Michal Yon's Latest...

Michael Yon posts a long dispatch for his new readers relating how he came to be in Iraq, the mistakes he's seen, as well as the successes. If you haven't read him before start now, he is one of the absolute best reporters over there. if you have read his stuff be SURE to read this one. It is a very important post and very edifying.

Excerpting can do it no justice and only detract from the many faceted picture he paints. It also links to many of his most important articles.

Read the whole thing.

Update: Huntress reports that he's not just getting picked up by FOX news online, but by NBC as well.
Neither is paying him, he's still quite independent.

Bias? Ignorance? or Biased Ignorance?

Meryl Yourish has a long series of posts on how anti-Israel bias reflects upon the Temple Mount controversy, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Viking May Have Missed Martian Life

According to one Dr. Schulze-Makuch the Viking probes sent to Mars in the 1970's may well have missed martian life because their instruments were looking for lifeforms very unlikely to have evolved on Mars. I fact the tests were likely absolutely lethal to any Martian bacteria that might exist.

This interesting and promising hypothesis is, of course, given the worst possible spin by CNN.

Scientist: NASA found life on Mars - and killed it

Preemption interplanetary...

I for one am shedding no tears over the fact that earth children will never have to cower in fear of fierce Martian tripods.

COMMENCE PANIC ON MY MARK!!! TYPEFACE TO RED!! BLINKY LIGHTS TO CRISIS SETTING NOW!!

The Drudge Report has announced that Israel is going to nuke Iran.

ISRAEL has drawn up secret plans to destroy Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities with tactical nuclear weapons.
Two Israeli air force squadrons are training to blow up an Iranian facility using low-yield nuclear “bunker-busters”, according to several Israeli military sources.

"secret"

I don't think that word means what you think it does.

This is certainly serious and worrisome but, my stock disclaimer notwithstanding, there are 3 reasons why I think the blinking Drudgereport blue-lights and above-the-fold breathlessness hysteria is unwarranted.

1The costs for Israel in such an attack even barring Pakistani involvement are going to be severe: Latent antisemitism, Europes Oil Dependancy, the feckless corruption of the UN, and Europes tolerance with any despot who will utter the right egalitarian platitudes and various other factors including an abominable double standard in the press coverage have Israel already teetering on pariah status. An attack such as this would get Israel the same diplomatic cold shoulder as South Africa in the late '80s, US security council veto or not.

2This would not be armageddon even if it happened. Hitting Irans nuclear sites with bunker-busting ground penatrating nukes would release less radiation than many of the above ground tests we set of in our own country in the '50s (*). Despite the propoganda putsch of Al-Jazeera and the media in general Israel does have a good record of trying to minimize civillian casualties. There is unlikely to be a response in kind from France Russia China India the US or the UK. So as terrible a thing as this would be for those in the proximity of Irans ill-concieved nuclear infrastructure it would be very unlikely to initiate global nuclear war.



3The fact that this is being leaked indicates 2 things, perfidy in the Israeli military or a calculated message. In other words warning/ red-flag whatever. The latter seems more likely...at this time. Glenn Reynolds pithilly points out another aspect to this.... I'm pretty sure that if they do they won't leak it first. They didn't leak the Osirak raid, or the Entebbe plans, or . . . . Well, you get the idea.


So the momentary freak-out response of certain press outlets seems to be a bit over the top.
More on this at the Moderate Voice, Captain's Quarters and Wizbang


OK so lets go play...

Ummm...no.

This is not impossible and may not even be unlikely in the longer run.

One quibble with Capt. Ed: Of course they would deny this, even if true; it would be an attack on a sovereign nation and just the plans could present Iran with a casus belli. Does anyone see Ehud Olmert as the man most likely to launch such a war?

Casus Belli?
Iran has announced that it does not recognize Israels right to exist, It has sworn to wipe Israel from the face of the planet. I has sent it's proxies to murder and kidnap Israelis, firing rockets into civillian towns and supplied them with Iran's most advanced weaponary. And now it is on the cusp of having its most advanced weaponary split atoms....I'd say Casus Belli already exists, the Iranians have quite adequately provided it with no help from the Israelis.

If (and that is a big "if") this happened one must also ask if letting Iran have nuclear weapons is any better an option.

The Iranians began their regime with terrorism they support terrorism around the world hate us with almost as much fervor as they hate the Jews. On a the theological front they see themselves on the cusp of taking the mantel of Islamic expansionism back from their greatest competition (Sunniism...which got a boost from the antics of AlQuaeda). In as little a 2 years (perhaps sooner) they will have nuclear weapons with Pakistan, and North Korea also running around as loose cannons, a nuke going off here in Hampton Roads, in New York of the District of Columbia would even have some plausable deniability.

We are talking about MLLIONS of deaths here. That is if they get the bomb.

.....so if this terrible step is taken what then?

In reason #2 as to why one should not panic yet, I mentioned a list of all the countries with full nuke capability.....except Pakistan.
Pakistan is one heartbeat away from becoming what Iran wants to be, a purveyor of nuclear weapons, the arab world openly cheered the "Islamic bomb" and with or without even Musharrif's admitedly imperfect arestor switch on the designs of many of the mullahs in the country and members of Pakistans intel services, (who put the Taliban in power BTW) that there is a possibility that an attack by the US and Israel could push some in the country to launch a strike or release some of these weapons to unsavory elements...if they haven't been already.




This is not the doomsday scenarios of the cold war with tens of thousands of nukes flying across the northern hemisphere destroying nearly all cities and enveloping the planet north of the equator in a frigid and radioactive little ice age ....but it is darned bad. Regards that (*)asterix in point 2, ground bursts tend to release orders of magnitude more fallout than airbursts, so any bunker buster however "clean" it is designed would likely have a greater short term fallout problem than, say, Hiroshima.

One argument against military action is that it would radicalize the Iranian regime....but I do wonder exactly HOW radical they need to be before some people will determine that that cost/benefit reasoning no longer applies....they think that the Holocaust as a PR ploy pulled by the dirty zionist Jooooooz!(tm) who rule the world. The Iranians are killing Israeli citizens as we speak, via Hezbollah rocketry. They are killing our soldiers pretty oppenly in Iraq, they are supporting terrorists....they want nukes.
This is pretty damned radical.


A few more points to ponder:

The positioning of multiple US carriers in the Arabian Sea.

The appointment of Admiral Fallon to lead a ground war in Asia.

Any Israeli strike upon Iran will involve considerable aquiesence by the US simply because it will involve passage through huge swaths of US controlled airspace and midair refueling therein. It is not inconcievable that it could be a "joint op" to varrying degrees. Certainly given the American blood Iran has spilled in Iraq and Lebanon and their support for terrorists stymying their nuclear ambitions is in US interests though the costs for us both meaningful(closure of the Hormuz straits, oil at 130 dollars a barrel, possible santions) and irrelevant (sanctimonious fingerwagging by hyppocritical, panzyass, Chaimberlainesque Euros) would be steep indeed.

IF this came to pass, it would be a terrible thing. But it may not be the worst posible outcome.....

Like Iraq , and everything else on the plate handed the US Government after 9/11, the situation in Asia and the 'stans is a buffet of bad worse and terrible choices, with few if any good ones. What is not recognized by many of those who are quick to criticize the choices made is that the absolute worst decisions are often the most tempting as they involve doing nothing or engaging in the smug cathartic security of endless talk....while monstrous evil transpires, (See Rawanda, Darfur)but there is no flow chart for sucess, and those who oppose us for reasons both misguidedly noble and obscenely evil are not generally incompetents.
The future is always an unlit road, but our future is a bit more complicated than that.
Our enemies are hard to detect and tend to be quite cunning. Our intelligence apparatus has not covered itself in glory vey often, thus we are often left fighting fires in the dark, but to stop means the whole of civilization burns down.


I am not optimistic about this year, but Armageddon is not at hand and hysteria does not in any way help us deal with the dark days that may well be ahead.

Update: Instapundit links to this piece...which makes some related points, though I must point out, though, that even the Democratic leadership has come out gainst Iranian nukes...what they intend to do is whats unclear.

Photoshop Follies.....

Gates of Vienna posts this view of the destruction in Beirut which which shows how cropping an image can remove context.....
Heh....

In all seriousness this is a troubling (though not suprising) story.


There has been much ado about this over the last several years though such blatant (and crappy) photoshops are rather new. Reuters has a generally anti-western bias in a lot of its reporting, though it is likely this is just Bo-Bo provincialism at work rather than (as some hotheads imply ) being on the jihadists payroll.

However, over at the always eclectic, and generally thoughtful Ghost Blog, Memewarrior Matoko seems upset with the attention being given to this by the right:

......Personally, i think the wedding dress and toys posed poignanatly in front of the rubble of lebabnon merely represent "art shots", a sort of conceptual art designed for visual impact. Not really a faithful visual recording of something that randomly occurred. Adnan Hajj's Beirut photoshop enhanced the visuals to portray the destruction of south beirut more dramatically. These pictures are for sale in a competitive market.......


Which is all well and good for ART or even editorials, but this is being presented as news. Yes, the pictures are for sale in competitive markets and one of those is the market of ideas in a war of ideas. I am not seeing a similar number of mistakes and 'artsy visual impact enhancements' that put the Jews in a similarly sympathetic light, so getting upset about this is not hysterical as is suggested in the above linked post.

The Palastinians and Hezbollah have a long history of this sort of thing.
So being suspicious is not hysterical.

Photoshopping the Beirut skyline to make the devastation look far worse when Israel is making considerable efforts to be as prescise as possible in their bombing is not art, it is dishonest yellow journalism and is playing directly into the hands of the Jihadists.


......Just as jihadwatch sees "dhimmitude" in the bend of a blade of grass, the rightside blogverse is seeing hizb' propaganda and info war covert ops in every image......


The enemies we (and Israel) are fighting depend on, thrive on, indeed, grow on this sort of propaganda. It doesn't really matter if this in no way done by Hezbollah, it serves their purposes and they can use it. Hezbollah is very good at this sort of thing, it is what they do. It is how a group of antisemitic thugs, murderers and terrorists who hide amongst children, draw fire upon families and in fact started this current conflict can have support rom the very people they have brought hell upon. They are masters of using this and to call attention to misrepresentations that play into the hands of those same murdering thugs is neither paranoid nor delusional.
To underestimate ones enemy, however, is.

Sometimes a picture is just a picture

A picture is indeed often just a picture, but a picture tells a thousand words and when pictures lie the truth often drowns.

More on this here, here, here, here, and a very link rich roundup here.

Oh and Major, I particularly want you to click HERE .

Because I'm just such a sad, petty, digital cracker. ;)

The Department of Ewww....

Over at Pajamas Media I was scrolling through their news reports regards the war.

I came across this map.

Notice the country thats to the south of Lebanon....

Good Grief!

It might as well be Malabar.

Shepard Smith SHUT UP!!

I have generally liked Shepard Smith of FOX News.
Now however, he has gone and made an asshat of himself. I was watching him broadcast from Israel last night on the rocket bombardment of an Israeli town. He gave the street he as on and the distance he was from a hospital.


He then reported that a rocket had landed very close to his position....and GAVE THE DISTANCE AND BEARING OF THE HOSPITAL TO THE ROCKET IMPACT. A bit later anothe rocket landed....closer to the hospital which he dutifully reported....this nonsense continued.

Shep...this is called artillery spotting.
You are letting Hezbollah know where their fire is landing so they can correct the aim of the next salvo. Don't give me the "They don't watch FOX." nonsense. If they are smart, they have CNN,BBC, FOX, MSNBC AlJazeera and everything else they can get running simoultaneously on seperate sets just waiting for some reporter to let slip this sort of info.

Perhaps you would be happier with a gig at the New York Times....

"To A Dark Place Does This Path Lead."

There has been much handwringing over the New York Times aparrant blowing of national security secrets recently. (link requires registration)

There is a good reaction to the NYT explanation for this wretched article here, here, here, here and here.

For my part, I'm horrified.

These unelected, prima-donna Bo'Bo's have not only compromised a program that they admit was legal and reportedly effective, the have played Russian roulette with not only national security, but the first amendment as well.

"Huh? How's that?" asks the reader.

NEARLY ANY PRECEDENT THAT IS SET BY THIS FIASCO IS BAD.

If nothing happens and there are no consequences for the 'Times or its informants, then this sort of thing will keep happening, the aura of 'untouchable royalty' that causes them to feel that they can do this with impunity will grow and they will eventually publish something so big they get millions of people killed (assuming this does not do so indirectly).

If, as is being proposed by some hotheads, and the 'paper of record' is prosecuted for espionage under the espionage act then the camels nose will be even further under the tent on the sort of press censorship that will make the prudish asshats at he FCC look like the writers for South Park...(but without their talent). Given the inevitable racheting and empire building of govt. administrators, the ultimate implications for talk radio as well as netroots campaigns and barren unvisited blogostanic wastelands like this are troubling. This seems odd to some calling for prosecution of the Times editors, as at at first blush national security would not seem to be involved in any of those things, but as we have seen with political corectness and hate speech legislation (and willie-nillie classification of information) what beauraucrats decide constitutes a public menace can be broad indeed.

The best option at this point might be to revoke the NYT's press credentials and find, then prosecute, the jackasses who leaked this in the first place. That sets up it's own set of very troubling issues, regards whistleblowers, but is likely the best response to the bad situation that the NYT's frothingly stupid lack of judgement has dropped upon us.

This bitch of it is that we DO need a free press constantly nagging and pushing for information, and there ARE things that need scrutiny (like the Patriot Act, secret tribunals and other things), as an unacountable government is or soon becomes a tyrrany. My great fear is that this terribly irresponsible act on the Times part may not only endanger us indirectly (by aiding Al-Quaeda financing) but may set the stage both legislatively and in the publics mind for a very troubling slippery slope.

Update: For some reason my draft posted initially.All the links now work. Also added 2 very good Anchoress posts to the list of above links.

What if They Threw a Revolution and No one Cared...

Gateway Pundit is still on the Iranian protests like ugly on a moose.

Nothing on CNN, FOX or MSNBC as of 6:00pm Sunday.

Ignoring this story is criminal, this is a huge story and for all its tragedy it shows that Muslim people WILL fight for freedom and against their nuttball governments. But that's not a story they want to tell.

Instapundit has more on the implications of the story they will cover and will run into the ground for the next year if it is true. I am not as convinced that this atrocity happend as is being presented as I was the other day. Part of the reason for that is stuff like this and most of all this.....

....dishonest, lazy, and playing into the hands of the enemy.

Much like the non-coverage of the uprising they are ignoring, that could make the world a far better place if only people knew to give support.

On the Suit Against Moore...

Odd, but as much as I detest Michael Moore, I'm not sure this is a good thing.

While it is certainly true that Michael Moore is a waste of skin that could be far better uttilized by burn victims, I worry about the precedent that could be set.

Yes Moore lied (that's not news), and yes he twisted a good mans words (that's what he does). But the idea that someone can sue for a news report that makes them look bad, is troublesome.

A few months ago I had a conversation with some rather left leaning aquaintances. They took on the most condecending provincial & arrogant tone when talking about red state types who, in their view, vote the way they do out of ignorance, and a lack of appreciation for the obvious superiority of their betters (that would be the left). There were some other rather scary things said that I will not repeat here. Suffice it to say several in this rather likeable and intelligent group had been utterly consumed by BDS. Which is sad, but a topic for another post.


Now if one did an investigative piece on a similar group, got all the proper releases signed, and released into theaters MOONBATS!! THEY LIVE AMONGST US!! could they then sue for presenting them in an unflattering light?

There is little comparrison between Moores deciet and the above scenario, but the far left has little compunction about stiffling unhelpful speech. And if this soldier wins and a precedent is set, then I can easily see anyone who does an expose' on DU type behavior getting their asses sued, particularly if they are marginally capitalized.

This smacks of the UK libel trials. Unentended consequences and all that...

It's 2:00 AM. I'm probably missing something....what am I missing?

Well, I'm gone for a month and everything goes to hell.....

South Park is censored.

Lots of links at the above Malkin post.

Nice to see a social conservative like Malkin come around on the show. I guess bhurkas and clittorectomies are more of a problem than profanity...priorities and all that .

I missed the episode dammit...though last weeks was quite good.

This is two times in a month that Comedy Central has knuckled under to threats, (the first being the Scientology broo-haha)yet they have had no trouble at all with the Christ scat scene at the link above.

Hypocrisy or cowardice?
Either way, not a good thing.

On the 'Cartoon War'

A decent overview of the Fatwa of the Toons here.

What caught my eye last week though was Hugh Hewitts take which is a bit different here. Hugh points out that the cartoons WERE offensive to muslims. Given the number of burned embassies and murders in the aftermath of say, "Piss Christ" that horrid dung painting of Mary, and any number of afronts to Christians the sneering, bigoted, arthouse left has perpetrated over the last few years, he....
oh wait....
that number was zero....

However, while I'm not persuaded by the main thrust of his argument, he does have an overall point which is valid and not getting a lot of play.

While this war is in some ways a war of civilizations (and one that's been going off and on for over a thousand years), to the extent we can diffuse that component we are doing a good thing. An ethically, stratigically and morally SOUND thing.

The President has gone out of his way to declare that this is NOT a war on Islam. His Afgani Barber demonstrating that he trusts Muslims with sharp pointy objects around his head. This also is one of the reasons for the campaign in Iraq, that is, to bring this HUGE swath of the worlds population into a modern age.

If we can avoid convincing the muslims that we are a trancendental threat to their religion they will look less favorably to the Al-Quaeda types that are a trancendental threat to their lives.

On the other hand I absolutely stand with the buy Danish movement, I have no problems with people boycotting either,it is a peacful protest that is far preferable to blowing things up, but that is a two way street.

And on the gripping hand, "The Major" (everyones favorite "irasci-belle" )has a really good couple of posts on this topic here and here.

She makes an important point: "Tell me, why should moderate Muslims be just like us?"
Go read the whole thing...and follow the links there and read them too.

Then go back to Ghost Blog and just scroll for a bit. Everyone should do that from time to time.

The Difference Between Reporters and......

HUMAN BEINGS is hinted at in the third story down on this Washington Post page.

It seems that a reporter doing a story on a pedophile ring convinced one of the young boys being molested to give up drugs, stop putting out, and referred him to a lawyer.

Why, you may ask, does this good deed bother me?

Because the reporter (Kurt Eichenwald) is under fire for having "...crossed the line from observer to participant."
Mr. Eichenwald says he knew he would be in hot water for this.
Well fine, if the thing that separates reporters from the rest of us is that they dare not lift a finger to do good lest they taint the story then I guess that Mr. Eichenwald has violated that and be cause of this transgression pedophiles are being rounded up and their victims are getting help.
I guess Mr. Eichenwald isn't cut out to be a reporter.

FINE!! Allow me extend a warm welcome to Kurt Eichenwald for ceasing to be a reporter and joining us in the human race.
We can use more of his kind.

Oh This was Tacky......

Malkin reports on the hatchet job the Old Grey Lady did on a fallen leathernecks last letter home.


This was damned wrong!