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.

It was a very last minute sort of thing. The invitation arrived by email, which I only got to while the program was already underway, and my emailed apology, along with contact information, for too-late response (Pacific Time Zone) produced a phone call from the BBC, and a speedy connection to the program.

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.

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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.

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Richard Bennett identifies a defender of Roger L. Simon as Roger’s wife.

Blogs4God has linked some of the latest reports, including ours.

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FrankJ sums up the current situation.

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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

An evolving document with links being added….

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

H RES 571 RECORDED VOTE 18-Nov-2005 11:33 PM
QUESTION: On Agreeing to the Resolution
BILL TITLE: Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the deployment of United States forces in Iraq be terminated immediately

—- AYES 3 —

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.

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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.

–Job 12:20.

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.
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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.