THE JIG OF MEDIA FRAUD
A great moment in journalism it wasn't. At 6:58 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time on Tuesday, Aug. 14, Agence France Presse distributed a photograph by Wissam al-Okaili, an AFP stringer, of an elderly Iraqi woman holding two cartridges in one hand. The caption that accompanied the photo read: "An elderly Iraqi woman shows two bullets which she said hit her house following an early coalition forces raid in the predominantly Shiite Baghdad suburb of Sadr City." I used the word "cartridges." The caption writer used the word "bullets." Let me explain the difference for the benefit of the photo editors at AFP. A cartridge consists of three elements: the bullet (the pointy thing at one end); the propellant (the gunpowder stuff) that forces the bullet through the barrel of the gun when the trigger is pulled; and the casing, in which the bullet and the propellant are held together until the cartridge is fired. Once the cartridge is fired, the bullet and the casing go their separate ways. So here's the AFP photo:
INDIANA JONES AND THE ALAWITE APOSTASY
Last Monday (8/20), Senator Joe Lieberman came quite close, in the op-ed page of the Wall St. Journal, to publicly calling for regime change in Syria. He couched it as calling for a boycott of Damascus Airport by international airlines as it is "the main terminal for international terror," through which flow foreign suicide bombers to be sent into Iraq and kill Iraqi civilians and American soldiers. Privately, he wants the "terrorist regime" of Bashar al-Assad removed from power, and is in close consultation on how to do so with the only folks possessing real cajones in the Bush White House, Dick Cheney and his staff. This is giving the Little Lord Fauntleroys in the seventh floor of the State Department the vapors. Condi has become their stooge, totally wimping out to the permanent (and permanently invertebrate) State bureaucracy. Thus she is blocking any attempt of Cheney and Lieberman's to get Bush to approve a plan for regime change in Syria. Now it looks like they've got allies, the richest and most influential allies in all the Middle East. The Saudis have decided that the Bashar regime must go, and Cheney and Lieberman are only too happy to accept their help. Finally, the Syrian dictatorship's Alawite Apostasy has caught up with it. And that brings up Indiana Jones.
PRIMARY INSANITY
America's democracy has always had its flaws, but it has long been considered the best. Our political "leaders" are changing that. Those of you who have lives may not have noticed that our presidential nominating process, which in recent years has been teetering on the brink of insanity, has plunged into madness. The Iowa caucuses traditionally have been held eight days before the New Hampshire primary. If New Hampshire moves its primary to Jan. 8, and Iowa keeps the normal separation, then the Iowa caucuses would be held on New Year's Day. Though caucus goers may make better choices when they're roaring drunk, and it would be delightful to make political reporters work that day, this is unlikely to happen. New Hampshire is likely to opt for its first ever Saturday primary, so Iowa can hold its caucus during the election year, though barely after the college football bowl games have ended. But at this writing it is possible the voting for president in 2008 will begin in 2007.
WE ARE WINNING IN IRAQ – WHEN DO WE GET TO WIN IN IRAN?
In reality - for what little it matters nowadays, either here or in the Middle East - we are winning the battle of Iraq. The percentage increase in Iranian activity, combined with a drop in the number of attacks, is another way of saying that al Qaeda is being destroyed for a second time, and the Iranians are scrambling to fill the void. But they are on the run, just as is al Qaeda, as you can tell by the back-and-forth shuttling of their factotum Moqtadah al Sadr, between Iran and Iraq. If their scheme was working in Iraq, he'd sit still. He's scrambling because they're in trouble. They're in trouble at home, too. Indeed, things are so bad that the government itself has open fissures, the latest caused by the resignation of the minister of industry and mines, and by the public testimony of the minister of welfare:
EURIPIDES’ RECIPE
Last month, Tom "Take ‘Em Out" Tancredo (R-CO) set off another political tsunami when he proclaimed on a talk radio show that if Moslem terrorists attacked America with nuclear weapons, we should respond in kind by wiping out Mecca. Everyone from the terrorist accomplices at CAIR to the terrorist appeasers at State was suitably outraged. Which was fine with Tom, for the whole purpose of his remark was to rattle their cages. And to add a whiff of substance to the whispers about Project Ultimate Deterrence. You learned about it almost three years ago (10/04) in Mad in Mecca -- the possibility that there already is a W-80 warhead from a cruise missile secretly buried somewhere in Mecca and satellite signal-ready to detonate with enough plutonium to render Islam's holiest site uninhabitable for several thousand years. This was further discussed (1/05) in George Bush and the Sword of Damocles: Why There hasn't Been Another 9-11. Yet holding Mecca as a nuclear hostage is not the only strategy in Ultimate Deterrence. There is another: Project Jahannam. You learned about it a little over a year ago (4/06) in No Moslems Go To Heaven, and again this spring (4/07) in Jahannam in Jolo. Jahannam is Arabic for Islam's Hell. It's all part of something called Euripides' Recipe.
BY WANTING AMERICA TO LOSE, DEMOCRATS WILL LOSE IN 2008
The Democrats, after spending the winter, spring and early summer frantically calling for getting out of Iraq as fast as their little feet can carry them, are now, as autumn approaches, demonstrating their Olympic-class back-pedaling skills. By winter (with the complicity of the drive-by media) the Democrats hope to expunge the historic record of their failure of war nerve this spring. This is the moment for Republicans from the president, to the candidates for president, to the incumbents and challengers for offices all the way down to dog catcher (and especially dog catcher) to remind the public of the springtime Democrat Party defeatism and lost nerve. The leadership of the Democrat Party has, by its public words this spring, disgraced themselves for a generation. Republicans have the right - and the duty - to engrave in the public mind the springtime Democrat perfidy and cowardice in the face of the enemy.
HOW MERV GRIFFIN ENHANCED AND EXTENDED THE LIVES OF MILLIONS
I first met Merv in 1977. Intrigued by my book, The Adventurer's Guide which explained how regular folks could have great adventures around the world, he had me as a guest on The Merv Griffin Show. We hit it off so well that I ended up being a co-host for his shows featuring famous adventurers and explorers as guests, such as Thor Hyerdahl, Jacques Cousteau, and Lowell Thomas. Whenever I got back from my latest adventure, living with cannibals in New Guinea, skydiving on the North Pole, taking elephants over the Alps, I'd get a call from Merv asking how soon could I be on the show. One conversation with Merv, however, ended up affecting the lives of millions for the better, quite possibly yours. Millions of people in America are alive today, will live longer, and are in better health because of this one conversation I had with Merv. It wasn't on his show. It was in a restaurant at the Riviera Hotel in Vegas.
SLAUGHTERING INNOCENTS TO IMPRESS CONGRESS
On Tuesday, August 14, Al Qaeda terrorists detonated four massive truck bombs in three Iraqi villages, killing at least 250 civilians (perhaps as many as 500) and wounding many more. The bombings were a sign of Al Qaeda's frustration, desperation and fear. Al Qaeda has been badly battered. It's lost top leaders and thousands of cadres. Even more painful for the Islamists, they've lost ground among the people of Iraq, including former allies. Iraqis got a good taste of Al Qaeda. Now they're spitting it out. Thus the purpose of these dramatic bombings is that Al Qaeda needs to portray Iraq as a continuing failure of U.S. policy. Those dead and maimed Iraqis were just props: The intended audience was Congress The foreign terrorists slaughtering the innocent recognize that their only remaining hope of pulling off a come-from-way-behind win is to convince your senator and your congressman or -woman that it's politically expedient to hand a default victory to a defeated Al Qaeda.
PROOF OF WARMING: IT’S ALMOST AS HOT AS THE 1930s
It was a small change, made quietly two weeks ago on the website of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies. But it could have big implications. Al Gore claimed in his 2006 crockumentary "An Inconvenient Truth" that nine of the ten hottest years in history have been in the last decade, with 1998 the warmest year on record. Not so, says the GISS, which is affiliated with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and Columbia University, and is headed by Dr. James Hansen, scientific godfather of global warming alarmism. According to the GISS, the hottest years ever in the U.S. were, in order: 1934, 1998, 1921, 2006, 1931, 1999, 1953, 1990, 1938 and 1939. Only one year in the last five (2006, 4th) is on this list, and only three in the last ten, compared to four in the 1930s.
THE IMPORTANCE OF HELPING MEXICO
Imagine if our country were so ravaged by drug cartels that the president sent the military into a third of the states to break the terror. That's where Mexico is today. We all pay the price. Narcotraficante infighting took over 3,000 lives in Mexico last year as the Sinaloa and Gulf cartels struggled for turf. With government officials and police officers facing the old choice of "silver or lead," out-of-control corruption plagued the country. Entire states fell under the influence of the drug lords. Narco-violence spread to previously safe regions, such as Monterrey - the most prosperous city between the Amazon and the Rio Grande. By late 2006, Mexico faced its gravest internal crisis since the Revolution of 1910. In response, Mexicans elected a tough president, Felipe Calderon. And President Calderon took action, ordering the army into nine states and deploying troops to cities such as Tijuana and the run-down resort of Acapulco. But the drug lords are fighting back. Today, the level of violence transcends mere crime. Mexico faces a narco-insurrection. And its government needs help.