JunkYardBlog

HMM

It can't be the July Surprise, because the Pakistanis had nothing to do with it, and because it happened too late to make the deadline...

...but Al Jazeera is reporting that Abu Musab Zarkawi has been captured.

FROM HEZBOLLAH TO HAVANA

Tubby Reifenstahl's film is popular in Castro's workers' paradise:

Michael Moore's anti-Bush documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11" got a prime time airing on Cuban state-run television Thursday.

Fidel Castro interrupted the regularly scheduled broadcasting, as it were, to show the film after it played to packed cinemas for a week, during which Cubans allegedly stood in long lines to see rough DVD copies projected at 120 cinema theaters across the island to what Reuters called "unfailing applause."

F*** 9-11. Terrorists love it! Communists love it! And Democrats love it!

UPDATE: Tubby's been caught in another intentional distortion:

A scene early in the movie that shows newspaper headlines related to the legally contested presidential election of 2000 included a shot of The Pantagraph's Dec. 19, 2001, front page, with the prominent headline: "Latest Florida recount shows Gore won election."

The paper says that headline never appeared on that day. It appeared in a Dec. 5, 2001, edition, but the headline was not used on the front page. Instead, it was found in much smaller type above a letter to the editor, which the paper says reflects "only the opinions of the letter writer."

There's no innocent explanation for this. It's a lie, pure and simple, meant to make it look like Bush stole the 2000 election.

BUSH ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL

President Bush spoke in Springfield, MO today. He hit all the right notes.

I've seen the great decency and the unselfish courage of those who wear our uniform. The cause of freedom is in good hands.

And when these good folks are in harm's way, they deserve the best pay, the best equipment, the best possible training.

That's why last September, when our troops were in combat in both Afghanistan and Iraq, I proposed supplemental funding to support them in their missions. The legislation provided for body armor and vital equipment, hazard pay, health benefits, ammunition, fuel, spare parts. In the Senate, only a handful of what I would call out-of-the- mainstream folks — that would be 12 senators — voted against that legislation. Two of the 12 are my opponent and his running mate.

(BOOING)

He tried to explain his vote by saying, "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it," end quote.

(LAUGHTER)

He's got a different explanation now. One time he said he was proud he voted against the funding. Then he said the whole thing was a complicated matter.

There is nothing complicated about supporting our troops in combat.

Kerry's got nuthin'.

This week, members of the other party gathered in Boston. We heard a lot of clever speeches and some big promises. My opponent has good intentions, but intentions do not always translate to results.

After 19 years in the United States Senate, my opponent has had thousands of votes but very few signature achievements.

During eight years on the Senate Intelligence Committee, he voted to cut the intelligence budget and he had no record of reforming America's intelligence-gathering capability. He had no significant record for reforming education and health care.

On the war:

We have more to do to wage and win the war against terror. America's future depends on our willingness to lead in the world. If America shows uncertainty and weakness in this decade, the world will drift toward tragedy.

This will not happen on my watch.

The world changed on a terrible September morning. And since that day, we've changed the world.

Before September the 11th, Afghanistan served as the home base for Al Qaida, which trained and deployed thousands of killers to set up terror cells in dozens of countries, including our own. Today, Afghanistan is a rising democracy, an ally in the war on terror, a place where many young girls go to school for the first time. And as a result of our actions, America and the world are safer.

Before September the 11th, Pakistan was a safe transit point for terrorists. Today, Pakistani forces are aggressively helping to round up the terrorists and America and the world are safer.

Before September the 11th, in Saudi Arabia, terrorists were raising money and recruiting and operating with little opposition. Today, the Saudi government has taken the fight to Al Qaida and America and the world are safer.

Before September the 11th, Libya was spending millions to acquire weapons of mass destruction. Today, because America and our allies have sent a strong and clear message, the leader of Libya has abandoned his pursuit of weapons of mass destruction and America and the world are safer.

Before September the 11th, the ruler of Iraq was a sworn enemy of America.

He was defying the world. He was firing weapons at American pilots and forcing the world's sanctions. He had pursued and used weapons of mass destruction against his own people. He had harbored terrorists. He invaded his neighbors. He subsidized the families of suicide bombers. He had murdered tens of thousands of his own citizens. He was a source of great instability in the world's most vulnerable region.

I took those threats seriously. After September the 11th, we had to look at the threats in a new light. One of the lessons of September the 11th is we must deal with threats before they fully materialize.

Absolutely right.

I heard part of the speech on the radio. There was no hate or malice, or even anger, in his voice in spite of all the smears his opponents have thrown his way this year. He sounded very relaxed, very happy and in command. He sounded like a man who knows what he wants to do and why he should be re-elected. I could practically hear the smile on his face as he spoke.

In other words, Kerry tried to swing voters his way last night, and President Bush recognizes that Kerry got a swing....and a miss.

WHINERS

I don't like whiners. Never have. And I don't like people who blame everything bad that happens to them on other people. Never have. They're whiners. And I don't like whiners.

So.....

What happened when a certain famous guy fell down while skiing?

He blamed it on the Secret Service agent sworn to protect him.

What happened when a certain famous guy fell down on his bike?

He blamed it on a patch of sand.

What happened when a certain famous guy took some flack for posing in an unflattering picture?

He blamed it on a conspiracy against him.

And what happened when no one like his wife's cookie recipe?

She blamed it on a conspiracy theory, too.

The Heinz-Kerrys are a bunch of whiners. Billionaire, elitist, earned-my-right-to-be-opinionated whiners. And I don't like 'em.

(thanks to Chris Regan and John Rosenberg)

MORE: Doh! Almost forgot one...

When a certain famous politician threw out a pitch that bounced several feet away from the plate and made him look like anything but a retrosexual, what did he do?

He claimed that he "held back." He wanted to be gentle, pitching to a 23-year-old military cop who had just returned from his second tour in the war.

Whiner.

CFR SCARED OF MAKING MULLAHS MAD

The Council on Foreign Relations is trying to make it easier for Iran to get the bomb:

A report by the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations urged the Bush administration to stop any Israeli attempt to strike Iran's nuclear facilities. The council warned that such an Israeli attack would be blamed on the United States and hurt its interests in the region.

"Since Washington would be blamed for any unilateral Israeli military strike, the United States should, in any case, make it quite clear to Israel that U.S. interests would be adversely affected by such a move," the report, entitled "Iran: Time for a New Approach," said.

These people aren't paying attention, even though they claim to be experts on foreign policy. There is a new approach. It's called Caspian Guard. There has been another new approach on display since 9-11. It's called fighting back. Get used to it.

But like the US State Department, the CFR is made up mostly of stability fetishists, prizing the status quo no matter how untenable it is above all else. In their view the "neocons" are heretics who have turned from the faith. In their report they actually express hope that the mullahs will liberalize more or less on their own! That's a fantasy, as is the notion that anything less than a full-court press will stop Iran's nuclear dreams. A credible threat of force--Israeli or American, I don't really care--is key. If they don't think we'll do anything or worse, keep our allies from doing anything, what is to stop them from going nuclear?

The U.S. report, drafted by an independent task force sponsored by the council, said Washington should resolve concerns over Iran's nuclear weapons program by coordinating with the European Union. But the council ruled out any military attack on Iran's nuclear facilities.

"In addition, any military effort to eliminate Iranian weapons capabilities runs the significant risk of reinforcing Teheran's desire to acquire a nuclear deterrent and of provoking nationalist passions in defense of that very course," the task force said. "It would most likely generate also hostile Iranian initiatives in Iraq and Afghanistan."

Heaven forbid we do anything to make the mullahs mad at us.

And in my opinion, the Rubicon of hostility was crossed nearly three years ago, on a beautiful autumn day when death came down from the sky. What we have to do now is first and foremost cut off and then destroy all terror-sponsoring regimes, giving priority to the ones that are capable of producing nuclear weapons.

And that's just what we're doing.

And as response from the WMD watchdog community to my Proliferation Security Initiative article seems to show, even a policy of slow strangulation isn't satisfactory, because it wastes too much time and might make somebody mad. Boo-hoo.

You know what. They're already mad at us, and there's nothing we can do about that. We just have to win.

I AM PROUD TO ADMIT

...that I am a Retrosexual.

A Retrosexual will have at least one outfit in his wardrobe designed to conceal himself from prey.

A Retrosexual knows how to tie a Windsor knot when wearing a tie - and ONLY a Windsor knot.

A Retrosexual should have at least one good wound he can brag about getting.

A Retrosexual knows how to use a basic set of tools. If you can't hammer a nail, or drill a straight hole, practice in secret until you can - or be rightfully ridiculed for the wuss you be.

Check, check, check, and check. Most of the other ones--Check! Especially the ones about DEALING WITH IT.

(via Michelle Malkin)

WHAT IF HE'S RIGHT?

Several readers have sent me links to this Esquire article by, as one reader puts it, a "recovering moonbat." It's a fine article and very much worth reading. Here's a taste:

The people who dislike George W. Bush have convinced themselves that opposition to his presidency is the most compelling moral issue of the day. Well, it's not. The most compelling moral issue of the day is exactly what he says it is, when he's not saying it's gay marriage. The reason he will be difficult to unseat in November—no matter what his approval ratings are in the summer—is that his opponents operate out of the moral certainty that he is the bad guy and needs to be replaced, while he operates out of the moral certainty that terrorists are the bad guys and need to be defeated. The first will always sound merely convenient when compared with the second. Worse, the gulf between the two kinds of certainty lends credence to the conservative notion that liberals have settled for the conviction that Bush is distasteful as a substitute for conviction—because it's easier than conviction.

Here's another taste:

Let's not flatter ourselves: If we do not find it within ourselves to identify the terrorism inspired by radical Islam as an unequivocal evil—and to pronounce ourselves morally superior to it—then we have lost the ability to identify any evil at all, and our democracy is not only diminished, it dissolves into the meaninglessness of privilege.

As I say, this article wasn't written by a Bush fan. The author calls the president an "a**hole" in the first paragraph and peppers the remainder of the article with insults, but nevertheless comes around to believing that Bush is serious about terrorism, which the author agrees is the most serious problem of our time, and thus around to understanding the need to keep President Bush in office. That's a feeling that I've been picking up in personal conversations lately, too. It's almost as if the primaries allowed many reasonable Democrats to take a holiday from the war and take out their fears and frustrations on Bush and the Republicans, never taking seriously the prospect of unseating him in November. But now that the election seems closer and therefore more real, they may be returning to a more serious posture and considering more deeply whether it has been wise to smear the president during wartime, and whether it would be wise to replace him with someone untested as a wartime Commander in Chief.

During the Democrat primaries, a campaign button appeared that seemed to explain why presumptive favorite and political spark plug Howard Dean flamed out so fast: "Dated Dean, Married Kerry." And John Kerry, the unexciting but "electable" candidate who had no core constituency or even belief system of his own, became the nominee. After reading the linked article and talking with some reasonable Democrats lately, and after Kerry's own less than thrilling acceptance speech last night, I'm starting to wonder if there might not be another button appearing in the weeks ahead: "Dated Kerry, Married Bush."

JOHN KERRY IS IRRELEVANT

He just is. Face it.

CAMPAIGN PHOTO OF THE MILLENNIUM

Osama had better pray for mercy from...the Kerry-tubbies!

MR. MULTILATERAL

My first column for TechCentralStation is up. It's about two Bush administration initiatives that are keys to winning the war on terrorism.

MEANWHILE, BACK IN THE WAR

Iran's nuclear program is back up to full steam:

VIENNA -- Defying international concerns, Iran has resumed clandestine work linked to uranium enrichment, testing equipment, and producing a gas that can be used to make nuclear warheads, diplomats said yesterday. The diplomats said Tehran has restarted equipment used to make uranium hexafluoride gas, which, when injected into centrifuges and spun, can be enriched to a level high enough to make the weapons.

While Iran seems only to be testing the machinery, it has apparently produced some of the gas as a side effect, said the diplomats, who are either familiar with investigations by the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency or privy to intelligence. Speaking on condition of anonymity, they said they did not know how much hexafluoride was made and when testing resumed.

The move, coupled with disclosures Tuesday that Iran had restarted building centrifuges, heightened concern that Iran was moving toward full uranium enrichment.

Germany is alarmed:

Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer has said he is concerned about Tehran's latest decision to go ahead with a threat to resume production of nuclear enrichment activity.

Expressing "great concern" over reports that Iran had flouted the international community's warnings and was once again building centrifuges that could be used to make weapons-grade uranium, Fischer on Wednesday cautioned the country against making a "miscalculation."

Under a landmark deal brokered in October with Europe's "Big Three" of Britain, France and Germany, Iran agreed to suspend sensitive uranium enrichment programs, stop making centrifuges, allow tougher inspections and file a complete declaration of its nuclear activities

Since then, experts from the United Nation's nuclear watchdog have discovered omissions in Iran's reporting on its atomic energy program, inspection visits have been delayed and the government has backed away from a pledge to stop all enrichment-related efforts -- a process of purifying uranium for use as fuel for nuclear power plants or weapons.

The mullahs can't be trusted. They have no need of nuclear power, other than to use a nuclear program as a cover to make nuclear weapons.

While the IAEA has found many instances where Iran concealed potentially weapons-related activities, the UN organization says it has no clear evidence that Tehran is trying to build a bomb.

The United States says there is sufficient proof and has accused the international agency of acting too cautiously. Washington accuses Tehran of using its civilian atomic energy program to mask development of nuclear weapons and wants the UN Security Council to take up the issue and possibly impose sanctions.

Time is not on our side.

JIMMY CARTER, RACIST

From an interview with CNN:

WOODRUFF: You're saying that esteem is lost under President Bush, because of President Bush?

CARTER: Absolutely. We've had such a confused foreign policy with demands on other nations. We've alienated almost everyone who offered their support after 9/11, and now we have just a handful of little tiny countries supposedly helping us in Iraq. We need to marginally combine the effort of major allies and minor countries as well in combating terrorism around the world.

Among the "little tiny countries" helping us not only in Iraq but globally is Japan. Japan is home to about 130 million people. It boasts the world's second largest economy, and the world's second richest military. In the Asia-Pacific realm, Japan is the leader. China may be far, far larger and more populous, but Japan is second to none in that region as a power. The Asian-Pacific region revolves not around Beijing or New Delhi, but around Tokyo.

But to Jimmy Carter (and the rest of the Democrats), Japan's unfailing support doesn't count. Why?

They're racists, in the old-school sense. Not hateful bigots, just racists. They look to white Europe, to France mostly, rather than seeing the world for what it is. Europe is fading in importance; Asia is rising, and Japan is leading the way. Japan isn't in Europe, and its people have funny eyes and yellow skin, so Carter and the Democrats think nothing of them and discount their support.

If I'm wrong, come up with a better explanation. But I've been watching the Democrats and how they treat our allies for a long time now, and their typical behavior is to sneer at anyone who does support us (which now includes the UK, Australia, Japan, Poland and South Korea directly in Iraq, along with Russia and 13 others in the PSI, and Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan in Caspian Guard), no matter how important a given ally or its support might be. And the fact is, Japan simply brings more to the table than France these days. It's economically larger and more vibrant. It is strategically positioned to help us where it will matter most over the next few years, which is right off the coast of North Korea. And it wants to help.

But Carter describes is as a "little tiny country." It's the size of California, with half the population of the United States itself. That makes it bigger than France in terms of population, and just a shade smaller in land area. But it's "little tiny" if you're the failed president who gave us the malaise of the 70s, the Iranian mullahcracy, the "legitimacy" of Yasser Arafat, and who hugged Castro and compared Kim Il-Sung to George Washington. Most people tend to give Carter the benefit of the doubt even while being happy that Reagan won in 1980. I don't think Carter even deserves the benefit of the doubt anymore. He lied about the Iraqi link to al Qaeda in the interview linked above, and about WMDs. Just shamelessly lied about it all, after take a shot at our allies.

If it weren't for the fact that the Democrats have a decent shot at taking power this fall, it would be impossible to take them seriously. They don't understand the world, they sneer at our best allies and choose their own allies very poorly. This year, they have trotted out Carter and embraced Michael Moore even while they disdain Japan. Racism--embracing white guys and rejecting non-white allies--is the simplest explanation.

THE HATE-RIOT

I see Tubby Reifenstahl is at it again:

[Michael] Moore, who sat in former President Jimmy Carter's box at the convention Monday night, has been welcomed by wildly enthusiastic audiences at his appearances in Boston. He made his remarks about Republicans during one of those appearances, at a forum sponsored by the left-wing organizing group Campaign for America's Future. The speech drew an overflow crowd; fans stood in line for hours for a chance to hear Moore speak.

"The right wing is not where America is at," Moore said. "Most Americans, in their heart, are liberal and progressive. It's just a small minority of people who hate. They hate. They exist in the politics of hate."

"They're not patriots," Moore said. "They're hate-triots, and they believe in the politics of hate-triotism. Hate-triotism is where they stand, and patriotism is where real Americans stand."

Moore, who predicted victory for Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry — "It's all over but the voting," he said — warned that the Republican Party will do almost anything to keep its hold on power. "They're not going to go without a fight," he said, "and believe me, they are better fighters than we are."

"I mean, they are up at six in the morning trying to figure out which minority group they're going to screw today," Moore continued. "The hate, they eat for breakfast. They are going to fight and they are going to smear, and they are going to lie, and they are going to hate."

As usual, the enemy propagandist is lying. I'm a certified right-winger, and I'm almost never up at 6 am. My usual breakfast is Cheerios--hate doesn't provide the required vitamins. I'm too busy wiping sleep out of my eyes to figure out whom to "screw." As for smearing anyone, it's unneccessary when creeps like Moore provide hard evidence that they are cheering for enemy victory.

THE JUNKYARDBLOG'S NEW MAP(S)

I've been working on a set of graphics for a public talk I'll be giving on the war in a few weeks. Part of that talk will concern the overall strategy the Bush administration appears to have pursued to win the war, and how well that strategy has worked to date. After weighing the entirety of US moves so far, from flash-bang warfare to careful diplomatic alliance building, to law enforcement and economic strategies, I believe I've figured out the outlines of the strategy. It's amazingly simple, sensible, and thus far effective.

It's a squeeze play strategy, aimed at squashing the most vulnerable terror-sponsoring governments in the region of the Middle East first--which also happened to be the most odious and most directly connected to 9-11 and Islamicist terrorism--and cutting remaining terrorist states off from each other to squeeze them until they change their ways or we're forced to take them down. I believe those who think there won't be any more military action in a second Bush term are probably wrong, though military action will remain a secondary tool (I can't answer for a Kerry term, because Kerry appears not to know himself how he will wage war on terrorism beyond platitudes about doing it "better" than the present administration). Alliances are and will remain the primary tool in a Bush-led war. Those who accuse the administration of pursuing a unilateral strategy either aren't paying attention or are trying to score political points at the expense of the facts. The fact is, this administration has constructed two major new alliances which will be with us for a long time.

If we stay the course, we stand a good chance of winning the war within five to ten years, or at least containing remaining terror states to wait out their extinction. The end state will be a more peaceful Middle East that doesn't spawn terrorists and is on a path toward free-market capitalism and democratic self-government.

The graphics I have been developing to explain all of this are posted as a rudimentary slide show here, with explanatory text. Hopefully you'll find them useful. Just click on the link, then use the thumbnails in the frame at the bottom to navigate through the slides. There are only five, so it won't take long.

Note, by the way, that these slides only concern the Middle East. I'm also working on graphics to show successes and threats beyond the region, and developing a comprehensive view of the war to date. We're winning in some areas, sliding in others and threats are gathering in other areas. It's a war, after all, and a global one. There are no straight lines to victory, and it is naive to expect everything to magically fall into place. In World War II we lost the entire Philippines before coming back to retake them on the way to defeating Japan; we invaded Italy (which had nothing to do with Pearl Harbor) on the way to encircling and finally defeating Germany (which also had nothing to do with Pearl Harbor) before finally defeating Japan. That's just how it all worked out. Looking back, though, it's perfectly obvious that there would have been no complete victory without defeating Italy, Germany and Japan. Likewise, this war isn't just about killing and capturing individual terrorists or destroying their mountain hideaways--it's about destroying the environments that spawned them and the states that support them. President Bush told us that in the beginning, but we seem to have forgotten. There have been and will continue to be setbacks and zigzags until we win this war. If you're only concerned with the daily death toll in Iraq or Afghanistan or the latest self-help tip from the 9-11 Commission, you're missing the big picture.

UPDATE: Turkey has received intelligence that al Qaeda is planning a 9-11 style attack there. Which makes perfect sense if you look at the maps: The terrorists want to take a US ally and destabilize it, putting it into play along with the four states already contested. Even if such an attack were to succeed, it's unlikely al Qaeda could turn Turkey against us, but if you're al Qaeda it's worth a shot. What are a few thousand more dead to a group of bloodthirsty terrorists bent on world domination?

SADDAM'S MASS GRAVES

This is the film our troops should see.

Last week in Washington, Iraqi documentary film producer Jano Rosebiani began a cross-country tour of his new “Saddam’s Mass Graves,” a poignant examination of Iraqis who thank President Bush every day for what the filmmaker calls unabashedly the “gift of life.”

Those who have watched Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11” might conclude the corpulent director was from another planet when his film portrayed Saddam Hussein’s Iraq as a modern-day Shangri-la with children dancing in the streets.

Rosebiani reveals a different Iraq. His poignant film displayed for journalists at an event that paired the preview with the live testimony of Iraqis back from the grave – shot and pushed into mass graves only to miraculously survive their wounds and escape.

Rosebiani told NewsMax that he was in discussions with a distribution group in Los Angeles that has expressed interest in getting the provocative new film onto U.S. movie screens.

But if patrons expect the slapstick partisan style of Moore, they should be forewarned that “Graves” offers not a single image of Bush. “I wanted to keep the message absolutely free of politics,” Rosebiani told NewsMax.

And this he does religiously – even cutting tempting footage of gushing families in northern Iraq who have named their new baby sons “Bush,” always politely shaking off the suggestion that Bush is a last name in America.

---

Director-producer Rosebiani interviews long-suffering Iraqis who came under sentence of death for the mere suspicion of opposing the dictator’s Baath party: “They took away the men and boys in trucks -- some of them barefoot and naked - never to be seen again.”

Filmed in cities and towns across Iraq, the film’s horrors include the opening of mass graves discovered in May, 2003, following the defeat of Saddam Hussein’s regime.

There are 270 known mass grave sites in the battered country. Rosebiani tells NewsMax that he suspects his countrymen will find even more – during the course of a painstaking forensic exercise that may take 50 years to complete.

Michael Moore is incapable of making such a film, because it depicts the truth. For the same reason, Moore's fans are incapable of understanding it.

CHILLING

If you belong to a politically incorrect church--one that still teaches basic Biblical Christianity, in other words--there's a good chance leftist activists will be monitoring you soon.

OVERLAND PARK, Kan. (AP) - A recent Sunday found Tina Kolm changing her morning routine. Instead of attending a Unitarian Universalist service, she was at the Lenexa Christian Center, paying close attention to a conservative minister's sermon about the importance of amending the U.S. Constitution to ban gay marriage.

Kolm is one of about 100 volunteers for the Mainstream Coalition, a group monitoring the political activities of local pastors and churches.

The coalition, based in suburban Kansas City, Kan., says it wants to make sure clergy adhere to federal tax guidelines restricting political activity by nonprofit groups, and it's taking such efforts to a new level.

The 47-year-old Kolm, from Prairie Village, Kan., said keeping church and state separate is important to her. She doesn't want a few religious denominations defining marriage - or setting other social policy - for everyone.

"What it's all about to me is denying some people's rights," she said.

Actually, what it's about is citizens informing on other citizens for exercising their freedom of religion, hoping to bring the hammer of the state down on them for the crime of espousing a completely reasonable and traditional point of view. It's the shadow of totalitarianism, forming where it almost always does--on the intolerant, illiberal Left. Since it's cloaked in the issue of gay marriage, I'm sure Andrew Sullivan approves enthusiastically.

Kansas isn't the only place in this election year where church-state separation has become a hot issue, but the Mainstream Coalition's efforts are more intense than most.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State filed a complaint this month with the Internal Revenue Service against the Rev. Jerry Falwell over a column endorsing President Bush on his ministries' Web site. Falwell said the group was waging a "scare-the-churches campaign."

Freedom of speech and freedom of religion, under sustained assault from the left. Persecution of Christians, the real thing, is coming to America folks.

(thanks to Chris)

JACK KEVORKIAN'S SUICIDE BOMBERS

It appears that not all the insurgents/foreign terrorists operating in Iraq are volunteers:

A military official with the U.S. Central Command tells CNN that in one case after an attack, troops found a body with a foot tied with a rope inside a vehicle.

The official says there also is evidence of some individuals having their entire family held by extremists who then force them into suicide car bomb attacks.

ABC News reported the U.S. claims in an interview aired Friday.

In some attacks, suspected bombers have run from their cars and come to U.S. forces, officials said.

In other cases, mentioned by the official, extremists with remote detonators have followed drivers to set off car bombs.

The official also said in one instance, U.S. forces went to a house and captured extremists holding a family hostage until a bombing mission was completed.

U.S. military officials say they have noticed another tactic, to use so-called "weekend jihadists."

This generally refers to using young men from neighboring countries who come to Iraq, and have no money. Then they are pressured into conducting attacks.

If the jihad is based on forced participation--assisted suicide bombings, holding families hostage, etc--it isn't supported by the "Arab street," is it?

MORE: This also means that the terrorist leaders are murdering their own people to try and disrupt Iraqi democracy or kill Americans.

Let's take stock of this enemy:
Exterminationist anti-Semitism--check.
Totalitarian ideology--check.
Enslaving their own people to fight a war they in all likelihood they don't even support or wouldn't support if they had enough facts to understand it--check. The Islamicist terrorist masterminds are essentially Nazis by another name.

As Indiana Jones would say, "Nazis. I hate these guys."

SHE'S BAAAACK!

My take on the return of the poisonous Cynthia McKinney to the halls of Congress is up at National Review Online.

THE TRAITOR'S POISON STARTS ITS WORK

A few weeks back I made a prediction, and it is coming true. I wish I had been wrong. Here's what I wrote:

Say 200 people watch the film [F*** 9-11] Saturday night at Yokota Air Base in Japan. Of that group, say just five people believe it. Do you think they'll just sit on their hands? They will feel like missionaries with a Cause. They'll start up the whispers, the kind of stuff that divides units along believe-it-or-not lines. A kind of cynicism among military members is likely to develop, maybe even between military members and their spouses who are looking for some way to make sense of the war and Moore has provided them the only coherent framework to do that. They don't know that he's full of crap, because by and large they won't take the time to do their homework. It'll all just give them a vague notion that there's something wrong with this war, it's just not right somehow. Never mind what that film may do to the shipboard audiences, separated from their loved ones and cruising into dangerous waters.

And in the face of the very real possibility of Moore's film doing a decent amount of damage to our military's morale in the middle of a shooting war, those White House Rovian fasicsts are lowering the boom on....no one. Ashcroft's America, indeed.

Well, we could do with a bit more of the America John Ashcroft is alleged to have created single-handedly, because Moore's film is making the rounds in the military even on the front lines, among that young audience I described, and it is causing major morale problems:

Michael Moore's film, Fahrenheit 9/11, is making the rounds here at U.S. bases in Kuwait. Some soldiers have received it already and are passing is around. The impact is devastating.

Here we are, soldiers of the 1st Armored Division, just days from finally returning home after over a year serving in Iraq, and Moore's film is shocking and crushing soldiers, making them feel ashamed. Moore has abused the First Amendment and is hurting us worse than the enemy has.

There are the young and impressionable soldiers, like those who joined the Army right out of high school. They aren't familiar w/ the college-type political debate environment, and they haven't been schooled in the full range of issues involved. They are vulnerable to being hurt by a vicious film like Moore's.

There are others who joined for reasons of money and other benefits, and never gave full thought to the issues. For them, seeing this film has jolted them grievously because they never even knew where some of these countries were that we have been serving in. Imagine the impact this film has on them.

And there are those who are hurting from being away from family and loved ones. They are burnt out, already hurting inside from 15 months of duty out here, and now to be hit w/ this film.. it is devastating.

Lastly, there are those like me, who want to explode in anger and rage at this abuse of the First Amendment and the way Moore has twisted reality so harshly.

Specialist Janecek, who is feeling depressed because a close family member is nearing the end of her life, just saw the film today. I saw him in the DFAC. He is devastated. "I feel shitty, ashamed, like this was all a lie." Not only is he looking at going straight to a funeral when he returns home, but now whatever pride he felt for serving here has been crushed by Moore's film. Specialist Everett earlier after seeing the film: "You'll be mad at shit for ever having come here."

And there are others. Mostly the comments are absolute shock at the close connections Moore makes between the Bush family and the Bin Laden family in Saudi Arabia. "Bush looks really really REALLY corrupt in this film. I just don't know what to think anymore," is a common comment to hear. Some of these soldiers are darn right ashamed tonight to be American soldiers, to have been apart of this whole mission in Iraq, and are angry over all that Moore has presented in his film.

We know this is all based on Moore's lies and deceptions. But we, I'm afraid, are a minority. Right now, just days away from what should be a proud and happy return from 15 months of duty in Operation Iraqi Freedom, your U.S. soldiers are coming back ashamed and hurt because of Moore's work.

---

From what I've heard from the soldiers, the things that have them most shocked and upset them are the connections Moore makes between the Bush family and the Bin Ladens. The impression is that Bush is part of a conspiracy that supported the September 11th terrorist attacks. They speak of how Moore makes a convincing case all the way from the 2000 election to now that Bush and Cheney are all about making money. That the September 11th attacks were merely calculated by them as to how they would earn them more money. They speak of the Saudi who was a fellow soldier w/ Bush in the National Guard, and how Moore makes it all look like Bush is more beholden to Saudi interests than US interests.

Moore's commentary and striking video stunts, such as confronting politicians w/ enlistment papers for their kids, of course hurts and affects these soldiers out here badly. These are the ones who have sacrificed much to serve. Moore's stunt is powerful.

I sometimes want to be mad at my fellow soldiers for being susceptible to Moore's distortions, but I can't really blame them. These are good Americans, who have volunteered to serve our country. Nothing says they all have to be experts in Middle Eastern issues and history and politics to serve. That would be silly. ...But this is, of course, the vulnerability that Moore has exploited.

If "Ashcroft's America" really existed, Michael Moore would be in jail right now. But like so much the left has pinned its electoral hopes on this year, "Ashcroft's America" is just one more lie.

As for Moore, instead of languishing in a jail cell contemplating the meaning of "treason," he is yucking it up in Boston this year, not quite a politician but certainly more than a heroic rock star. It's sickening, that such depravity is now celebrated, that an enemy propagandist is embraced by a major political party with a real shot at taking power in the midst of war.

Those of you who didn't expect my prediction to come true, well, I was there once, a young enlisted man among other young enlisted men. I saw how easily a rumor or the smallest little thing could fracture a unit or disturb morale. I saw how much the average ground pounder depends on his sense of pride in mission, pride in self and pride in his unit, really an extension of his family. That kind of pride is necessary to build and maintain a viable volunteer fighting force, but it's also all too easy to disrupt.

Such a disruption was probably in Moore's seditious plan from the start, and he is achieving it. And we're letting him. God help us, because we cannot help ourselves.

IN DEFENSE OF JOHN KERRY...

This blogger has had to wear one of those space geek bunny suits a time or two. It's impossible to look cool, or even sentient, when you're inside one.

That said, John Kerry is a stupid, stupid man. Why?

This blogger had the good sense to make sure there are no pictures of him--anywhere--actually wearing the bunny suit.

John Kerry didn't.

On the other hand, Kerry's political rhetoric sounds increasingly Marxist in tone and content. And given the horrors that Marxism wrought on the last century, there is no defense for that. None at all.

WHERE BEELEZEBUB REIGNS

There are no words to describe this sickening spectacle.

But there are words to put it into context. The slideshow in that link shows what happens when the Israelis strike a terrorist in the Palestinian territories. After the strike, Palestinians swarm what remains of the terrorist's car. They pull trophies from it, which can be anything from bloodied upholstery to part of the terrorist himself. They smear the blood on themselves. One man holds up a charred hand; another, something that looks like a heart. The mass behavior on display in those slides is among the most depraved and disgusting things I have ever seen.

That slideshow is not for the faint of heart, but if you want to see what evil is doing to and through the Palestinians and most importantly through Yasser Arafat, father of modern terrorism, you should view it. And think about the possibility of dialogue or understanding with such people and their leadership.

MORE: Consider also:

The Guardian newspaper is the Bible - perhaps one should say the Koran? - of Islamo-fascist Britain. However, it has recently been lending its opinion pages to one Fuad Nahdi, a leading Islamic "moderate" who publishes Q-News, a magazine for young UK Muslims. When two British Muslims launched a suicide attack in Israel, this is what he wrote in The Guardian of May 2, 2003: "I am not surprised by news of Britain's first suicide bombers. What, however, I find astonishing is that it took place in Tel Aviv, not Manchester." He goes on to say, "We should brace ourselves for the forthcoming intifada on the streets of Birmingham and Detroit."

And Washington, and New York, and Dallas, and Los Angeles, and Chicago, and Atlanta, and Topeka...

SULLIVAN SUCCUMBS TO THE FORCES OF MOOREGORE

Right Wing News does an admirable job of fisking Andrew Sullivan. Not much I can add to it.

I'll admit I was prepared to get brutal on Sullivan, too, when I saw a link to a Sullivan article saying that Kerry is the conservative choice this year.

But rather than just cowboying up to take him down, I went on to other things all day. I read. I tinkered with my car. We had dinner. I tickled my kid, and chatted with my wife. I smoked my pipe.

And then I read Sullivan's "Kerry is the conservative" article. And you know what? He's right. But only if you forget what the terms "conservative" and "liberal" mean today. And only if Kerry gets to wipe out his entire record in public life.

Going by the classical--as opposed to current--definition, Kerry is the "conservative" choice this year. If you want a President who has no idea how to fundamentally change the Middle East so that it stops sending monsters over here to kill us, and who furthermore doesn't even want to come up with an idea because it would be too risky to put himself on the record, John Kerry is your man. If you want someone who has yet to put forth a single rationale for his presidency other than "I'm not the other guy," Kerry is your man. If you want to return to anti-terror policies that have already been tried an failed, Kerry is your man. A classically conservative person wouldn't want to change the Middle East no matter how dangerous it has become, and a classically conservative person wouldn't take the risk of putting his policies on the record, since doing so would only invite scrutiny and criticism.

But other than that, Kerry as a conservative--classical or current definition--is laughable. The truth is, and it's a hard truth, there isn't a conservative candidate for president this year if you're using the current definition of what it means to be a conservative. President Bush has run to the right on national security, in that he actually believes in national security, and to the right on tax policy, and is philosphically a man of the right in many ways. But he is no conservative when it comes to fiscal policy. He talks right but tacks center-left, because he knows that's where the swing votes are--both of them, this year--and because that's where his heart seems to be. Milton Friedman, he isn't.

But Kerry? Other than being too chicken to take a stand and then stick with it, name one single thing that matches the current definition of conservative, which means less government, lower taxes, strong on national defense and tacking to the traditional over the radical on social policy. Kerry's entire record is hard left liberal. He helped the Communists win Vietnam--don't try to sweeten it by saying he did something noble, because he didn't. He helped the Communists win, largely because by his own words he didn't understand the difference between Communism and democracy at the time. He was 27 years old, just in case you're thinking he may have been too young to grasp the intellectual nuances of freedom and liberty as opposed to gulags and forced famine. Then in the 70s and 80s he tried to help the Communists win all around Latin America, going as far as to accuse President Reagan of starting a second Vietnam war in Nicaragua and of picking on farm squad armies in Grenada. One wonders when, if ever, Kerry finally figured out that democracy is good and Communism is bad. We now know that stemming the Latin American Soviet and Cuban adventures was key to winning the Cold War, and Kerry was on the wrong side of that, as a US Senator. I guess you could say he was classically conservative if you stretch the definition a bit, in that he didn't want America to use its power and influence to help free others from Communism. But that doesn't make him a conservative today. It just shows that he either has poor judgment, is too frightened of his own shadow to understand the proper role and use of American power, or he sympathized with the Communists that Reagan was trying to defeat. Or maybe he just never figured out that we're the good guys and the Communists were the bad guys. That's excusable, to an extent: The same problem still afflicts most of the leftwing in academia to this day. But it's not conservative by any definition, and not what I want in a president.

That reluctance to use power showed up again in 1990 and 1991, when the US led the broadest coalition in world history to oust Saddam. Kerry voted against that, though that war was fought for the purpose of freeing Kuwait from Iraq's brutal clutches and keeping the world's economy from falling prey to one madman.

Maybe Kerry just doesn't like to use US power to free non-whites. After all, in Vietnam Americans fought for Asians. In the 80s, Reagan tried to keep brown-skinned Latins free from Communism. In the Gulf War, we were freeing Arabs. Or could it be that Kerry only believes Democrats should lead America's wars? He only protested Vietnam when Nixon led; LBJ never had to deal with Kerry the rabble rouser.

The only foreign policy call Kerry managed to get right in his entire time in the Senate was the vote last year to go to war in Iraq. He voted for that. But since that correct call he has waffled, voting against funding the troops in the field, occassionally accusing the president of lying us into war when Kerry knew perfectly well that such a lie was impossible. And Kerry has until recently kept two discredited Washington huckster-players, Sandy Berger and Joseph Wilson, around as his foreign policy advisors. Berger was central to the failed Clinton policy of treating terrorism as a law enforcement problem when he wasn't busy making sure the ChiComs had access to Los Alamos; Wilson was an out-of-work ambassador to Gabon with enough time on his hands to spend a few days sipping tea in Niger and call it an intelligence mission. What kind of judgment does Kerry exhibit in trafficking with those two? And apparently Wilson is still among Kerry's advisors, more than a week after he has been shown to be an abject liar.

But what's conservative about any of this? By today's definition, nothing. By today's definition, Kerry is a typical illiberal leftwing party hack who only became the nominee because the left's darling, Howard Dean, went a little too far a couple of times in the primaries and Edwards, the other favorite, was just too inexperienced to put at the front of the ticket and appeared too mainstream to get excited about. He's the nominee by default.

But Sullivan misses some deep points in his "Kerry the conservative" piece. He says Bush is a foreign policy liberal, but only if you go by the classical definition, and that definition hasn't described American "liberals" since the death of the real JFK and means little in current parlance. The most "liberal," by which I mean to say the most concerned with human rights on a global scale, foreign policies of the past few decades came from the conservative Reagan administration, in that his policies fostered human rights while at the same time tried to squash Communist tyranny, which was the world's worst human rights abuser. Today's liberals don't trust American power, don't believe in America as a force for good in the world and are very reluctant for America to defend herself or her allies--as long as a Republican happens to be president. That is not liberalism. It's partisanship, a particularly poisonous variety that has hamstrung us throughout this war. And Kerry is for most part from that strain of liberalism, making him a leftist as opposed to a liberal. Bush, on the other hand, is a conservative on foreign policy. Conservatives believe America has been entrusted with great power and the responsibility to use it wisely--but use it, not just keep it and admire it. Conservatives have been the most daring, bold and courageous force in American foreign policy since the Nixon administration, with the leftists from Carter forward seeking accomodation and even appeasement with America's enemies. That's Kerry's record. Not liberal. Not conservative, either. Leftist.

Labels at some point loose their meaning in discussions such as this one, don't they? Bush the compassionate conservative finds himself nation-building in two particularly troubled spots on the globe, a fact which as near as I can figure Sullivan dings him on. No direct mention of why--that one harbored al Qaeda and had to be overthrown; that the other was run by Saddam Hussein and in a post 9-11 world his tenure had to end. It's just a bullet point for Sullivan to "prove" that Bush is a "foreign policy liberal." But by which definition, old liberal or new? Sullivan seems not to care. He just wants to build a rationale for selling Kerry as a conservative, because Sullivan sees himself as a conservative and has turned against Bush because of the latter's stand on gay marriage.

Likewise Sullivan's treatment of Bush, Kerry and the adherence to allies. Kerry says he'll just magically rebuild our alliances with the French and Germans, and Sullivan just goes ahead and concedes. Sullivan is like just about every single pundit on the planet, only looking at the Iraq war and the scattered UN votes on it when examining our relationships with our allies. What about the cooperation we do get from our allies--even the hateful ones such as France--in Afghanistan? What about the fact that Japan and South Korea, allies every bit as important as France, support us to the hilt on Iraq? Do they not count because they're Asian? Japan's economy is larger than France's, it spends more on its military and is not in a post-modern state of decay like France. South Korea is an economic dynamo and a military tiger. Why don't these two count? What about the cooperation we're getting from them and the French and Germans and Russians on North Korea through the PSI? Why don't any of these self-apppointed experts like Sullivan ever actually do their homework and figure out that the Bush war strategy is much deeper, broader and far more intelligence than anything the Democrats--or other Republican administrations for that matter--have come up with in years? Why are they all--left and right--so slow to figure this out? And why do they think Kerry will do half as well, when he hasn't bothered to lay out any plan worth looking into and when his base thinks with a 9-10 state of mind? Does Sullivan seriously think that a president who takes the White House on platform of Not The Other Guy will have any kind of political capital to spend dissing his rabid leftist base on Iraq, when that base for the most part wants an immediate pullout, if not reparations paid to Iraq for our invasion? Kerry's foreign policy advisors had their chance in the last administration and their plans amounted to nothing. And Kerry wanted to bring them back to power. Where's Sullivan on that?

The truth is, Sullivan has become less and less readable over the last year. His hatred of religious conservatives--me, my family, most of my friends, the people I generally associate with--has become white hot in its intensity, and has blinded him. He can't see past his own lifestyle politics far enough or clearly enough to know that we're not mullahs in waiting. He seems to think defeating us is just as good as defeating the maniacs in Gaza and Tehran. He can't see that all of our recent attempts to stop gay marriage have been defensive actions, and that his side's coups in San Francisco and judicial overreach in Massachussetts have forced us to act. We're conservatives; we didn't want to amend the Constitution and for the most part still don't if we can avoid it. We didn't pick this fight; he and his side did, and they have painted us into a corner where only an amendment will stop them. But to him we deserve the name-calling and the smears. It's just so preachy and tiresome.

But now he's trying to fool readers into thinking that Kerry may be more conservative than Bush. That amounts to deception. He seems to be trying to fool his readers into thinking there is some grand rationale behind his eventual and inevitable endorsement of Kerry. There won't be, though. Sullivan just hopes that Kerry's bland non-stands on Sullivan's single issue--gay marriage--will either translate into overt support or at least benign neglect. Either way, Sullivan wins.

Don't let him fool ya, folks. Andrew Sullivan is this close to endorsing John Kerry for president, and he's also this close to dropping his support for the war on terrorism as led by George W. Bush. It has nothing to do with Kerry vs Bush as a wartime leader; it's still obvious even to Sullivan that Kerry isn't a leader in any sense of the term, wartime or peacetime. It's all about Sullivan's identity politics, politics that will soon have Sullivan siding with the forces of MooreGore.