Firestarter

Rumsfeld repeatedly made statements insinuating that he could find the WMD himself if the Iraqi government wasn't playing their inspectors shell games. Find me one direct quote in which the President stated that Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat. You can't. Why? Because he said precisely the opposite. And you are a liar. Stop lying. Stop trying to weasel your way out of your lies. Is your statement false or not? Do you or do you not admit that you lied when you made it?

Feh.

I'm sorry, I should've said Mosselmen. Or Mohammedans. I don't care if my spelling doesn't closely approximate the Arabic pronunciation. I call them what I've always called them. I speak English and I don't speak Arabic, so to hell with the Arabic pronunciation. Go tell them to start calling us "Americans" rather than "Uhngraze" or "Uhmreekee" and I'll think about calling them "Muslims."

Like when, say, you shoot an enemy soldier in the head without giving him the opportunity to defend himself in a court of law first? These are unrepentant and admitted terrorists. They are enemies of the United States and they deserve nothing but death. I'll see them in hell before one cent of my taxes goes towards providing them with the rights they're trying to take away from us.

I agree, we're violating their rights. It's their unalienable right as Moslem terrorists to be shot in the head by United States Marines. We need to respect that right and start shooting them right now.

Precisely so. And that is why the President's policy of pre-emptive strikes makes the United States, and the world, safer.

Yep. And they did. Way back before the war ever started, I mentioned that Ansar al-Islam was operating in northern Iraq with Saddam Hussein's approval, and now we have undeniable proof. An out and out lie that you and Tyler never seem to tire of repeating. Find me one direct quote in which the President stated that Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat. You can't. Why? Because he said precisely the opposite: that we could not afford to wait until the threat from Iraq was in fact imminent. "America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof - the smoking gun - that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud. As President Kennedy said in October of 1962, 'Neither the United States of America, nor the world community of nations can tolerate deliberate deception and offensive threats on the part of any nation, large or small. We no longer live in a world,' he said, 'where only the actual firing of weapons represents a sufficient challenge to a nations security to constitute maximum peril.' Understanding the threats of our time, knowing the designs and deceptions of the Iraqi regime, we have every reason to assume the worst, and we have an urgent duty to prevent the worst from occurring." - Remarks by the President on Iraq, 10/07/02

And it's precisely that sort of patronising garbage that proves beyond all reasonable doubt that the left is not only hypocritical almost beyond belief but deeply racist itself. Dr Condoleezza Rice said it best: "We must never indulge the condescending voices who allege that some people in Africa or in the Middle East are just not interested in freedom, that they're culturally just not ready for freedom, or that they just aren't ready for freedom's responsibilities. That view was wrong in 1963 in Birmingham, and it is wrong in 2003 in Baghdad." Freedom and justice are absolutely universal. Saddam Hussein will be tried by Iraqis, yes. But the Iraqi people, no less than any other people anywhere in the world, hate oppression and love freedom. They've been given back their freedom by President Bush. They will not reject it in favour of more decades of torture, murder, and subjugation under Saddam Hussein. The fact that you posted those absurd caricatures proves once and for all that you and everyone like you, with your cloying multiculturalist ideals and supposedly complex nuanced sensitivity, are the bigots. And the President you oppose and deride as an obtuse blunderer is the one who exemplies courage, wisdom, fairness, vision, and foresight.

Jesus CHRIST, who the fucking hell cares if we offended a few goddamn Iraqis by humiliating Saddam Hussein? I don't need a fucking ridiculous analogy to MY President being captured in an inane hypothetical that will never happen to get the fucking obvious. Congratulations, you've made your point and it's utterly fucking worthless. Iraqis who were offended by Saddam Hussein's humiliation are the Iraqis we want to capture or kill, so offending them means approximately shit to me. The vast majority of Iraqis were overjoyed that we captured him and they don't give a shit about their former torturer being humiliated either. In fact they were probably happy about it. And yes, filming him like that WAS meant to humiliate, infantilise, and ridicule him. Yes. Yes it was. We did it deliberately and we did it well. He'd built up a grand mythology about himself over decades of oppressing his people, a culture of fear and awe and terror, and it had to be destroyed. This was a good first step. The next will be the trial, and yes, the outcome is predetermined. Saddam Hussein will not be found innocent. He has NO chance. Not one. And he doesn't deserve one. I'm fucking sick of apologising for our actions. We're the angels here assholes, and you fucking sit down and shut the fuck up if you can't appreciate that fact. Do we humiliate, incarcerate, hunt, and kill evil people? Do we make their worlds a living hell? Do we blow up their houses, hurl down their power structures, and rip apart their organisations? Yes we fucking well do and I'm fucking proud of it. If you think we need to apologise for any of that or consider their fucking feelings or their oh so precious religious sensibilities while we're destroying them you're a fucking idiot.

- America Makes Life Worse for Iraqis, Who Are Increasingly Siding with Saddam Hussein

It's a process. That process is ongoing. Really? Have you taken a poll? Really? I haven't noticed many successful terrorist operations in the recent past. For the moment. I'll pass that on to the special forces in Afghanistan and the FBI agents in Pakistan. Nope. You don't. If it's rabid, like Moslem terrorism, you shoot it. And that's what we're doing. On the whole, what we're doing already. Nope. But we're making America safer. What security clearances do you have? And that, right there, is why my contempt for you cannot be fully put into words.

Stabilise the region. OH! <smacks herself in the forehead> That's what we should be doing?! Well thank God we have you around to clue us in! Where's the President? I need to tell him that we should be stabilising the region!!! My God what a fucking revelation! I'M BLINDED BY THE LIGHT OF TRUTH Well, fuck me, but I thought that's exactly what we WERE doing by killing, capturing, and hunting them. But no! Obviously we should be doing something else entirely! Will you enlighten us, O great bodhisattva of wisdom? Shit! You're right! You're SO RIGHT! Not living under the lash of a sadistic tyrant doesn't improve anyone's quality of life! I mean who cares about the freedom to speak your mind without being tortured, raped, and shot in the head? The Iraqi people sure don't! We need to start handing out welfare cheques to them instead of hunting down the Ba'athists! That should improve their quality of life! Yay! And then we'll win a big fucking prize for being the Best Loved Country In The Whole Wide Wide World! YAAAAAYYYYY Yeah! Stop those embarrassing stories, who gives a shit about the First Amendment! And I'll bet they aren't bothering to plan anything of the sort on their own! They're waiting for college kids in the States to come up with ideas and write about them in the papers so they can figure out what to do! Damn those cunning Al-Qaeda bastards! Where's the President?!!!

Whatever I had last night. Jesus, my head hurts.

Excellent.

Shut up.

You better watch out, you better not cry, You better not pout, I'm telling you why, Santa Claus is coming to town. He's making a list and checking it twice; He's gonna find out who's naughty and nice; Santa Claus is coming to town.

Any news items with significant legal, cultural, and/or social ramifications should stay in CE. The news items I really consider "fluff" are those which are only remarkable because they're bizarre, gross, or funny.

- The Campaign of Hate and Fear by Orson Scott Card A long but excellent column. Read the entire piece to appreciate Mr Card's trenchant points on the differences between Iraq and Vietnam, and the similarities in the dishonest attacks leading up to the elections in 1992 and 2004. NB: all boldface mine.

No, the Cuban missile crisis was ended by making the Soviets realise that our strategic first-strike capability would overwhelm them within minutes of the launch of their tactical nukes. Khrushchev realised that the face-off was spinning out of control and he decided to put a stop to it before we took him apart. Neither conventional arms nor diplomacy played any significant role, despite RFK's meetings with Dobrynin.

In almost everything before Sexie, yes. I've just ordered Circle, which I haven't yet seen, but from what I've read about it, it looks much more like his previous work than Sexie.

Sexie was crap, though. My wife and I just got it from the UK and it's unbelievably boring. Very little on politics, religion, history, and sociology, just a lot of movie references and a bit of pop culture here and there - none of the brilliance that made Dress to Kill, Glorious, Definite Article, Unrepeatable, and Live at the Ambassador's such superb, almost peerless examples of the art of comedy. I wonder what the hell he was thinking - it's not as if there hasn't been enough going on in the world over the past few years. He should have had truckloads of material, but there wasn't word one about Iraq, the war on terror, Europe, the United States, Islam, or anything else even marginally pertinent to people's lives. It was plodding at best, a good cure for insomnia at worst. Maybe half a dozen jokes that actually made us laugh over something like two hours, and we're tremendous fans of his past work. Disappointing, extremely disappointing. I don't even think he did his James Mason voice, and there was nothing like the genius which made some of his past lines and skits so devastatingly perfect and quotable. Ten years from now, I'll still be saying "Cake or death?" and "God attack the Queen, send big dogs after her," and "Put all the animals with long ears along the shide of the shpeedboat," but I doubt I'll remember even one word from Sexie.

All I have to say is this: God bless and keep you, President Truman. I'm grateful beyond measure for your courage and wisdom, and of all the people who suffered on August 6th, 1945, my sympathies are foremost with you for the awful decision you had to make.

Excellent piece. Thanks for posting it here, Mike.

I didn't see where the Secret Service told him to go to a specific spot and protest. They just moved him away from the President. So? What principle? Seriously. What's the principle here? I'm asking this question in all honesty. What specific right do you think is being violated? It's not the right to protest. Bursey was allowed to protest. He was just made to do it in a spot which he felt was "out of sight of the president and the press." The Constitution does not guarantee that you will be seen by the President. The Constitution does not guarantee that you will get your picture in the newspapers. The Constitution does not force the President or any government agency to ensure that your face is televised nationwide. More accurately, Neel's fifteen minutes of fame were taken away from him. Go bitch at Andy Warhol. Go bitch at CNN. But don't bitch at the President, and don't bitch at me.

Oh yes. I remember this garbage. So you weren't allowed to get in the President's face and yell that he was a mass murderer and a corrupt moron. Big whoop. Try doing that to a private citizen and you'll have your ass thrown in jail for assault, intimidation, harassment, and stalking. You don't have the right to protest in the best position for a photo-op. There's no constitutional amendment that guarantees that. You have the right to protest. If the Secret Service decides that you might be a threat to the President's safety they have not only a right but a duty to move you. Bitch all you want, it's not an attack on free speech. You can still speak. You just can't do it in the President's face. Sorry.* * No I'm not. You said "what happens if someone else attacks us." I told you what could happen. The fact alone effectively renders the possibility of any open attack nonexistent.