Livin' In America

Carl Bernstein may well save the Republic a second time.

I mean, unless he gets the reputation of being a Clinton Hater.

I caught George Tenet on "60 Minutes" last night. He's got a new book coming out, and the chattering class is beside itself with excitement.

Anyway, Tenet on "60 Minutes". Not believable. He waved his hands, jerked back and forth in his chair, shouted, grimaced. It was like watching and attack of St Vitus's Dance. Compared with Condaleeza Rice's carefully-controlled demeanor on the morning talk shows, this guy looked like a CIA edition of Elmer Gantry.

This morning, on the way into work, I listened to news reports that the White House is pointing out factual errors in Tenet's book. Among other things, apparently Tenet claims to have had a face-to-face conversation with someone who was in Paris at the time. That sort of thing.

Not wanting to scratch an old wound or anything, but what is it about Clinton appointees? Sandy Berger stealing documents, George Tenet doing a tell-all, all in order to hide or alter the past. Let's face it: the Clinton Administration was an eight-year holiday from history that'll take a century to pay off.


UPDATE: Christopher Hitchens agrees with me.

I caught Joe Biden today on Meet the Depressed.

It was quite a display. Among other things, when he voted to give the President the authority to invade Iraq, he didn't, in fact, vote to give the President the authority to invade Iraq.

I found myself remembering those lines from Act 2, Scene 3 of Macbeth:

...Faith, here's an equivocator, that could
swear in both the scales against either scale, who com-
mitted treason enough for God's sake, yet could
not equivocate to heaven. O, come in, equivocator.

Biden wants to be President. He's made himself look like a whore. And a cheap one at that.

Am I the only person out there who thinks NBC's airing of Cho's videos pretty much guarantees that the next whacko is going to bring along a steadycam?

I'm watching "This Week with George Stephanopolous." They've just finished talking about the mass-murder at Virginia Tech. Cokie Roberts just finished talking about what a shame it is that our "children" can't be safe on college campi.

Children? I suppose, strictly, that the victims were children. They were also "adults." When someone says "child," or "children," I think of toddlers, ten-year-olds. I don't think of car-owning, world-traveling, tax-paying, beer-drinking voters. The people killed ranged in age from 18 to 76. These were not "children." These were "adults."

I'm tired of the infantilization of America.

Huh?

The BBC World Service just described the Virginia Tech shooter as "Asian."

UPDATE: Bloomberg narrows it down.

UPDATE: The killer was a South Korean English major.

UPDATE:

First it was Johnny Muhammad, now it was Cho Sueng Hui aka Ismail Ax. Precisely how many mass shooters have to turn out to have adopted Muslim names before we get it? Islam has become the tribe of choice of those who hate American society. I'm not talking about people who grew up as Muslims, confident and secure in their faith, good fathers, sons and neighbors. I'm talking about the angry, malignant, narcissist loners who want to reject their community utterly, to throw off their 'slave name' and represent the downtrodden of the earth by shooting their friends and neighbors.

A misanthrope done in by a rampantly infectious venereal disease masquerading as a human being.

Hard to know who to cheer for.

The LA Times has decided that Iraq is a failure. The question now, for the LA Times, is "What next?"

For the Democrat party, that has to be a question with a hard moral, and easy political answer. In other words, it has an easy answer. Read on for illumination.

The Democrats believe they came to power with the support of their netroots, by opposing the way the war in Iraq was being fought. A large part of their opposition argument was the need for more troops in Iraq.

After the 2006 election, President Bush decided to take Democrat advice and increase the number of troops in Iraq.

Of course, for the netroots, the number of troops in Iraq was never an issue. It was simply a handy rhetorical cudgel. Now that the Democrats have power, the cudgel has been changed. Forget having too few troops in Iraq. Now, any troops are too many troops. All the troops must be gone, ASAP! Democrat politicians, victorious and in thrall to the netroots, are being led to that altar by the nose.

Reid, Pelosi, Clinton, Obama, Kucinich, Obey, Murtha, etc., are actively opposing the surge - the only strategy on the table for improving the outcome in Iraq. They're doing so in order to repay the netroots wing of the party. In doing so, they have velcroed their future to failure for our forces in Iraq.

Since 2003, President Bush's legacy has been directly tied to success in Iraq. Now the Democrats have chosen to align their party's future with the opposite idea. It's no longer the case - as it was during the 2006 election - that Democrats will look better the worse things get in Iraq. Now, because of their opposition to the surge, Democrats will look worse the better things get in Iraq. The only way for the Democrats to win in the 2008 election is for the surge - and the effort in Iraq - to fail.

Iran is betting on this, and the laughing stock it recently made of Britain's armed forces can only have emboldened it. Iran's accelerating its nuclear program because it wants a demonstrated nuclear capability when the US fails in Iraq.

In the US, the Democrats look like they're going to be successful. The Standard Total Academic View of Iraq - echoed by the LA Times - is that Iraq's a failure, so the Democrats get to succeed with an academic and journalistic cheering section that will cover for them when the slaughter begins.

When the US runs from Iraq, I expect an immediate Iranian invasion, with a nascent nuclear umbrella to keep the world at a distance. To liberate the oppressed Shi'ite majority, or somesuch. The decadent Saudis (I served there in Desert Shield/Desert Storm, and I never saw a Saudi lift anything heaver than a billfold), unable to defend themselves, will scream for American cover, which may not be forthcoming. The Kurds will defend themselves. The Sunnis will be pushed into Saudi Arabia and Jordan. The Iranians will physically link up with Syria, giving Iran reach from the Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf and the Afghan border.

The next President, most likely a Democrat, will come to office facing a nuclear-armed Iranian empire on the border of (nuclear-armed) Israel - a nation Iran has vowed to annihilate. The Kurds will be defending themselves against Turks and Iranians, while millions of refugees stream across the border into Saudi Arabia, just ahead of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

Morally, well, the Democrats will have sponsored hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of murders. Politically, well, they'll have the White House. Oh, and an academic and journalist class dedicated to validating them. As I said earlier, easy answer.

Me? Well, this is getting me thinking of another emigration (I came to the US from Ireland, I'm willing to head to Australia), and reminding me of a song from my childhood: McAlpine's Fusiliers.


UPDATE: Harry Reid agrees with me.

Offered without comment.

I mean, other than that Fred Thompson will be the next President.

Best. Conversation. Ever.

KEITH RICHARDS CANNOT BE KILLED BY ANY WEAPON KNOWN TO MAN!

Kind of reminds you of the old line: "THE ROLLING STONES! LIVE! (With Keith Richards.)"

What are the chances that the Royal Navy personnel kidnapped by Iran will be released the day Tony Blair leaves office?

Does he really want to go down in history as Britain's Jimmy Carter? Hell, Britan's "worse than" Jimmy Carter. I mean, the Habitat for Humanity gig is already taken by Jimmah, and the Nobel Committee are never going to give him an award. He supported President Bush, after all.


UPDATE: The EU and UN have left Britain hanging. The EU doesn't see Brits are EU citizens, they're Brits. The UN, whose mission the kidnapped Brits were executing is, well, neutered.


UPDATE: The Brits have left Britain hanging. Only 7% of Brits support military action. 48% oppose military action, no matter what. Ten years of Tony Blair as Nanny-in-Chief have put paid to British mettle. Pity, that.

Where's the chocolate Mohammed?

Oh, right, Muslims behead people. On TV. With no artistic purpose in mind. At all.

I don't think this necessarily means that CNN alone is biased.

Listening to CNN, CNN Headline News, XM Public Radio, and BBC World Service on my way to and from work, I'm struck by the unrelenting negativity of their coverage of Iraq. Every car bomb is described with loving care. Each suicide bomber is more evidence that Iraq is a lost cause. There can be no good news.

These journalists all hang out together, reinforce each others' views, wish to be invited to the same dinner parties, what have you. It's not that they don't want to report the "truth", as such, it's just that everything they report is filtered by their echo chamber, their standard view.

If you want to read about leftist echo-chambers, how they’re built, and their results, take a little time to read this thesis.

It’s about the left’s view of Cambodia between about 1975 and 1979. About how an echo chamber was formed and how the cries of the murdered in Cambodia were drowned by the howls of the American left, journalistic and academic.

The end result? Over a million Cambodians dead, with almost nary an apology from the American left. Indeed, Chomsky's weasel-wording enhanced his reputation for infallability.

The same sort of Standard Total Academic View has formed about Iraq. The view is that the US has screwed it up, Iraq cannot be recovered, we’d best turn and run now, etc. Ware is just repeating the accepted line within his echo chamber.

If the US does abandon Iraq, you can be sure that some time around 2030, a graduate student is going to do another honors thesis, with a title something like “THE SUNNI/SHI’ITE/BA’ATHIST CANON 2003 - 2009: The Standard Total Academic View on Iraq."

In the thesis, we’ll get the details of how the left forced the US out of Iraq, how four million or so Iraqis were massacred afterwards, and the end result on Iraq. Probably something like a partition resulting in an independent Kurdistan, annexation of southern Iraq by Iran, and annexation of of western Iraq by Syria and Saudi Arabia, with Syria linking up with Iran to give Iran Mediterranean ports.

And yet again, the long-dead Chomsky, and most of his assorted acolytes, will have managed to escape any blame, despite responsibility for the whole mess.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la meme chose, as Khieu Samphan might have said.


UPDATE: Apparently the Ware story was bogus. That said, I remain struck by the unrelenting negativity of the coverage of Iraq.

Mayhem in Atlanta.

Time for a drink.

What is it with Democrats?

Back in the 1980's we had Fort Worthless Jim Wright off to El Salvador to smooch Daniel Ortega. Now we have Nancy Pelosi off to suck face with Boy Assad.

The party really needs to change it's slogan to something like "Democrats: Sucking up to America's Enemies since 1968."

That said, Boy George is no Ronald Reagan.