Month: August 2006

From Israel, we get the following headline:

Many Israelis Furious at How War Was Run

Didn’t they get the Cheney-Rumsfeld memo? Don’t they realize that, according to Joe Lieberman, no citizen in a democracy should criticize the conduct of a war while a terror threat is in place? Don’t they understand that their job is to support their political leadership at all times and that any criticism is simply playing into the hands of terrorists? And yet few in Israel are saying these things. Apparently, the Israeli democracy, a democracy that is barely fifty years old, is much more robust than America’s. America is too weak to allow its leaders to be criticized in wartime, its citizenry too pathetic to distinguish between assailing an administration for bungling a war to an almost comic extent and supporting terror – at least in the mind of Dick Cheney. Tom Friedman (TimesDelete) has the best response to Cheney’s brutally consistent incompetence:

If we‚Äôre in such a titanic struggle with radical Islam, and if getting Iraq right is at the center of that struggle, why did you ‘tough guys’ fight the Iraq war with the Rumsfeld Doctrine ‚Äî just enough troops to lose ‚Äî and not the Powell Doctrine of overwhelming force to create the necessary foundation of any democracy-building project, which is security? How could you send so few troops to fight such an important war when it was obvious that without security Iraqis would fall back on their tribal militias?

Bottom line: Mr Cheney, you’re an incompetent wimp who didn’t have the will to win in Iraq, or the integrity to uphold American values while fighting a deadly foe. You have thereby made us all less safe, and stained the reputation of America for decades. Your incompetence and brutality have made us both less feared and more despised in the world. Why is that not the rallying cry for the opposition this fall?

(Photo: Charles Dharapak/AP.)

It’s Dennis Leary, the Red Sox, a Jewish first baseman, and Mel Gibson – from last night’s TV. Classic. Sublime. The best commentary on Gibson yet.

(Hat tip: Seth Mnookin’s great blog and Deadspin.)

The Viriginia hierarchy back a state constitutional amendment to strip gay couples of any legal protections for their relationships, deny their partner health benefits, access to hospital rooms, inheritance rights and simple human dignity. Read the statement and see if you can find any outreach to the minority being targeted for discrimination, any argument that treats the minority as human and deserving of respect. This is what the Catholic hierarchy now prioritizes: targeting social outcasts for further marginalization.

So far, no one has been charged in the alleged terror plot to blow up several airplanes across the Atlantic. No evidence has been produced supporting the contention that such a plot was indeed imminent. Forgive me if my skepticism just ratcheted up a little notch. Under a law that the Tories helped weaken, the suspects can be held without charges for up to 28 days. Those days are ticking by. Remember: the British authorities had all these people under surveillance; they did not want to act last week; there was no imminent threat of anything but a possible "dummy-run," whatever deranged guest-bloggers at Malkin say. (Correction, please.) Bush and Blair discussed whether to throw Britain’s airports into chaos over the weekend before the crackdown occurred.

Then we have the following comment from Craig Murray. Craig Murray was Tony Blair’s ambassador to Uzbekistan whose internal memo complaining about evidence procured by out-sourced torture created a flap a while back. He is skeptical. Money quote:

None of the alleged terrorists had made a bomb. None had bought a plane ticket. Many did not even have passports, which given the efficiency of the UK Passport Agency would mean they couldn’t be a plane bomber for quite some time.

In the absence of bombs and airline tickets, and in many cases passports, it could be pretty difficult to convince a jury beyond reasonable doubt that individuals intended to go through with suicide bombings, whatever rash stuff they may have bragged in internet chat rooms.

What is more, many of those arrested had been under surveillance for over a year – like thousands of other British Muslims. And not just Muslims. Like me. Nothing from that surveillance had indicated the need for early arrests.

Then an interrogation in Pakistan revealed the details of this amazing plot to blow up multiple planes – which, rather extraordinarily, had not turned up in a year of surveillance. Of course, the interrogators of the Pakistani dictator have their ways of making people sing like canaries. As I witnessed in Uzbekistan, you can get the most extraordinary information this way. Trouble is it always tends to give the interrogators all they might want, and more, in a desperate effort to stop or avert torture. What it doesn’t give is the truth …

We then have the extraordinary question of Bush and Blair discussing the possible arrests over the weekend. Why?

I’d be interested in the number of plotters who had passports. How could they even stage a dummy-run with no passports? And what bomb-making materials did they actually have? These seem like legitimate questions to me; the British authorities have produced no evidence so far. If the only evidence they have was from torturing someone in Pakistan, then they have nothing that can stand up in anything like a court. I wonder if this story is going to get more interesting. I wonder if Lieberman’s defeat, the resilience of Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the emergence of a Hezbollah-style government in Iraq had any bearing on the decision by Bush and Blair to pre-empt the British police and order this alleged plot disabled. I wish I didn’t find these questions popping into my head. But the alternative is to trust the Bush administration.

Been there. Done that. Learned my lesson.

"I am just not going to wet my pants every time some guys get arrested in a terror plot. I will do my best to stay informed. I will support the necessary law enforcement agencies. I will take whatever reasonable precautions seem, um, reasonable. But I will not be terrorized. I assume that the terror-ists would like me to be terrorized, as that is what is says on their nametag, rather than, say, wanting me to surrender to ennui or negative body image, and they’re just coming the long way around," – blogger John Rogers.

A reader writes:

I realize that you may find male circumcision to be heinous and unnecessary, and for the record I agree with you, but I find your use of the term MGM to be completely distasteful. By using the term MGM, you’re piggy backing on the FGM (female genital mutilation) cause and comparing male circumcision to FGM, which is dishonest to say the least. While male circumcision may diminish male pleasure, the vast majority of FGM results in the complete removal of a woman’s clitoris and in the most serious case, infibulation, the removal of clitoris, all labia, and the closing of the wound into the size of a matchstick. As a result, both menses and urine pass through this hole and infection is often the result.

Childbirth results in severe tearing, and, unlike male circumcision which decreases the rate of HIV transmission, infibulation increases the risk. In short, one cannot compare male circumcision with FGM, because by doing so, you’re merely making FGM look more innocuous. I urge you to find pictures and compare the two, you’ll probably regret the comparison you’re making.

I agree with everything this reader says, but one. FGM is exponentially morally, medically and psychologically worse than MGM. It’s an evil practice. But it is untrue that MGM "may diminish male pleasure." It drastically decreases male sexual sensitivity. In the era of AIDS, some parents may believe that diminishing their child’s future sexual pleasure is worth the benefit of extra protection from HIV. But the trade-off exists.

How on earth did this classic blooper find its way into the head of Fox News Anchor Shep Smith? I YouTube. You decide.

The BBC is on the case of the orphanage massacre in Sri Lanka. Good for them. But the MSM seems eerily silent. What do you think the coverage would be if the Israeli government killed 61 children in an anti-terror bombing campaign? Front-page A-1. Sri Lanka? Nada. And people wonder why some of us believe much of the media has an anti-Israel bias.

Little Italy, Cleveland, Ohio, today, in a celebration of the Feast of the Assumption.

"Hezbollah killed more cows than people in Israel" – Michael Totten, in his latest missive from the Israel-Lebanon border.