more in his own party than the usual suspects. Was it worth so much damage? Only if in the end this war is successfully averted.

Well... In that case, it wasn't worth it... But in the long run, it will be.

Even now, the drafters are working at a UN resolution to square (or fudge) the needs of the US war party with French and Russian hesitation. Deals are brokered, poor countries' arms are twisted with aid and trade while Russia may be allowed to kill a few more Chechens. But a deal there must be. The only ones who hope the UN fumbles...

...as they will...

are the Rumsfeld/Cheney warriors who want no straitjacket, no option for Saddam to avoid the war now sharpening its knives on his borders.

Oh but he does have an option: He can follow every condition laid down by President Bush yesterday to the letter, all of which is backed by the UNs own resolutions. Nothing more, nothing less.

Moving command headquarters from Florida to Qatar could hardly send a louder message: America wants war, America means war.

The only hope of avoiding it is that Saddam takes fright at a security council resolution with a firm time limit for the weapons inspectors to return - any time, any place or else, no run-around or obstruction.

And it won't happen. The time limit would have to be within days and he'd have to allow full and unfettered access as well as all of the other terms. Saddam is a dead man walking.

The message that the US means war has been conveyed to him forcefully by everyone who has his ear, including former weapons inspector Scott Ritter.

Oh, the Traitor-in-Chief? No doubt he's realized that his future looks rather dim...

The US sabre is out of its scabbard: just let him look Cheney and Rumsfeld in the eye. The world will hold its breath and hope he blinks or, better still, that he is overthrown by others who see what's coming.

For those who supported the wars in Afghanistan, Kosovo and Sierra Leone, the enslaved peoples of Iraq are no less just a cause. Once legitimised by the UN and international law, there is no moral difference in the need to liberate Iraqis and relieve the potential threat Saddam poses to his neighbours. None would mourn his passing from power. The difference is pragmatic, not moral. There were very good reasons why Bush senior did not march on Baghdad in 1991, reasons that remain unchanged.

...and none of which you've gotten the foggiest of ideas about, judging by what follows...

Saddam's elite troops around Baghdad would inflict very heavy casualties.

I'm not convinced. Especially not considering how his "Elites" were running like scared rabbits and surrendering to TV crews back in '91. Not to mention that I highly doubt that the "Elites" are going to sacrifice themselves to a lost cause.

In his death throes, he would certainly use anthrax and nerve gases.

He didn't the last time. And even if he did, what makes you think that he wouldn't anyway, should he so desire? It's not like he has an impressive track record when it comes to rational decisions.

No matter what, we cannot let ourselves be blackmailed by a mad dictator.

Iraq might fall apart

Oh the horror...

with Shi'ite lands defecting to Iran, strengthening another vile regime

...which will, in due time, either reform itself or follow Saddam into his grave...

destabilising others.

Here we go again: The mythical stability of the Middle East that we must not, cannot disturb for anything in the world.

For one thing, the Middle East is about as stable as plutonium. For another, we want to destabilize these regimes. They're so much easier to topple that way, you dimwit.

If Afghanistan cannot hold US attention for one short year, how would far more complex Iraq be nurtured long term? Fermenting terror, recruiting generations of terrorists to come, the cure looks worse than the disease.

You're an idiot. A drooling, babbling idiot with not the first clue as to what you're talking about. Where's all this terror that has been "fermenting" in Afghanistan since we sent the Taliban packing? I sure as Hell haven't noticed it. And if the Iraqis, after having had their asses handed to them twice in a decade, once again are skullcrushingly stupid enough to play terror games again, then we'll go right back in and punish them s'more. Only this time, they won't have any weapons to defend themselves with.

Curiously, the louder Bush and Blair call for an end to this villain, the less convincing it sounds. Why now? That remains the perplexing question.

Yeah, let's go back to sleep. All of this racket is frightening the Bunnies.

Containment works well:

Would somebody tell me which reality this bumbling b*tch lives in? 'Coz she sure ain't living in this one.

few observers think Saddam can launch anything under present no-fly, daily bombing pressure.

Apart from the blatant absurdity of that statement, why is it that you believe that we're the slightest bit interested in spending the rest of forever delivering pin-pricks to Soddy while he works on perfecting his suitcase nuke? Are you really that much of an Idiotarian, or do you just play one very convincingly on TV?

What is Bush's obsession? It remains a mystery.

"...to uphold and defend...etc." There you go. That wasn't so hard, was it? Just wait 'till the rest of the loons at your Saturday cocktail party find out that you know, they're going to be so impressed with you...

It is not a vote-winner in the US where the danger looks not clear and present, but cloudy and distant.

Checked that with the local Olive Garden™, didya? Well, I'm gonna have a talk with them then, because that's certainly news to me. You'd think that if it wasn't, then the Dems would be all gung-ho to get the question on the table before the elections, wouldn't ya? You Driveling Drift of Donkeys' Droppings.

The risks are frightening and the costs staggering. Petrol prices rise while stock exchanges fall at the prospect. Oil say some, but if US companies want Saddam's oil, an oil-driven cynical administration could make peace not war and help themselves to fat contracts.

Exactly.

Thank you for having volunteered one of the most elegant arguments against the "it's all about oil"-meme. You may go far yet, once you get your feet out of your mouth.

No, it appears to spring from a new ideology, a neo-conservative dream which Charles Krauthammer, guru of the right, calls the US's "uniquely benign imperium". Hyperpower is not enough unless it is exerted so forcefully that no state ever again challenges benign US authority.

I'll put it in another way, a much easier way for you intellectually impaired Idiots to comprehend:

We honestly don't give a goat's turd about what the f*ck you morons do or don't do in your own "shitty little countries", as long as you don't mess with us and as long as you don't mess with our friends.

If you follow this simple rule, we'll all get along just fine.

If you don't, I see mushroom clouds in your futures.

Get it?

Good.

One thing was made crystal clear yesterday - there is no other source of authority but America, and that means there is no other law but US law.

Not in this country there isn't. And when it comes to defending our own interests, you're damn straight Skippy that there ain't no law but our law. Learn to deal with it.

What the US wants, the UN had better solemnise with a suitable resolution - very like the Roman senate and one of its lesser god-emperors. But this is not the real America. A small cultish sect is battling for the "imperium" within this bizarre administration, resisted by mainstream Republicans

Where is this "Republican Revolt"? I've been looking and looking and I can't see a single sign of it.

Oh, there it is... It's all in Ms Toynbee's pointed little head.

R.I.P., EUroweenies... You're as gone as the dinosaurs, you just haven't quite figured it out yet.

But you will... Oh yes, you will...

2002-09-13T14:01:00.000-05:00

Emily's Back and Idiotarians Everywhere Had Better Take Cover... Now...

After having washed moron "Gigi" thoroughly out of her system, Emily's back, vicious and lovely as ever, rolling up the latest drivel from "The Independent (...of rationality)" and shoving it so far down the EUroweenies' throats that they'll have the headlines stamped on their turds for weeks...

Good job, girl, and welcome back on the frontlines...

2002-09-13T13:47:00.000-05:00

Send In the Droids

Scientists, frustrated with trying to find out what's behind a mysterious hatch in the Great Pyramid of Giza, are going to send in a robot to check it out for them.

I've got one piece of advice, guys: Do not nickname the lil' bot "Geraldo", OK? Just saying, 's all...

(Link courtesy of The Lair Man)

2002-09-13T12:44:00.000-05:00

Linking, Linking, Linking...

In what must be one of my most serious errors of omission, I forgot to link to "Scrappleface", one of the funniest and most viciously satirical blogs I've ever had the enjoyment of reading through.

My thanks for the headzup and the error has been corrected. If you're not already a regular reader of Scrappleface's, you might just want to surf your way over there and check out the digs. You won't regret it.

And while on the subject of Linkagery, to steal another term:
If you're the author of, or a regular reader of, a blog that you think ought to be on my blogroll but isn't, please don't think that it's because I don't want it there. It's more than likely because I haven't yet gotten around to checking it out.

The blogosphere is growing at such a mad pace and there is so much talent out there that if I was to try and cover every single one worthy of mention, you wouldn't see much content on this page at all.

So, don't be shy, send me a hint. I solemnly promise that I'll check each and everyone out and you have my thanks as well.

Thatisall...

2002-09-13T11:57:00.000-05:00

More Goodness From Down Under:

Bargarz, destined for greatness in the blogosphere, delivers a thorough and well-researched deconstruction of a particularly vile America-Hater, Alison Broinowski.

It's a little long and a lot good.

2002-09-13T10:43:00.000-05:00

The Love Of a Son

More news from the clogged sink of humanity, the Paleostinian "Authority", thanks to Charles at LGF:

Tulkarm man kills mother over 'Jewish lover'
By KHALED ABU TOAMEH

Miriam Sufan, 46, was stabbed to death by her son in downtown Tulkarm on Wednesday evening, because he suspected she was having an affair with a Jewish man, according to reports.

The son, Adnan, told passersby that his mother was a traitor because she was having an affair with a Jew.

"He was walking with his mother hand-in-hand, when he suddenly drew a big knife and started stabbing her in the chest and face," according to shopkeeper who saw the killing.

...most likely through the view finder of his video camera... These snuff videos sell for top dollar at his his friends' site, after all.

"It was a big shock for many people who happened to be in the market buying food before the Israeli army reimposes the curfew on the city."

It's really hard for me to believe that anyone 'round those parts got shocked, considering that this is the kind of thing that happens just about every other day in that cesspool.

But surely, once the shock had subsided, it spurred the Palis into action, right?.... Right???

Another shopkeeper who also witnessed the killing said that at first he thought the woman was a collaborator. "You know, we have become used to hearing about women who work with the Israeli Shin Bet," he said.

Yup, just about every Paleostinian woman is involved with the Shin Bet. The main reason that they're almost all women is because the men might fight back when the Pali snuffers come around to murder them.

"That's why when the young man started stabbing the woman, no one wanted to help here. We thought the killer was a member of the Aksa Martyrs Brigades."

Guilty until proven innocent... I'm... so... touched... But, in all fairness, this is exactly the kind of thing that the Al Aqsa Batshit Brigades would be involved in. Not that that's an excuse for standing passively by while a woman is being murdered but hey, this is Paleostine and it's only a woman, after all...

The killing took place as dozens stood by, even as the victim, a mother of five, called for help, a Tulkarm resident said. She said that only after the son fled the scene did a medical team approach the bleeding woman.

I'm sure that there are words that would adequately describe such craven cowardice, but I just don't happen to know any of 'em.

[SPIT!]

The son was later arrested by the Tulkarm police, which described the murder as a "killing with a background of honor."

Which, in the lingo of "Peaceful Islam", means that he'll be free to go before the body of his mother has even had time to cool...

A source close to the family said the woman was divorced and had moved to Israel several years ago. The source would neither confirm nor deny that the victim had married a Jew. "She was on a visit to her family in Tulkarm," the source said. "She didn't have a clue her son was planning to murder her. On Wednesday, people saw them walking happily, hand-in-hand in the central bus station. It's not clear what led the son to commit this crime."

How 'bout years of blatant, uninterrupted, bloodthirsty fundamentalism and anti-Semitism, coupled with a sick, twisted mind?

Sufan was the third woman killed in Tulkarm in the past month. Ikhlas Khouli, a 36-year-old mother of seven, was executed by Fatah gunmen after she allegedly confessed to working with Israeli security forces. Her 19-year-old niece, Raja Abu Omar, was executed a week later after similar allegations.

Two other suspected collaborators were gunned down in the Tulkarm area over the past 48 hours. Fatah claimed responsibility for the killings, saying it would continue its campaign against Palestinian who help Israel.

Can anybody give me one, just one good reason for Israel not to conduct an above-ground nuclear test in, say, Tulkarm?

I can't think of any...

2002-09-13T09:13:00.000-05:00

Slapping a Falwell Wannabe Around...

Although I'm very much a Christian (whoops, there went half my readership ;-) ), I find Tex of Whacking Day's Full Frontal Fisking of Townhall weirdo Ben Shapiro very, very appropriate.

It's morons like Ben Shapiro that, along with Jerry Falwell, do their damndest to reinforce the myth that we Christians are all wild-eyes, fundamentalist weirdos with their inane blather.

Consider a few quotes from Shapiro's piece:

America has divided into two factions: those who fight evil and those who do not believe in evil. The dividing line is religion.

Those who believe in a Judeo-Christian God know the difference between good and evil because they know the value of human life.

(...and everybody else, presumably, don't know...) This is pure, unadulterated horse hocky and it's straight from the mouth of a self-righteous moron.

I'm Christian, therefore I have been taught to distinguish good from evil or, at the very least, to know that there is such a thing as evil. This is true. But that does not mean that, "logically", everybody who isn't a Christian does not have the ability to make that distinction, you insufferable twit!

I know and have come to know a lot of atheists who are perfectly capable of making that distinction and you'll find quite a few of 'em on my blogroll. I don't know who hammered that stupid notion into your pimpled head, Ben, but you don't have to be a Christian to know, instinctively, that stoning women, chopping peoples' limbs off and gassing Kurds is evil. If you doubt this, please take a tour of my links.

The fact that you're trying to monopolize morality like that, quite frankly, makes me want to puke.

And if you think that that was bad, please take a look at the following:

Jerry Falwell said after Sept. 11 that abortionists, feminists, the gays and lesbians who promote homosexuality as a natural lifestyle, the American Civil Liberties Union and all those who try to secularize America (in short, the PC crowd) bear some responsibility for Sept. 11.

While his statement may have been unpopular, it was true, at least in the larger sense.

OK, that's it, right there! Please do me a favor and shut up until you grow some hair on your upper lip, Ben, because right now you've proven that you're not fit to be in the company of grown people.

I thought that that subject had already been covered sufficiently after Jerry opened his mouth, put both feet in it and buried his head up his ass, but apparently I was wrong.

You may think that you're awfully "brave" to present that particular view, Ben, but the only thing you've proven to anybody with two braincells to rub together (a quality that you obviously lack) is that you're a complete and utter buffoon.

I'm quite comfortable with being a Christian (just as I'm quite comfortable with anyone who's not, as long as they don't try'n shove their beliefs or non-beliefs down my throat, just as I'm sure they'd much appreciate it if I'd show them the same courtesy. It's a matter between them and God, which means it's none of my damn business), at least most of the time.

But every once in a while a clueless cockroach like Lil' Ben here comes crawling out from under his or her rock and starts spewing fundamentalist nonsense like the above and I immediately start wondering if I should become an atheist instead.

No, I don't, really. But I do so dearly wish that "Christians" like Ben would shut the Heck up, because it's narrow-minded, holier-than-thou bigots like him that give the rest of us a bad name.

Now piss off, little boy, and come back when you've learned something about the real world, the one the rest of us live in.

Flippin' F*ckwad!

2002-09-13T07:47:00.000-05:00

Fun With Google:

And now to a recurring space filler of mine, Weird Search Queries:

Egyptian burqa pics : There's been a disturbing increase in demand for these pictures as of late and the only explanation I can find is that somebody's realized that, within a few years, the supply of them is going to dry up, if you know what I mean, and therefore some nefarious Burqa Pic Pusher is trying to corner the market, so he (or she) can demand outrageous prizes from Righteous Woman-Beating Islamists who crave this soon-to-be-rather-rare commodity.

I have to disappoint you, though. My supply ran out a few weeks ago.

"To be a true blue" dictionary : This one had me baffled for a while, until it hit me like a hammer: Check out a few Mississippi Delta book stores and you might find just what you've been looking for, a dictionary with any and all references to mirth and gaiety surgically removed.

Alternatively, you could check the upcoming annual al-Qaeda report for the fiscal year of 2002. That one is bound to get you in a "blue" mood, especially if you tend to wear a turban and scream "Jiiiiiiihad!" at the top of your lungs for every two sentences or so.

Privatizing water in islam : You've come to the source, my man! Being a member of the VRWC and an Evil Capitalist Lackey to boot, I just closed a deal on all the water supplies in the Middle East with the help of a fine Nigerian broker that contacted me by email a few weeks ago.

So pony up, or you won't have nothing but goat milk to drink for the forseeable future, MWHAHAHAHHAH!

esophageal spasm joke : Sorry, I don't have any. But if you have any luck in your tireless search for this classic of comedy, please share. Unless it has the words "nun" and "sailor" in it, in which case I'd rather not hear about it.

2002-09-13T07:10:00.000-05:00

Reader Contribution:

Although I'm still peeved that I'm not receiving any hatemail, I do find great comfort in the fact that it gives me so much more time to enjoy the massively talented hints, suggestions and contributions that you, my readers, send in.

One such example was sent in by alert reader Noel, and it was just so damn beautiful that I couldn't let it languish in my inbox, so I asked him for his permission to post it here and he graciously allowed me to.

So, without further ado, here's a contribution by talented "Rott"-reader Noel:

CAPT. JONES v. STATE RELIGION or "Who would have Guessed being a Dem. & a Japanese-Am. would Guarantee me a Rep. Cabinet Post?"

(In the skies somewhere over America:)

"This is Capt. Jones. Come in Ground Control."

"This is Ground Control. Go Ahead."

"We've got an unruly passenger. Could be trouble"

"This is Cheif Controller Mineta, Captain. What is your situation?"

"There is a passenger creating a disturbance, and threatening to take us to Washington. Over."

" Are there any passengers aboard who could assist?"

"Affirmative, Ground Control. We have a wounded veteran from Afghanistan, a Medal of Honor winner, a nursing mother,..."

"Negative! Negative , Captain. They could be accomplices! Do you have a gun, Captain?"

(long silence)

"Uhhh...you wouldn't let me, remember?"

(long silence)

"Copy that, Capt. Can you describe the suspect?"

"Yes, Control. He is a young Arab male.He's waving a book on Islam & screaming."

"Calm down, Capt. We can't use a suspect description like that."

"Say what, Control?"

"Capt.; Is there any chance he could be a Klansman or a Basque Separatist? That would be better."

"Control; Do not understand. repeat: Do not understand."

"FAA has strict Affirmative Action Goals for hi-jackers.We've used up all slots for young Muslim males. Does he appear to be a Fiji Islander? Over."

"Negative, Ground Control."

"Can you ask him if he's a Bi-sexual Druid?"

"Uhh...don't speak the lingo, Control. But there is a Norweigian grandmother in coach who is reading 'How to Parse Farsi so Your Fed. Airport Screener can Understand You.' She's also wearing a kaffiyeh. Over"

"Captain; Do you think she's one of the hi-jackers? We've been itching to get our hands on one like that!"

"Negative, Ground Control. She wore the kaffiyeh to speed her way through security. Last time, they surgically removed her suspicious hip-replacement at Baggage Claim."

"Copy that , Capt. We'll get her for impersonating a Person of Peace."

"Good news, Ground Control! The purser just told me the guy turned out to be a Secret Service agent!"

"Whew, That's good Capt. We might have had to shoot you down, and the missile could have ignited your bullets, I mean , IF you had a gun. Well, Happy Landings, Capt. Jones! Say, is that like Capt.John Paul Jones , as in 'I have not yet begun to Fight!'?"

"You sure haven't, Ground Control. OUT."

(by reader Noel)

2002-09-12T22:07:00.000-05:00

More On the Glowing Ship...

Defense officials are now quoted as saying:

trace radiation could come from a number of sources, such as clay, pipes that have been used for a long time underground in oil excavation.

In other words: They DID find something and now they're scrambling for a "weather balloons lit up by ignited swamp gas reflected by Venus"-style cover-up.

2002-09-12T21:45:00.000-05:00

Discovered A New One...

The blog known as "IMAO" is now a proud (well I hope it is) inhabitant of my blogroll.

Don't let me go on about how funny it is, just scoot yer damned asses over there right now and check it out.

2002-09-12T19:22:00.000-05:00

Great Photo Coverage Of Yesterday In NY Can Be Found...

Right Here.

Tough on bandwidth (high picture content, obviously), but says so much more than many, many words.

2002-09-12T19:13:00.000-05:00

Now Where Did I Put That Damn Violin?

Damn thing keeps falling between the cracks in the floor, it's so small!

Thanks to alert reader Scott (thanks, man!) I'm alerted to the fact that the British sleaze rag "The Mirror" apparently still hasn't tired of yammering about the horrific plight of our turbaned f(r)iends at Gitmo:

THIS is the first glimpse of Camp Delta, the new Camp X-Ray at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

Here 598 al-Qaeda and Taliban suspects from 38 countries - including seven Britons - are held without charge, without legal rights and for some, without hope.

The ones "without hope" would be the ones guilty of crimes that call for the death penalty, I suppose, in which case my sympathy-meter doesn't even register a slight quiver.

For 167 of the 168 hours in a week their world is a cramped 8ft x 6ft 8in cell.

...which is one Heck of lot more than their crazed brethren back in Ashcanistan have. Their accomodations are, if they're lucky, roughly 6ft x 2ft and surrounded with dirt. On all sides. Which is still too good for 'em.

Their day-to-day existence in a remote corner of the US Naval Base on the south-east of the island is pitiful.

They've always been pitiful. But now that they're no longer free, it means less danger to me and mine, which works excellently, as far as I'm concerned.

The strain of living in such conditions - condemned by human rights groups again last week

Must have missed that one. I was too busy waiting for them to condemn this or this or this, to name a few.

But obviously it's much more important (and free of danger) to howl and screech about the "horrible" conditions that we force "poor" crazed, frothing, murderous Islamofascists to live under. Well kiss my American ass, you assnuggets!

- has taken a severe toll. The Daily Mirror has learned that more than 30 of the men have attempted suicide.

...without strapping a bomb on themselves first? Now that's news!

It would seem that they failed, however, which is just too damn bad. Better luck next time Mahomet, I'll send you an instruction booklet if you like.

Occupying five dusty acres on a clifftop half a mile from the old Camp X-Ray, the new facility is no temporary jail.

Camp Delta is designed as a permanent prison - a grim monument of rigid metal, steel and razor wire to President Bush's determination to continue offending basic human rights.

Yep. That's what this here war's all about: Offending basic human rights. We're also denying them the right to vote, you know. And tomorrow we'll force them to eat pork chops, but not until we're done playing Barry Manilow songs to them for 8 hours... No, that would be too gruesome...

And I could name some 3,000 people who don't have any "basic human rights" anymore, thanks to these despicable swines' aid and comfort to a certain buttmunching goat molester, not to mentiont that these pigs weren't exactly big on "basic human rights" themselves when they were back terrorizing the Afghans. So don't expect me to cry too much over their "privations" now... Morons...

As the weeks and months crawl by, more and more unidentified prisoners arrive.

GOOD!

Last month 34 were flown in from Afghanistan. Their arrival left just 14 vacancies, but phase three of the prison will be finished by next month, allowing the camp to incarcerate 816.

So far £30million has been poured into the project - that's £36,764 a cell - and blueprints for the facility to be expanded to detain 2,000 prisoners have been approved.

Senior officers have also earmarked a site near the base airfield for a bricks and mortar prison. A fully-equipped permanent hospital with 116 beds is being built at high speed to replace the medical centre of scruffy, beige tents where 50 major surgeries have been performed since the detainees began to arrive in January.

The only kind of "major surgery" I would find appropriate for these worthless wastes of skin would be an immediate cordectomy without the benefits of anesthesia.

But what's all this about building a hospital for them? I thought we were supposed to be mean?

Guantanamo's business is banging up suspected Taliban and al-Qaeda. And business is clearly good for the Americans.

...and getting better every day, thank you very much. So good of you to notice.

But the mental health of the detainees is cause for concern.

I'd say anybody who shacks up with a loonie who decides to go declare war on the strongest nation on the planet has serious mental health issues already.

One of the 30 who attempted suicide tried to slash his wrists with a plastic razor

Maybe he was just trying to shave his armpits?

while three others tried to hang themselves.

It's amazing how inept these murderous bastards are when trying to wax themselves... Perhaps remedial lessons are in order?

US officials also confirmed to us that 37 other detainees are being treated for severe mental health problems.

..."they're just sitting there in a corner, screaming 'Jiiiiiiiiiiiiiiihaaaaddd' every five seconds or so..."

And 18 of those psychiatric cases are so severely traumatised that they are receiving daily treatment and powerful drugs to stave off a variety of symptoms.

...such as an irrepressable urge to go kill infidels, a tendency to jerk themselves off and stick toothpaste up their butts etc...

It's not quite clear what the last bit is supposed to accomplish, but their shit sure don't stink as it used to no more.

A new Amnesty International report says the detainees are in legal limbo and face a serious breach of their human rights.

Did I hear something? Nah, must be the wind...

They are routinely denied the right to see lawyers, although they could face trial by special US military courts with power to pass death sentences.

...of which none have been passed, yet. And since when were illegal combattants entitled to legal aid? Must be something our little Camel Humping friends have picked up since they got over here, for they sure as Hell weren't big on those issues before.

The Mirror quizzed guards, doctors, nurses and military officials during a heavily-escorted three-day visit.

Our every move was monitored.

That's generally the case in high security prisons, in case you didn't know.

And it was difficult to get any information, either on or off the record.

"...so we just made shit up."

What the Hell did you expect, you bumbling asswipes? A full disclosure? We're at WAR, morons!

But despite the tight restrictions the Mirror has pieced together the most accurate picture yet of life for the detainees. And it's not pretty.

Considering the source, I'm not the least bit surprised.

The cramped cells, cut from steel shipping containers and even smaller than X-Ray's notorious cages, are collected in 10 blocks.

Delta, surrounded by thick green netting to keep out prying eyes, is brightly lit by powerful arc lights 24 hours a day and the camp is ringed with seven wooden guard towers manned by sharpshooters.

Quick! Somebody hand me my pills! These murderous and suicidal fanatical Islamofascists are surrounded by armed guards??? Oh the HUMANITY!

There are regular incidents when some prisoners go stir crazy, shouting and screaming as they climb and claw their cell walls in despair.

That's what we call "entertainment" in these parts, yanno. They just tire so damn quickly.

But most of the time there is an eerie, pathetic silence.

Cue a couple ravens and a tolling bell and you get the picture...

On our two visits to the camp there wasn't a sound and it was hard to believe there was any life behind the wire at all.

So you guys missed out on all of the "stir crazy" shit? Hmm... I wonder where you got it from then.

Overhead, like extras in a bad movie, huge black turkey vultures lazily circled the parched landscape.

If you guys are thinking about writing movie scripts, please rethink... Your entire article is a bad movie...

The 30 who have tried to end their lives have taken desperate and pathetic measures. A few have used the plastic utensils issued with their meals to try and slash their wrists.

Some repeatedly banged their heads against the metal wall in their cells or punched the walls in frustration.

Punching the walls, a tried and true method of offing yourself.

Other men suffer from insomnia which in turn makes them anxious and then depressed. A few pace their cells manically or pass the time doing endless press-ups.

Extraordinarily, the military insist none of men's mental health has degenerated since being incarcerated in either camp and that all 37 had their psychiatric problems before being captured.

But you Mirror crapsmiths know better, don't you?

army chaplain Major Mike Merrill, a 35-year-old Southern Baptist preacher from Maryland who ministers to the guards and some of the detainees, admitted talk of suicide was common.

He said: "They are going through a very rough time. There are issues of loneliness, frustration, anger, emotional mood swings.

"They miss their families, they lose hope and lose sight of tomorrow. Like any prison there are a few individuals who will say, 'I don't want to live any more. I have no purpose'."

Merrill initially saw the one Christian detainee, but has converted five Muslims to Christianity and has lent them Bibles translated into Arabic. "I didn't try to convert them, they approached me," he added.

Surely this is a breach of their basic human rights as well?

The rear section of the cell has a 4ft x 4ft mesh window which allows - in theory - the breeze from the Caribbean to blow through the prison.

But the desert heat which sends temperatures soaring into the high 90s by 8am,

Take my word for it, you palefaced BritTwits, the high 90s ain't nothing 'round these parts. But of course, Dallas has always been known as a "desert city".

Disgracefully, yet just within the guidelines of the Geneva Convention,

I can almost hear you say "dammit!"

...they are allowed only two 15-minute showers a week when they are also given a freshly laundered orange two-piece prison suit.

...which is, more than likely, 10 times as much by way of hygiene as they ever received before.

Each time they are required to leave their cell they are shackled at the hands, waist and feet and escorted by at least two guards who tightly grip either arm.

Damn those evil Merkins! Keeping the poor misguided lamb from escaping! One might almost be led to believe that fanatic Islamofascists were dangerous!

Occasionally, in a rare moment of good humour, some of the captives sing Britney Spears or Madonna songs. Oddly, country singer Garth Brooks is a particular favourite.

I don't even wanna hear a Taliban rendition of "Wild Camels, keep draaagging me awaaaay...". Or "Like 72 Virgins". Not to mention "Oops! I Blew Up Again!"... What about the guards' "basic human rights"???

For the detainees each day is the same. They all ask what's going to happen to them. They all ask for lawyers. They all ask for some glimmer of hope.

...and I say:

"Fuck them!"

"Fuck them and the camels they rode in on!"

2002-09-12T18:00:00.000-05:00

It Seems I'm Not the Only One.

Fellow blogger Whiggin' Out (who's got permalinks now, way to go, bro!) has noticed that it's somewhat difficult to get back up to speed today, blogwise. I'm glad to hear that, I thought it was only me...

Anyway, he then gets right back in gear and has a few choice words to say, if it should turn out that a certain ship has a nuclear device on board.

I don't have a problem with Ashcroft and Ridge being vague about the nature of the "specific threats" and handing out Code Oranges. But once they have located a nuclear shipment we must be told. And then we find the origin of address and insert a nuclear bomb. See I'm really unsteady today, and maybe I shouldn't be driving this laptop. But the delivery of a nuclear device, by ship or by cruise missile, is grounds for all out, total nuclear war. If you think that kind of talk is nutty then I ask you how you would have enjoyed yesterday if you had spent the day watching the flesh of your family members, children, pets and friends melt off of their bones while they shrieked in agony. Or maybe they would die a little more slowly over hours with pain the kind of which you cannot comprehend. Are you ready to kill our enemies before they kill us? Or are you too civilized and high toned for that. If you are then FUCK YOU.

Amen to that, brother!

If it turns out that the captain of this ship had plans for added fireworks yesterday and if we find the return address, then I too believe that the only right thing to do is to return the compliment.

If we cannot retaliate when enemies try to nuke us, then when, exactly, can we retaliate?

Deterrence isn't worth a whole lot if you prove to the world that you're afraid to back it up.

But let's see what comes of this whole affair.

2002-09-12T17:45:00.000-05:00

Well I'll Be a Monkey's Uncle!

Sullivan Goes Fiskin'™ and does a damn good job of it too!

Go and enjoy his merciless deconstruction of the Hideous Hag of Hypocrisy, Susan Sontag.

(Only thing I have to say is: "Where's the profanity?", but then again, you knew I would...)

The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler

Welcome to the Bunker!

The Rott Has Moved!

Uh-Oh, We're In Trouble...

Fiskings'R'Us

Confessions Of a Moron...

OK, THIS Needs Exposure!

Taking a Snarky Break™

Public Service Announcement:

Well, That Settles It...

Watch My Pet Comment Troll Dance...

Grady Makes a Promise That He'll Soon Retract...

More Linky Love

The Presidential Campaign For 2004 is Heating Up

From the Department of "Too Much Information", or "TMI":

I Love Short and Pithy Comments...

Looks Like We're Finally Getting Ready to Roll...

Ann Coulter, Hot or Not?

"Squashing of Dissent" at Kumbaya HQ?

It's Official At Last:

Laughing My @ss Off

Common Nightmares

American Pacifists Descend on Baghdad

It's Link Time In the Blogosphere

Good Questions All

Watching the Train Of History Disappearing in the Distance

More Nigerian Goodness...

Damn That Logic!

OK, If THIS Ain't Worth Supporting, Nothing Is...

Oh, Did I Mention?

The Chief Fisk™ Is Cruising For a Bruising Again

A Long Overdue Announcement:

Woooooo HOOOOO!

Time To Move the UN.

The Childrens' "Crusade"

"Please Don't Let That Big Meanie Hurt Me! Whaaaaaaaaaahhhh!

And That's All I Wanna Say About THAT:

Blogrolling Again:

More From Norway

This Just In:

"This Is Another Fine Mess I've Gotten Myself In"

If I Don't Post This Link, the Terrorists Will Have Won...

Idiotarians Manage to Murder Even MORE People:

Public Service Announcement:

The "Elite" Republican Guard or "It Sucks To Be Hated"

I Thought It'd NEVER Happen!

"What Is It With All This Starry-Eyed Idealism?"

Who Is The Enemy?

Seems There's Another Country Ripe For Regime Change Too...

My Apologies

Lack of Clue All Over Again

Of Bitches and Lefty Loons

Commenting Back On

But What If...?

And a Few Way Overdue Additions:

A Washed Out Has-Been Refuses To Shut the F*ck Up...

While I'm At It, I Mustn't Forget This:

Rachel On a Roll...

SPLAT!

The Beat Goes On...

I Have No Idea How This Site Has Managed to Slip Under My Radar...

Don't Read This While Drinking and/or Eating

To Whom It May Concern

Wash, Rinse, Repeat...

The al-Guardian Is Showing Its True Colors Again

Post-9/11 Greed

Delivery In 30 Minutes Or...

A Day Late And a Dollar Short

Now THIS Is Bloody Bad News!!!

I've Got It! By Jove, I've Got It!...

To Shoot or Not To Shoot...

Democracy, the Islamofascist Way:

Told Ya So...

Damn Postal Service...

Monday's Edition of the Pravda on the Hudson

Link Redundancy

Damn I Should Really Go To Bed

On War

Clarifying Terms That Have Lost Their Meaning

Quality and Quantity Are Not Mutually Exclusive