America’s East Asian Allies looking at US Congressional behavior and opinion polls are naturally concluding that the US lacks both the leadership and will to win a war with China.

Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara has gone public, warning that the United States would lose any war with China.

“In any case, if tension between the United States and China heightens, if each side pulls the trigger, though it may not be stretched to nuclear weapons, and the wider hostilities expand, I believe America cannot win as it has a civic society that must adhere to the value of respecting lives,” Mr. Ishihara said in an address to the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Mr. Ishihara said U.S. ground forces, with the exception of the Marines, are “extremely incompetent” and would be unable to stem a Chinese conventional attack. Indeed, he asserted that China would not hesitate to use nuclear weapons against Asian and American cities—even at the risk of a massive U.S. retaliation.

The governor said the U.S. military could not counter a wave of millions of Chinese soldiers prepared to die in any onslaught against U.S. forces. After 2,000 casualties, he said, the U.S. military would be forced to withdraw.

People living in Taiwan better hope that China is not coming to same conclusion.

Hat tip to Emmy Chang.

The New York Sun has discovered a recent undergraduate fad spreading from Yale (& Brown?) to Columbia: Naked Parties.

Columbia undergraduates are staging parties with one basic ground rule – all guests must part with their clothes upon arrival. The invitation circulating around Morningside Heights bans three additional items: cameras, masks, and “spikey things.”.. A student who attended the party in the spring, Richard Lipkin, said about 80 to 100 naked people – including a fair number of law and business school students – were concentrated in one apartment. Clothes were dumped near the entrance. Women slightly outnumbered men, and people were generally – if not exclusively – good looking, the type who are often more willing to flout culture’s restrictions on nudity.

Mr. Lipkin said he had no recollection of the music that was played.

“It was surprisingly comfortable,” he said. “Most of the people were quite comfortable. Everyone was pretty mature about it. I don’t think anything inappropriate went on. ... People were definitely networking, but there wasn’t anything bad going on.”

A novel published last March by recent Yale graduate Natalie Krinsky (Timothy Dwight, 2004) features an account of her fictionalized heroine attending one.

Judith Coburn is cheerleading for Bush’s eventual impeachment over at Moonbat Jones, in an article headlined Worse than Watergate?

The current “One-Party State” seems to preclude hope, Coburn laments. But, still, she notes:

It’s often forgotten how long it took for Watergate to get traction as a political juggernaut. The initial Washington Post reports by Woodward and Bernstein on the Watergate burglary were printed before the 1972 election and yet Nixon was reelected….

Plamegate, after all, is no more just an odious but simple case of Beltway character assassination than the plumbers’ break-in at Democratic Party headquarters was just a burglary. Famed Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein now argues that just as the Watergate break-in was the key that opened a strongbox of ugly facts about the Nixon Administration’s unbridled abuse of power, so might the Plame affair break open the Bush Administration’s imperial modus operandi.

Will Plamegate lead to the collapse of the Bush presidency or even impeachment? These are, in the end, matters less of legality than politics, consciousness, and conscience.

We can rely on the Extreme Left to be diligent in consciousness-raising in support of its affiliated Intelligence Community members in their continuing efforts to build momentum, to fan the sparks of L’Affair Plame into a media barnfire adequate to provide the basis to overthrow an elected president.

The White House has dismissed claims that George Bush was talked out of bombing Arab television station al-Jazeera by UK Prime Minister Tony Blair.

And it’s really better to suppose that putting the Voice of Terrorism out of business permanently is one of those small, but important, steps in achieving victory, which the Bush Administration somehow managed to talk itself out of?

George W. Bush ought to take note that (1) he didn’t do it, and (2) the MSM raked him over the coals about it anyway. He might as well just have done it in the first place, since he was going to get attacked over it whether he did or not. There’s a moral here, folks.

My suggestion is that the Bush administration must realize that this is a terribly dangerous situation: at a time of national danger, when we are at war, the CIA has become a rogue agency, uncontrolled by any branch of the federal government. It conducts its own foreign policy; it dictates military policy (through control of the intelligence the Department of Defense needs); it has seized control of a significant portion of the powers of the elected Executive.

It’s time to fight back… and best and quickest way to do so would be for President Bush to direct Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez to immediately begin Justice Department investigations of this rash of recent leaks from the CIA, including the decision to allow Joe Wilson to go public with his lying claims in the New York Times about “what [he] didn’t find” in Niger; the leak about the previously secret prison facilities for terrorists; and so forth.

Reporters should be subpoenaed; if they refuse to testify, put them in jail for contempt until they do. Use the full powers of the Patriot Act to seize records and find out who is doing the leaking. And then drop the hammer on them: prosecute them for misuse of classified information or even worse criminal violations. At the very least, get enough evidence to strip them of their security clearances… make it plain that leaking to the press to damage the administration is a career-terminating offense and might even lead to prison time.

Also, be sure to widely publicize the names of leakers as soon as you dredge them up. These people rely upon anonymity; if word gets around that whatever you tell Harry ends up in a Walter Pinkus column tomorrow, the leakers will be shunned by many of the folks who have unwittingly been helping them funnel damaging information to the mainstream leftist media.

Bush can do all of this without Congress lifting a finger. He can do it over the Thanksgiving Day weekend, and he doesn’t need any votes from the Democrats.

Heinlein would be mad as hell that he can’t be there.

Charles Johnson and Roger L. Simon have responded to naming conflicts and reader disapproval by abandoning the corporately-imposed moniker Open Source Media and going back to the old name Pajamas Media. As one can tell by this blog’s title, I think an insult turned around makes a good blog name.

Ann Althouse takes the occasion to get one in on the still-unresolved content quality issue. Girls can be so mean.

And wouldn’t you know it? Here’s Dennis the Peasant ragging on them too.
———————————————————
EARLIER REPORTS.

The BBC today, in the manner of journalists and Europeans, was taking the idea of American withdrawal from Iraq proposed by Congressman Murtha seriously. J. Peter Mulhern in American Thinker properly demolishes that kind of thinking:

A victorious nation either establishes a permanent troop presence on the battlefield or it loses the fruits of victory. A win or a draw followed by retreat will always degenerate into a defeat. If there is such a thing as a law of history, this is it. Consider just the few examples from our own short history.

Two hundred and twenty years after the Revolutionary War we still have troops along the east coast of North America. A hundred and sixty years after the Mexican-American War we still have troops in the Southwest. A hundred and forty years after the Civil War we still have troops in the states of the Confederacy. Sixty years after World War II we still have troops in Germany and Japan. Fifty Years after the Korean War we still have troops guarding Seoul.

We left Cuba after occupations in 1906 and 1912 (retaining only the naval base at Guantanamo Bay). Fidel Castro is our reward. We left Europe after World War I and we got World War II. We left Vietnam after we had bought a stalemate with 50,000 lives and the result was our most humiliating defeat.

When you leave, you lose. Defeat is the only exit strategy and in this instance defeat would be catastrophic. The stakes could not be higher.

Alfred Anderson, a member of the famous Black Watch regiment, passed away today at the age of 109. Anderson was the last surviving soldier of WWI to be able to recall hearing the guns fall silent for the spontaneous Christmas truce of 1914.

preview

I spoke briefly this morning on BBC radio, in my capacity as author of the Never Yet Melted blog, deploring Rep. Murtha’s proposal for American withdrawal from Iraq, and disputing the contention of members of a selection of other multi-national pundits and journalists that a majority of Iraqis were opposed to the current US role in establishing democracy in Iraq.

If my comments proposing war-duration internment camps for US subversives forty miles south of Barstow, presidential-appointment of Pope Benedict as the Islamo-extremist desired Caliph, and the immediate bombing of Hanoi (Better late, than never!) were not too off-putting (only kidding!), and an invitation of this sort is ever renewed, I will try to alert readers.

Dennis the Peasant aka Kenton Kelly reveals his side of the story.

About the dog.

Earlier battle report from Dennis.

Dennis responds to Roger by outing himself.
———————————————————————
Ann Althouse podcast for 47 minutes. Essentially, she’s happy enough with her blog advertising now. She expressed skepticism about rosy promises. Roger Simon was not persuasive at recruiting over the phone. He emphasized financial aspects too much. She places a very high value on the ethos of blogging and independence. When they failed to agree, he ended by hanging up on her.

Ms. Althouse says that she was attacked in Little Green Footballs (I believe it had to have been in Comments), and she blames the proprietor (I think mistakenly) for loosing his minions on her. I get abusive attacks in my Comments, and I’m the proprietor, so I don’t think it’s a question of anybody encouraging anyone.

Ms. Althouse had a certain amount of fun about the quality and selection of material currently featured on OSM. She suggested that it might have been better to do a soft launch, and perfect and improve operations in front of a much smaller limited release, early-adopter audience.

Ms. Althouse’s opinions were presented informally and digressively in the course of a lengthy stream-of-consciousness, ex tempore podcast, which format may be relied upon to preclude their wide dissemination.
———————————————————————
Richard Bennett identifies a defender of Roger L. Simon as Roger’s wife.

Blogs4God has linked some of the latest reports, including ours.
———————————————————————
FrankJ sums up the current situation.
———————————————————————
EARLIER REPORTS.

Ray McGovern, in an interview with Moonbat journal Mother Jones, states that VIPS was organized in January of 2003.

We established our group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, in January of last year. Before that several of us had been writing op-eds, and we had been giving each other sanity checks, because the conclusions we were coming up with were pretty far out—that the President and the Secretary of State were lying through their teeth.

According to McGovern, VIPS, at the time of the interview (March 2004), had 35 members consisting of retired and resigned officials from the FBI, Defense Intelligence, NSA, Army Intelligence, and the State Department, and also boasted of the existence of active members of the intelligence community working with VIPS, but “not as members.”

Why is this group of disaffected intelligence agency and state department officials trying to bring down the Bush Administration?

Because there is no English word to describe our outrage. We’ve been watching this for a year now, and we’ve published eleven memos on what the Bush administration has done. We’re just aghast at what we saw all during 2002.

We have never seen anything like this orchestrated campaign, as the Administration chose to play on America’s real suffering and trauma to sell an illegal and unnecessary war.

VIPS original steering committee included:

Raymond McGovern, Arlington

Richard Beske, San Diego, “former CIA officer”

Kathleen McGrath Christison, Santa Fe
and
William Christison, Santa Fe, resigned from VIPS 15 July 2003, over memo calling for Cheney’s resignation.

Patrick Eddington, Alexandria Sourcewatch

David MacMichael, Linden, VA

Obvious additional affiliates or allies, appearing in the 2003 Moveon.org-sponsored film, Uncovered: the Whole Truth About the Iraq War include:

David Albright

Robert Baer

Milt Bearden, former CIA station chief in Pakistan

Rand Beers more politely

David Corn

Philip Coyle

John Dean

Chas Freeman

Graham Fuller

Mel Goodman Mother Jones bio and in CounterPunch Democracy Now! interview

John Brady Kiesling

Karen Kwiatkowski

Patrick Lang

Scott Ritter

The Rt Honorable Clare Short

Stansfield Turner

The Honorable Henry Waxman

Thomas E. White also

Joe Wilson article about

Colonel Mary Ann Wright

Peter Zimmerman.

Linked via Goodman above:

Greg Thielmann

Vincent Cannistraro

Other alleged VIPS members:

Ray Close, Princeton, NJ quotes CounterPunch 10Jun03 On Fallujah30Apr04

Eugene Betit

Larry Johnson web-site

Clarice Feldman at American Thinker points to an ultra-left affilliated group calling itself Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, frequently abbreviated as VIPS, as the behind-the-scenes allies of the MSM in fanning the flames of the Plamegate scandal. VIPS recently appeared in the Washington Post:

A group of former intelligence officers urged President Bush not to pardon anyone convicted of leaking Valerie Plame’s name to reporters and to pull security clearances of any White House officials implicated in the investigation.

Feldman notes a previous article of her own demonstrating that some of the same group of people have been conducting an anti-Bush administration campaign for a considerable period of time.

VIPS was opposing the upcoming invasion of Iraq, and predicting catastrophe, on Alexander Cockburn’s far-left CounterPunch in February of 2003:

after watching Secretary Powell today, we are convinced that you would be well served if you widened the discussion beyond violations of Resolution 1441, and beyond the circle of those advisers clearly bent on a war for which we see no compelling reason and from which we believe the unintended consequences are likely to be catastrophic.

VIPS can be seen organized and in operation already arguing for Dick Cheney’s forced resignation over his role in pre-war intelligence assessment as far back as 14 July 2003:

We recommend that you call an abrupt halt to attempts to prove Vice President Cheney “not guilty.” His role has been so transparent that such attempts will only erode further your own credibility. Equally pernicious, from our perspective, is the likelihood that intelligence analysts will conclude that the way to success is to acquiesce in the cooking of their judgments, since those above them will not be held accountable. We strongly recommend that you ask for Cheney’s immediate resignation.

Adolescent, I know, but I have a lot of Tolkien fan friends.

To which race of Middle Earth do you belong?
From Quizilla.

Result for JDZ: Rohirrim.

“Exit strategy” is a defeatist’s term. The only exit strategy that matters was summed up by George M. Cohan in the song the Doughboys sang as they marched off to the Great War nine decades ago:

“And we won’t come back

Till it’s over

Over there!”

Is this a great country or what?

More videos and photos here.

Homepage.

Best 2005 results:

Air cannon class: 4331.72 feet

Centrifugal class: 2705.09 feet

Catapult: 2862.28 feet

Trebuchet 1702.46 feet

Cynthia McKinney- representing the 4th District of Georgia, comprising most of DeKalb and the Southwest portion of Gwinett Counties.

Jose Serrano – representing the 16th District of New York, comprising most of the South Bronx.

Robert Wexler -representing the 19th District of Florida, comprising portions of Palm Beach and Broward Counties.

——ANSWERED “PRESENT” 6—-

Mike Capuano – representing the 8th District of Massachusetts, comprising the towns of Cambridge, Chelsea, Somerville, and 70% of Boston.

William Lacy Clay Jr. – representing the 1st District of Missouri, comprising portions of St. Louis.

Maurice Hinchey – representing the 22nd District of New York: Binghamton, Newburgh, and the Catskills – Broome, comprising all or portions of Duchess, Orange, Sullivan, Tioga, Tompkins, and Ulster Counties.

Jim McDermott – representing the 7th District of Washington -comprising King County and including Seattle, Vashon Island, and parts of Shoreline, Tukwila, SeaTac, and Burien.

Jerrold Nadler – representing the 8th District of New York, comprising a spectacular gerrymander: most of Manhattan’s Upper West Side, and most parts of Clinton, Chelsea, SoHo, Greenwich Village, TriBeCa, and Downtown Manhattan; and in Brooklyn: parts of Boro Park, Sunset Park, Bay Ridge, Bensonhurst, Coney Island, Brighton Beach, Gravesend, Dyker Heights, Bath Beach, and Seagate.

Major R. Owens – representing the 11th District of New York, comprising all or portions of the East Flatbush, Park Slope, Crown Heights, and Brownsville neighborhoods in Brooklyn.
—————————————-

Hinchey, at least, represents a largely non-rich liberal, non-inner city minority district. He ought to be vulnerable. Woodstock shouldn’t be able to out-vote the rest of New York’s 22nd District.

Kurt Vonnegut, a great American writer who served honorably in WWII, is now 83. The vissicitudes of age combined with long exposure to the ideational pathologies endemic in the community of fashion have afflicted Vonnegut cruelly. He is obviously mad as Lear, and has made an international spectacle of himself in an interview with the Weekend Australian, praising suicide bombers, defending their cause, and abusing the administration.

He removeth away the speech of the trusty, and taketh away the understanding of the aged.

Greyhawk at Mudville Gazette has compiled an Iraq War Timeline, 1990-2003, which is going to prove a handy reference. Hat tip to Glenn Reynolds.

Unfortunately, Greyhawk omits referencing the highly significant fact that “during Operation Desert Storm the Iraqi Air Force did not seek to challenge Coalition air forces, and nearly half the Iraqi Air Force fled to Iran, to escape destruction” an obvious key precedent for WMDs not captured in the course of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. See the Bill Tierney interview linked below.

In an unusual floor action, Representative Jean Schmidt (R-2nd District Ohio) today was forced to withdraw remarks she made referring to Congressman John Murtha as a “coward.” After making the remarks, amid vocal protests from her colleagues, Rep. Schmidt took back her statement to avoid breaking House rules regarding impuning the integrity of another Member of Congress.————————————————————————————————————————The Speaker Pro Tempore: The gentlelady from Ohio is recognized for one minute.

Ms. Schmidt: Yesterday I stood at Arlington National Cemetery attending the funeral of a young marine in my district. He believed in what we were doing is the right thing and had the courage to lay his life on the line to do it. A few minutes ago I received a call from Colonel Danny Bop, Ohio Representative from the 88th district in the House of Representatives. He asked me to send Congress a message: Stay the course. He also asked me to send Congressman Murtha a message, that cowards cut and run, Marines never do. Danny and the rest of America and the world want the assurance from this body — that we will see this through.

The Speaker Pro Tempore: The house will be in order. The house will be in order. The house will be in order. The house will be in order. The house will be in order. The gentlelady will suspend. And the clerk will report her words. All members will suspend. The gentleman from Arkansas has demanded that the gentlelady’s words be taken down. The clerk will report the gentlelady’s words.

The Speaker Pro Tempore: The house will be in order. Members pleas take seats. The gentlelady from Ohio.

Ms. Schmidt: Mr. Speaker, my remarks were not directed at any member of the House and I did not intend to suggest that they applied to any member. Most especially the distinguished gentleman from Pennsylvania. I therefore ask for unanimous consent that my words be withdrawn.

The Speaker Pro Tempore: Without objection. The gentlelady’s words will be withdrawn.

On Power-Line News.

This blog will be three weeks old tomorrow; it was started October 29th.

I had been gloating over finding a few dozen hits per diem, many from actual strangers, and considering that real progress, until Jonah Goldberg over at National Review Online linked a fairly frivolous posting responding to some moonbat who calls himself “Hunter” on Daily Kos, and I found four thousand hits this morning.

A hearty welcome to all our new visitors. Please look in again from time to time. I believe I can promise some rational observations from the political Right, and some links providing passing amusement.

Wonkette informs us that the Smithsonian National Zoo has an Internet pandacam on Animal Planet, at the moment, allowing viewers worldwide to watch Mei Xiang, a giant panda, and her recently born cub, Tai Shan (renamed “Butterstick” by Wonkette?) sleep.

Wonkette has been posting about this since the panda was born last summer. I guess I haven’t been reading Wonkette too closely lately.

Jim Dunnigan’s Strategy Page reports the cancellation of the development of the XM8, another lightweight assault weapon chambered for the 5.56×45 mm NATO (.223 caliber), owing to growing reports from Iraq of American forces’ disenchantment with the groundhog round’s poor killing power on white-tailed deer-sized targets, i.e., human beings (Too often, enemy troops require several 5.56mm bullets to put them out of action), and because of the small round’s lack of ability to penetrate walls and doors in urban fighting.

Reports from Iraq indicate that the infamous M-16 is just as prone to jamming on account of desert dust, as it was from jungle mud in Vietnam.

James Joyner at Outside the Beltway supplies a very informative collection of reactions and opinions on the launch of the new bloggers’ consortium.

Iowahawk adds a precis today (11/18) of the ” new multi-aspect business concept in which many of the top superstar and mega-hyper superstars of the internet blogosphere have formed a powerful alliance to create shareholder value, and piss off Ann Althouse. ”

Ms. Althouse is not amused, and takes a hard-core reductionist view of the plot:

In Phase A, various important blogosphere blogs are coerced into a mutual non-aggression pact under the auspices of the OSM directorate. This is very similar to NATO, but French people are excluded. In Phase number B, there is large alcohol party in New York, which is an important center for media business discussions. In Phase 3, the system creates values, which are translated into very large checks for everybody. In Phase number D, I drive my new yacht, the “Ha Ha Ha,” to a tax-free Caribbean island.

Dennis the Peasant is also very anti OSM and is blogging defiance. Roger L. Simon (11/19) explains Dennis’ dudgeon.

The notorious Frank J. (11/19) offers the consolatory promise to all of us without stock options: when I get my yacht, I’ll let you all look at it.

Julia Gorin, writing in Jewish World Review, is not a fan of the metrosexual urban liberal who makes a lot of noise about hating guns:

LET’S be honest. He’s scared of the thing. That’s understandable—so am I. But as a girl I have the luxury of being able to admit it. I don’t have to masquerade squeamishness as grand principle-in the interest of mankind, no less.

Many are boiling over with anger at Congressional calls for retreat from Iraq:

Dympha calls Senate Republicans a bunch of wusses, and refers to them as the Gang of Invertebrates.

Will Malven describes the behavior of 46 Republican Senators as Cowardice Under Fire:

They waited until the President was out of the country. They waited until he was in a plane 35000 feet in the air. They waited until he was unable to respond appropriately before betraying him. Then they abandoned him to the Democrat wolves.

Mark Steyn says: I would be in favor of wrapping virtually every Republican Senator in asbestos, and using them to insulate my attic.

Van Laskey, quoted in The American Thinker,

There is no more spineless group of men than our esteemed Senate Republican leaders with the exception of Allen and Santorum. Had Rockefeller gone to Italy prior to 1941 and told Mussolini that he thought that Roosevelt was planning to aid Britain he’d have soon been looking at the business end of a noose…

And Marines are especially disgusted by calls for American withdrawal from Iraq by former USMC colonel Congressman John Murtha.:

Gunny Bob declares that Representative John Murtha soils the Corps, and urges that

John “The Jellyfish” Murtha should be shunned by all Marines and, if possible, legal steps should be taken to prevent this betrayer from being buried in a national cemetery upon his demise.

Here’s a great on-line rifle and pistol shooting simulator. (I should have kept this one to myself a lot longer. )

Today is really comedy day in the Blogosphere.

The Los Angeles Times had the unmitigated bad taste in liberal eyes, it seems, as to profane that newspaper’s editorial shrine by admitting the unworthy person of conservative syndicated columnist, and NRO editor-at-large, Jonah Goldberg.

STOP ME IF YOU’VE heard this already. But there are people out there—honest, decent, sincere people and deranged moonbats, too—who think that George W. Bush lied about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. No, seriously, it’s true.

Unfortunately, Goldberg immediately changes course, and turns the whole thing into a mildly amusing bit of sophistry contending that: Bush is right, even if he lied, because FDR lied the country into WWII, and we all agree in the end that he was right to do so. Therefore, we must recognize that presidents may very well need to lie on grave occasions to get the country to support hard choices and naturally intrinsically-unpopular policy decisions, like going to war.

Maybe so. And, though I did not find myself completely carried away with admiration, I recognize that syndicated columnists do have to turn in something regularly in order to collect a paycheck, and they can’t all be gems.

Over on Daily Kos, however, the incongruously named “Hunter” summons the literary equivalent of a carpet-bombing B-52 airstrike to express precisely how shocked… shocked he is to find such incivility as the opprobrious epithet of “deranged moonbats” being applied to a particular category of ideological opponents in a political editorial. “Hunter” then undertakes to fight the good fight for more and greater politesse in the political wars by donning his literary critic Halloween costume, raising a pinkie finger delicately in the air, and proceeding to find Goldberg’s prose-style wanting and his manners uncouth at very considerable length.

One is simply compelled to conclude that the term deranged moonbats must have struck a nerve.

Goldberg clearly meant by that term the sort of people on the political left who are so carried away by emotion, enthusiasm, and passion that their actual grip upon reality has become unhinged, and they have modified their own memories, and subverted their own powers of reason sufficiently as to believe that what “Hunter” refers to as speeches about mushroom clouds and African uranium really have been established in the eyes of anyone less deranged than an indubitable, barking, and likely card-carrying, moonbat to represent anything other a false line of partisan political obfuscation entered into the public debate by former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, whose report was actually subsequently established to indicate the exact opposite of what he said it did.

The Right Brothers, a conservative duo out of Nashville, have a new song, Bush Was Right, intended “to teach the youth of America the TRUTH.” Well, I don’t think many of the Youth of America will prefer this one to Eminem’s latest, but you can certainly annoy the heck out of any of your liberal friends just by clicking on it.

US Patent No. 6,960,975 B1
Space vehicle propelled by the pressure of inflationary vacuum state
Boris Volfson, 5707 W. Maple Grove Rd., Apt. 3046, Huntington, Ind. 46750 (US)
Filed on Mar. 14, 2005.

Full text.

It certainly looks like a joke, but the patent can be found by the search engine on the US Patent Office site.

Science Daily is not pleased.

Nature comments.

The NY Times writes:

To avoid having to account for his administration’s misleading statements before the war with Iraq, President Bush has tried denial, saying he did not skew the intelligence. He’s tried to share the blame, claiming that Congress had the same intelligence he had, as well as President Bill Clinton. He’s tried to pass the buck and blame the C.I.A. Lately, he’s gone on the attack, accusing Democrats in Congress of aiding the terrorists…

It’s hard to imagine what Mr. Bush means when he says everyone reached the same conclusion. There was indeed a widespread belief that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons. But Mr. Clinton looked at the data and concluded that inspections and pressure were working – a view we now know was accurate.

What Mr. Clinton actually concluded may be seen in the video here.

confesses Point Five who observes:

Senate Demonstrates Republican “Big Tent” Large Enough For Anti-War Left.

God Hates Shrimp.

National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley is reported by Raw Story to be the source who informed the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward of Valerie Plame’s CIA employment and her role in arranging Joe Wilson’s trip to Niger.

Raw Story is an unreliable moonbat site, but…

Front Page interviews Bill Tierney, a former UN weapons inspector, on the missing Iraqi WMDs:

FP: Ok, so where did the WMDs go?

Tierney: While working counter-infiltration in Baghdad, I noticed a pattern among infiltrators that their cover stories would start around Summer or Fall of 2002. From this and other observations, I believe Saddam planned for a U.S. invasion after President Bush’s speech at West Point in 2002. One of the steps taken was to prepare the younger generation of the security services with English so they could infiltrate our ranks, another was either to destroy or move WMDs to other countries, principally Syria. Starting in the Summer of 2002, the Iraqis had months to purge their files and create cover stories, such as the letter from Hossam Amin, head of the Iraqi outfit that monitored the weapons inspectors, stating after Hussein Kamal’s defection that the weapons were all destroyed in 1991…

FP: Let’s talk a little bit more about how the WMDs disappeared.

Tierney: In Iraq’s case, the lakes and rivers were the toilet, and Syria was the back door. Even though there was imagery showing an inordinate amount of traffic into Syria prior to the inspections, and there were other indicators of government control of commercial trucking that could be used to ship the weapons to Syria, from the ICs point of view, if there is no positive evidence that the movement occurred, it never happened. This conclusion is the consequence of confusing litigation with intelligence. Litigation depends on evidence, intelligence depends on indicators. Picture yourself as a German intelligence officer in Northern France in April 1944. When asked where will the Allies land, you reply “I would be happy to tell you when I have solid, legal proof, sir. We will have to wait until they actually land.” You won’t last very long. That officer would have to take in all the indicators, factor in deception, and make an assessment (this is a fancy intelligence word for an educated guess).

The Democrats understand the difference between the two concepts, but have no qualms about blurring the distinction for political gain.

A Passer domesticus or house sparrow, what we in the New World refer to as an English sparrow, and look upon as an undesirable variety of winged varmint, got into a Dutch exposition center, where he made a nuisance of himself, interfering with a domino event by knocking down dominoes that over a hundred people from twelve countries had spent more than a month setting up. Exhibition authorities brought in an exterminator, who delivered retribution via pellet gun, but the Dutch Animal Protection Agency has placed English sparrows on its Endangered Species List (what’s next? cockroaches?) and is investigated the sparricide.

The Point Five blog reports:

Zarqawi, forced against his will to fight by an imperialistic US policy, pauses during his tireless struggle, to reflect on the meaning of good and evil.

Zarqawi, who has been conducting a Iranian- backed resistance against the nascent Iraqi democracy, is believed to have been fundamentally shaken by the prospect of a an official denunciation of torture by his long-time enemy, the United States. He is reportedly holed- up in a safe house in Ramadi contemplating his next move.

“This really has knocked Zarqawi on his heels,” said Peter Welker, a Middle East expert with the Welker Group. “The introduction of this legislation has sent a wave of doubt through the entire insurgency. The United States— the focus of so much of their hate— suddenly seems like a shining example of decency. They’re suddenly stopping in the middle of assembling an IED, or while strapping on a suicide belt, and questioning everything they believe. We expect to see a mass surrender of arms and a huge shift to a more political focus for Zarqawi’s group.”

They have not reformed taxes. They have not reduced federal spending. They have not repaired Social Security. And they are starting to crawfish on the War on Terrror. We may soon lose control of Congress, and when we do, will we really care?

Maybe we can get Ronnie Earle to indict a few more members of the useless, worthless, and invertebrate Republican Congressional leadership which has frittered away the historic opportunity to produce change afforded by the electoral victories of 2004 through lack of principle and sheer cowardice. What do we need democrats for, when we have the so-called Republicans we have?

It is becoming increasingly obvious that the Conservative Movement has gotten ahead of itself. We have learned how to win elections, but in too many cases we are just electing the same bloviators and opportunists as the democrats. I’m afraid it’s back to drawing-boards again for Conservatism. It’s not just about winning elections, and securing Congressional majorities. We are going to need to be a lot more certain about whom we are electing.

Scott Johnson at Power-Line deservedly cites as definitive Andrew McCarthy’s column at NRO: Say “No” to the McCain Amendment, which eloquently, and unanswerably, concludes:

We should be asking this question of each and every member of Congress who claims to support the McCain Amendment: If we had credible information regarding an ongoing al Qaeda plot to detonate a nuclear weapon in the continental United States, and we had just taken into custody an al Qaeda militant who was in a position to know where and when the attack was to occur but who was refusing to cooperate, are you saying we would need to let thousands of Americans die rather than harm a hair on the terrorist’s head in an effort to extract the information that might save them?

If the answer to that question is “no,” you have no business voting for the McCain Amendment. If the answer is “yes,” you have no business serving in a government whose first obligation is the security of the governed.

Swiss authorities have impounded 54 extremely valuable paintings loaned by Russia’s Pushkin Museum to an exhibition at the Fondation Pierre Gianadda in the Swiss town of Martigny. The paintings seized included works by Pablo Picasso, Auguste Renoir, Claude Monet and Vincent Van Gogh and had been on exhibit at the Foundation Pierre Gianadda for five months. The property of the Russian Government is being taken on behalf of Noga, a Swiss trading firm, seeking to recover $800 million in unpaid debts associated with food for oil exchanges in 1991-1992. Noga has previously succeeded in having a Russian ship, warplanes and diplomatic property temporarily seized in France, Luxemburg, and Sweden.

The Russian Government characterized the action as a gross breach of international law.

The Washington Post reports that the big secret of Valerie Plame’s CIA employment as an ANALYST, not a spy, was known by leftie journalist extraordinaire Bob Woodward a month before Bob Novak spilled the beans:

Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward testified under oath Monday in the CIA leak case that a senior administration official told him about CIA operative Valerie Plame and her position at the agency nearly a month before her identity was disclosed.

In a more than two-hour deposition, Woodward told Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald that the official casually told him in mid-June 2003 that Plame worked as a CIA analyst on weapons of mass destruction, and that he did not believe the information to be classified or sensitive, according to a statement Woodward released yesterday…

William Jeffress Jr., one of Libby’s lawyers, said yesterday that Woodward’s testimony undermines Fitzgerald’s public claims about his client and raises questions about what else the prosecutor may not know. Libby has said he learned Plame’s identity from NBC’s Tim Russert.

“If what Woodward says is so, will Mr. Fitzgerald now say he was wrong to say on TV that Scooter Libby was the first official to give this information to a reporter?” Jeffress said last night. “The second question I would have is: Why did Mr. Fitzgerald indict Mr. Libby before fully investigating what other reporters knew about Wilson’s wife?”

Fitzgerald has spent nearly two years investigating whether senior Bush administration officials illegally leaked classified information.

Tom Maguire at Just One Minute has been taking point on Blogosphere coverage of L’Affaire Plame.

As promised, the Open Source Media site opened this morning. Many of the most talented voices in the Blogosphere have been involved in this project, and I expect this will quickly prove to be an essential source of news and opinion, one of those first stops on the Information Superhighway every morning.

Congratulations to Roger Simon, Chuck Johnson, and the many others leading the way into a better future.

The anticipated transition of the Blogosphere into established and commercially-oriented institutions is beginning to take place.

Tomorrow, Open Source Media, a web-site described as seeking to “blend traditional journalism with freeform commentary” will be launched. How long can it be before Microsoft buys Instapundit and Fox Television hires Michelle Malkin?

Getting back to the Yale-Princeton game, Emmy Chang writes:

“You know… when you go to the game against Yale here, everybody has stickers and stuff like that with ‘BEAT YALE’ on them. So I was in New Haven for the first time, a few months ago, and I went into the stores to see if they had anything that said ‘BEAT PRINCETON.’ But there wasn’t anything!”
—spoken to me by a genuinely confused Princeton grad student, at a dinner the other night

The BBC fawns over a looterfest in Tunisia, to which 15,000 delegates, and more than 50 heads of state, are gleefully converging (likes ants to a picnic) to panhandle their way into control of at least a slice of the world’s most important information technology delivery system. It isn’t fair, you see, that

The net’s infrastructure has been managed in an informal way through collaboration with businesses, civil society, academic and technical communities.

Many developing countries have felt left out of this process.

A private, not-for-profit group, formed by the US Department of Commerce, called the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann), currently supervises the net’s infrastructure.

Its oversees domain name and addressing systems, such as country domain suffixes, and manages how net browsers and e-mail programs direct traffic.

Developing nations want the net and its domains shared more equally, so that everyone can benefit from the web’s economic, political, social and cultural advantages.

The US is reluctant to relinquish its grip, arguing that UN proposals would shift regulation from private sector leadership, to government, top-down control.

WSIS takes place in Tunis, Tunisia, from 16 to 18 November.

Possible US sell-out to European plan.

11/15 Follow-up on OSM

The McCain Amendment will only increase intelligence demand and create a black market in interrogation astutely predicts Wretchard:

What the McCain Amendment will do is change the bean-counting rules. It will not create a framework in which real torture can be limited and stopped. That would require accepting moral responsibility for affirming practices which may be proscribed under the Geneva Conventions but fall short of real torture. That would mean explaining to the public that we are correspondingly determined to outlaw real, barbaric torture, even when by foreswearing it, public losses must be endured. Instead politicians will want to have it both ways and promise the public that they will neither soil their hands nor let the sleeping populace come to harm. No one who desires re-election can promise the voters only “blood, sweat and tears”. The time is long since past when politicians could say to a nation at war “death and sorrow will be the companion of our journey; hardship our garment; constancy and valor our only shield.” That’s too much of a drag. Today even our conflicts, like our food, must be untouched by human hands.

Jack Bauer, the indefatigable Counter-Terrorism agent played by Kiefer Sutherland in Fox Television’s popular prime time evening drama, is certainly headed for federal prosecution, and a long-stretch in federal prison, under the terms of the soon-to-be-adopted McCain Amendment banning cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment of any individual in the custody or under the physical control of the United States Government, regardless of nationality or physical location.

Season after season, as the clock ticks away, bringing the bad guys’ nefarious plots closer to completion, and innocent victims (frequently including Jack Bauer’s own loved ones) closer to horrible death, Jack inevitably turns outlaw, defying orders, breaking the rules, and proceeding time after time to abusive interrogation techniques, as the television audience nods in approval.

I’ve only watched a handful of episodes of 24, but the plots from one season to another seemed very similar. On one occasion, Jack forces the bad guy to talk by shooting him in the leg. In another episode, Jack kidnaps the villain right out of confinement in Counter Terrorist Unit Headquarters, drags him out into the building’s parking lot, handcuffs him to a steering wheel, and sets to work (off camera) breaking his fingers one by one.

Strong measures certainly, but Jack has his reasons. One season, he’s preventing the explosion of a nuclear warhead over Los Angeles. In others, he’s stopping the assassination of a major party presidential candidate and a Defense Secretary, and he is always saving the lives of innocent women and children.

The plots of this television series throw a lot of light on the way our society characteristically approaches moral dilemmas. We are naturally against bad things like torture, and we want there to be systems and rules prohibiting anything so cruel and unpleasant to contemplate as coercive interrogation. But we also want those in charge of protecting us to break all the rules and go outside all the systems in really serious circumstances when society’s existence or serious numbers of innocent lives are at stake. We insist that we be lied to, so that we can kid ourselves about realities too unpleasant to think about. We will reliably codify and institutionalize hypocrisy. And we don’t mind jeopardizing the real-life Jack Bauers out there, just so we can participate in a momentary gesture that makes us feel good about ourselves.

Republican Party video . (Hat tip to Glenn Reynolds.)