Raving lunatic describes modern-day events from a Libertarian/Conservative point of view.
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05/09/2004 - 05/16/2004 /
05/16/2004 - 05/23/2004 /
I'm sure you've all seen the quotes from babbling Blix and assorted other ass biscuits about how the sarin chemical gas shell that was used as an IED must've been some kind of bizarre fluke. Here's another way to look at it. Iraq is apparently the only country where WMDs are so common that our soldiers can get attacked with wildly illegal nerve gas completely by accident. Isn't that amazing? I must go think on that for a while. I suggest you do the same. It might prove useful.
It seems to me that both arguments have put the cart before the horse. For one thing, you cannot have representative democracy without taking a census of the electorate, something which cannot have been completed in the current environment. And who takes such a census? The Americans? I doubt that an American census would satisfy many of the occupation's critics; we can't even do one in the US without a lot of rancid debate about undercounts and political shenanigans. In Iraq, where the CPA might have good reason to undercount in difficult areas such as the Sunni Triangle, Najaf, and Kufa (even legitimate ones, such as lack of access while bullets are flying), you can bet your last dinar that any result would have zero credibility.
The only authority that could attempt a census with any measure of credibility is a reasonably independent Iraqi government, transitional or not. With Americans and British troops providing security, such an effort will still take months, meaning any national or regional elections before then would be hopelessly flawed. I don't even know if anyone has promulgated voter qualifications, such as what constitutes an Iraqi citizen, what kinds of documentation are needed for identification, and so on. It's easy to call for elections when your whole life has been spent in a stable democracy -- most of those questions were answered before you were born.
On the other hand, I agree with Kaus about rolling elections. Let's establish control where we can, conduct censuses under the auspices of the Iraqi Governing Council, and demonstrate to those areas currently experiencing insurgencies that democracy can work in Iraq. Successful elections will put more pressure on the militias to disband as Iraqis see how normative representative government can be. Rather than dropping democracy like a philosophical bomb on the entire country at once, establish it where it's most likely to succeed and let it grow into the rest of the country.
....The American media is now acting as a fifth column, just as it did in Vietnam. The press is adamantly opposed to President Bush and the Iraq policy. Ergo, it "reports" the story to make the thing look far worse than it is. Hence the administration is losing the information war. The most glaring example is the fact that an American was brutally and mercilessly slain in cold blood with and international audience and the American press gave it short shrift. Today it's back to Abu Ghraib and the ever irresponsible Charlie Rangold(sic) suggesting that Berg was killed because there are not enough jobs in America and of course that very unfortunate emotional diatribe from Nick Berg's grieving father.
"Last week, John S. Carroll, editor of the Los Angeles Times, delivered a lecture during "Ethics Week" of the Society of Professional Journalists. The speaker has not yet been announced for "Abstinence Week" of the Society of Professional Whores."
Ann Coulter
President Bush is no news junkie, or so he informs The Washington Times senior White House correspondent Bill Sammon.
"I don't watch the nightly newscasts on TV, nor do I watch the endless hours of people giving their opinion about things," Mr. Bush says in one of several intriguing chapters of Mr. Sammon's new book, "Misunderestimated: The President Battles Terrorism, John Kerry and the Bush Haters."
"I don't read the editorial pages; I don't read the columnists," Mr. Bush says.
In fact, the president says he gets his unofficial news by "scanning" four morning papers: "I get the newspapers — the New York Times, The Washington Times, The Washington Post, and USA Today — those are the four papers delivered."
"Experts fear 'dirty bomb' attack in U.S., Europe." Thus spake a story
featured Sunday in the Los Angeles Times and headlined on Yahoo News, where I spotted it.
While a dirty bomb "would not cause the death and destruction of a nuclear weapon," experts say it would "produce some fatalities, radiation sickness, mass panic and enormous economic damage."
But that, of course, is not the case at all. Instead, Abu Ghraib is all the rage. It's a wild circus, 24/7, the images from the prison as sordid and obscene as the faces of the leftist moralists are righteous and haughty.
It's been claimed that liberals can't cope with the reality of evil, hence deny the necessity to fight it. But the existence of evil isn't really liberals' problem; it's that they see it in the wrong places.
Whether it was Vietnam, the Cold War, or now the War on Terror, liberals always shine the spotlight on alleged sins of U.S. presidents or the U.S. military. The names Nixon, Reagan, and Bush are actually talismans of evil for them, but not the savage regimes and movements that they fight.
In fact, liberals will accuse Republican presidents of any evil imaginable. Nixon's 1972 "Christmas bombing" of North Vietnam was, for Anthony Lewis, "the most destructive single episode of international violence in recent history  a policy that many must know history will judge a crime against humanity." Back in the eighties, I had parlor arguments with liberals who explained Reagan's nuclear policy as a desire "to nuke us all." Now, in Iraq, liberals see a war "to make the world safe for Halliburton."
And when America really does screw up -- as in My Lai, or Abu Ghraib -- that's when liberals go wild. At such times you find out how very little they're impressed by things like dirty bombs, Iranian nukes, or Saddam's mass graves. With America and the world facing unprecedented, apocalyptic threats, liberals lust only to topple an admired, experienced U.S. defense secretary of proven effectiveness. Liberals don't believe in evil? No, they believe in it; but they see it in us.
And so the Left keeps distorting the public agenda, keeps stoking anti-American hatred, keeps flailing away at those trying to defend us. When Lenin made his famous remark about useful idiots, he couldn't imagine the destructive power of useful idiots armed with 21st-century media technology. But his totalitarian descendants among the Islamists understand it well, and know that they can build their weapons in secret while liberals unleash another dirty bomb of anti-American calumny.