February 13, 2007

Iran Implicated

06-13-2007 Update: This Daily Telegraph story now appears to be all but completely fabricated. Burning the Smoking Gun.

This is the Steyr HS50, a single-shot bolt-action rifle of the shell-holder type, chambered in .50 BMG. You can get one if you pass a NICS background check and have $5,599.99 to spare (or you can get it on sale for$3,999.99), plus another $1,000 or more for one of the handful of scopes than can withstand the recoil of such a rifle, and of course, the cash needed for the custom-made .50 BMG cartridges these rifles digest (military-grade 50 BMG ammo, designed for machine guns, is not designed for the long-range accuracy these precision rifles demand).

Field & Stream had a nice write up about the growing number of American shooters who use rifles of this caliber and design for long-range marksmanship competitions and hunting.

Today's article in the U.K. Telegraph is far more disturbing. It seems that Iran purchased 800 of the Steyr HS50 rifles pictured above in 2006, and to date, more than 100 have been captured in Iraq.

Say hello to the smoking gun.

Austrian sniper rifles that were exported to Iran have been discovered in the hands of Iraqi terrorists, The Daily Telegraph has learned.

More than 100 of the.50 calibre weapons, capable of penetrating body armour, have been discovered by American troops during raids.

The guns were part of a shipment of 800 rifles that the Austrian company, Steyr-Mannlicher, exported legally to Iran last year.

The sale was condemned in Washington and London because officials were worried that the weapons would be used by insurgents against British and American troops.

Within 45 days of the first HS50 Steyr Mannlicher rifles arriving in Iran, an American officer in an armoured vehicle was shot dead by an Iraqi insurgent using the weapon.

Over the last six months American forces have found small caches of the £10,000 rifles but in the last 24 hours a raid in Baghdad brought the total to more than 100, US defence sources reported.

It will be very difficult for Iran's apologists on the American far left to call these captured rifles "spurious" evidence or "groundless assertions and half-truths." The fact that 12% of the rifles purchased by Iran have been captured in Iraq sure sounds like evidence as strong as "videotape of the Ayatollah Khamenei himself attaching tailfins to one of these things and putting it in a box labeled "Baghdad -- ASAP."

No doubt Huffington Post contributer Cenk Uygur will soon be breathlessly telling us that since he's never heard of the country of Iran, this can't be true.

No, there is no way that the apologist left can blame this on the "Bush regime." Iran's government officially purchased these long-range rifles, and within 45 days of their delivery, one of these rifles was used to kill an American soldier in Iraq.

As Ed Morrissey stated this morning:

Pardon the pun, but this is literally the smoking gun. We can trace these weapons from its manufacturer directly to the Iranian government. The quantity in which they have been found in insurgent bases precludes any explanation that a few just got mislaid; they obviously have been transferred from an Iranian state organization to the terrorists in Iraq. It's the clearest evidence of Iranian involvement in attacks on Americans. The involvement of the mullahcracy is undeniable, and it is a direct retort to those who keep claiming that Iran has no stake in Iraqi instability.

The question of course, is what we can and should do in response to not only Iran's shipping these rifles into Iraq, but the heavier weapons, such as Iranian-manufactured 81mm mortar ammunition and Iranian-manufactured Explosively-formed projectiles (EFPs) that have been used by insurgents to kill more than 170 coalition soldiers.

Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit offers suggestions:

We should be responding quietly, killing radical mullahs and iranian atomic scientists, supporting the simmering insurgencies within Iran, putting the mullahs' expat business interests out of business, etc. Basically, stepping on the Iranians' toes hard enough to make them reconsider their not-so-covert war against us in Iraq.

Hugh Hewitt, upon reading Reynolds' post, comments:

If we know that Iran is killing American soldiers, if we don't punish that action is some way, the killing will not only continue, it will increase.

Hewitt's comment is as dead-on accurate as one of the .50 BMG bullets Iran is putting in the hands of anti-Iraqi forces. Unless the Iranian government is made to feel the pain of supplying arms, money, training, and personnel to fight America soldiers and the Iraqi government, then they will continue with their attacks.

Reynolds is also correct in his suggested approach of what I'd consider a "soft war" campaign of destabilizing the mullahcracy in Iran.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:39 PM | Comments (11) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Edwards' Bigoted Blogger Resigns

Just when it mattered least, Amanda Marcotte resigned from the John Edwards campaign:

I was hired by the Edwards campaign for the skills and talents I bring to the table, and my willingness to work hard for what’s right. Unfortunately, Bill Donohue and his calvacade [sic] of right wing shills don’t respect that a mere woman like me could be hired for my skills, and pretended that John Edwards had to be held accountable for some of my personal, non-mainstream views on religious influence on politics (I’m anti-theocracy, for those who were keeping track). Bill Donohue—anti-Semite, right wing lackey whose entire job is to create non-controversies in order to derail liberal politics—has been running a scorched earth campaign to get me fired for my personal beliefs and my writings on this blog.

In fact, he’s made no bones about the fact that his intent is to “silence” me, as if he—a perfect stranger—should have a right to curtail my freedom of speech. Why? Because I’m a woman? Because I’m pro-choice? Because I’m not religious? All of the above, it seems.

As ever, Marcotte just doesn't get it.

Bill Donohue may have been the catalyst bringing her anti-Christian, anti-Catholic bigotry to a national audience, but Amanda Marcotte was targeted because she was and is an unrepentant bigot, and for no other reason. Period.

Marcotte attempts to shift the blame to Bill Donohue, a bigot in his own right (his views on Judaism turn the stomach), but the reality is that Marcotte and Donohue are flip sides of the same vile coin.

Despite her protests, Marcotte's free speech was never curtailed. It was in fact her exercise of her free speech--her own bigoted words spread far and deep across her person blog over an extended period of time--that was responsible for the controversy surrounding her hiring. What Marcotte did not understand then, and either does not understand, or refuses to acknowledge now, is that free speech is not freedom from responsibility for those opinions you chose to exercise. Marcotte apparently thinks that "free speech" means she has the "right" to denigrate and offend others without those others having the ability to exercise those same free speech rights in protest. She wants freedom to be a critic without having that same critical eye cast in her direction. It is a double standard that she seeks, and nothing less.

Marcotte's resignation post also admits what many of us thought about her earlier apology. It was insincere; a blatant and calculated lie meant to excise her from criticism. She stated in her apology that:

My writings on my personal blog Pandagon on the issue of religion are generally satirical in nature and always intended strictly as a criticism of public policies and politics. My intention is never to offend anyone for his or her personal beliefs, and I am sorry if anyone was personally offended by writings meant only as criticisms of public politics. Freedom of religion and freedom of expression are central rights, and the sum of my personal writings is a testament to this fact.

Her statement now?

The main good news is that I don’t have a conflict of interest issue anymore that was preventing me from defending myself against these baseless accusations. So it’s on.

Marcotte now admits that she only issued her apology on the Edwards blog in a cynical attempt to keep her job. She knew her comments on her personal blog were never "satirical in nature and always intended strictly as a criticism of public policies and politics." Now that she is free of the Edwards campaign, she fully intends to revert back to form. "It's on."

The problem for Amanda Marcotte isn't that the criticisms of her writings were baseless. The problem for Amanda Marcotte is that the criticisms exposed precisely who she is.

It remains now to be seen if Marcotte joins the Ku Klux Klan. Not for the bigotry, you understand.

She just seems to love the idea of a burning cross.

Update: More reaction from Ace, Bryan, Glenn, Joe, Jeff, and Michelle.

A good cross-section of blog reactions at Memeorandum.com.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:07 AM | Comments (19) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

February 12, 2007

Name That Weapon

Michael Yon has a question for his readers: What the heck is this?

As the Drudge link seems to have fried Yon's server momentarily, here's the low-resolution version he emailed me this morning as he was trying to ID it.

Photo property of Michael Yon. Swiped pending permission.

Funky, isn't it?

It looks fearsome, but don't plan on buying one: this homemade weapon was pulled from a captured ammunition cache in Iraq.

What is it? Here is what I told Mike this morning when he asked for my opinion:

I want to start by saying that without being able to get other angles and actually take the thing apart, what follows is purely unadulterated speculation, and perhaps laughably wrong.

That out of the way, I think my original, joking assessment calling this a potato gun might not be too far off.

This appears to have a crudely manufactuered wood front grip and stock, and the size of the holes in both to me suggest that they might have used nuts, bolts and washers to put this thing together... we're not talking a weapon designed by experts, or a weapon designed to handle much in the way of pressure. The welded together scope mount is probably not "true," and if you tried to adjust it, it would probably pull you off target. Based on what I can see, I'd suggest the scope is mostly for show, not performance.

The plunger-type trigger to me suggests a friction ignitor, once again suggesting a potato gun, as does the larger of the two tubes, which suggests a combusion chamber leading to the smaller front tube, which is the barrel.

With nothing else to go on, I really think it is a tater gun, though perhaps one with serious intentions.

If you've got a tube of sufficient strength to handle a decent amont of propellant without detonating, I'd guess it could be used as a crude launcher, perhaps being used to toss molotov cocktails a little further or with a little more velocity or accuracy. If it wasn't found in a cache, I'd think it was a complete joke.

Feel free to drop your guesses of what it might be used for in the comments.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 04:22 PM | Comments (73) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

None So Blind

"There are none so blind as those who will not see."

--Various

Some of the deep thoughts of HuffPuffer Cenk Uygur, regarding the Iran weapons presentation released over the weekend:

Then the officials made the highly dubious claim that 170 US troops have been killed by these so-called Iranian weapons. Really? They CSI'ed the scene of all the troop deaths and found forensic evidence linking these weapons to exactly 170 deaths. I call bulls**t [edited].

During the demonstration they talked at length about these cylindrical pipes that shoot molten hot balls of copper through the armor of US vehicles. In all of the gruesome stories of our men and women dying in Iraq, I have never heard of this weapon before or any deaths being attributed to it.

Defensetech.org wrote about them being used by insurgents in Iraq on Aug 3, 2005. Other news organizations have written dozens of articles about them as well.

Perhaps Uygur has never heard of these weapons, but they're hardly new:

Explosively formed projectiles (EFP) have been used to defeat armored vehicles for more than 30 years.

What does the UK Telegraph have to say about EFPs? Quite a bit in this June 25, 2006 article alone:

The first picture of an Iraqi insurgent mine, believed to have been responsible for the deaths of 17 British soldiers, has been obtained by The Sunday Telegraph.

The device, which has been used by insurgents throughout Iraq since May last year, fires an armour-piercing "explosively formed projectile" or EFP, also known as a shaped charge, directly into an armoured vehicle, inflicting death or terrible injuries on troops inside.

The weapon can penetrate the armour of British and American tanks and armoured personnel carriers and completely destroy armoured Land Rovers, which are used by the majority of British troops on operations in Iraq.

The device, described as an "off-route mine", was seized by British troops in Iraq earlier this year and brought back to Britain where it underwent detailed examination by scientists at Fort Halstead, the Government's forensic explosive laboratory in Kent.

The Ministry of Defence has attempted to play down the effectiveness of the weapons, suggesting that they are "crude" or "improvised" explosive devices which have killed British troops more out of luck than judgement.

However, this newspaper understands that Government scientists have established that the mines are precision-made weapons which have been turned on a lathe by craftsmen trained in the manufacture of munitions.

But where could the insurgency be getting such weapons?

British military sources believe the devices have been developed in Iran and smuggled across the border into Iraq where they are supplied to Iranian-backed anti-coalition insurgents.

The weapon first emerged on the Iraqi battlefield in May last year and since then it has been used more than 20 times to kill 17 British servicemen. The last two soldiers to be killed by the device were Lieut Tom Mildinhall, 27, and L/Cpl Paul Farrelly, 28, both members of the 1st Queen's Dragoon Guards, who were killed on May 28 in a district north-west of Basra.

The devices, which are impossible to detect, can be easily camouflaged and triggered using infra-red technology, remote control or by a command wire.

Earlier this year, The Sunday Telegraph revealed how a multi-charged roadside bomb, developed by Hizbollah in Lebanon, was also being used against British and American soldiers by Iraqi insurgents.

Essentially, Cenk Uygur's argument appears to be that since he hasn't heard of such things, that they don't exist. I imagine that by that lofty standard, much of the world doesn't exist for him.

But he isn't done yet:

Guess who's supposed be bringing in the EFPs? Why Iran, of course. Really? Can these brilliant, anonymous defense analysts tell us who fire these EFPs and for what purpose?

They gave a lot of generic blame to the Mahdi Army because that is who we are going to attack next in Iraq. But are they saying the Mahdi Army is now engaging in combat against US troops? Because that would be news to everybody. Right now, it is believed that they are fighting - and often times brutally killing - Sunnis. But I haven't read anything about the Mahdi Army attacking coalition forces. Can this explosive new charge be proven in anyway? Have there been any of their fighters captured in the battlefield?

So many charges, so little evidence.

That the Madhi Army has engaged U.S troops is only new to you, Cenk. The rest of the educated world calls it "history."

The eight-day Battle of Najaf in August of 2004 featured 2,000 U.S Marines and 1,800 Iraqi Army soldiers against roughly 2,000 members of Muqtada al Sadr's Madhi Army. 159 militiamen and 261 were captured in this one battle alone.

Perhaps Cenk might be able to understand this information in a format more he might find more approachable. I'm sorry, but they don't have it yet on Playstation.

Najaf, was, of course, just one of many battles coalition forces fought against the Madhi Army between 2004 and October of 2006, and smaller scale, skirmish-level fights against the Shia milita have never ceased.

It's funny how much of the world you can miss when you are determined not to see it.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 03:20 PM | Comments (14) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Dollard Updates

From time to time I've written about Pat Dollard, the former Hollywood agent turned outspoken Iraqi War documentary filmmaker and IED magnet. He has a new site design up, and it is quite improved over his old site. Check it out.

While you're there, make sure you drink in the Youtube video he found, where a Iraqi cleric thanks America for invading Iraq and daring to try to fix an Arab culture that has been broken for 1,400 years (his words). He compares the existing Arab culture to slavery repeatedly, and says that our attempt to give Iraq a democracy is the best thing that has ever happened in the region.

Don't look for CNN, ABC, CBS, or AP to share this video.

Pat was recently on Greg Gutfeld's new show on Fox News called Red-Eye. An excerpt of the interview was on Hot Air over the weekend, talking about media coverage of the war and the "bravery" of George Clooney.

The full 14 minute, 4 second segment was on Google Video, but doesn't presently appear to be working. Hopefully it will be up and running later today.

Pat's war documentary Young Americans will hopefully soon be released as a series soon, once he landsa distributor. He tells me hes just watched the two-hour pilot episode and knows what edits he would like to make, and should hopefully have it complete soon.

If you want a taste, he has five video clips posted here.

CONTENT WARNING: The Marines in this video drop F-bombs like they were trying out to be John Edwards campaign bloggers, and his choice of music is hardcore punk liberally sprinkled with the same kind of language. As you might also expect, some combat footage is also not for the sqeamish. You might want to save this until you get home, and the kids are off to bed. If you want one words to describe the footage Dollard collected in Iraq, "raw" describes it best.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:10 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Missing in Action

According to a source in Baghdad, the dozens of checkpoints manned by Madhi Army militamen in the Shia areas are now missing in western Baghdad as of Monday, and the militamen themselves are absent from public view. The western media should be able to confirm this fairly soon.

In the meantime, the U.S. has locked down the Rusafa district in preparation of sweeps in eastern Baghdad. These operations have been confirmed as part of the much-discussed surge:

American commanders described the operation Sunday in the Rusafa district as an early taste of large-scale sweeps expected in eastern Baghdad to take back some measure of control from militias. Troops from the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team were fired on by insurgents with automatic rifles, and they detained 10 Iraqis while searching for a car-bomb manufacturing site in the area, a violent sectarian fault line between a Shiite enclave and the insurgent-ridden Sunni neighborhood of Fadhil.

The operations in eastern Baghdad are to be a centerpiece of the so-called surge of 21,000 troops that many here view as a last-ditch effort to save the country from all-out civil war.

Eastern Baghdad "is a focal point for us right now," said Brigadier General John Campbell, deputy commander of coalition troops in Baghdad. American- led forces say they have conducted 3,400 patrols and detained 140 suspects in the past week.

Not surprisingly, Jon Kerry has attacked the surge, even though it has already commenced and American forces are already in combat.

Shocking, I know.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:58 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

February 09, 2007

Dear John

As a fellow North Carolinian (well, you're close enough), I'll be perfectly up front about this: you never had a chance at getting my vote. I still remember you channeling a five-year-old cerebral palsy patient as a personal injury attorney using junk science, long before North Carolina newspapers nicknamed you "Senator Gone" for missing 43-percent of Senate votes after suspending your first Presidential run.

And yes, I still remember how you took advantage of a tax loophole to avoid paying more than a half million dollars in Medicare taxes by forming a subchapter S corporation. Did you know there are books out there about that now? Impressive legal work, to be sure... but I'm not sure those folks in that other America--those without a 28,200 square feet mansion and a million-dollar home on a private Island--feel about that. That $591,000 you cleverly steered away from Medicare and back into your own pocket, seems, well, deceptive for someone claiming to run as a populist.

That said, there are quite few folks living in your adopted home state that voted for you in your Senatorial bid in 1998, and voted for you again when you teamed up to run for President with John Kerry in 2004. Quite a few of those folks--I'd guestimate roughly 400-500 or so--go to my church in Cary. Something tells me they might not be so enthusiastic about your candidacy this time around.

Fair of foul, people--and particularly those people under the intense spotlight of a foundering Presidential campaign--are judged by the company they keep. Now, it has been well known for quite a while that Elizabeth Edwards is well known in the left wing blogosphere, but let's face facts: most Americans simply don't read blogs. Still the potential for danger was always there:

There are two ways to view Mrs. Edwards' posting on blogs. Some will wonder how wise it is for Edwards to enter this swamp. Every blogger has a sane/insane ratio for political posts ... we come to accept it from our peers. But when an aspiring First Lady says something pointed, it's not just typical Internet chatter, it's potentially big news. Elizabeth Edwards is extremely smart and a terrific writer ... but it's an incredible high-wire act for someone so prominent to attempt.

To date, your lovely wife has avoided "stepping in it" as the saying goes, but you haven't done too well with your newest forays into the blogosphere, managing to hire for yourself a couple of bloggers whose "sane/insane ratio" has now become national news.

Part of me admires you for sticking to your guns and keeping Amanda Marcotte and Melissia McEwan on staff despite their obvious and long-standing hatred of Christians--Marcotte alone has referred to Christians derisively at least 114 times, as "godbags"--but I don't think too many of my fellow North Carolina Christians are going to recognize your political courage, in which you bravely responded to radical left-wing astrology site's IMPORTANT ACTION ALERTS by doing exactly as they wanted.

Most of these folks could care less about Marcotte's thoughts about what would have happened if the Virgin Mary had aborted Jesus as an independent blogger, but they are concerned, because you don't seem to much care about the image that gives your campaign. Some might just get the sneaking suspicion that you might feel the same way.

Now, I know you're simply pandering to the left wing base to give yourself some fleeting hope of being able to parley your campaign into the Number Two slot behind Hillary! or Barack Obama, but that's because I'm a political blogger myself. But I'm not everybody, and you never had a chance at my vote.

That said, the family usually sitting several rows ahead of me Sunday mornings has a cracked and peeling Kerry/Edwards sticker on their minivan, which should put you in contention for their vote, but what do you think they felt when they opened the print edition of the Charlotte Observer, the Raleigh News & Observer, or my hometown Greenville Daily Reflector this morning, to find stories like this? It doesn't bode well, John.

In Greenville, where someone with similar degrees of tolerance for "godbags" and the "Christofascist base" decided to burn two churches and vandalize a third only weeks ago, I don't think you'll win any new fans, either.

I wish you the best of luck with your choices and your campaign.

Lord knows, you're going to need it.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:22 PM | Comments (28) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

A Gathering of Eagles

Via Bill Faith of Small Town Veteran, A Veterans group calling themselves "A Gathering of Eagles" will be on hand to protect the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial in Washington, D.C. on March 17, against anti-war protesters they feel might intend to deface the monument dedicated to the more than 58,000 Americans who lost their lives fighting the Vietnam War. Anti-war protestors recently defaced the steps of the U.S Capitol with anti-war slogans.

From the "Gathering of Eagles" Web page:

"We'll be there to act as a countervailing force against the Cindy Sheehan-Jane Fonda march from the Vietnam Memorial to the Pentagon," retired Navy Capt. Larry Bailey said. "We will protect the Vietnam Memorial. If they try to deface it, there will be some violence, I guarantee you."

Bailey and thousands of his fellow Vietnam vets are worried that the anti-war protesters will damage the wall, just as they spray-painted the steps of the Capitol at their last march.

The wall is sacred to the men and women who fought in that war.

"It is our contact with our dead brothers -- those who lost their lives in the cause of their country," Bailey said.

And so it is that Washington will see a Gathering of Eagles - Americans determined to stand up against leftist propagandists who denigrate U.S. troops and the mission for which they sometimes sacrifice their lives.

Retired Col. Harry Riley organized the Gathering of Eagles. Organizers hope thousands will show up in Washington from as far away as Hawaii, and they won't only be Vietnam veterans. Families, friends and veterans of other wars, including Iraq, and soldiers still on active duty, will be there to defend the Wall.

It is shameful that this overwatch even needs to occur, but as the recent incident at the Capitol indicates, some anti-war protesters—and please note that we're only talking about a small minority of those protestors, I hope—feel there is something to gain by such seething displays of unbridled contempt for this country.

That said, looking at the participants in this march, I think that the "Gathering of Eagles" has every reason to feel concerned.

The leftist Web site MarchonPentagon.org describes the anti-war demonstrators this way: "The March on the Pentagon has already attracted more than 1,500 endorsers, including prominent individuals and national and grassroots organizations. Students on college campuses and in high schools will be attending in large numbers. There will be a large turnout from the Muslim and Arab American community, which is organizing throughout the country."

The movement is well-financed. Its sponsor list is lengthy and contains highly recognizable names, as well as those of Fonda and Sheehan:

• Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark (who offered his services to defend Saddam Hussein)
• Ultra-liberal Congresswoman Maxine Waters
• Former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney
• Ron Kovic, Vietnam veteran and author of "Born on the 4th of July"
• Mahdi Bray, executive director, Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation
• Waleed Bader, vice chair of the National Council of Arab Americans and former president of Arab Muslim American Federation
• Medea Benjamin, co-founder, CODEPINK and Global Exchange
• Free Palestine Alliance
• Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation
• Islamic Political Party of America
• FMLN (Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front)
• Islamic-National Congress
• Gay Liberation Network
• Muslim Student Association
• Jibril Hough, chairman, Islamic Political Party of America

It may be worth noting that for a march apparently organized by leftists, the overwhelming majority of sponsoring groups have a radical Islamic focus.

The Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation is one of the groups that threatened a "Sheikdown" of U.S Airways after the removal of six imams from a Minneapolis- to-Phoenix flight in which the imams performed what one airline pilot stated was "a terrorist probe in the airline industry."

A 2004 Chicago Tribune article states that the MSA is the American face of the Muslim Brotherhood, a group that seeks to impose radical Islamist sharia law as the government of the United States. The terrorist group Hamas is also a wing of the Brotherhood, and the Brotherhood was financially supported by none other than Ayatollah Khomeini. Khomeini's movement is also responsible for kidnapping American embassy personnel for 444 days from 1979-81.

Osama Bin Laden was influence by professors closely alligned with the Brotherhood, and his current cavemate, Ayman al-Zawahiri joined the group at age 14 before "graduating" to found al Qaeda with bin Laden.

Mahdi Bray, current leader of that group and a supporter of the Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist groups according to JihadWatch, protested on behalf of both Ahmad Abu-Ali (charged with plotting to kill President Bush), and Abdurrahman Alamoudi, a man convicted in a plot to assassinate Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.

Waleed Bader, vice chair of the National Council of Arab Americans and former president of Arab Muslim American Federation, previous protested against the "occupation of Iraq and Palestine." The National Council of Arab Americans called the creation of the state of Israel as the "Palestinian Catastrophe (Nakba) of 1948" just this past July.

The Free Palestine Alliance has attempted to stifle the business of Caterpillar Corporation (the bulldozer folks), saying that they want "to expose Caterpillar’s complicity in Israel’s war crimes." This "complicity" is apparently the IDF practice of using Caterpillar bulldozers to destroy tunnels used to smuggle firearms and explosives to terrorist groups in Gaza, which are then used to target Israeli civilians.

The Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, better known as FMLN, is a communist organization from El Salvador formed in 1970 which fought a civil war against that country's government in the 1980s, and was once identified as a Marxist-Leninist terrorist organization before putting down their arms to become a purely political party.

The Muslim Student Association, with multiple chapters at universities around the country, has been investigated for funding terrorism multiple times. A Speaker from the group was once quoted by Robert Spenser as saying, "The only relationship you should have with America is to topple it." The MSA has invited neo-Nazis to speak at forums sponsored by the group.

These primarily Islamist groups are among the vanguard of those sponsoring the anti-war march scheduled in the nation's capitol for March 17. Based upon this roll call of Islamists, terror supporters, and neo-Nazi admirers playing a leading roll in the anti-war march, I'd say that the Gathering of Eagles has every reason to be concerned for the sanctity of the powerful monument known simply as The Wall.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:20 AM | Comments (25) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

February 08, 2007

Oh, Jeez...

It's a race to the bottom, kids.

Bill Donohue, president of the conservative-leaning Catholic League and the first to call on the Democratic presidential candidate to fire the bloggers, told FOXNews.com that he is not satisfied with Edwards' decision to scold — but not can — the staffers.

By not firing Andrea Marcotte and Melissa McEwan, Donohue said, Edwards is promoting anti-Catholicism. He said the 2008 Democratic contender's actions should be viewed in the same way it would be seen if Edwards had not fired a staffer who had used the 'n'-word.

"He's nothing more than David Duke with a blow-dried haircut," Donohue said of Edwards.

Considering the apparent shall we say, shared appreciation of the Jewish faith that Donahue and Duke seem to have in common, I think he better find a less self-immolating comparison.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 08:29 PM | Comments (18) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

"Is Anna Nicole Smith still dead, Wolf?"

The sensitivity of Jack Cafferty on display in CNN's The Situation Room, moments ago.

Classy guy, that Cafferty.

Update: Allahpundit has the video.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 07:14 PM | Comments (13) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Swiftboating Redefined

It appears that the Marcotte/McEwan/Edwards blog controversy has entered a second day with little letup in the comments coming from both the right and the left.

For those of you just coming around to this story, the John Edwards campaign hired a pair of comically stereotypical feminist bloggers (on who's advice, no one will say), Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon and Melissa McEwan of Shakespeare's Sister, respectively. Once hired, some conservative and libertarian bloggers began bringing to light some of the previous posts written by these bloggers (focusing on Marcotte in particular), many of which are offensive to those outside of the insular world of far-left political blogging. A right-wing bigot by the name of Bill Donahue began calling for their heads for comments written by these two that he said were anti-Catholic, these comments hit the New York Times, and the brouhaha went mainstream.

By late yesterday afternoon, word leaked out that Marcotte and McEwan had been fired by the Edwards campaign...or not.

There have been a lot of pixels slung around on both sides in the blogosphere over this one, but I've been particularly fascinated at the response thus far from the liberal blogs trying to close ranks around Marcotte and McEwan.

Some are attempting to the "right-wing character assassination machine" for the issue being raised. Others are declaring a "rightwing Swiftboat-style attack" on the two bloggers. Another claims that the "smear train" has been fired up.

My, how the goalposts have changed.

According to Wikipedia, character assassination can be defined as:

Character assassination is an intentional attempt to influence the portrayal or reputation of a particular person, whether living or a historical personage, in such a way as to cause others to develop an extremely negative, unethical or unappealing perception of him or her. By its nature, it involves deliberate exaggeration or manipulation of facts to present an untrue picture of the targeted person...

In practice, character assassination usually consists of the spreading of rumors and deliberate misinformation on topics relating to one's morals, integrity, and reputation.

Also according to Wikipedia, "swiftboating" can be defined as:

Swiftboating is American political jargon for an ad hominem attack against a public figure coordinated by an independent or pseudo-independent group, usually resulting in a benefit to an established political force.

This form of attack is controversial, easily repeatable, and difficult to verify or disprove because it is generally based on personal feelings or recollections...

"Smear train" and other assertions made on the left to describe this conflagration are not so easy to define, so let's focus on whether or not the allegations of "character assassination" and swiftboating" really apply to this case.

Character assassination requires "deliberate exaggeration or manipulation of facts to present an untrue picture of the targeted person," and "usually consists of the spreading of rumors and deliberate misinformation on topics relating to one's morals, integrity, and reputation."

That is clearly not in evidence in this instance; Marcotte has been hoisted on her proverbial petard for her own controversial words, not for the words of others. The only possible claim of manipulation that can be made is that some critics have chosen to publish shorter excerpts of her commentary for the sake of brevity. Her comments, however have not been taken out of context, and a reader disturbed by her excerpted comments will be no less offended if they read the entire post in its entirety. In some instances, the full posts only serves to make Marcott'e comments more appalling to those offended by the excerpts. These comments made by Marcotte reflect her own, true feelings, as written by her own hand. A review of her comments resulted not in character assassination, but character definition. Charges of character assassination are completely false.

What about the charge of "swiftboating?"

The charges against Marcotte and McEwan are neither "difficult to verify or disprove." We have permalinks to what Marcotte haven't erased, and the rest is captured in the Google cache. The greatest damage done, clearly has been from a spotlight being cast on their own freely-given words. These words are, however, clearly based upon their own personal feelings, so one could presumably make the argument that they "swiftboated" themselves.

Other liberal bloggers have complained that Marcotte and McEwan have complained that the rantings on their personal blogs does not indicate in any way how they may perform as part of the Edwards campaign. It is of course true, but that was not the argument they were making when they pilloried Ben Domenech for the plagiarism he commited prior to joining the Washington Post as a blogger.

As a matter of fact, Media Matter's own David Brock stated:

...with each hour bringing new evidence of Domenech's racially charged rhetoric and homophobic bigotry, the time has come for the Post to end its ill-conceived relationship with Domenech. Examples of Domenech's views include:

• In a February 7 post on RedState, Domenech wrote that he believed people should be "pissed" that President Bush attended "the funeral of a Communist" -- referring to the funeral for Coretta Scott King. As you know, labeling the King family "communists" was a favorite tool of the racists who opposed them.
  In another RedState post, Domenech compared "the Judiciary" unfavorably to the Ku Klux Klan.
• In still another RedState comment, Domenech posted without comment an article stating that "[i]t just happens that killing black babies has the happy result of reducing crime" and that "[w]hite racists have reason to be grateful for what is sometimes still called the civil rights leadership" because black leaders "are overwhelmingly in support" of abortion rights.
• In yet another, Domenech wrote that conservative blogger/journalist Andrew Sullivan, who is gay, "needs a woman to give him some stability."

Domenech has also been caught at least once apparently fabricating a quote. A June 20, 2002, Spinsanity.org entry demonstrated that Domenech made up a quote he attributed to Tim Russert in order to defend President Bush.

In a post on RedState.com, Domenech once agreed with a commenter who called Washington Post columnist Dan Froomkin "an embarrassment to the saner heads at the paper."

It is time for "saner heads" to prevail. Will The Washington Post honor its history as one of America's most respected news organizations -- or will it stand with Ben Domenech, tacitly endorsing his assault on Coretta Scott King, his offensive suggestion that a gay man "needs a woman," and his fabrication of a quote?

America is watching.

David Brock seemed very concerned about the rhetoric and bigotry of Domenech, even moreso than his plagiarism, if his letter can be believed. He and his fellow liberals were quite against what they construed as hate speech then.

Funny how Brock and other liberals don't seem to have a problem with the incendiary rhetoric and the readily apparent bigotry of two of their own, now.

Update: Edwards is not firing Marcotte and McEwan.

I lack the words to fully express just how devilishly amusing this is to me.

Luckily, Jeff G. captures the essence of this debacle perfectly:

But lost on these Marcotte supporters—who are cheering on the power of the “netroots” to cow a politician into keeping on an ugly and hateful liability—is that Edwards just showed up Marcotte and McEwan as frauds and posturing blowhards, writers who have been pulling the wool over their audiences’ eyes by posting vicious “arguments” they never truly believed. To use the loaded language of establishment feminism—he publicly castrated them—and in so doing, he made fools out of their audiences, to boot.

Further, in doing so, he has shown himself to be nothing more than a calculating political opportunist of the worst sort—one who believes the voting public so daft they might actually buy a statement like the one he just released.

As I wrote yesterday, I don’t care one way or the other, personally, about whether or not Marcotte and McEwan are allowed to keep their josb. That’s Edwards’ call. And from a blogging perspective, I suppose Edwards’ decision is good news.

But let’s not confuse the effect with the rationale—which is both risible and insulting. Because were it really never Marcotte’s intent to malign anyone’s faith, she probably wouldn’t have dedicated so many hate-filled blog posts to, you know—maligning anyone’s faith.

Of course it was her intent. Just as it was McEwan’s intent. And worst of all, Edwards knows it. That he has pretended to take the two at their word, in an ostentatious gesture of “trust,” is precisley the kind of staged treacle that makes people doubt the sincerity of politicians; and that both Marcotte and McEwan have assured their own personal Patriarch that they’ll behave, now that he’s promoted them to the grownups’ table, is, to put it bluntly, one of the most pathetic public surrenderings of personal integrity I’ve ever seen.

Seriously. We should feel bad for them.

That is, were we to actually believe they meant any of it. Because how this plays out for the netroots is this way: either they are cheering on an ideological sellout, or they are knowingly and happily embracing an opportunistic liar. So. Congrats to them. Once again, they’ve covered themselves in white hot sticky glory!

There is more, of course, so be sure to read the whole thing.

My take away on this is that Marcotte, McEwan, and Edwards will say or do anything it takes to attempt to preserve their limited relevance. Once the primary season is over, Marcotte's and McEwan's futile efforts will be forgotten, but their willingness to prostitute their principles for a furtive brush with greatness will last far, far longer.

At least Edwards will still have nice hair.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:45 AM | Comments (21) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

February 07, 2007

His Name Was Scott

If you are going to write about the contractors killed by a mob in Fallujah, at least do them the honor of getting their names correct, you careless AP hacks:

The deaths of the four, all former members of the military, brought to U.S. television some of its most gruesome images of the Iraq war. A frenzied mob of insurgents ambushed a supply convoy the guards were escorting through Fallujah on March 31, 2004. The men were attacked, their bodies mutilated; two of the corpses were strung from a bridge.

At the hearing, Kathryn Helvenston-Wettengel, mother of Stephen Helvenston, read a statement on behalf of the families. She stopped several times to collect herself as she recounted the emotional day.

His name was Scott Helvenston.

He was a fitness instructor, a celebrity trainer, Navy SEAL, and most importantly, a father. I don't expect AP to go into those details of his life, but I do expect them to pay enough attention to at least get his name right.

Update: I stand corrected. Via email from Eddy Twyford, Scott Helvenston's best friend:

His full name is Stephen Scotten Helvenston but as you know he was always called Scott.

The reporter simply chose to use Helvenston's lesser known given name, instead of his preferred nickname. I apologize to the Associated Press for calling them "careless hacks."

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 02:42 PM | Comments (56) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Hatergate

The blogger dust-up over John Edwards choice of campaign bloggers has hit the mainstream media, as at least one radio station in Raleigh has pounced upon the foul language and anti-Catholic rants of Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan, of liberal blogs Pandagon and Shakespeare's Sister, respectively.

John M. Broder of the NY Times is on the case as well:

Two bloggers hired by John Edwards to reach out to liberals in the online world have landed his presidential campaign in hot water for doing what bloggers do — expressing their opinions in provocative and often crude language.

The Catholic League, a conservative religious group, is demanding that Mr. Edwards dismiss the two, Amanda Marcotte of the Pandagon blog site and Melissa McEwan, who writes on her blog, Shakespeare’s Sister, for expressing anti-Catholic opinions.

Mr. Edwards, a former North Carolina senator, is among the leading Democratic presidential candidates.

That last sentence is sure to elicit a giggle here in North Carolina, where Edwards is widely reviled by many. But I digress.

Why are these two bloggers under fire? In Marcotte's case specifically, it is for her stupifyingly ignorant and inflammatory remarks about the lacrosse rape case in particular, along with a general predisposition towards profanity-laced, intolerant rants on various subjects. For McEwan, it seems directed at her profanity-laced intolerant rants in general.

The Times article again, talking about Marcotte:

The two women brought to the Edwards campaign long cyber trails in the incendiary language of the blogosphere. Other campaigns are likely to face similar controversies as they try to court voters using the latest techniques of online communication.

Ms. Marcotte wrote in December that the Roman Catholic Church's opposition to the use of contraception forced women "to bear more tithing Catholics." In another posting last year, she used vulgar language to describe the church doctrine of the Immaculate Conception.

She has also written sarcastically about the news media coverage of the three Duke lacrosse players accused of sexual assault, saying: "Can't a few white boys sexually assault a black woman anymore without people getting all wound up about it? So unfair."

Of course, the Times has chosen to present only her cleanest language: much of what Marcotte typically writes cannot be aired among civil and polite people. Her actual comment about the Immaculate Conception was this (h/t Patterico):

Q: What if Mary had taken Plan B after the Lord filled her with his hot, white, sticky Holy Spirit?

A: You’d have to justify your misogyny with another ancient mythology.

Nice. McEwan, as I noted earlier, is cut from much the same cloth:

Ms. McEwan referred in her blog to President Bush's "wingnut Christofascist base" and repeatedly used profanity in demanding that religious conservatives stop meddling with women's reproductive and sexual rights. Multiple postings use explicit and inflammatory language on a variety of issues.

I don't think you need to see any direct quotes from her blog to get the point.

Depending on their differing perspectives, bloggers on the right and left are approaching the story quite differently.

Michelle Malkin has thus far "vented" on Marcotte not once, but twice. Hanging Marcotte with her own words is not only sport, it's easy sport, and Michelle is by no means the only blogger on the right taking issue with Edward's blogger; libertarians and conservatives alike have pounded her in a decidedly non-procreative way.

Liberal bloggers seem to be approaching this story as a tempest in a teapot. In general, they seem to be taking the position that a compliant media is doing the will of the conservative and libertarian blogosphere ("swiftboating", a term the left uses to disparage those who dare look at someone's track record of past performance), that the profanity issued forth on Pandagon, Shakespeare's Sister, and other liberal blogs is the main issue and really, no big deal; it isn't like those christofascist fringe right fundamentalists that consider women brood animals would vote for Edwards anyway.

In my completely humble opinion, they just don't get it.

Boiled down to its purest form, national politics is a popularity contest where something less than have of the population is going to dislike a candidate for simply belonging to particular party, while something less than the other half is going to accept the candidate for the same reason. Whether that candidate goes to Washington or end up in the Old Politician's Home depends largely on attracting the significant minority in the middle who have either not made up their minds, have an open mind, or can be persuaded to change their minds to support a certain candidate.

William Donahue and the Catholic League are bomb-throwers in their own right, as several of the liberal bloggers commenting on this story rightly observe, but that is also completely irrelevant. Bill Donahue is not trying to win anyone's nomination to be a candidate for President. John Edwards is, and he hired a pair of bloggers that are "easy pickings."

Is it fair to judge Marcotte and McEwan for their past comments? Shouldn't people instead just focus on their current work for the Edwards campaign? Oh, it would be nice in an ideal world if our track records weren't used to judge our future performances, but out here in the real world, where people hire you based upon the premise that past performance indicates your future successes (or failures), that simply isn't the case.

The Edwards campaign should have been cognizant of the liabilities of hiring these two particular bloggers, as they are indeed perfect examples of a very popular subset of liberal bloggers that have produced a body of work that will offend many of those potential voters who have not made up their minds, have an open mind, or can be persuaded to change their minds to vote for Edwards in the Democratic primaries. That the "wingnut Christofascist base"—liberal code for Republican conservatives—are not going to be voting in the Democratic primaries is completely irrelevant.

Democrats, many of whom are conservatives, and a majority of which are Christians and "breeders", are going to be choosing the Democratic Presidential candidates. Most of them don't read blogs, but many do read the newspapers, and they are likely to be offended that Edwards hired a pair of bloggers that mock their core values with the strongest possible language.

The kind of derisive language Marcotte, McEwan and her fellow travelers is widely accepted in their reality-based online community, but it is shocking enough to the supermajority of Americans that have never read a liberal blog, that even an ABC News blog questioned whether or not Marcotte's comments qualify as hate speech, and whether or not hiring Marcotte and McEwan means Edwards condones such speech. Fair or not, many people formerly in that potential pool of Edwards voters are going to make the judgement that Marcotte's and McEwan's comments are condoned by Edwards because he hired them. At least some of those people are now probably lost to the Edwards campaign, as judged by comments like these at the ABC blog:

Hate speech is hate speech, whether from a democrat or a republican. You learn a lot about a person by watching the people they associate with. Marcotte's comments say something about her, and a lot about Edwards.

Posted by: Leonard | Feb 6, 2007 7:34:32 PM

* * *

Of course she has a right to say this juvenile stuff, but the question is, does it show good judgement on the part of the Edwards campaign to hire someone like this?
Believe me, I'm hoping he keeps these bloggers on the payroll. This can and be used against him now and further into the campaign.

Posted by: Brian | Feb 7, 2007 10:50:28 AM

* * *
...Look, I am not easily offended. I love South Park, don't have any problem with their irreverent Jesus parody (and I am a Christian). But this person's description of the immaculate conception is just WAY over the line. There is irreverent and then there is crude disrespect.
Does she have the right to write it? Of course, this is the internet. Will I be contributing to Edwards' campaign, as I did in '04? No way. Not if this is the type of person he chooses to surround himself with.

Posted by: Ron C | Feb 7, 2007 11:36:40 AM

At best, a campaign blog can moderately help a candidate. At worst, it can be a debilitating side issue detracting from overall message discipline, and making people focus on rhetorical garbage and hatred that the candidate (rightly or wrongly) seems to condone.

Edwards made a bad choice in hiring McEwan and Marcotte, and is now reaping a media firestorm for not properly vetting his potential blogging staff. There are certainly articulate, thoughtful bloggers bloggers on the left far better qualified to hold these positions. Dave Johnson, I think, at Seeing the Forest may fit the bill for this kind of position, and I'm sure there is at least one other liberal blogger out there capable of holding a position without harboring such hate in their hearts.

Let me know when they find 'em.

Update: Godbags successful in crushing those speaking truth to power.

Truth be told, I'm kind of sad to see this happen. The Edwards campaign obviously didn't vet these two before offering them jobs. Firing them because of the the campaign's sloppiness in vetting their employees seems somewhat unfair. I'm not sure if McEwan has much lost over this, but Marcotte apparently moved across the country for this, and this will end up costing her real money.

Anyone know where she can find a good lawyer?

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:28 PM | Comments (17) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Hardball?

Jules Crittenden has a post up this morning called Hardball, Anyone?, in which he posits that the Iranian diplomat kidnapped in Baghdad may be an example of the U.S playing hardball by snatching a "diplomat" that is actually an Iranian intelligence agent fomenting sectarian violence.

Plausible? Certainly, and an interesting theory. The Iranians, of course, are alleging exactly that. But quite frankly it doesn't sound like our modus operandi.

We've captured Iranian operatives before--we're currently holding five right now--and our soldiers were in U.S. uniforms when they made their raids on a fixed location.

This diplomat--and I doubt very much he was a diplomat--was snatched from his car in a very crude ambush, where tow cars blocked his path, engaged his guards in a brief firefight, snatched him, and sped away. Four suspects in one car were captured by Iraqi police, only to be apparently set free by Iraqi government officials the next day.

Could this be a simple kidnapping? That government officials allegedly ordered the release of four of the suspects suggests that it was not. This looks like an Iraqi operation, or at least an operation executed by Iraqis.

The question seems to be whether or not this an unsanctioned action by a rogue element of the Iraqi government, a directed clandestine action by the Iraqi government, or if this was an Iraqi operation on behalf of the United States. Quite frankly, we don't know, but the last seems the least plausible. When we want to arrest Iranian "diplomats," we simply do it, out in the open, as we did with the five already in custody. Why risk someone else screwing it up?

I suspect this is an Iraqi operation, one designed to send a message about Iran's meddling in Iraqi affairs. The only question in my mind is whether this operation was cleared from Nori- al-Maliki's office, or whether this action was autonomously conducted by other elements of the Iraqi government.

Either way, I'm sure the message sent to Tehran was received loud and clear. It only remains to be seen if the diplomat ever turns back up, and what the Iranian response may be.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:33 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

February 06, 2007

It's Official... Sorta

Live from Baghdad, the surge is officially on... depending on who you are listening to.

"Official" or not, American and Iraqi soldiers began operating yesterday, and are conducting raids tonight. To date, we have elements of the Iraqi Army 1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th and 9th Divisions operating in the Baghdad battlespace with Interior Ministry commandos and various American units, including a Brigade Combat Team of the 82nd Airborne and elements the U.S 2nd Division.

Allah's updating like crazy. Stay tuned...

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 07:27 PM | Comments (17) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Coming Clean

Isn't it cathartic? (h/t Instapundit)

On Friday night's edition of Inside Washington airing locally on Washington PBS station WETA, the first topic was whether the media's been unfair to President Bush, given his abysmal approval ratings. NPR reporter Nina Totenberg said Bush received a "free ride" for years, so now the worm has turned and the coverage is fierce. Then the host turned to Newsweek's Evan Thomas, who was frank in his assessment of the media's role:

Gordon Peterson: "What do you think, Evan? Are the mainstream media bashing the president unfairly?"

Evan Thomas: "Well, our job is to bash the president, that's what we do almost --"

Peterson: "But unfairly?"

Thomas: "Mmmm -- I think when he rebuffed, I think when he just kissed off the Iraq Study Group, the Baker-Hamilton Commission, there was a sense then that he was decoupling himself from public opinion and Congress and the mainstream media, going his own way. At that moment he lost whatever support he had."

The message in that is very simple: the president must never "decouple" himself from the "mainstream media," because they are the key players in maintaining public opinion.

Honesty is such a lonely word.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:09 AM | Comments (23) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

February 05, 2007

Rudi's In

So it seems like "America's Mayor," Rudy Giuliani, is one step closer to running for President:

In a sign that he's serious about running for the White House, the two-term mayor was filing a so-called "statement of candidacy" with the Federal Election Commission. In the process, he was eliminating the phrase "testing the waters" from earlier paperwork establishing his exploratory committee, said an official close to Giuliani's campaign.

AP is all over it at Hot Air.

A lot of folks seem thrilled that Guiliani's throwing his hat in the ring, but I'm not one of them. His 9/11 leadership was extraordinary (compare his inspired performance to Ray Nagin's quivering collapse after Hurricane Katrina for juxtaposition), but his personal failures and his overtly liberal positions on a whole raft of issues leave me cold.

The only thing that Rudy brings to the table over our current President is his ability to articulately explain why he won't enforce or borders while increasing the bloat of the federal government.

Factor in his pro-gun control views, and Guiliani's a Republican candidate not worth having... one of many.

Drafting Fred is starting to look like a better idea all the time.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 04:02 PM | Comments (22) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Surge

It has apparently. begun, and the rash of terrorist attacks over the past week, including the suicide truck bombing Saturday of a Baghdad marketplace frequented by both Sunni and Shia makes it appear, at least on the surface, that the terrorists were either attempting to get their last licks in before the expected crackdown before melting away, or the were planning to stay and fight. Of course, with different groups making different decisions (some reports indicate the Shia militias may go dormant; past experience tends to show that diehard al Qaeda elements prefer to seek their martyrdom), the attacks may have no more "meaning" than they typically do.

CNN reports on what appears to be the start of the much-debated "surge."

U.S. and Iraqi forces on Monday were preparing to launch a major security crackdown in Baghdad to curb sectarian bloodshed as a wave of bombings pushed the country's death toll to more than 1,000 in seven days.

Even as the security plan was being finalized, fresh violence continued to escalate the carnage with fresh explosions across the Iraq capital claiming more lives.

The city was still reeling from a massive suicide truck bomb on Saturday that detonated in a bustling market place, killing nearly 130 people in one of the worst attacks in the city since the U.S.-led invasion of 2003.

The United Nations says almost 17,000 people have died from fighting in the last year in Baghdad.

There was no official timeline for the launch of the new security plan, but U.S. Colonel Douglass Heckman, the senior adviser to the 9th Iraqi Army Division, said it was expected to begin shortly after a transition of military control in the city.

"Officially the Baghdad Operational Command takes over tomorrow, so the expectation is that the plan will be implemented soon thereafter, very soon thereafter," he said, according to The Associated Press.

Two Iraqi newspapers have reported the operation, the third attempt since May 2006 to pacify the capital, would begin Monday.

Heckman said thousands of U.S. and Iraqi reinforcements already were in place for the neighborhood-by-neighborhood sweep to clamp off the violence by Sunni insurgents and Shiite militia, AP said.

Greyhawk has a round-up at Mudville Gazette that suggests the surge is starting today, and that a Brigade Combat Team of the 82nd Airborne is already deployed in Baghdad as part of the first wave of the surge.

Back in the States, our feckless Senators, led by the craven John Warner, (R-Va.), and Carl Levin, (D-Mich.), are now set to attempt to debate their gutless non-binding opposition to the surge. This is especially disgusting when you take into account that these senators already know (or should know) that U.S. and Iraqi units are already engaging.

What moral cowardice it takes to debate a "non-binding resolution" which has no responsibility associated with it. What moral turpitude to attempt to undercut a battle already being joined.

I don't expect much from our Senators, but I do expect them to have enough courage to either issue forth law, or shut up. A non-binding resolution is the mark of a political coward; it means nothing, stands for nothing, and merely serves to provide them "wiggle-room" in either direction depending on the outcome of the battle.

Michael Yon, currently in Iraq spoke about the surge on yesterday's The Glenn and Helen Show. He said it will be like "unlike anything we've seen before."

Watch, and we will see. At this point, with so much of the public against the war, the future of our involvement in Iraq depends on the outcome.

Update: I just confirmation from a source in Baghdad. The "surge" started today, and is underway.

Update: I just called MNSTC-I PAO LTC Kevin Buckingham to get official word on the surge, and "the offical word" is that Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki will release the official word of when the surge starts.

We do know that Iraqi forces already establishing checkpoints throughout five districts, and we know it was Iraqi soldiers (with U.S. forces in support) that killed Khadhim al-Hamadani, a top al-Sadr official in the Medhi Army, in a raid last night.

Readers should keep in mind that the official, announced start and end dates of military operations are not always the same as the actual start and end dates.

According to al Sabaah, battalions of the Iraqi 3rd, 5th and 7th Divisions, along with Interior Minsitry commando units, are currently being deployed.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:55 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Measuring Bias

Ace of Spades found an interesting article at Slate over the weekend about a series of online bias tests called the Implicit Association Test, or IAT, with the most popular one being the race IAT, to judges your biases (prejudices) based upon timed responses to paired words and images.

It works like this:

In the test's most popular version, the Race IAT, subjects are shown a computer screen and asked to match positive words (love, wonderful, peace) or negative words (evil, horrible, failure) with faces of African-Americans or whites. Their responses are timed. If you tend to associate African-Americans with "bad" concepts, it will take you longer to group black faces with "good" concepts because you perceive them as incompatible. If you're consistently quicker at connecting positive words with whites and slower at connecting positive words with blacks—or quicker at connecting negative words with blacks and slower at connecting negative words with whites—you have an implicit bias for white faces over those of African-Americans. In other words, the time it takes you to pair the faces and words yields an empirical measure of your attitudes. (Click here for a more detailed description of the test.)

The elegance of Banaji's test is that it doesn't let you lie. What's being measured is merely the speed of each response. You might hate the idea of having a bias against African-Americans, but if it takes you significantly longer to group black faces with good concepts, there's no way you can hide it. You can't pretend to connect words and images faster any more than a sprinter can pretend to run faster. And you won't significantly change your score if you deliberately try to slow down your white = good and black = bad pairings.

Banaji, now a social psychologist at Harvard, has found that 88 percent of the white subjects who take her test show some bias against blacks. The majority of all subjects also test anti-gay, anti-elderly, and anti-Arab Muslim. Many people also exhibit bias against their own group: About half of blacks test anti-black; 36 percent of Arab Muslims test anti-Arab Muslim; and 38 percent of gays show an automatic preference for heterosexuals.

Sounds interesting, no? A test that won't let you lie, even to yourself. I'd like to see how CY readers fare on this, so if you have the time (about 10-15 minutes), take the test at this link (follow the link on this page to the "Race IAT."

Then post your age, race, and state where you grew up, along with your results in the comments. I've already taken it, and I'll post a screen capture of my results page tonight.

Also tell me if your results surprised you, or if they were about what you thought they would be.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 08:58 AM | Comments (16) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

February 02, 2007

Global Warming: The Un-Science of Fear

Long before al Gore invented the Internet, way back in 1989-90, I was an undergraduate taking a series of geology classes, and I liked them well enough that I gave serious thought to making that branch of science my vocation.

Times and majors changed, but I can still recall the long view of the earth's climate over the course of history, and so when I hear politicians like Barbara Boxer declare "The scientific debate is over," on global warming, then I know that I am hearing the words of someone scientifically incurious, politically reactionary, and/or hopelessly gullible.

The debate isn't over. For what it is worth, most of the "debate" is simply invalid. Junk science. Hype.

Humankind has very little or nothing to do with climate change, a fact that that a group of idiots assembled in Paris can't quite seem to grasp.

Let me say it very slowly: Global warming is real, but mankind has little or nothing to do with it, and it is a transitory state.

Here's a little reality check for Al Gore:

Approximately 99.72% of the "greenhouse effect" is due to natural causes -- mostly water vapor and traces of other gases, which we can do nothing at all about. Eliminating human activity altogether would have little impact on climate change.

The simple fact of the matter is that global warming began 18,000 years ago as we started leaving the Pleistocene Ice Age. We are currently on the tail end of a 20,000-year interglacial period, and do you know what that means?

If millions of years of history can be our guide—and it should— we are within a few hundred years of entering a new ice age.

Global warming advocates attempt to say that global warming can be tied to an increase of greenhouse gases they tie to the Industrial Revolution. They're confusing proximation with causation. Just because things occur at the same time doesn't mean they are related... unless, of course, you really want to believe that on this day in 1971, a groundhog seeing his shadow somehow helped the success of Idi Amin's coup in Uganda. Good luck with that.

No, the Industrial Revolution coincided with global warming, but it didn't cause it. It was merely part of a cycle already millions of years older than mankind itself.

Baby Step:

Big Picture:

(both charts from here, which will decode them for you quite nicely.)

The "science" you see from proponents of the idea that humans are behind global warming are guilty of finding precisely what they were looking for, not of promoting responsible science.

What causes global warming? Read the link above, but if your eyes start to glaze over, Jules Crittenden's take isn't far off:

Re Earth. It gets hot. It gets cold. This is what Earth does. No one knows why. Even the scientists who say its getting hot because of human activity, when pressed, have to admit it might be only heating up at a greater rate because of human activity, but even then, no one can really say for sure.

It's hotter now than it's been since the time of Jesus. What that means is, 2,000 years ago, the Earth was as hot as it is now. I'm blaming Iron Age farming practices and smelting for that New Testament uptick. Or maybe it was the righteous fire and burning passion of the age … have to go back and have another look at the ice cores. Might find some particles of faith.

By the 14th century, it was wicked cold. And I do mean wicked. Like, medieval cold. Even all those witch burnings had no effect. But not as cold as it was 10,000 years ago. We're really only just starting to warm up from that. We have a long way to go before it is as warm as it was 66 million years ago, you know, Everglades in Montana warm.

All the time in between, I'm fuzzy on the temps. But I'm going to take a wild guess. Warm, cold, warm, cold, warm, cold. You have a water view? Look out. It might come through your window. Never know. Things happen.

You would think that the Global Warming Evangelicals would have a handle on the way-cool existentialism of this, considering some are actually poets instead of scientists, but perhaps we overestimate how good they are at being poets, as well.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 03:40 PM | Comments (82) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

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