A bizarrely persistent spammer/troll has finally forced me to take the plunge and start comment registration. Hopefully, I'll have the system set up in the next few days, so heads up - you'll need to register with a username and password in order to participate in discussions.

In the meantime, please ignore anyone that insists on flooding my comments section with links.

UPDATE: It will be Typekey.

Bloomberg reports:

Employment Growth Accelerated in October: U.S. Economy Preview Oct. 31

U.S. employers probably added 175,000 workers to payrolls in October, the most in five months, while the unemployment rate held at a three-year low of 5.4 percent, the median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey of economists shows.

Considering the fact that the real loss of jobs during Bush's Administration now stands at 410,000, and not John Kerry's incessant quote of 1.6 million, a slight uptick in the last two months of the year could result in a wash or even a net gain of jobs during Bush's 4 years in office. This would dodge the job-losing ghost of Herbert Hoover, even after the inheritance of a recession that was abetted by the most catastrophic terror attack in history.

Apparently the director's cut of the Bin Laden tape is even more interesting than the excerpt shown on Al Jazeera:

Osama bin Laden doesn't seem nearly so cocky in the unedited version of a videotape aired on al-Jazeera, complaining that the manhunt against him has hampered al Qaeda. Osama bin Laden's newest tape may have thrust him to the forefront of the presidential election, but what was not seen was the cave-dwelling terror lord talking about the setbacks al Qaeda has faced in recent months.

Officials said that in the 18-minute long tape — of which only six minutes were aired on the al-Jazeera Arab television network in the Middle East on Friday — bin Laden bemoans the recent democratic elections in Afghanistan and the lack of violence involved with it.

On the tape, bin Laden also says his terror organization has been hurt by the U.S. military's unrelenting manhunt for him and his cohorts on the Afghan-Pakistani border.

A portion of the left-out footage includes a tirade aimed at President Bush and his father, former President George H.W. Bush, claiming the war in Iraq is purely over oil.

I can certainly understand why the collaborators at Al Jazeera would cut the tape, but I can't fathom why Bin Laden would distribute a display of weakness in the first place. I hope that a domestic news organization will obtain and release the full video and/or transcript for our perusal.

UPDATE: The Belmont Club interprets the edited version:

It is important to notice what he has stopped saying in this speech. He has stopped talking about the restoration of the Global Caliphate. There is no more mention of the return of Andalusia. There is no more anticipation that Islam will sweep the world. He is no longer boasting that Americans run at the slightest wounds; that they are more cowardly than the Russians. He is not talking about future operations to swathe the world in fire but dwelling on past glories. He is basically saying if you leave us alone we will leave you alone. Though it is couched in his customary orbicular phraseology he is basically asking for time out.

This analysis was proffered prior to knowledge of the extended transcript. And note Wretchard's conclusion:

The American answer to Osama's proposal will be given on Election Day. ... Osama has stated his terms. He awaits America's answer.

(Via CQ)

UPDATE: See also Wizbang, Truth Laid Bear, Volokh Conspiracy.

UPDATE: Was the tape mistranslated? MEMRI thinks so:

The tape of Osama bin Laden that was aired on al-Jazeera on Friday, October 29 included a specific threat to "each U.S. state," designed to influence the outcome of the upcoming election against George W. Bush. The U.S. media in general mistranslated the words "ay wilaya" (which means "each U.S. state") to mean a "country" or "nation" other than the U.S., while in fact the threat was directed specifically at each individual U.S. state. This suggests some knowledge by bin Laden of the U.S. electoral-college system. In a section of his speech in which he harshly criticized George W. Bush, bin Laden stated: "Any U.S. state that does not toy with our security automatically guarantees its own security."

Interesting.

(Via sja)

50 Reasons to Vote for George Bush

Walter Russell Mead has a profile and interview with Dick Cheney in this month's Esquire Magazine. This is a must-read for everyone that plans to vote this election. It's extremely long, but it's perhaps the best explanation of this administration's real mistakes and ultimate rationale and strategy in the war on terror that I've seen in recent memory.

The author has good credentials and certainly isn't a shill for the administration:

I think and write about U. S. foreign policy for a living at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. Before getting this far—my first contact with the vice-president—I'd gone through months of screening. My latest book had circulated among the vice-president's staff to determine whether my political attitudes passed muster. Call me unaligned; there are days when I can't decide whether to worry more about the Bush administration or its critics.

And it's not flattering:

But I had come to the White House on a mission. This man, and this administration, were wrecking my life. I wanted to know why.

I hate the decision I'm being forced to make this November. I hate the choices that the war on terrorism is imposing on us. The gravest threats of an unimaginably difficult and challenging future are coming together with some of the unhappiest unresolved conflicts in our national life, creating a perfect political shit storm. I don't like the storm and I don't like the choice. But the war is real, our divisions are real, and the choice isn't going away.
...
That's not quite my beef with Dick Cheney. Rather, for virtually his entire adult life, he's been engaged in the systematic destruction of what I was raised to believe was progressive, decent, and forward-looking in the United States of America.

But I endorse much of his less personal criticism; maligning the communication efforts of this Administration is largely just and accurate:

And what did Cheney's silence on these topics mean? Had the administration not really thought about these problems or learned anything from its experience in the terror war? In that case, would another four-year mandate mean more of the same? ... In Battle Creek, Michigan, and again in Dayton, Ohio, I watched with diminishing hope as Cheney continued to utter slogans—often slogans I agree with—but without performing what I remain naive enough to believe is an essential task of a national leader in wartime: giving the public a serious and thoughtful exposition of the country's policies in a time of great danger. ... But as much as Cheney and Bush might like to compare themselves to Churchill, the real problem isn't that they are excessively Churchillian; it's that they aren't Churchillian enough. Churchill believed that the united will of the British people to fight was the secret weapon that would win the war, and preserving and toughening that united will was the course that he took. His wartime speeches acknowledged defeats and setbacks. Unpleasant facts were frankly stated and faced. He earned the trust of a people at war by voicing their doubts even as he stoked their resolve. ... Not everyone in the United States or abroad would have accepted this case or agreed with the president's decision for war if coercive diplomacy failed, but we would clearly be in better shape today if the administration had done more to put the full range of its views on the table.

But the author also possesses a deeper understanding of the danger that partially explains why some of us that don't care much for Cheney's stances on domestic issues still think it's so important to re-elect the incumbent:

For many people, the "cautious and prudent" course would be to leave Iran alone, avoid war, and try to work out some way of living with its bomb. Russia has the bomb, China has the bomb; Israel, India, England, and Pakistan have the bomb; we've even learned to live in a world where France has the bomb. Why not do the "cautious and prudent" thing—and learn to live with a nuclear Iran?

A few days later, I spoke to former secretary of state George Shultz about this principle, and he immediately understood and agreed. Tie goes to the runner in those cases, Shultz says. That is, when you are facing unknown, possibly grave dangers, and you really don't and perhaps can't know exactly what to do, it is safer to act than to wait. It's a positively radical idea, at the heart of George Bush's doctrine of preventative war. It is precisely this kind of thinking that got the United States into Iraq. And never before in our history, perhaps never before in the history of war and peace, have prudent and cautious added up to invade .

There's the rub. And Cheney is still quietly and calmly explaining that it's the right thing to do. Worse still, I think I believe him.

So do I. And this point is crucial:

Yet there's a more substantive point as well. Cheney is a military-history buff and is very well read on the U. S. Civil War. Lincoln made a lot of mistakes in that war. There were times when things looked very bleak for the United States. International public opinion was on the side of the South. Enormous scandals rocked the government, analysts and pundits blasted Lincoln's administration, and even his allies sometimes despaired.

But Lincoln knew that he had to hold on, to fight the war through thick and thin, to engage the enemy and grind him down with the North's superior numbers and wealth. In Grant he found the general who could fight this kind of warfare: ugly, costly, and at times ruinously unpopular.

Cheney sees this kind of persistence as the essential quality of wartime leadership. I don't think he's wrong. Churchill, too, was a leader who saw the essential logic of the fight against Hitler and was willing to follow it wherever it led—to the alliance with Bolshevik Russia, which he hated with every fiber of his being; to the destruction of the British Empire, which he had dedicated his life to preserving; to the very gates of hell.

Suppose that the invasion of Iraq was a blunder, goes this quiet, unspoken argument. Yes, the news from Iraq is bad. And yes, it is the Bush administration's fault. Well, Lincoln made one blunder after another. Churchill failed in Norway, failed in France, failed in Yugoslavia, failed in Crete, failed in Singapore. And he won the war. You cannot ask a leader to be infallible or ever-victorious in a real war. You can only ask him to persevere.

Lincoln, Churchill, and Grant: I don't think Cheney invokes them just to drop names. These are clues to the kind of world he believes we live in and to the war of survival he believes we must fight. These names are a measure of the stakes he sees, of the risks he will run, the price he will pay, the suffering and damage he is willing to sustain and inflict.

It's a good article with one fatal flaw: the non-conclusion, which rolls up the mass of analysis with the declaration that the Bush Administration has "missed the most important lesson of all," by failing to communicate war's hardship while having had the vision and bravery to undertake its toil. The author's piece plummets by operating in a vacuum that fails to examine and prioritize these mistakes in the context of the previous alternative and the current alternative - a Kerry Administration that might communicate more effectively than the Bush Administration, yet lacks a fundamental strategy to persevere and aggressively engage the global war on terror. By the logic of the author's piece, Kerry offers the far "riskier" option because he would naturally favor inaction and shun "prudent" courses of preemption and Churchillian will.

A return to a reactive, defensive foreign policy that projects weakness, looks for politically convenient "solutions" for Iraq and allows Iran to go nuclear will lead the United States in the wrong, bleak direction, at a moment in history where we face a new paradigm of ubiquitous destructive technology and the catastrophic intentions of dedicated extremists.

It's a concept so abstract that most Americans can barely grasp its practical implications through the hazy memory of September 11th and our subsequent return to the majority's collective failure of imagination. In this sense, the difficulty of the task renders me far more forgiving than the author regarding the Bush Administration's failure to adequately communicate rationale and setbacks during the war; I'd rather have flawed leadership that takes action and unfortunately risks flagging political will than an Administration that does the opposite. But make no mistake - if we return to a never-never-land that embraces diplomatic processes that have been exposed time and time again as failures, through a corrupt multilateral organization that's merits are not adequately adjusted for the self-interest of its member states, we greatly increase the chances of decline and ultimate catastrophe for the United States - perhaps within a generation.

There exist practical reasons to fear a Bush Presidency, but I think that the country can survive any domestic and fiscal disagreements, in a reasonably comparable way to the manner in which we'd handle the alternative. In contrast, I'm absolute in the belief that a foreign policy guided by a man like John Kerry, who has shown 35 years of consistent weakness - from his unethical tactical judgment as an anti-war protestor to his vote against one of history's broadest coalitions assembled for the first Gulf War - will be a quiet disaster.

Consider: a beautiful house that has termites can be a wonderful place to live - until the roof crashes in on the heads of your children.

I'm not blind to his errors or assured of our ultimate success, but George W. Bush has proven that he has the political courage and will to attempt success and weather errors; the essential qualities of a wartime President. I politely ask those of you that are still undecided to consider this argument - and to please consider voting for the Bush-Cheney ticket.

Let them finish the job.

UPDATE: As a requisite complement to my argument, and for an illustration of the alternative of Kerry's leadership, please watch a film titled "Kerry Iraq Documentary." Then make your ultimate decision.

Very classy:

John Kerry's stepson, Chris Heinz, 31, displayed his mother Teresa's famous lack of rhetorical restraint at a recent campaign event with a group of Wharton students. Philadelphia magazine reports: "Heinz accused Kerry's opponents - 'our enemies' - of making the race dirty. 'We didn't start out with negative ads calling George Bush a cokehead,' he said, before adding, 'I'll do it now.' Asked later about it, Heinz said, 'I have no evidence. He never sold me anything.'" Heinz also reminded writer Sasha Issenberg of Pat Buchanan by saying, "One of the things I've noticed is the Israel lobby - the treatment of Israel as the 51st state, sort of a swing state."

A Jewish conspiracy theorist and a jerk - but I repeat myself.

Tabling the "cokehead" comments for a moment, the popular meme about the overwhelming power of the insidious Jewish lobby and its modern direction of US policy towards Israel ignores a few very relevant facts:

1. There are only about 5.2 - 6 million Jews in the United States, and only a little over half of those Jews self-identify as "religious."

2. Republican presidents enact policies that are typically more favorable toward Israel.

3. About 75% of Jews typically vote Democratic and plan to vote for John Kerry this year.

4. Nearly a third of all US Jews live in New York, a consistent Democratic stronghold in national elections.

5. The Jewish population in America is in decline, while the immigrant Muslim population is ascendant.

While the pro-Israeli lobby has played an historically disproportionate role in US politics via outsized funding and activism, any Republican policy towards Israel would court perhaps only 0.16% of the population.*

The leftist article of faith that Republican Presidential policy toward Israel is primarily motivated by pandering to Jewish voters is one of demographic ignorance and bigotry.

* 0.16% does not represent the percentage of Jews in the US; it's a rough estimate of the potential Republican Jewish constituency that takes into account the 75/25 Democratic party affiliation and the location of 1/3 of Jews in NY, a Democratic stronghold that's electorally unavailable at the national level. It's only meant to be a rough estimate.

UPDATE: Jeff Goldstein has some more pointed commentary.

I'm reposting this because if I find it timely, perhaps some of you will as well. Enjoy.

(Requires Quicktime)

UPDATE: Infidel Cowboy cleverly ties the lyrics back to politics.

Jim Geraghty:

"Last night, I heard secondhand that a left-of-center friend said, during a discussion about the tape, “Well, now I actually agree with bin Laden, I mean, the stuff he said about Bush.”

It was probably meant as a joke, or as a statement of irony. I wasn’t there, so I don’t want to draw conclusions about the statement’s meaning, and apparently the topic of conversation shifted so that no one could really analyze what that speaker meant.

But I have little doubt that in some other corners of our country, a statement like that was probably said and wasn’t a joke, or wasn’t ironic."

Dean Esmay from the popular blog Dean's World will be a guest on Pundit Review Radio today. Check him out.

First Tom Brokaw deployed the word "jihad" to describe the efforts of the bloggers that took down CBS's phoney documents.

Now he's said this:

In an interview last week Mr. Brokaw said CBS News had clearly made mistakes. But, he said, "I think there were people just lying in the Internet bushes, waiting to strike, and I think that particular episode gave them a big opportunity."

My response? You're exactly right, Mr. Brokaw.

Now take it a step further and ask yourself: what motivated those people to lie "in the Internet bushes" and devote so much time to disproving those documents, even though most bloggers juggle day jobs and receive no compensation or direction from any political party?

Drop me a line and we'll talk about it reasonably some time. Seriously.

(Via Malkin)

It sort of resembles a clip from "Weekend at Bernie's."

Al Jazeera has just played a tape of Osama Bin Laden that refers to a recent event in Iraq. It was authenticated by "the government," though I'm not sure what agency. The tape lists a litany of complaints about the Bush Administration and highlights the motivation behind September 11. The US cable networks now have it.

More as it develops.

"The Bush Administration resembles a corrupt Arab government."

"Bush is misleading Americans."

"September 11 would have been less severe if George Bush had been more alert," Bin Laden said.

Has he been in contact with Joe Lockhart? What odd statements.

MSNBC said that bin Laden references John Kerry in the tape.

It looks like an endorsement for Kerry, which can be interpreted several ways.

UPDATE: I don't have access to a TV right now - did bin Laden voice any displeasure with Bush's support of the Federal Marriage Amendment? Because if he did, I think we definitely need to check Lockhart's satellite phone records. As it is, I'm suspicious:

"In addition, the infidel George Bush is outsourcing America's future with tax cuts to the wealthy. Where are the 1.6 million jobs? The infidel Bush is the first infidel since the infidel Herbert Hoover to lose jobs! Awake from your slumber, America! The infidel John Kerry has a plan. You can do better, Insha'Allah!"

"Let me tell you, I spoke to the infidel Christopher Reeve a week ago, and if the infidel John Kerry is elected President, Insha'Allah, the infidel Christopher Reeve will walk again!"

"Are you infidels aware that the infidel John Kerry killed infidels in a war of imperialist infidel aggression in Southeast Asia?"

"The infidel Mary Cheney is a lesbian."

(Um, some people seem confused - those last quotes were parody)

UPDATE: Back to a somewhat serious note - Bin Laden mocked President Bush for Reading "My Pet Goat" just after the planes struck the towers on 9-11, one line of a series of attacks in the video that that used talking points featured in Fahrenheit 9-11.

I'd like to remind you of this picture from the Democratic National Convention:

And this picture of Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe at the Washington, DC premiere of F 9-11:

DNC Chairman McAuliffe shakes the hand of a man that celebrates the Iraqi resistance as "the Minutemen."

Read this to comprehend my fleshed-out position on the matter.

It's not an abstract concept to grasp which candidate is perceived as more of a threat to terrorists, considering one party's mainstream embrace of the man that authors dangerous propaganda that's beneficial to their cause.

I hope this helps sharpen your focus, America.

UPDATE: Right on Red has more fun with Bin Laden:

Infidel Bush has secret plans to reinstate the draft, so as to continue his illegal crusade against the oil-producing peoples of the Middle East. Young infidels from working class minority families will be the hardest hit.

UPDATE: The Llama Butchers have more Moore!

Beautiful Atrocities has a great round-up. My favorite:

Economist Jude Wanniski: I'm leaning toward Kerry because I prefer recession to imperialist war.

(Emphasis mine)

Wonder what getting shot at feels like? Here's a little taste from thousands of miles away.

My cap is permanently tipped to those soldiers.

And harping on Kerry's post-Vietnam rhetoric, I certainly wouldn't accuse them of false atrocities, approved and directed "at all levels of command," while they're fighting to win a war. Think about it. Think about a modern analogy that extrapolates Abu Ghraib to reflect the efforts of all of those men; an extrapolation that's based on made-up testimony by anti-war protestors that pose as combat veterans.

The concept certainly bothers me.

(Via Ace)

Everyone should probably check out Drudge.

UPDATE: Now we've got a FOX News link:

U.S. Team Took 250 Tons of Iraqi Munitions

U.S. Army officer came forward Friday and said a team from the 3rd Infantry Division took about 250 tons of munititions and military material from the Al-Qaqaa (search) munitions base soon after Saddam Hussein's regime fell last year.

Explosives were included in the load taken by the team but Major Austin Pearson said he was unable to say what percentage it accounted for. The Pentagon believes the disclosure helps to explain what happened to 377 tons of explosives that the International Atomic Energy Agency (search) said disappeared after Saddam Hussein's regime fell.

Recall that the IAEA's initial estimate of about 380 tons of RDX and HMX was revised downward to about 200 tons of HMX that was marked by the UN. The rest was not in question.

This news doesn't officially stake the story, but it throws a lot of cold, cold water in the gold-gilded locker room at the New York Times.

UPDATE: Earlier, Geraghty highlighted the WaPo's relatively fair analysis of the larger context of the explosives story (prior to this most recent, key development). I meant to link it this morning, but Kerry Spot treats the Post's treatment with very similar conclusions. That Geraghty kid's a star; mark my words, someday he's going to get hired by a prominent publication.

Bonus thought #1: There's a takedown of Andrew Sullivan at the end of the post. Sullivan has now morphed from staunch "Eagle" to overly emotive hyperbolist to closeted Kerry shill to ... what's the apt description? "Condescending jerk," apparently.

Bonus thought #2: The WaPo's riled me up with bias before and undoubtedly will again (start the stopwatch), but consistently, all election season long, they've shown up with their gameface on certain key issues. The massive exception to this statement is anything written by overt hack Dana Milbank and many of the jaundiced, canned Iraq narratives by Rajiv Chandrasekaran.

Michael Dobbs, Howard Kurtz and Thomas E. Ricks have been stars among the media elite, however. Credit where credit's due.

I'm posting light today, but Michele has something you ought to read; it's about my favored topics of cognitive dissonance and dishonesty:

I've written before about the utter hypocrisy of the left, but never have I seen that hypocrisy displayed before me so blatantly as I have today. And yet, they are so wrapped up in their vile righteousness that they remain absurdly unaware of how they are letting their contradictions slip.
...
And now, in a complete reversal of fortune, ****** has become the poster boy for the left. The man who was once hailed as a racist, homophobic supporter of spousal abuse is now the king of the leftie world because he made an anti-Bush video. All is forgiven, ******! Bash those gays, make more videos about beating up women because you are golden, baby. As long as you come out against Bush, you could come out in favor of eating babies and no one would blink an eye.

Go find out who and what she's talking about.

An anti-war protestor hoists her sign in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial. (Photo- INDC)

Do most Americans understand the meaning of the word sacrifice? Does our insulation from fear distort our view of the war on terror?

What would you do if you were a 22 year old Kurdish Muslim woman in March of 2003, when an army drawn from several countries invaded your homeland?

If you were Humalia Akrawy you would remember your brother, killed under Saddam -- and remember how they sent back just one leg and part of an arm to demonstrate his death and their power to your family. You would look at your father, who no longer has full use of his hands after being tortured by Saddam.

And then, despite the disapproval of many but with the blessing and support of your family, on 23 March you would volunteer to become a translator for the 101st Airborne Division of the U.S. Army.

But what would you do when Ba'athists and jihadists ambushed your car, injuring your brother and trying to kill you, and when they later killed your 24 year old sister thinking she was you -- pumping 60 AK47 bullets into her body? Or when you received a letter saying, "We know we missed killing you, but we will be back" and then your home was blown up, injuring another brother and killing the Iraqi policeman guarding it?

If you were the remarkable Ms. Akrawy you would help your remaining family members move to a safe area in the far north of the country and then return to your job. And this time, instead of insisting on a lower profile role, you would eagerly agree to become the translator for Lieutenant General Petraeus himself, the commander of the 101st - despite all the media exposure that entailed - and you would proudly do that job in the face of continued death threats against you.

I had the humbling experience of meeting this courageous, intelligent and outspoken 23 year old woman today. Here are some of my notes, capturing her own words as much as I was able, and posted here with her enthusiastic permission.

Read it.

It was our opportunity to help this woman. It's our obligation to finish the job for this woman. This was the right war at the right time, and the success of Democracy in Iraq will make her family safer, as well as ours.

Protein Wisdom, INDC Journal and the Daily Recycler present:

"The Choice."

*** Red Sock thinks Bush is Wicked Awesome; John Kerry, not so much. Whaaatta tool.

*** The Truth Laid Beah has a wicked pissah of an explosives-gate round-up:

Explosivesgate Roundup: Day III

Some folks might be thinking "wow, this story is moving amazingly fast,", and I'll admit that was my first reaction. But the reason this story looks like it is moving quickly is because other news organizations are now doing the work that the NYT should have done in the first place. And it is going fast because, frankly, it wasn't all that damned hard.

They suck like da *&%$#*# Yanks! Choke! Da curse ah Howell Raines!

*** James Joynah is all ovah an impendin' assault into Fallujah ...

A stable Iraq, if it can ever exist, can come about only after the armed militants are defeated. That's not going to happen through negotiations, gun buybacks, or other passive strategies.

Hey insurgents - soon the Marines are gonna be on your ass like Teddy K on a bottle ah Glenfiddich and a Back Bay hookah!

Saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawxxxxxxxxxx!

Where are the IAEA's missing explosives, along with other elements of Saddam's WMD program? It seems that the Russians might know:

Russian special forces troops moved many of Saddam Hussein's weapons and related goods out of Iraq and into Syria in the weeks before the March 2003 U.S. military operation, The Washington Times has learned.

John A. Shaw, the deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, said in an interview that he believes the Russian troops, working with Iraqi intelligence, "almost certainly" removed the high-explosive material that went missing from the Al-Qaqaa facility, south of Baghdad.

"The Russians brought in, just before the war got started, a whole series of military units," Mr. Shaw said. "Their main job was to shred all evidence of any of the contractual arrangements they had with the Iraqis. The others were transportation units."
...
The Russian arms-removal program was initiated after Yevgeny Primakov, the former Russian intelligence chief, could not convince Saddam to give in to U.S. and Western demands, this official said.

A small portion of Iraq's 650,000 tons to 1 million tons of conventional arms that were found after the war were looted after the U.S.-led invasion, Mr. Shaw said. Russia was Iraq's largest foreign supplier of weaponry, he said.

This gels with the previous assessment of a suspicious Russian presence in Iraq before and during the war, along with dubious Russian denials of any previous violation of UN sanctions:

March 24, 2003

Tensions increase between the United States and Russia. The United States charged the Russians of supposed deliveries of Russian weapons in Iraq. The spokesman of the American President, Ari Fleischer, rejected denials of Moscow and assured that Washington has "evidence" of these deliveries, which could give the Iraqis invaluable assets against the Anglo-American forces. Devices listed are binoculars for night vision, GPS units, and anti-tank missiles.

Ari Fleischer said the American government asked the Russians to immediately put an end to its assistance. It reminded them that the deliveries of this type of materials and equipment in Iraq were the subject of sanctions by the United Nations. The Russian government and the companies mentioned as having delivered armaments to Iraq have rejected these allegations on Monday, describing them as "inventions" and reaffirming that Moscow strictly respected the embargo imposed by UN in Baghdad. Russian president Vladimir Putin rejected the American charges himself during a telephone conversation with George W. Bush, the Presidential press secretary indicated Tuesday, quoted by the Interfax agency.

Also recall that during the war, a column of Russian diplomats was shot at by coalition forces as it moved out of Baghdad towards the Syrian border. At the time it was described in the Western media as a case of mistaken crossfire.

The straight version from the BBC:

7 April, 2003

A convoy of Russian diplomatic cars shot at while leaving Baghdad was caught in crossfire between US and Iraqi forces, a Russian TV journalist travelling with the convoy has said.

In contrast, this translation of an analysis by a group of Russian journalists and military experts paints a slightly different picture:

Read More »

CW says: "Iraq has no ties to Al Qaeda; it's all in Dick Cheney's head!"

Read this.

“I conclude that plaintiffs have shown, albeit barely, ‘by evidence satisfactory to the court’ that Iraq provided material support to bin Laden and al Qaeda.”

(Via Beautiful Atrocities)

Many Kerry supporters assume that those of us that are overt partisans for Bush are blinkered true believers that can't see the man's personal and professional failings and blunders. This assumption is wildly incorrect. There are many aspects of the President's policies and decisions that worry me greatly, give me pause and make me yearn for a third, imaginary candidate who could rise above both choices this election season and lead America with sureness, nuance, curiosity, openness, and grace. But then, when I revisit an honest moment like the one featured in this new campaign ad, and think of the relatively soulless alternative presented by so many politicians, I recall why this man earns my respect for his sincerity and political will to attempt the right - though not necessarily easy - course of action.

Every President makes errors. Every politician obfuscates and spins the news. Every administration from the inception of this democracy onward has eagerly provided plenty of legitimate ammunition to political opponents from all hues of the political spectrum. But among other important traits, a guiding factor that holds sway over steering a massive and inherently flawed bureaucracy in the right general direction is sincerity and strength of character.

George W. Bush possesses these qualities, and that goes a long way towards earning my vote.

Individuals that were against the war to disarm Saddam Hussein are suddenly terrified over the fate of 380 of the over 1 million tons (0.03%) of conventional explosives that are currently estimated to exist in Iraq. The pointed US effort that has thus far destroyed 400,000 tons of munitions, yet failed to immediately account for 380, somehow respresents an unacceptable US failure and subsequent terrorist risk to the IAEA, NY Times and other overt critics of the Bush Administration.

But perhaps they draw the wrong lesson from this situation.

For example, considering the IAEA's current deep concern over the location of the explosives and their potential use "in standard nuclear weapons design," why didn't the UN destroy the deadly material when it had the option?

After the Persian Gulf war in 1991, the United Nations discovered Iraq's clandestine effort and put the United Nations arms agency in charge of Al Qaqaa's huge stockpile. Weapon inspectors determined that Iraq had bought the explosives from France, China and Yugoslavia, a European diplomat said.

None of the explosives were destroyed, arms experts familiar with the decision recalled, because Iraq argued that it should be allowed to keep them for eventual use in mining and civilian construction.

Coincidentally, this bolsters the famous "dual-use" argument that the Bush Administration cites so often - and is typically ignored by the media. Iraq was permitted to keep high-explosive material that was specifically intended for use in the construction of a nuclear bomb because they successfully argued to the UN that someday, they might like to use it for "mining and civilian construction." But what about that - did they use it for mining?

But Al Qaqaa was still under the authority of the Military Industrial Council, which ran Iraq's sensitive weapons programs and was led for a time by Hussein Kamel, Mr. Hussein's son-in-law. He defected to the West, then returned to Iraq and was immediately killed.

Kamel revealed interesting details about Iraq's ostensibly civilian program when he defected:

What Kamel divulged about Iraq's weapons programs was shocking. Kamel described where the material and facilities were, what was built, the existence of an extensive biological program, the existence of a far more more extensive nuclear program than was ever known, who was running Iraq's deception programs and how they worked.

To recap thus far - after the first Gulf War, Saddam Hussein convinced the IAEA to allow him to retain the high explosives that they're now so worried about being used for terrorism or a nuclear weapon, under the guise of potential use in mining and construction. Despite that supposed intention, the explosives remained under the control of the Military Industrial Council, whose leader defected in 1995 and revealed that the explosives were indeed part of a secret nuclear weapons program that was "far more more extensive ... than was ever known."

After the information about the covert nuclear weapons program was revealed to the world, three years before inspectors were booted from the country, the UN failed to destroy or confiscate the explosives that are now missing:

The Qaqaa stockpile went unmonitored from late 1998, when United Nations inspectors left Iraq, to late 2002, when they came back. Upon their return, the inspectors discovered that about 35 tons of HMX were missing. The Iraqis said they had used the explosive mainly in civilian programs.

Once the inspectors returned in 2002, the Iraqis explained that nearly 10% of the explosives - previously kept for "mining and civilian construction" but later revealed to be part of a nuclear weapons program - disappeared because the Iraqis claimed that they had been primarily used for - you guessed it - "mining and civilian construction." No viable evidence backed up Iraqi claims to the IAEA about the whereabouts or use of the missing HMX material.

A comprehensive Google search also reveals no NY Times report about the UN's failure to secure 35 tons of missing explosives at the time.

From the IAEA's 2002 report to the Security Council pursuant to Resolution 1441:

Read More »

CW says: "Undecideds always break for the challenger."

Not according to this Rasmussen Reports survey:

Those who made up their mind earlier in the process tend to be more supportive of Senator Kerry. Those who made up their mind later in the process are more supportive of the President. This is consistent with the fact that Senator Kerry led in most polls through mid-August and has generally trailed since Labor Day and the Republican National Convention.

Among voters who made up their minds in the Spring of 2004 or sooner, Kerry is favored by a 51% to 48% margin.
...
The candidates are essentially tied among those who made up their minds during the summer. However, those who decided in the past month favor President Bush by a 57% to 38% margin.

Keep talking Senator, keep talking. Let's see how many times you can say "Mary Cheney's a lesbian" before election day.

(Thanks to Michael Kim)

UPDATE: Ace has more on the phenomenon.

A newly unearthed CBS News report reveals that a rather thorough search of the Al Qa Qaa weapons facility was conducted by the 3rd ID back in April of 2003.

Read the Belmont Club's excerpt and analysis.

UPDATE: Say Anything has a pretty big development:

Now it seems clear that there was no stash of weapons at Al Qaqaa, according to the United Nations weapons inspectors .

A team made up of Stanford Statistics students and supervising professors is running a predictive election model, and Bush is currently up ... BIG:

Kerry 21.0%
Bush 76.4%

The numbers above represent the probabilities that either candidate wins enough votes on the Electoral College to be elected President, as of the latest available polls.

Why their analysis is different:

Our analysis attempts to make finer distinction from poll data, apart from declaring a state Red, Blue, or Swing. It proceeds in two steps:

Step 1: compute the probability that a given candidate wins a given state, given the latest polls for that state, rather than categorizing the state as Red, Blue, or Swing.

Step 2: roll up the probabilities thus computed for each of the 50 states plus D.C. to infer the nationwide probability that a given candidate wins the majority of the electoral colleges (270 or more votes in the 2004 election).

Interesting. Check it out.

UPDATE: No, I don't put much stock in fancy statistics, either; I rely on yard signs. This one was spotted in Powhatan County, Virginia by reader Ned May:

Je suis d'accord! Chirac est un ver qui mange du fromage!

UPDATE: Princeton however, says "non!"

Predicted median with undecideds: Kerry 309 EV, Bush 229 EV (probability map)

Median outcome, decided voters only: Kerry 264 EV, Bush 274 EV (probability map) (Trends to 10/12)

Zut!

But wait! Is the Princeton analysis unbiased? Check out what the good professor says on his site:

I do not take donations. If you would like to express your support, you are welcome to do so politically through ActBlue. For balance, Republicans may donate through the NRSC.

"For balance." Furthermore:

Dear fellow Kos readers,

I am undertaking a meta-analysis of state polling data to calculate a current snapshot of the probable range of election outcomes. Like most of you, I have a strong bias about how I want the presidential election to turn out. However, I wanted a measure that did not have that bias. Read my preliminary findings here.

Heh. A good scientist never tips his hand, le professeur.

Meeeerd-euh! Je n'y crois pas à ces conneries!

Si les cerveaux étaient de l'essence, ils ne seraient pas suffisants pour faire tourner un kart de fourmis à l'intérieur d'un beignet!

(Via commenter StatSam)

Gallup? Pew Research? Zogby? Well yes, but in addition to those polls ...

7-Eleven did an unscientific poll in 2000, which was uncannily accurate.

The poll gives 7-Eleven customers the choice of a Bush, Kerry or undecided cup when purchasing a fountain soft drink. Poll results are based on the number of cups sold for each candidate. Although unscientific, the poll samples millions and millions of Americans from all walks of life across the nation, including those whose primary phone is a cell phone.

This year the vote is:
Bush: 51.17 %
Kerry: 48.83 %

Heh. Thanks to e-mailer Robert Burke.

Kerry's newest position on Iraq states that President Bush "took his eye off the ball" by confronting Saddam Hussein instead of maintaining exclusive focus on Osama bin Laden and the terrorists in Afghanistan. As I've previously pointed out, Kerry conveniently ignores the fact that he urged an earlier focus on Iraq, after 9-11. From his October 9th, 2002 speech prior to the vote authorizing the use of force in Iraq:

But the administration missed an opportunity 2 years ago and particularly a year ago after September 11. They regrettably, and even clumsily, complicated their own case. The events of September 11 created new understanding of the terrorist threat and the degree to which every nation is vulnerable. That understanding enabled the administration to form a broad and impressive coalition against terrorism. Had the administration tried then to capitalize on this unity of spirit to build a coalition to disarm Iraq, we would not be here in the pressing days before an election, late in this year, debating this now. The administration's decision to engage on this issue now, rather than a year ago or earlier, and the manner in which it has engaged, has politicized and complicated the national debate and raised questions about the credibility of their case.

(Emphasis mine)

Today we can add another piece of evidence to the pile: leftie blogger Mickey Kaus dug up an additional quote from John Kerry's November 16, 2001 television interview with John McLaughlin, given at a point when American forces were still engaged in combat in Afghanistan:

I have no doubt, I've never had any doubt -- and I've said this publicly -- about our ability to be successful in Afghanistan. We are and we will be. The larger issue, John, is what happens afterwards. How do we now turn attention ultimately to Saddam Hussein? How do we deal with the larger Muslim world? What is our foreign policy going to be to drain the swamp of terrorism on a global basis? [Emphasis added]

Kerry was talking about a focus on Iraq barely two months after 9-11.

Kaus comments:

Wait--I thought shifting the focus to Saddam was a "diversion" and distraction from the fight against Al Qaeda! Not, apparently, when Kerry saw an opportunity to score political points by advocating it. [But would he have rushed to war in Iraq without a plan to win the peace!-ed. Maybe not. But, given Kerry's recent he-took-his-eye-off-the-ball rhetoric, it's embarrassing that he brought up pivoting to Iraq "now" long before the Afghan campaign was over--indeed, when the Tora Bora battle against bin Laden's men had barely begun.]

Exactly. Anyone that votes for Kerry because they think that Iraq was "Bush's distraction" is living in a world of spin and denial.

Pat Buchanan apologizes for Lawrence O'Donnell's foamy-mouthed tirade. Truth, Lies and Common Sense has the details and a hilarious photoshop.

Michelle Malkin is not impressed.

The main thrust of the New York Times' attempted hit piece has been blown out of the water by NBC News. As per usual, the Daily Recycler has a video that specifically devastates the Kerry Campaign's resultant talking points.

Watch it.

UPDATE: Say Anything has commentary and a round-up:

It seems very apparent now that this entire story was some sort of attempt at discrediting Bush's position and performance in Iraq shortly before the election.

UPDATE: The NY Times knew, but buried it in the story:

But the Times didn't just do a shoddy job of reporting and failed to identify the possibility that the explosives were gone before our troops arrived. It's worse than that: they did find that out, they just buried it deep in the story and, apparently, never bothered to follow up on it.

UPDATE: Contrary to the Times' report, the missing explosives, HMX and RDX, aren't much more potent than TNT, the material used in Iraqi Improvised Explosive Devices:

The materials can handily be molded and shaped into bombs, he said, but the explosives are only "slightly more powerful" than TNT and not as explosive as C4 chemical explosives.

In contrast, the bomb that brought down Pan Am Flight 103 was made of more powerful Semtex, not simply RDX:

The bomb was made out of the plastic explosive Semtex and was activated by a timer.

Semtex does contain RDX, but in a ratio from 1/20th to 1/2.

In addition, the New York Times ran a previous story that remarked that there were over 1 million tons of ordinance loose in Iraq.

The Times and the Kerry campaign are spinning this in all kinds of pleasant directions, no?

UPDATE: An MSNBC producer suddenly backs off their story ...

AR: Was there a search at all underway or was, did a search ensue for explosives once you got there during that 24-hour period?

LLJ: No. There wasn’t a search. The mission that the brigade had was to get to Baghdad. That was more of a pit stop there for us. And, you know, the searching, I mean certainly some of the soldiers head off on their own, looked through the bunkers just to look at the vast amount of ordnance lying around. But as far as we could tell, there was no move to secure the weapons, nothing to keep looters away. But there was – at that point the roads were shut off. So it would have been very difficult, I believe, for the looters to get there.

Contrast this dubious assessment ("the searching, I mean certainly some of the soldiers head off on their own") with the facts that the NYT already reported NBC's findings in their story, this still says absolutely nothing about when the explosives were removed from the storage facility, there are a million plus tons of explosive ordinance in the country anyway, and the explosives weren't really more powerful than conventional arms.

This was a spun hit piece, pure and simple.

UPDATE: "mt" makes the best comment that anyone's ever left on this blog:

El Baradei leaked a false letter that reproduces a previously debunked story. The NY Times in their zeal to see Kerry elected president, run with the story without providing any of the evidence that shows this facility was void of the weapons BEFORE the United States invaded.

What part of this story do you and Geek not understand?? Do I have to get my "Team America" puppets out and put on a show for the "intellectually challenged" out in Bill's audience?

Must. Get. Puppets.

UPDATE: Looks like CBS was originally behind the "October surprise ..."

60 MINS PLANNED BUSH MISSING EXPLOSIVES STORY FOR ELECTION EVE

UPDATE: I've been informed that the Baltimore Sun's account is wrong, and that RDX is much more powerful than TNT. I'm looking into it.

UPDATE: Fred Schoeneman digs up details:

C4 (more correctly, composition C-4) is made of 91% RDX, the remainder being a plasticizer which allows for moldability and stickiness. So anyways, for practical purposes, you can think of RDX as synonymous with C4. C4 has a relative effectiveness factor (R.E. factor)RE factor of 1.34, which makes it significantly more powerful than TNT (which sets the standard at 1.0). Additionally, I think that the RE factor of RDX is actually somewhat higher than for c4, because the plasticizer in c4 is inert.

Semtex has similar properties to c4, and is made up of roughly equal portions of RDX and PETN. PETN has an RE factor of 1.66 -- which would, I'm guessing, make the RE factor of Semtex somewhere between 1.34 and 1.66.

Contrast with the Baltimore Sun's quote from John Pike, "a defense analyst for GlobalSecurity. org:"

The materials can handily be molded and shaped into bombs, he said, but the explosives are only "slightly more powerful" than TNT and not as explosive as C4 chemical explosives.

I suppose I need to do every interview myself. All of them. In the world.

I'll see if I can get Mr. Pike on the horn to clarify.

On Sunday night, I wrote the following caveat about John Kerry's UN deception:

A commenter brings up a reasonable point - Kerry "meant to communicate" that he only met with the permanent members of the Security Council, not "all of them," as he specified on two occasions. I don't believe that this interpretation completely invalidates the significance of Kerry's statements, but in any case, I've been told that verification regarding the permanent five is in the works as well. We'll see. I await further detail with everyone else.

But ... journalist Joel Mowbry posts at Redstate:

Not Russia or China, either

Fox News' reliable Jim Angle is now following up on my Washington Times story, reporting that, in fact, John Kerry only met representatives of four members of the Security Council--a small fraction of the 15 nations who sit on the panel. This also destroys left-wing bloggers' theories that Kerry meant the "permanent representatives" (US, UK, France, China, Russia) when he said the "entire Security Council." Since we know for sure that Kerry met with France, the city-state of Singapore, and the former French colony of Cameroon, that means that at most Kerry met with half of the four other "Perm reps." (Not to mention far, far less than the "entire Security Council.")

And once again, it should be obvious to anyone that the Kerry campaign understands how deep a lie their boss told when they backtracked before the Washington Times story ran. Kerry lied. Repeatedly. On what he himself portrayed as a crucial event in shaping his thinking about the dominant issue of the election. He did this while making honesty and integrity cornerstones of his campaign.

This is a very significant lie, people. It's not a simple exaggeration for Kerry to claim - seven times - to have met with "the entire UN Security Council," "all of them," "in a room just like this at a table like this," when he really only had verified, individual meetings with France, Cameroon and Singapore, and employed the story as a justification for criticism of George Bush's "failed diplomacy" during a nationally televised debate.

I'd probably give him a pass if it had been the Permanent 5, but "France" does not equal "the UN Security Council" or "the permanent members of the Security Council." Kerry's tendency to manufacture strangely detailed stories actually disturbs me - it should disturb you too.

Still no word on whether he wore his "magic hat" to the imaginary meeting.

Read More »

I promised a moonbat pictorial yesterday, but I'm swamped and ran into some minor technical difficulties while working on the post.

Patience. Hopefully the final product will meet with your approval.

In the meantime, here are some quick links to tide everyone over:

*** Ace has some worthy thoughts on war and political will, including a bonus spanking of Andrew Sullivan:

I had hoped that this country would rise to the challenge, and perhaps it still will. Certainly there are those who understand the stakes in this battle, and the catastrophe that would flow from a defeat. But it does seem that 40% of the population -- and perhaps 50-55% -- have no stomach whatsoever for any war that involves more than 100 hours and/or 100 American war dead.
...
What on earth did you think you were doing urging the nation into a war that you would only continue supporting under the most blithely-optimistic of conditions?

Sullivan is not a warhawk. He's a bird of paradise. And that's far worse.

Read the whole thing.

*** The Commissar just celebrated his first anniversary as a blogger. Congrats!

*** Science fiction meets reality at my alma matter:

A University of Florida scientist has grown a living “brain” that can fly a simulated plane, giving scientists a novel way to observe how brain cells function as a network.

The “brain” -- a collection of 25,000 living neurons, or nerve cells, taken from a rat’s brain and cultured inside a glass dish -- gives scientists a unique real-time window into the brain at the cellular level. By watching the brain cells interact, scientists hope to understand what causes neural disorders such as epilepsy and to determine noninvasive ways to intervene.

This brain may be able to fly a plane, but can it coach a football team?

(Via tickled ubergeek Esmay)

*** Florida Cracker features photos of a Bush rally in Ft. Myers. She's also on the hunt for the biggest Insta-suck-up in the blog world.

*** Ever the optimists, the Llamas chronicle Old Media panic:

Today is the first installment of "PANIC!!!!!! Watch", dedicated to watching for signs of panic within the herd of the dinosaur media as a means to assess the status and chances J. Francois has going into next week. I've decided to call it "Fear and Loathing on the campaign trail" as it describes rather accuaretly the emotions of the core of the dinosaur media covering Dubya.

*** And Team America creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone discuss their dislike of Michael Moore in a transcript posted at Protein Wisdom. Jeff adds his own thoughts, of course.

More later.

... and I approve of this message.

(Click on the video)

(Via KS)

Americans aren't the only ones that are tense about this election:

Arabs Worried About the Impact of ‘Second US Civil War’
Amir Taheri, Arab News

JEDDAH, 25 October 2004 — Normally it is Washington that worries about stability in Arab countries.

These days, however, there is much official nail biting in Arab capitals over the threat of instability in the United States.

“What we are witnessing in the United States is their second civil war,” says an Arab diplomat posted to Washington. “The difference is that this war is waged in the media, in churches, on the hustings, and inside many American homes.”

That next week’s presidential election is the closest in US history seems certain. What is causing concern in Arab and other capitals is that the intense passions unleashed by both sides could provoke instability and violence regardless of who wins.

Arab diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity, claim that the Democrats, many of whom believe their party was robbed of victory in 2000, are determined to fight hard to dislodge President George W. Bush from the White House.

Fears that the “American street” might explode, in the fashion often attributed to the “Arab street,” may well be exaggerated. But the possibility of US government becoming paralyzed for weeks, if not months, as a result of disputes over election results cannot be discounted.
...
“The prospect of the US being unable to take urgent decisions for months cannot be taken lightly,” suggests an Arab diplomat. “Such paralysis could be dangerous in our region where the situation remains volatile. The war in Iraq, the dispute over Iran’s nuclear ambitions, the UN fight with Syria over Lebanon, and the Israeli plan to withdraw from Gaza cannot be put on the backburner for months.”

The poisonous nature of America's political environment has consequences beyond who obtains power in January, not the least of which is setting an example for the fledgling Democracy of our new allies in Iraq.

(Via the Llamas)

I'll take second place to the Corner:

Washington Post:

2004 Best Blogs - Politics & Elections Readers' Choice Awards

Best Inside the Beltway

Winner
National Review - The Corner
www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/corner.asp

Honorable Mention
INDC Journal
www.indcjournal.com

Barely any SWWNBNOL or Kos in sight, and a lot of Corner wins. Actually, it looks like the right-leaning bloggers cleaned up all around ...

Thank you to all of the readers that voted in the contest and make INDC a regular visit - I sincerely appreciate your support.

People looking for the definition of an overhyped story should compare this Drudge bit to the previous story of a Presidential candidate repeatedly fabricating stories about meetings with foreign diplomats regarding a war in Iraq.

(Be sure to listen to the audio for complete context)

UPDATE: The point of my post (since nobody actually ever reads my posts) is that Edwards, who has previously made inappropriate comments, isn't doing anything that I'd consider particularly newsworthy or scandalous in this case. She's just making a dumb, hesitant, off-the-cuff remark and getting an unfair treatment from Drudge.

I have no idea why anyone would treat that sound clip with outrage, whereas Kerry's repeated remarks about fabricated meetings elicit a "yawn."

UPDATE: If you'd like to peruse more serious examples of worry about post-election riots, check out Kerry Spot.

There's no doubt that this is a scary piece of news:

Huge Cache of Explosives Vanished From Site in Iraq

The Iraqi interim government has warned the United States and international nuclear inspectors that nearly 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives - used to demolish buildings, make missile warheads and detonate nuclear weapons - are missing from one of Iraq's most sensitive former military installations.

I have a few immediate problems with the Times' unnecessarily hyperbolic treatment, however. The story devotes a great deal of space to the breathless assertion that the explosives are used to "detonate nuclear weapons," but as far as my education permits, a nuclear chain reaction is basically initiated from shape charges of conventional explosives. To correctly jump start an implosion weapon, exact measures of these high-explosives need to be placed at very specific machined angles to create the desired effect. And beyond the expertise involved in designing the weapon, the fundamental challenge has always been the obtention of nuclear material; any terrorist chasing the bomb would have no problem getting his hands on the relatively small amount of requisite high-grade explosives, if he's already able to get his hands on some uranium.

So essentially, the fact that these explosive could be used to initiate a nuclear reaction is not significant, and the Times is attempting to hype the story with a misleading and unnecessarily terrifying focus on nuclear proliferation.

Beyond the Times' propaganda however, the MIA status of 380 tons of high explosives is a story that shouldn't need hype, with its potentially strategic implications to success in Iraq and the war on terror. Who has the goods? If the material disappeared during the post-war looting (an unproven implication/assumption of the story), why hasn't it been used in force? Has it been used at all? Was it moved by Saddam Hussein after the IAEA inspectors pulled out prior to invasion?

That last question is an angle that you won't hear much about in the news.

Another interesting angle of the story is the assumption that munitions in Iraq were leagues safer in the sloppily run bureaucracy of Saddam Hussein's terrorist state (remember the missing WMD documentation), but I suppose that's a much larger, abstract argument. In the here-and-now, there's no getting around the fact that 380 tons of missing high explosive material is very bad news. More detailed observations as information develops.

UPDATE: As a commenter succinctly points out:

I read this story a couple of times and I'm still confused as to exactly WHEN the explosives went missing.

Me too.

UPDATE: Commenter JPickens reads the story closely:

"A European diplomat reported that Jacques Baute, head of the arms agency's Iraq nuclear inspection team, warned officials at the United States mission in Vienna about the danger of the nuclear sites and materials once under I.A.E.A. supervision, including Al Qaqaa."

"But apparently, little was done. A senior Bush administration official said that during the initial race to Baghdad, American forces "went through the bunkers, but saw no materials bearing the I.A.E.A. seal." It is unclear whether troops ever returned. "

So, no IAEA seals were found, and the IAEA had already reported that the stuff was uncontrolled BEFORE the US invasion.

"[B]ut saw no materials bearing the I.A.E.A. seal." Did they see any "materials" that were later unguarded? The article is unclear.

UPDATE: Captain Ed offers some perspective, with an on-the-ground assessment from the son of a Navy SEAL in Iraq:

No one doubts that 380 tons of high-tech explosive is a big, big problem. But the Times article fails to put the issue into its proper perspective; the US and its coalition partners have been securing and destroying loose munitions ever since the invasion, as fast as they can. My friend Mike, a Navy SEAL and a contractor in Iraq, worked on this mission during his time there, and described the process in his letters home to his son:

"When Daddy first came to Iraq it was estimated that there was more than 2 million tons of ammunition stored in hundreds of storage places called ‘caches’. We may not have that much ammunition in our own country
...
So let's keep in mind that when we're talking about 380 tons of ammunition, it represents 0.019% of the estimated amount of explosives and munitions that confronted the US at the beginning of the invasion. As Mike makes clear, it will take years to find, secure, and destroy all of these caches, and the Coalition had to prioritize the sites very quickly on their arrival. Absent any IAEA seals, they did what common sense dictated: the US moved its troops into positions where they could fight the enemy and secure communications."

He includes pictures; please read the rest of the post.

UPDATE: See new post.

Arthur Chrenkoff once again has an amazingly comprehensive round-up of the stories that you will never see on the front page of the New York Times:

There are two Iraqs.

The one we more often get to see and read about is a dangerous place, full of exploding cars, kidnapped foreigners and deadly ambushes. The reconstruction is proceeding at a snail's pace, frustration boils over and tensions - political, ethnic, religious - crackle in the air like static electricity before a storm.

The other Iraq is a once prosperous and promising country of twenty-four million people, slowly recovering from physical and moral devastation of totalitarian rule. It's a country whose people are slowly beginning to stand on their own feet, grasp the opportunities undreamed of only two years ago, and dream of catching up on three decades of lost time...

In truth, of course, there is only one Iraq. Even if we don't see it too often reflected in the news coverage, we instinctively know that Iraq of violence and Iraq of recovery can, and do, coexist with each other within the same physical borders. We know that there is nothing mutually exclusive about tragedy and hope, horror and promise, frustration and exuberance. This is true in our own lives; and so it is just as true in lives of whole nations.
...
"In a recent poll 80.5% of Iraqis ..."

"[t]he World Bank said... it had granted Iraq 60 million dollars to build and repair schools ...

Meanwhile, on Iraqi university campuses ...

"[The IMF] predicts a post-conflict economic boom in Iraq this year ...

Read the whole thing.

Security Council members deny meeting Kerry

At the second presidential debate earlier this month, Mr. Kerry said he was more attuned to international concerns on Iraq than President Bush, citing his meeting with the entire Security Council.

"This president hasn't listened. I went to meet with the members of the Security Council in the week before we voted. I went to New York. I talked to all of them, to find out how serious they were about really holding Saddam Hussein accountable," Mr. Kerry said of the Iraqi dictator.

Speaking before the Council on Foreign Relations in New York in December 2003, Mr. Kerry explained that he understood the "real readiness" of the United Nations to "take this seriously" because he met "with the entire Security Council, and we spent a couple of hours talking about what they saw as the path to a united front in order to be able to deal with Saddam Hussein."

But of the five ambassadors on the Security Council in 2002 who were reached directly for comment, four said they had never met Mr. Kerry. The four also said that no one who worked for their countries' U.N. missions had met with Mr. Kerry either.

(Emphasis mine)

All politicians lie, right? Not quite like this:

Watch the video.

Kerry manufactured meetings out of whole cloth and then presented them as justification for a serious contradiction of George Bush's decision to go to war.

He did something very similar when he previously recited a false story on the Senate floor about an illegal mission into Cambodia, using it as a basis for criticism of Ronald Reagan's intent to provide aid to the Nicaraguan contras.

These aren't exaggerations. This isn't a case of lying about sex. It's a story about a man that's pathological enough to look a nationally televised audience of 55 million people in the eye and tell them a manufactured story, and then use it to propose a conclusion about a deadly serious matter of foreign policy.

This isn't a misused accusation that "KERRY LIED!" by virtue of his previous declarative statements about the "unacceptable threat" from Iraq's WMD programs. This isn't akin to Lawrence O'Donnell's tirade of, "LIAR LIAR LIAR," about items deemed unworthy of public debate.

This is just a "lie." Take it for what its worth.

UPDATE: Please read and absorb this post by the Truth Laid Bear:

Without lapsing into blogger triumphalism, countering the mainstream media's tendency to ignore Kerry's flaws is, after all, what we're here for, isn't it? (Or Bush's flaws, for that matter, but others have that beat covered pretty well.)

I'll admit, my first reaction was a bit of a yawn myself. But then I thought about why that was, and I think it comes down to the fact that I expect Kerry to exaggerate and outright lie when it serves his political purpose of the moment. But the fact that he's a serial exaggerator is exactly why this story should receive attention, not why it should be shrugged off.

So let's not treat Mr. Kerry with the "soft bigotry of low expectations" that I'm sure his squishly little liberal heart would find so offensive. The standard is a simple one: tell the damned truth. It would appear he didn't in a crucial discussion of one of the most critical policy decisions made in years.

So let's make sure that everyone we possibly can reach knows that. And let's not conclude that Teflon John is going to get away with this one just yet --- because the one thing that is true is that if the blogosphere doesn't light a fire under this one, he will walk...

UPDATE: Roger Simon:

Is John Kerry a sociopath? That's an extreme statement but it would seem he has sociopathic tendencies if the new report by Joel Mowbray in the Washington Times turns out to be correct. We all remember the Senator's bizarre (and to date unsubstantiated) claim that he spent Christmas in Cambodia during the Vietnam War. Well, he appears to have gilded the lily once again, this time, incredibly, before our very eyes during the second presidential debate.

A commenter brings up a reasonable point - Kerry "meant to communicate" that he only met with the permanent members of the Security Council, not "all of them," as he specified on two occasions. I don't believe that this interpretation invalidates the significance of Kerry's statements, but in any case, I've been told that verification regarding the permanent five is in the works as well. We'll see. I await further detail with everyone else.

UPDATE: I'll try to muster up some commentary on the commentary tomorrow. Suffice it to say that there is an appropriate reaction that lies somewhere between "the world revolves around this" and "yawn."

Predictably, Captain Ed has some of the best analysis.

UPDATE: Remember, a spokesman for France's chief U.N. representative at the time said that Kerry did not have a single group meeting, rather several smaller, even one-on-one meetings. But here's a third instance of Kerry being very specific with his assertion, this time in a December 10, 2003 interview with the Boston Globe:

Secondly, I spent a lot of time before the vote looking at this issue. I went up to the United Nations at the request of some friends. And I met with the entire Security Council in a room just like this at a table like this. I spent two hours with them. (inaudible), just me and the Security Council, asking them questions. The French ambassador, "Is there a time when President Chirac would be ready to come on board? What do we need to do to move the French people to a place where they understand the stakes? Are you prepared to spend money? Do you believe we might have to use force in order to disarm Saddam Hussein? At what point would you be ready to do that?" I went through that with all of them. And I left there convinced that the U.N. was prepared to be deadly serious about this.

(Emphasis mine)

UPDATE: Read Redstate's comprehensive round-up:

... go ahead and re-read the quoted lies above. Notice a surprise guest at the table in Kerry's imaginary international conference? Germans. Kerry is manufacturing a Security Council meeting involving nations that weren't on the Security Council in 2002.

UPDATE: And more from Captain Ed:

Yes, it reveals nothing that we haven't seen before, but in this case the lie is particularly egregious in that he's using it to undermine our foreign policy and diplomacy in a time of war. It's another indication that nothing, not our security or the lives of our troops, comes before his own overwhelming ambitions to seize power and live out the life of his boyhood idol, John Kennedy. And the fact that he's established a firm pattern of deceit and self-aggrandizement shouldn't be treated with a round of indifference; it should be heralded to the American electorate so that they can see Kerry for the prevaricating narcissist that he so clearly is.

"In order to pass the global test, the prepared student must be willing to cheat:"

THE ROLE of Kofi Annan in the Iraqi oil-for-food scandal is to be investigated after it emerged that the United Nations secretary-general was in charge of some of the most controversial aspects of the discredited humanitarian programme. Annan, 66, the Ghanaian-born head of the UN and Nobel peace prize winner who is due to retire in 2006, is “co-operating” with the independent commission set up to look into the scandal. He has agreed to waive his diplomatic immunity and face legal action if any wrongdoing is uncovered.

(Via Heard Here)

I've always rejected the notion that John Kerry is an "intellectual," and this seems to go a long way towards dispelling the notion:

To Bush-bashers, it may be the most infuriating revelation yet from the military records of the two presidential candidates: the young George W. Bush probably had a higher I.Q. than did the young John Kerry.

That, at least, is the conclusion of Steve Sailer, a conservative columnist at the Web magazine Vdare.com and a veteran student of presidential I.Q.'s. During the last presidential campaign Mr. Sailer estimated from Mr. Bush's SAT score (1206) that his I.Q. was in the mid-120's, about 10 points lower than Al Gore's.

Mr. Kerry's SAT score is not known, but now Mr. Sailer has done a comparison of the intelligence tests in the candidates' military records. They are not formal I.Q. tests, but Mr. Sailer says they are similar enough to make reasonable extrapolations.

Mr. Bush's score on the Air Force Officer Qualifying Test at age 22 again suggests that his I.Q was the mid-120's, putting Mr. Bush in about the 95th percentile of the population, according to Mr. Sailer. Mr. Kerry's I.Q. was about 120, in the 91st percentile, according to Mr. Sailer's extrapolation of his score at age 22 on the Navy Officer Qualification Test.

A few important notes:

*** Yes, it's only one test, but it's a standardized test, and Bush beat him.

*** 120 isn't bad at all, but it's not considered "gifted."

*** If George Bush is such a chimpy dumbass, how could he have possibly taken Kerry on the NOQT and gotten a 1206 on his SAT? And how does this reflect on the Donk faithful's contextual view of their challenger?

*** Are Kerry's positions really incredibly complex, or is he just confused about keeping them straight?

*** Could any intellectual possibly be this bad at pandering and naked political calculation?

I guess not. Both men are reasonably bright, but not exceptionally so.

Via Instapundit, who adds, "The second-most infuriating thing (for Bush-bashers) must be having to read this in the Sunday New York Times ..."

UPDATE: Ok, Exhibit B:

Democratic presidential nominee and Vietnam War veteran John Kerry tried to burnish his national security credentials on Saturday by vowing to hunt down terrorists with the same energy he used to pursue the Viet Cong.
...
"With the same energy ... I put into going after the Viet Cong and trying to win for our country, I pledge to you I will hunt down and capture or kill the terrorists before they harm us," Kerry said. "And we will wage a war on terror that makes America proud and brings the world to our side."

Is anyone with a brain in their head failing to chortle at painfully dumb statements like this? Be honest, my smart, wacky Dem readers - be honest.

Kerry's stump bites make Bush's repetitive bromides about "freedom" look Churchillian. Really.

UPDATE: "John 'Forrest' Kerry." Heh.

The result of things like this ...

2. If no signs of intimidation techniques have emerged yet, launch a "pre-emptive strike" (particularly well-suited to states in which there techniques have been tried in the past).

• Issue a press release

i. Reviewing Republican tactic used in the past in your area or state

ii. Quoting party/minority/civil rights leadership as denouncing tactics that discourage people from voting

• Prime minority leadership to discuss the issue in the media; provide talking points

• Place stories in which minority leadership expresses concern about the threat of intimidation tactics

• Warn local newspapers not to accept advertising that is not properly disclaimed or that contains false warnings about voting requirements and/or about what will happen at the polls

... and this ...

Unlike the former vice president, who lost a recount fight and the 2000 election, Kerry will be quick to declare victory on election night and begin defending it. He also will be prepared to name a national security team before knowing whether he's secured the presidency.

... and this ...

A group of opposition Democrats in the House of Representatives has asked United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan to send U.N. observers to November's presidential election.

"We are deeply concerned that the rights of U.S. citizens to vote in free and fair elections are again in jeopardy," the members of Congress wrote Jul. 1.

... is this:

ALMOST HALF (48%) OF REGISTERED VOTERS THINK AN ILLEGITIMATE WINNER WILL WIN PRESIDENCY, ACCORDING TO TIME POLL
---
56% Support Abolishing The Electoral College
---
58% Worry the Courts May Have to Decide Winner;
Just Over Half (54%) Trust Courts to Determine Election Winner
---
47% Believe The Country Has Become More Divided In Past Four Years; 57% Place Blame on Media For Dividing Country

As Stephen Green wrote - these tactics will steer us towards "Banana Republic" status. And this heated wrangling will take place at the exact point in time when Iraqis are looking to the United States as an example for their own nascent electoral process.

UPDATE: Think both sides are equally culpable? Read this. And then try to compile your own list ...

It's pretty unpleasant to witness what depths of mad depravity certain quarters of the left are reduced to this election season. From today's Guardian:

On November 2, the entire civilised world will be praying, praying Bush loses. And Sod's law dictates he'll probably win, thereby disproving the existence of God once and for all. The world will endure four more years of idiocy, arrogance and unwarranted bloodshed, with no benevolent deity to watch over and save us. John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr - where are you now that we need you?

Choose wisely, America.

UPDATE: Yes, that Guardian.

UPDATE: If you'd like to let the Guardian know how you feel about them publishing this column, the Watcher has the relevant contact info. There's also another list in the Tim Blair link.

Keep in mind - polite, eloquent letters are considered, while profanity-laced tirades are laughed at and tossed in the trash. Anger is of course appropriate.

UPDATE: The Guardian pulls its shoe out of the muck ...

The final sentence of a column in The Guide on Saturday caused offence to some readers. The Guardian associates itself with the following statement from the writer.

"Charlie Brooker apologises for any offence caused by his comments relating to President Bush in his TV column, Screen Burn. The views expressed in this column are not those of the Guardian. Although flippant and tasteless, his closing comments were intended as an ironic joke, not as a call to action - an intention he believed regular readers of his humorous column would understand. He deplores violence of any kind."

... but its shoe remains dirty.

(Via Intellectual Intercourse)

Speaking of "lies," keep an eye on the front page of the Washington Times this coming Monday.

UPDATE: It's something that the Kerry campaign will be forced to address regarding a previous criticism of Bush's foreign policy. That's all.

UPDATE: Redstate is my source for the fact that the WaTimes is running with the story, though not the story itself. More detail when the story breaks.

Do you still wonder why I complain about the way the Swiftboat Veterans and POW's for Truth were treated by the MSM?

You need to watch this video of Lawrence O'Donnell losing his mind on Scarborough Country. Wow.

While O'Donnell's tirade against John O'Neill is certainly unhinged, it's also an accurate, distilled reflection of the conventional narrative that's pushed by much of the mainstream media.

For a description of this bias, check out Wizbang's recent interview with O'Neill:

Aylward - Let's go back to May 2004 and your press conference at the National Press Club. What did you expect to happen as a result of you charges against John Kerry, and were you at all surprised by the media coverage your group got or didn't get?

O'Neill - Yes we were somewhat surprised, actually probably more naive than anything else. We expected that a neutral media would pick up the story, report the facts, then we could all go home. Obviously that's not what happened.

Aylward - How have alternative media sources helped?

O'Neill - The interesting thing about the mainstream media is that we expected a set of facts would lead reporting to an fact informed opinion, but it turns out that opinion or bias drives the presentation (or non-presentation) of facts.

What we've gotten from blogs and other non-traditional media is a willingness to examine the facts and draw conclusions from them, which is what we expected from traditional media. Alternative media sources have been instrumental for us because of the willingness to base conclusions on the evidence, not start with a conclusion and shape content to support the preconceived conclusion.
...
Aylward - Have you been surprised that the Swift Vets have been portrayed in some quarters as "a bunch of liars?"

O'Neill - The term that comes up a lot in interviews is "generally discredited," What I've found is that it's the editors who are directing that reporters refer to the Swift Vets as "generally discredited," not the reporters themselves. When I challenge reporters to name one fact that has been disproved they generally can't. If they do bring up a point of confusion they've gotten from Kerry loyalists, I give them the well documented proof behind our claims. The fact that Kerry himself wrote most of the after action reports lead to confusions. We've show in several cases that the after action reports don't match the facts.

This phenomenon really hit home with me when a typically reasonable friend of mine lashed out by calling the SwiftVets underhanded Republican agents, after I e-mailed him a link to one of their commercials as a follow-up to a previous conversation about the impact of Kerry's post-Vietnam rhetoric. I realized then that even bright people can't fathom the impact that a select few people in the MSM have had on setting the terms of the debate this election, and nowhere has this been more evident than the media's initial ignorance and subsequent spin about the Swift Vets.

Read More »

For those that like polls, Time just sent me a release trumpeting their new effort:

BUSH OPENS 5 POINT LEAD AGAINST KERRY
AMONG LIKELY VOTERS, ACCORDING TO NEW TIME POLL
---
Among Likely Voters, 51% Support President Bush,
46% Support Senator John Kerry, and 2% Support Ralph Nader
---
Bush Approval Rating Up To 53%

Kerry Loses Ground on Economy, Health Care, War on Terrorism
and Support Among Women

Looks like Bush has established a solid lead in the homestretch, but I'm sure we'll see some interesting revelation/accusation a la 2000 on November 1.

UPDATE: Please note - I don't put much stock in polls either, I just thought that the internals on this one were interesting. That being said, Real Clear Politics' average of polls does show a small lead for Bush.

Full details below the fold:

Read More »

Interesting:

The liars at MTV are using the airwaves to brainwash America’s youth. As a result, the California College Republicans (CCR) scheduled a protest of MTV to confront MTV/Rock the Vote for using the draft to scare young voters. We now see why they chose the fear factor: to elect the Democrat nominee for President to office.

MTV/Rock the Vote called CCR Chairman Michael P. Davidson to deny any association with Rock the Vote’s draft scare tactics. When asked who the person calling was, they would not give a name. The number from which they called (212-846-2609) is a non functioning number in the Viacom system. The anonymous MTV caller repeatedly tried to deny any connection between MTV and Rock the Vote, but the evidence proves otherwise.

Through just cursory research, CCR discovered numerous connections between MTV, Rock the Vote, and the DNC.

Read the rest.

The California College Republicans might also want to note the fact that one of the leaders of Rock the Vote is a bona fide Dem operative, while the other is an unaffiliated left-wing activist.

"Non-partisan" indeed.

(Via IP)

Another Friday titter:

The Guardian yesterday ran up the white flag and called a halt to "Operation Clark County", the newspaper's ambitious scheme to recruit thousands of readers to persuade American voters in a swing state to kick out President George W Bush in next month's election.

The cancellation of the project came 24 hours after the first of some 14,000 letters from Guardian readers began arriving in Clark County. The missives led to widespread complaints about foreign interference in a US election.

It also prompted a surge of indignant local voters calling the county's Republican party offering to volunteer for Mr Bush.

Imagine.

I'm not a very big fan of Ann, but I'll freely admit that several of her answers in this interview made me laugh out loud:

John Hawkins: Any initial reaction to the $60 million dollar sexual harassment suit against Bill O'Reilly?

Ann Coulter: Last week I received an obscene phone call that began, "Ann from New York, you're in the Zone. What say you, and what are you wearing?" and ended, "I'll give you the last word."

Literally.

As an old Iron Maiden aficianado, "Spitfire" is my favorite song.

UPDATE: Cool metal instrumental of "Message in a Bottle" as well.

As I've said before, sometimes honesty and spin intersect in political discourse, even last-minute campaign advertisements (I encourage you to watch both ads).

For example, realists knew that this was going to happen:

Iran is unlikely to accept European incentives aimed at getting it to suspend uranium enrichment, diplomats said Thursday, raising the prospect of a showdown next month between Tehran and the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency.

And why is it vital to prevent Iran from producing nuclear weapons?

Exhibit A:
Iran has increased the range of its missiles to 1,250 miles, a senior Iranian official was quoted as saying on Tuesday, putting parts of Europe within reach for the first time.

Exhibit B:
In addition to China, Russia and North Korea, Iran could threaten the United States with intercontinental ballistic missiles in the near future -- in large part because of help Teheran has received from Russia and China...

Exhibits C, D and E:
The U.S. government first listed Iran as a terrorist sponsor in 1984. Among its activities have been the following:

In November 1979, Iranian student revolutionaries widely thought to be linked to the Khomeini government occupied the American Embassy in Tehran. Iran held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days.

Observers say Iran had prior knowledge of Hezbollah attacks, such as the 1988 kidnapping and murder of Colonel William Higgins, a U.S. Marine involved in a U.N. observer mission in Lebanon, and the 1992 and 1994 bombings of Jewish cultural institutions in Argentina.

U.S. officials say Iran supported and inspired the group behind the 1996 truck bombing of Khobar Towers, a U.S. military residence in Saudi Arabia, which killed 19 U.S. servicemen.

And when the mullahs decide to press ahead and go nuclear, what's the proper way to confront them?

Option A:

John Kerry's proposal would call their bluff by organizing a group of states to offer Iran the nuclear fuel they need for peaceful purposes and take back the spent fuel so they cannot divert it to build a weapon ... If this process fails, we must lead the effort to ensure that the IAEA takes this issue to the Security Council for action.

Option B:

The Bush administration - which labeled Iran part of an "axis of evil'' along with North Korea and Iraq when it was still ruled by Saddam Hussein - said this week it did not endorse the European allies' plan.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the Iranians "have shown a pattern of not being willing to comply and of not being willing to be transparent and open about their intentions and programs.''

Implicit in the Bush Administration's rhetoric is the option of a quicker move to unilateral economic or military action.

When the IAEA's flawed proposal fails for good and the Iranians inevitably stall, the Security Council will fail to act. Why? Because contravening Kedwards supporters' belief in the rule of diplomacy and desires for America to be "liked," one of the permanent members of the Security Council is building Iran's nuclear reactors and selling them long-range missiles - Iran is the primary Mideast trading partner of another member - a third member has billions of dollars in economic ties to Iran, a strategic interest against the US, an amorphous view of foreign relations and a dearth of historical enmity with the Iranians.

Oh yeah, and don't forget that the Chinese also currently sell Iran ballistic missile technology and WMD.

Do you understand? Foreign policy does not run on black-tie dinners, derisive comments about "Old Europe," candy canes, sunshine or gummy bears - it primarily turns on countries' self-interest, which usually manifests itself in money and guns. The great hope for Iran has always relied on the demographic shifts that will replace the mad mullahs with a reformist youth movement, but considering the pace of their nuclear program and the recent Iranian fundamentalist power consolidation, along with the hardliner panic bred by the inevitability of change, this is not a reliable option to prevent the catastrophic use of an Iranian nuclear capability.

And come next term, which potential President do you think is going to make the hard decision to prevent the Mullahs from going nuclear, even when America's collective failure of imagination and insulated naivete casts a cloud of political unviability over the use of pre-emption? I'll give you a hint: it's not John Kerry. The coalition assembled to remove Saddam from Kuwait did not pass John Kerry's "global test;" what makes you think that he would ever take the steps necessary to stop Iran from having the capability to wage nuclear war against the United States?

The 90's are over, and the ubiquity and ease of obtaining destructive technology have placed this generation on the cusp of a very tough struggle against somewhat irrational players. This is not a game - and it's just getting started.

Wake up, America. Please.

UPDATE: Many strategic realists will argue that the Bush Administration weakened our hand against Iran by embroiling the United States in Iraq, and that we've goaded Iran's aggression by meddling in the region. This is true to some extent, but I'll pre-empt the criticism with the following:

Read More »

So pretty, so very, very pretty. Charles Ommanney - Newsweek

Back in July, Evan Thomas from Newsweek predicted that the media would try to help swing the election for Kedwards, painting them as dynamic optimists poised to take the country by storm. The exact quote from "Inside Washington:"

MR. THOMAS: There's one other base here, the media. Let's talk a little media bias here. The media, I think, wants Kerry to win and I think they're going to portray Kerry and Edwards I'm talking about the establishment media, not Fox. They're going to portray Kerry and Edwards as being young and dynamic and optimistic and there's going to be this glow about them, collective glow, the two of them, that's going to be worth maybe 15 points.

That very week, Newsweek's cover featured a glamour shot of a smiling Kerry and Edwards that dubbed them "The Sunshine Boys." The inside feature by Howard Fineman and Richard Wolffe included flattering family pictures, at least one reference to Camelot and some of the following milk-spewing lines:

"Their energy was infectious, but their numbers barely moved. Can Kerry-Edwards convert smiles into votes against Team Bush? Game on"

"The Kennedys loved to play football in odd places and so, naturally, does their political descendant, Sen. John F. Kerry ... In coats and ties, the newly minted running mates performed yet another bonding ritual, a typical blend of bonhomie and competition. Grinning, Kerry winged a pass across the table to Edwards, who caught it with the practiced, spread-fingered ease of the high-school player he once was.

Indeed, Edwards's ingratiating incandescence has already brightened Kerry. The two became a buddy-buddy act, hugging and whispering like Starsky and Hutch after consuming the evidence.

"... the "John-John" ticket was campaigning as the Sunshine Boys, eager to paint the campaign as a Manichaean struggle between their light and the darkness of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, whom Democrats depict as the gloomy, disingenuous avatars of war abroad and economic inequality at home."

It's perhaps the most obvious piece of soft-focus MSM political propaganda that I've laid eyes on this election season. Let's get an instant replay on that last line:

Read More »

(Photo - INDC)

Can you hear them?

Can you smell them?

Can you sense them?

They're coming.

I just squeaked into Right Wing News' latest top 40 bloggers list at number 32. My ego can certainly handle landing in the bottom quartile, but to get narrowly stomped by Wizbang ...

Damn you Wizbang. (Shakes fist, looks to the heavens) Damn you.

I'm coming for you, Aylward.

Seriously though, if you're looking to expand your right-leaning (with the exception of Kaus) blog horizons, that list is a good place to start.

According to my server stats, INDC Journal just entertained its one-millionth visitor since January inception. Current average daily visits:

Server Statistics
16,940 visits per day

Sitemeter Statistics
14,959 visits per day

INDC draws over 400,000 visits per month now.

In conjunction with my uptick in traffic, I've started offering Blog Ads, which are featured on the right side-bar. Our current advertisers include a petition to thank Tony Blair for his firm support of the United States in the War on Terror, and ListenBeforeYouVote.com, which, despite the partisan "He's an idiot" appeal, offers an awesome bipartisan variety of downloads of everything from the Presidential debates to speeches, as well as very inexpensive "audiobooks" of your favorite political titles. Very cool.

I implore you to make your way over there to the right and sign the petition to thank PM Blair, and I also encourage you to check out Listen Before You Vote. Every click to my advertisers supports the independent journalism, punditry and silly jokes at INDC.

Readers: Thank you for supporting my advertisers; every click helps!

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Stephen Moore, the former pollster for the Coalition Provisional Authority and founder of The Truth About Iraq, has an op-ed in the LA Times:

John Kerry is playing the prophet of doom in the most important foreign policy initiative of our generation. In Pennsylvania, Kerry described Iraq as "the wrong war, wrong place, wrong time." In New York, he opined that murderous cleric Muqtada Sadr "holds more sway in suburbs of Baghdad than Prime Minister [Iyad] Allawi." In Columbus, Ohio, the senator claimed to have a more accurate perspective on the situation in Iraq than did the interim prime minister, whose favorability rating of 73% among Iraqis, it's worth noting, is higher than Kerry's 48% favorability rating among Americans in the latest polls. Kerry, of course, has never set foot in Iraq.

I was there from July 2003 to April 2004, conducting about 70 focus groups and a dozen public opinion polls and advising L. Paul Bremer III, then the civilian administrator, on Iraqi public opinion. Whatever you might hear from Kerry, Michael Moore, the mainstream media and anyone else to whom defeating President Bush is more important than the fate of the Iraqi people, those who know best what's going on in Iraq — the Iraqis themselves — are optimistic about the future.

Read it all.

A favor - would any Kerry supporters and/or Bush detractors that plan on voting for the Kedwards ticket please outline the rationale behind your vote? A couple of guidelines:

*** Please use relatively structured, concise form, where possible. Bullets are helpful.

*** I'd like other commenters that support Bush to refrain from criticism in this thread.

*** Rationale can focus around complaints about Bush or positive support for Kerry, preferably both.

Please refrain from e-mail - leave your input in the comments section below. If desired, anonymity is fine.

Thank you.

UPDATE: I said "refrain from criticism" and I meant it - the next smart-ass that violates my instructions gets booted for good. If Kerry voters know other Kerry voters that have reasonable criticisms (read: sane), please shepard them towards this thread.

UPDATE: Since you Bushies are itching to fire your ammo, leftie David Anderson has graciously set up a thread for you to present the alternate case for Bush. You have to register for Typekey in order to comment, but I believe that one registration will allow you to comment on all blogs with Typekey (Captain's Quarters, Allah, etc.), so it may be worth your time. Plus - you could bring a moonbat back from the brink.

Light blogging today. A smattering of quick links to keep the natives happy:

*** Silly campaign fun: Malkin rebuts the Kerry campaign's whinging about GOP flu shots and later whales on her favorite drum:

Well, Teresa Heinz Kerry's subdued act didn't last long did it?

Oh, who am I kidding - it's everyone's favorite drum. Bang away!

*** Speaking of banging favored drums, Patterico takes another bite out of the hackdom at the LA Times:

There was one small problem: the Times's claim was not true. Contrary to the Times's claim, Kerry's op-ed makes no argument that could possibly be interpreted as an argument for "tougher efforts to find and destroy terrorist organizations." The Times's claim was based on an outright falsehood. You can see this for yourself if you read the op-ed -- which I strongly encourage you to do.

Sounds familiar.

*** In a continuing series, Protein Wisdom publishes exclusive entries from Martha Stewart's prison journal - Part's One, Two and Three:

... at least she could have returned the favor. I mean, Martha has needs too ...

Steamy. I'll never look at pine needles the same way again.

*** And finally, the Daily Recycler posts a hilarious video that's sure to make Val Prieto's week:

Look on the bright side, Fidel... At least you have free health care!

Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.

Read this e-mail to Sullivan, that I picked up via Ace:

It is an old military maxim that blunders can be forgiven, but a lack of boldness cannot. There will always be blunders. The simple becomes difficult in war. Take for example the following question: what is 2+2 equal to? An easy question right? Now imagine I gave you 15 such questions and you had 2 seconds to answer them. Most likely you would answer some and leave the rest. Looking at those questions you missed in isolation I might say, "What kind of blathering idiot are you? You can't even answer simple questions like 2+2=4". That is why Armchair Generals are so annoying. They look at one thing in isolation with all the time in the world to think about it and say confidently "the answers obvious". But when you are out in the fight everything looks different. Nothing is ever seen in isolation. You never have enough time. You never know more than 1/10 what you need to know. There will always be blunders.

But the job has to get done anyway. And to get this kind of job done boldness is essential. A leader who never blunders, but who doesn't take the fight to the enemy is worthless. A leader who sets about to win - win ugly if needs be - is priceless.

One thing the Marine Corps taught me is that a 70% solution acted on immediately and violently is better than a perfect solution acted on later. My experience has proven this true time and again. The sad fact is however, that a 70% solution is a 30% mistake. And those mistakes can be hard to take. In WWII for example, 700 soldiers drowned in a training accident in preparation for D-Day (that is about how many combat deaths we've experienced so far in Iraq).

There is a scene in the movie "We were Soldiers" that says it better than I can. In the scene a young soldier on the ground is giving directions on enemy positions to aircraft flying overhead. The aircraft then dropped Napalm on the enemy. At one point the soldier gets the directions wrong and stares horrified as the Napalm is dropped on his own unit. The soldier is shaken beyond belief. He sat there doing nothing - paralyzed by his mistake. Then his Commanding Officer gave him the confidence to carry on. The CO told him to "forget about that last one" and "you're keeping us alive here". And so the soldier swallowed his guilt and kept doing his job and thereby saved the unit. That is what a 70% solution looks like in real life. And those are the 70% solutions that win wars.

Most people and events are beyond your control. Most questions you don't have time to answer. Most facts you will never know. But you have to press the attack anyway. No matter how ugly it gets, you keep going until you win.

Kerry doesn't understand that. Everything he did during the Cold War and everything he says about this one states as much. He represents those who would never blunder, but who would not take the fight to the enemy. He would just sit there - like the soldier in the movie - paralyzed by America's mistakes."

This man's letter can be employed to address not only John Kerry's potential policy in the War on Terror, but also recent critics of Tommy Franks' Afghanistan strategy and the auto-shame and hesitance that many leftists and pacifists feel about America's role in the world. This speaks to what I keep referring to as "selective negative argumentation," or deconstruction of the War on Terror - finely sliced and non-contextual criticism without solution or viable alternative, often from the benefit of hindsight.

Parsing the details and highlighting the mistakes are easy - designing and implementing a strategy and weathering grave challenges and missteps is hard, and made immeasurably harder in a pluralistic Western Democracy that's largely insulated from the brands of fear and pain that breed determination. This is why, despite numerous errors, I'll be voting for George Bush, and fervently hoping that he wins this election. It's immeasurably superior to have an aggressive strategy for success that gets some things wrong, than a perfectly executed - and fundamentally wrong - unserious and tactical reactionary focus.

History repeats this lesson over and over ... and over again. I hope that this country doesn't have to relearn it the hard way.

UPDATE: Dean chimes in:

What has been most frustrating about some of the Bush critics I encounter, and so distressing, is that there has been literally nothing they won't criticize, even if it's contradictory to things they've said in the past. But what's even worse is the simple fact that they refuse to acknowledge that anyone can criticize anything, and that if you really want America to be successful in her war efforts you don't just criticize, you propose alternatives. Which, with the exception of those who say simple things like "Out of Iraq now!" (which would be a humanitarian disaster) almost none of them will do. They seem content merely to engage in hindsight criticisms of how things could have been done better.

In short, when the going gets tough, the whiners whine louder and the sneerers sneer wider.

Read the rest.

The British Guardian's letter-writing campaign to hapless American rubes in Ohio gets results! Not exactly the results that they expected, but results nonetheless:

UK anti-Bush letters spark outrage

The Fox national cable television network tore into the newspaper and even John Kerry's own Democrats expressed horror at the campaign.

"We all feel it is not a good idea. I think it was unwise. It is so poorly thought-out," said Sharon Manitta, spokeswoman in Britain for Democrats Abroad.

But the newspaper, whose cartoons regularly portray President George W. Bush as a semi-literate ape, was unrepentant.

Of course. Heh.

(Via Wizbang)

UPDATE: As Rusty says, not funny, funnay!"

"Hey Behnam - why do you sully the meaning of your name by reading that infidel fishwrap?"

The AP erroneously declares an "endorsement" from Iran that would be disingenuous at best:

The head of Iran's security council said Tuesday that the re-election of President Bush was in Tehran's best interests, despite the administration's "axis of evil" label, accusations that Iran harbors al-Qaida terrorists and threats of sanctions for the country's nuclear ambitions.

Historically, Democrats have harmed Iran more than Republicans, said Hasan Rowhani, head of the Supreme National Security Council, Iran's top security decision-making body.

"We haven't seen anything good from Democrats," Rowhani told state-run television in remarks that, for the first time in decades, saw Iran openly supporting one U.S. presidential candidate over another.

"We do not desire to see Democrats take over," Rowhani said when asked if Iran was supporting Democratic Sen. John Kerry against Bush.

(Emphasis mine)

Of course, this generation's useful idiots at the AP seize on the comments in a bid to implicitly push the narrative that Bush's aggressive foreign policy plays into the desires of the rogue regime. As a counterweight to a quote from a Bush campaign official, they feature a summary of Kerry's plan and a quote from a Kerry campaign official, make a casual assertion that "Iran was happy" about US action in Afghanistan and Iraq, and uncritically quote two "Iranian political analyst[s]" that explicitly criticize Bush, one with hyperbolic language.

Also note this little "factual" dig that's been slipped into the "straight news" text:

Though Iran generally does not publicly wade into U.S. presidential politics, it has a history of preferring Republicans over Democrats, who tend to press human rights issues.

But quibbles about the AP's silly subjective asides aside, their unequivocal treatment of the Iranian's comments begs another question - did Rowhani really "openly" support Bush?

Agence France-Presse via the Persian Journal doesn't think so:

Mullah Rowhani: Kerry or Bush, makes no difference to Iran

Neither does "IranMania:"

Kerry or Bush, makes no difference to us: Iran

Neither does the item in the Turkish Press (AFP):

Kerry or Bush, makes no difference to us: Iran

It makes no real difference to Iran whether US President George W. Bush or Democrat contender John Kerry wins the presidential elections, a senior Iranian official said Tuesday.

And come to think of it, neither does Rowhani, according to a quote that's mysteriously absent from the AP story:

"It makes no difference for us which of the two parties wins the elections," Iran's top national security official Hassan Rowhani said in an interview on state television.

So the AP's "news" is really "analysis" that omits direct quotes that contradict their narrative, extrapolates endorsement from the context of some of the source's words and presents this extrapolation at face value, not even bothering to note Iran's previous prevarication that would indicate a tendency to try and game the political process with shifting positions. A google of the story reveals that many dailies in the West have some variation of the headline "Bush receives endorsement from Iran," without Rowhani's contradictory quote. Why? Because almost all of them feature the selective wire spin by Ali Akbar Dareini of the Associated Press. It's group-think at its worst, and highlights the reason why the "reporters" at the wire services are the most dangerous and influential commentators in the mainstream media.

Keep in mind - I could personally care less about whether or not the Mullahs endorse Bush. What I care about is the fact that the AP thinks that it matters, and feeds the world selective information to push an agenda.

Let's examine some further Iranian manipulation and AP spin:

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No my leftie trolls, this is not a "big deal," but can't you just lighten up and laugh at something every once in a while?

It's even funnier when you visualize Dick Cheney in his place.

For readers that demand a dose of sobriety and some news that may be good for Kerry, check out Simon's summary of a recent talk given by pollster John Zogby.

UPDATE: Back to the funny. Did you know ...

John Kerry supports desecrating the memory of C.H.I.P.s.

(Via Nathan Hamm)

UPDATE: C.H.I.P.s. link is down.

UPDATE: The link is back up, but it looks like the powers-that-be at North Carolina State University have compelled the student to add a disclaimer ...

"W son of Iran-Contra." (Photo - INDC)

Only a few more days until the swarm invades INDC.

The Free French Forces (FFF) of Protest Warrior infiltrate a pro-Kerry rally in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, and hilarity ensues:

The idea behind the Democrats Abroad rally was to have demonstrators go up to the front, take turns holding a bullhorn, climb up an unsteady stepladder, and speak up for Kerry, resulting in constant noice against Bush throughout the afternoon. So I thought I would join in the fun.

I climbed the small stepladder, struggled to keep my balance, and started speaking.

"George W Bush is the worst politician in the world…" I started, borrowing a page from Winston's book. (Cheers, applause)

"George W Bush is the worst liar in the world…" (cheers, applause)

"with the EXCEPTION… of all the rest!" (perplexed silence)

A gutsy move from men that are truly far behind enemy lines. Click below for a bonus song dedication to my brave French brothers-in-arms:

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Submandave went sniffing around some of RtV's source material on the draft scare:

Bill at INDC has been on Rock the Vote's case about a dummy "draft card" on their front page that, until yesterday, bore the signature of Donald Rumsfeld. They replaced it with Charlie Rangel, but still give the "draft issue" front page treatment. I poked about a bit, noting that they link to Alliance For Security for Debunking the Myths, a site that still spoke of both the House and Senate bills, even though the House Bill was shot down recently. But, oh, wait, they did notice that and didn't like it because "As a result, the draft issue will not receive the extended discussion and debate it deserves."

Go read his conclusions.

Retired General Tommy Franks smacks around John Kerry's new WOT talking points in a New York Times Op-Ed:

President Bush and Senator John Kerry have very different views of the war on terrorism, and those differences ought to be debated in this presidential campaign. But the debate should focus on facts, not distortions of history.

On more than one occasion, Senator Kerry has referred to the fight at Tora Bora in Afghanistan during late 2001 as a missed opportunity for America. He claims that our forces had Osama bin Laden cornered and allowed him to escape. How did it happen? According to Mr. Kerry, we "outsourced" the job to Afghan warlords. As commander of the allied forces in the Middle East, I was responsible for the operation at Tora Bora, and I can tell you that the senator's understanding of events doesn't square with reality.

Read the whole thing.

*** INDC World Exclusive ***

After yesterday's revelation of alleged crack cocaine payments for false voter registration forms during the course of an NAACP voter registration drive in Ohio, INDC Journal immediately launched an investigation and unearthed a highly secret RNC memo that specifically addresses the practice of crack-induced voter fraud.

Shockingly, the Bush/Cheney campaign and the Republican National Committee are advising election operatives to declare existence of Democratic "cracktic[s]" -- even if none exist, INDC Journal can reveal.

Below is a copy of the newly discovered memo. Its authenticity has been verified by a panel of four forensic handwriting experts and a pet psychic.

When contacted by INDC Journal for comment, one top RNC official denied the manual's authenticity, asking, "are you on crack?"

"We all know the Democrats are going to try to and pull some real scooby doo crap this election season, but who could possibly predict paying crackheads for fake voter registration forms?! In crack, no less!" the top RNC source explained.

"Now get out of my office, weirdo. I'm calling security."

*** The RNC memo is satire ***

UPDATE: Dangerous Logic has some more straightforward, local commentary:

They say truth is stranger than fiction, because fiction has to make sense ...

I try not to excerpt Drudge too much, but I can't let this Kerry quote slide:

He also made campaign stops meant to play to southeast Ohio's strong gun-rights voters. In Pike County's city of Buchanan, Kerry's motorcade stopped at the Village Grocery Store, where he paid $140 for a hunting license he plans to use during a hunting trip and campaign stop in Youngstown this week.

"Can I get me a hunting license here?" Kerry asked store owners Paul and Debra McKnight.

"Can I get me?" Is poor grammar something that amounts to reaching out to to them-there dumb, gun-loving right-wing redneck Ohana hanas in Kerry's world?

This is part of a painful pattern of bad acting that begins with mindboggling foreign policy prevarication, picks up speed with terribly awkward stump soundbites ("Bring. It. On."), reaches new heights with a bizarre debate detour into "lesbian[ism]," digs up questionably exploitive quotes from a dead Christopher Reeve and leaves us today with patronizing redneck grammar from the original effete Boston Brahmin, a man so dedicated to etymologically correct pronunciation that he's one of 10 people in North America that uses the "soft-g" when he breaks out the word "Ghengis" during the course of false war crimes testimony before the Senate.

I mean, Kerry may be "a man who will do and say anything to get elected," but does he have to patronize America's intelligence every time he attempts a cynically calculating remark?

...

On second thought, I suppose that's a good thing.

*** Kids and Mrs. Bush, please look away ***

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I refreshed Rock the Vote's mock draft card many, many times over the weekend, and it always had Donald Rumsfeld's signature at the bottom. E-mailer Greg points me to the fact that Democrat Charlie Rangel's signature is now on their mock card:

I still think that the draft issue is an unrealistic anti-Bush scare tactic that implicitly plays to fear of aggressive foreign policy, but the inclusion of the signature of the man that sponsored the draft bill, instead of the man that has explained the futility of a draft, is a start. A start.

Later tonight, I'll be scouring their site for prominent, correct information about the draft bill's sponsorship and John Kerry's compulsory service proposal for young Americans.

UPDATE: I just refreshed the homepage about 20 times, and it's been switched to Rangel - no rotating signatures. Note to Rock the Vote: this is really not enough. You should take the damn fake draft card down or the focus will be turned back around on Democratic sponsorship of the bill. Replace it with a real youth issue, like education.

UPDATE: 28J agrees:

The draft "issue" is partisan. The bills that were introduced a year or more ago were introduced by Democrats. This rumor has been debunked by virtually everyone in the MSM.

Yet, Rock the Vote continues to use it on its audience, much like Democrat operatives are doing. How non-partisan is that? It's a disgrace that RtV is stooping to this issue to rally its base. Yes, get out the vote. Yes, concentrate on issues that affect young people. But do not continue political rumors to do so. You lose all credibility when you do.

The Paris Hilton voting endorsement probably indicates that they're not too concerned with "credibility."

Way back in June, I wrote the following about the Daily Show:

It's crap. Sure, it's funny, but watching Jon Stewart's sarcastic, insulting interview with Stephen Hayes regarding "The Connection," his book detailing Iraq's ties to Al Qaeda, it completely dawned on me that Jon Stewart's smirking, incredibly shallow read of the issues surrounding this war is every bit as harmful as Michael Moore's hullabalooed love letter to Leni Riefenstahl. Don't fool yourself, a huge portion of the yucks at the Daily Show are seriously committed to minimizing and misinterpreting the strategic threat posed by terror and painting defeat in Iraq as a foregone conclusion.

Stick with Reno 911.

It seems that others agreed with my assessment:

COMEDY CENTRAL's 'DAILY SHOW' has experienced surprise audience erosion -- despite a publicity push by host Jon Stewart.

Stewart, who announced last week that he plans to support John Kerry, pulled 1,040,000 total viewers for the month of September -- down 7% from August, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

Jumbo hype from media writers and a bestselling book apparently have failed to translate into any TV audience improvement.

And while Stewart's recent evisceration of the Crossfire hacks was great fun, it's also tainted by the fact that he was throwing stones from a glass mansion. Stewart likes to slide out of public responsibility for accuracy by citing the fact that the Daily Show is a comedic farce, but that defense is undermined by the fact that his show has a very large practical influence, his partisanship is overt and pointed, his analysis is frustratingly superficial, and if everything is such a silly joke ... he wouldn't become angry, serious or aggressively condescending during certain political interviews.

You can't have it both ways, Stewart. It's fine for you to take sides, but you're drubbing of Begala and Carlson marks you as a hypocrite. And besides - any sensible political junkie isn't stupid enough to view Crossfire as anything other than really bad comedy. Unfortunately ...

A poll released earlier this year by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that 21 percent of people aged 18 to 29 cited "The Daily Show" and "Saturday Night Live" as a place where they regularly learned presidential campaign news.

... it seems that a lot of young people are dumb enough to view your relatively good comedy as news.

UPDATE: Jeff Goldstein envisions some snappy comebacks from Tucker Carlson.

UPDATE: American Digest has some related thoughts:

Dear Jon Stewart, I Want You To Be Honest Too

Do we really want a President that wears faith on both sleeves and takes policy positions that are overly informed by religion? I'm starting to get terrified that we might live under a fundamentalist theocracy come January:

John F. Kerry is evolving from a reserved Catholic reluctant to discuss faith in the public square into a Democratic preacher of sorts who speaks freely and sometimes forcefully about religion on the hustings.

From the pulpit to the pastures, Kerry is increasingly spreading a more spiritual message and visiting local churches, as he did the past two days in Ohio, to expound on the political lessons of the Bible's James and Saint Paul.

Why, it's just like our own version of the Taliban! It's almost like Kerry thinks that he has a mandate from God!

And INDC has uncovered this shocking revelation:

Senator Kerry's royal descent even includes the Albanian royal house. These relationships are direct through the Senator's mother, Rosemary Forbes. Her father was descended from William Forbes, Laird of Newe. The Baronets of Newe are extant. It is via this family that the Democratic candidate is descended from Henry II, King of England and father of Richard the Lionheart who was leader of the third Crusade in 1189.

Can this Bible-thumping crusader be stopped?

A sign is displayed at a movie theater about the Afghan elections next to a Afghan restaurant in the Little Kabul area of Fremont, Calif. Saturday, Oct. 9, 2004. Residents of Little Kabul, the nation's largest concentration of Afghan emigres, are watching closely as their homeland prepares to hold its first direct presidential election. As millions of voters in Afghanistan (news - web sites) get ready to cast ballots Saturday, some residents of Fremont's Little Kabul see the landmark vote as a crucial step for a budding democracy. Via Yahoo. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma)

Polish-Aussie blogger Arthur Chrenkoff has an amazingly comprehensive round-up of the "Good news from Afghanistan, Part 5." A tiny snippet:

RECONSTRUCTION: USAID, which since the fall of the Taliban has been a significant contributor to rebuilding of Afghanistan, lists the following brief but useful summary of the milestones on the road to a better future:

"10 million Afghans registered to vote
Five million children vaccinated
School enrollment explodes
Reconstruction accelerates
3.7 million refugees return
Private construction booming
New Afghan currency introduced
Agriculture output nearly doubled
Afghan National Army and National Police created
Regional militias disarming"

Admittedly, the booming "agricultural output" includes a great deal of heroin, but still - how you like them apples, Christian Parenti?

Earlier in the year, I linked to and read a blog called "the View from Baghdad," written by a young, anonymous administrator with the Coalition Provisional Authority. After dropping out of site, he resurfaced yesterday and wrote me:

You may recall a blog about six months back "The View from Baghdad," written by an anonymous guy working with budding democrats in Bagdad, that disappeared suddenly in April. It posted a lot of photos and gave personal accounts of what was going on with every day Iraqis. Well, I am back and no longer anonymous. I was in Bagdad for nine months, from July of last year through April of this year, doing about a dozen polls and seventy focus groups, advising Ambassador Bremer on Iraqi public opinion. Check out my new website at http://www.thetruthaboutiraq.org

I came back from Iraq in May, and got disgusted with how the media was portraying events in Iraq, and thoroughly nauseated by Michael Moore ... and the lies he is propagating, so I started The Truth About Iraq.org. I've decided to use the polling information from Iraq to debunk some of the myths that have been created by the media.

Domestically, our organization also did a poll of swing state media markets- Columbus, Cleveland, Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Philly- and found out that a lot of the messages we have on our site about how life is improving for Iraqis move voters. 6% of voters change to Bush in Cleveland and Columbus, and 4% in the Philly suburbs change to Bush when given our message.

Since more than 7 million people watched Dan Rather last night, and Fahrenheit 9/11 has sold some 13 million tickets, I figure the only way to counter such massive disinformation is through paid television commercials.

We are airing the attached commercial starting on the 16th.

I'd appreciate it if you could help get the word out. Feel free to email me with any questions or comments.

Thanks.

/sm
Steven Moore
Founder
The Truth About Iraq.org

More about Steve:

For most of the last year, California political consultant Steven Moore advised Ambassador Paul Bremer and the Coalition Provisional Authority on Iraqi public opinion.

Mr. Moore helped develop Iraqi capacity for public opinion research. After conducting more than 70 focus groups in 13 Iraqi cities, and having a hand in writing and analyzing nearly a dozen public opinion polls, Mr. Moore is a leading expert on Iraqi public opinion.

You heard the man - please visit his site and learn "the Truth About Iraq." Be sure to read the sections titled "Media Bias," and "Myths and Facts About Iraq." If you think that John Kerry's cynical admonition about "the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time" is simply "wrong," please note that they're soliciting donations to get an ad on the air in swing states.

(INDC)

Moonbats on deck.

UPDATE: FYI, this post isn't just intended as commentary on the draft non-issue, it means that a full protest post is coming soon ...

... doesn't mean that all of my arguments in the previous thread are 100% correct ... but it sure feels like victory:

Fifty-seven percent say being homosexual is the way people are, not the way they choose to be — up from its level a decade ago. But likely voters by 2-1 also call it inappropriate for Kerry, when asked that question, to have noted that Vice President Dick Cheney's daughter is a lesbian.
...
Indeed only among one group, Kerry's own supporters, does a majority (52 percent) say it was appropriate for him to mention Mary Cheney. Among Democrats, 51 percent call it inappropriate; that rises to 64 percent of independents, 80 percent of Republicans and 82 percent of Bush supporters.

Yet, on the question of whether homosexuality is a trait or a choice, more people take Kerry's position. (In response to this question at the debate, Kerry said, "I think if you talk to anybody, it's not choice." Bush said, "I just don't know.") A third of likely voters call homosexuality a choice; 10 percent have no opinion; and, as noted, 57 percent say it's the way people are. (That compares with 49 percent in an ABC News/"Washington Post" poll of the general population in 1994.)

I wonder if Andrew Sullivan will label all of the Dems and independents that found Kerry's remark to be inappropriate as closeted homophobes.

(Via Instapundit)

James Joyner has the scoop on mindboggling dishonesty by CNN and the AP:

CNN Headline News managed to portray the Annenberg Survey that I discussed yesterday, which showed that troops overwhelming supported the Iraq War (64-32) and preferred Bush over Kerry by a ridiculous margin (69-24) as horrible news for the president.

Read the rest.

UPDATE: And typically, Newsweek spins, spins, spins.

"Like, vote!"

It seems that the MTV-sponsored "Rock the Vote" is still trying to scare the dumb portions of the America's youth into casting a vote against Bush that's based on phony draft fears.

Blogger Fred Schoeneman points out a fake draft card that appears on the organization's homepage, and features an e-mail exchange between Ed Gillespie of the Republican National Committee and Jehmu S. Green, President of Rock the Vote. Gillespie writes:

It has been brought to the attention of the Republican National Committe -- and was confirmed in the Los Angeles Times yesterday -- that your organization is sponsoring and promoting a false and misleading Internet campaign designed to scare America's youth into believing that they may be drafted to serve in the military.

And Green's response to Gillsepie's legitimate problem with the debunked campaign?

The letter I received from you yesterday was quite a surprise. It struck us as just the sort of "malicious political deception" that is likely to increase voter cynicism and decrease the youth vote. In fact, it is a textbook case of attempted censorship, very much in line with those that triggered our organization's founding some fifteen years ago.

Wh-wh-wh-whaaaat?! A JDAM strike on MTV broadcast studios would be "censorship," not an e-mail. That being said, I say fire up the F-15's.

Awptimus has another great post featuring Rock the Vote PSA's from Lindsay Lohan and ... Paris Hilton!

I think that we all know how important it is to have Paris Hilton browbeat young ladies into voting on the pressing women's issues of the day: abortion, gun control, and a nationwide ban on the distribution of amateur porno. As Awptimus concludes, so shall I:

Thanks MTV, for your continuted ruining of this country.

UPDATE: And once again, throw John Kerry on the pile of fearmongers:

Yesterday, though, I was rescued from my embarassment by Senator Kerry himself. Speaking to the Des Moines Register, Kerry said "With George Bush, the plan for Iraq is more of the same and the great potential of a draft. Because if we go it alone, I don't know how you do it with the current overextension" of the military.

UPDATE: Fred e-mails me and points out that the signature on MTV's fake draft card looks like Donald Rumsfeld's signature. Below is a comparison - the top signature is taken from a memo written by Rumsfeld that was released to kill rumors about a draft; the bottom signature is from the MTV draft card.

While Rock the Vote's claims to be non-partisan were always met with a quiet snicker, this pretty much invalidates the possibility. MTV's draft scare is overt political propagandizing for the Kerry Campaign.

UPDATE: Dinocrat has a very comprehensive post that includes details about Rock the Vote's leadership:

Rock the Vote, and its president Jehmu Greene are affiliated with Robert Muller, an anti-war, leftist entrepreneur. Muller and RTV head Jehmu Greene jointly run the Rock the Vote blog, for example. Muller has a number of organizations that he runs or has founded, including the Alliance for Security, the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation, the Nuclear Threat Reduction Campaign, the Campaign for Criminal Justice Reform, the Justice Project, etc. His VVAF is indirectly connected to the International Campaign to Ban Land Mines, and his is an advisor to the new anti-Iraq War organization Operation Truth.

Here’s an example of the non-partisan nature of the MTV/Muller effort. This ad, featuring soldier Robert Acosta, put out by Operation Truth talks about three government “lies” – WMD, Saddam/911 linkage, and a quick exit from Iraq – things which, like Acosta’s maimed arm are “not there.”

And I found Jehmu Green's bio:

Prior to joining Rock the Vote, she was the director of women's outreach and Southern political director at the Democratic National Committee (DNC). She is on the executive committees of Vote for America, Freedom’s Answer and the Youth Vote Coalition. She also served as program director for the Center for Policy Alternatives' Youth Voices Project and National Student Voter Education Day; volunteer coordinator for the University of Texas’s Neighborhood Longhorns Project; and executive director of the Texas Young Democrats. She has worked on numerous campaigns, including Clinton/Gore ’96, Harvey Gantt for U.S. Senate, Lloyd Doggett for Congress, Jim Mattox for U.S. Senate and Ann Richards for Governor.

These are the leaders of this "non-partisan" voter drive.

Guess who sponsors Rock the Vote? MTV. Guess who owns MTV? Our old friends at Viacom. If you'd like to contact some of the relevant parties to complain about the overt partisanship of a "non-partisan" organization and their fearmongering about the draft, please note the contact information that I'll be aggregating below the fold:

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Post deleted.

Why? Because I can, I'm out of my depth on these tax issues, and I don't want to put out inaccurate information until I get a better read on the situation.

I'll leave the relevant links about the Tides Foundation up for perusal.

Conservative accusations about the Heinz Foundation's charitable giving.

TruthOrFiction's assessment of the Heinz Foundation's charitable giving.

Factcheck.org's assessment of the Heinz Foundation's charitable giving.

I'm coming up on Pundit Review Radio in a minute, by the way.

UPDATE: Drudge now cites a Wall Street Journal article (no direct link), and that's good enough for me:

"But even this minimal disclosure deserves more attention in light of John Kerry's pledge to raise tax rates. In 2003, Mrs. Kerry -- or Teresa Heinz, as she declared herself on her IRS 1040 form -- earned $5.07 million, hardly a surprising income for someone estimated to be worth nearly $1 billion.

"The news is that $2.78 million of that income came in the form of tax- exempt interest from what the Kerry campaign's press release attributed to investments in 'state, municipal and public entity bonds.' What the campaign didn't say is that these are the kind of investments that rich people can afford to hire lawyers and accountants to steer their money into."

On her "remaining 'taxable' income of $2.29 million, Mrs. Kerry paid $627,150 in taxes, for an overall average federal tax rate of only 12.4% on her $5.07 million in total income." This "puts Mrs. Kerry's tax rate at well below that of other filers in her super-rich neighborhood. But it also means she is paying a lower average rate than nearly all middle- class taxpayers paid in 2001, the last year for which the IRS has published the data.

The top 50% of all federal filers contributed 96.1% of all federal income taxes in 2001, and they paid an average income-tax rate of 15.9%. That's 3.5-percentage points more than Mrs. Kerry paid in 2003." At the "very least, Mrs. Kerry's tax returns are a screaming illustration of the need for reform to make the tax code simpler and fairer. But they also show that Senator Kerry's proposed tax increases are much more about a revenue grab than they are about tax justice."

I'm still interested to learn if serious contortions are necessary to invest in "'state, municipal and public entity bonds," but her effective rate was 12.8%, and Drudge did not bury his original story. My mistake.

I think that this FrontPageMag article focuses a bit too much on the political ideology of Halperin's father, but it seems that ABC's Political Director has flirted with crossing the line from journalist to political operative before, and that there were some notable conflicts of interest during his coverage of the Clinton Administration:

During the 1992 campaign, Halperin violated journalistic ethics by providing to Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos a copy ABC had obtained of Mr. Clinton’s youthful “I loathe the military” letter written to his ROTC commander, according to Tom Rosenstiel’s book about ABC Strange Bedfellows. Halperin thereby gave candidate Clinton days of advance warning to prepare his response before facing reporters’ questions about this letter Clinton had no reason to believe still existed.

Having helped Clinton win, Mark Halperin then covered the President-elect’s transition to power and “was assigned to White House coverage for the first two years of the Clinton administration.”

Apparently it bothered neither ABC nor Halperin that this network’s White House reporter was the son of high-level Clinton appointee and controversial presidential advisor Morton Halperin. In 1997, the same year Mark Halperin was promoted to Political Director of ABC News, his brother David began a four-year stint as speechwriter to President Clinton.

If ABC News discovered that the public watchdog over a corporation was the son of one high official in that corporation and the brother of another, ABC rightly would report this as a scandalous conflict of interest and a betrayal of public trust. ABC never notified its audience that its reporter Mark Halperin was covering a Clinton White House that employed two members of his immediate family.

Do you suppose that Halperin's remark that Clinton "doesn't have a clue" about the media came up in conversation at Thanksgiving dinner? Or that his view that "Clinton was held to 'way too high a standard - coverage was way too tough'" was perhaps influenced by his family's high-level employment in the Clinton Administration?

You know, just askin'.

I'll be a guest on New England's Pundit Review Radio at 12:30 PM tomorrow (Saturday, Oct. 16 -Ed). Readers in the Boston area can listen in on AM 1060, while worldwide web surfers can hear a live stream of the show at www.wbix.com. The link to listen to the streaming audio is located on the top far left of their home page, under "audio clips."

If you'd like to call in and ask a question, the number is 877-711-1060.

And if you miss it, a replay of the interview will be archived on punditreview.com.

Pundit Review's teaser is here:

We will cover such topics as the debates, election, Swift Boat Vets, Teresa, taxes and the Mary Cheney controversy.

Teresa. Heh.

(Original photo - zombietime)

I will see Team America this weekend. And it will be good.

Originally, the pleasant woman pictured above was holding a modern day Communist Manifesto titled "Revolution," by Bob Avakian, but INDC contributor Jacques Vanderdreschd spiced it up with a little photoshop fun. For context about moonbat demands for a Bush Puppet in Team America, make sure that you read my previous post about wacky leftist whinging from DU posters and the Daily Kos.

Below the fold is an extra special comic:

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** The Daily Recycler weighs-in on Kerry's Mary Cheney remark and Andrew Sullivan's reaction:

Sullivan implicitly endorses an effort to bait and agitate what he considers to be a homophobic Republican base by drawing attention to Mary Cheney's sexuality.

Deluded apologists that still insist on defending the motivations behind Kedwards' debate remarks should be sure and watch the clip from the Daily Show that's featured in his post. I'm talking to you, Sullivan.

** Dean Esmay explains why this cynical strategy to tweak evangelical Christians will backfire:

I'm not sure how to explain this, but I can only say that anyone who snickers over Mary Cheney and thinks that she's a liability among Bush's conservative Christian base is simply failing to understand how conservative Christians think.
...
Failure to understand how your opponent's mind works is a weakness. It really is.

** The leftist British paper "The Guardian" is trying to influence the American Election by sponsoring a patronizing letter-writing campaign to voters in Clark County, Ohio. In response, Tim Blair is organizing a letter campaign ... to try and influence the Guardian. Heh. Check it out and fire off an e-mail!

** IMAO serves up educational primer on Ohio, perhaps this election's most important swing state:

People aren't sure what to call people from Ohio. Some use Ohioans. Others say Ohohos. Still others use, Ohana hanas. Whatever. As long as the first sounds are Oh.

I think that it's 'Ohohos.' Perhaps you should tell the Guardian that when you write them an e-mail.

** Spoons piles on Andrew Sullivan. Instapundit even gets testy, in his patently non-testy manner. Glenn Reynolds' understated beat-downs are akin to that moment when mom and dad "aren't angry," just ... "very disappointed in you." Ouch.

** James Joyner reviews Bush's "not worried about Osama" sentiment:

I agree that some focus too much on state actors to the exclusion of non-state actors but don't think Bush is one of those. Rather, he thinks reining in states is the only way to go after the terrorists.

Agreed.

** Michelle Malkin explains the relevance of Bob Schieffer's question about the unavailability of flu shots:

The shortage of the flu vaccine may lead to more deaths than the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001. What makes me angry is that this didn't have to happen. The technology exists to manufacture an abundant supply of vaccines at a reasonable cost. But it sometimes doesn't work that way because penny-pinching public officials have set up a government-run vaccine purchasing system that pays ridiculously low prices. As a result, scores of companies have stopped making vaccines.

Now let poor Bob up for some air, will you?

** Wizbang sums up Ted Koppel's attempt to commit Rathercide. I said, "attempt:"

When Koppel asked O'Neil to respond to the villagers who he, in an overstatement, said backed Kerry's claims, O'Neil -ever the trial lawyer- did what I did not think possible. He laid Koppel on the canvas.

O'Neil held up his book and read the part where he claimed there was only one VC soldier. THEN he held up the Boston Globe biography of John Kerry and he read the part where IT said there was only one VC solder... Then in a coup de grâce, John O'Neil held up John Kerry's own AUTObiography and read the part where Kerry himself says he was glad there was only one VC soldier because he was not sure what would have happened if there had been "2, 5 or 10 of them."
...
In reply, O'Neil took both Koppel and ABC to task for not asking any of the Swift Boat Vets on to tell their story and for not even telling John Kerry's own version of the story but for only going to communist country and asking our former enemies.

Nice try, Ted. It's not a last-minute, pre-election story unless it's positive for Kerry, right?

The Dems may complain about Sinclair Broadcasting, but they've certainly got PBS and the big three in the tank for Kerry.

More posts later.

UPDATE: Captain Ed has a more thorough treatment of the issues surrounding the Nightline episode.

I was going to write a post about the DNC's pre-emptive plan to sully the election results, but ...

... I'm tired, and Stephen Green already wrote something that probably smacks around any of the thoughts that are trapped in my addled noggin.

Read it.

UPDATE: Spoons points me to the DNC's response and expresses a belief that Drudge took them out context and blew up the story. A quick perusal of the Dems' post does indeed mute Drudge's typically histrionic treatment and make some reasonable points, but the questionable section is still in black & white:

2. If no signs of intimidation techniques have emerged yet, launch a "pre-emptive strike" (particularly well-suited to states in which there techniques have been tried in the past).

• Issue a press release

i. Reviewing Republican tactic used in the past in your area or state

ii. Quoting party/minority/civil rights leadership as denouncing tactics that discourage people from voting

• Prime minority leadership to discuss the issue in the media; provide talking points

• Place stories in which minority leadership expresses concern about the threat of intimidation tactics

• Warn local newspapers not to accept advertising that is not properly disclaimed or that contains false warnings about voting requirements and/or about what will happen at the polls

At the very least, placing "stories in which minority leadership expresses concern about the threat of intimidation tactics" in an area where "no signs of intimidation techniques have emerged yet," is pretty deplorable. Perhaps signs of intimidation tactics don't emerge in certain areas because ... they don't exist in those areas?

This election looks like it's going to be very, very close. This country does not need another four years of manufactured outrage over a "stolen election."

Occasionally, spin and honesty intersect in political discourse:

Lynne V. Cheney, wife of Vice President Cheney, accused John F. Kerry on Wednesday night of "a cheap and tawdry political trick" and said he "is not a good man" after he brought up their daughter's homosexuality at the final presidential debate.
...
Lynne Cheney issued her post-debate rebuke to a cheering crowd outside Pittsburgh. "The only thing I can conclude is he is not a good man. I'm speaking as a mom," she said. "What a cheap and tawdry political trick."

Of course, outlets that typically would have torn a Republican limb-from-limb for a similar remark have selectively risen to defend Kerry:

Steven Fisher, communications director of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest gay and lesbian political organization, said Kerry "was speaking to millions of American families who, like the Cheneys, have gay friends and family members."

Chris Crain of the Washington Blade:

Whether or not Lynne Cheney is embarrassed by public discussion of her daughter's sexual orientation — and obviously she is — the president's horrid gay rights record makes it valid political fodder. Kerry's reference to Mary Cheney was no doubt intended to put the president on the defensive, but since when is that a "cheap and tawdry political trick"?

And Andrew Sullivan once again fails to grasp reality (or the point) by employing selective argumentation from his new position inside the anti-Bush marination tank:

I keep getting emails asserting that Kerry's mentioning of Mary Cheney is somehow offensive or gratuitous or a "low blow". Huh? Mary Cheney is out of the closet and a member, with her partner, of the vice-president's family. That's a public fact. No one's privacy is being invaded by mentioning this. When Kerry cites Bush's wife or daughters, no one says it's a "low blow." The double standards are entirely a function of people's lingering prejudice against gay people.

Look, I'm for gay marriage, and I believe that history will rebuke Bush for having made an error in judgment by supporting the FMA. Because I believe that many individuals are gay because of genetic determination, I also believe that homosexuals are faced with a situation where they are denied social status freely available to others - status fundamentally tied to who they can love and embrace officially into their family unit - because of who they are, not any sort of behavioral deviance that has the intent or effect of harming society.

But what Andrew, Mr. Crain and the HRC may not accept from the supportive confines of Washington, DC and Provincetown is that there are huge swaths of people in this country that disagree with all of us, and that many of these people aren't deranged bigots, rather individuals that have drawn a different conclusion about the nature of homosexuality based on their experience and exposure to different lifestyles, and their judgment on its biological vs. behavioral roots. Whether gay-rights advocates like it or not, this is an issue that still engenders very legitimate debate.

Dissonantly assuming that society should accept your conclusion that homosexuality is a fundamental state of being that deserves equal consideration under the law does not make it a social or political reality, and is certainly not the way to change minds. And failing to criticize Kerry for a blatant attempt to score cheap political points at the expense of the Cheney family severely undermines the credibility of organizations and individuals that are working towards this end. Mute their criticism of Kerry? I could buy that. Defend him while taking another swipe at Bush or the Cheney's? Hell no.

The thing that really made Kerry's statement so distasteful and petty was the fact that he clumsily brought it up in a debate vs. George Bush, not Dick Cheney. He sounded like a mean child awkwardly trying to score a zinger on a classmate, not a thoughtful debater of social issues. Edwards could get away with it in the VP debate, because it was on-topic and mixed with a nice sentiment - I actually thought that Edwards' swipe painted Dick Cheney as a loving dad, and both men came off relatively well in the exchange. It also added a bit of substance and context to the debate. But the form and intent of Kerry mentioning Mary Cheney ... that was just blatantly "dirty pool," as Mort Kondracke said in FOX's post-debate analysis.

It's a shame that certain quarters of the gay rights community aren't intellectually honest enough to admit it.

UPDATE: Elizabeth Edwards has the temerity to suggest that Lynne Cheney is embarassed by her daughter's sexuality, just because Cheney has a problem with her family being used as a political football. Edwards' statement is offensive and way, way out of line. The Dems should just be quiet and take their lumps on this one, or at least phrase their defense in more artful, conciliatory language.

UPDATE: Jeff Harrell agrees with me on the need for debate, disagrees with me on gay marriage, and then comes back around on the money graph:

I agree with Bill on his other point, too: that Senator Kerry's mention of Mary Cheney in last night's debate was a shameless attempt to attract the negative attention of the most conservative Bush supporters. He didn't bring up Mary Cheney to make a substantive point about the question asked, or about anything else for that matter. He brought her up to try to damage the Bush campaign, and that's just low.

The Swift Vets and POWs for Truth released two new ads yesterday, and they both make a pretty powerful statement. The ads seem specifically designed to counter the dismissive conventional wisdom espoused by a scornful media, and the second one is particularly effective because of the direct, angry questioning from men that served time in Vietnamese prison camps. Bud Day's angry stare and Medal of Honor don't hurt.

I fail to see how anyone can dismiss these men as Republican shills after viewing that ad, unless they're Republican shills and professional actors that are willing to dishonor their service with convincing performances. These guys were tortured in Vietnamese prisons, and Saturday Night Live does a skit making the outrageous claim that they really care about taxes and gay marriage? Eleanor Clift attacks them as Bush's political "sleeper cells," a term usually reserved for terrorists? The Daily Show cracks smarmy Gen-Y jokes about their honesty? Andrew Sullivan dismisses them and comes to the the conclusion that their claims were "largely unproven hearsay and malice," equating them to the "sleaze" that's rampant among 527's?

All I can say is shame - shame is what those people should feel. It's not anyone's place to casually condemn men that are angry about suffering both defamation as war criminals and torture in defense of our country, by slandering them as lying partisans or paid operatives. There are also very legitimate ways to criticize them and flawed aspects of their campaign, while still showing an adequate level of respect.

Let's see Eleanor Clift, Jon Stewart and Andrew Sullivan take a few years of torture in a North Vietnamese prison camp - then we'll ask them about their priorities.

As always, watch the ads and decide for yourself.

And Sullivan's finally been taken off of my blogroll, by the way.

UPDATE: The link to the ads is working intermittently - keep trying throughout the day if you can't get it the first time.

Schieffer did alright. (Ok, ok, I get the fact that you disagree! -Ed)

I know that this is a boring, repetitive assessment, but ... very close to an effective tie. But with the strength of his closing, Bush actually won. The momentum is to Bush.

Once again, with only a couple of exceptions, Kerry had a decent presentation throughout, while Bush started clippy, picked up speed and finished very strong, bolstered by relaxation and a few great moments.

Some notables:

** Kerry's worst moments: Incomprehensible answer on healthcare, voicing public disagreement with poobah Greenspan, bumbling answer on abortion and using Mary Cheney as a prop, which was shameful and obvious manipulation.

** Bush's worst moments: Again, his animation on the first foreign policy question seemed forced and nervous (compared to his relaxed delivery on most of the domestic material). Nothing else jumped out at me.

** Kerry's best moment: Tie: "Bush on fiscal discipline - like Tony Soprano to Law & Order..." and self-effacing "Some would say I've married up ..."

** Bush's best moment: Three-way tie:

1. I don't agree with Bush on abortion, but he nailed Kerry on this issue.

2. Nailed Kerry on Gulf War I.

3. Endearing statements during the softball question about his family.

Hell, I totally disagree with him on gay marriage, but I thought that he gave a good answer. I'm non-religious, and yet I felt him on the religion question.

Other notable lines:

** Bush: "The best way to take the pressure off our troops is to succeed in Iraq."

Amen.

** Kerry: "We're all God's children."

Heh.

** Number of times Kerry said the word "kill:" Only once.

Surprisingly, no mention of kicking "Osama in the nuts" or personally challenging "Abu Musab Zarqawi to a bareshirted cage match."

** Number of times George Bush mentioned Ted Kennedy: Four.

Teddy was three sheets to the wind by the third mention.

** Favorite moment of the night - runner-up: Bob Schieffer losing it at Kerry's joke about marrying into money.

** And my all-time favorite moment of not only the night, but of all of the debates:

In response to Kerry citing a "major news network" as a source, George Bush saying:

“With all due respect, I’m not sure it’s credible to quote leading news organizations about ... oh nevermind.”

Great job, Dan Rather!

UPDATE: Other blog reactions:

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Translation: "Iraqi SWAT Team"

Finally, some good news about the performance of some of the Iraqi security forces that are being trained to replace US troops and stabilize the country. Jeff Quinton obtained the exclusive recruiting image and combined it with detail from National Review:

From their operating base in Kalsu (so-named for Bob Kalsu, a Buffalo Bills lineman and Army lieutenant who was killed during the Vietnam War), Douglas tells National Review Online, "The Iraqis are performing well-above my expectations. Their strengths are their aggressiveness and mobility, and we are enhancing those strengths."

Douglas, commander of a Marine Force reconnaissance platoon and a reconnaissance and surveillance platoon, is referring to a crack Iraqi SWAT (special-weapons and tactics) team, sometimes referred to as the Al Hillah SWAT team.

"Lie, lie ... Hallichimperor!" Springsteen then dedicates "Born to Run" to Zarqawi.

While I hope that you enjoy this footage of Bruce Springsteen trying to rock the vote in DC by claiming that Bush misled America into war, I'd advise you not to take your foreign policy cues from "the Boss."

Team America creator Matt Stone was correct:

In talking about the film, which ridicules Hollywood liberals (but not Penn), Stone said he thought Diddy's voter drive was a "danger to democracy" because, "If you don't know what you're talking about, there's no shame in not voting."

Here's a very brief educational primer (mp3 file) for the MTV crowd, starting with a sober report filed by ABC News in 1999, long before George Bush set foot anywhere near the White House:

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Thomas Lipscomb reports (subscription):

An official Navy document on Senator Kerry's campaign Web site listed as Mr. Kerry's "Honorable Discharge from the Reserves" opens a door on a well kept secret about his military service.

The document is a form cover letter in the name of the Carter administration's secretary of the Navy, W. Graham Claytor. It describes Mr. Kerry's discharge as being subsequent to the review of "a board of officers." This in it self is unusual. There is nothing about an ordinary honorable discharge action in the Navy that requires a review by a board of officers.

According to the secretary of the Navy's document, the "authority of reference" this board was using in considering Mr. Kerry's record was "Title 10, U.S. Code Section 1162 and 1163. "This section refers to the grounds for involuntary separation from the service. What was being reviewed, then, was Mr. Kerry's involuntary separation from the service. And it couldn't have been an honorable discharge, or there would have been no point in any review at all. The review was likely held to improve Mr. Kerry's status of discharge from a less than honorable discharge to an honorable discharge.

This would explain why Kerry refuses to sign the authorization releasing all of his military records. Captain Ed has the relevant analysis:

One thing is certain: until John Kerry signs the 180, we will never know for sure what's in his service record. All we know is that he has something significant to hide. We also know that Kerry has to be the dumbest son-of-a-gun to run for President in decades if his own record is so bad he can't reveal it, and spent months attacking his opponent's service anyway, making what would have been considered an irrelevancy a fair point for debate.

I'll second that notion.

UPDATE: A lawyer with some pretty impressive credentials weighs-in via e-mail:

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Dean has another exclusive interview, this time with anti-Kerry Swift Boat Vet George Elliott. The fact that Elliot previously helped John Kerry in his 1996 Senate Campaign has been a major criticism of the "Swift Vets and POW's for Truth," so I found this snippet particularly interesting:

DW: Are you a Republican?

GE: No I'm not. I'm registered as an independent voter and have never voted a straight ticket in my life that I recall. I have not always voted for one party or the other on the national ticket--presidents, senators, congressmen, so forth.

DW: Is it true that you campaigned on behalf of Senator Kerry in the 1990s, and if so, why are you involved in this effort against him now?

GE: Campaign is the wrong word. In 1996 a Boston Globe reporter named, Warsh I believe it was, in 1996, he wrote an article that very strongly implied that John Kerry, in the Silver Star incident, had simply executed a wounded Viet Cong soldier. In Warsh's words, he had issued a "coup de grace," which we found deeply offensive. So, with several members of John Kerry's crew, Admiral Zumwalt and Captain Adrian Lonsdale and I went to speak out against accusations of war crimes by the Navy.

We went to Boston to support Kerry in this accusation of a war crime. It was as much to defend the Navy and my outfit as it was to stand with John Kerry. This was a specious inference and we couldn't let it stand. It had very little to do with politics in my view.

In my opening remarks at the press conference on the piers down at the old Boston Navy Yard in Massachussetts, my remarks were, "I am not here to support Senator Kerry, I am here to support Lt(jg) Kerry." And I made that distinction for two reasons. First I didn't want anyone to think I was a carpetbagger there to inject myself into a campaign in Massachussetts, and second I wanted to make it clear that I was there to defend the Navy against accusations of war crimes.

I still find it pretty strange that he would have bothered to support Kerry at all, but he continues:

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This guy's giggle is infectious. His criminal tendencies, not so much.

"Bingo!" (INDC)

Go check out the Commissar's great series of posts that feature some of the pleasantries of partisan political expression during this election season.

One: "The Shrill Meter"

I measured the number of Google hits for "John Kerry" and "George Bush," and then searched for their names in combination with some shrill, uncivil, hot words.

Two: "The Brownshirt Meter"

All across the country, Revolutionary partizans are violently attacking Criminal Reactionary Repugnicans! To the barricades, comrades!!!

Three: The NYT Public Editor: How Would Jackson Pollock Cover This Campaign?

At any rate, all members of the VRWC should take great comfort from Okrent's last two paragraphs:

"But before I turn over the podium, I do want you to know just how debased the level of discourse has become. When a reporter receives an e-mail message that says, 'I hope your kid gets his head blown off in a Republican war,' a limit has been passed."

Four: Sorry That He Got Caught

Jarvis presented this whole issue in a context of reprehensible mud-slinging all around, how regrettable it all is, and how Okrent could have handled it better. Jarvis is way off the mark.

People forget that assault is assault, whether expressed in email or in the public square. Forget the anonymity of emails, which clouds the issue. Suppose all this had happened in the public square. How laughable would be Schwenk's defense. What right should of privacy should be accorded to someone who threatens another's children? None. Zero. Zip. Schwenk is the guilty party. 100%. Nagourney and Okrent are wholly blameless, and better not recant or back down one step.

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Jeff Harrell goes bobbing for apples in a trash can marked "biohazard."

Perhaps Danny Schechter was right! Last night I participated in Right Wing News' online symposium about the past, present and future of blogging. Special guest stars included Michele Catalano, Frank J., Ace, and of course, John Hawkins as the moderator.

There are a few good quotes over there, even though Ace only cursed once, I took it easy on SWWNBNOL, and Frank apparently inhaled his ritalin prior to the chat.

Hans Blix takes a dip in Kim Jung Il's shark tank. © 2004 Paramount Pictures. All rights reserved.

My anticipation level for Trey Parker and Matt Stone's new puppet movie was already pretty high, but after reading the injured commentary in the DU moonbat forum, it's now at a fever pitch. Here are some excerpted reviews from our favorite irony-impaired members of the proletariat:

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* Instapundit has a great round-up of reactions to Kerry's recent comments comparing terrorism to prostitution. My verdict: the comments were politically stupid because he should know that they'd be truncated and taken out of context, but a lot of people are, in fact, taking them out of context. He was clumsily grasping for a way to describe the ominpresence of terrorism in much the same way that Bush told Matt Lauer, "'I don't think you can win" this war. Of course, the Dems spun that perceptive statement to Hell and back, so fair is fair.

That being said, there's no doubt in my mind, that based on his description of a "global test," his drastic anti-war and anti-defense history and his previous description of the WOT as primarily a law-enforcement operation, that John Kerry plans on pursuing a foreign policy that devolves US strategic thinking back to an approximation of the Clinton Administration's weakness. Such a defensive posture will be more likely to steer us towards disaster.

Did I just question John Kerry's patriotism?

The Instapundit round-up features a James Lileks' take that I endorse:

Mosquito bites are a nuisance. Cable outages are a nuisance. Someone shooting up a school in Montana or California or Maine on behalf of the brave martyrs of Fallujah isn't a nuisance. It's war.

But that's not the key phrase. This matters: We have to get back to the place we were.

But when we were there we were blind. When we were there we (were) losing. When we were there we died.

* Stacy Tabb has started a site that's like Consumer Reports for a labrador puppy. If you've got a dog, you might want to check out "Lab-Tested."

* Wretchard at the Belmont Club busts a rhetorical 2'x4' over Andrew Suillivan's head in a tug-of-war with Paul Bremer's recent remarks about troop levels in Iraq. If you're looking for very deep, very clear analysis of strategy in the WOT, grab a chair and scroll around that site for awhile. Trust me.

* Dean points to a video that analyzes George Bush's speaking style, and adds a few thoughts of his own.

* Jeff Goldstein's back in town! I expect madness to resume shortly.

And finally ...

* Teray-za in action!

Imagine her as the First Lady of the United States. Disturbing, right?

On the way home from work tonight, I had the misfortune of making my way through the crowd attending the Vote for Change concert that took place at the MCI Center; a steady stream of concert-goers sporting a striking amount of leather, John Kerry buttons and designer hipster eyewear. Considering the fact that DC votes about 85% Democratic, I'm not sure if this tour stop had much of a purpose beyond fundraising and the symbolism of visiting the nation's capital.

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Teresa continues to keep it interesting with scandalous, offensive accusations about blood for oil:

"John will never send a boy or girl in a uniform anywhere in the world because of our need and greed for oil," Teresa Heinz Kerry told about 1,200 supporters at the McAllen Civic Center.

I can't believe that they still allow her to speak in public.

Via Drudge, who also reveals that John and Teresa pay an effective income tax rate of ...

12.8%

My effective income tax rate is about double that figure, and I assure you - I'm not rich. In contrast, their effective rate is less than the gross marginal rate for a couple that makes under $45,200 per year.

Sound fair?

From a practical standpoint, I can't figure out why any multimillionaire politician would bother to exploit write-offs and loopholes for this exact reason. Is that extra $725,000 on his $6.8 million income worth the embarrassment to Kerry in a presidential campaign?

Bush pays 30%, by the way.

UPDATE: The Key Monk has more analysis.

UPDATE: Commenter David points out:

With a top dividend rate of 15%, if most of Ms. Kerry's income is from dividends, and some from interest on tax-free municipal bonds, it doesn't really take much accountant finagling to achieve an overall federal tax rate of 12.8%.

Seems fair to me.

Good point. But when you're that rich, why not just ditch the stocks and throw the money into good old American T-Bills? It's interesting that the majority of George Bush's income comes from interest on T-Bills, and he still pays a 30% effective rate. If Kerry believes that tax cuts need to be rolled back on the top 1% of earners, why not volunteer to pay the top marginal and effective rate? If nothing else, it's smart politics.

As far as "fair" ... if one is a believer in effective wealth distribution, it's certainly not fair for a low to mid-income couple with a joint income of $35,000 to pay a higher tax rate than the Kerry-Heinz-Kerry's.

Simplify the tax code - flat tax now!

What follows are the unedited "Key Findings" from the report issued by Charles Duelfer, Special Advisor to the Director of Central Intelligence on Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction:

Regime Strategic Intent

Key Findings

Saddam Husayn so dominated the Iraqi Regime that its strategic intent was his alone. He wanted to end sanctions while preserving the capability to reconstitute his weapons of mass destruction (WMD) when sanctions were lifted.

• Saddam totally dominated the Regime’s strategic decision making. He initiated most of the strategic thinking upon which decisions were made, whether in matters of war and peace (such as invading Kuwait), maintaining WMD as a national strategic goal, or on how Iraq was to position itself in the international community. Loyal dissent was discouraged and constructive variations to the implementation of his wishes on strategic issues were rare. Saddam was the Regime in a strategic sense and his intent became Iraq’s strategic policy.

• Saddam’s primary goal from 1991 to 2003 was to have UN sanctions lifted, while maintaining the security of the Regime. He sought to balance the need to cooperate with UN inspections—to gain support for lifting sanctions—with his intention to preserve Iraq’s intellectual capital for WMD with a minimum of foreign intrusiveness and loss of face. Indeed, this remained the goal to the end of the Regime, as the starting of any WMD program, conspicuous or otherwise, risked undoing the progress achieved in eroding sanctions and jeopardizing a political end to the embargo and international monitoring.

• The introduction of the Oil-For-Food program (OFF) in late 1996 was a key turning point for the Regime. OFF rescued Baghdad’s economy from a terminal decline created by sanctions. The Regime quickly came to see that OFF could be corrupted to acquire foreign exchange both to further undermine sanctions and to provide the means to enhance dual-use infrastructure and potential WMD-related development.

• By 2000-2001, Saddam had managed to mitigate many of the effects of sanctions and undermine their international support. Iraq was within striking distance of a de facto end to the sanctions regime, both in terms of oil exports and the trade embargo, by the end of 1999.

Saddam wanted to recreate Iraq’s WMD capability—which was essentially destroyed in 1991—after sanctions were removed and Iraq’s economy stabilized, but probably with a different mix of capabilities to that which previously existed. Saddam aspired to develop a nuclear capability—in an incremental fashion, irrespective of international pressure and the resulting economic risks—but he intended to focus on ballistic missile and tactical chemical warfare (CW) capabilities.

• Iran was the pre-eminent motivator of this policy. All senior level Iraqi offi cials considered Iran to be Iraq’s principal enemy in the region. The wish to balance Israel and acquire status and influence in the Arab world were also considerations, but secondary.

• Iraq Survey Group (ISG) judges that events in the 1980s and early 1990s shaped Saddam’s belief in the value of WMD. In Saddam’s view, WMD helped to save the Regime multiple times. He believed that during the Iran-Iraq war chemical weapons had halted Iranian ground offensives and that ballistic missile attacks on Tehran had broken its political will. Similarly, during Desert Storm, Saddam believed WMD had deterred Coalition Forces from pressing their attack beyond the goal of freeing Kuwait. WMD had even played a role in crushing the Shi’a revolt in the south following the 1991 cease-fire.

• The former Regime had no formal written strategy or plan for the revival of WMD after sanctions. Neither was there an identifiable group of WMD policy makers or planners separate from Saddam. Instead, his lieutenants understood WMD revival was his goal from their long association with Saddam and his infrequent, but firm, verbal comments and directions to them.

(Via LGF)

Col. Bud Day's medal is really big, blue and shiny for a reason. - BERT V. GOULAIT (THE WASHINGTON TIMES)

The Washington Times' fawning treatment aside - I'd be worried:

These Swiftees, at times jocular (breaking into "Row, row, row your boat") and at other times on the verge of tears, are angry and frustrated. Not only because they say Mr. Kerry has lied about his service and refuses to sign the form that releases his military records to the public, but because 30 years ago, the candidate threw away his medals and called his fellow servicemen murderers, rapists, baby killers and cowards.

John Kerry's assertions in front of the Senate were a manipulative repetition of largely discredited testimony of atrocities that was provided at the Winter Soldier's Conference in 1971. While the Swift Vets deceptively imply that John Kerry made these accusations from personal recollections of atrocities, they certainly have a right to be angry at his use of false testimony to game the political environment, especially when POW's held in North Vietnam at the time were being tortured to provide similar false testimony for the purpose of propaganda.

I'd almost welcome the MSM's attempts to dismiss a man like Bud Day after this last push by the SBVT. Whatever the overall judgment of their wide-ranging and partially challenged accusations, It's bizarre, inaccurate dissonance to paint a group of highly-decorated veterans that have wept on camera as calculating Republican shills, just because their initial press conferences were ignored by the media and they were subsequently forced to obtain funding from overtly partisan interests.

They have a right to air their grievances.

UPDATE: Redstate has more:

What the Times gets wrong, however, is the tone of the Swifties. To be sure, the Swift Vets are angry - and they have a right to be, not only because of John Kerry's action during and since the Vietnam war, but also because of the media's complete and utter smear job against them personally.

What the Times missed, however, is the genuine reluctance of these men. They would all rather be doing something else, spending time with their families or enjoying their retirement.

UPDATE: Malkin adds a similar sentiment.

UPDATE: Redstate also has the text of Col. Day's Medal of Honor citation.

UPDATE: Below the fold is a letter from Col. Day to Joe Scarborough regarding John Kerry:

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A recent controversial memo issued by ABC News Political Director Mark Halperin urged journalists not to "reflexively and artificially hold both sides 'equally' accountable" during the network's coverage of the presidential election. To be fair, I understand Halperin's intent - if one candidate lies about their rationale for war, and another candidate lies about what they had for breakfast, it's not in the public interest for the media to give equal time to each deception. But what Halperin may not fully grasp from the cocoon of an ideological/MSM bubble is the idea that his judgment against Bush may be a matter of subjective partisan bias that's enhanced by anger at the Bush Administration's arm's-length media policy. And contrary to Halperin's subjective assessment, the subjective assessment of other smart, informed individuals, with supporting objective evidence, is that John Kerry is now misleading the American public in extremely important ways.

I believe that it's a very shallow read of the issues to assert that Bush consciously misled anyone regarding the war, but even giving the anti-Bush argument about deception the benefit of the doubt by assuming it's accuracy, John Kerry's platform and public assertions are at least as worthy of attention and close scrutiny as the media tries to provide the American public adequate information to inform their vote. The directive in Halperin's memo steps far beyond the information-gathering mandate of the ostensibly "neutral" media and actually attempts to fundamentally sway the course and presentation of the news, rather than allow the course of the news to influence the reporting.

In an attempt to gain perspective on the motivation for Halperin's ire at the Bush Administration, Carnivorous Conservative dug up some of his earlier statements to the Harvard Institute of Politics in 2003:

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Come lefty readers, free the enemy combatants from Guantanamo!

"What is the alternative to this bleak and barren policy of the inevitability of war? In my view it is that we should seek by all means in our power to avoid war, by analysing possible causes, by trying to remove them, by discussion in a spirit of collaboration and good will. I cannot believe that such a programme would be rejected by the people of this country, even if it does mean the establishment of personal contact with dictators, and of talks man to man on the basis that each, while maintaining his own ideas of the internal government of his country, is willing to allow that other systems may suit better other peoples."

-- Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, House of Commons, October 3, 1938. The British Parliamentary Debate on the Munich Agreement of Appeasement with Hitler.

"The goal of the sanctions was not to remove Saddam Hussein, it was to remove the weapons of mass destruction. And, Mr. President, just yesterday the Duelfer report told you and the whole world they worked. He didn't have weapons of mass destruction, Mr. President. That was the objective."

"And if we'd used smart diplomacy, we could have saved $200 billion and an invasion of Iraq."

-- John Kerry, October 9, 2004.

''In this administration, the approach is that democracy is the automatic, easily embraced alternative to every ill in the region,'' he told me. Kerry disagreed. ''You can't impose it on people,'' he said. ''You have to bring them to it. You have to invite them to it. You have to nurture the process.''

-- John Kerry, October 10, 2004

"Bring them to it" while under the fist of a dictator? Surely a novel idea.

Yes, I realize that it's always fashionable and often inappropriate to make World War II analogies, but after reading the Duelfer report's conclusions about Saddam Hussein's omnipresent ambition and successful gaming of the Oil for Food Program, I've come to the conclusion that no realistic options existed beyond regime change or eventual appeasement. Hussein's Iraq was a lynchpin of aggression, repression and terror in the Middle East, and any generational attempt to heal the region required a removal of its cancer.

Kennedy. Wilson. Spinning. In Graves.

UPDATE: Challenge to anti-war readers:

Instead of criticizing my analogy or deconstructing the Bush Administration's decision to go to war with Iraq, please provide "Plan C." What was a relatively moral, inexpensive and safe alternative course of action that would have avoided war, "nurture[d]" regional Democracy, eliminated no-fly zones and peril for the populations in N and S Iraq, maintained long-term regional stability and/or prevented the potential nexus of WMD and terror? This question is not phrased in a way that assumes the success of the Bush Administration's plan; I just want your best viable alternative.

Please take into account the following assumptions:

1. Oil for Food Corruption
2. Duelfer's assessment about Saddam's eternal ambition for WMD
3. Al Qaeda operatives living in Iraq (not necessarily with official sanction)
4. Saddam Hussein nurturing of Palestinian terrorism

The first cogent argument wins some animal crackers.

UPDATE: In the midst of a much larger analysis, Captain Ed points out a key passage in the NYT piece:

What few Democrats did at the time was think creatively about the new world of foreign policy. The candidates who began their runs for the presidency last year, from Dennis Kucinich and his peace platform on the left to Joe Lieberman and Dick Gephardt on the other side of the spectrum, attacked the president's foreign policy from different directions, but if any new ideas emerged during those months, they were soon drowned out by the booming anti-war voice of Howard Dean. When Kerry emerged as the most palatable alternative, he at first ran mostly on the viability of his personal story, focusing more on his combat experience in Vietnam than on any plan to fight Al Qaeda or remake Iraq. Only since Labor Day has Kerry begun to sharpen his distinctions with Bush on national security and foreign policy.

Building a contrarian argument is easy; winning animal crackers is a challenge.

The WaPo:

Controversy clouding Afghanistan's historic first presidential election eased Sunday when several major opposition candidates backed off from assertions that voter fraud and errors at polling places had rendered Saturday's vote meaningless and illegitimate.
...
Robert Barry, who headed the European election monitoring delegation, said the opposition candidates' demands to nullify the vote were "unjustified" and would "put into question the expressed will of millions of citizens." He called for a "thorough and transparent investigation" of the polling complaints and said they should be "dealt with as the law provides."

What a great weekend for Democracy.

UPDATE: Armies of Liberation:

A generation previously disempowered has grasped the reins of national power and voted for the first time. Women previously locked in their homes in ignorance and fear stood in line for hours in the snow to wield their power. Hamid Kharzai’s opposition may dispute the quality of the ink, but no one can dispute the millions who have claimed their right of self determination.

UPDATE: In contrast, we have the requisite sour grapes from the likes of a Nation magazine correspondent:

"Imposing Imperial Democracy" - Upcoming Afghan Elections Marked by U.S. Pressure, Fraud and Corruption

AMY GOODMAN: We go first to Kabul, to Christian Parenti reporting for The Nation magazine. Welcome to Democracy Now!, Christian.

CHRISTIAN PARENTI: Thank you for having me on.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you tell us about what's happening in this lead up to Saturday's election?

CHRISTIAN PARENTI: Well, Kabul is very quiet today. The whole city is sort of on lockdown. Flights inside the country have been canceled and there hasn't been as much violence as people expect. There was a rocket attack last night. Two rockets came in towards the U.S. base, as you said earlier, and landed nearby and one went off and one didn't. Other than that, things have been fairly quiet. The overall thing to report is that Afghans are not as excited about this election as international observers are. Most Afghans are very, very – cynical would actually be too strong a word, they’re just very apathetic about the whole process.

(Emphasis mine)

"Liberal?" I don't think so. In contrast:

Afghan election staff stand behind ballot boxes full of votes at Herat's main mosque polling station in the first direct presidential election in Herat, Afghanistan (news - web sites) on Saturday, Oct. 9, 2004. (AP Photo/Hasan Sarbakhshian)

* The voter enthusiasm for Saturday's first democratic poll in Afghanistan was formidable.

* Karimullah, 50, a civil servant in Kabul, said Saturday was one of the most important days in his life.

"Men, women, voted and it was a free choice," he said. "I voted in the mosque and everyone was joyful."

Voters line up to vote at a polling station in Kabul Saturday, Oct. 9. 2004. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

* Afghans from remote Hindu Kush villages to dusty southern Taliban heartlands were jubilant at their first chance to have a say in their country's destiny, and some were bewildered by the boycott call.

* Claims of voting irregularities had tainted the jubilation among electors but the polls were hailed around the world for the strong turnout and lack of violence.

* In Afghanistan, optimism swelled among many who cast their ballots.

"For the first time, Afghans are able to choose their own leader," said Kabul shopkeeper Ahmed Jan. "From today, things will only get better in the country."

Afghan men take to the streets and dance celebrating the presidential elections in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar Saturday, Oct. 9, 2004. (AP Photo/Elizabeth Dalziel)

Note from INDC Journal to Mr. Parenti and any other partisan, automaton hacks at The Nation magazine and the ironically titled, "Democracy Now:"

Piss off. And stay off of the local hash.

(Requisite bitter moonbat link via Gordon)

Michael Goodwin comments on Rathergate in the NY Daily News:

Rathergate be damned, CBS News still doesn't get it.

A month after it embarrassed itself with the discredited story about President Bush's National Guard service, the network continues to send mixed signals about the mess it created. Most shocking, top brass apparently are allowing the same team that screwed up the initial report to keep working on the story.

Note to CBS: The first rule of holes is, when you find yourself in one, stop digging. Step away from the shovel!

That certainly sounds like good advice.

I can't stand it when people claim that "Bush lied!" when he made a case for war based on the CIA's intelligence assessment of Iraq's WMD capability and inventory. An accusation of dishonesty is a serious charge, especially when it refers to the application of military force based on subjective source material. But when John Kerry claims that his position on Iraq has always been consistent, and further claims that the administration misled the American people, isn't he the one employing blatant deception about such a deadly serious topic?

For example, John Kerry's newest talking point claims that President Bush took his "eye off the ball" by raising the Iraq issue after September 11th, the "ball" being the exclusive hunt for Osama bin Laden and the elements of Al Qaeda that remained in Afghanistan. So then tell me - why, in his October 9, 2002 speech just prior to his vote affirming the authorization for the use of force, did John Kerry criticize the Bush Administration for not moving sooner against Iraq, after September 11th?

But the administration missed an opportunity 2 years ago and particularly a year ago after September 11. They regrettably, and even clumsily, complicated their own case. The events of September 11 created new understanding of the terrorist threat and the degree to which every nation is vulnerable. That understanding enabled the administration to form a broad and impressive coalition against terrorism. Had the administration tried then to capitalize on this unity of spirit to build a coalition to disarm Iraq, we would not be here in the pressing days before an election, late in this year, debating this now. The administration's decision to engage on this issue now, rather than a year ago or earlier, and the manner in which it has engaged, has politicized and complicated the national debate and raised questions about the credibility of their case.

And while much of the speech speaks of the pressing need for a multilateral approach and provides plenty of wiggle room for hindsight criticism, his statements about the serious nature of the threat are very clear, and stunningly contradict post-conflict assertions about Bush's honesty. Below the fold is a series of very long, very relevant excerpts from John Kerry's speech that sound suspiciously similar to the exact rationale used by the Bush Administration in the run-up to the war. I've added emphasis that I find appropriate:

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Dave Koppel picks apart the media's handling of the draft story in the Rocky Mountain News:

Some people are so gullible that they believe the get-rich-quick e-mail that purportedly comes from relatives of deposed African dictators. Other people are so gullible that they've fallen for an e-mail hoax claiming that the military draft will be reinstated next spring. The media don't run stories that treat the African scam letters as possibly true, but the media have, unfortunately, not always been so accurate about the draft hoax.

And points to the only candidate that's made a proposal centered around any type of compulsory service:

And when doing stories about young people who are worried about being forced into government service, the Denver and national media should have pointed out that John Kerry is the only candidate who has proposed such coercion. As detailed in Kerry's proposal "100 Days to Change America," Kerry's "plan will require mandatory national service for high school kids . . . As president, John Kerry will ensure that every high school student in America does community service as a requirement for graduation." The plan appeared on Kerry's Web site at www.johnkerry. com/issues/100days/. Like many other pages on Kerry's Web site, this one has disappeared without explanation, but you can still find the page by entering the original URL into the "search" box at www.archive.org.

He also makes a nice citation of Beldar and INDC Journal, actually providing text links to both blogs, which is a step above the protocol of any other daily newspapers' web sites. I still can't figure out why newspapers won't hot link the stories or blogs that they reference; it seems like a waste of the medium.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard (C) sings the Australian national anthem as he stands with his wife Janette, his sons (L-R) Richard and Tim, daughter Melanie and her husband Rowan MacDonald after winning the federal election for a fourth consecutive term in Sydney October 9, 2004. - Yahoo

A key ally in the war on terror wins re-election:

Howard claims victory
Prime Minister John Howard has thanked the Australian people for his historic fourth federal election victory.

Federal Labor leader Mark Latham conceded defeat after the Howard Government won an increased majority in the federal Parliament.

Australian troops will stand firm with us in Iraq, safe from the political prevarications of a notorious flip-flopper.

Tim Blair reaffirms his love for his country, and has a round-up of Aussie reactions.

Moqadasa Sidiqi casts her vote for the landmark Afghan election in Islamabad, October 9, 2004. The 19-year-old Afghan woman living as a refugee in Pakistan made history on Saturday by casting the first vote in Afghanistan (news - web sites)'s first direct presidential election. (Mian Khursheed/Reuters)- Yahoo

And more importantly, another ally plants an important seed of Democracy in the Muslim World:

Afghanistan Votes

AFTER ENDURING Soviet occupation, civil war and rule by a medieval-minded Islamic militia, millions of Afghans will go to polling stations today for the first free election in their country's history. This is an extraordinary achievement, the more so because it will occur in spite of concerted efforts by the Taliban militia and its al Qaeda allies to prevent it. Thanks in part to U.S., NATO and Afghan forces and in part to the extraordinary determination of Afghan citizens to launch their democracy, the enemy campaign failed: the turnout percentage for the presidential vote may rival that of the U.S. presidential election. Sixteen candidates are challenging the current president, Hamid Karzai, and though he is expected to win, the outcome is neither fixed nor assured. In that respect alone, the Afghan election is unlike any ever held in most of the Muslim world.

Beautiful.

UPDATE: This is a day that should make the family of Captain Dan Eggers very proud of their sacrifice. Note: The INDC pledge drive mentioned in that post is closed; anyone wishing to donate should go here.

UPDATE: Voting irregularities are causing protests among 15 of the 18 Afghan candidates. Regardless, the Afghani people have displayed a strong will for Democracy - the ball is rolling downhill:

Despite the controversy, reports from the ground by BBC correspondents spread across Afghanistan suggest that the issue has had little impact among voters.

Many Afghans are keen that the international community appreciate just what a historic day it has been for this country.

"It is amazing, as an Afghan, to see the turnout, see how many people have come out to cast their votes - especially as it was an exercise that was new to them," says Shoaib Sharifi, a senior Afghan journalist.

It's a view that many voters concurred with.

"This is a country that has suffered greatly over the years," said Abdul Mateen, a Pashtun taxi driver, after casting his vote in the city's diplomatic district.

"To be able to cast my vote and participate in the future of my country - this is a dream to be cherished."

A release from Pundit Review Radio:

Pundit Review Radio highlights the work of bloggers and other leaders of the new media and discusses the impact they are having on politics and the press.

The show can be heard every Saturday between noon-1pm EST on www.wbix.com. (The link to listen to the streaming is on the top left of their home page -ed)

This Saturday we have a great show lined up for you. Our first guest will be Don Luskin of Smart Money, National Review and PoorandStupid.com.

We will also be speaking to Hugh Hewitt, blogger, nationally syndicated talk show host, columnist and best selling author of If It's Not Close, They Can't Cheat

If you want to ask a question to Don or Hugh, the number is 877-711-1060.

The show is archived on punditreview.com. Our interviews from last week with Dean Esmay of Dean's World and Scott Johnson of Powerline are now available as is our interview with Mattt Margolis of BlogsforBush.

I'll be doing their show next weekend. If you're curious to hear your favorite bloggers practice radio punditry and talk about the rise of new media, check out their regular Saturday feature.

Outrage of the Night: The final question! Why is President Bush forced to defend himself against self-identified "mistakes," while Kerry is given a free shot to attack his opponent in the rebuttal? This is absolutely outrageous, specifically with its place as the last question of the night. As it is, Bush's comeback on Kerry's $87 billion vote was great.

Kerry - Relatively strong throughout. Calm, cool, collected. Great presentation. Started out with a stronger delivery than Bush - actually looked more Presidential when they were discussing national security issues, which was surprising, but petered out towards the middle. Hardly ever lost a fundamental quality to his speech, however. He's a very, very good debater, and much better in these ad hoc forums than he is on the stump. The substance of his foreign policy talking points left something to be desired (of course), but scored even with Bush on domestic substance (economic policy). Strongest moment: retaining calm and baiting Bush into anger over Iraq. Weakest point: middling healthcare response, slight stumbles on abortion, etc.

Bush - I cringed at the beginning of the debate. While his talking points were great, his defensive, high-volume and angry delivery looked a tad Nixonian. I actually had the thought that he was losing himself the election based on his style (if it would have continued), not the substance of his answers, which were solid. Thankfully, he picked up speed in ... the domestic portion?! Actually, he delivered a particularly strong response on the question of North Korea and Iran, but he hit his stride in the last two-thirds - blew my mind. He was comfortable, folksy, confident and brutally effective. What was really surprising was how he smacked Kerry around like a wiffle ball on healthcare, specifically tort reform. He also gave Kerry a drubbing on his liberal voting record in the Senate.

Overall, a great debate, but I have trouble picking a winner. Kerry was solid, even good, throughout, whereas Bush started a little defensive and reactionary, but then closed with comfort, humor and great talking points. He really beat Kerry up around the mid-point. Given Kerry's demoralizing incompetence on the stump, this second strong debate performance will further energize the Dem base and keep the race tight. Perhaps it's an effective tie, perhaps a slight win for Kerry based on his more consistent delivery.

Funniest moment of the night:

Newsflash: George Bush Against Slavery!

Factcheck of the night:

Was John Kerry Really "in Kyoto?" Was it during Christmas? Before or after he ran a marathon?

UPDATE: But was he there?

Kerry renounces Kyoto treaty while backing measures to impose its controls

Presidential hopeful's stance confusing

(Thanks to Nathan Hamm)

The GOP picks Bush's best line, and I agree:

"He's got a record. He's been there for 20 years. You can run, but you can't hide."

UPDATE: Other blogging:

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A Drudge Exclusive:

ABCNEWS POLITICAL DIRECTOR MEMO SPARKS CONTROVERSY: BOTH SIDES NOT 'EQUALLY ACCOUNTABLE'
...
An internal memo written by ABCNEWS Political Director Mark Halperin admonishes ABC staff: During coverage of Democrat Kerry and Republican Bush not to "reflexively and artificially hold both sides 'equally' accountable."

The controversial internal memo obtained by DRUDGE, captures Halperin stating how "Kerry distorts, takes out of context, and mistakes all the time, but these are not central to his efforts to win."

But Halperin claims that Bush is hoping to "win the election by destroying Senator Kerry at least partly through distortions."

"The current Bush attacks on Kerry involve distortions and taking things out of context in a way that goes beyond what Kerry has done," Halperin writes.

Halperin's claim that ABCNEWS will not "reflexively and artificially hold both sides 'equally' accountable" set off sparks in St. Louis where media players gathered to cover the second presidential debate.

Halperin states the responsibilities of the ABCNEWS staff have "become quite grave."

In August, Halperin declared online: "This is now John Kerry's contest to lose."

Read the actual memo at Drudge. I can't say that I'm surprised. It's nice of him to decide "which" distortions are more important on your behalf, right?

Formatting lifted from Allah (I don't think he'll mind):

I have been listening to the report about the WMD's by Mr. David Kay. Now, all of you in the West must know that as far as we, the Iraqis, are concerned, we care very little that stocks of WMD's existed or not at the time of liberation. For us Saddam and his regime were in themselves, the most lethal WMD that cost our people hundreds of thousands of victims not to mention the destruction of the economy and the very fabric of society in our afflicted country. . . .

Were we better off during Saddam's time? - A question to which many outsiders are very keen to know our answer. Well, in many respects the streets are much more insecure, yet the security that existed in Saddam's days was like someone quietly waiting for certain death; like a cancer stricken individual carrying the disease in his guts with no hope or attempt at cure. Yes, the pain and torture may be much more terrible when the surgeon has operated and the disease is tackled; but at least there is hope of recovery and healing, and the prospect of life saving. And this is not allegory, nor a parable; this is coming from someone whose house has been standing in the midst of bombs and explosions for so long now, protected by none but the mercy and grace of the Lord; from someone who has suffered robbery, kidnapping and constant daily danger.

And here we are, trying to organize elections, trying to control the security situation, trying to restart the reconstruction, able to talk, able to think, able to watch satellite T.V., use the internet, the mobile etc. – in short everything that we have been forbidden to do before. And without the slightest hesitation, we hail with Love and Gratitude our giant U.S. friend and his allies, standing with us shoulder to shoulder, braving the elements, braving death, calumny and hatred, shedding blood; to help us heal, to help us reach the shores of safety. And make no mistake, the campaign is winning and will achieve its objectives. Make no mistake; you have already created an allied nation in the very heart of the M.E. despite all appearances, which will produce all the long term benefits and consequences so many times reiterated by President Bush, to the ridicule and insults of the profoundly mistaken, of the profoundly hating.

America, stay the course - God, Decency, Honor, Hope and everything that is virtuous and right is on your side, beside the majority of the Iraqi people. America do not waiver, for you have never waged a more noble and just campaign in your entire history. America, we are winning, God's willing, and Victory is coming sooner than many might think.

Salaam

Please visit his excellent blog and scroll around to obtain a vital Iraqi perspective that you can't find in the Washington Post.

What kind of topsy-turvey world do we live in when conservatives are romantics and leftists are cynical isolationists that sanction the continued rape of a country because our treasure could have been put to "better use" on domestic programs?

John F. Kennedy is spinning in his grave.

Have you answered this question yet? I'd like some centrist and left-wing reader responses as well, if anyone is so inclined.

* Don Hewitt takes a swipe at Dan Rather on O'Reilly. Note to O'Reilly: let people answer the questions.

* Jonah Goldberg points us back in an important direction.

* Glenn Reynolds reveals the collapse of John Kerry's foreign policy case.

* Jeff at Beautiful Atrocities does a bizarre piece of investigative work, outing me as a 15 year-old girl. How he knows so much about the truly appalling lingo of 15 year-old girls is a mystery to me.

* Jokes about John Edwards and his love for cute bunnies are always a treat.

* Al Qaeda kills more Muslims. Sounds like a dumb strategy to me.

* Jib-Jab! (Does anyone else notice that one of the guys with the Halliburton check looks just like Paul Krugman?)

* The Cranky Neocon just got a job. To congratulate him, I'm giving the gift of traffic, since Gordon tends to squeal like a 15 year-old girl (I should know) every time his hit counter takes a spin. Plus his post about "October Surprises" is pretty funny. Give him a quick visit.

Moonbats tied to crime or terror?

The FBI issued an order to Rackspace in the US (Indymedia's provider with offices in the US and London) to remove physically one of our servers. The order was so short term that Rackspace had to give away our hard drives in the UK.

The servers hosted numerous local IMCs. If you find a site is down: that might be the reason

The reason why the hard drives were taken are unknown.

Based on my own personal research, I can assure you that many far left "progressives" are never more than a few degrees of separation from terrorists and criminals. It's like that game "Six Degrees," except instead of linking a random actor to Kevin Bacon, the challenge is to tie a "peace" protestor back to Yasser Arafat. Some of the time it's a naive association, other times - not so much.

(Via LGF)

UPDATE: Good discussion there ...

Have you knuckleheads voted?

I'm getting killed, over there ...

UPDATE: In response to an e-mail - to be clear, I'd like to win, but I'm very tongue-in-cheek about all of this. The real odds of me bringing home a victory against such highly trafficked competition are about the same chances that Wonkette can go 5 days without making a sex joke (essentially zero).

'Tommy Pain' plots his revenge.

With a snide entry under the previous thread, Tommy Pain has already broken INDC's newly posted rules for commenting!

They missed out on a 96 yea vote?!?!?!?! How dare they not drop their presidential campaigning and rush back to DC to make it a 98 yea vote? I mean, a 96 yea vote could leave the terrorists thinking we are vulnerable to attack!!!!!!

Sad and desperate. This is what I'm talking about. Thanks INDC!

BTW, how can you complain about this, but give the prez a pass on ignoring "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Within the United States"? Does it even cross your mind how twisted the logic has to be to complain about two senators running for president to miss a 96 Yea vote, while not caring that the president couldn't call off a vacation to maybe do something about terrorists out to attack the US.

Aside from failing to understand that the subtext of my post deals with the political implications of missing that vote, as well as the fact that Kedwards' involvement in and knowledge of intelligence reform is vital to bolstering their anti-terror platform, Tommy commits the following violations:

1. Unauthorized moonbat on the field - 15 yards.

2. Impotent rage representing misplaced aggression for unloving father - 15 yards.

3. Nasty insults - "not funny" - 15 yards from the spot of the foul.

4. Repeated active use of the Nelson Muntz voice - 40 yards.

5. Specific assertion that fails to cite a source or employ a link - 15 yards.

Let's see, that's ... 15, 15, 15 plus ... plus ... carry the ...

... it's 100 yards! Touchdown!

EJECTED!!!!

What's particularly sad about Tommy Pain's discourse is the fact that he probably has absolutely no idea how his tone is counterproductive to actually convincing anyone of anything - other than the fact that he's a complete asshole.

Call your daddy, son. He loves you. Deep down.

Who's next?

I'm not going to excerpt it - I want you to click on the link and read the whole thing.

UPDATE: More required reading. There were only two Senators that missed this unbelievably relevant vote:

The Senate voted overwhelmingly yesterday to revamp the structure of the nation's intelligence community by creating a national intelligence director, a counterterrorism center and other agencies in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The bill calls for the most dramatic changes to the intelligence community in half a century, and would give the new director authority to coordinate the activities and spending of the CIA and several other intelligence agencies throughout the government. It would also declassify the amount of money the government spends on intelligence and would create a civil liberties board to safeguard privacy and civil rights as the government steps up anti-terrorism activities.

I'll give you a cookie if you can guess who those two Senators are ...

UPDATE: An e-mailer makes a suggestion and provides perspective on why involvement in the vote matters to her:

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Because in addition to presenting a fair range of opinion and treating his guests with laid-back respect, Scarborough does things like this:

The host of "After Hours" announced that there were two post-debate polls of reaction to the vice-presidential debate, one from ABC and another from CBS.

CBS had done a poll of "uncommitted" voters which seemed to conflict with the general consensus of who won the debate (see below).

Scarborough announced that he had the poll, "But since it's from CBS, we're not going to bother you with the results."

As he said this he wrinkled up a paper and threw it on the floor.

Sweet.

Fight the Disneyfication of foreign policy: It's not "a small world, after all."

Let's briefly review the permanent obstacles inherent to obtaining approval for military action from the United Nations Security Council, starting with the real "coalition of the coerced and the bribed."

The French:

Saddam Hussein used a U.N. humanitarian program to pay $1.78 billion to French government officials, businessmen and journalists in a bid to have sanctions removed and U.S. policies opposed, according to a CIA report made public yesterday.

The Russians, circa late 2002:

As many as 300 Russian companies now do business with Iraq, under a United Nations program set up in 1996 permitting Baghdad, which is under a trade embargo, to sell some oil to pay for essential imports like food and medicine. Russian companies control the rights to sell 40 percent of Iraq's oil on world markets. But the real prizes are Iraq's oil fields, which are now producing at far below their potential. Iraq's reserves are second in size only to Saudi Arabia's, and Iraq has offered Russian companies development rights to some of its richest fields.

China? Moving beyond the naked self-interest that would drive relish for an economically crippling terror attack in the United States, and also currently prevents any post-war assistance in Iraq ...

China’s leaders consistently characterize the United States as a "hegemon", connoting a powerful protagonist and overbearing bully that is China’s major competitor, but they also believe that the United States is a declining power with important military vulnerabilities that can be exploited. China views itself as an emerging power.

... US foreign policy with China is also plagued by more nuanced challenges (pdf document):

Chinese worldviews tend to see an ever-evolving, ever-changing nature, without a set beginning and with no “end” to which the world is inexorably evolving; Chinese “analogical” or “correlative” thinking “accepts the priority of change or process over rest and permanence” and “presumes no ultimate agency responsible for the general order of things.”

This philosophical approach sees history more as a dialectical or cyclical, rather than linear, process. Worldviews in the United States, based on Western/Judeo-Christian philosophies and Enlightenment values, tend to presume a philosophical “beginning” and “end” point, that history moves linearly from an initial chaos, anarchy or “law of the jungle” toward a desirable, universalistic end, and that man can shape that destiny through concrete action. In its approach to foreign policy questions, U.S. views would then tend to favor action over acquiescence, regularized, formal, transparent, and predictably ordered relationships, and to mark progress by the steady and timely achievement of binding instruments and arrangements.

Chinese philosophical views spill over into the country’s international relations, and affect understandings of time, relationships and agreements: Chinese interlocutors will tend to take a politically pragmatic, even cynical, “long-term view”, and prefer personal, informal relationships forged on trust and mutually recognized codes of conduct rather than formal, institutionalized relationships based on legally-derived, concrete covenants.

(Emphasis mine)

John Kerry speaks of a "Global Test," but he neglects to elucidate the nature and uncertainty of the test's answers for any situation that serves US interests. The fact is, questions of national security, economics and strategic competition don't hinge on vague diplomatic platitudes or intemperate remarks by Donald Rumsfeld. Countries are primarily rational players that act for largely selfish reasons, and they will not ally with the United States if particular aims contradict their interests. Don't believe the hype.

UPDATE: The Watcher's first comment is spot-on:

If the first Gulf War didn't pass Kerry's global test, then nothing will.

UPDATE: Don't forget China's direct, tactical economic interest in Saddam's survival:

The published lists show how much oil individuals, political parties or firms from more than 40 countries purportedly were allocated and the names of the companies contract to lift oil on their behalf.

The list cited names from France, Russia and China, all permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, which supervised the program.

(Emphasis mine)

UPDATE: Not surprisingly, Instapundit has more.

UPDATE: I've got some pretty good SUPER IMPORTANT comments in the thread below, centering around my exchange with Walter. This string of thought may clarify my position.

A lot of new INDC readers and commenters have come on board in the past month, and while the traffic is nice, some of the comments and trolls are a severe pain in the ass. I had to do some bloody Stalinist purging of commenters yesterday, but I surely don't want to crush dissent and set up a center-right echo chamber in my comments section. With this spirit in mind, I'm going to lay down a hodge-podge of ground rules and facts that should set the tone for commenting on this site. This is my house. Here goes:

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Ok, there are "Communists" for Kerry ..."

... and then there are Communists for Kerry:

John Kerry’s stands on the major issues of the times, since the 1970s, have been a lot better than those of Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, or Bill Clinton. He is a progressive Democratic senator from a liberal pro-labor state, Massachusetts, as Roosevelt was the progressive governor of New York.

Like Roosevelt in 1932, Kerry is saying some ridiculous things. (Roosevelt, for example, criticized Hoover for running deficits and promised to balance the budget. The deficit was not the problem, but a symptom of the Depression. Hoover was spending too little, not too much. After taking office, Roosevelt sharply increased federal spending to provide for people’s needs, which is healthy for society.) But, like Roosevelt, Kerry is articulating broad themes that lead away not only from the sinister nightmare of the Bush administration, but from a generation of right-wing political hegemony in the U.S.
...
With Kerry in the White House we have a chance to regain ground lost over a generation. With Bush back in power, we are in the short run digging our own graves, and the graves of people’s movements throughout the world, not the grave of the capitalist system as some ultra-leftists might hope. For those reasons we must not only support the Kerry campaign but work actively for its victory.

The opening line of their endorsement is my favorite:

As I talk to friends on the left and center-left ...

No buddies in the middle or center-right? Sounds suspiciously like the bullpen at 60 Minutes II.

Hilarious. One link is satire, by the way. And yes, I know that there is a margin of difference between "socialism" and "communism," but these are communists:

The People’s Weekly World is the newspaper of the Communist Party, USA reporting on and analyzing the pressing issues of the day: peace, social and economic justice, workers’ rights, civil liberties, reproductive rights, protection of the environment, and more.

Via Awptimus, who has a few of his own thoughts on the endorsement.

UPDATE: The Watcher points me to another official endorsement from the Communist Party of the USA:

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The Washington Post:

Evidently, Cheney meant to say FactCheck.org a site run by the Annenberg Public Policy Center. Instead, he directed the nation's attention to a Web site that refers people to sellers of dictionaries and encyclopedias -- at least at first. The company behind the site, Cayman Islands-based Name Administration Inc., which also owns sites such as Lipbalm.com and Antarctica.com, was quickly overwhelmed.

"Suddenly they had 48,000 hits in an hour, then 100 hits a second," said John Berryhill, a lawyer for the company. "They had a technical problem on their hands."

To avoid crashing, and to exact revenge on Cheney for causing it such grief, Name Administration decided to forward traffic to GeorgeSoros.com -- a site that could handle the traffic, was not soliciting funds and clearly wasn't tied to Bush. "And you got to admit it was kind of cute," Berryhill said.

Yeah, cute, but instead of redirecting visitors to the non-partisan political analysis site that features plenty of factual criticism of Cheney, they sent millions of people to a work of partisan spin. I suppose that this prioritization is a reflection on the "educational materials" sold by their company. USA Today adds:

The lawyer, John Berryhill, said Wednesday that the company's owners — whom he declined to name — are not fans of Bush or Cheney. When they saw the number of users clicking on "factcheck.com" start to soar Tuesday night, they feared the traffic would "crash" their computer. But they also saw a chance to tweak the president and vice president.

I'll repeat - the smallest things matter in a debate watched by tens of millions of people.

Today's testimony to Congress predictably passes out some heavy ammunition to all sides of the debate.

The good stuff goes to Kerry-Edwards:

Charles Duelfer, the chief U.S. weapons investigator in Iraq, told Congress today that Saddam Hussein destroyed his stocks of chemical and biological weapons and agents in 1991 and 1992 and that his nuclear weapons program had decayed to almost nothing by 2003.

And for Bush-Cheney:

Duelfer, a former U.N. inspector and the personal representative of the CIA director, said the former Iraqi dictator had intentions to restart his program, but after weapons inspectors left Iraq in 1998, Hussein instead focused his attention on ending the sanctions imposed by Western governments following his incursion into Kuwait and the Persian Gulf war of 1991.

The "top priority" for Hussein "was to escape the economic stranglehold of U.N. sanctions," Duelfer said. Although Duelfer did not make the judgment that sanctions were working to prevent Hussein from developing new weapons, he reports, "Sanctions limited his ambitions and took an enormous toll on Iraqi society."

Retrospectively, the question of whether Saddam Hussein remained a threat is largely a waste of time - his regime was indeed a chronic menace. The remaining legitimate arguments center around timing for action and the question of whether sanctions that crippled Iraqi society were a just method of keeping Saddam "in a box."

If the West raised the boot off of his neck, Hussein was clearly intent on reconstituting his weapons programs. If the sanctions remained, the Iraqi people suffered as Oil-for-Food money was criminally diverted from its intended purpose. In addition, the no-fly zones that protected the Kurdish and Shiite populations from terrible retribution were unsustainable operations.

Simplistic anti-war arguments do not begin to address the prior situation in Iraq, and even valid questions about timing tend to quickly brush aside the logistical and political demands that favored a quick timetable for action.

"Senator Gone?"

"If they couldn't stand up to the pressures that Howard Dean represented, how can we expect them to standup to Al Qaeda?"

Nope.

What a lopsided match-up!

UPDATE: Posts like this make me wonder if my sense of humor expects too much of people, or whether my readers bother to click on the links. The Dick Cheney quotes were just a joke set-up to get you to click on the link to the real debate - Bill Kristol vs. Susan Estrich. You guys got that right? Right? Bueller?

Dr. Joseph M. Newcomer weighs in on their hoax-debunking-debunking:

"...this is science, not opinion..."

Bartlesville, Oklahoma:

Embattled CBS anchorman Dan Rather's afternoon feature on a Bartlesville radio has been yanked off the air, at least for the time being.

KWON Radio Station General Manager Kevin Potter made the announcement this week, saying that Rathers' "questionable fact-finding and news reporting" during the presidential campaign has "irritated" radio listeners across the country and that Bartlesville listeners are no exception.

(Via Ratherbiased, who has your definitive round-up of CBS-related news)

I'm going to repost a video link that highlights Kerry's prevarication on the Iraq War:

Kerry Iraq Documentary

I'm a reasonable guy that accepts reasonable contrary arguments that don't fulfill my predispositions, but any informed assertion that John Kerry has not switched his position on the war to curry political favor is a statement that is disingenuous enough to be called a "lie."

Can we at least put this one to bed?

"I think it was the right decision to disarm Saddam Hussein, and when the President made the decision, I supported him, and I support the fact that we did disarm him."

-- John Kerry, Democratic Primary Debate, 5/03/03

(Ignore the video's music and any skepticism about the source - the words are Kerry's, and the dates are accurate)

UPDATE: And John Edwards, circa 2002:

“I think Iraq is the most serious and imminent threat to our country. And I think Iraq and Saddam Hussein present the most serious and most imminent threat.”

(Via LGF)

The affiliate is located in Bryan, Texas:

Local radio station WTAW will sever its ties with CBS News because of negative reaction to the network’s recent news coverage of President Bush’s military record, the station said Tuesday.

WTAW, which is located at 1620 AM, will ditch its CBS affiliation and begin airing national news broadcasts from ABC within 90 days, station manager Ben Downs said.
...
“I don’t think CBS has a defensible position on this,” Downs said. “I feel a little checking would have found these were old claims. Even I can look at the memo and tell it didn’t come from a Selectric typewriter.”

And let's not forget Dr. Bouffard's final statement:

"For your information, it appears that the Selectric Composer could not have created the memos. See http://ibmcomposer.org."

(Via Rathergate)

UPDATE: Reader Peter Sheeran adds some political/geographic context:

Read More »

I just received this e-mail from reader Sarah Miers:

You have ruined me with your damned Hummel cartoon! I can no longer look at Edwards without visualizing that little parasol ...

I'm so proud. This one's going in the INDC political trophy case.

UPDATE: And do not, and I mean do not, forget the bunnies.

UPDATE: Before you read factcheck's piece on Halliburton, you might also want to check out this WSJ editorial.

(Via Right Moment)

The factcheck.org article that Dick Cheney wanted you to see is reprinted in full below, as their web site is having trouble with the traffic load.

Factcheck.org is a "nonpartisan, nonprofit, 'consumer advocate' for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics." It is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania and "accepts NO funding from business corporations, labor unions, political parties, lobbying organizations or individuals."

Kerry Ad Falsely Accuses Cheney on Halliburton

Contrary to this ad's message, Cheney doesn't gain financially from the
contracts given to the company he once headed.

September 30, 2004
Modified:September 30, 2004

Summary

A Kerry ad implies Cheney has a financial interest in Halliburton and is profiting from the company's contracts in Iraq. The fact is, Cheney doesn't gain a penny from Halliburton's contracts, and almost certainly won't lose even if Halliburton goes bankrupt.

The ad claims Cheney got $2 million from Halliburton "as vice president," which is false. Actually, nearly $1.6 million of that was paid before Cheney took office. More importantly, all of it was earned before he was a candidate, when he was the company's chief executive.

Analysis

A Kerry ad released Sept 17 once again attacks Cheney's ties to Halliburton, implying that Cheney is profiting from the company's contracts in Iraq. That's false.

Read More »

Rathergate.com has an interesting little scoop that highlights some ultimately responsible journalism by a local newspaper.

Rodney also got 'no respect' in pajamas.

Comic Rodney Dangerfield Dies at Age 82.

What a funny, funny guy. It specifically amazed me that in the past few years, at his age, he maintained perfect timing and a razor sharp wit.

Remember when your middle school teacher stumbled into work and had you watch a movie like Clash of the Titans, while he sat in the back of the classroom and nursed a wicked hangover? Well I didn't drink last night, and I sure as Hell hope that I'm not your teacher, but I'm not in the mood to deal with you smart young punks, nonetheless. Time for a "name your favorite" thread. Today's challenge, should you choose to accept it ...

Name your favorite national or syndicated opinion columnist.

Opinion ... columnist. This rules out people like "Bob the Auto Parts Answer Man" and "Dear Abby."

Dick Cheney erred tonight by citing "Factcheck.com" instead of "Factcheck.org" as a reference for the debunking of Halliburton charges. Immediately after the debate, "dot-com" pointed to an education site. Within an hour, it was redirected to GeorgeSoros.com - possibly millions of people are finding information that's vastly different than what they expected ...

UPDATE: Upon reflection, I think that this makes the Dems look bad. Eh, maybe not. I would have chosen a site that made specific accusations about Halliburton, but very quick response to an opportunity, nonetheless.

UPDATE: A commenter points out:

Bill: I hate to point this out, but ... You must not do any of your own DNS management, because web addresses cannot be commandeered in an hour.

I have no knowledge of DNS servers, but I do know that I went to "factcheck.com" immediately after the debate in order to verify Cheney's error, and it led to a mortgage or domain name sales site (I can't recall). Now it points to www.georgesoros.com. Headline amended. See for yourself - www.factcheck.com. It's possible that I mistyped the address, I suppose, but what are the odds that "factcheck.com" was a mirror for George Soros prior to the debate?

UPDATE: I wasn't hallucinating - Claire comments:

I had the same experience -- it was an educational domain registration site when I checked it about 15 minutes after the debate ended.

UPDATE: Commenter "Anonymous Scientist:"

It could be a javascript or server redirect. If it is either of these two, then it was most likely not put in place by George Soros. It was most likely put in place by the owner of the web address listed above. Quick thinking really, but not the doing of George Soros (most likely).

Whether it's an independent action by the domain's owner or a move by Soros's organization, the destination site was changed almost immediately after the debate in adaptation to Cheney's error.

UPDATE: Earlier tonight, the destination site was listed as "the leading education site on the net." (Thanks Claire) A Google search reveals a whole host of listings, including:

factcheck.com: The Leading Education Site on the Net
factcheck.com/ - 1k - Oct 5, 2004 - Cached - Similar pages

Tricky. Text updated.

UPDATE: Awptimus:

I’ve concluded through my test that it is redirect via the apache server. Congrats to who had access to do that with such speed. Look for ["lastredirectaddr"]=>string(26) “http://www.georgesoros.com”

Gwen Ifill's questioning was fantastic, far superior to Lehrer's effort.

Great debate.

Edwards started out well, with well-tailored (if hollow) rebuttals and lines of attack on the WOT and Iraq, but then drifted towards the middle. Given his reputation, I was surprised that he lost focus and stumbled with his presentation - in particular, he bumbled oddly in his response to the gay marriage question, and his one interruption of Cheney and petulant response to Ifill's admonition about Israel seemed childish and out of character. Towards the end, he picked up speed on domestic subjects, but failed to nail the case. His shining moments centered around his discussion of the tax code and his Halliburton attack.

Random notes:

* Edwards said the word "kill" only twice. Skipped over "maim" and "garotte with piano wire" in his attempts to sound tough on terror.
* It turned me off when Edwards pimped his family at the end - too obvious.
* Edwards has a purty mouf.
* Painfully patronizing; a stratospheric BS quotient.
* Edwards and Alan Colmes have trouble distinguishing the difference between the terms "9-11" and "Al Qaeda," in their attack on Cheney's statements about Iraq.

Cheney was solid, strong and occasionally smacked Edwards around on national security issues. His response to the Halliburton issue had me conflicted - I can't decide whether he does himself a disservice by just (wrongly) citing factcheck.com (it's '.org') and dismissing it, or whether a more detailed response would weaken his demeanor. Tricky. Cheney's glaring weak spot was the way he handled the domestic AIDS question. He clearly had the international talking points covered, but was painfully unprepared for the domestic side of the issue, which makes him look insenstive to the downtrodden. I was actually surprised at how well Cheney handled most domestic issues, especially medical malpractice.

* Cheney slouches as if he's plotting great evil.
* Excellent reaction management.
* Sober demeanor.
* Never said the word kill, but expressed it with his eyes.
* Bizarrely failed to slam his opponent's lack of experience, which Ifill handed him on a silver platter.
* Does not have a purty mouf.

Overall? Judging for polarization, the minimal impact of the VP race, windspeed and direction, I'd say that the functional impact is minimal, with a slight advantage to Cheney. The reason? People fed the caricature of "evil Cheney" might have been impressed to find out that he's a reasonable, well-spoken, informed and perhaps even laid-back man. Edwards pleased his constituency, but the patronizing schtick was painful at times. It had to bother some people.

In terms of substance? Not even close. It's pretty hard to imagine John Edwards making decisions as President.

The best quote of the night goes to Cheney:

"If they couldn't stand up to the pressures that Howard Dean represented, how can we expect them to standup to Al Qaeda?"

"Yeeargh," indeed.

UPDATE: In the Bullpen has a good round-up of debate reactions and live-blogging efforts.

UPDATE: Alan Colmes is an idiot. Cheney never claimed a link between 9-11 and Iraq, he claims a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq. Hannity is also an idiot for not immediately issuing a correction.

UPDATE: Commenter "Violent Kitten:"

The Godfather takes care of business.

Geraghty:

If I ever need to sue somebody, I’ll call John Edwards.

If I ever need somebody killed - like, you know, terrorists trying to kill my family - I’ll call Dick Cheney.

UPDATE: Even adjusting for pro-Cheney partisan triumphalism, it's official - Andrew Sullivan has officially lost all capacity for objective analysis and fully embraced his role as a shrill stand-in for Oliver Willis:

Boy was I ever wrong. If last Thursday night's debate was an assisted suicide for president Bush, this debate - just concluded - was a car wreck. And Cheney was road-kill.

At least O-Dub collects a check from the Dems.

UPDATE: Does the sound of Susan Estrich's voice make anyone else hot? Hello? Hello?

UPDATE: Say Anything:

Also, some of her questions were down right silly.

You are crazy, my friend - she grilled Edwards and set Cheney up like a champ.

LAST UPDATE: Don't forget to read Jeff. I'm not one for round-ups, but Allah is, and I'll leave you with the verdict of my favorite Babylon 5 Conventioneers (scroll upwards):

Cheney had to do two things: whack Edwards and Kerry harder than a meth crazed biker knocking up a whack-a-mole machine, all the while not looking too much (or more than usual) like Mister Potter foreclosing on the poor old Bailey Building and Loan. You can just see if Dick Cheney were a hit man, he would eschew the sawed off shotgun in the violin case, the baseball bat, or the clean 45, instead going for the stileto, or better yet the garrotte around the neck. He's the Luca Brasi of the Bush Administration.

Two garotte references in one night!

UPDATE: The smallest differences matter in a debate watched by 40 million people.

"Awptimus" has the details that counterspin the Kerry Campaign's claims against their candidate's long-term support of a nuclear freeze in the Reagan era:

[James M. Shannon] and Kerry quickly began to battle for the approval of the state’s liberal interest groups, which enjoyed heightened influence in Democratic primaries.

First and foremost among those groups was the nuclear freeze movement. By the early 1980s, supporters of a freeze on developing nuclear weapons systems had transformed into a vibrant national movement–fed by widespread public fears about the global presence of 50,000 nuclear warheads and loose talk by officials from Ronald Reagan’s administration about the possiblity–and ‘manageability’–of nuclear war…In spring, with the September 18 primary date months away, candidates seeking an endorsement were asked about their positions. On a crucial test, the Freeze Voter ‘84 questionnaire submitted to both candidates, Shannon outscored Kerry by 100 to 94…Kerry revised his answers, tied Shannon with a perfect score…

I'm shocked.

Frank J weighs in on nuclear proliferation:

Iran, North Korea, and children probably won't accept this ruling and throw tantrums saying they should be able to have nuclear weapons too. It's best to just ignore them when they act like that. But, we need to keep a constant eye on Iran, North Korea, and children because they are likely to disobey us if they think we aren't looking. Perhaps we can motivate them by saying if they're good we'll make trade agreements, loosen sanctions, and give them cookies, things that Iran, North Korea, and children want.

Go to the Kerry Spot and find out exactly why this is so funny:

I'm a life-long Democrat, but I'm so embarrassed by how **** dumb the minions of my party are. You guys are less street smart than those guys named Scooter who work for Bush. No wonder we keep getting our ***** kicked.

Presented without comment:

An external review of how CBS News came to use disputed documents in a report on President Bush (news - web sites)'s military record will probably not be concluded until after the November election so as not to interfere with the presidential race, a top executive said on Tuesday.

I'm not sure if the investigation by the Texas Rangers will proceed at a quicker pace.

UPDATE: Wrong! Ratherbiased has the scoop.

Someone tell me what Scott McLemee is talking about:

With his anti-Semitic and pornographic obsessions, the journalist may well be in the grip of a severe personality disorder. But if so, it's nothing more severe than one might encounter at a television studio in downtown Washington, D.C., with some blogger eager to grab his or her 15 minutes of fame on the little screen.

The only DC bloggers that I've seen on TV have been Wonkette and Andrew Sullivan (and neither have anything resembling "crazy," thirsty eyes). I was outside a TV studio once, and it certainly wasn't an attempt to get on the "little screen."

So, who the Hell is this guy talking about? And what possesses him to make such a sick analogy?

And who does the hiring at Newsday?

I think that I know the answer to one of those questions, by the way.

UPDATE: Just got this e-mail:

Paranoia doesn't become you ... Third sentence is more likely targeted at a blogger appearing ON TV, not in front of the studio.

I thought that I was making that distinction when I pointed it out. I don't think that he's talking about me, SWWNBNOL or Sullivan, but for the life of me, I'm pretty sure that those are the only bloggers that have set foot anywhere near a TV studio in downtown DC, hence the confusion.

Why does Kim Jung Il traffic drugs, kidnap foreign nationals and build weapons of mass destruction?

Check out these two clips from Trey Parker and Matt Stone's new puppet movie, Team America: World Police. (In the first clip, keep an eye out for the John Edwards hummel figurine!) Madeline Albright and Sandy Berger were right - he just wants to be held, people.

If you're into this sort of goofy comedy, also be sure to watch the trailer.

I have a hunch that the release of this movie was timed for the election. The White House may not realize this, but Stone and Parker are probably Bush supporters, or more accurately, enemies of liberal ideology run amok, and their commentary on South Park is typically a powerful center-right-libertarian antidote to the left-wing Daily Show's vast influence among the under-40 crowd.

(Direction via PW)

UPDATE: SarahW provides a screen shot of Kim Jung Il's hummel case:

Look closely - the DNC John Edwards hummel is second in from the right!

UPDATE: More:

Try to imagine, if you will, a movie that in its first few minutes offends just about everyone who's watching it.

My criticism of Josh Marshall's righteous demands of FOX News were pretty mild compared to Ace's new treatment:

The hysterical left-wing blogosphere thinks they've gotten hold of their own little Rathergate. It seems that Fox reporter Carl Cameron, covering the Kerry campaign, inserted joke-quotes -- obviously parodies -- into a preliminary news-script and those quotes were taken as real by someone on the FoxNews website.

Check it out.

As an aside, I have to admit something, folks - Ace scares the crap out of me. You should see the e-mails I send him; it's all "Yes sir, this, and no sir, that. Excellent job sir. May I get you a scone?" I mean, this guy's a maniac - I only link him every other day because I'm afraid that he'll kill me.

Take your medicine, Cookoo Bird.

John Edwards:

"I'd say if you live in the United States of America and you vote for George Bush, you've lost your mind."

Well. At least he isn't questioning anyone's patriotism.

This is a great sound compilation.

(Via Allah, via Hugh Hewitt)

UPDATE: Context - it's a Titanic/Iceberg reference.

Uh-oh. The mullahs don't seem to respect the fact that there's an election on:

Iran on Sunday rebuffed a proposal by U.S. presidential candidate John Kerry, who has suggested supplying the Islamic state with nuclear fuel for power reactors if Tehran agrees to give up its own fuel-making capability.

What's "Plan B," Senator? How will you halt Iran's nuclear quest without unilateral or aggressive action?

Note: This is family business between bloggers; new readers to the medium won't necessarily appreciate this post, so just ignore it.

I'll address this post as if it at least largely addresses me, because aside from a select few other bloggers that have jumped into the original data game, how many others have been consistently attempting an approximation of real journalism prior to the recent tempest and traffic spike? For 6 months, not 3 weeks. And how many others had a questionable scoop in the past day or so?

I can't help but feel a bit attacked by both the advised caution (which is a sober and necessary admonition) and the expressed contempt for the effort. I also get a kick out of any lectures over specific posts. The advice is contradictory - watch out, because your words are important, but at the same time, "there's a dark evil change on the horizon," and we need to remember that at heart, we're just little old diarists.

Regarding Rathergate, any fret over the new media holding an egregious MSM violation to account is foolish carping. Period.

Wizbang's fisking of the good professor was a legitimate attempt to debunk what amounted to an intellectual scam.

And about today's pen kerfuffle - I tend to think that even some of the criticism from legitimate quarters is ludicrous, considering the contradictory advice about fear and responsibility mentioned above. I posted a pretty solid normal blogger gotcha post, putting the exclusive claims up after Drudge had already lifted it, but suddenly, I'm either an adrenaline maniac chasing a scoop or someone who should know better about his grave and sober responsibility as a massive media force.

Let's review the scenario: the post made a declarative assertion that was proven absolutely true, based on unequivocal video evidence. The portion of the post that featured reasonable speculation turned out to be untrue, but was clearly marked as speculation.

And what about Wizbang's case? The original post was phrased in triumphal, excited terms, but what has been proven irresponsible? The site that took a swipe at Professor Hailey? Or a professor's attempt to verify clearly fraudulent documents?

Meanwhile, compare either of these scenarios to the fact that many of the most vitriolic bloggers in the 'sphere have been freely peddling far-left and far-right conspiracy theories and cognitively dissonant, misleading analysis for years. But suddenly, blogs that get into journalism are a dark cloud of change that represents something to be feared. Spare me. Spare us all.

All blogs are not journalism outlets and nor should they be; I've laid out my personal belief that blogs and the MSM have more of a necessary symbiotic relationship than one that's fueled by exclusive competition and natural enmity. I also don't buy the assertion that the blogosphere is an independently self-regulating marketplace of ideas that can serve as a legitimate replacement for professional journalism. If such a sentiment were true, dishonest and occasionally offensive web sites like the Daily Kos would have evaporated long ago. Instead, many of the worst bomb-throwers have achieved and maintained unparalleled success.

I find this portion of Michele's post particularly bothersome:

So I guess my dismay comes from the fact that blogging is reaching a peak - in recognition, credibility, stats and money-making - when I think it's at it's worst. I'm seeing people that are straining to hold onto the post-Rather stats and the rush that came with them and it makes me uncomfortable in sort of the same way that watching someone make a horrible mistake in a movie does; I just want to turn it off until that part is over and hope that when I turn it back on, everything's worked out.

If you're referring to me specifically, Michele, all I can say is ... you're wrong. I don't post things or chase down stories in a calculated attempt to boost my traffic, I chase down posts because they interest me, or because I want answers to questions that will remain unanswered unless I take personal initiative. If Michele is speaking of "others," name them. LGF's legitimate and powerful document analysis? Ratherbiased's admirable original journalism? Powerline's razor-sharp vetting of a conspiracy theory from the untamed wilds of the right-wing fever swamp?

What is the abusive, scary, exasperated journalism that you speak of?

If it's Wizbang, say it. If it's INDC Journal, say it.

ASV is a fantastic blog written by a gifted, emotional writer that features perceptive analysis and entertaining posts, but in this case, personal "blogger" instincts and anxiety about change have overridden an accurate perception and prioritization of the 'sphere's character and role in a greater, new narrative. Blogging doesn't need to be either/or - personal piquant rants and cookie recipes, or "independent, peer reviewed journalism." It can be both. It is both; journalism and "roaring into empty space," all at once. These are not fundamentally incompatible concepts in a big, wide internet.

And the only thing more "uncomfortable" than watching bloggers aggressively swarm to chase news, even when they fail, is watching one of the old guard grasp at memories of "the neighborhood" and lash out at those that are honestly trying to break new ground.

I expect Tom Brokaw to try and put bloggers in their place, but not one of our own. You may be just writing a rant into your diary, and generally shy away from embracing your very real influence, but like it or not, you're a leader, and your words have consequences, especially on a day when a couple of your peers could use a hand up.

That's a personal rant coming from the Bill "the blogger" - not the "peer-reviewed journalist."

Those that came for "news" may now return to our regularly-scheduled program.

UPDATE: Michele tells me that the post that I questioned did not refer to INDC, which would just represent highly cooincidental bad timing. In my estimation, Michele's post is flawed by generalizations that more accurately reflect fears of what may come, rather than incidents that have actually come to pass, but it's otherwise admittedly relevant. I highly disagree with her assessment that blogging is at its worst, but her warnings about responsibility and feelings of fundamental change are worth reading. A couple of lines have been truncated or amended in my post.

UPDATE: Then again, Jeremy says:

Beyond that, I find it nearly impossible to believe that Michelle wasn't implicitly (hell, it seemed pretty explicit to me, honestly) saying exactly what you took offense to.

Seemed implicit to me as well. Decide for yourself.

The scurrilous charge:

"What I think is highly inappropriate is what's going on across the Internet, a kind of political jihad," Brokaw said during a panel on which he appeared with Rather and Jennings. "It is certainly an attempt to demonize CBS News, and it goes well beyond any factual information a lot of them has, the kind of demagoguery that is unleashed out there."

The response:

Michael Paranzino, founder of Web site BoycottCBS.com, wasted little time responding to Brokaw's statements.

"Tom Brokaw reads the news, but does he understand it?" Paranzino said in a statement. "Jihad is not Americans demanding reforms from an arrogant and biased media. Jihad is Islamists mowing down children for sport, blowing up families at Tel Aviv cafes, and in case he forgot, terrorists sending jet airliners into the World Trade Center and Pentagon."

He added: "We will not be cowed into silence by Mr. Brokaw's intemperate remarks."

I think that I know who won that debate. Network ratings are down 28% over the last 10 years (even before Rathergate), and they still refuse to face the music....

A visual aid (via Journalism.org):

(Thanks to David)

UPDATE: Boyd has something to say about all of this ...

Say Anything has the details. I'm sure that the Wizbang guys did their homework, so a lawsuit looks like a silly idea.

(Screen cap via the Recycler, from FOX News)

Not cue cards, not notes - a pen.

My previous commentary applies:

The debate rules were violated in letter, but not intent, and any charges of cheating against the Kerry campaign are undeserved and inaccurate.

Captain's Quarters rocks. Political junkies on the right and the left should make sure to regularly check out his sober, insightful, starboard political analysis.

If true, this is a legitimate bombshell (or at least it should be):

Iraqi intelligence documents, confiscated by U.S. forces and obtained by CNSNews.com, show numerous efforts by Saddam Hussein's regime to work with some of the world's most notorious terror organizations, including al Qaeda, to target Americans. They demonstrate that Saddam's government possessed mustard gas and anthrax, both considered weapons of mass destruction, in the summer of 2000, during the period in which United Nations weapons inspectors were not present in Iraq. And the papers show that Iraq trained dozens of terrorists inside its borders.

One of the Iraqi memos contains an order from Saddam for his intelligence service to support terrorist attacks against Americans in Somalia. The memo was written nine months before U.S. Army Rangers were ambushed in Mogadishu by forces loyal to a warlord with alleged ties to al Qaeda.

(Emphasis mine)

Assuming that the documents are real, of course.

Polish troops will start to withdraw from Iraq in the New Year and all will be out by the end of 2005, the country's president has promised.

Poland is the fourth-largest contributor of troops to the coalition in Iraq - with 2,500 - and there is strong opposition at home to the deployment.

Beyond the political implications for US and Polish elections, signalling a deadline to the enemy is effectively very bad policy.

Are the SwiftVets Republican operatives? And does their commentary detract from the Presidential race?

Dean Esmay has an exclusive interview with Swift Boat Vet Van Odell, and many of his questions aren't softballs.

For this:

As I discovered from reading the comments and following the TrackBacks from my brief post on the subject, many people don't bother actually reading what's written before engaging in commentary on it.

Yes. Thank you. You should see the e-mails ...

On Friday I teased an upcoming interview and cartoon, but I got sidetracked this weekend with ... "debate-non-gate?" Hopefully I'll get them out later this week. Regarding the debate, a few very important points:

My post about the debate was not intended to "distract from the issues," I had no idea that it would get picked up with a typically melodramatic Drudge headline and treatment, and it certainly doesn't directly accuse John Kerry of "cheating," rather highlights the appearance of impropriety and explicitly accuses him of a direct violation of the terms of the debate, and then explains why such rules are important. There was also no intention to make excuses for Bush's performance in the contest; for reference, some of my new (pleasant) left-wing readers should read my previous defense of the fairness of Lehrer's questioning:

And at the very least, there was nothing that George Bush shouldn't have been able to swat down with abandon. Some of the complaints about how hard and mean Lehrer's questions were seem like petulant whining.

"Petulant whining" is exactly what I'm being accused of, but if you go back and read the initial post about the debate, the terminology and tone were relatively laid-back and straightforward:

INDC Journal and the Daily Recycler aren't going to hyperventilate and claim that this violation influenced the outcome of the first debate ...

Read it next time.

And to the members of the VRWC that were ready to have Kerry hogtied and beaten with a rubber hose, I'll highlight the dependent clause:

... but it's certainly reasonable to request that the rules are followed by the Kerry Campaign and enforced by the Debate Commission for the remaining two contests.

I guess I'll have to ignore all of the specific accusations about me being fitted for a tin-foil hat, so I'll just issue a sweeping defense by repeating the comment made by ScottM under the previous post:

I'm not sure why it's supposed to be fever-swamp thinking to ask why Senator Kerry violated the rules.

Exactly. If I had John Kerry's cellphone number, maybe I would have called him and said, "John, baby, what are you doing bringing things to the debate? Looks bad, man, real bad." As it is, I have a blog.

Another sentiment that gets under my skin is this typical tidbit:

As a comment, I really hope this is something. If it isn’t, then all the credit the blogosphere has built up over the exposure of CBS’ use of fake memos will be blown.

Blown how? Because some people run with the news like a naked, giggling baby? Unless there was a coordinated agreement to violate the rule just prior to the broadcast, there is absolutely no doubt that Kerry violated the terms of the debate. Whether it's a big deal or not depends on subjective interpretation of the objective information, as well as the nature of the object. As it is, the New York Post reveals their opinion:

But the mystery was solved when The Post reviewed a Fox News Channel feed from Thursday's debate: Kerry pulled out . . . a black pen.

If the Post's judgement is based on new evidence, I apologize if my post started an inappropriate furor, and I apologize if anything in my tone was too accusatory ... but I don't apologize for posting the story.

In a contest that was prefaced by weeks of negotiation, and has staggering international implications, the rules that govern undue advantage, or even the perception of undue advantage, are important. Otherwise, the 30+ page document wouldn't have forbidden all "tangible things" and bothered with the following regulation:

Each candidate must submit to the staff of the Commission prior to the debate all such paper and any pens or pencils with which a candidate may wish to take notes during the debate, and the staff or commission will place such paper, pens and pencils on the podium, table or other structure to be used by the candidate in that debate.

In addition, this is a blog. Bloggers analyze things and draw conclusions. And what may be lost in the distortion and feedback of this issue is the fact that my unequivocal headline and conclusions were completely accurate:

"John Kerry Violated Debate Rules"

UPDATE: If the NY Post and FOX News are interested in putting a stake in this meme, I'd suggest that they release the high-def stills, seeing as I've already received this comment:

Pen My ASS!!! Look at that movie. Obviously either note cards or a sheet of paper.

I assume that the Post's analysis is accurate, but many will not come to the same conclusion without evidence. Why do I assume that it could be a pen after viewing that seemingly contradictory link? Perhaps the pen was in a case, and Kerry was merely flipping the case's top, and perhaps he shuffled the papers that were already on the podium. Who knows?

UPDATE: Also, I've seen a lot of comments and blogs indicating that Bush "took something out as well." Based on repeated review of the angle of the tape, I find that conclusion utterly strange and puzzling. It seems very clear that his hand is resting on the podium, and that the movement centers around uncapping or clicking a pen. That being said, if Bush took something out of his pocket (a sentiment that I don't endorse based on the video), then he would have violated the terms of the debate as well. A recommendation for internet sleuths: back-up the accusation with a still of Bush's hand in a pocket. Thus far, most analysis and conclusion simply makes an assertion without a compelling still frame.

UPDATE: Error corrected - it was the Post's analysis of FOX's video feed. FOX had nothing to do with the Post's conclusion. (Thanks to AW) If the Post was merely looking at the same angle from the debate, then I'm confused about their declarative certainty. I will withold further judgement or comment until FOX News releases footage or issues a statement.

UPDATE: In the comments, IgwanaRob issues the following demand:

It's obvious we need a full frontal Bush shot...

Um, Rob? Keep your twisted fantasies about the President to yourself, buddy - this is a family-friendly blog.

UPDATE: In the comments, Angie Shultz calls me out:

You made it into a big deal when you said, "Must CREDIT Recycler and INDC". This makes it a Real News Story ... you chose to invest the story with your newly-won journalistic creds. I agree that it's important for the candidates to follow the rules, and I'm glad that this is the line you're taking. But "Must CREDIT" and *** INDC Journal and Daily Recycler Zapruder Special *** suggest you have something really damning here.

This is a good point. I apologize if having fun with the post made for poor information management. But this is still a blog, and I will point out that "Must Credit" was added only after Drudge ran it and yanked attribution, and that "Zapruder" was tongue-in-cheek, actually designed to humorously and mildly minimize the impact of the story when compared to "really weighty evidence" for a "really big story." That line, along with the alternate demand for exclusivity, was preceded by the headline:

"John Kerry Violated Debate Rules"

Not "John Kerry Won Because He Cheated." That being said, she's correct in making the judgment that my taglines set a certain tone. I'm sorry if this influenced the fever swamp, but the violation itself is news (as long as the specific nature of the violation is unclear). Period. My explicit goal was to prevent further violations. Period.

FINAL(?) UPDATE: Text around excerpt from the NY Post edited for clarity and meaning.

UPDATE: See breaking news item.

Re., accusation that Kerry brought in forbidden materials to the debate.

Hey bill, what a lame attempt at belittling Kerry after he kicked Bush's rear all over the stage. You are just like the Swift Boat Vets for Stretching the Truth. Sometimes I look at jokers like you and wonder what happened to all your little grey cells as it is obvious you have very few left.

People like you are all anal retentive and have little to offer in the way of objective journalism or reporting and are great examples of small minded biased people with little to contribute to this planet of ours...so why don't you just disappear.

I got a real laugh out of this latest attempt to portray yourself as a patriot....You are a joke.

Sincerely and without respect,

Murv Sears
murv_s@olypen.com

It's not an "accusation," Murv. Kerry violated the terms of the agreement, very similar to the way that you've violated the rules of English syntax and punctuation.

The tone of my post is relatively laid-back and sober, and I'm not attacking Kerry because he "kicked Bush's rear all over the stage," rather primarily pointing out that the terms of the debate should be enforced in the remaining venues. That's what's important.

Remember folks, it was a big deal when Nixon didn't shave, for Pete's sake.

UPDATE: LGF has a better view of Debategate.

UPDATE: I'll parrot Charles's line:

By the way, if this turns out to be something innocuous and perfectly legal according to the Memorandum of Understanding, I’ll be one of the first to acknowledge it. (Unless I’m asleep.)

It can't be ok by the strict terms of the Memo of Understanding, but it could still be innocuous.

A Time magazine exclusive:

London's Dirty-Bomb Plot
British authorities suspect that a cell of Islamic terrorists where trying to harvest radioactive material from smoke detectors

A dirty bomb may not be as destructive as many people think, but the lasting stigma of a radioactive explosion in a dense urban area could be catastrophic news for the economies of places like London, NY and DC ...

I didn't score so well ...

We're sorry, but your score of -3700 is not sufficiently high to justify your imperialistic foreign adventure.

UPDATE: Some sites have linked to this URL in the past few days with a reference that John Kerry "cheated" during the 2004 debates. As the original post attempted to make clear with updates, Kerry did not cheat, rather broke the technical rules outlined by both parties prior to the debate by bringing in a pen. Since this truth is apparently still getting muddled, I'll add this statement: there is no evidence that John Kerry cheated in the 2004 debate.

Original post follows:

IMPORTANT NOTE: For best view, right click on video while it's playing and select 'zoom,' 'full screen.'

John Kerry brought prohibited material into last Thursday's Presidential Debate. From section 5, pages 4-5 of the binding "Memorandum of Understanding" (pdf file) that was negotiated and agreed upon by both political campaigns:

(c) No props, notes, charts, diagrams, or other writings or other tangible things may be brought into the debate by either candidate.
...
(d) Notwithstanding subparagraph 5(c), the candidates may take notes during the debate on the size, color and type of paper each side prefers. Each candidate must submit to the staff of the Commission prior to the debate all such paper and any pens or pencils with which a candidate may wish to take notes during the debate, and the staff or commission will place such paper, pens and pencils on the podium, table or other structure to be used by the candidate in that debate.

(Emphasis mine)

As indicated by the linked video (fullscreen mode is very compelling), John Kerry clearly removes what look like note cards or papers from his right jacket pocket, and then places them on the podium at the beginning of the debate.

1. A single candidate's use of prepared notes could provide a distinct advantage in the debate, hence their mutual prohibition.

2. While the nature of the object is inconclusive based on the angle and resolution of the video, the rules clearly state that "[n]o ... tangible things may be brought into the debate by either candidate." That includes notes, Mont Blanc pens, magic hats, you name it.

INDC Journal and the Daily Recycler aren't going to hyperventilate and claim that this violation influenced the outcome of the first debate, but it's certainly reasonable to request that the rules are followed by the Kerry Campaign and enforced by the Debate Commission for the remaining two contests.

UPDATE: And if it was his lucky CIA hat? The magical powers could have been devastating!

UPDATE: Captain Ed