October 1, 2004
I'm sure we will all peruse various analyses about last night's presidential debate to get a sense of how the two candidates were received, but I thought that both of them did well enough for partisans to claim victory, maybe giving Kerry an edge on debate style and Bush at least an edge on substance. In particular, I expected the European media to promote Kerry's performance, in part because (like their American counterparts) they prefer Kerry to Bush and in part because they prefer his debating style. Imagine my surprise when CQ reader KPowell referred me to the center-left magazine Der Spiegel, which claims that Bush won on points: Die teils scharfen Angriffe von Kerry ließen den amtierenden Präsidenten Bush weitgehend unbeeindruckt: Mit der Darstellung seiner Außenpolitik und des Irak-Konflikts konterte Bush die Attacken seines Herausforderers. Für SPIEGEL ONLINE analysiert das Forschungsinstitut Medien Tenor die erste von drei TV-Debatten im...
The BBC reports that the US and Iraqi forces have moved into Samarra with brigade strength and coordinated jet and tank attacks on 2,000 fighters in the city has been a terrorist stronghold in answer to the ongoing kidnapings and attacks. They have killed 80 terrorists and retaken key positions in the city: The US military says it has killed more than 80 insurgents in a major offensive in the northern Iraqi city of Samarra. US and Iraqi forces say they took control of government and police buildings in the restive city, in a raid that began just after midnight. The US claim that 80 insurgents had died came after local doctors said at least 20 civilians had been killed. The attack targeted 2,000 fighters who the US says have made Samarra a base for attacks across the country. This is the opening salvo in a larger plan to eliminate...
One point Candidate Kerry has remained consistent on during last night's debate is his plan to open bilateral talks with nK. When asked how he would deal with what he perceived as the greatest threat to America, Kerry responded, "I'm going to immediately set out to have bilateral talks with North Korea." President Bush immediately rebutted this idea, explaining: Again, I can't tell you how big a mistake I think that is, to have bilateral talks with North Korea. It's precisely what Kim Jong Il wants. It will cause the six-party talks to evaporate. It will mean that China no longer is involved in convincing, along with us, for Kim Jong Il to get rid of his weapons. It's a big mistake to do that. We must have China's leverage on Kim Jong Il, besides ourselves. And if you enter bilateral talks, they'll be happy to walk away from the...
It's not too often that one finds editorial agreement between the two DC papers, the Post and the Times, but both papers called last night's debate a draw. The Post gives its analysis in its unsigned editorial: The center of the debate was Iraq, though the candidates differed more on past actions than on future plans. Mr. Bush stoutly defended his decision to go to war and its results; Mr. Kerry forcefully criticized that decision and the war's management and offered himself as a more competent commander in chief. But Mr. Kerry had a more complicated position to defend, and it showed at times. He called the war a mistake and a diversion, but later said that American soldiers were not dying for a mistake. He implied that money being spent in Iraq could be better spent on prescription drugs for seniors, but insisted, "I'm not talking about leaving. I'm...
Don Hewitt, the creator of the original 60 Minutes who recently got pushed out by CBS, spoke out in a South Dakota radio interview on Rathergate and the election: The creator of "60 Minutes," Don Hewitt, said Thursday he would not have done the story on President Bush's National Guard service that got CBS anchor Dan Rather in so much hot water. ... "I never would have done the story," said Hewitt, who retired in June as the show's executive producer after 36 years. "I would have been very wary injecting myself into a campaign. You've got to be very careful that you're not perceived as doing the job that one of the two candidates should be doing himself." Hewitt told the audience that the problem with running a gotcha story like that during an election is that it has to be perfect to be successful; one mistake, and "you're...
Thomas Lipscomb writes a fascinating article about his clever piece of detective work which demonstrates that John Kerry wrote the after-action report that led to his Bronze Star for an engagement that almost all witnesses claim never involved enemy fire. Lipscomb uncovered a 35-year-old operations order which narrows down the source of the story Kerry denies inventing: A faded 35-year-old operations order recovered from the Naval Historical Center in Washington bears directly on the ongoing dispute between Sen. John Kerry and the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth about who wrote the key after-action report that ended Kerry's service in Vietnam. The report appears in the official Navy records and is posted on Kerry's presidential campaign Web site. The report details Kerry's participation in a naval operation on the Bay Hap River on March 13, 1969, in such glowing terms that he was awarded a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star...
I just heard back from Laura at Six Apart about the Typekey frustrations: You recently reported problems logging in with TypeKey on some weblogs and sites. Our technicians have made some changes on our servers. Their testing suggests that these changes have resolved the login problems. We would appreciate it if you could do some testing as well to see if you continue to experience the problems. If you do, please contact us again with the following information: 1) What exactly happens when you attempt to sign in with TypeKey to post a comment? 2) What browser and operating system are you using? Thank you. Laura Six Apart, Ltd I tried this earlier tonight and it appears to be working properly. Feel free to test on this post to check it out....
If the rumors are true and the Italians paid $1 million for the return of the "Two Simonas", they likely will ask for a refund now that the two women have started giving interviews after their return to Italy. The two women have turned into mouthpieces for the Islamofascists who terrorized them: Italy's adoration of the "two Simonas", the women aid workers abducted in Iraq, began to sour yesterday, as the extent of their sympathy for the Iraqi fight against the allied occupation became clear. Simona Pari, Simona Torretta and Lello Rienzi talk to the press In their first big interviews given since their release in return for a reported $1 million ransom on Tuesday, Simona Pari and Simona Torretta, both 29, gave their backing to insurgents opposing the allied forces. ... "If you ask me about terrorism, I'll tell you that there is terrorism and there is resistance. The...
October 2, 2004
CQ (and more famously Power Line) reader Dafydd ab Hugh posted an interesting take in our comments on the two Italian hostages who were released unharmed, only to proclaim their captors' cause on their return. He makes an interesting connection between the Two Simonas and the Japanese hostages that were released earlier this year. In case anyone misses it there, I'm posting them here: My wife was born and raised in Japan, and she at first was very upset about the Japanese "hostages" in Iraq. Sachi lives here in America (she's a US citizen), and she got on some Japanese bulletin boards, trying to find out what was going on. She was startled to find that nobody on those boards seemed particularly sympathetic; and that was when she found out that the Japanese had already by and large concluded that the "kidnapping" was in fact a set-up: the Japanese who...
The Washington Post has an unusual editorial in today's edition pointing out the efforts of DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe to hijack their Letters section for unpaid advertising. You have to read this to believe it, but apparently some of the mindless sheep he's driving can't tell time: WE RECEIVED THE following letter from a woman in Yonkers, N.Y.: "Dear editor: This debate made it clear: John Kerry is a leader we can trust to tell us the truth when it comes to our nation's security. George Bush has had his chance; I'm ready for a new direction." Cogent, succinct, personal -- everything we look for in a letter. So why are we writing about it here, instead of publishing it in the columns to the right? Unfortunately, the letter, perfect in every other way, arrived in our electronic in-box Thursday afternoon, four hours and 14 minutes before debate moderator Jim...
UN officials are investigating a video showing Palestinians loading suspicious, elongated objects into UN ambulances after Israel released the images and accused UN personnel of collaborating with the terrorists: UN officials said Saturday they are investigating a claim by the Israeli military that Palestinian terrorists transported a rocket in a vehicle with UN markings, but accused Israel of having made false allegations in the past. On Friday, the IDF released video footage taken from an unmanned aircraft, or drone, flying over the Jebalya refugee camp. The blurred black-and-white video showed three men walking toward the U.N. vehicle, including one who carried an elongated object. The army said the object was a rocket. Don't expect too much from this investigation, however. As the above indicates, the UN "investigator" assigned to the case has started out his probe by assuming the Israelis are a bunch of liars: "This won't be the first...
Tomorrow's New York Times runs a 10,000-word article about prewar intelligence on Iraq's nuclear program being called a "smoking gun", "persuasive", with predictions of "significant impact". I agree, although not on the Bush campaign, as Barry Ritholtz suggests. I believe it will have significant impact on the New York Times, because as Tom Maguire and CQ reader Michael K note, the Washington Post ran an article fourteen months ago that tells the exact same story. At issue is the national-security assessment of aluminum tubes sought by Saddam Hussein in 2000 from China. The administration determined that the type and size of the tubes indicated that they were to be used in a nuclear centrifuge. Now we know that was not the case, especially after the testimony and evidence of Dr. Mahdi Obeidi, but at the time the West had not been in Iraq for two years and had little information...
It's been a long day, meeting with the Northern Alliance after our radio show. A few links before I fall asleep ... Hugh Hewitt is inviting people to a virtual symposium on John Kerry's proposed ban on bunker-busting nukes, as well as his idea about sending nuclear fuel to Iran to see what they do with it. Follow the links ... CQ reader Retired Military points out an interesting error on an absentee ballot in Michigan. Note which ticket the printing error affects. RM says he's confirmed that this only occurred in one county ... Fox News apologized for a lame gag item that got posted to its website earlier from reporter Carl Cameron with a number of faked Kerry quotes in it. I can't work up a great deal of outrage over this, since Fox acknowledged Cameron's fubar immediately, apologized, and pulled the article. However, the faked quotes in...
October 3, 2004
US and Iraqi forces completed their liberation of Samarra from the control of terrorist forces, having seized all government and Muslim facilities and have embarked on door-to-door searches for weapons and stragglers, the AP reports: Iraqi security forces patrolled the streets, and U.S. troops went door to door searching for weapons and fighters Sunday after the military claimed success in wresting control of Samarra from Sunni insurgents in fierce fighting. ... U.S. commanders have praised the performance of Iraqi security forces in the offensive in Samarra, 60 miles northwest of Baghdad, calling the assault a successful first step in a major push to wrest key areas from insurgents before January elections. As the gunfire subsided, Samarra residents emerged from their homes on Sunday to survey the damage and bury the dead. At the main hospital, bodies in black plastic bags were loaded on a truck to be taken to the...
Frequent CQ contributor Bandit points me to this Los Angeles Times article on Dr. Mahdi Obeidi, about whom I have written two posts. Obeidi ran the Iraqi nuclear-weapons program during the run-up to the first Gulf War, and afterwards managed to hide the core of his research -- and a prototype centrifuge for enriching uranium -- from UN weapons inspectors until the American invasion in early 2003. The Times gives a more personal view of Obeidi than the Scotsman article did and touches less on Saddam's desire to keep the nuclear-weapon development option open for his post-sanctions ambitions. Bob Drogin does report that Obeidi had more help than he first let on, and that more of his colleagues have evaded accounting than first thought: But it is far less clear what happened to most of the 500 other scientists U.S. officials considered to be at the core of Hussein's programs...
As any Dodger fan will tell you, the final weekend of a pennant race in Los Angeles evokes thrills and chills -- thrills for the possibility of the Boys in Blue getting a playoff slot, and chills because inevitably we have to go through the hated San Francisco Giants to get there. When only one of the two rivals have a shot at the playoffs, the other always relishes the opportunity to send them home for an early vacation. But when they're fighting each other for that spot, the tension can be unbearable. This weekend, the Dodgers needed only to win one game against the Giants to clinch the division, and they lost the first one on Friday. I was prepared to write a celebratory post on Friday night -- stayed up late to do it -- but unfortunately, the Giants hung tough. Yesterday's game looked like it would bring...
As further evidence rolls in about European complicity in the record-breaking corruption at Turtle Bay within the UN Oil-For-Food program, the notion of French cooperation against anything involving Saddam Hussein increasingly looks like utopian fantasy rather than rational options (via Instapundit): A LEAKED report has exposed the extent of alleged corruption in the United Nations’ oil-for-food scheme in Iraq, identifying up to 200 individuals and companies that made profits running into hundreds of millions of pounds from it. The report largely implicates France and Russia, whom Saddam Hussein targeted as he sought support on the UN Security Council before the Iraq war. Both countries were influential voices against UN-backed action. A senior UN official responsible for the scheme is identified as a major beneficiary. The report, marked “highly confidential”, also finds that the private office of Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, profited from the cheap oil. Saddam’s regime awarded this...
The London Telegraph, reporting out of Miami, says that Democratic strategists have ordered Teresa Heinz Kerry to take a lower profile and only appear at small gatherings of the true believers until the election: Democratic election advisers have ordered Teresa Heinz Kerry to adopt a lower profile in the final stages of the campaign by her husband, Senator John Kerry, for the White House because they fear that she may be alienating voters. Mrs Heinz Kerry, who as the heiress to the Heinz fortune is one of the world's richest women, has been told to keep out of the spotlight because her outspoken and unpredictable manner is regarded as an electoral liability. ... Mr Kerry drafted veterans of the Clinton White House, including the former press secretary Joe Lockhart, into his team last month to reinvigorate his campaign. They warned that his wife appeared to be costing him votes and...
It's Friday, so it must be time for another edition of the Captain's Caption Contest! Much has been made about the enthusiasm gap this week, in which 65% of Bush supporters say they enthusiastically back the President, while only 42% of Kerry voters enthusiastically back the Senator. Long-time CQ reader Thief noticed evidence of this enthusiasm gap even within John Kerry's staff: Thief will be guest-judging this week's entries, so make them good! As always, put your best caption entries in the comments section -- NO e-mail, please! (E-mailed entries will be scanned at the Abilene Kinko's, faxed to CBS News, and used to slander David Strom.) The contest will remain open until 8 PM CT Sunday, October 3rd, at which point the comments will be closed and Thief will pick the winners. Let the games begin! BUMP 10-3: Only a few hours left! ......
If one figure in Iraq could be said to be comical, even in a dark way, it would have to be the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. Caught between the idiocy of his generalship and the poor fighting quality of his militias, he has at least three times decimated his Mahdi Army supporters by initiating hostilities against the US forces in Iraq. In Najaf, he almost completely wiped them out, only surviving thanks to a belated rescue by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who wanted to save the Imam Ali mosque there from destruction. Now, for at least the third time as well, Sadr has decided to create a political party instead of an army, only this time it looks like he means it. Not because he doesn't want to fight, but mostly because he's realized that he's incapable of it: The Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr has begun laying the groundwork to...
October 4, 2004
The Washington Post editorial board does a little "truthsquadding" this morning in a staff editorial on North Korea. In the first presidential debate, John Kerry asserted that George Bush's Korean policy had resulted in the nuclear weapons Kim Jung-Il claims he now has, an unsupportable accusation, as the Post notes: Some truth-squadding is needed here: While the CIA concluded that North Korea may have built one or two nuclear weapons before Mr. Bush took office, and while U.S. intelligence agencies believe the fuel rods have been reprocessed into plutonium, there is no certainty that North Korea has built more nuclear weapons. To say so is to make the same sort of reach that Mr. Kerry faults Mr. Bush for making in his statements about Iraq's nuclear program. In other words, since the CIA concluded that the North Koreans had one or two nuclear weapons already as Bush took office, and...
An Australian who redefined the notion of a quick airpport layover managed to shut down an airport when their mechanical paramour decided it still had a bit more life left after being thoughtlessly tossed aside: Hundreds of airline passengers suffered disruption to their travel plans when a major regional airport was shut down for an hour after a humming and vibrating adult sex toy was mistaken for a bomb. The vibrator was discovered at 9:15 am (2315 GMT Sunday) by a security officer who checked out a suspicious package inside a rubbish bin at the terminal cafeteria of Mackay Airport in the northeastern state of Queensland, a police spokeswoman said. The terminal was evacuated immediately while passengers who had just arrived from a flight, check-in staff, cafeteria employees and hire car personnel were all forced to leave. Of course, the first question one asks is why anyone would throw away...
If like me, you're getting tired of all the hyper spin and pseudo-surge news which has followed Thursday's debate, check out the latest by Mark Steyn, my all-time favorite writer (except for my parter Ed, of course). Steyn acknowledges Bush's weaknesses then humorously fisks Kerry's unoriginal policy prescription: Oh, and he'll call a summit. ''I have a plan to have a summit. . . . I'm going to hold that summit ... we can be successful in Iraq with a summit . . . the kind of statesman-like summits that pull people together ...'' Summit old, summit new, summit borrowed, summit blue, he's got summit for everyone. Summit-chanted evening, you may see a stranger, you may see a stranger across a crowded room. But, in John Kerry's world, there are no strangers, just EU deputy defense ministers who haven't yet contributed 10,000 troops because they haven't been invited to a...
In a jarring contrast to the triumphalism projected by Democrats after the debate last Thursday, the John Kerry campaign has abandoned Virginia to George Bush and will transfer the personnel to other states: Sen. John F. Kerry's top campaign officials in Virginia have been reassigned to work in other states, effectively conceding the commonwealth to President Bush even as the Democratic presidential nomineerides a wave of momentum nationally from his performance in last week's debate. Susan Swecker, the Kerry campaign's state director, and Jonathan Beeton, its press secretary, were scheduled to leave Virginia on Sunday night, Beeton said. Eighteen other campaign staff workers were sent to help elsewhere, leaving about 10 paid staffers in Virginia. Some of the Virginia staff will wind up here in Minnesota and neighboring Wisconsin and Iowa, where Kerry is in danger of losing ground that Al Gore barely retained in 2000. Losing just one of...
According to the Times of India, Iran has rejected Kerry's offer of nuclear fuel in return for it's promise to be good and not make bombs: Foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said it would be "irrational" for Iran to put its nuclear programme in jeopardy by relying on supplies from abroad. "We have the technology (to make nuclear fuel) and there is no need for us to beg from others," Asefi told a weekly news conference. Of course, the nuclear fuel was only Kerry's first offer. An astute reporter should ask whether he would be willing to lift the sanctions on Iran as part of his intended negotiations. (Yes, Mr. Kerry, there are already sanctions against Iran.)...
John Kerry did the worst kind of pandering last night at the East Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Cleveland. Kerry told the predominantly black church that the GOP is actively suppressing the black vote in battleground states, a claim which he repeatedly makes and for which he gives absolutely no evidence: "In battleground states across the country, we're hearing stories of how people are trying to make it harder to file for additional time, or how they're making it harder to even register," Kerry told an enthusiastic congregation at East Mt. Zion Baptist Church. "We're not going to let that happen because the memories of 2000 are too strong. We're not going to allow 1 million African Americans to be disenfranchised." At a stop in Ohio earlier Sunday, Kerry told a voter concerned about ballots cast by military personnel overseas that Democrats are aware of voting problems and are concerned....
Yesterday was the one-year blogiversary for Captain's Quarters, a milestone which I intended to mark last night after attending a Patriot Forum here in town with Hugh Hewitt, Jason Lewis, and the entire Northern Alliance gang. Instead, I did what I usually do -- blog on a breaking news item, and then fell asleep before I could do anything else. In the one year since I started CQ, I have made more friends and enjoyed more new experiences than I ever imagined this would create. Friends like Hugh, Scott and John from Power Line, the entire gang at Fraters Libertas, King from SCSU Scholars, Mitch Berg, David and Margaret from the Taxpayers League, and many others I don't have time this morning to name have helped push CQ to unplanned success. Some of the highlights from the past year: * Adding my partner, Whiskey * Joining the NARN * 29...
John Kerry and John Edwards Iran policy proposal has raised eyebrows around the world, offering to give the Iranian hardliners nuclear fuel in exchange for a promise to drop their enrichment program. Now WorldNet Daily reports that three top financial backers of the Kerry/Edwards ticket may account for the unusual notion of giving fissile materials to the largest backers of Islamofascist terror groups: Sen. John Kerry's call for providing Iran with the nuclear fuel it seeks, even while the regime is believed to be only months away from developing nuclear weapons, is being linked to his campaign contributions from backers of the mullah government in Tehran. During last Thursday's nationally televised debate between the Democratic presidential candidate and President Bush, Kerry insisted as president he would provide Tehran with the nuclear fuel it wants for a pledge to use it for peaceful purposes only. ... Among Kerry's top fund-raisers are...
In a blockbuster article if their sources pan out, CNS News reported today that it has documents from the Saddam regime which not only document active operational links to al-Qaeda and other terrorists as late as 2000 but also contain directives to use WMD stocks to attack Americans: Iraqi intelligence documents, confiscated by U.S. forces and obtained by CNSNews.com, show numerous efforts by Saddam Hussein's regime to work with some of the world's most notorious terror organizations, including al Qaeda, to target Americans. They demonstrate that Saddam's government possessed mustard gas and anthrax, both considered weapons of mass destruction, in the summer of 2000, during the period in which United Nations weapons inspectors were not present in Iraq. And the papers show that Iraq trained dozens of terrorists inside its borders. ... Among the organizations mentioned are those affiliated with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Ayman al-Zawahiri, two of the world's...
The blog Political Musings notes an interesting sidebar to the Newsweek poll that showed some sample-juggling by their experts. CBS News reported in its Marketwatch feature section that the two presidential campaigns revved up their ad buys last week -- including an interesting purchase by the Kerry campaign that only gets mentioned at the end: The biggest online advertising buys for Bush were at these sites: KPTV Oregons12.tv.com, Parents.com, KNVA-TV.com, El Nuevo Herald.com and KPHO CBS 5 News.com. The biggest online ad buys for Kerry were at these sites: SFGate.com, Newsweek.com, Village Voice.com, Reuters.com and L.A. Weekly Media.com.[emph mine -- CE] Combined with the odd shift in sampling seen between their two most recent polls, the ad buy looks a bit suspicious ......
For those who argued that the Supreme Court decision striking down the stupid sodomy laws with Lawrence v. Texas would not lead to challenges for gay marriage and polygamy, Jonathan Turley's column today defending polygamist Tom Green should disabuse us of that illusion: Tom Green is an American polygamist. This month, he will appeal his conviction in Utah for that offense to the United States Supreme Court, in a case that could redefine the limits of marriage, privacy and religious freedom. If the court agrees to take the case, it would be forced to confront a 126-year-old decision allowing states to criminalize polygamy that few would find credible today, even as they reject the practice. And it could be forced to address glaring contradictions created in recent decisions of constitutional law. For polygamists, it is simply a matter of unequal treatment under the law. Turley launches into a defense of...
I hope the Democrats enjoyed the weekend, because the debate bounce turned out to be a figment of Newsweek's imagination. The new Washington Post-ABC poll taken for the three days after the debate shows that Bush maintained his five point lead over Kerry, despite their usual underreport on Bush's support: President Bush continues to lead rival Sen. John F. Kerry among likely voters despite surging enthusiasm for Kerry among Democrats and new doubts about whether the president has a clear plan to deal with terrorism and the situation in Iraq, according to the Washington Post tracking poll. In the aftermath of last week's presidential debate, Bush currently leads Kerry 51 percent to 46 percent among those most likely to vote, according to polling conducted Friday through Sunday. Independent candidate Ralph Nader claims 1 percent of the hypothetical vote. ... Half of Kerry's voters now say they are "very enthusiastic" about...
October 5, 2004
All of the entries are in and Thief has judged them all -- and believe me, it wasn't easy! He had a heck of a time picking out the best captions for this exciting action photograph, which captures the essence of the John Kerry magic. You can feel the charisma jumping right off the screen, can't you? Not only has Thief supplied the winners, he's also given CQ a series of icons to go along with them. Great work, Thief! And here are the winners: Captain’s Award (Weapon of Mass Distraction): capitano: McCurry -- "What's the consensus?" #1 --"Draw" #2 -- "Draw" #3 -- "Huh? Oh, uh, half caf/half decaf, single sweetener, skim foam, with a dash of cinnamon. ... and a bearclaw." You Have The Conn #1 (What’s That Buzzing Sound?) radio: Fox News is now using new ultra-high speed (450 frames/per/second equivalent) digital cameras which permit us for...
The Iranians announced that they could hit targets all over Southwest Asia and even southern Europe with their new Shahab-3 rocket, the AP reports: Iran can launch a missile as far as 2,000 km (1,250 miles), a senior official was quoted as saying Tuesday, substantially increasing the announced range of the Islamic state's military capabilities. Such a missile would be capable of hitting Israel or parts of southeastern Europe. Iran says its missiles are for purely defensive purposes and would be used to counter a possible Israeli strike against its nuclear facilities. "Now we have the power to launch a missile with a 2,000 km range," IRNA quoted influential former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani as saying. "Iran is determined to improve its military capabilities." The only way Iran could consider the Shahab-3 a defensive weapon is if they think the combat front exists at the borders of the old Ottoman...
The Supreme Court rejected the appeal by Catholic Charities of a California law that requires them to supply contraception for its employees as part of its health insurance plan, the Los Angeles Times reports today: The contraception case asked the justices to reconsider what laws violate the "free exercise of religion" protected by the 1st Amendment. The lawyers for the Roman Catholic bishop of Sacramento faced an uphill fight because of a 1990 ruling written by Justice Antonin Scalia. In that ruling, he said state laws could not be challenged on freedom of religion grounds if they applied equally to everyone and did not target a religion for unfair treatment. The California Legislature passed a women's rights measure that required employers to pay for "approved prescription contraceptive methods" as part of their health insurance plans. While the law excluded churches from the mandatory coverage, it did not exclude all groups...
Dragging out Michael J. Fox and a father with insulin syringes, John Kerry again misrepresented the current policy on stem-cell research in a stump appearance yesterday: John F. Kerry charged Monday that President Bush has "turned his back on science" in limiting embryonic stem cell research financed by the federal government. The Kerry campaign rolled out a television ad on the subject, saying that "millions of lives" are at stake, as the Democratic presidential nominee was joined by actor and activist Michael J. Fox at a town-hall-style meeting here. "It's time to lift the political barriers blocking the stem cell research that could treat or cure diseases like Parkinson's," the ad says. "I believe that science can bring hope to our families." Let's review this one more time: 1. There is no ban on stem-cell research of any kind. 2. There is no ban on embryonic stem-cell research of any...
The sports wires carry a three-bagger of good news for the Los Angeles Dodgers on the eve of their first playoff game in years. The first comes from the Dodgers' front office itself, announcing that outfielder Milton Bradley will be allowed to play after serving a team-enforced suspension after Bradley threw a bottle into the stands: Bradley will return from his five-game suspension Tuesday against the Cardinals in Game 1 of the NLDS, the Dodgers' official site reports. ... "We as an organization and he as an individual recognize the fact that he made a mistake. He paid for it," manager Jim Tracy said. "He served his sentence, and we're going to move forward." This comes as no surprise; the Dodgers got into the playoffs on Bradley's bat and his fire. Hopefully they can get him to channel that in more productive ways during the playoffs. The other two items...
The anti-insurgency effort appears to be gaining momentum: More than 3,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops launched an operation in the southern approaches to Baghdad on Tuesday, seizing a suspected insurgent training camp and capturing more than 160 alleged rebels, the U.S. military command said. The force also took control of a bridge across the Euphrates River believed to be a favored corridor for insurgents moving into and out of key cities, including Baghdad and the Sunni rebel stronghold of Fallujah, a command release said. The operation involved the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit as well as U.S. and Iraqi army troops and members of the Iraqi National Guard. The release did not report any casualties taken or inflicted. Other than the AP's insistence on calling the terrorist bands "rebels", the announcement gives more evidence that the Iraqi security forces have begun to have an impact on the situation on the ground....
I will be live-blogging tonight's VP debate between Dick Cheney and John Edwards. I'd caution my friends on the starboard side of the blogosphere from getting too cocky about the event tonight; John Edwards' success as a plaintiff's attorney shows that he can think on his feet, and his popularity on the stump demonstrates his ability to project a warm and engaging persona. The latter talent will come in especially handy against Cheney, who is undoubtably better at grasping details and strategies but can come across as cold and rather cynical. I'll be using this post for the live blog, so link back here if you want. Keep checking back during the debate for updates, and I may also update the post with breaking news items regarding the debate during the day. UPDATE: Starting the debate at 8:01 ... 8:03 - First question to Cheney refers to statements by Rumsfeld...
The Wall Street Journal reports (through the London Telegraph) that Iraqi oil officials have accused a UN inspector responsible for enforcing the UN Oil-For-Food program of taking over £60,000 in bribes, equivalent to around $100K: Iraqi oil officials have accused a United Nations inspector of taking almost £60,000 in bribes from Saddam Hussein's regime as his henchmen and foreign business partners siphoned millions from the UN's oil-for-food programme, it was reported yesterday. An inquiry by officials in the State Oil Marketing Organisation - a body which, under Saddam, was a key player in schemes that allegedly diverted billions in oil revenues from the UN-run programme - accused an inspector contracted through the Dutch company Saybolt of falsifying documents in return for bribes, the Wall Street Journal reported. Saybolt was one of two Western companies hired by the UN to provide inspectors to help monitor the oil-for-food programme. A second company,...
October 6, 2004
Vice President Dick Cheney trounced Senator John Edwards in the debate last night, a verdict delivered almost unanimously by the mainstream-media pundits as well as an ABC poll of questionably methodology taken in its aftermath: Dick Cheney prevailed in the vice presidential debate with help from a more Republican audience — and more support from his ticket's side than John Edwards got from his. Among registered voters who watched the debate, 43 percent said Cheney won, 35 percent called Edwards the winner and 19 percent called it a tie. One factor is that more Republicans tuned in — 38 percent of viewers were Republicans, 31 percent Democrats, the rest independents. One explanation for the oversample is that Republicans may have been more likely to tune in, especially after Bush's struggles last Thursday. At least this poll attempted a scientific method; CBS used only 178 so-called "undecided" voters found, ironically, by...
In another John Kerry flip-flop, the Democratic nominee admitted that his ballyhooed plan for Iraq for getting a "true coalition" to send troops as replacements for Americans has no chance of succeeding (via Right On Red): Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry conceded yesterday that he probably will not be able to convince France and Germany to contribute troops to Iraq if he is elected president. The Massachusetts senator has made broadening the coalition trying to stabilize Iraq a centerpiece of his campaign, but at a town hall meeting yesterday, he said he knows other countries won't trade their soldiers' lives for those of U.S. troops. "Does that mean allies are going to trade their young for our young in body bags? I know they are not. I know that," he said. Asked about that statement later, Mr. Kerry said, "When I was referring to that, I was really talking...
I get a lot of spam on my blog account, most of which I simply delete because it's not worth the trouble to complain or unsubscribe (of which I'm suspicious, anyway). However, when someone is clueless enough to send out self-promotional material that contains a two-megabyte graphic announcement via my e-mail -- especially when I'm paying for bandwidth -- I find it not only incredibly annoying but awfully self-defeating as well, especially on the second message. When the spammer represents himself as a veteran expert in public relations, communications, and e-zines, the cluelessness almost approaches satire. So in an attempt to keep this consultant from sending me any more huge graphic attachments as well as possibly giving him a clue about Internet etiquette, I send the following message: A veteran PR firm would know better than to send a 2MB file on e-mail, especially a self-promoting one, twice. Please don't...
A few days after the lightning-quick recapture and liberation of Samarra from terrorist thugs, the residents of Sadr City have suddenly launched a cease-fire negotiation with the Iraqi government. Reports conflict about whether an agreement has actually been reached, but the Iraqi PM left no doubt as to who initiated the talks: The Iraqi government and followers of Muqtada al-Sadr were nearing agreement on a formula to end weeks of clashes between U.S. forces and the radical cleric's militia in the Sadr City district of the capital, representatives of both sides said Wednesday. Prime Minister Ayad Allawi told reporters there was no cease-fire between the two sides but that a committee was being formed to discuss what he termed an "initiative" by the "people of Sadr City" to end the conflict. "There is a committee being formed to discuss the details and the timing," Allawi said. "Once the committee will...
The organization whose approval John Kerry requires for global action in defense of our national security has been urged to run away yet again from Iraq due to the danger of confronting terrorists, the AP has just reported: Two organizations representing more than 60,000 United Nations staff members urged Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Wednesday to pull all U.N. staff out of Iraq because of the "unprecedented" risk to their safety and security. In a joint letter to Annan, the staff organizations cited a dramatic escalation in attacks in Iraq and said the United Nations regrettably "has become a direct target, one that is particularly prone to attacks by ruthless extremist terrorist factions." "Just one staff member is one staff member too many in Iraq," they said. "We ... appeal to your good judgment to ensure that no further staff members be sent to Iraq and that those already deployed be...
The Washington Post reports that Senator Hillary Clinton is under investigation by the FBI for campaign irregularities involving fundraising for her 2000 Senate bid and her husband's use of the Presidential pardon. If you didn't see it in the paper, it's buried at A11 of the Post: The Justice Department is trying to secure the cooperation of an indicted businessman as it pursues Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's 2000 Senate campaign for possible fundraising violations, according to interviews and documents. The FBI told a U.S. magistrate in Los Angeles two years ago that it has evidence Clinton's campaign deliberately understated its fundraising costs so it would have more money to spend on elections. Prosecutors contend that businessman Peter Paul made donations because he wanted a pardon from President Bill Clinton. ... Paul is a three-time convicted felon who hosted a Hollywood fundraising event for Mrs. Clinton in 2000. He alleges he...
While Al Gore wails about "digital brownshirts" who dare to write criticisms of the entrenched Left, the real variety of brownshirts have attacked Republican campaign offices across this country, shooting, stealing, and intimidating political volunteers in what certainly appears to be a coordinated effort to scare Republicans into silence. Michelle Malkin has compiled a list of attacks on GOP offices, including these: * Orlando, FL - 2 GOP volunteers injured by AFL-CIO protestors storming the building * Knoxville, TN - Gunmen shoot the windows out of Republican campaign office * Gainesville, FL - Democratic activist punches GOP volunteer in the face * Columbus, OH - A wounded soldier is assaulted by anti-war demonstrators The Democrats not only seem to be losing their minds, they appear to be doing it on purpose. The latest example occured in St. Paul yesterday, in an office where I've done some volunteer service, when AFL-CIO...
In yet another revelation that the French conspired to undermine US and global security, the Duelfer report from the Iraq Survey Group provides evidence that Saddam Hussein had bribed the French to not just sit out the war but to actively undermine any attempts to enforce the UNSC resolutions against Iraq: SADDAM HUSSEIN believed he could avoid the Iraq war with a bribery strategy targeting Jacques Chirac, the President of France, according to devastating documents released last night. Memos from Iraqi intelligence officials, recovered by American and British inspectors, show the dictator was told as early as May 2002 that France - having been granted oil contracts - would veto any American plans for war. The Scotsman also reports what the American media is blaring to the exclusion of everything else in the ISG final report: Iraq had no stockpiles of WMD. Most mainstream outlets are playing down the finding...
The Canadian Press reported this evening on a bit of internecine Islamofascist infighting, which killed as many as 37 radicals as they gathered for a conference in Pakistan. 34 killed in explosions at gathering of Islamic radicals in Pakistan - Two bombs exploded at a gathering of Islamic radicals in the central Pakistan city of Multan early Thursday, killing at least 34 people and injuring dozens, police said. Other media outlets weighed in on this story, but their reporting told different stories. Here's AFP (France) on the explosions: At least 33 killed, 70 wounded in Pakistan bombings - At least 33 people were killed and dozens others wounded when two bombs ripped through a congregation of Sunni Muslims in Pakistan's central city of Multan, police said. AFP doesn't bother to mention the fact that the crowd were radical militants or to report on the feud between the Sunni and Shi'a...
October 7, 2004
At the end of a Washington Post puff piece on teenage Democrat volunteers in Oregon, Evelyn Nieves writes in an unsupported and frankly weird allegation that seems to contradict almost everything she had previously written. Nieves reports on grass-roots efforts to get out the vote called "vote-mobbing", which just means that volunteers approach shoppers at malls and try to engage them in marketing questions designed to drive voters to the Democrats and possibly expand the volunteer ranks. In Portland, as Nieves writes, this is hardly difficult: There's no question that Portland is Democratic territory. It put presidential candidate Al Gore over the top in Oregon in 2000, beating Bush by more than 100,000 votes in a state that Bush lost by half of 1 percent of the vote. Portland is full of tie-dyed, punked-out lefties, aging hippies and run-of-the-mill liberals, and they all seemed to converge Sunday afternoon at a...
The Los Angeles Times takes an interesting look at one aspect of the Duelfer report that paints Saddam Hussein in a different and far more Machiavellian light than first thought. Once Operation Iraqi Freedom was complete and the WMD had not been found, analysts presumed that military and scientific leadership had fooled Saddam into thinking Iraq had WMD to protect themselves from Saddam's wrath, or that Saddam had gone mad and refused to accept the weapons no longer existed. However, that's exactly the opposite of what the Iraq Survey Group found: Shortly before the U.S. bombing and invasion of Iraq last year, Saddam Hussein gathered his top generals together to share what came to them as astonishing news: The weapons that the United States was launching a war to remove did not exist. "There was plenty of surprise when Saddam said, 'Sorry guys, we don't have any' " weapons of...
The Manchester Guardian reports on a family's struggle against Britain's National Health Service to keep their daughter alive. The NHS has decided that Charlotte Wyatt, an eleven-month-old preemie, will never be able to recover from the complications of her birth and want to force a do-not-resuscitate order onto her parents: The parents of baby Charlotte Wyatt are expected to hear this afternoon whether a high court judge has supported their case for their daughter's right to life. Darren and Debbie Wyatt from Portsmouth tried to convince Mr Justice Hedley that their 11-month-old child has a right to life. They argued their daughter should be provided with every aspect of medical care available. Charlotte was born three months premature, weighing only 1lb and measuring five inches. She has already stopped breathing three times due to serious heart and lung problems; she is fed through a tube because she cannot suck from...
Two polls released in the last 24 hours show Florida swinging solidly behind George Bush, dashing hopes among John Kerry supporters of creating yet another race-based smear of Republicans in the Sunshine State. The Mason-Dixon poll conducted Oct 4-5, after the first Bush-Kerry debate, shows Bush up, 48-44. However, when you look at the polling sample, you see some interesting data: Men 307 (49%)...Whites 491 (79%)...Democrats 279 (45%) Women 318 (51%)...Blacks 65 (10%)...Republicans 258 (41%) ..................Hispanic 65 (10%)..Independents 88 (14%) Forgive any formatting issues (it's hard to emulate tables), but you can see that the M-D poll give a four-point sampling edge to Democrats. On the other hand, it looks like both blacks and Hispanics may be underrepresented, and with its large Cuban community, the Hispanic vote has traditionally supported the GOP. Quinnipiac also reported results for Florida today, showing Bush up by 7 in the Sunshine State: President George...
The French have responded to the CIA's release of the long list of officials bribed by Saddam Hussein through the UN Oil-For-Food program -- and it's a non-denial denial: France dismissed accusations made in an official US report that French businessmen and politicians received bribes from Saddam Hussein order to influence government policy on Iraq, with the foreign ministry describing them as "unverified." ... "It is important that we check very closely the truth behind these claims, because as far as we understand it the accusations ... are unverified either with the persons concerned or the authorities of the countries concerned," ministry spokesman Herve Ladsous said. In other words, France will not accept the results of the report if it is not accompanied by either (a) an individual admission of guilt, and/or (b) an admission of guilt by the country -- France! That's a nice example of circular logic. By...
Although many MSM pundits have declared John Edwards the winner of the domestic portion of last night's debate, both observers and VP Cheney missed a major blunder, especially considering that Edwards is an attorney. During his discussion of the gay marriage question, Edwards repeatedly stated, "No state for the last 200 years has ever had to recognize another state's marriage." Edwards went on to criticize for "using the Constitution as a political tool." I'd like to direct the trial attorney's attention to Article IV of the US Constitution, Section 1, also known as the Full Faith and Credit Clause. States are compelled by law to recognize marriages performed in other states. If any state performs a marriage between homosexuals, then all other states in the union will be bound to recognize it, regardless of that state's law. Apparently Edwards didn't just miss Senate sessions, he missed a lot of law...
According to an unsettling report by ABC News, elementary and high schools in six states have been warned to increase security based on information discovered by the US military in Baghdad. Brian Ross reports: A man described as an Iraqi insurgent involved in anti-coalition activities had downloaded school floor plans and safety and security information about elementary and high schools in the six states, according to officials. School officials in Fort Myers, Fla.; Salem, Ore.; Gray, Ga.; Birch Run, Mich.; two towns in New Jersey; and two towns in California have been told to increase security in light of the discovery. Officials in the New Jersey towns, Franklinville and Rumson, were notified by counterterrorism officials last month that their schools had been possibly singled out. The report does not indicate that an attack was in the works and does not disclose the nationality of the "insurgent" in possession of the...
I expect many of our readers have read at least part of Deterrence 1 and 2 at Eject!Eject!Eject! Bill Whittle's argument that the stick is far more reliable than the carrot is airtight. Since I’ve been a realist since my college days, I found much to agree with while reading these posts, but the section that really made me think was Bill’s conclusion that OBL is dead. Some highlights: Osama made endless videotapes. Lecturing, preaching, instructing, firing an AK-47: all the things that make young jihadis feel funny in the pants. After 9/11, he wowed ‘em in several tapes gloating and laughing over the attack and its aftermath. He was reliably heard on the radio during the final phase of Tora Bora, then…nothing. Maybe he escaped. It’s possible. Then came the videotape condemning the Israeli incursion into Ramallah and Jenin…only it didn’t. The US corporate scandals? Silence. Anniversary of Holy...
Fox News's article on the ISG report ties more names to the widescale corruption at the UN which enabled Saddam to subvert the international sanctions John Kerry claims had him "trapped". Billions of dollars made their way illegally into Saddam's coffers, and some familiar names benefitted from the kickbacks: Suitcases full of cash, secret bank accounts, covert operatives, corrupt politicians on the take. A report detailing alleged illicit U.N. Oil-for-Food deals with the former Iraq government paints a portrait of Saddam Hussein as an international gangster -- not a nuclear terrorist. ... The report, delivered Wednesday by Charles Duelfer, who was charged to investigate the extent of Iraq's weapons programs, relies on internal Iraqi documents and extensive interviews with members of the former regime now imprisoned in Iraq. Although Saddam opposed the program at first, he quickly realized it could be exploited and did so with mendacious verve until the...
The First Mate and I will be off this weekend to South Bend, IN, to see the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame take on the Stanford Cardinal at Knute's house. (The tickets are a Christmas gift from Vayapaso -- my mom.) It's our first trip ever to the hallowed stomping grounds of the Gipper, and I'll be taking along the digital camera while I'm there. I'll put up a couple of the best shots, and since this is October, I'm betting that the scenery will be gorgeous if the weather holds up. We'll be driving down to South Bend, a trip that Mapquest says will take a shade under eight hours if we can avoid gridlock in Chicago. Once we get there, we'll meet my godfather, Uncle Emilio, for a late dinner on Friday. (He lives in Southern California. We live in Minnesota. So it's only natural that we planned...
October 8, 2004
The Scotsman today publishes an analysis of Saddam Hussein's use of the Oil-For-Food program and the UN system to bolster his security and his ability to re-arm his military in the face of so-called "global" sanctions. Far from keeping Saddam in his box, as critics of the war claim, the Duelfer report from the Iraq Survey Group shows how the same nations from whom Kerry craves approval happily supported Saddam's regime: SADDAM Hussein believed that the United Nations system was so corrupt that it would protect his dictatorship from American aggression and allow him to complete quickly his quest for weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Detail from the full Iraq Survey Group report - compiled from scores of former Iraqi officials and captured intelligence documents - shows that Saddam was intending to resume his WMD programme as soon as UN sanctions were dropped. His officials believed they could make WMD...
Hugh Hewitt is holding a virtual symposium on John Kerry's impromptu press conference yesterday, which Hugh has transcribed on his site. The entries have already begun arriving, and I thought I would toss my two cents in before the big trip to Notre Dame. Right from the outset, with the bald and obvious lie about General Eric Shinseki being fired and the Bush administration having a "chilling" effect on career line officers, Kerry reveals his lack of insight into the military and his propensity to believe (or at least spread) the wildest conspiracy theories. We've seen this before, with his insistence that Republicans are conspiring to steal votes from millions of black people, or that they did that in 2000. However, since Kerry is running to become Commander in Chief, this lie is especially egregious. Does he truly believe that career general officers in the US Armed Forces are so...
Okay, one last thing and then I really have to hit the road. Today's funniest site is Mr. Sun, who has a roll-your-own John Kerry stump speech that will have you in stitches. He also wrote a similarly funny one for George Bush. Check them both out. Because if we've lost our sense of humor, then the Kerrys will have certainly won ......
October 9, 2004
Australian PM John Howard scored a victory over Labor Party leader Mark Latham, ensuring that the coalition built by President Bush will remain intact. Latham ran on a Kerryesque platform, arguing the Iraq invasion was a distraction from the international fight against terrorism and promising to bring the troops home before Christmas. According to NRO’s John Sullivan, the election outcome would send a powerful message to the Islamic terrorists: A defeat for Howard on Saturday would be interpreted in most of the world as a defeat for the U.S. and a repudiation of Australia's involvement in Iraq. It would reinforce the impact of the Spanish election: Two leaders who backed Bush would have lost power. Above all, it would embolden the Islamist terrorists to think that their enemies were falling like ninepins and their cause succeeding — which in turn would strengthen their appeal in the Islamic world. Certainly, the...
I realize I’m the last in the blogosphere to weigh in on the Halperin memo bombshell. I saw this last night but too wrapped up in the debate to consider Matt Drudge’s report. Here’s the alleged memo in full: Halperin Memo Dated Friday October 8, 2004 It goes without saying that the stakes are getting very high for the country and the campaigns - and our responsibilities become quite grave I do not want to set off (sp?) and endless colloquy that none of us have time for today - nor do I want to stifle one. Please respond if you feel you can advance the discussion. The New York Times (Nagourney/Stevenson) and Howard Fineman on the web both make the same point today: the current Bush attacks on Kerry involve distortions and taking things out of context in a way that goes beyond what Kerry has done. Kerry distorts,...
I didn't stay up to post on the debate last night, and I haven't read any MSM commentary (yet), so here are my unvarnished impressions on the candidates' style and demeanor: Senator Kerry: The gloss noticeabley faded throughout the evening. He started out smooth, with controlled facial expressions and managed to look pensive. He seemed to nod a little during the president’s answers on national security, may have just been my TV screen. By the end of the debate, the smoothness became so false that Kerry resembled a cardboard cut-out, and he has no humor. None. Not even a hint. At several points, I noticed the Bush smirk on Kerry’s face. This must be a bug in the Kerry Version 20.1 wherein the candidate randomly displays the demeanor of the president. Someone alert Terry McAuliffe! The worst part of the debate was when Kerry looked into the camera and made...
October 10, 2004
Don't miss The Big Trunk's post on the latest New York Times Magazine love note to Kerry. The article lovingly reveals Kerry's plan to revive the Carter approach to foreign policy, especially that administration's failed approach to North Korea: He would begin, if sworn into office, by going immediately to the United Nations to deliver a speech recasting American foreign policy. Whereas Bush has branded North Korea ''evil'' and refuses to negotiate head on with its authoritarian regime, Kerry would open bilateral talks over its burgeoning nuclear program. We posted on the futility of this approach after the first debate. Kerry thinks he can woo the dictators and Islamic terrorists with summits and sanctions, a selfish fantasy that puts our lives at great risk....
Friday night, a questioner asked the president, “What is your plan to repair relations with other countries given the current situation?” Friday night, a questioner asked the president, “What is your plan to repair relations with other countries given the current situation?” Frankly, I was afraid the president would bite on this one and answer with an optimistic answer about how he was going to work on this. I underestimated him. Bush responded: No, I appreciate that. I — listen, I — we've got a great country. I love our values. And I recognize I've made some decisions that have caused people to not understand the great values of our country. I remember when Ronald Reagan was the president; he stood on principle. Somebody called that stubborn. He stood on principle standing up to the Soviet Union, and we won that conflict. Yet at the same time, he was very...
From CQ reader Kate Nguyen: "I believe that a woman's right to choose is a constitutional right," Mr. Kerry said in May. "I will not appoint anyone to the Supreme Court who will undo that right." This litmus test really means Mr. Kerry wants justices who embrace the two unstated premises of Roe vs. Wade: The Supreme Court can act as a national legislature that can never be vetoed, and when it does it must advance the liberal agenda. Elect Mr. Kerry and that liberal agenda will keep advancing not only for the next four years, and not only when it can muster a narrow majority on a divided court, but for as long as the justices Mr. Kerry appoints serve out their lifelong terms. To me this is very scary. Not just on "Roe vs. Wade" but what a "liberal" Supreme Court will do to our society on many...
... but I just walked in. As predicted, I had no access to the Internet, and thanks to the activities this weekend, not much access to the news, either. It was so bad that I called my mom (Vayapaso) late Friday night and had her read the debate analyses from the other Northern Alliance blogs to see how it went. I just read Whiskey's excellent analysis and her blog entries, and I see CQ readers didn't miss a beat while I took my first vacation from the blog. I have 166 e-mails to scan -- sorry, but replies will be almost impossible -- before even approaching blogability. I'll write something about the wonderful visit to Notre Dame and the interminable drives getting there and back later on. Great to be back in the saddle again!...
While her loyal sons are marching, Onward to victory! As I wrote earlier, we just returned from our first trip to the University of Notre Dame, home of the Fighting Irish, the greatest and most stories college football program. I have been a fan of the Fighting Irish since I was a young lad, but I have never had the opportunity to even visit the campus, let alone see the football team play in person, anywhere. Thanks to a generous Christmas gift from Vayapaso, that changed this weekend ... but not until we had to drive eleven hours to get out there. We originally planned to fly, but that plan didn't work out. Since it was only 500 miles (499.7, according to Mapquest), I thought we could drive it in about eight hours. That plan held up really nicely -- up to the outskirts of Chicago, on Friday about...
October 11, 2004
Newsweek reports in its new issue that one of the redacted names from the Duelfer ISG report is Oscar Wyatt, a Houston oilman and Democratic donor (via Friends of Saddam): Law-enforcement sources say Americans who participated in alleged oil-for-food scams also may face further investigation. The CIA deleted from Duelfer's report names of Saddam's U.S. oil-for-food favorites. But an uncensored copy of the Duelfer report obtained by NEWSWEEK indicates Houston oil mogul Oscar Wyatt got oil allocations from Saddam which could have earned him and Coastal Corp.—a company he founded and ran until 2000—profits of more than $22 million. Wyatt and wife Lynn are major donors to political causes: since 1989 they have given nearly $700,000 in contributions, of which more than $500,000 went to Democrats. Wyatt told NEWSWEEK that his company did buy oil from Saddam but that he never did so personally, and that his company's dealings all...
The London Telegraph reports that a German initiative banning headscarves for Muslim teachers has backfired in Baden Wuerttemberg, where a federal judge ruled the ban must also apply to Roman Catholic nuns who teach: Nuns who teach in state schools in the Black Forest region of Germany are to be banned from wearing their habits in the classroom in line with a judgment on Muslim headscarves, a federal court has ruled. The federal administrative court decreed that it would be unjust if a law passed this year in the southern state of Baden Württemberg prohibiting Muslim women teachers from wearing headscarves did not also apply to Christian symbols. "There can be no exception. Any form of religiously motivated clothing in certain regions is not in question," said the written ruling from the court in Leipzig, eastern Germany. I wrote earlier this year, regarding the broader French ban, that such laws...
While I was disconnected this weekend, Moqtada al-Sadr finally cut a disarmament deal for the insurgents of Sadr City, agreeing to trade weapons for cash and allowing the Iraqi National Guard to take over the Baghdad slum area. Disarmament started today, with Shi'ite leadership in the area encouraging their followers to abide by the terms of capitulation: "I've given up my weapons, I'm with the interim government now," said Ahmed Hashem after handing over 22 rocket-propelled grenades. "We want peace and I won't fight the Americans." The U.S.-backed government aims to retake control of rebel-held areas throughout Iraq by political or military means ahead of national assembly elections due in January. Mehdi Army fighters led by Moqtada al-Sadr began handing in weapons at the start of a five-day period in which they have agreed to disarm in the flashpoint Sadr City district. It's going slowly, and understandably so; Sadr had...
Much has already been written regarding yesterday's New York Times Magazine lengthy article profiling John Kerry, especially his contention that terrorism can be considered a "nuisance" equal to prostitution, a blunder of enormous magnitude. What may be lost in the analysis of that stupidity is the vacuousness that Matt Bai's article reveals about the Massachusetts Senatoru, and that of his party as well: While Bush and much of the country seemed remade by the historic events of 9/11, Democrats in Washington were slow to understand that the attacks had to change them in some way too. What adjustments they made were, at first, defensive. Spooked by Bush's surging popularity and the nation's suddenly ascendant mood of patriotism, Democrats stifled their instinctive concerns over civil liberties; and whatever their previous misgivings about intervention, many Congressional Democrats, a year after the terrorist attacks, voted to give Bush the authority to invade Iraq....
Sorry for the lack of updates so far this weekend, but our kitten became very sick yesterday. We had to spend the afternoon at the vet and stayed up all night taking his temperature and feeding him water. His temperature went up again, so we had to go to the Pet Hospital early this morning. We're home again now, and the kitten is doing much better after all his treatments. UPDATE: The kitty's fever is back up again, and the vet wants us to bring him back in. UPDATE: The vet gave our kitty another fever-reducing injection and a bag of fluids, and he's been improving steadily over the last 15 hours. No more fever, and he cleaned up his food dish this morning. Looks like he's finally on the mend! Thank you to everyone who expressed concern....
Despite its strident opposition to the war in Iraq, the Vatican now supports US efforts to build a democracy in the Muslim nation. The Telegraph reports: In a trenchant interview in the Italian newspaper, La Stampa, Cardinal Sodano said that as the crisis in Iraq deepened, the time had come to forget past differences over the decision to invade. His comments appear to be part of an orchestrated campaign to galvanise military and financial support for a democratic Iraq among critics of the war such as France and Germany. Both countries have refused to contribute troops to Iraq, while American and British occupation forces remain in the country. A subsequent front page editorial in Avvenire, an influential Roman Catholic magazine which boasts Cardinal Camillo Ruini, the Pope's own vicar, as a board member, calls for "tens of thousands of Nato troops" to be sent to Iraq to assist the interim...
Once again taking the campaign to church, candidate Kerry and help-mate Jesse Jackson tell black voters to just ignore the gay marriage issue. According to the Washington Times: Mr. Kerry attended Mass at a Catholic church in North Miami, and then spoke during services at Friendship Missionary Baptist Church in Miami , as he and several black Democratic leaders tried to rally black voters. "How many of you — someone from your family — married somebody of the same sex?" Mr. Jackson asked of the congregation of about 500. After nobody raised a hand, he asked, "Then how did that get in the middle of the agenda?" "If your issues are cancer and Medicare and education and jobs and Social Security and decent housing, then how did someone else put their agenda in the front of the line?" he asked. Following him a few minutes later, Mr. Kerry urged his...
It's Friday, so it must be time for another edition of the Captain's Caption Contest! In the first presidential debate, John Kerry told us that any action taken by the United States had to have the ability to pass a "global test", although he neglected to mention that the proctors would all be bribed to give us failing grades. When asked to demonstrate one possible method of performing a global test, Kerry happily demonstrated the preferred position for America among the nations whose approval Kerry craves: Kelly, who runs one of my longtime favorite blogs The Patriette, will guest-judge this week. As always, put your best caption entries in the comments section -- NO e-mail, please! (E-mailed entries will be forced to sit at a table with Dick Cheney and be shredded into little John Edwards government-experience-sized pieces.) The contest will remain open until 8 PM CT Sunday, October 10th,...
NZ Bear announces new features in the Truth Laid Bear Ecosystem, and references CQ to help explain the additions: Over the past few weeks, I've been doing quite a bit of work behind the scenes to improve the Ecosystem and add new functionality. There's still more to be done, but today I'm unveiling some of the new features. ... - History statistics for the blog's rank and total unique inbound links presented in a line graph. Check out Power Line, Captain's Quarters, INDC Journal, Hugh Hewitt or Allah's detail pages for good examples. - An expandable tree menu showing the blog's ten most-linked-to posts and who linked to them - An expandable tree menu showing the links which the blog has received from other blogs, sorted in descending order of the source-blog's Ecosystem rank (for easy identification of 'big links' from top bloggers). The Bear has done tremendous work in...
The entries are in -- over 200 of them -- the deadline has passed -- the judge has made her decision -- and all of the possible ass jokes have been exhausted. At least, I think they've been exhausted. However, just in case this one got missed, I would describe this week's picture as evidence that Democrats conflated the ass which serves as the party mascot, and the one carries the party banner in this election: You all did a tremendous job with your entries this week. I'm not sure, but I know we approached the CQ record with this edition! Kelly from The Patriette had a tough time judging the terrific captions you submitted. You could say she was flying by the seat of her pants ... Here are the winners! Captain's Award (The Kerry Counter-Terrorism Plan Explained, or The Democrat Duck & Cover) - John F: My fellow...
Last week, Spain showed up the US by refusing to allow them to participate in a march in their national holiday parade, replacing the American troops with the French. The Socialist government wanted to demonstrate that Spain was "no longer subordinated and kneeling" before Washington. Now word comes that Spain has invited more than just the French to replace the US: The Spanish government has sparked a fierce row by inviting a soldier who fought with Hitler's Wehrmacht to share the podium at the national day military parade today with a republican veteran of the Spanish Civil War. The defence minister, Jose Bono, who was once caught on microphone calling Tony Blair a "complete dickhead", said the presence of the former member of the Spanish Blue Division, recruited to fight for the Nazis in the Second World War, was part of the reconciliation process between the two opposing sides in...
October 12, 2004
Joint Iraqi-American operations in Ramadi resulted in raids on several mosques to flush out terrorists, signaling an end to unilateral American respect for Muslim places of worship when used as military staging grounds: Iraqi forces backed by U.S. soldiers and Marines raided mosques Tuesday in the insurgent stronghold of Ramadi and detained a prominent cleric following fierce clashes that hospital officials said killed at least four people. U.S. aircraft also rocketed a mosque northwest of Ramadi on Monday after insurgents opened fire from there on U.S. Marines, the command said. The seven mosques targeted in Ramadi are suspected of supporting insurgents through a range of activities, including harboring terrorists, storing illegal weapons caches, promoting violence and encouraging insurgent recruitment, the U.S. command said. Sheikh Abdul-Aleim Saadi, the provincial leader of the influential Association of Muslim Scholars, was detained at Mohammed Aref Mosque, his relatives and followers said. US command has...
In an odd move, a coalition of leftist politicians and artists from Norway placed an ad in today's Washington Post urging Bush to apologize to the Iraqis for ... liberating them? The Norwegian group "www.tellhim.no" said it used about $50,000 in donations from 4,000 people to fund the advertisement in the Washington Post to tell Bush that 80 percent of people in NATO-member Norway opposed the U.S.-led war in Iraq. ... It urged a shift in U.S. foreign policy to allow greater U.N. involvement in Iraq, an apology to the Iraqi people for the war and compensation for victims. That understates the incoherence of the advertisement itself. One could chalk this up to a language difference, but Norwegians speak excellent English. Any incoherence in this statement, therefore, derives from the idiocy of the writers: Mr. President – we urge you to change your foreign olicy. To pursue a flawed and...
The Boston Globe spins this morning with the help of the Associated Press, describing John Howard's landslide Australian election as a referendum on economics while noting Howard's insistence on seeing the joint Iraq mission to its conclusion: Australian troops will stay in Iraq, Prime Minister John Howard declared yesterday, as the stock market in Sydney hit a record high following the conservative leader's election to a historic fourth term. At his first news conference since Saturday's election increased the parliament majority of his center-right coalition, Howard said his priorities were guarding the nation's security, working with allies to fight terrorism, and maintaining the booming economy. The victory was a resounding vote of confidence in the government's handling of Australia's economy, which has low inflation, unemployment, and interest rates, a budget surplus, and low government debt. While I'm certain the economy played a role in Australia's election, the notion that Iraq...
For what it's worth -- and with Zogby, not much -- George Bush moved back into a tie with John Kerry in the Zogby tracking poll, 45-45, after having trailed Kerry since the first debate: Bush gained three points on the Massachusetts senator to move into a 45-45 percent dead heat in the latest three-day tracking poll of the White House campaign. The focus of the tight race now turns to Wednesday's pivotal final debate in Tempe, Arizona, with both candidates hoping to take advantage of their last chance to court a national television audience of likely voters. "A close race got closer," pollster John Zogby said. "I am not expecting anyone to pull away in this one -- at least not yet." I remain highly suspicious of both Zogby's methods and results. Reuters reports one of the reasons; the new Zogby poll shows Bush with just a 35% job-approval...
In the clearest indicator yet that John Kerry has serious trouble on his hands, the Los Angeles Times reports that Democratic candidates for Senate this year have decided to run to their right, and away from John Kerry: The Democratic candidate in Alaska supports President Bush's call to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. The Democrat running in South Carolina supports Bush's call for a constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriage, and the Democratic candidate in Oklahoma is in favor of repealing the District of Columbia's tough gun control law. ... Some of the Democratic candidates have sought to distance themselves from the party's presidential nominee, Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts. "The main reason you're hearing Democratic candidates talk like Republicans is that most of the highly competitive Senate races this year are taking place on GOP turf," said Andrew Taylor, a political scientist at...
The Washington Times reports this morning that the Iranian mullahcracy has made plans to infiltrate Iraq during Ramadan, spreading their Qumian brand of Shi'ite radicalism and disrupting elections in the south: A top Iranian dissident living in Paris says up to 800 clerics and theology students from Iran are in the process of infiltrating cities in neighboring Iraq in time for the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, which begins Friday. Ayatollah Jalal Ganje'i, a prominent critic of the Iranian regime, said in an interview with The Washington Times that the influx is part of continuing efforts by Tehran's power brokers to exploit the crisis in Iraq in order to set up a sister fundamentalist Islamic republic. The religious leaders, dispatched by the Islamic Propaganda Organization, plan to use the holy month to propagate militant Islamic views, he said, with the goal of strengthening Iraqi political groups whose philosophy and aims...
Today's Minneapolis Star-Tribune reviews the flip-flopping going on in one of our Congressional races, pitting popular Rep. Mark Kennedy against political neophyte Patty Wetterling. Wetterling has built a name for herself from her tireless work on behalf of missing children after the tragic disappearance and loss of her son, Jacob. However, the Democratic strategy to run her against Kennedy appears to be floundering as their candidate can't decide which policies she supports or opposes, even on basic-values questions such as abortion: U.S. House DFL candidate Patty Wetterling confirmed Monday that she unreservedly favors abortion rights and supported the war in Afghanistan, two issues that may play a decisive role in her Sixth District race against Republican incumbent Mark Kennedy. ... Wetterling retreated from previous statements that she and others made that she opposed second-trimester and late-term abortions. "I did have concerns about late-term and second-trimester," she said Monday. "I always...
The bizarre behavior of the senior Senator from Minnesota continues and deepens this afternoon, as CBS News reports that Mark Dayton has closed his office for security reasons. CBS also reports that government sources are baffled by his reasoning, as no specific intelligence exists which would lead them to believe he's been targeted (hat tip: CQ reader Laura): Sen. Mark Dayton said Tuesday he is closing his Washington office because of a classified intelligence report that made him fear for the safety of his staff. Dayton, D-Minn., said the office will be closed while Congress is in recess through Election Day, with his staff working out of his Minnesota office and in Senate space off Capitol Hill. "I take this step out of extreme, but necessary, precaution to protect the lives and safety of my Senate staff and my Minnesota constituents, who might otherwise be visiting my Senate office in...
I guess it wasn't enough to have the Norwegians interfering with the upcoming presidential election by publishing incoherent rants in the Washington Post. Now we have the Manchester Guardian getting into the act, publishing a primer on how to launder foreign campaign contributions and cold-call American voters to convert their votes into European proxies: Certainly, the actions of the US impact on our lives in overwhelming ways; British political life may now be at least as heavily influenced by White House policy as by the choices of UK voters. And yet, though the US Declaration of Independence speaks of "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind", you don't, of course, have a vote. You can't even donate money to the campaigns: foreign contributions are outlawed. And you're unlikely to have the chance to do any campaigning on the ground. All you can do is wait and watch: you're powerless....
Earlier today, I wrote about the way Democratic candidates for Senate appear to be running to the right -- and away from John Kerry. This tendency belies a desperation among Democrats that the poor performance of the top of their ticket may well destroy any chance of the secondary candidates to win. CQ reader Gary S. notes an example of this from last Sunday's Meet the Press, which had both Colorado Senate candidates talking with Tim Russert. Gary notes this exchange between Ken Salazar, the Democratic candidate, and Russert: MR. RUSSERT: You say that you wouldn't use the same words that John Kerry used. John Kerry's been to Colorado five times during his campaign, and you've never appeared with him. Are you running away from John Kerry? MR. SALAZAR: I'm not running away from John Kerry. John Kerry is a person who has done a lot for this country, who...
... seem to be popping up tonight. If you're getting slow loads or hiccups, be patient. I'm sure the problems will be fixed shortly....
October 13, 2004
In a sign that the joint Iraqi-American initiative to pursue the terrorists of the Sunni Triangle has paid off, the insurgency appears to be turning in on itself. The Washington Post reports that a deadly rift has been created between foreign terrorists and the native Ba'athist remnants in Fallujah and elsewhere which promises to help bring a swift end to their campaign: Local insurgents in the city of Fallujah are turning against the foreign fighters who have been their allies in the rebellion that has held the U.S. military at bay in parts of Iraq's Sunni Muslim heartland, according to Fallujah residents, insurgent leaders and Iraqi and U.S. officials. Relations are deteriorating as local fighters negotiate to avoid a U.S.-led military offensive against Fallujah, while foreign fighters press to attack Americans and their Iraqi supporters. The disputes have spilled over into harsh words and sporadic violence, with Fallujans killing at...
The case for removing Saddam Hussein from power has been made clearer by a media organization known for its overwhelming bias. Fox News? NewsMax? No -- Al-Jazeera: Hoping to unearth crucial evidence that could help in convicting deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, investigators said nine trenches in a dry riverbed at the Hatra site in northern Iraq contained at least 300 bodies, and possibly thousands. Those buried included children still clutching toys [emph mine - CE]. "It is my personal opinion that this is a killing field," said Greg Kehoe, a US lawyer appointed by the White House to work with the Iraqi Special Tribunal. "Someone used this field on significant occasions over time to take bodies up there and to take people up there and execute them". "I have been doing grave sites for a long time, but I have never seen anything like this, women and children executed...
Much has been made of the job losses that have occurred during the George Bush administration, even though most of that talk ignores the single greatest foreign attack on American soil and its tremendous economic impact. However, frequent CQ contributor Bandit has done a bit more research into recent job-loss history and finds that the rosy picture painted about the Clinton years by the Kerry campaign and his media allies is more cartoon than realism: First major signs that all was not well surfaced in May 2000. This is the month the biggest recorded decline in jobs in eight years - 116,000 jobs disappeared [see private-sector jobs -- CE]. What made this number even more alarming is that the cutbacks were widespread affecting all sectors: 29,000 jobs in construction, 71,000 in wholesale and retail, 17,000 in manufacturing, and 11,000 in transportation. ... The unions were sensing not all was well...
For weeks, speculation has swirled on e-mail regarding the discharge granted to John Kerry. Some have speculated that Kerry received a dishonorable discharge that only was reversed under Bill Clinton. As these charges have been largely unaccompanied by objective evidence, I've passed on mentioning them here at CQ. I know that the Swiftvets and their supporters such as River Rat and Bandit have been researching the issue more carefully, and that if anything reportable arose , we''d hear it soon enough, if an enterprising reporter or two didn't. Now the ever-enterprising Thomas Lipscomb has pieced together some interesting information regarding Kerry's discharge and reported them in today's New York Sun (subscription only). I've received a slew of e-mails from my regular readers on this article, and it looks very interesting indeed: An official Navy document on Senator Kerry's campaign Web site listed as Mr. Kerry's "Honorable Discharge from the Reserves"...
Tonight, the Northern Alliance makes history as we welcome our local bloggers to watch the last Presidential debate with us tonight at the Minneapolis Downtown Hilton. The event has been set up by AM 1280 The Patriot and is being sponsored by the Hilton and Wade Financial. We'll have free snacks, a cash bar, and wireless networking available, and several of the Northern Alliance will be on hand to live-blog and to hang out with our friends. Your friendly Captain will certainly be on hand, and check out the other NARN blogs to see who else will be there....
The Scotsman reports today that UN weapons inspector Hans Blix told British officials that the dossier compiled by Anglo-American intelligence services actually understated Saddam's capacity to produce chemical and biological weapons (hat tip: Secure Liberty): Former UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix believed the Government’s controversial Iraq weapons dossier actually understated the case against Saddam Hussein, according to documents released today by the Foreign Office. The papers released by the FO show that British officials at the United Nations in New York showed a draft of the dossier to Dr Blix in September 2002, two weeks before the final version was published. A note from one official, Adam Bye, said that Dr Blix had liked the section on chemical, biological and nuclear weapons as he believed that it did not exaggerate the facts. According to the note, Dr Blix said that the dossier even risked understating Iraq’s ability to produce...
For those who want to link to my live-blogging, I'll be working off of this post. I just got done speaking to The Patriot's operations manager, who tells me that we are expecting 650 people for our event at the downtown Hilton! ... 7:35 - We are at least at 300 people so far and climbing! We are all pretty amazed that the response has been so enthusiastic. We have a 5' projection screen at the front of the room tuned to Fox News. A Kerry supporter in a bow tie tried handing out literature in the room, but The Patriot shut that down pretty quick ... 7:58 - Rocket Man just fired up the crowd here, preparing them to cheer and yell during the debate. Should be lively! 8:05 - First question is on national security. Kerry talks about the COPS program. Kerry will hunt them down and kill...
October 14, 2004
Donor nations for the rebuilding of Iraq met this week in Tokyo, after having stiffed the new interim Iraqi government last year from the $13.6 billion that they pledged for the stabilization effort. This conference led to much fewer pledges, but may have shaken loose the money promised in the first conference: The meeting of 57 donor nations and international organizations is a follow-up to a conference a year ago in Madrid, where the international community vowed to contribute tens of billions of dollars to rebuild wartorn Iraq. Iraq's delegation, headed by Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh, expressed strong frustration with the slow pace of funding, arguing that many parts of the country are safe enough for projects to go forward and warning that delays could ruin Iraq's chances of a sustainable recovery. Thursday's final, closed-door session focused on how two trust funds operated by the United Nations and the...
The rank-and-file of Swedish labor will not be pleased to learn where their dues money went in Trollhattan, in every sense of the word: Union leaders in the Swedish industrial town of Trollhattan, which is threatened by huge job losses, have quit after allegations they used membership dues to buy liquor, porn and sex toys, the union says. An internal audit by Sweden's second-largest union, Metall, unearthed expense abuses by branch 112 in Trollhattan, where about 6,000 workers at a Saab car factory fear they might be hit by European job cutbacks by Saab owner General Motors. As if that wasn't bad enough, listen to the description of the malfeasance reported by a former union branch employee about the disposition of the items in question: A former cashier at the branch told public radio Ekot of drinking bouts and sex shop sprees during official visits to Denmark and Belgium, using...
The early spin is in, folks, and the MSM has decided to crown John Kerry the winner of the third debate -- a conclusion they must have reached before air time, because the grim and stumbling performance that Kerry gave was easily the worst of the three debates thus far. CNN attempted to ensure that spin by having paid Kerry advisor and paid CNN consultant Paul Begala give his commentary on the night's events. (So much for the non-partisan, objective Old Media.) Ironically, in an election where the Democrat has fallen behind with women, Kerry's post-debate troubles will be on two talking points about women: Mary Cheney and his answer to Bob Schieffer's "strong women" question. Lynne Cheney came out swinging after the second time the Kerry/Edwards ticket has used her lesbian daughter as a debate prop: Lynne V. Cheney, wife of Vice President Cheney, accused John F. Kerry on...
CQ reader John Gault notes that the valediction that John Kerry's mother gave him, according to his answer at the debate, has a ring of familiarity to it. Band of Brothers member Jim Rassmann, while campaigning for Kerry in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, said this from the stump last month: After serving with John Kerry, a veteran says Kerry is better suited to serve in the White House. Jim Rassman was in Eau Claire on Tuesday to campaign for Kerry. Rassman says Kerry saved his life when he pulled him out of a river during a battle in Vietnam. Rassman says he voted for Bush in 2000, but says he doesn't plan to back the President this time around. "There are three character traits John has that George Bush does not have and they are integrity, integrity, integrity [emph mine - CE]. I trust John Kerry implicitly. I don't trust a...
Senator Mark Dayton continued to defend his singular decision to shut his DC office down and evacuate the Capitol, even though no specific threat exists and no other Senate offices will close. CNN reports that Dayton claims his staff would have been little more than "human shields" had he kept his offices open: Sen. Mark Dayton Wednesday defended his decision to close his Capitol Hill office until after the November 2 election, saying it would have been "immoral" to leave his staff members as "human shields" facing a possible terrorist attack while he returned home to Minnesota. "I can't predict the future. I don't know what the future holds, but I do know that the safety and lives of my staff are my responsibility," Dayton told CNN's "Wolf Blitzer Reports." "And I'm not going to leave them there exposed to risks that I'm not there to take myself." ... Elaborating...
Just when I thought I'd seen and heard everything in this election cycle -- a major party candidate trucking in urban legends, party chairman engaging in transparent smear campaigns, and broadcast networks publishing fraudulent stories to unseat a sitting president -- the Democrats manage to create one more surprise. Drudge has a document from the Kerry/Edwards campaign that not only lowers the bar on political discourse but threatens to undermine the democratic processes themselves, all just to grab power (scan here): The Kerry/Edwards campaign and the Democratic National Committee are advising election operatives to declare voter intimidation -- even if none exists, the DRUDGE REPORT can reveal. A 66-page mobilization plan to be issued by the Kerry/Edwards campaign and the Democratic National Committee states: "If no signs of intimidation techniques have emerged yet, launch a 'pre-emptive strike.'" Here's what else the strategy plan for the Colorado race asks campaign staffers...
The AP reports that some sources indicate the US Marines have begun the long-anticipated push into Fallujah after negotiations broke down earlier in the day: U.S. Marines launched air and ground attacks Thursday on the insurgent bastion Fallujah after city representatives suspended peace talks with the government over Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's demand to hand over terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Late Thursday, residents of the city, 40 miles west of Baghdad, reported shuddering American bombardments using planes and armored vehicles in what they said was the most intensive shelling since U.S. forces began weeks of "precision strikes" aimed at al-Zarqawi's network. Earlier, attempts to reach a peaceful conclusion to the Fallujah problem broke down, as city leaders balked at turning over Abu Masab al-Zarqawi, an ironclad demand of both the US and the interim Iraqi government. The religious council that headed the Fallujah side of the negotiations claimed the...
The Scotsman, doing yeoman work on the Duelfer report on the Iraq Survey Group investigation, reports that recently uncovered documents reveal a series of payments to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The PFLP is a PLO splinter group that has spent most of the time since Oslo setting off car bombs to derail the peace processes, such as they are: The PFLP, whose history of terrorism dates back to the "black September" hijackings of 1970, was personally vetted by Saddam to receive oil vouchers worth £40 million. The deal has been uncovered by US investigators, trawling millions of pages of documents showing a network of diplomats bribed by Saddam’s regimes, and political parties who qualified for backhanded payments from Baghdad. The Iraq Survey Group (ISG), which is still working its way through 20,000 boxes of documents from Saddam’s Baath party discovered only recently, found a list of...
October 15, 2004
In a report that underscores the urgency of stopping Iran's nuclear-weapons program, the London Telegraph reveals that Palestinian terror groups have increasingly fallen under the influence or direct control of Teheran: Iran has taken control of many Palestinian terrorist cells from Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, giving them funds and orders to attack Israeli targets, and even rewarding successful missions with "bonuses", according to a senior Israeli security source. For many years, Iran has given money and ideological support to radical Palestinian groups, especially Hamas and Islamic Jihad, responsible for most of the Israeli deaths in the past four years of the Palestinian uprising. But Israel believes that much of the Fatah-affiliated armed faction, calling itself the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, has now come under Iran's sway, especially in the West Bank. Even Yasser Arafat has complained about Iranian interference. The Telegraph reports that Arafat called Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini a...
So much for the rough, tough terrorist facade ... The Boston Globe reports that a captured terrorist complains that the Canadians tricked him into going to the US, where he's been held since 2002 after admitting to attempting to kill US citizens abroad: Mohammed Jabarah, identified as a member of Al Qaeda by police in Singapore, Canada, and the United States, was arrested in Oman in March 2002 and deported to Canada. After four days of interrogation by agents of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Jabarah was transferred to the United States in April 2002 and is still in custody. Alan Borovoy, general counsel of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, has written to Public Security Minister Anne McLellan to urge an investigation into whether Jabarah had been misled by the intelligence service. ... Jabarah's father, Mansour, told the Canadian news program his son was convinced that the intelligence service had...
In what will be a shock to the pundits who thought that Kerry won Wednesday's debate, the new Reuters/Zogby (ha!) poll shows that Bush picked up three points since then, extending his lead to four points over Kerry: Bush led Kerry 48-44 percent in the latest three-day tracking poll, which included one night of polling done after Wednesday's debate in Tempe, Arizona. Bush led Kerry, a senator from Massachusetts, by only one point, 46-45 percent, the previous day. An improvement in Bush's showing among undecideds and a strong response from his base Republican supporters helped fuel the president's rise. The difference between the two daily tracking polls is that now we start to see the effects of the debate, as one-third of the survey was taken the day afterward. Far from hurting Bush, the debate seems to have swung more independents and younger voters to the Republicans, while Kerry now...
I guess we can scratch Japan from the list of countries to which John Kerry may have referred when speaking about how foreign leaders preferred him to George Bush: The comments come a day after Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi made remarks that appeared to suggest he would prefer to see Bush win the Nov. 2 U.S. presidential election. "I think there would be trouble if it's not President Bush," Liberal Democratic Party Secretary General Tsutomu Takebe told a radio program, Kyodo news agency reported. "For instance, Mr. Kerry wants to handle the North Korean issue bilaterally, which is out of the question. We're now in the era of multilateralism," Takebe was quoted as saying, referring to six-way talks involving North and South Korea, Japan, the United States, China and Russia over the North's nuclear ambitions. Bush has ruled out bilateral talks with reclusive communist Pyongyang, but Kerry has said this...
Pity the mainstream media, which apparently fell asleep for the last four years and have woken to discover a brand new world. This time it's ABC's turn for embarassment, as their attempted attack on the Swiftvets has foundered on the shoals of a thousand fact-checkers -- and the calm determination of John O'Neill: Nightline traveled to Vietnam and found a number of witnesses who have never been heard from before, and who have no particular ax to grind for or against Kerry. Only one of them, in fact, even knew who Kerry is. The witnesses, all Vietnamese, are still living in the same villages where the fighting took place more than 35 years ago. A Nightline producer visited them and recorded their accounts of that day. The accounts were subsequently translated by a team of ABC News translators. ... The Vietnamese government initially rejected Nightline's request to visit the village,...
It's Friday, so it must be time for another edition of the Captain's Caption Contest! It's also October, so everyone's watching out for the various October Surprises. Last time out, the Democrats pulled out an ancient DUI from George Bush's past that almost won them the White House. Bush calmly handled the crisis four years ago, talking about his past experiences with alcohol abuse and how his faith helped turn his life around. Kerry, on the other hand, looks a bit skittish: This week's guest judges will be David & Margaret from Our House, which they have not yet learned, because David keeps complaining I never read his blog. Nonsense -- go check it out! It's a great blend of national and local politics, as well as a wonderful photoblog from one of may favorite blogging couples. I read it all the time. (Dammit, David, I really do!) As always,...
A new Annenberg survey reveals that active-duty military members and their families prefer George Bush over John Kerry despite the Kerry/Edwards accusations of back-door drafts and poor administration of military resources, by a 3-1 margin: When asked who they would trust as commander in chief, people in military service and their families chose President Bush over Sen. John Kerry, a decorated Vietnam veteran, by almost a 3-to-1 margin. Bush, who served in the Texas Air National Guard, was more trusted by 69 percent while 24 percent said they trusted Kerry more, according to the National Annenberg Election Survey released Friday. ... A majority in the military sample, 64 percent, said the country is on the right track. Among Americans generally, 55 percent said the country is headed in the wrong direction. The National Annenberg Election Survey found that seven in 10, 69 percent, had a favorable view of Bush. Only...
The First Mate and I have a friend who has served in Special Forces for over 30 years. The FM has known "Mike" since before he enlisted, and I've been fortunate and honored enough to be a friend to him and his family for over 10 years. "Mike" has served his country in many conflicts, starting with Viet Nam right up to the current conflict in Iraq. I posted a letter from Mike in April, when he worked as a security contractor in Iraq and just after the butchering of four of his colleagues in Fallujah. Mike has returned from his service in Iraq in the last few weeks and has spent some time catching up with his family. He wrote a moving series of letters to his sons, explaining our involvement in terms his young children could understand. For security reasons, I have removed any references which could identify...
Continue reading "Explaining Why We Fight To Our Children, Part I" »
As part of their daily tracking poll, the Washington Post added a question about John Kerry's controversial reference to Mary Cheney, Dick Cheney's daughter, in a question about homosexuality. The Post reports that likely voters overwhelmingly disapproved, even the morning after the debate, before the controversey broke out to the mainstream press: An overwhelming majority of voters believe it was wrong for Democratic nominee John F. Kerry to have mentioned in Wednesday's presidential debate that Vice President Cheney's daughter was a lesbian, according to the latest Washington Post tracking survey. Nearly two in three likely voters -- 64 percent -- said Kerry's comment was "inappropriate," including more than four in 10 of his own supporters and half of all swing voters. A third -- 33 percent -- thought the remark was appropriate. Even more inappropriate was the comment by John Edwards' wife, who said she felt that the Cheneys were...
October 16, 2004
Analysts have determined that al-Qaeda has shifted its focus from American targets to Pakistan instead, trying to destabilize what it sees as the weak link in the coalition to stomp out Islamofascist terror: Diplomats and other analysts believe al Qaeda cells are using Pakistan as a key battleground in its broader war against the United States and are exploiting long-standing enmity between Sunni and Shi'ite extremists to further this aim. They say the government's failure to crack down on groups it has used for years as tools of policy in the divided Kashmir region and in Afghanistan has played into al Qaeda's hands. ... In the past month, Pakistan has been rocked by a fresh wave of bombings of majority Sunni and minority Shi'ite Muslim gatherings that have killed nearly 80 people. It has also seen its ties with its closest ally China tested by the kidnapping of two Chinese...
The French president, Jacques Chirac, has a museum showcasing all of the gifts given to him by foreign dignitaries, an odd form of official showiness that usually is associated with dictators and other narcissists. Having his own museum seems like a perfect reflection of the man who has decided to make himself and France the center of anti-American global expression. Unfortunately for Chirac, his museum also perfectly reflects French economics: A state-funded museum built to display gifts showered on President Jacques Chirac by foreign dignitaries has gone almost three times over budget and is steadily losing money as admission figures slump. Inspectors from the regional audit office in the Corrèze, south-western France, found that the museum, opened in 2000, cost almost £5 million to build and lost more than £400,000 in a single year. Most Western heads of state wait until their retirement to open their libraries; countries usually wait...
The Arab news translation service MEMRI reports in a breaking-news crawl that Osama bin Laden met with Saddam's Italian attorney in the al-Rashid Hotel in Baghdad in 1998: Saddam's Italian attorney Giovanni de Stafano told a London-based daily that a meeting was held between himself and Osama bin Laden at the Rashid Hotel in Baghdad in 1998. (al-Sharq al-Awsat) Big hat tip to Kevin McCullough. I have yet to find an English-language link to al-Sharq, even though it's based in London, nor have I seen this break anywhere else in the English-language media. Needless to say, if this report pans out, it puts a completely new light on our efforts to depose Saddam -- not so much for those of us who understand the strategic necessity of removing Saddam, but for those who can only think tactically. More to come ......
This is Part II in a continuing series by my friend "Mike", a Navy SEAL who spent most of the last couple of years in Iraq as both an active-duty participant and a private contractor. "Mike" explains the war in Iraq to his young sons, and has graciously allowed me to share his letters with you. "Mike" will appear on the Northern Alliance Radio Network today to discuss his experiences and the situation in Iraq. The show starts at noon CT. IRAQ PICTURE LETTER TO MY SON PART 2. THE EVIL RULER OF IRAQ Do you know the name of the bad man who ruled Iraq until last year? The US Army just captured him on December 13, 2003, and he is going on trial in a few weeks. That’s right, his name is Saddam Hussein. He put his face on all of the paper money in Iraq which they...
After yesterday's interesting Zogby poll results showing a post-debate Bush bounce, I was curious as to whether that would prove anomalous, a one-day polling outlier from a pollster known for such results. So far, however, their polling shows Bush maintaining his four-point lead over Kerry, demonstrating that the final debate damaged Kerry despite the pundit spin afterwards: Three days after the final presidential debate, President Bush retains his four-point lead over Senator John Kerry, according to a new Reuters/Zogby daily tracking poll. The telephone poll of 1211 likely voters was conducted from Wednesday through Friday (October 13-15, 2004). The margin of error is +/- 2.9 percentage points. Pollster John Zogby: “Bush led by 4 today [Oct. 15th] -- the first full day sample after the debate. Kerry gets 81% of support among Democrats while Bush gets 14%, but Bush gets 92% among Republican to Kerry's 5%-- and, of course, the...
The fallout of Mark Dayton's decision to close his offices in Washington DC due to unspecified threats continues, generating ridicule from both sides of the aisle and embarassment for Minnesotans. The Washington Post reported on Thursday that local DC reaction fluctuated from fury to concern over Dayton's psychological fitness: The surprising response by the freshman senator from Minnesota to the latest in a series of warnings prompted ridicule and a flurry of angry reactions yesterday. Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) said Dayton's decision was "ill-informed." Minnesota's senior senator, Norm Coleman (R), called Dayton reckless. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) compared him to the boy who cried wolf. Colleagues on both sides of the aisle whispered "paranoid." ... Dayton's reaction to the extreme possibility was ridiculous, D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey said. "It's not based on any credible information that's come in. Nobody knows why he is doing what he...
October 17, 2004
In a reminder of Rush Limbaugh's famous rejoinder that words have meaning, the BBC reports that UN commanders on the ground blame John Kerry's stump speech professing support for Haitian strongman Jean-Bertrand Aristide for the continuing violence from Aristide supporters: The commander of the UN peacekeepers in Haiti has linked a recent upsurge in violence there to comments made by the US presidential candidate, John Kerry. Earlier this year Mr Kerry said that as president he would have sent American troops to protect Jean-Bertrand Aristide who was ousted from power in February. ... Eight months ago the Bush administration withdrew all support for Mr Aristide and made it clear he should leave Haiti. John Kerry called that "short-sighted" and said he would have sent troops to protect Mr Aristide, who was an elected leader. Now General Heleno, says those comments have offered hope to Aristide's supporters that should Mr Kerry...
In an article intended on highlighting John Kerry's attempts to present himself as an average, ordinary guy, the Associated Press inadvertently shows how Kerry's rank manages to get him preferential treatment by some in the Church whose teachings he defies. After talking about how Kerry presented himself as a humble member of the proletariat by donning brown corduroys and a mustard-yellow jacket, Mary Dalrymple reports that a Catholic priest used Mass to endorse Kerry's run for the presidency: Some Catholic Democratic officials arranged a private mass for the Massachusetts senator in Chillicothe, Ohio. Kerry called it a way to "stop the hurly-burly, get away from the wildness" and "have this moment of tranquility." Father Lawrence Hummer, nevertheless, gave the moment an election-year flavor by criticizing church officials who condemn Catholic politicians who speak out for abortion rights, calling on them to use patient persistence and bring them into the fold....
The First Mate and I went out to church this afternoon and followed Mass with a screening of the new movie Thérese, the biopic of the Catholic saint nicknamed "The Little Flower". The FM had looked forward to the movie opening in our area as Thérese is the saint which she admires the most -- an unassuming young girl whose saintliness expressed itself in the many small acts of faith she did. I'd like to say lots of nice things about this film, whose heart definitely is in the right place. The filmmakers treat their subject quite respectfully -- in fact, too much so, to the extent that the film fails to work. Thérese lost her mother when she was very little, and as a result wound up being doted upon by her entire family. She became a bit spoiled, as youngest children often are, and a bit willful. At...
This is Part III in a continuing series by my friend "Mike", a Navy SEAL who spent most of the last couple of years in Iraq as both an active-duty participant and a private contractor. "Mike" explains the war in Iraq to his young sons, and has graciously allowed me to share his letters with you. IRAQ PICTURE LETTER TO MY SON PART 3. WHY WE INVADED IRAQ & WHY WE ARE STILL HERE In Part 2 we learned about how Saddam Hussein was an evil and crazy ruler of the Iraqi people and that he had bad intentions for the world and especially Israel. However, Israel is quite capable of defending itself. We also learned how cruel he was to his own people. However that doesn’t explain why President Bush sent us into Iraq when he did. One reason is because we believed that Saddam Hussein helped the terrorists...
October 18, 2004
Earlier this week, I wrote about the efforts of the Manchester Guardian to influence our election by starting a letter-writing campaign from Brits to American voters in Clark County, Ohio. Apparently, their project attracted quite a bit of attention, even getting my blog noticed in a follow-up article. Now the Guardian has started receiving feedback from Americans of all political stripes regarding their intention to corrupt our electoral process, and a lot of it ain't pretty. Most of the e-mail they've received opposing their project has been rather obscene, or at least those e-mails they chose to share with their readers: Wading River, NY: Have you not noticed that Americans don't give two shits what Europeans think of us? Each email someone gets from some arrogant Brit telling us why to NOT vote for George Bush is going to backfire, you stupid, yellow-toothed pansies ... KEEP YOUR F****N' LIMEY HANDS...
Howard Kurtz, the media watchdog at the Washington Post, notes that John Kerry's new campaign ad and push at the stump to paint George Bush as a one-man wrecking crew for Social Security intentionally misleads voters on two separate tracks. After giving a transcript of the new television ad by the Kerry/Edwards campaign, Kurtz notes that the supposed "quotes" used by Kerry have never been attributed to Bush through any reliable sourcing: "I’m going to come out strong after my swearing in," Bush said, "with . . . privatizing of Social Security." ... The "admission" by the president comes not from a public statement but from a New York Times Magazine article yesterday in which the president is quoted as making the privatization comment to a "confidential" Republican luncheon. No source for the comment is cited ... Interesting timing, no? The New York Times magazine runs an article on some...
The Washington Post reports that investigators into the Madrid bombings this year have uncovered new evidence that the Islamic terrorists that attacked the Spanish transportation system specifically intended to warp the election three days later: Seven months after bombs exploded aboard morning commuter trains in Madrid, killing 191 people, the precise motives of the attackers remain unclear. But new evidence, including wiretap transcripts, has lent support to a theory that the strike was carefully timed to take place three days before a national election in hopes of influencing Spanish voters to reject a government that sent troops to Iraq. ... Newly disclosed wiretaps of an alleged organizer of the bombings expressing glee that "the dog Aznar" had been put out of office have prompted some analysts here to conclude that the perpetrators sought to try to bring about specific reactions through the attacks. Obviously, it's good to be precise and...
Californians have put a new ballot initiative in front of voters this November asking for a new tax "on the rich" to fund increased spending on the mentally ill. Datelined out of San Francisco, which should surprise no one in California, the proponents of this new tax want to continue expanding the Golden State's welfare system: As pressures increase on California's mental health system, its workers and advocates say they are forced to do more with a supply of money that seems to shrink each year. "The number of people who need services is growing. The cost of the services is growing. The revenue source is not growing," said Patricia Ryan, executive director of the California Mental Health Directors Association. Note that the AP reports that the money "seems" to shrink every year. That's an important qualification for a ballot initiative. Had the money actually shrunk, the AP and the...
This may be as much of a surprise as John Kerry winning endorsements from mainstream newspapers, but Captain's Quarters is endorsing George Bush for President. (Do you think this will make headlines around the blogosphere? Neither do I.) With two weeks left to go before the election, however, I think it's important to get past the normally reactive posture that blogs have and to communicate clearly why I think Bush should be re-elected, as well as why I think Kerry should be turned away. I covered some of this material earlier, and in greater detail, but it bears repeating now. George Bush is the first president in a generation to truly understand the nature of terrorism and the effort it will take to defeat it. In this election, he's the only candidate who strategizes to win, rather than reduce it to so-called "nuisance" levels. He had the vision to understand...
Florida introduced early voting in this election in order to ensure that as many voters as possible have a chance to participate. Predictably, the first fruits of that effort have been to generate early complaints about the ballots: With memories of 2000 and the state's bitter fight over ballots still fresh, Floridians began casting votes Monday and within an hour problems cropped up. In Palm Beach County, the center of the madness during the recount four years ago, a Democratic state legislator said she wasn't given a complete absentee ballot when she asked to opt for paper instead of the electronic touch-screen machines. And in Orange County, the touch-screen system briefly crashed, paralyzing voting in Orlando and its immediate suburbs. ... State Rep. Shelley Vana was not so happy. She said the paper absentee ballot she was given at a Palm Beach County site was missing one of its two...
The Securities and Exchange Commission has launched an investigation into fraudulent reporting of circulation numbers at newspapers owned by publicly-traded companies, the Washington Times reported last week: The Securities and Exchange Commission has started an investigation into newspaper circulation reporting after several publications acknowledged exaggerating their sales. In the past two months, the commission has requested circulation documents from at least six major publishers, including The Washington Post Co., Gannett Co. Inc. and the New York Times Co., according to a report the New York Times published yesterday. ... The investigation was triggered by a series of circulation scandals that has left the $55 billion-a-year newspaper industry stained. Since June, four newspapers have admitted to reporting faulty sales figures to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, an independent agency that audits circulation data for newspapers and magazines. The Chicago Sun-Times disclosed that it inflated circulation by as much as 10 percent...
In a story that will redefine the term "crack troops", a volunteer for Democrats and the NAACP tried to pay registration-gatherers in illegal drugs: Defiance Deputies along with Toledo Police Department detectives conducted a search warrant of a residence on Woodland in Toledo, believed to be the home of the woman who hired Staton to solicit voter registration. Officers confiscated drug paraphernalia along with voter registration forms from the home. The occupant of the home, Georgianne Pitts, age 41, advised law enforcement, along with Ohio B.C.I.&I., that she had been recruited by Thaddeus J. Jackson, II, of Cleveland, to obtain voter registrations. Pitts admitted to paying Staton crack cocaine for the registrations in lieu of money. A business card provided by Pitts indicated that Jackson is the Assistant NVF Ohio Director of the NAACP National Voter Fund. Predictably, instead of going out and getting valid registrations, the addict instead filled...
Thanks to our so-called friends and allies, the US military has been playing a bit of catch-and-release with the terrorists originally captured in Afghanistan. International pressure and domestic legal action have caused the Bush administration to be cautious about indefinite detention -- perhaps a bit too cautious, CNN now reports: t least seven former prisoners of the United States at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have been involved in terrorist acts, despite gaining their freedom by signing pledges to renounce violence, according to the Pentagon. At least two are believed to have died in fighting in Afghanistan, and a third was recaptured during a raid of a suspected training camp in Afghanistan, Lt. Cmdr. Flex Plexico, a Pentagon spokesman, said last week. Others are at large. ... The small number returning to the fight demonstrates the delicate balance the United States must strike between minimizing the appearance of holding people unjustly and...
Despite its own reporting on the debacle of John Kerry's debate reference to Mary Cheney, the Washington Post apparently missed the entire point of the outrage. In an essay for tomorrow's edition, Hank Steuver uses Dick Cheney's daughter to push his own political agenda: Mary Cheney: Somewhere out there she exists, the actual Mary Cheney, child of the nondisclosed location, the one who's the luh-luh-lesbian. She's become this eternal and complicated mystery for people who are gay, and without ever really knowing her or hearing from her, they've spent four years writing poems, articles and protest songs about her. They've implored her with open letters in forums she may or may not ever read. They've waved signs with her name, started Web sites and put her on a milk carton as though she were a missing child. Oh, Mary Cheney, speak to us. Then, after last week's final presidential debate,...
October 19, 2004
I wondered how long it would take Tommy Franks to respond to repeated accusations from John Kerry that American military commanders allowed Osama bin Laden to escape from their grasp at Tora Bora by "outsourcing" the war on terror, an egregiously false accusation which the SSCI report shows to be a lie. Today, Franks fires back at Kerry from the pages of the New York Times in a scathing essay that underscores Kerry's cluelessness on military matters: First, take Mr. Kerry's contention that we "had an opportunity to capture or kill Osama bin Laden" and that "we had him surrounded." We don't know to this day whether Mr. bin Laden was at Tora Bora in December 2001. Some intelligence sources said he was; others indicated he was in Pakistan at the time; still others suggested he was in Kashmir. Tora Bora was teeming with Taliban and Qaeda operatives, many of...
The cease-fire that Spain bought with Islamists with their capitulation after the Madrid bombings appears to have been an illusion, as predicted. Spain announced that it captured seven terrorists plotting to bonb their High Court, according to Reuters: Police arrested seven suspected Islamic militants in raids across Spain on Monday to foil a planned bomb attack on the High Court, judicial sources said. The arrests came seven months after train bombs killed 191 people in Madrid. The seven suspects, including four Algerians and one Moroccan, were arrested in the southern region of Andalusia, the Mediterranean city of Valencia and Madrid. Further arrests could be made in the coming hours as part of the operation against a radical and violent Muslim network, the Interior Ministry said in a statement. Perhaps the Spanish electorate will understand now that appeasing terrorists only leads to more terrorism, a lesson that Europeans learned the hard...
The votes are in, and the judges have rendered their decision -- and they had another tough time with their decision! David and Margaret from Our House may have been intimidated by the enthusiasm of the CQ crowd, just as Senator Kerry appears intimidated by this gang of toughs: Here are the winners! Captain's Award (Who's Your Dummy?) - Inkling: Madame Tussaud's 2005 exhibition, History's Greatest Losers, was a hit with many American tour groups. You Have The Conn #1 (The Family Reunion) - Twoff: Despite John Kerry's resemblance to his beloved "Lurch", "Thing" came to the inescapable conclusion that Kerry would in fact take away the Addams family's tax cuts. You Have The Conn #2 (Give Him The Sedagive!) - skatz51: The angry villagers finally surround the Frankenstein monster. You Have The Conn #3 (Who's Your Dummy, Redux) - Eric Akawie: The life-size ventriloquist's dummy was a huge hit...
John Kerry told the nation in June that "I don't cross picket lines. I never have," in explanation of why he left Boston Mayor Thomas Menino twisting in the wind at the Mayor's Conference. Now the Boston Globe reports that Kerry crossed two picket lines in Florida yesterday, police picket lines at that, in order to make a campaign appearance in Orlando: Last summer, John F. Kerry refused to cross a police picket line and address the US Conference of Mayors meeting in Boston. Last night he rode in a motorcade that crossed two Florida police picket lines en route to a get-out-the-vote rally in vote-rich Orlando. Aides said the demonstration, staged by members of the Orlando Police Department represented by Fraternal Order of Police Local 25, was sprung on the campaign without prior notice in an effort to embarrass the city's Democratic mayor, Buddy Dyer. Local media describe the...
The Associated Press reports that George Bush has doubled the support he received in 2000 from the African-American community, although he still trails John Kerry by a wide margin in this almost exclusive Democratic voting bloc: President Bush has doubled his support among blacks in four years and Sen. John Kerry's backing among the key Democratic voting bloc is down slightly from the support Al Gore won in 2000, according to a poll released Tuesday. ... The poll found Kerry receiving as much or more support than Gore among those age 18 to 25, those with less than a high school diploma and those making $60,000 or less. But Kerry had 49 percent support from black Christian conservatives, down from the 69 percent Gore enjoyed in 2000. Bush was at 36 percent among the group this year, more than tripling the 11 percent he got four years ago. Republican officials...
Ron Wright sent me this insight into the Iranian mullahcracy -- the one to which John Kerry and John Edwards want to give nuclear fuel to see what they do with it. In a case where a 15-year-old boy impregnated his 13-year-old sister, the mullahs have upheld a 150-lash sentence for the boy, but have confirmed a sentence for the girl of death by stoning: Almost two months after having hanged a 16 years-old girl, the ruling Iranian ayatollahs are to commit another human crime by condemning another young girl to stoning. According to Iranian and foreign press, Zhila Izadi, a 13 years old girl from the north-western city of Marivan had been condemned to death by stoning after being found that she had been pregnant from her 15 years-old brother. ... While Zhila as been sentenced to stoning, her brother, jailed in Tehran, is to receive only 150 lashes,...
The Bush campaign got more good news this afternoon from the ABC News trackng poll taken over the weekend, which shows George Bush leading John Kerry by 5 points and Bush over the 50% mark for the first time: Support for President Bush has crept above the critical 50-percent mark for the first time in two weeks, but one group — new voters — could be John Kerry's wildcard. Fifty-one percent of likely voters support Bush, 46 percent support Kerry and 1 percent prefer Ralph Nader in the latest ABC News tracking poll, based on interviews Saturday through Monday. That's a slight lead for the president after a 48 percent to 48 percent dead heat the second half of last week. The increase in Bush's support comes from weekend polling as well, which usually favors Democrats. The internals of this poll also augur well for Bush: * Only 12% of...
CQ reader Jeff Dennis has been thinking about John Kerry's response to the question about homosexuality, in which Kerry managed to bury his campaign in controversy by using Dick Cheney's daughter as a rhetorical prop. Jeff thinks about how Bush might have handled a similar question in a compassionate-conservative manner, and he came up with this hilarious dialogue: Q: Mr. President, in your last campaign you were heard over an open microphone describing a New York Times reporter as a "major league as***le." To understand how you came to that conclusion, I want to ask you a more basic question. Do you believe being an as***le is a choice? A: I just don't know. I do know that we have a choice to make in America and that is to treat people with tolerance and respect and dignity. It's important that we do that. I think if you were to...
For political junkies who haven't already become addicted to National Review Online, go check out their new Battlegrounders blog, which offers a state-by-state analysis of the presidential race. A bonus: the guys at Powerline are reporting from Minnesota....
We've had a huge event going on at work for the last two weeks, thus the minimal posting by yours truly. While the event is set to end on Friday, my parents will be visiting this weekend so I have to do the requisite cleaning and organizing (i.e. cramming things in closets). I should be back to regular blogging by Monday night!...
The new Bush campaign ad is worth viewing, which you can do here. Unlike the ever-reliable attack ads, Kerry is never mentioned and the message is quite positive. If any campaign ad can reach the so-called "security moms," this is probably it....
A number of bloggers commented before the debates on how invisible John Edwards had been on the campaign trail. After his appearance in New Hampshire today, perhaps his supporters would prefer a return to milk carton for the man his hometown newspaper nicknamed "Senator Gone". Edwards tried to chide Bush for turning Iraq into a haven for terrorists, buying into the Michael Moore vision of prewar Iraq as a kite-flying paradise: Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards on Tuesday accused President Bush of failing the United States and the world in Iraq, citing unsecured nuclear weapons abroad and unprotected ports at home as further evidence of the president's "incompetence." "He's created something that didn't exist before the war in Iraq — he's created a haven for terrorists," Edwards said. I hate to break it to Senator Edwards -- maybe the Senate Intelligence Committee covered it during one of his many...
This is Part IV in a continuing series by my friend "Mike", a Navy SEAL who spent most of the last couple of years in Iraq as both an active-duty participant and a private contractor. "Mike" explains the war in Iraq to his young sons, and has graciously allowed me to share his letters with you. NOTE: Some images may be disturbing! IRAQ PICTURE LETTER TO MY SON PART 4. DADDY’S WORK IN IRAQ In the last section we learned about the Captured Enemy Ammunition (CEA) mission that Daddy helps with. All of the ‘planned detonations’, which is when we blow things up, are closely supervised by former military explosives experts called EOD technicians. EOD stands for Explosive Ordnance Disposal. ‘Explosive ordnance’ is another way of saying ‘ammunition.’ The EOD techs try to blow something up almost every day so that we can get rid of the dangerous ammunition as...
It's been a long time since I've been exposed to the miltary genius of our 39th President -- so long that I've forgotten how idiotic one can be and still be elected to the White House. Fortunately, we have Hardball to allow us to bask in the undimmed genius of Jimmy Carter. Yesterday, Carter managed to write off the Revolutionary War as a mistake, and that was his opener for his interview with Chris Matthews: MATTHEWS: Let me ask you the question about—this is going to cause some trouble with people—but as an historian now and studying the Revolutionary War as it was fought out in the South in those last years of the War, insurgency against a powerful British force, do you see any parallels between the fighting that we did on our side and the fighting that is going on in Iraq today? CARTER: Well, one parallel is...
October 20, 2004
Today's New York Times analyzes the impact of the successful Afghanistan elections which appear to affirm Hamid Karzai's leadership and demonstrate that the Afghanis enthusiastically support the ideas of freedom and representative government. Typically, the Times gives short shrift to the American efforts that allowed Afghanistan to shake off one of the most oppressive regimes in recent memory, but the point gets made anyway: The success of the Oct. 9 election, experts and officials said, stemmed from three things: an aggressive American-led security and reconstruction effort in Afghanistan in 2004, pressure on neighboring Pakistan to rein in Taliban remnants, and most important, a passionate desire among average Afghans to choose the country's leader through a peaceful, democratic election. Whether all three factors can be sustained, especially as the country looks ahead to far more complex parliamentary elections in the spring, is an open question. ... A sea change in Bush...
The Australian blog House of Wheels believes it has discovered fundraising links between the John Kerry campaign and the Kosovo Liberation Army, an organization that the Department of Homeland Security appears to label as a terrorist organization. Leigh from HoW links to a heavily-footnoted essay by Andy Wilcoxson at a website defending Slobodan Milosevic, not exactly a source that fills me with a sense of confidence about the material. However, some of the connections Leigh makes appear to point to sloppiness among Kerry's campaign staff, at the least: The leader of the KLA is a man named Hashim Thaci. Thaci, who goes under the nom de guerre "Snake," attended the Democratic Party’s convention in Boston earlier this year. Upon returning from the convention, Thaci told the Albanian-Language KosovaLive agency, "It was a very successful visit at the Democratic Convention, where the PDK [Thachi's political party] had been invited as a...
In an odd twist, the BBC reports that Moqtada al-Sadr's mentor, Iranian Grand Ayatollah Kazem Haeri, has denounced Sadr for fighting US troops and has essentially fired Sadr as his representative in Najaf: A senior religious leader in Iran has severed ties with radical Iraqi Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr for encouraging his followers to fight US troops. Grand Ayatollah Kazem Haeri, one of the top authorities in Shia Islam, said Mr Sadr was no longer his representative in the holy city of Najaf. A spokesman said that Mr Sadr's actions no longer reflected the ideas of the Grand Ayatollah's teachings. But he praised a scheme to disarm Shia militias in Baghdad's Sadr City slum. Haeri went on to blame US and British troops for damage done to shrines in Najaf, but scolded Sadr for mounting armed attacks in the first place. Haeri leads the Shi's from Qom, known for its...
It's not often that an American blogger finds himself mentioned in the foreign press, but yesterday the Guardian's (UK) blogger Simon Jeffery took me to task for criticizing Spain. In my post yesterday, I noted that Spain had captured seven Islamist terrorists planning a major operation in Andalusia, demonstrating that their precipitous withdrawal from Iraq did nothing to improve their security. Appeasement should have been discredited six decades ago, I argued, and Jeffery decided that them's fightin' words, by golly: Taking the temperature of the more right wing blogs, you cannot help but wonder if they were rather the US was fighting its war on terror against France or Spain. The foiling this week of a suspected bomb plot in Madrid led to another round of anti-Spanish outbursts. "Perhaps the Spanish electorate will understand now that appeasing terrorists only leads to more terrorism, a lesson that Europeans learned the hard...
Pakistani officials confirm that a major al-Qaeda operative was captured in Peshawar a few days ago, Agence France-Presse reports today: Pakistani security forces arrested an Egyptian Al-Qaeda operative in the northwestern city of Peshawar bordering Afghanistan, a security official said. The official identified the man as Abdul Rehman and said he was on the most wanted list of the US Central Intleligence Agency. "He is an important Al-Qaeda operative who had been hiding in Pakistan," the official who could not be identified told AFP on Wednesday. The Pakistanis continue to roll up major AQ players in their country, which indicates that the new democratic movement in Afghanistan ill suits them for continued operations. Reuters describes Rehman as a "communications expert" but not a senior man. However, they report that the Pakistanis also captured a more senior AQ leader, Saleh Nauman, ten days ago while he tried to flee Pakistan. The...